found_drama

• Open the Future: Molecular Rights Management
  at Beyond the Beyond
  (tags: future research)
• urbanized
  (tags: apocalypse art photography architecture research)

• Major biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor??
  via Doug’s Darkworld: a collection of fungi that eat gamma rays?
  (tags: biology chernobyl evolution nuclear russia science panspermia research)
• How to close off a project properly
  via lifehack.org
  (tags: management work productivity projects essay todo)

I first encountered Accelerando about two years ago and had a go at the PDF version last year. I didn’t get very far on this first attempt — but I blame the fact that I was trying to read it via PDF. I flew threw the first 20 pages or so but got stymied after that. It’s not a very comfortable medium for bed-time reading¹.

Getting into the novel, Charles Stross seems to share some of the same literary memenome as Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow. The prose style (especially early on in the text) felt a bit like Snow Crash with its vivid bits of lurid ephemera, its nigh comic book pacing, its every tawdry detail competing for your attention parallel to some critical core story element. And like Doctorow on crystal meth, every ten pages of Stross bombards you with some prosaically twisted huge new idea: what would Islamic scholars have to say about bacon built molecule-by-molecule by nanobots instead of cut from a pig? if your meatbody died while a digital “vector state” clone of your mind was traveling to-and-from a distant star system, would that digital clone be liable for debts that the meatbody incurred?

In Accelerando, Stross has decided to take us on a wild ride through a technologically force-fed, post-evolutionary end-stage of humanity courtesy of some mad scientist jet propulsion laboratory. He is not afraid to “go there” with any of the implications of any of the “out there” ideas that he weaves into the story. Stross gives us an intriguing, balls-out take on The Singularity. He grapples with most of the what-ifs and gets them illustrated reasonably well through the narrative — whether it’s part of the core plot or through the asides and atmosphere.  That said, for each run of well-paced, well-timed passages, there’s a short run of bits that ever-so-slightly drag. Still… I did laugh out loud quite a few times.

Overall? Not the “Wow!” effect I was expecting but still an enjoyable piece of speculative fiction with some razor sharp wit.

1. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was pretty much a one-time thing, I guess. [↩]

WordPress 2.3 upgrade here at F_D is … well, it’s more-or-less complete.  The Extended Live Archive plug-in had some compatibility issues so it was discarded for the simple and effective “Compact Monthly Archive” plug-in.  At least for now.  At least until I can roll-my-own archives plug-in¹.  On the flip of that, switching to the native tagging system was a snap.  The main thing that I’ll miss from Ultimate Tag Warrior however is how it automatically appended the assigned categories as tags.  Oh well..  My other plug-ins worked: SparkStats, FootNotes, the FeedBurner plug-in, and (of course) Akismet.

So here we are … up and running on 2.3.  w00t!

1. They’re all so chronological … where’s the categorical? the taxonomical? the tag-based folksonomy? [↩]

• 10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of

  via Developer’s Toolbox @ SmashingMagazine.com (aware of usability but not (apparently) of grammar)

  (tags: work webdev usability UI essay)

• My Personal Opinion - 90% of the Rankings Equation Lies in These 4 Factors

  via SEOmoz: just plain common sense?

  (tags: marketing webdev work search seo essay)

• The New Wave

  Jon Whipple (via DF) on the great Core Image rodeo — weighing in on Acorn vs. Pixelmator vs. Photoshop vs. iPhoto…

  (tags: graphics OSX software Acorn Pixelmator essay)

• Your Ballardian Dream Home (serious offers only)

  via No Fear of the Future (via B^2): Titan missile base for sale

  (tags: nuclear apocalypse ColdWar)

• How to Make Perfect Sushi Rice

  via Mahalo

  (tags: sushi recipe rice tutorial)

I’m inside my own private version of Cargill’s 90/90 Law.  Comparing the last three days of work on The Project’s outline with the last three weeks…  Well, it doesn’t look like much by comparison.  Endings are as difficult to conceptualize as they are to write.  Even something that borders on Stephensonian¹.  I suppose then that Hick’s Law works overtime on aspiring novelists.

Similar things at play on my WordPress upgrade.

Oh… and finishing Accelerando, too.

1. What denouement? [↩]

• Pixelmator

  Another editor to try alongside Acorn. (Looks like it offers a bit more … but is it too much? Will it be as easy to use? How will it stack up in the “vs. ImageWell vs. Photoshop” battle?)

  (tags: editor graphics software todo)

I are running late for the NCAA championship tournament; I was supposed to have met Dad there already.  I’ve arranged a ride on this strange guy’s spare sailboat.  Part of my problem is that I cannot get the lenses to fit correctly on the new camera.  I have my silver-bodied Canon point-and-shoot digital in my pocket already but the SLR is giving me trouble.  The last trip out to the game, I made the mistake of affixing the macro lens and so all of my assumed telephoto shots came out with the subjects quite blurry and the back of some other audience member’s head quite clear.  As I can’t find the telephoto lens, I’ve spent the last day and half trying to figure out what other lens in the collection would be best here.  But with the game imminent, I’ve given up trying to find the best lens and just affix an appropriate lens.  Even that isn’t going well; for some reason, the barrel of the lens doesn’t match up with the camera body and the built-in adapter set (this weird little arm that folds down out of the body) doesn’t quite work either.  I’ve spent the last hour trying to plug the holes with various stickers and electrical tape.  And the sailboat owner is getting anxious as well; so anxious in fact that he’s come clean about his intent to rob me.

F_D in transit to WordPress 2.3…

Plugging in the new native tagging API was a snap (10 minutes max). There’s a built-in migrator for existing Ultimate Tag Warrior tags (bonus) so getting this rolled out to the live environment should will go nice and smooth.

The bummer part is with the “conflict” reported on the Extended Live Archives plug-in that we’re using for the archives here. What’s weird (at least to me) is that the reported issue talks about “problems when editing or creating new posts due to the database changes” whereas I couldn’t even get the plug-in to work at all in my sandbox environment (wouldn’t load Taxonomy or Folksonomy clusters). So now we must decide whether to strip it out, wait for the fix (or try to fix it my own self), or re-invent my archives all together. I’m leaning toward the latter because of some other UI tweaks that I’m considering (may as well do it all at once, eh?)