Author Archives: Eric

Save Against Fear

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I spent the weekend at a local game convention with my daughter. It was time well spent. The folks at the Bodhana Group really put together an excellent weekend. This year was the second time in their location at the Harrisburg Mall. It was also the second time I got to attend the convention.

Great stuff – it’s local to me, affordable and filled with activity. Added bonus, I was only an attendee. I wasn’t part of the team putting the show on, I wasn’t working or speaking or any of the other things that I’ve come to associate with conventions. I was simply attending and enjoying the time with my daughter.

More Great Stuff – we had the chance to put in for door prizes each day, could pick up tasty tasty treats from the bake sale and got the chance to participate in the “play to win” promotion. Play to win is a super cool idea. Game companies donated a number of games to the convention. You could check out a game and play it. When you did, put your name on the list and you’re entered for a chance to win. Call them out on social media and get an additional chance to win. We came home with two FREE games this weekend just because we took the time to sign them out and test drive them. Combined with the door prize I won I think the winning balanced out what we paid to attend this year.

Even more great stuff – it really was a fantastic little convention. The people attending were nice and friendly. We got to play games with new folks and both learn and teach new games. We got to meet and talk to game designers. Test drove 3 different games that are still in development. Couldn’t pick them up as they’re still in development, but signed up to be notified when the games come out so we can get them then. All kinds of fun.

Really, the only down side to the whole thing involves the location. Being at the mall is excellent. It’s a ton of free parking, easy access and short walk to the food court when we chose to break for something to eat. Close to the house and easy to get to any time. The space itself is one of the large stores that hasn’t been rented out yet. It’s not pretty. It is as unfinished and worn out as you might think. The temperature was all sorts of out of control. It got hot enough in there to make a number of folks not feel well on Saturday afternoon – and I don’t know if the HVAC system was something the con could control or not, but it was a real issue. Also – just on a personal level – I HATED the chairs that were provided. To be fair, they DID provide chairs and tables for around 400 people. NOt easy. I still hated them.

If you’re in the area I highly recommend looking this convention up next year. They’ve already announced it – and as soon as registration goes up I’m signing up to go again!

Busy, busy, busy….

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The subject line of this post is actually one of my favorite lines from the Frosty the Snowman Christmas special. It’s after Prof. Hinkle is told by Santa what he needs to do in order to continue to get Christmas gifts. He says he hates to lose and run but that he’s got lots to do. Busy, busy, busy…

And I’ve been busy. Most of the time when blogs “fade away” and then come back the individual writing that blog gets all apologetic and claims to have plans for getting better at keeping up, and many other things. I’m not doing that.

I’ve helped run a convention, I’ve met a movie star I admire, taught classes, created art, met and talked to people from a half dozen countries and still had time to catch a movie in there. It’s been a whirlwind – and I have no intention of slowing down. The stuff I’ve been busy with are the sorts of things that you could put on a checklist of “Hey I did that!” or for some people the “bucket list”. I don’t like to think like that, I just like knowing that I have so much story material now because I’ve gone out and done some amazing stuff with some great people. Hopefully one day I’ll get a bunch of stories written and published ~ but if not, I’ll still have amazing stories to tell.

Showing Up

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Showing up. This is a topic that I’ve wanted to take on for quite a while now. I went to a meeting that wasn’t a couple of weeks back. I was more than a little put out at the idea that a meeting (associated with a professional trade organization) would be advertised and then nobody would show up. It reminded me of a news article I saw back during the winter Olympics. The article (here) was about an Olympic skier who apparently is not very good. She is world ranked simply because she keeps showing up – particularly when others can’t. The question in my mind becomes, is showing up enough? I’ve been rolling this around in my head for a while now and I’m still not sure I have a good answer.

To some degree showing up is the only thing that matters.

Showing up, and showing up consistently is the one thing that I’m actually quite good at. It’s something that I think is a virtue or a value and it was clearly and stated or installed I’m not sure exactly how you phrase that, by my parents. It has been a really long time since I was in high school but even then showing up, and showing up on time, was a thing that I was very good at. I actually had perfect attendance all four years in high school. Perfect attendance meant never missed a day (unscheduled – I wasn’t in class one time while I was off looking at a college) and never late. I don’t remember how many people did that in my class, but I don’t think it was many. I don’t know if I got anything from that perfect attendance. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right way to phrase that, because I did get something, I got a pin (I actually I think I also got a piece of paper or some kind of award too) but beyond that I don’t think I got anything. The part I question about this now becomes, is there something to regret? I know other people who took days and very specifically did not show up. Some of those days were apparently the Grand Adventure or the wild story that formed a significant part of their youth. I’m not sure, and never will be, that I didn’t miss something that I could have been out doing.

Grade school is a different topic. There clearly is value to showing up, if not every single day, at least consistently. Not being there will actually cause you to miss out on things you’re supposed to learn. Beyond the simple fact that you would miss things, there are actual legal requirements for kids to attend. I don’t know what the exact requirements are, but I believe there is a limit of either 4 or 6 days that kids are allowed to miss during the school year before there becomes an issue. Clear value and legal requirement.

Moving forward. College does not have the attendance requirement that public school has. I have always understood that showing up for class in college was meant to be an exercise and self-discipline as much as it was for learning whatever the topic was you were supposed to be studying. No college that I had heard of before had placed specific attendance requirements on their classes. This might be something that’s changing. I have recently heard of specific classes instituting attendance requirements in order to receive passing grades. A portion of this stems from the fact that an online presence and virtual classes now allow students who are ambitious enough to cover the topics that would normally be talked about in class on the internet without any interaction with other people. In the past as long as you turned in your homework assignments and sat for your exams those were the pieces that made up your grade. There were certainly classes when I was in college that attendance wasn’t mandatory but made a significant difference in my understanding of what the concept was we were supposed to be covering or learning about. I think that attendance or showing up certainly has value in being able to discuss ideas with others around you and garner some extra level of understanding about topics while giving you viewpoints that may differ significantly from your own.

College, showing up may not be mandatory but clearly is advantageous.

As an adult showing up is something that becomes more difficult to quantify. Any number of day to day, normal 9 to 5 jobs have very specific requirements about showing up. You must be there, you must be there on time, you cannot leave early, and there are a very limited number of days when you are allowed to not be there and even then must have an excuse. That is not to say that there are aren’t jobs available that allow you to set your own schedule. I think schedule is a completely separate question from attendance. There’s a subtle difference attendance and showing up. There are a lot of jobs out there that allow you to work on something other than a normal 9 to 5 schedule. Those jobs while not requiring specific attendance certainly require dedication and work. Essentially you have to ‘show up’ at some point and apply yourself to whatever work it is that you’re doing. The more you do that with a non-traditional job the higher the likelihood that you will be successful. Clearly attendance and the intent behind my phrase ‘showing up’ are two separate issues. Perhaps I need to define what I mean by ‘showing up’. Narrowing that down will help me understand better.

I think it’s relevant to look back at the skier example at this point. She has a world ranking. It’s her job, but also her passion (I suspect). Many people don’t think she’s a good skier at all, let alone world ranked. How can you be bad at your job but still ranked as one of the best in the world? The shortest answer here is there aren’t enough people doing what it is that you do. In this girl’s case I think it’s more subtle than that, and also more important to the chosen field of endeavor than that. No, she might not be great at what she does, but she is consistently there and consistently promoting something that she wants to see succeed. I think that’s the heart of what I mean by showing up. If you want something to succeed, you have to keep showing up. Having the idea, having a desire for something to succeed is not enough. At some point somebody has to keep showing up and doing the work. I suspect that this sport will benefit in the long run from this person continuing to show up. I know in certain professional organizations that I am part of showing up is something that has mattered a great deal and continues to matter a great deal. Membership in our professional group is declining at a significant rate. Good, bad, indifferent, doesn’t really matter if nobody’s there to see what you’re doing. What you do or promote doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough people to have a meeting. All of the benefits that go along with this group simply go away if not enough people keep showing up.

I think I’ve talked myself into the understanding that I’m trying to achieve. Attendance is different than showing up. Showing up and doing the work matters. It will continue to matter because in order for there to be greatness there has to be something available to be great at. Whether or not I will actually be great at anything can be less relevant then continuing to show up so that there is something for others to be great at.

Consistency matters. now that I’ve talked about it I recall that I have written about consistency before. I’ll need to go and dig out this old article that I had written and post it again.

Will the name of this skier be remembered in history? Maybe not. Will that matter to people in the future? It will only matter if the thing that she is promoting continues on and become something greater than what she’s a part of now. Will being remembered to history matter to her? I can’t really say as I’m not in her head. Something I can say with certainty is that consistently showing up and getting out the door and doing things absolutely matters. Showing up makes all the difference in the story of what it is that you do. In the end it will make a difference that you have a collection of fantastic stories that accumulate to make your life. Make your story a great one. Get out there and show up to something.

YouTube and Silo Entertainment

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Voice typing is something that requires more setup then I think works well with actually getting started on my treadmill. With time I think this will become something better than what it is right now but I need to have a lot more things preset before I start. There’s also a lot more editing to be done after the fact. My typing is slow, but the edits are a whole lot faster. More set up, more follow up.

I think that goes with the theme of what I want to talk about.

There are a lot of things that the computer does really really well. There is an amazing amount of information and entertainment that is at my fingertips all day, every day. I have discovered that there are certain things that I enjoy watching on YouTube. Problem is, I also like to use YouTube to find new things that I’m interested in watching or listening to. I say this is a problem not because there isn’t an infinite variety of things on YouTube, but because YouTube makes an effort to specifically cater to the other things that you have already watched. There are two particular, I’ll call them chat show hosts, that have very interesting guests and interviews.

I’m not quite sure how to express what it is that YouTube does. I have watched an interview with a particular host, therefore YouTube me a huge list of other things that this particular host has done. The two chat show hosts that I found interesting have hundreds of videos available. Now my “suggestions” page is nothing but videos from these particular chat show hosts or music from the one or two artists that I have listened to. Literally nothing else.

This list of suggestions is fantastic when that’s what I want to listen to. If I don’t want to listen to one of them or I’ve gone through all of the interviews or items that I found interesting from these particular interviewers and want to find something different, I now have two type in specific search words in order to find anything. Then even if I have searched for something different, still about half of my list are items related to the videos I’ve already seen. Not only does that make it very difficult to find other things that are new and interesting, but it narrows my selections to things that this computer program believes are my taste. This doesn’t give me an opportunity to find things that might not necessarily match exactly what I have watched before. It becomes a silo. It’s almost as if there is nothing else in the world except what I have seen already or the people that I have already indicated that I enjoy listening to.

YouTube is not the only entertainment provider that does this. Netflix is actually another provider that does something very similar. The list of videos that are recommended to me from Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, or any other place where I actually watch videos has become an extremely narrow selection. I only see things similar to what I’ve seen.

I think one of the things we need is an ability to have what I would call an anti-logarithm. The computer has the search pattern that it thinks it gives me all the things I want to see, but I want an alternate search pattern that gives me a list of other things with an opportunity to find something I didn’t know I was interested in. It is a struggle to find something new and interesting when my entire recommendation list is a bunch of things that match or closely match what I have already seen. It’s insular and boring.

Entertainment videos are not the only place where this becomes a problem. Facebook is another example of only showing you the things you want to see. It becomes very easy, very quickly to only ever see opinions that match your own. While I understand that there are number of times one doesn’t want to see inflammatory opinions or the ideas and concepts that make you angry, there is still a need for the availability of those things. It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy? You put an opinion out and the only people who see it are those who already agree with you. You gain a warped View of exactly how popular something really is. There is no reality check.

I wish I was better at math and/or computer programming. I think it would be a best selling app or program, that would be the “find me something new” button. I don’t know if simply applying and negative prefix to any of the programming language would provide the alternates that I’m thinking, but I’m sure there has to be a way to develop a search engine that picks out either popular or specifically different trends that might not necessarily match the things you’ve already seen. I think more people need this in greater quantity than ever before. Not just from an entertainment point of view, but also from an information standpoint. Most people these days receive and process more information than ever before. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of filtering all the information to become just the things you want to hear it gives a warped perspective and it’s terrible for actual entertainment value.

Perhaps what I need to do is float this idea out there for free. Somebody needs to make that app or program that is called “change my mind”. Even that is actually a meme that I’ve already seen before. I don’t know its origin, I just know that it’s really popular. A guy sitting behind a card table in a park with a cardboard sign hanging in front of it. Written on the cardboard is an inflammatory or challenging question, ending with “change my mind”. I don’t think asking the people who like the same things you like to change your mind is necessarily an effective tool. I think if there were a statistical or mathematical based program it would work in a much healthier manner.

I may regret this part, but they’re only about a half a dozen people that read this. Give me a comment that is something I should search for on YouTube or Netflix that will change the search patterns that has narrowed my entertainment. I both look forward to, and cringe at the thought, of what you all have to say.

Wrinkle

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A Wrinkle in Time (Time, #1)A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s difficult to offer up a ‘review’ of a book deemed by many to be a classic of genre fiction.

I did not read this book when I was a teenager. I read it recently, partly for a book group and partly so I would have the book version in my mind before I watched the movie adaptation.

I suspect that IF I had read the book when I was a teenager the impact would have been vastly different than reading it as an adult. I understand why so many people relate to it. I understand why it’s considered a classic. It’s a good book. I wasn’t overwhelmed – but I think I missed the ‘sweet spot’ as far as the age to read this book.

What I am going to do is give it to my daughter and let her know that it’s worth HER reading it. It is a classic. If you haven’t read it, it’s a quick read and worth the effort.

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Seeking

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Truthseeker (Worldwalker Duology #1)Truthseeker by C.E. Murphy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I actually finished reading this book some time ago, but have just now gotten around to the review.

It’s marked as a duology – so it shouldn’t be a shock that this book doesn’t have a complete ending. It reaches a good finishing point, but you have to read them both to get the whole thing.

I didn’t get to the second one. I can’t put a finger on exactly what didn’t catch me on this one. I will say it did something that I haven’t seen in other books.

– spoilers if you haven’t read it yet –

There’s a part where the main character travels by magic to fairy land. She’s supposed to be able to get right back to the time when she left. She doesn’t. I’ve read a number of alternate world stories and it’s unheard of to actually then deal with somebody not getting back to their place during the time when they should have been there. Sure, there are the ones where people are placed out of time by a hundred years or more – but this one was more like 6 months and then the main character shows up again. And has to deal with court cases and missing persons cases that are being handled by the police *about them*. It was very refreshing to see that. It was one of the things I really enjoyed about this book.

I think there’s a lot of good stuff here for fans of urban fantasy.

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Limit Your Greed

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Limit Your Greed: Put principles above money to build better businesses and a better world (and still make a profit)Limit Your Greed: Put principles above money to build better businesses and a better world by Bill Catchings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stay away from 5 star ratings generally, but I do genuinely think this book qualifies.

I will add the disclaimer here that I know one of the co-authors BUT I went and purchased my own Kindle version of this book.

Then I went and bought a hard copy so I could hand it to a co-worker. When she’s done with it I’m going to start noting things up and seeing what sorts of practices I can pull from the book and apply to the office I work in.

In case you’ve missed it – I like this book. I don’t read a lot of business books, but if other business books were like this one I’d likely read a lot more of them. Concise, clear and well written. There’s no nonsense here. This is real world, in practice stuff.

The downside, if you can call it that, is the aim or focus of the book toward people running or starting businesses. I am not the owner of the place where I work. IF I were the owner I’d be in a much better position to push for changes like these. As it is, I am going to need to figure a way to get these ideas across to the owners of my current office.

I recommend anyone with an interest in running a business differently go and get a copy of this book. Absolutely worth it.

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Harsh Mistress

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The Moon Is a Harsh MistressThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a selection for a local book group. I’m glad it was picked.

I’ve read other works by the author but never this one. I had no idea what to expect, no preconceived notions with regard to the story. My “notions” were all related to the author himself.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Yes, there are a number of anachronistic things in the book. It was published more than 50 years ago – of course some of the devices and gear won’t look “new”.

The thing that struck me most was the number of ideas at play in there. Little things that amounted to “throw away” bits in the book. The main character is dealing with a computer that has become self aware. The main character then considers his interactions with the machine not just as a person to a tool, but takes into account the “feelings” of the machine, at one point mentioning that he doesn’t want it to become suicidal. This in an age that still thought the computer needed to be a room sized thing with tubes. Like I said – ideas.

There are lots of good things to chat about in here. It’s a classic that is worth picking up and checking out.

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Audio Learning Curve

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I’m sure that I’ve mentioned this before in my writing. I don’t remember where, but I’m certain that I have because I was incensed. I once read an article in a newspaper that was by one of the staff reporters. This staff reporter had, and I believe still has, regular space that presumably she’s paid well for. This article that she spent considerable space and time on said, in a nutshell, I have nothing to say but there was a deadline so I typed out all these words and turned it in. I couldn’t believe that a professional would simply put something like that out. If it were a column by a satirist like Dave Barry, then I could much more easily understand why something like that would be “newsworthy” for lack of better term. Notably satirists tend not to waste their column space. This person is nowhere near that sort of level nor is she a satirist. This is also something that always bothered about people who on their blogs or their Vlogs or their audio podcasts do essentially the same thing – putting out a big fat pile of “I have nothing to say”.

I haven’t been on the computer much at all when I’ve been at home lately. I have been on the computer for extended amounts of time at my day job. Between that and other life circumstances it has been very difficult to have something to say that is is worthy of posting, let alone finding the time to actually sit down and be willing to get in front of a screen again. I don’t want to be one of those people that simply puts nothing out there for the sake of putting something on a screen. I hope that I can put something out there that is in some small way either useful to myself or useful to others. Perhaps I’ve been unfair now that I think about it to this other person, if she put forth the article in some form or fashion saying nothing but that was useful to her. Something I hadn’t thought of before but it still makes me angry that she got paid for a number of words that essentially said “I have nothing to say”.

Today I am continuing my experiment in audio. I have set up a way to connect my technology with my technology.

Because I spend so much time at the screen already, one of the things that I attempt to do is keep myself physically healthy. Being healthy really matters for all people, but specifically for people who spend a lot of time in a sedentary position working at a screen. I don’t know that this this post necessarily counts as “something to say”, but I’m putting it out there so that if there are any other authors who feel the time crunch that I do combining family and work and other things with their craft. I have a treadmill in the same room with the computer. It took me awhile to come around to the solution, and once I mentioned it to a friend found out that it is not new or even necessarily uncommon. I have added a shelf over the front end of the treadmill and I have set up my laptop on that shelf. I then hooked my microphone in to my laptop and connected myself to the computer while walking on the treadmill. This gives me the opportunity to simply speak all of the things that I wanted to type well actually being able to walk on the treadmill and try to stay healthy at the same time.

Something else I’ve done while walking on the treadmill actually hook myself into the safety equipment. There’s an emergency stop connected to a string that you can clip to whatever you’re wearing. Normally I bypass that right away and simply use the treadmill. It’s something that I haven’t ever had problems with in the past. Now I’m clipped into the safety piece and because I don’t have a wireless microphone I’m also clipped in to the headset attached to my laptop. I think all I need now is some sort of breathing apparatus like one of those things you always see in science fiction films and I’ll look pretty out there. I went with the safety thing because I could clearly imagine the first time I tried to do this something would go horribly wrong I would fall, then the laptop would drop on my head and the tread portion of this machine would simply continue to run either or both pushing me off to the end and creating some unnecessarily painful friction.

I think I have learned a couple of lessons already this morning. First, it’s hard to type while walking so put your password before starting the walk. Next, I don’t know if there’s a way to move the cursor backwards. If there’s any kind of mistake and what it is that you said, you need to go back and edit it later. Lastly, this does make this post (and anything I’m writing) essentially a pure stream-of-consciousness writing style. I have yet to discover whether or not this will in fact make my writing any easier to read in terms of flow and understandability.

I also find it amusing, but I believe there’s the very real chance that I’ll be speaking to somebody and actually use my punctuation when I’m speaking out loud to them now. I definitely think that would be an entertaining story the first time that happens. “Oops. Sorry, I’m used to speaking this narrative into my computer and I just forgot that I was actually speaking to a person. Good news, you’re in the story now”.

Interestingly enough I’ve actually gone past my normal daily amount of walking on the treadmill while doing the speaking and still been able to knock out all these words. I think this experiment’s going to continue into the future. Hopefully that means that I’ll have more things that I will be able to say in a timely manner and get them out to my blog on a regular basis.

Now I just have to make sure that I always have something to say.

Audio Test

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I was looking for something in a Google doc a few days ago and saw a voice tool listed there. I plugged in my headphone mike and tested it out. This should be interesting. Space I got that wrong I thought I would have to actually put in the spaces but what I have to put in is the punctuation and it spaces those automatically. I’m actually testing out for the first time using a microphone to type out the things that I would normally sit here and type out. If I can talk my way through these sort of entries I think it will really make my ability to get blog post and writing a bunch of other things done far more quickly than I ever could before. I’m hopeful that this will work out and it won’t need a ton of editing but even if it needs editing this is going to be considerably faster than any other method of inputting my stories my words my anything. return paragraph Okay so any word that I’m going to say is just going to be put in there. I don’t think there’s a way to make this change paragraphs or do anything other than put lots of words together as quickly as I say them. I do have to say the word recognition is really fast. I put this paragraph together in seconds and it’s just flowing along with my words. Now what I need to do is gather up my script if you will, or my outline, and start moving forward with my stories. I have a feeling that this is going to be something considerably faster than anything I’ve done and then it’s going to take me twice as long to edit it because I don’t know how the hell to make a

The funniest thing… I said

And then it jumped to a

And I can’t actually type

I wonder if anybody reading this will see the humor in this creating a

every time I try to say

Another line another paragraph thankfully it doesn’t pick up the laughing and the snorting. I keep forgetting to put punctuation at the end of my thoughts. It’s very very odd. This is going to take a massive amount of editing I can see that already but I am very enamored with this test. I think my next piece is going to have to be a timed test to see how many words I can put together in what amount of time. Because I think I could throw down a lot more speaking then I can typing I’ve been at this for far less than 5 minutes I’m certain and I’ve knocked out a whole page without actually typing anything.

Problem that I’m finding in here is that this becomes very stream-of-consciousness very quickly and I’ve lost track of what I was saying and I can see looking back at the page above that I repeat myself and tend to use the same words frequently and these things show up very clearly when someone else is typing for you even if that’s somebody else’s the magic Google computer.

I’m going to have to edit this after my next meeting and post about it. my first foray into the land of somebody else typing for me.