Some links of how we're living in an SF world. Still, no jet pack, crystal cities, or moonbases, but progress.
Boeing has made a successful ground text of their air-to-ground high energy laser platform. Personally, the writer in me squees we delight, the former military in me is worried. There's just something wrong with thinking about this weapon being used in an anti-personnel capacity. Vehicles or hardened stationary targets I feel okay about. It's the same feeling I get thinking about an A-10 strafing troops with that vulcan cannon it has, only more intense. Maybe it's the total overkill capacity that's keying off my internal moral monitors.
Real low cost solar energy is soon to be available. Looks like somebody was paying attention to the helios project and said, "hey, we could do that, cheaper, on the ground." Although they haven't matched the solar cells to fuel cells, just the adding focusing lenses to solar cells. (swiped from John Farr)
Vat grown meat is quickly becoming a commercially viable product. Really sets off the squick meters in my head. But, because my wife has advanced degrees in biology so I pick up on things like this, to paraphrase Carleton Heston from the end of "Solent Green", "It's cancer. It's made of cancer." Do a search on the Hayflick Limit if you want to find out why. Sure, you can add telomere bits, but that doesn't go on forever.
And from good friend Dan, not exactly "living in the future" but still important to it anyway, Web Monkey is back. If you know and care, it's big. If you don't, that's okay. Not everybody is an HTML/XML and Javascripting geek. Hand-coders rejoice, da monkey is back!
6 comments:
Steve.
Did you realize that just in this blog alone, your wordcount including your comments are well over 1150 words? Think how much fiction you'd be crankin' out. Or the poetry! Oooo. . . the poetry you could write in a week of non-blogging!
Just a thought.
Camille, it's worse than you think. Over all I've written about 6000+ words in the past two weeks. The vast majority of them were in reports, emails, and some non-fiction writing I'm doing for a client (for which I'm being paid, but mostly for the design work I'm doing in conjunction with it). The problem for me is focusing and timing. If I could focus and divide my time writing fiction like I do for the blog posts, I'd be made. I know it's possible, but right now there's a psychological block to it. I really need to get back to writing fiction. It's killing me that my output is so low this year (and I think it's part of the depression).
And yes, there has been poetry. Not much, none of the SF/F flavor, but it's been in there.
I meant that 1150 words was just in the past two days.
I understand about the work and the funk and the focus, but I think a few new pieces making the rounds might make you feel better.
You're so right. That's why I'm so glad I know you, Camille. Not only did you get me writing out poetry instead of me just whispering sweet nothings and greeting cards.
Finding that daily time has been a hard row to hoe for me, but two things have been super helpful for me:
1) realizing that I, and my life, are not necessarily made for long-term adherence to routine, and that it's okay if I do things one way one week and another way another week
and
2) approaching it like food. You HAVE to eat. And now I have a rule: I HAVE to write. I ask myself "What will we have for dinner tonight?" and then right after that, I ask, "When are we going to write today?" And that works out pretty well for me. Sometimes I just want cereal for dinner, and the equivalent of for just writing fifteen minutes. The deal is, you can't not write a LITTLE, same as you can't not eat a little. You get time off during stomach flu, though. :)
It's worked a lot better for me than being a hard-assed rule writing for three hours a night that I break 6 out of 7 days, and mope around feeling guilty for.
Mer, that's so true and frustrating. I like routine. As I guy I could eat the same thing for weeks. But I need to keep changing and finding ways to write. If I don't, I start inflicting my fiction on my wife. And I find the hard assed rules just aren't working anymore. Even for the freelance stuff.
So I keep trying this experiment, and trying to make large chunks of time available to write. I keep looking back to the lake, and how I got out about 4000 words in that one day. I can do that. Now I've got to figure a way to do it in chunks.
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