Science Fiction Author Feuds, DeathCon, and the first ever flame war on the (proto) internet

Via the Whatever, a link to a transcript of a panel at Penguicon 5.0, where John Scalzi, Nick Sagan, and Sarah Monette discuss science fiction author Godfrey Winton. I wasn't aware of Winton before I read this, but I sure as hell am interested now. Apparently Subterranean Press is coming out with an omnibus volume of his collected works, so I'll try to pick that up. Read up, enjoy, and marvel at the wild and crazy world of science fiction fandom.

Introverts, unite!

After a few weeks of non-stop action (hectic freelance schedule, houseguests, shows, and outings with friends), I finally have a weekend all to myself. So for today, an interesting article from Psychology Today: The Field Guide to the Loner. A great (if somewhat badly written) article about the 25% of us who prefer spending a weekend with a good book rather than going out and getting drunk at a bar. While I'm not averse to a night on the town with my friends every now and then (nor am I in any way shape or form averse to drinking- beer FTW!), for the most part, I prefer to hang out solo. Read a good book, watch some TV or a movie, work on my projects, etc.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is that most people aren't that interesting or engaging to be around. Why subject yourself to mind-numbingly dumb conversation, stupid pickup lines, or random chatty strangers, when you could be doing something interesting and personally fulfillng with your time? When I want to be social, I have my friends: smart, interesting, and hand-picked. Most of the time, however, I would rather revel in my own solitude. I like myself, and I like being inside my head.

Try a Silent Sunday one of these days: don't speak or interact with anyone for the whole day on a Sunday. You may go nuts. Or you my find that it's relaxing and re-energizing.

Guns into Plowshares, Anyone?

From Boston.com:

Including the $124.2 billion bill, the total cost of the Iraq war may reach $456 billion in September, according to the National Priorities Project, an organization that tracks public spending.

The amount got us wondering: What would $456 billion buy?

Among the highlights:
- Free gas for everybody for 1.2 years
- With just one-sixth of the US money targeted for the Iraq war, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol.
- Feed and educate the world's poor for five and a half years (WTF?!?!?!!)
- 14.5 million free rides to Harvard

This shit is depressing. Fucking warmongers.

Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

ComputerWorld has a great short interview with mathematics professor and science-fiction author Vernor Vinge (yes, he's one of Tor's) on the coming technological singularity. Not too in-depth, but a nice quick rundown of main themes. The article also links to Vinge's seminal 1993 manifesto, The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era, a short but fascinating piece of speculation.

I actually just finished reading Vinge's latest novel, Rainbow's End, a great vision of a near future where the singularity is in its early bloom. I highly recommend it, it's a great read.

TV Show Torrents thru RSS: A Piracy Primer for Purloined Programming, Part 2

In the previous post in this series, I outlined the reasons why I prefer to pirate my media, as opposed to buying it outright from the thugs fine folks in the cable entertainment industry. Now it's time to get down and dirty, into the nuts and bolts of how I do what I do.

Most TV shows nowadays are available on the internet very soon after they air, and a few enterprising pirates are dedicated to providing trackers and torrent files for downloading via the BitTorrent file transfer protocol. Legal issues aside, this is a great service for those of us who prefer to roll our own media, but the logistics of automating the process of finding, downloading, encoding, and properly archiving your media take a bit of trial and error to figure out. This is what has worked for me, so your mileage may vary.

First, a word about my setup: I've got a 1Terrabyte external hard drive attached to a Mac Mini, which is in turn hooked up to a 60-inch Pioneer Elite plasma display, and that's pretty much it, aside from a PS2 for gaming, and the speakers hooked up to the Mini. Instead of using a keyboard or mouse to control the Mini when I'm not in Front Row, I run Apple's Remote Desktop to control the Mini from my MacBook. It works like a charm. My setup is pretty bare-bones, and I like it that way. I prefer to watch everything through Front Row, Apple's media center that comes bundled with all new Macs, so I put all of my contents (Shows, Movies and Music) into iTunes. The only upgrade I possibly foresee in the future is to replace the Mini for an AppleTV (as soon as the damn thing comes with an HD-DVD or BluRay - or better yet, a hybrid- drive... otherwise, no deal), and use the Mini as a headless media downloader and server.

I've separated this tutorial into two sections. The first section deals with downloading content automatically. This is good enough for most people, but if you're anally retentive like me, and want every single file you download properly tagged, archived, and accessible via iTunes and Front Row, then stick around for the second part.

So without further ado, here we go. First, you'll need to download some software. All of this software is either freeware or shareware, and developed by independent software developers. I strongly suggest buying it, since it's not too expensive, and these guys need our support if they're going to keep working on these projects in their free time.

For the first part- Downloading:
1- Newsfire- for subscribing to Torrent feeds.
2- xTorrent- for downloading your files.

For the second part- archiving and tagging:
1- VisualHub- for re-encoding video.
2- Lostify- for editing the metadata on your files before adding to iTunes.

Part One- Downloading Torrents with RSS

The first thing you need to do is create an RSS feed to subscribe to. You can do this on www.tvrss.net.

1- Go to www.tvrss.net, and click on the 'Shows' link. You'll see a list of all the TV shows that TVrss has feeds for.

2- Choose the show you want to subscribe to. Let's choose 'Heroes' (BTW, if you're not watching Heroes, you're a retard. Now that Battlestar Galactica is off the air until January of next year, Heroes has become my favourite show). You'll be taken to a page that lists all available episodes for the show you chose.

3- At this point, the list of available episodes is duplicated, because there are many release groups releasing the same episodes at different qualities. You need to refine your search using the options located in the 'Search' area, at the top of the search results page. Choose a Distribution Group (I like EZTV for the most part, but they don't always distribute all the shows I watch), and choose a Quality setting (HRHD, HDTV, 720p, etc.), then press Search. You'll see refined search results. Each TV show is different, so you'll have to play around until you get what you want. A good rule of thumb is to switch up the search parameters until you get a list where there are either very few or no repeated episodes.

4- Once you have your list of episodes, hit the 'Search-based RSS Feed' link at the top of the Search Results list. This will generate an RSS feed for the show. If you use Safari or Firefox as your browser, it may give you the option to subscribe to this RSS feed. Ignore the hell out of it.

5- Copy the URL for the RSS feed from the address field in your browser (it should look something like this: http://tvrss.net/search/index.php?distribution_group=eztv&show_name=Heroes&show_name_exact=true&filename=&date=&quality=hdtv&release_group=&mode=rss)

6- Open Newsfire, and create a new feed. Paste the URL for the RSS feed into the Address field, and name your feed. NewsFire should automatically connect to the feed, so you should see the same results you got from tvrss.net after the feed loads.

7- Select your newly created feed in NewsFire, and go to Feeds> Edit selected Feed. Here you can set how often you want the feed to be refreshed. I have mine refreshing every 10 minutes, but that's just because I'm impatient. Make sure to check the box that says "Automatically download audio/video attachments. This will ensure that the .torrent file downloads onto your Desktop (or wherever you decide to set NewsFire to download files to) as soon as it's available.

8- Repeat steps 1-7 for each TV Show you want to add.

9- Open xTorrent, and go into the Preferences. In the Interface tab, check the box next to 'Load .torrents found in' and choose the same folder you're downloading .torrent files to from NewsFire. Also, check 'Delete original .torrent file once added to xTorrent', just to keep things nice and neat.

Now you're set up. NewsFire is constantly refreshing your feeds, so as soon as the .torrent file for a new episode is posted, NewsFire grabs it and puts it where xTorrent can find it, and start downloading the actual file. Once you've input all the shows you want to watch into NewsFire, this is pretty much hands-off.

Note: The newest version of xTorrent has the ability to subscribe to rss feeds, so theoretically you can simply put the rss feed you create from TVrss into xTorrent, and go without NewsFire altogether. However, xTorrent does not currently offer the option to auto-download any attached files like NewsFire does, so it makes little sense to do this if what you want is truly automatic downloading. The developer of xTorrent has said that he's going to put that feature into xTorrent in a future release, so when that happens, I'll be moving all my feeds from NewsFire to xTorrent, and eschewing NewsFire completely.

Part Two: Tagging and Archiving

This part requires some hands-on housekeeping for each file you download, so not everyone will want to go this far. I like it, since I'm a neat-freak, OCD'ed out mofo.

Now you have your files, and you can watch them with any media player (I like VLC player because it plays pretty much anything you throw at it), or through Front Row (if you place them in the Movies folder of your home directory). But I go an extra step, and add them to iTunes, so that they're nice and organized and I can keep them indefinitely, as well as back them up along with the rest of my iTunes content. In order to do this, you want to include the metadata in the file so that iTunes can identify whether it's a TV Show or a Movie, as well as identify the Season, Episode, etc. While you can edit metadata from within iTunes, by using the 'Get Info' command, iTunes is still a bit sketchy when it comes to TV Shows in particular, so I use an additional piece of software, Lostify, to edit the metadata before I add the files to iTunes. I also like to have everything in the same format, so I run the files through VisualHub even before I go into Lostify. Both VisualHub and Lostify create a new file when they process the old one, so you end up with two files which you'll eventually want to delete. It helps to have plenty of extra space in your hard drive to accommodate these temporary files.

1- Drag the file you downloaded with xTorrent onto the VisualHub icon, to place it in the queue. You can add as many files as you want, and VisualHub will batch process them all in one fell swoop. While VisualHub has a pre-set for iTunes, I use the pre-set for MP4 instead, since I'll be running the file throguh Lostify before I add it to iTunes anyway, and I want the best quality possible. Check the box for H.264 encoding (smaller file size, great quality), set your quality to 'Go Nuts', and hit the start button. VisualHub will create a new .mp4 file, so you can delete the one you downloaded after Visual Hub is done with it.

2- Now take the .mp4 file that VisualHub created and open it with Lostify. Here you can set all the metadata you need to properly archive your video within iTunes: Series name, Episode title and number, Season number, etc. Again, Lostify will create a new file, this time an .m4v file, so you can delete the .mp4 file you created with VisualHub after Lostify is done with it.

3- Add video to iTunes. Once you do this, the video should show up in iTunes, nicely catalogued, and should play in Front Row as well.

And that's it! Enjoy your purloined programming.

Hey, MPAA/DCMA: Fuck you.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Give us REAL Fair Use, not lawsuits.

Give us engaging content, not sequels and remakes.

Give us the option to do whatever the hell we want with a product we legally buy. Read: I want to rip my DVDs into iTunes, along with its menus and extra features, without having to jump through stupid, stupid quasi-legal DRM-laden hoops. Or better yet, I want to 'legally' (and I use the term here in deference to their vocabulary, not as an admission of wrongdoing) purchase and download the whole shebang. Do I need to waste shelf space and pay for superfluous packaging when I know there's a better, more efficient, speedier, ecologically friendly and convenient way, and the only reason it's not accessible to everyone is because a few fat cats in the entertainment industry want to make more money than they already do? Fuck that. Those neckties must be cutting of the circulation to your brains. Make it happen, monkey boys.

In the meantime, there are those who will do everything they can to thwart your bully-tactics, and I for one will happily download whatever the hell I want, because frankly, I probably wouldn't pay for the crap that Hollywood's producing these days, anyway. The genie's out of the bottle, chumps. It happened with DVDs, it happened with BluRay, and now it's happening with HD-DVD. Sooner or later, there will ALWAYS be a crack.

For those of you who have no idea what that number up top means, or what the hell I'm ranting about, look here and here.

Scientists Use Nanotechnology to Mend Broken Spinal Cords

It's on, baby. The singularity looms ever closer, and I say 'bring it on, bitch'. From the article on abc.com:

Samuel Stupp has a bunch of mice that used to drag their hind legs behind them when they crawled around his Illinois lab, but they have miraculously regained at least partial use of their rear legs.

Astonishingly, their severed spinal cords have been repaired, at least partly, without surgery or drugs.

All it took was a simple injection of a liquid containing tiny molecular structures developed by Stupp and his colleagues at Northwestern University. Six weeks later, the mice were able to walk again. They don't have their former agility, but their injuries should have left them paralyzed for life.

Stupp is on the cutting edge of one of the most exciting fields in medical research: regenerative medicine. If he and others in the field are on the right track, one of these days tragic diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's will be a thing of the past. And the crippled will walk again as the human body repairs itself in ways that it cannot do today.

Natalia Yovanne

My friend Natalia Yovanne has put up her cyber-shingle. Check out her website, where she's got a portfolio of her most recent work. Natalia is from Chile (by way of the D.F.), and she studied painting at SVA. I enjoy her use of graphic stencil-like imagery (although to the best of my knowledge, they're not stencils, per se, since she hand-draws each instance individually), her penchant for working on surfaces such as brown butcher's paper, and the print-like quality of her work. Plus, she digs pirate ships. Can't go wrong with pirate ships. Ever.
Or rather- 'Evaaaargh!!!'
Sorry 'bout that.

Scott Mc Cloud (of Understanding Comics fame) has posted parts one and two of his online comic, The Right Number, online for free. From his site:

The Right Number was originally presented in June 2003 using a micropayments system offered by a company called Bitpass, sold for 25 cents each. Since Bitpass ceased operations in January 2007, I'm offering Parts One and Two for free now.

Part Three was delayed due to severe hand strain problems on my part a few years ago and delayed again when I began work on my recent book, Making Comics. I do still hope to finish the third and final chapter and make it available at some point in the future. Part Three will also be offered free through this page. (Sorry for the delay!)

Although the The Right Number was an experimental story, in an experimental format using an experimental payment system, I do like it as a story. I hope you will too.

Nifty creator, nifty comic, and hella nifty flash interface. Check it out!

Food for thought

From the fine folks over at the Guardian:
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
By Naomi Wolf

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

Fascinating article, and more than a little disconcerting. I'm tellin' ya: we won't be seeing presidential elections in '08. Mark my words.

The Farm Bill– Yes, it's gonna cost you.

From the New York Times Magazine: A fascinating look at the U.S. Farm Bill, which is a five-year subsidy plan for the Agriculture sector, and its (mostly) adverse effect on nutrition, on the environment, on global poverty, even on immigration (NAFTA cakes, anyone?). A couple of choice quotes:

"A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called “an epidemic” of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation’s agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives."

". . . a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce."

". . . Americans may tell themselves they don’t have a national land-use policy, that the market by and large decides what happens on private property in America, but that’s not exactly true. The smorgasbord of incentives and disincentives built into the farm bill helps decide what happens on nearly half of the private land in America"

While this is hardly a new, or surprising issue, it's nice to see it getting some press. I don't think that most citizens of the United States are aware that the hypocrisy and cynically self-serving attitude that has come to light with the current presidential administration is hardly limited to them— the whole of the government is to blame –and has for some time now– for letting big business fuck regular people in the ass. After all, the legislators who so cheerfully bend over for campaign contributions and perks from lobbyists in exchange for things like the Farm Bill aren't the ones who feel the effects, when all is said and done. They're rich. They can go shop at Whole Foods, or Trader Joe's, where good, healthy, organic food is sold- at a premium, of course.

Big Damn Print Day

We couldn't have asked for a nicer day for the steamroller print session: the sun was out, it wasn't too cold, and the wind was only a minor inconvenience. We pulled the first print at around 9:30 AM, and went right through to about 5:30 PM, inking blocks and printing them. I don't think Aristides, the steamroller driver, ever got off the steamroller, even for lunch!

In the morning, we were visited by a small crowd of children (presumably from one of the local schools or maybe Pratt's Saturday Art School, I was too busy to chat them up and ask), who all proceeded to 'ooo' and aaah' all over the place. Fucking adorable. Some of the printmaking students had set up a station for making silkscreen prints on t-shirts, so the kids got to take home their very own self-printed souveniers. At noon-ish, some of the Pratt printmaking kids brought out their music gear and set up a badass punk rock cover band, which proceeded to be very loud and fun for an hour or so. Dennis hooked us up with pizza for lunch, and bananas and Mountain Dew for snacks (weird, I know, but Dennis is a huge MD freak, so he had us all hopped up on that crap!)

Everyone who walked by had to stop and chill for a while, just to see what the hell was up with these crazy printamkers and their heavy machinery. There was some wonderful work printed, not only from Pratt students, but also from Martin Mazorra's Parsons printmaking classes, as well as some blocks by Swoon, and other artists from the NYC print scene. The best part about it, for me, was that since it's practically impossible to ink a block and pull a print all by yourself, we all got to work collaboratively. For someone who is used to working alone, in the dark recesses of my studio (or office, depending on the day) the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation among the printmakers from Pratt, Parsons, and the NYC printmaking community was wonderfully refreshing. There were no egos flying, very few bad vibes, and everyone looked out for everyone else's work. For more pictures of the process, and images of some of the final printed pieces, go to my Facebook album here.

We got two good prints out of my block, although I printed it three times. Since I hadn't shellacked my block, the first time I inked it, the wood sucked up all the ink, so it made for a bad, faded print. Once the ink had sucked into the wood, and the new ink could sit on top, all was good. I think I want to pick up some large pieces of nice paper and hand-print the block, though, just to have it on paper, and a sharp print. Although the steamroller is fun, and a great way to do large-scale prints, there is some unavoidable slippage, which leads to ghosting and double images sometimes. I want a so-called 'prefect' print in addition to the ones I've pulled so far.

As soon as I got home, I hung up the better of the two prints I took home (the third one -the best one- is still drying on the racks at Pratt, since we pulled it at the end of the day). Since the ink still hadn't settled completely, my house now smells lie a print shop, which is great, since I love the smell of fresh ink. Also, if you come into my house now, you can get high on ink fumes for free!

In all, a fantastic time was had, and I have the farmer's tan, blisters, and sore arms and back to show for it. Oh, and some nice zombie prints, too. . . .

Check, check, check, and check. Good to go.

Quiet.

Taxes.
Deathface.
Fela.
Tor.
Strange lesions.
Out of body.
-----
End report.

No rotten tomatoes. . . yet.

AU Students Protest After Karl Rove Speech

White House Advisor Karl Rove was the target of a protest on the American University campus Tuesday night, News4 reported. Rove was on the campus to talk to the College Republicans, but when he got outside more than a dozen students began throwing things at his car, an American University spokesperson said.
The students then got on the ground and lay down in front of his car as a protest.The students said security officials picked them up and carried them away so Rove could leave.

Maniacal cackling could be heard as the car sped away. One of these days, this kind of thing will turn into an old-fashioned lynching. This would not be a bad thing. Lynch the politicians, I say. Lynch them all.

Urban Farming. It's the wave of the future. . .

Via New York Magzine: Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University, believes that “vertical farm” skyscrapers could help feed cities, and fight global warming. To that end, he's conducted a comprehensive study on the costs and projected benefits of 'skyscraper farms' in urban settings. These structures would not only provide organic crops year-round, but would also collect rainwater, treat blackwater, create energy through solar, steam, and wind power, and bring peace to earth (um, just kidding on that last one, unfortunately). The vertical farm could grow fruits, vegetables, grains, and even fish, poultry, and pigs. Enough, Despommier estimates, to feed 50,000 people annually.

And the price tag? Roughly $200 million per farm for startup costs, and the idea is for each 'farmscraper' to be self-sustainable.

Details at VerticalFarm.com. Check it out!

It's aliiiive!

I've finished the carving the block for the zombie print, and I'm pretty damn pleased with it. I think I enjoy working large. I haven't done it too often (only three times that I can think of), but each time it's been a daunting, but very satisfying experience. I'm definitely doing more zombie prints (and possibly other monsters or characters). There's so much you can do with the undead. . . I've been doodling in my head all week. Maybe not as large as this, but probably around 20 x 30 inches, which is the largest I can fit on a press at school.

The steamroller print session is a week from this Wednesday, so I have time to go back in there next weekend with the Dremel and see if there's anything that needs touching up, if I want to. Score one for finishing something ahead of schedule!

Actually, next weekend I should probably clean out the back yard. It's time for a Sunday afternoon cookout.

Here's some shots of the almost completed block. I didn't take pics of the finished block because Dennis dropped by to work on one of his blocks, and we got to talking while I cleaned up after finishing.

It's a Blogroll. Break out the chopsticks.

I woke up early-ish this morning –around 8.30– resolved to go into the studio in the morning to work on the zombie print. Alas, I sat down in front of the computer with a joint to catch up on teh blogginsfear, and it's now 11 in the AM. But before I leave for Pratt, here are a couple of choice links from this morning's foray into RSSes:

• Tobias Buckell writes about the whys and wherefores of the appeal of zombies in his blog. Buckell is one of our authors at Tor, and I just finished reading his first novel, Crystal Rain. It's damn good, go out and read it, if only for the fact that it's SF with a Caribbean feel to it. I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel, Ragamuffin.

• Justine Larbalestier has a cool open thread going about what it means to be a 'fan', or a 'geek' (For the record, I consider myself a geek, but not a fan).

• Over on the tin-foil-hat side of things, we've got this gem from governmentdirt.com: The War is Coming to Iran - April 6th at 4 am - US has Warned Financial Interests in the Area and the Media Crews are Deployed.
Great.

• Speaking of geekness, and my admission to said state, here's a link to an interesting post by Audra Heaslip of the Galactica Watercooler podcast, about sexist rhetoric –both within Battlestar Galactica, and in the fan community for the show– when referring to Laura Roslyn:

Lately, Laura Roslin’s been getting a lot of flak for her actions as president, even if the GWC polls indicate mostly favorable ratings. But I’ve noticed something new creeping into the fray: sexist rhetoric (or, one might call it, rhetoric that is hostile or condescending to women) aimed at Roslin’s character, whether intentional or not.

Lots of great comments by the GalacticaWatercooler community follow.

• And finally, from 'Sleekness favourite Strange Maps blog, here's a map in which the actual geography is distorted in order to demonstrate information about the world's popultion.

Ok, enough of teh intarrwebz. Must. . . Carve. . . Wood. . . . I'm out!

Grand Theft Auto IV: No one will see me in October.

Holy crap. This game looks in-fucking-sane. They've gone back to the Liberty City setting, which is a clone of NYC (you can actually see the Flatiron bldg, where I work, at 00:39 on the clip).
I can forsee three things this fall:

#1- I will be a few hundred dollars poorer, because this is the kind of game that will make me spring for a next gen console (should I go with Sony, and their overpriced Blu Ray-playing quad core PS3, or should I just say 'resistance is futile', and bow to the Borg that is Microsoft by buying an XBox 360? We'll find out soon enough)

#2- No one will see me for a good two weeks after this game drops.

#3- Traffic accident rates in the real NYC will skyrocket, and we'll see lots more pedestrian attacks with baseball bats.

Let the fun begin.

Zombie Progress. . . the undead lurches on.

The commie zombie has gone the way of the Dodo, my friends. It just wasn't panning out too well, and after sitting on the sketch for a while, I realized that this zombie is much more roots- he's all about the eating of the brains, and who can blame him, really? I mean, that's what the undead are all about anyway: eating flesh. So I went with my gut –pun intended– and gave my zombie a true rallying cry: "MUST... EAT...BRAINS!!"

I put in a good 12 hours of carving on the block this past weekend, and I've got most of the main figure done. I finally finished the lettering on the sketch to my liking yesterday, and got it tile-printed at work today. If all goes well, I should be done with the carving this weekend, and then it's time for touch-ups with the Dremel. Woo-Hoo, power tools!

Here's the finished sketch, for your viewing pleasure. I'll post more in-progress pix over the weekend.