JamesSavik

The answer to these questions will vary considerably from person to person. I answered where to live because I sincerely regret getting so attached to Mississippi. It doesn't matter how much I love it, it will never love me back.

I'm lukewarm on Fanfics. I would rather deal with my own original material than geek out on the various quirks of the Star Wars, Star Trek and X-men universes. Each one of the fan-fic genres that I mentioned has its own orthodoxy: history, characters, politics and so on. It is a major chore to write anything that will fit into that world without contradicting something and making recurrent characters consistent. The people most likely to read fan-fiction, the real fanatics, know their stuff and are likely to spot even the smallest deviation from the published body of work. e.g. In a Star Wars Fan-fic I read a cool story where a rebel sympathizer steals a TIE-advanced interceptor and hands it over to the rebels. Problem was the TIE Advanced didn't exist yet in that time-line. The discussion thread had 150 angry entries from geeks over a time-line mistake in an otherwise fairly well written story. If you feel motivated to do a fan-fic, remember your auidance. They are Trekkies for whom 6 series and 18 movies aren't enough. They are the X-men fans for whom 3 movies and a few thousand comic books aren't enough. What they want is tough to deliver and you have to know the material as well as the uber-geeks among them.

It is easier to say I'm gay because name your BS reason than I'm gay and it's none of your f-ing business.

I sincerely hope that we aren't that superficial.

I have been working on a project for a long time that I'm going to describe in the next few blog entries. I began collecting e-books some time ago. At first it was just a few but as I began finding more and more sources for them, my ebooks collection became like a snowball rolling downhill getting bigger and bigger gathering momentum. It wasn't too long before the management of this collection became a real chore. This library is now several hundred gigs in size and contains over 100,000 distinct volumes. There are a great many headaches involved. First: formats- there is pdf, djv, txt, html, compiled html and more. Second: some volumes are teasers and are incomplete and ineligible for inclusion. Third: some books don't neatly fit into one subject area- e.g. Does An Atlas of Gravity belong in the Reference section, physics section or astrophysics section? Fourth: duplicates are a big problem and are not easily detected. As a person who has worked in "Information Systems" for 20+ years, the management of unstructured data is a challenge that I have been working on for a very long time. While many applications are neatly and cleanly death with in the tabular format of spreadsheets and relational databases, knowledge is not so neat or clean. It comes in blobs and often overlaps on to completely different genres. The breakthrough that I have accomplished is not making knowledge fit into a nice neat package or application. It is building the application to accommodate the knowledge. Various schemes have been devised to accomplish this. The oldest and best known is the Dewey Decimal System which is a reasonable and efficient way to organize paper libraries. When IT is applied to the problem however, Dewey's decimals don't add up. The DDS depends on numbers like 431.11c, 536.32 and 702.122. The problem is that computers see those numbers as REAL numbers with a decimal part and an exponent. In some cases a Dewey Decimal Number doesn't equal a number that the computer can use. Because of rounding, 702.122 might actually equal 702.123. This Dawg just won't hunt. In the eighties, another scheme developed for organizing library data with info technology in mind is called MARC MAchine Readable Cataloging. MARC kicks butt for cataloging libraries. The problem is that it was expanded to encompass ALL of the different things that modern libraries are keeping: records, CDs, software, etc. MARC has become so complex that it has become unwieldy and difficult to work with. The use of other methods is underway like XML and XML enabled databases but the central problem remains: how best to organize and structure an electronic library?

It IS very sad that Craig (and millions of other gay conservative Christians) are unable to accept their own sexuality. It's a recipe for disaster actually. All their friends, all their family members, and their entire church community (which holds a great deal of sway) would be horrified and shun them (if you've come out before imagine all your worst fears. Now imagine that they're true). Everything they've ever been told about homosexuality is how evil it is. They feel an overwhelming amount of pressure to conform and to also castigate gays. Quite a lot of gay people have grown up around conservative churches and have had the courage to come out and not sell out. I DO mean COURAGE because a-holes like these Haggard and Craig are a dime a dozen. They are the sort that will cause an out, gay person whatever sort of trouble that they can manage. The actions of people like Haggard and Craig are destroying the very churches that they follow by exposing the centuries old lies, distortions, double standards and hypocracy of those instutions. I have NO compassion for Haggard or Craig. Their bad karma has finally caught up with them and its about time.

What Craig probably did, what Haggard admittedly did, what thousands of other wretchedly conflicted gay or bisexual men did, hurt only themselves and their loved ones who were caught up in the resulting media maelstroms. The ones who "outed" and persecuted them, in contrast, have deprived our country of the services of good citizens. Bollocks! What Craig and Haggard did was to use the subject of homosexuality for personal and professional gain. Craig grandstanded gay issues and fought/voted against basic civil liberties for gay people... for votes and power. Haggard demonized gay people from the pulpit... to exploit fear, inspire bigotry and capitalize on the sensationalism surrounding homosexuality. The claim that they only hurt themselves is clearly specious and completely disengenous. They both built their careers on marganilizing gay people while participating into worst behaviors attributed to gay people. The ones who "outed" and persecuted them, in contrast, have deprived our country of the services of two con men and bullsh*t artists whose biggest claim to fame is selling out their own kind.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a great mix of cute and talent. I remember trying to watch 3rd Rock from the Sun. There simply wasn't enough of him in the show to save it. Since then he has done a number of off beat roles in Indie films that have established his acting chops. You'll want to see him in Latter Days, Manic, Beautiful Skin, Brick and the Lookout.

I will bow to Graeme's expertise on the matter of kids since he has a couple of them. Come to think of it, he owns a small farm and might own a kidd or two.

Might I suggest the Capernicans [after Capricorn the goat]

Vance- Do take care of yourself and I hope that you feel better soon. I hope your cat is doing well. Mine likes to keep me company when I convalesce since its the only time I sit still. James

Have a great year Jalaki and take care of that roomie. He may look grown up but he's still just a pup. Keep him from chewing on anything electric.

Dude- Start a video store. If that's the extent of your competetion, you can kick that ass with your eyes shut.

A lot of people like Super Bad so far but it came out too late to be considered a "summer" movie. More like a back-to-school-in-the-heat-of-bleeting-August movie.

Be careful changing POV. It can be confusing and/or cause an unnatural "break" in the story flow while the reader figures out what you are doing. That's not to say a good story can't be done in multiple points of view. You just have to be very careful doing it. It takes great skill, craft and some experience. It is hard to point out where shifting POV's are done poorly or using them turns cheesy. I'll leave that to your imagination (it doesn't take much). If you want to see a story where it is done well, look up Gabe Duncan's Angel at awesomedude.com

I'll be looking forward too it!

Dennis is a bottom: the more they bluster and insist that thet're butch, the much more likely that they take it in the tush. -attributed to an old drag queen that looks like Ethel Merman

I did not take an active dislike for any of Dom's characters. He does a good job developing characters and even with his villains, you understand them and their behavior. Two bullies/villains in particular stand out: Aaron K. and Dennis G. It is easy to look at their behavior and label them asshole however Dom doesn't leave it at that. Aaron is a self absorbed closet case that so entrapped in his web of lies that if you pulled on one thread, his whole world would unravel. Hell- how many Aaron's do we all know? He's not your atypical mustache fondling villain that is a villain for the sake of pure evil. He is just a maladjusted kid that's a tad on the spoiled side with sibling rivalry issues. Dennis's family situation has made better men than me into raving lunatics or snipers. No wonder he is so close to his dog: it's probably been the only affection that he has ever known. When we closely examine these villains, we find them more wretched than wicked. The real genius of Dom's villains is that they are just people. They aren't Die Hard-esque super Euro terrorists who are just over-the-top-evil for no apparent reason. They show that those people that annoy, irritate and even abuse us have dimensions that we are completely unaware of and if we look close enough, their behavior might make sense after all. One character that I never really "got" was Seth. I wonder if he wasn't meant to be just a bit mysterious and we learned about him at the same pace as Rory did. Doesn't matter, it worked. Seth is just a departure from Dom's usual characterization.

Shia LaBeouf made a real statement in 2007 with strong performances in major roles in Disturbia and Transformers. In '08 he will appear as Indiannia Jone's son and in '09 he will reprise his role as Sam Witwicky in Transformers 2. Bob: I can't figure out how to add that question. It looks like I've got the # of questions maxed out.

The 2007 Summer Movie Season Well- summer is almost over and so is the summer movie season. What movies did you see? What was good? What was bad? What new actors and actresses impressed? Spider-Man 3 Shrek the Third Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Ocean's Thirteen Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer Evan Almighty Live Free or Die Hard Ratatouille Transformers Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix The Simpsons Movie The Bourne Ultimatum Rush Hour 3 What do you think?

Might I point out that a lot of adults act like large, slobbering 7th graders. No offense intended 7th graders: it's an awkward age but you will grow out of it...

100 Ways to Kill Your Character Natural Causes Acute Illness/Infectious Diseases: an acute disease is a disease with either or both of a rapid onset and a short course influenza Lower respiratory infections Diarrheal diseases Tuberculosis Malaria Measles Pertussis Tetanus Meningitis Hepatitis syphilis West Nile disease Lyme Disease [*]Chronic Illness; a disease that is long-lasting or recurrent. heart disease Cancer Liver disease Kidney disease AIDS Parkinston's Alzheimer's Suicide shooting exanguination overdose handing poision "suicide by cop" murder/suicide homicide/suicide bomber mass murder via suicide (like 9/11) Accidents- urban: Vehicle Crashes Air Crashes Ship sinks Car Crashes Bus Wreak [*]Structural Failures elevator collapse bridge collapse building collapse [*]Fire fire- office fire- industrial fire- commercial [*]Energy Related hazards eletrical problems- down power line, malfunctions electrical fires Nuclear plant accident/incident- radiation release natural gas leaks Refinery fires Storage related incidents (coal, oil, natural gas) [*]Industrial Accidents industrial/hazardous waste- fumes, fire, poisioning industrial accident- refinery fire, chemical release Refinery fire/coal, oil or natural gas storage Toxic chemical release/ liquid poisioning of groundwater [*]Urban Crime overdose- accidental gang violence (undirected urban violence) drive by shooting (undirected urban violence) Organized Crime Hit (wrong place/wrong time) Accidents- suburbian/rural: hunting accident injury/shock recreational vehicle accident (4-wheeler) Work vehicle accident (tractor, combine) house fire Cave ins/sink holes tainted water raiders, bandits, rebels Animals Snake-bite (primary) Spider-bite (primary) Scorpion sting (primary) Allergic reactions to insect stings mosquito borne illness Predators (Bear, cougar) feral animals (dogs, hogs, etc) [*]Environment exposure environmental illness/severe allegy terrain related injuries (falls) falling trees [*]Hazards abandoned dangerous equipment abandoned toxic materials abandoned dangerous structures abandoned mines Murder robbery/homicide shot stabbed Impaled poisoned beaten to death/head trauma blunt force trauma strangulation Fatal reaction to recreational drug combination overdose- forced overdose- sold drugs too pure intentionally hate crime ritual killing ritual sacrifice Murder as a result of a primary crime like arson or sabatogue. Murder as a result of a terrorist incident Act of War Small Arms Machine gun fire Grenade, fragmentation Bombardment/barrage Artillery bombardment Aerial bombardment Naval Bombardment Morter fire Missile impact precision munition (smart bomb) [*]Weapons of Mass Destruction WMD- nuclear Dirty bomb (conventional bomb used to spread highly radioactive particles over a large area) fission bomb (kiloton yield) Fusion or two-stage bomb (megaton yield) [*]WMD- chemical [*]WMD- biological [*]WMD- kinetic energy weapon Natural Disaster Storm lightning high winds tornado (regional) hurricane or typhoon (regional) [*]flood hurricane related storm surge flash flood dam burst spring snow melt backwater [*]Fire forest fire/Wild fire fire caused by volcanic action fire- seasonal [*]Earthquake Building Collapse Fire trapped injury, bleed to death and/or shock electrocution tainted water [*]Volcano pyrocastic flow lava- falling lava- flowing Rapid snow melt/flashflood secondary fire poison gas [*]tidal Wave washed out to sea building collapse buried in rubble/mud [*]Afterkill- in many large scale disasters, the aftermath is just as deadly if not, more so starvation bad water or food disease secondary events (aftershocks, eruptions) exposure general weakened condition due to hunger, dehydration, exposure paranoia/panic/predatory behavior among survivors _____________________________________________ Adds major subhead: suicide, minor listing impalement

Darn-it- I forgot a gruesome method of pest disposal: IMPALEMENT

Ayn Rand: the Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Secret Sharer Hubregt J. Visser: Array and Phased Array Antenna Basics JACOB FRADEN: HANDBOOK OF MODERN SENSORS: PHYSICS, DESIGNS, and APPLICATIONS, 3e J.-L. Starck & F. Murtagh: Astronomical Image and Data Analysis

Bondwriter- that looks delicious!!! Reaper- hope you get a cake that yummy!