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The Pressure of Existence
In lieu of having gotten enough sleep to say anything interesting today, even after two cups of coffee, I’m just going to post a little exchange between two characters in my primary novel-in-progress. I’m not sure if this is a good idea at all, but I thought about it as Greg was criticizing my Uno game for being very unstrategic. Blackman is a human lady visiting and studying U’look, an alien with a rather different way of perceiving time. Blackman: We haven’t seen your people play strategy games, U’look. Do you have strategy games? U’look: Of course, we had and have concepts of strategy. Blackman: But do you have games?…
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Weekly linkage
This week’s internet cruising: Lymejello – Wow. Speaking of telling difficult stories. Lyme disease is apparently no joke. I remember seeing the photos in middle school health class–a ringed rash, warnings that it could kill untreated, but not that it was so damned debilitating. My Hopebuilders 5k page – Yeah, I'm a punk. Go donate and push me to run. If I meet my fund-raising goal, I'll run it hard. Tim Gunn Is A National Treasure – "[W]hen I visit department stores and I go to the shop that’s called “woman,” I am horrified! Horrified by the awful, degrading, disrespectful choices that women have." 10 Usability Tips Based on Research…
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Uncategorized
Keep Telling the Difficult Stories
I had dinner with some friends about a week ago, and I retold (part of) a story that I’d been told of a painful in vitro experience that included the selective culling of some of the fertilized eggs. I hadn’t thought twice about it–if you go shopping for one kid and end up with four (!!) fertilized eggs and the doctor offers to cull the herd in a standard (albeit risky) procedure, there’s little issue with taking said option. My nurse friend didn’t say anything, but she got a look on her face. Oops? The word “abortion” never even crossed my mind as a label for that until I saw…
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Weekly linkage
This week’s internet cruising: How to keep someone with you forever – "You create a sick system." I wanted to cry when I read this. Looking Back — Discord&Rhyme – "To be successful at bootstrapping, you have to cut every feature except those you think are absolutely necessary. Then you cut some that you thought that you absolutely had to have. You compromise your design because you need to get the product to market. You ignore automated testing and documentation because your code is too unstable to be held back by rigorous processes." Launching beta, or “How to decide when and where to cut corners” – 200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect…
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Uncategorized
I don’t use too many tabs!
No story last weekend — I apologize! One will be up this weekend, and I’ll be sticking with the Witches of Ming Ung until it’s done. I think it’s confusing to keep switching back and forth, especially since Witches is a serial plot (whereas Transhuman Congress jumps around). I’ve been in the world of software development for a hot minute now, starting in the high school classroom, through an internship at a startup, to doing fast-paced client work, and now to big corp. One thing I’ve consistently found time and time again, is a correlation between computer UI usage skills and problem-solving efficiency. This is all anecdotal, of course.