Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Bad Ideas for Pixar-​​themed Disney Attractions—Part 1

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The Monsters Inc. Hotel

Here at Disney World, we pride our­selves on giv­ing you and your fam­ily the com­plete Disney® expe­ri­ence.  Beginning in 2013, that expe­ri­ence won’t stop at the park gates if you stay in one of our themed hotels for the ulti­mate immer­sive experience!

In the Pixar clas­sic Monsters, Inc. Mike, Scully, and all their fel­low crea­tures at Monsters, Inc. can come through any door in our world to col­lect the screams of lit­tle children—the fuel that pow­ers their world.  And now, your fam­ily can expe­ri­ence what it was like to before lit­tle Boo vis­ited and turned their world upside down!

Our highly-​​trained cast mem­bers have access to secret pas­sages that allow them to spring out of clos­ets in any of our guest rooms.  You  just never know when one of our Pixar-​​designed mon­sters will pay a visit to lit­tle Bobby and lit­tle Suzie!   You can turn our Mickey-​​shaped night­lights… but it won’t keep the mon­sters away when they have a job to do!

Now tak­ing reser­va­tions for spring of 2013!

And Another #*(!ing Definition of Fantasy

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Fantasy is a lit­er­a­ture that responds to the reader’s excla­ma­tion  of “that’s impos­si­ble!” with “chal­lenge accepted… your majesty.”

Another Definition of Science Fiction

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Science Fiction is a lit­er­a­ture that responds to the reader’s excla­ma­tion  of “that’s impos­si­ble!” with “chal­lenge accepted.”

Dreamhost is failing me. Suggestions?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I recently moved a dozen or so low-​​traffic sites to a Dreamhost VPS server from an aging ded­i­cated box.  For the first two weeks, I had no trou­ble.  Now, out­side of the free mem­ory allot­ment time, the server is going down 6–7 times a day.  I have zero inter­est in being a sysad­min, and so far Dreamhost’s sup­port seems to think the prob­lem is some­thing I should have to fig­ure out myself.   And I’m pay­ing out the EAR for this ser­vice com­pared what my share of the ded­i­cated box was.   I’ve filed another  tech sup­port com­plaint, but it’s been sev­eral hours and still no answer.  I’m very dis­sat­is­fied with this level of sup­port.  I expected more for my money.

Can any­one rec­om­mend a host­ing solu­tion that is fire and for­get?  I do not have time to be mon­i­tor­ing my mem­ory usage 24/​7 so their server doesn’t auto­mat­i­cally ter­mi­nate all my scripts, run out of mem­ory, and lock up until I reboot the god damned thing.

My liveli­hood is based on my web­sites.  This is absolutely unac­cept­able.  One thing’s for certain—I won’t be using Dreamhost VPS for any future client projects.

More Crossovers in Web Design and Writing: Kill Your Darlings

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s often heard advice in writ­ing that you should kill your dar­lings.  I don’t take this to mean you should kill your char­ac­ters (although really, why not?).  What I think this typ­i­cally refers to is hav­ing the open­ness, the will­ing­ness, to cut pieces that you love in ser­vice of the greater story.  You may have a line or a scene that you just love, that you think shows all your bril­liance.  But in the scheme of all things story, it doesn’t work.  It slows things down, or takes the reader out of the story.  Maybe it’s too shiny, or maybe it’s just irrel­e­vant.  You need to be will­ing to swal­low your pride and kill the bit to make a bet­ter piece.

I was reminded recently that this holds true for web design.  I’d built this tabbed nav­i­ga­tional struc­ture for a web­site that I really liked.  I thought it was clever and use­ful and I spent a lot of time cod­ing it.  But come time for con­tent to be loaded into the site, it just wasn’t work­ing.  I tried chang­ing the design of it visu­ally, but that didn’t fix the prob­lem.  The prob­lem was that it was just slightly too dif­fer­ent from the usual UI pat­terns.  It was con­fus­ing.  Ultimately, we cut it down into some­thing that was more rec­og­niz­able and standard.

I’m sorry I haven’t been blog­ging lately.  Oddly, I blog less when busi­ness is slow.  All my think­ing time is devoted to how I am going to get work, get paid, and avoid des­ti­tu­tion, rather than what I can blog about.  Maslow’s hier­ar­chy in action!

I’ve spent the last two weeks devel­op­ing a new Clockpunk Studios web­site.  When I’m burned out on star­ing at that, I switch over and learn CodeIgniter for devel­op­ing apps.  My brain is full of cod­ing things right now, and not so much with the prose.  I’m hop­ing that all this time and energy trans­fers over to a broader appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge.  The more I know about pro­gram­ming, per­haps the bet­ter I can write TAKEDOWN NOTICE.   And if not, well, hope­fully I’ve expanded my skillset with new ways to pay the bills.  It’s win/​win, really.

Alone with the Works of Masters

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I had a wan­der through Google’s lat­est Streetview-​​esque project, Google Art Project.  It’s basi­cally Google Streetview for major muse­ums.  Sadly, the Louvre is not included yet—and some­how I think the French will never allow it.  But there are other fan­tas­tic muse­ums in the site.

I wish the walk­through images were of higher qual­ity, but as I wan­dered the gal­leries, I real­ized some­thing was… odd.  There are no other people—the expe­ri­ence is one of com­plete soli­tude.  It’s like wan­der­ing the halls after an apoc­a­lypse that only you have survived.

There’s some­thing unset­tling about being in a museum alone, even if vir­tu­ally.  The years of his­tory seem to close in on you.  Time does funny things.

You should def­i­nitely check it out.

Server Move

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Please excuse any dust while we move sites to a new server.

Five Animals That Will Take Over the Earth After We Eradicate Ourselves

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have a new (barely) non­fic­tion arti­cle up at Lightspeed Magazine.  It’s about the species that will replace us!

Let’s face it. We’re doomed. Our species’ great­est sci­en­tists have admit­ted as much—if we don’t find a way off this rock, the human race is fac­ing extinction.

Check it out!

Some Good SF/​F Stories Around the Web

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Here are some free online read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for the month of January.  I read these over the week­end, try­ing to catch up with my mas­sive back­log of online fiction.

“The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft” by Marc Laidlaw

This story might frus­trate or upset some genre read­ers, but I loved it.  The less I say about why, the more likely it is to be the same for you. 

“In-​​Fall” by Ted Kosmatka

This has some clever use of the strange physics around black holes.  A really nice, short, taut piece, and a great exam­ple of a cer­tain kind of story I really like, one which parades a really shiny idea and doesn’t over­stay its wel­come. And it still has a good emo­tional core.

“A Long Walk Home” by Jay Lake

There was a beau­ti­ful melan­choly feel to this one, with that usual Jay Lake touch of deft world build­ing and lovely lan­guage.  This one echoed in my head for a while after I fin­ished it.

…

Otherwise, I’m read­ing In Cold Blood by Joe Abercrombie.  I enjoyed his tril­ogy last year, and this one is no excep­tion.  It does feel a tad long though.  I feel like I should have fin­ished it sev­eral days ago. I haven’t picked out what to read next, but I get one more fic­tion novel before I tackle another non­fic­tion text.