Harold: I’ve been using the library a lot more since we got together. I think it’s because you go all the time, but I never realized what a great resource the library could be.
Meg: Yeah, that’s where they keep the free books.
Giant Small Talk
I’ve been thinking recently about my adventures in China. Sometimes I have this homesickness for places in Yantai and Beijing, even though I’m pretty sure that with pace of change in China, those spots are completely different now.
I struggled with my Mandarin pretty much every day I was there. The Chinese will give any attempt beyond a toneless knee how a great deal of praise, but let’s be honest, my Mandarin is pretty rough.
One of my most exciting days was when I was in the local vegetable market, and the vendor mentioned it had been very cold recently. This was mindblowing, because I had slowly and painfully brought my Chinese abilities up to identifying the vegetables I wanted, how many I wanted, and bargaining down from Complete Idiot Price to a decent foreigner-tax. This is hard, you guys. Tones! Reading signs! Anyway, one day the vendor commented that it had been cold recently, using the past-tense marker le, and I agreed.
And I am still proud of myself, years later.
Sometimes, I really miss those tiny exciting moments of expat life.
Posted in Beijing, Chapel Hill
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Book Review: Writers of the Future #WotF31
But it wasn’t entirely about publishing and writing, I did find some lovely alternate world and spec-fic pieces in this anthology. Wisteria Melancholy is a wonderful short about accidentally manifesting supernatural powers at times of strong emotion, swiftly modifying gravity like an involuntary blush.
Hipstrgram of eARC cover. #ALLtheFILTERS!
Stars That Make Dark Heaven Light told a compelling story about a struggling space colony, Shakespeare, genetics, and the survival of humanity. The best scifi for me has a wildly different society, where people still make familiar and human choices. (Look at you, Divergent.) I believed every single bit of Dominion Colony, strange as it was. This was one of those scifi shorts that make me completely convinced there’s a full universe surrounding this scene, instead of ones that are a short story because the worldbuilding won’t hold up to another chapter. The author’s name is Sharon Joss, I stalked her blog and it looks like her previous work is an urban fantasy novel called Destiny Blues. Writer of the future, for sure.
The anthology format meant I gave short stories on topics that wouldn’t ordinarily interest me a full read. Sometimes, this served to remind me why I avoid that premise. (Oh look, a hardboiled spacecop with offstage devoted wife.) But in other cases, I was glad I’d given the chance to a premise that didn’t hook me. Planar Ghosts is a particularly good example of post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, with a characters acting in really human ways, even as they barter half-rolls of tape and questionable meat.
Some of the stories in this anthology were fun concepts, perfect for scifi shorts. In one, a young man is harassed by a misbehaving pet war god, and calls in the local God Whisperer to get better behavior from angry little Zu’ar. Another story was told entirely in 5-word sentences, another cool concept perfect for a short story.
The illustrations are printed in black & white next to the associated story, and then in full color in an illustration section in the end. Maybe this is a function of the eARC I received, but I really liked having an art gallery at the end, and I really liked the blend of styles and worlds all together in the illustration section.
Writers of the Future Volume 31 will be released on May 4th, 2015.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review. Thank you! All opinions are my own, and free copies have never stopped me from snarking about a bad book before.
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Posted in Books, Chapel Hill
Tagged #WotF31, Book review, Books, reading, sci-fi, Sharon Joss, Writers of the Future
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Evaluating
It’s been a few months of a rough “temporary” work situation, and I can feel it taking a toll. I’m starting to slide into slow motion, taking forever to get up, to get out of the shower, to come in from the car, (Not for work particularly, I sat outside the library for a while and I love the library.), it just seems like so much effort to do whatever I’m going to do next.
As this goes longer, checking my online grades has gone from checking on a Monday or a Tuesday to see which of last week’s assignments have been graded so far, to alt-tabbing over, and over again, to see that my 91% is still there. Grade checking ALL THE TIME. My teacher recently made a graph of student grades, without names, obviously, it’s a stats thing and not a public humiliation tactic, and I have the lowest A in the class. I also noticed that the student averages make that reverse bell curve so common in adult ed. (Why is that so common?)
Sometime I’ll write up a cost-benefit analysis of studying for this course, because I’ve noticed that after doing the assigned reading, and looking up a scientific term or two each week, I get a steady B+ on the weekly test. With additional hours of studying, making outlines and detailed notes, I can bring that up to an A-. So I’m either spending 2 hours for an 88% or 6+ hours for a 92%. Maybe I don’t study in an efficient way (How DO you memorize and contextualize new concepts without an outline? Is there something everyone else knows how to do?) or maybe that’s the class working as intended, and that’s what builds the reverse bell curve in student grades.
Posted in Chapel Hill
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Mouths of Babes
In App Design class, I ask my students keep their code statements in groups and name the groups something logical, like Game Controls. For the older kids, sometimes they get a detailed discussion of how good writers choose words to have meaning for the reader, so we have to choose words that are meaningful to the reader. The reader of these words will be the student in the future, and their programming teacher, and while we have the technical ability to put statements in any order and name groups and variables anything we want, future-student will thank you for making it logical and simple.
Anyway, the other day I asked the students to make a new group called Spikes and then to watch carefully and pay attention to our first hero-murdering lesson.
“Do we call this Spikes or Spike’s?” one of my students asked.
“No apostrophe. Just plain Spikes because it’s plural.”
“Plural?”
“We need more than one spike to scare our hero! And look at the art, look at all those spikes. You just use S for more than one spike. You use the apostrophe when something belongs to something else.”
“Oh,” he turned back to his computer, “That makes sense. I think you could even be an English teacher, Miss Meg.”
Posted in Chapel Hill
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Shades of ‘Grey’ and Rainbow Colors
Grey, from Kevin Does Art, is a little platformer in a grey world. I’m not great at platformers, well, actually, that’s an understatement, but I tried to overlook my general dislike of platformers when I checked out this game for our students.
The game opens in a sad grey world, which is one of my favorite settings. You’re a little blocky dude, and your little blocky friend with long hair is sad. The game description says that you’re a guy and this friend is your girlfriend, but there’s no dialogue or in-game description to clarify this, so I just imagined her as a sad friend. I liked this interpretation. Save the world from certain doom is a pretty common game story, so go cheer up your buddy made a pretty engaging game hook.
The protag waves at her a couple times, but she doesn’t react. Actually, she doesn’t react to anything, and I’m so bad at platformers that when my friend wouldn’t respond to my actions, I thought I didn’t understand the controls. Then a compass of colored directions appears, which is actually telling you how to solve the puzzle. Of course, I went jumping and running off towards a color, because the world is grey.
I expected to have a lot of trouble with this platform game, but it was more using platforms and jumping as a method to explore, rather than an exercise in timing and tapping buttons. In each direction, there’s a small colorful item, like a blue necklace or a green shamrock, and of course, I picked it up. I’m an adventure gamer, I pick up everything that’s not locked down. Sometimes I get a bobby pin and pick the lock and then I pick up the item. Moving on.
I thought my sad friend would cheer up when I brought her gifts but she didn’t react. This time, I didn’t think I was doing it wrong, because the world reacted. When I gave her the shamrock, all the grass and trees in the world turned green. With the blue necklace, the gray waters turned blue.
The protag can only hold one item at once, so there’s no speedy playthrough by grabbing everything in one circular path, but that meant that I kept exploring a slowly-changing world. Each new color made the world more vibrant and alive, even ones like purple or orange that I expected to be accent colors. It made my landmarks (see previous re: not good at platformers) harder to identify, and made the same old path seem new.
After bringing the last gift, and fulling coloring the world, the sad girl finally reacted. I was… not prepared for this. With the last color, the girl stands up, the protag fades away, and the girl goes on with her life. The animation is open to interpretation, but… I think he’s dead.
Until this point, I’d seen Grey as a minimalist indie platformer about adding colors to a gameworld. The gifts, which seemed like easy-to-draw representations of each color, suddenly seemed terribly sad. A teddy bear, a piece of candy. Actually, didn’t I see a gravestone when I was picking that flower? I realized the sad-girlfriend character was more of a grieving child, retrieving her memories and coming out of a depression, and it was not at all what I expected from a simple platformer.
Posted in Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Game Reviews, Gaming Culture
Tagged game feelings, grey, kevin does art, kevin does games
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Considering a Response in Cuneiform
Today my favorite student left me a note in hieroglyphics.
Posted in Teaching
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Favorite Things That Are Almost Pride & Prejudice
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star
Bride And Prejudice
Manga Classics: Pride & Prejudice
Death Comes to Pemberley
Betrothed to Mr. Darcy
Mr Darcy Takes A Wife, for a scene in which Mr Collins falls into a mud puddle and drowns, and The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett for a human sacrifice cult in the secret cave network outside Pemberley.
But No One Wants To Read The Comments Section
Part of my science class involves reading and commenting on other students’ coursework, so the other day I had to read an essay about why the writer would never give up his SUV and how whiny sissy scientists don’t scare him, and how can water vapor be a greenhouse gas, when humans need water to live, so CHECKMATE, CLIMATE CHANGE!
It was just like stumbling into a horrible comments section, only I’m required to read it all, and respond usefully and politely for a grade.
Sometimes when I’m spending an evening doing homework, I question why I signed up for this class or exactly what I hope to get out of it, and my answers change from day to day. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this.
Posted in Chapel Hill
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Carolina Blogging
Such a great day at Carolina Blogging this weekend! Group organizers Heather and Sara really did an impressive job putting everything together, from getting interesting local vendors and a great conference space with solid wifi and pretty decorations, to all the details that make a good experience for everyone. I had a good time meeting everyone, it was great to meet my internet friends in person and to get to know completely new people who share my blogging interests. My favorite part of being around bloggers is if you want to set up a photo of random things, they won’t ask why, they’ll get excited, too, and suggest how to improve the light or the layout. Also, more than one person made a joke about something happening as frequently as Facebook changes the feed algorithm. My people.
There was a lot of great tips and advice from other bloggers, like how DIY and food bloggers are taking such great photos (Did you guys know there are factors in good photography besides finding an interesting texture?!?!? Turns out there are!), how successful bloggers plan posts, and how bloggers are authentically and honestly promoting products.
The day also raised larger questions for me, like what exactly do I want from my blog? How can I be more intentional about the way I’m sharing my work, finding some kind of balance between I guess I wrote a thing, maybe you sould read it if you’re bored and communicating solely though clickbaitery and social spamming? How can I be more intentional about the way I’m blogging? Without it turning into Work, and Deadlines, and developing a consistent brand, and planning consistent and optimized content around that brand, and I just bored myself typing that. Too much like work.
I was a little (a lot) intimidated when I followed a speaker who makes thousands of dollars every month on her blog. I mean, I make a little money here, but it’s more like covering my hosting fees here and the fancy coffees to sip when I read and write. I spoke a little bit about turning blogging for fun into blogging for new subculture-fan readers, and access to ARCs and beta codes. Anyway, I took some questions and ended up talking about all the things I love about Mr. Darcy.
Because I guess that’s my brand.
