I’m going to tie a couple of things together that some people might find to be a stretch, but I don’t. A lot of folks know that I’m a Patriots fan. As an adult I’ve actually backed away from the role of active fan and take things passively. I’m not a fan of paying a salary larger than my school district budget to one man to play a game. There’s something decidedly broken about that.

Another piece to the puzzle here is that players frequently make poor life choices and do bad things. This happens to lots of folks, but lots of folks don’t have the kind of money these players do. Hernandez, formerly of the Patriots, isn’t the first to land in hot water – and he won’t be the last. For anyone that hasn’t heard, Hernandez is a well-known football player who has been arrested and charged with murder. Hold that thought, we’ll come back here.

There’s a clever / cute news story on the web lately about two Dutch artists that decorated surveillance cameras with party hats as a way to celebrate George Orwell’s 110^th birthday. They’re attempting to call attention to the ubiquitous nature of cameras in today’s society and how we’re edging toward the Big Brother state. I suspect this would be less of a news story if a certain Mr. Snowden hadn’t made the news quite as much as he has lately – but wiretapping and surveillance are big news stories.

I bet you don’t understand how I’m tying this together yet.

Here’s the part that bothers me. The Patriots organization is offering to take back the Hernandez jerseys they’ve sold and give out an equal (or lesser value – of course) jersey in exchange. They’ll give that number to some other player this year and hope that this ugly incident fades from memory.

Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth is the exact same thing. For all the people that gripe and moan and wail about the government watching them, how many people are letting the little steps be taken to move to a point where an event, or an unsavory person, is expunged from the public record? How easy is it then to dump his name from the web page for the team (it’s not on the front page of the team site already) and then proceed to making him just go away?

I think the way media in general, and news in particular are heading don’t give me a lot of hope in this department. People are in favor of this move and calling it classy. I call it scary. I fear things being scrubbed from the record as much as I fear the cameras… maybe more. I have never put much trust in stuff on the internet – that could be real, could be archived, could be totally fabricated – and there’s no way to definitively tell who posted it or why for the average person. Where will the record be? Who will have this information and how will we find it? Will it be at the library – or will the library still exist?

So, for what it’s worth – keep your Hernandez jersey. I’m not saying wear it out, flaunt it or whatever, but keep it. Use it as a teaching tool. Just don’t let it disappear.

“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984

“Half of writing history is hiding the truth”   Capt. Malcolm Reynolds as written by Joss Whedon

Yes, nothing will kill a site or a blog more certainly than fade. I am still here – just been off in the real world trying to make sure I keep the day job. It’s been a struggle lately. Lots to learn and a short time frame to learn it in. Having caught up with day job, I could turn to other things.

I turned in my story submission for Dogs Of War yesterday. It clocked in a little over 4,800 words. It’s a little silly, but I’m hoping it will be greeted favorably. I’m interested to hear what  the editor thinks, but also more than a little concerned. I suspect that even if I ever reach a lofty authorial position there will still be the nagging part in the back of my mind telling me I’m not really that good and that somebody will uncover the fraud any moment now.

I’m going to attempt to get a few more tweaks to the web site up and running. I’m still crashing about and messing things up. I’ve got about 90% of the connection thingy set up so these will post directly to Facebook rather than forcing me to copy and paste after the post is done. I have figured out how to schedule posts to publish at a later time… just not how to fix the local time. I think my web site believes it’s on a cruise in the Atlantic… I’m not sure where 4 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time actually is.

More to come this week.

Many people know that I’ve spent a lot of years working in the architectural field. I recently made a move into the support of the technology of the architectural field as a software application engineer. I love the fact that I get to check stuff like this out as part of my job.

http://www.core77.com/blog/ux/adobes_project_mighty_input_tools_look_pretty_awesome_24855.asp

No, I haven’t seen one in person yet but I would love to try one. I wonder if we’re coming full circle and in the near future if you want to draw or create architectural drawings you will actually need to be able to draw?

I’m not sure I can rightly call this work. I’m not certain I want to call it work even if it is. I like writing and posting things. I’m struggling to rearrange my routine to be sure that I get a meaningful post up here at least once per week. I say meaningful because I think if somebody’s going to revisit a site there should be something worth looking at.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am anxious about the things I post simply because I have published written work. I feel that if you’re a writer, you should be able to write a coherent blog post, and that includes avoiding misspelled words and terrible grammar, while still delivering an interesting topic or discussion.

I saw an article relatively recently (see it here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/wood-string-and-hard-drives-could-this-be-the-future-of-the-book?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29) that was about getting stories delivered in different ways. There are a host of topics I could tie to this, but I’m interested in hearing what other folks think about this vision of the future of books. Is the interactive story the future? Is the story you participate in the future? Is the book as an object of art the future?

What do you think?

I snagged this picture from a social media site. Perhaps it’s just that it’s late and I’m longing for bed. Perhaps it’s that I’ve given a lot of thought to this sort of thing lately. Whatever the reason I was struck when I read this that it was far more accurate than it had any right to be and that I needed to get out and read more of what this man had to say.

The longer I go, the more I find there are so many topics I should have studied or things I really should have remembered. Perhaps if I’d seen this sentiment earlier in my life it would have changed things? Is that something a person really wants – to go back and change things? I seem to recall a quote about pulling away one thread unraveling the entire tapestry that is your life – you would lose part of what makes you the person you are today.

I have no idea what I’ll think of Mr. Leary after a little reading time. I’ll at least learn something, and that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.

So – this seemed more accurate than it should have. I got a fortune cookie with dinner tonight and it said: “On the right track means need to run even faster or get run over”

I suspect the way things have been going so far this week, they may be dead on.

There have been lots of times when shows have been accused of “jumping the shark”… you know, taking that one step past where you think they should go. I suppose even kids shows can do that – but maybe it’s no longer “jumping the shark” it’s “jumping into the shark tank”?

What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T95l98XKVXA&list=TLMmmzO05snG0

SPAM is a tasty product. I like it enough to eat it straight up out of the can (and often do). Maybe I should have been Hawaiian? I’m not sure how such an excellent thing as SPAM got associated with all the crap that bombards a web site on a regular basis. I think it’s an entirely unwarranted connection. We need a new word for that nasty stuff from people trying to bomb your e-mail or your web site. OK, we need new words that we can use in polite company and in front of children. I’ve found many creative sets of alternative words to describe this stuff, just none that were all that appropriate for public consumption. I’ve gotten easily 5x the number of spams to number of actual comments in the moderation bin. I suspect that ratio won’t change.

Clearly I need more time to focus on my writing and art – and my web site. I would love to find the best way for me to stop all the stupid crap that ends up in my mailbox because “tshirtlove69ru” has decided that I *need* to post his/her advertisement for some product (undoubtedly along with some virus or trojan or something). The development speed here is dismal (and I think that’s being kind to myself) but I really want this to be me, and my learning process. I hope to squeeze in some more work on this and  update material here (like my convention schedule for Balticon!) before I’m away for a few days.

I just need a few more hours in the day.

I’m late on commenting about this, but that actually ties in with this topic neatly.

Relatively recently there was an article about the most well-read places. I saw it here:

http://io9.com/these-are-the-most-well-read-cities-in-america-accordi-480776448

The thing about that article – it’s all about purchases. If you own something, does it mean you know it? If I pick up a copy of The Hobbit and put it on my shelf, does that make me a Tolkien Scholar? Can you even prove I’ve read the book? I wish I could find the story I once heard about a publishing company that tested this little article’s assumptions. It was in the days before e-books, so tracking was different. The book was a large, dense coffee table kind of book (kids, ask your parents). People loved to have this book and put it out where folks could see it. Made them feel… clever I guess. The important part of this was the coupon the publishing company placed deep inside the book. This coupon allowed the purchaser of the book to mail in for a return of a significant portion of the books purchase price. I don’t remember the exact statistic – but it was somewhere below 5% of the coupons actually got mailed back. Nobody read that far. They didn’t even flip past that page and have it drop out. They just wanted to look smart.

So, I said that being late in commenting tied into this. Many years ago I fell into this trap. At that time I was the proud owner of every album ever put out by Led Zepplin. A guy I knew was talking to some girls about the music of Zepplin. I jumped in, without listening to what they were talking about or any consideration at all really, and explained that I owned all the albums they had put out to date. The guy (a musician) then proceeded to point by point embarrass me as completely as he could by asking me specifics about the drum solos from Physical Graffiti and the production value of one album vs. the other and any other point he could dig up. I had no answers for any of it. I am not a musician. I have zero talent or knowledge in that area – none – BUT I did own all the albums.

My point is this, I take the time before commenting on this sort of thing (or any sort of thing) to be sure what the topic is and that I’ve got a clue about the conversation and its content. The “best read” cities list should more accurately be called “the places where we registered the most sales” list. Has nothing to do with what was actually read. It shows nothing of the retention of that knowledge or application of the ideas from those books.

Hopefully this surge in “reading” will lead to better ideas and thoughtful dialog… What do you think?