Interesting Links for 02-12-2011
Dec. 2nd, 2011 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Apple: Siri isn't anti-abortion. Glad to hear it!
- Ministers announce U-turn on mobility benefit cut - Yaaaay!
- A Londoner’s Guide to Living in New York: Part 1.1: Language (I laughed at the translations)
- Having problems motivating yourself to write? You need "Written? Kitten!", the world's best motivator!
- HP Printers Can Be Hacked to Catch on Fire
- New Icelandic volcano eruption could have global impact (Just what we need!)
- What it's like to sleep with cats
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Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 11:30 am (UTC)In the same way, people who need a digital kitten to motivate them to write, should probably stick to WoW. If it's not more fun than other activities, then it is honestly not worth it.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 11:32 am (UTC)I agree though - writing is something you do because you love it, or because you have to do it for work. If you don't enjoy it then don't do it unless you have to!
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 02:16 pm (UTC)And I note that Warren Ellis has been using, whilst not a kitten, a ticker for counting up his progress towards projected completion on his current novel. Of course, he's reached 100% (80,000 words) and not yet reached the end of the book, so he's carrying on.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 01:29 pm (UTC)by contrast, people who've read my work have near universally loved it. Figure.
nothing would motivate me less than a digital cat. and I love cats
Gods I'm a miserable bugger
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 01:50 pm (UTC)Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 08:32 pm (UTC)Possibly useful: 7 Secrets of the Prolific by Hillary Rettig (a book about writing while being happy and not wrecking your life) has a fair amount about the effects of traumatic rejection on writers, and how to get past it.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 08:57 pm (UTC)I can write a scene. I can make that scene very, very good, with convincing characters doing convincing things. Once that scene is done, I have *no idea* how to connect it to the next scene.
so what I end up with is a load of relatively well written shorts with nothing filling the space.
I thought a while ago that the ideal solution to this is to write a lot of connected short stories, but then what I write isn't short stories, it's just snapshots of something happening.
further to that, I have dirt-poor understanding of the technicalities of English. I still can't, e.g. tell you the difference between a noun and a verb. I also *absolutely don't care*.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-03 01:52 am (UTC)Are your short scenes sometimes from what might be a single story, or are they completely separate?
That ability of yours to do convincing writing sounds really valuable.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-03 06:52 am (UTC)the fictional aspect is in assuming that the superstitions and supernatural beliefs were completely real, and genuinely happened.
this is where being able to write as though it's actually happening is fairly valuable. I'm assuming it's a direct effect of having spent my entire adult life in or around the city, and apparently knowing it better than the local historical society [who have made some truly bizarre errors and assumptions, such as getting the route of the Flodden Wall wrong]
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 09:01 pm (UTC)A location I write will look, sound, smell real. You'll probably picture it exactly as I intend. Conversations will feel right, as if it's something a few people really would say to each other
[dialogue in the vast majority of novels I've read is fucking dire. I read it and I think, dude, have you ever actually *listened* to a conversation? People just don't talk like that]
I just can't keep it going for more than a few hundred words.
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 07:53 pm (UTC)Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 09:06 pm (UTC)I know an awful lot of people who love doing stuff, but get to the point where it's just not feasible anymore.
In fact, I'm painfully close to dropping a lot of activity that's been a major thing in my life because I just can't afford to do it free.
there's a world of difference between not having ideas [and needing a digital cat for 'inspiration'] and just being beaten down by the need to eat.
unless I'm missing your point?
Re: Writing Motivation
Date: 2011-12-02 10:32 pm (UTC)Time is money. So most writers aren't motivated by money, but want the money in order to have the time to write.
For example, I have one (1) clear day a week for writing. I expect to be able to manage 1.5 novels a year once underway on the two series I have built. I am 43, so have a mere [don't want to think about it] writing years ahead of me. I have more tales to tell than time to write them - unless I can get a living wage out of my writing, then I can write more.
If somebody - because I feel that's where this question is leading - pirates a writer's work, then they are eating into that time. No matter how clever the argument about IP, that's what it comes down to.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 11:58 am (UTC)Beyond that, it's possible to use code in your site to skew results so that they come up very differently on mobile devices than they do from laptops and desktops. Simply optimizing your site for mobile devices will skew it higher (something that well funded pro life people might think of, but that a local Planned Parenthood might not.) Cookies also skew results.
If they've managed to make it so that when someone accidently clicks on a pro-life place other than an actual abortion provider even once that it installs a cookie that redirects future searches to pro-life places that would explain it as well.
I'll give you an example from my own personal experience. A few years ago I did copy for a gay bareback dating site. As such I had to look at tons of other gay bareback sites. One of them must have put a search cookie on my machine because after that whenever I searched anything sex related gay results came up first. That is, until I had to do a bunch of stuff for female escort services. Again, one of them must have stuck a cookie on my computer because after two or three days of looking at female escort sites my sex related results were putting girls in the top results again.
I can't image a well funded pro-life organization couldn't use the same cookie approach to skew results their way.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 12:51 pm (UTC)Bareback.com actually got written up by Rolling Stone Magazine after the launch as one of the most "immoral" websites in the world (which, of course, got tons of people to sign up for it and made my client a lot of money.) I was so proud.
What pissed them off, of all things, were our slogans which included "Who's afraid of the big bad bug?", "Condoms are for pussies" and "No matter what you promise, don't pull out of Dodge."
They also didn't like that we made the "I am 18 I want to enter" and "I am not 18 get me out of here" buttons read "Cum Inside" and "Pull Out" instead of the standard "Enter" and "Exit."
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 01:32 pm (UTC)Siri primarily gets results from Yelp and Wolfram Alpha.
anything that isn't easily found there get a quick Google.
the problem is parsing. Siri has to be able to figure out what you're asking for - and if that's not easily found via the first two, it gets a bit stuck.
asking for Planned Parenthood, which is there in the Yelp directory, gets an instant accurate answer.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 01:01 pm (UTC)It's essentially a European word. It comes from the common greek term "Gyro" (which I see on signs at greek sandwich shops all the time.
"Gyro" when pronounced in a New York accent sounds like "Hero."
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 02:00 pm (UTC)"Gyro," when heard by a Londoner, would mean something like "state issued welfare cheque."
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 02:01 pm (UTC)Why?
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 02:31 pm (UTC)soundsreads a bit like "girocheque"no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 09:07 pm (UTC)unemployment benefits are known as giro's, as linked by innerbrat.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 01:11 pm (UTC)Less so than they did about Eyjafjallajökull. It's a lot easier to pronounce. Sounds almost like a big, playful kitten. Awww.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 01:51 pm (UTC)I write for the love of writing, but I don't mind a kitten now and again. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 10:39 pm (UTC)I can't remember where I read that. It's not in the Beeb article.