Words are inadequate

21 days for Dreamwidth, #21:
What's your favorite thing about Dreamwidth?

I could say that it's the friendliness, or the developers' willingness to keep working on things that are frustrating, or the way it's imported nearly ten years of history from Livejournal without much of a hiccup. But honestly? It's the expanding cut tag.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, click over to Dreamwidth to take a look at the cut tag ETA: and click the triangle next to it!)

( It expands! )

So there's that.

(the cool new people i've met are a close second, though. *wave*)

21 days for Dreamwidth, #19:
Any questions from the audience?

Feel free to ask and I'll happily answer, either in comments or in a separate post. (The answer may be "None of your business" or "I don't feel like talking about that," but it's still an answer.)

In fact, I've got a couple left over from last month that I never got around to:

Are you still learning Perl? How's that going?

At this point I know enough Perl to get by, I have a small stable of scripts I can easily modify for my uses, and (most importantly) I know where to look in the camel book when I forget the syntax for whatever regex I'm trying to write. So, not really "learning" so much as "using, on occasions that grow ever more rare."

How were you able to resist naming your blog "Tuckered Out?"

Having a given name of "John" left me with an atrophied sense of humor about name-based jokes, and the "Take Away Tucker" sign at the to-go order counter at Outback Steak House dealt it a fatal blow.

Every place has something, be it an awesome video store or a Chinese place that just does perfect crab wonton. What would be The Place that you'll miss from DC?

The AFI Silver, hands down the best movie theatre I've been in.

If you could send one text message (140 chars, no more) to yourself at any point in the past, how much would it suck to realize that the point you'd pick is before you bought a cell phone?

heh. It'd mostly just be frustrating. "Well, there's... no. Or how about... no. Or maybe... no, not quite. Dammit." To the left, it's not like I'd be losing anything I hadn't just gotten for no reason about three minutes ago, so it wouldn't be /that/ bad.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

... either more drugs, or fewer.

21 days for Dreamwidth, #17:
How many people on your reading list do you know IRL?

About half? *counts* Twenty-eight of forty-nine, plus two I've met only once (hi, blaisepascal and coraa!). More like three-fifths, then.

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Book Reader vs Book Owner:

There is a growing distinction between the book reader and the book owner. The book reader just wants the experience of reading the book, and that person is a natural digital consumer: Instead of a disposable mass market book, they buy a digital book. The book owner wants to give, share and shelve books.

Meh. I'm a "book owner," I guess. Have been since I bought the bright blue/green/red paperbacks of Lord of the Rings in elementary school, since I first grasped the idea that I could have books that I could read whenever I wanted to. Which I did, repeatedly, until I wore out a lot of my older paperbacks. In high school I discovered the local used bookstore, and started trading in the books I wasn't rereading as often. Later I found sources for affordable hardbacks, first through the SFBC and then from Green Valley Book Fair, and I started building up a substantial Library. These days, I know I've really moved in to a new place when the books come out of the boxes.

But I own books because I want to read them. If a book doesn't pass the Good Enough To Reread test, into the Go-Away pile with it. I love books because I love reading, and reading is a joy that's mostly independent of the physical medium. If it's holding together and not of so poor quality that it's distracting, I don't much care whether the book is a cheap beat-up paperback or a beautiful limited edition from Subterranean.

My main objection to ebooks, after technical complaints like "lack of a decent e-reader" and "lack of a consistent e-format," is the same as my objection to electronic music: there's no physical medium, no way to recover from a data crash. These days this is at least partially irrational: between backups and the ability to re-download a book or song from whichever online store, I could most likely rebuild my library if my hard drive were to explode. The fear's still there, though.

There's also the question of availability. I could see myself switching over to ebooks... but a lot of what I want to read is older and not (currently, or ever in some cases) available in a decent e-format. So if and when I go digital I'll still be hauling a bunch of physical books around, because that's my option.

I'm okay with this. I do appreciate the way books furnish a room, and I like having a physical tactile association with what I read. (There's a phrase I've been meaning to look up for months now, that I know is in the second half of a book, near the top of a left-hand page. And I imagine that when I next read Tolkien I'll get all discombobulated, because I no longer have those falling-apart primary-colored paperbacks, and the words will all be in the wrong places.)

I just don't think there's nearly so great a divide between "book owner" and "book reader" as the New Yorker blogger, or the Penguin Putnam executive, seem to see. In ten years, if and when print books actually become the luxury items they're supposedly threatening to, maybe. But at that point, "book" will mean "ebook," and we'll have a separate word for dead-tree editions, like with "album" and "vinyl."

21 days for Dreamwidth, #15:
What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?

I don't really have one other than "moving" at the moment. Last week it was "the Canadian election" but that's resolved itself into "everything sucks," so there's not a lot of point obsessing over it. Avatar is quite good but probably not going to draw me in enough to hit the "obsession" state.

If I had more time and energy I'd probably be perfectly capable of holing up in front of a given video game for hours on end, for weeks on end. But these days even my video game obsessions only last a week or two, and then I'm done.

In a couple of months maybe I can go back to obsessing over my writing.

---

So far, Windows 7 exemplifies Johnson's dictum. It looks a great deal like a half-assed implementation of OSX, with some distracting transparency effects and animations in the windows. The net effect is that a machine that ought to be two to three times as fast as my Windows XP desktop and probably half again as fast as my laptop feels extremely sluggish.

I'll adapt eventually; it'll just take some doing and grumbling.

(See, this is what happens when you spend half the workday trying to set up a new computer: you FALL BEHIND ON YOUR DAILY POSTING SCHEDULE. Tragic.)

21 days for Dreamwidth, #12:
What do you consider the five most "telling" interests from the list on your profile? Why?

• having too many books, because my love affair with books is not only about reading, it's about the physical presence of the library as Home.
  
• statler and waldorf, because they encapsulate so much of what made the Muppets great. "I've a good mind to go home." "If you had a good mind you wouldn't be here in the first place!"
  
• military brats, because I'm fascinated by the ways we're broken and the ways we healed around it.
  
• the waste land, because its depth of allusion and gorgeous language Changed My Life.
  
• affection, because it's vital.

And #13:
Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?

Several. I've not really updated my interest list since importing it from LJ however long ago, and most of these are shared there.

• blaming the patriarchy: Jeez. I cannot believe no one else on Dreamwidth is interested in blaming the patriarchy. How is that even possible?
  
• cat vacuuming society: My writing group. None of the other members are on LJ or DW. (Actually I think Jen-in-charge has a Livejournal account but she doesn't use it.)
  
• fleeing to canada: It seemed like a good idea at the time.
  
• homing from work: I stumbled across this in someone else's profile, and it seemed like a really good idea. Soon I'll be homing from work at home, which is less impressive.
  
• jazz fish zen: An obscure picture book from the mid-nineties.
  
• lacuna: An obscure role-playing game from the mid-2000s. I keep hoping other fans will pop up.
  
• military brats: My obsession with brathood dates back to reading the book four years ago.
  
• owain glyndwr: The last Welsh Prince of Wales, disappeared in 1610 or thereabouts. Also the namesake of my first car. For awhile I wanted to run away to live in Wales.
  
• red bell peppers: Tastiest of veggies. Seriously, no one else on DW likes these?
  
• snowpocalypse: Feb 2010. God, that was wonderful. I have never seen so much snow and I probably never will again. Okay, so I can understand how no one but me would like this.
  
• spring peepers: Among the things I'll miss in Vancouver. I was once unable to hold a conversation at Pandapas Pond in B'burg because they were so loud.
  
• the scribblies: The Interstate Writers' Workshop, a bunch of formerly-Minnesota-based fantasy writers who put out some of my favorite books.
  
• the treachery of images: Magritte's painting of a pipe. Ceci n'est pas une interest.
  
• tjhsst: My high school, whose full name is longer than its physical address and several time longer than its URL. For a year or so everyone I knew on LJ was from there.
  
• tjst: Jefferson Shakespeare Troupe, the best part of high school, even once I'd graduated.
  
• zarf: A genuinely weird and awesome guy.

21 days for Dreamwidth, #10:
Tell me about your default icon.

It's cropped from an image I found a decade ago on Howie Green's website. I've been feeling a little guilty about that recently and have been meaning to write Howie and ask for permission (and offer payment) to use the image and username. That, like so many things, is On My To-Do List.

---

I still need to sort through my now-mostly-unplayable computer games and my Miscellaneous Closet Stuff, and do some amount of herding of things into reasonable piles, but I'm mostly ready for the Burly Men to come and put everything I own in boxes.

This is kinda weird. I haven't had other people pack up all my stuff in... yeesh, twenty years. (That was the time I went away to summer camp for a week and when I came back we'd moved.)

It's starting to sink in that, yeah, I won't be here this time next month, for most values of "here" that come to mind.

Like I say, weird.

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An amusing side effect of the NDP's unexpected surge: the new NDP Members from Quebec include a student voting in his first election, and an assistant pub manager who speaks limited French and spent the week before last in Vegas instead of campaigning. Oh dear.

(Are you sick of hearing about the Canadian election yet? Me too! But I have to suffer through the consequences, so you can as well.)

21 days for Dreamwidth, #8:
What community do you wish was more active?

Again, endings, because it's mostly me and wishfulclicking posting, and while zie's found some awesome stuff it's nice to get some different perspectives.

I'd like to see a bit more activity in some of the writerly communities as well.

(Busy workday today, so this is all you get.)

21 days for Dreamwidth, #6:
What do you wish people who read your journal knew about you?

... I don't think there's much of anything. I'm pretty open about the things I want to be open about, and the things I'm not so open about are because I don't want to talk about them to (the wider internet | my DW/LJ friends).

I hope everyone knows that I've got an opt-in filter for babbling about writing (or, more recently, how poorly the writing is going): it's opt-in because I didn't want to flood everyone's flist with wordcount updates and whining unless they actually wanted to read that stuff.

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Off to 24 hours of camping with uilos's parents down by the James River. I'm annoyed about this but mostly in the "this is eating into my weekend and i need that time to RELAX" way. It'll be good.

21 days for Dreamwidth, #4
What do you do online when you're not on DW?

(I have my DW readinglist open in a tab most of the time these days, so "not on DW" is more of an "at the moment" than in general.)

I catch up on Facebook and Twitter and a handful of other social networking sites. I read a few blogs (LG&M, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Pandagon, Crooked Timber, some others). I poke around on Boardgamegeek and Tor.com.

I read and write email. At home I chat, occasionally.

... you know, I'm not terribly sure what I do with all that time I spend online. It's good to have it laid out like that.

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Michael Chabon's introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of The Phantom Tollbooth: "Puns act to shatter or at least compromise meaning; a pun condenses unrelated, even opposing meanings, like a collapsing dwarf star, into a singularity. Maybe it’s this antisemantic vandalism that leads so many people to shun and revile them."

Interactive talking plush Portal turret: I want one. I have no idea what I'd do with it, but I want one.

Existential Star Wars (in French): "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I exist, and I find it nauseating."

---

We just had a five-minute storm. The weather turned from greyish and imposing to sheets-of-water in the space of about thirty seconds. There was enough water in the air that I could make out individual gusts of wind.

And then it was over, and the rain cleared, and the air took on that clarity to it that it sometimes gets when the light is just right.

This was a bad day to have left my lunch at home.

21 days for Dreamwidth, #2:
Why did you choose your journal name?

For continuity; it's my LJ name, and it's been my online handle since, mm, summer 1996. (Originally, from Howie Green's book, via Steph.)

The journal title is from John M. Ford's revolutionary "Chromatic Aberration":

Words are inadequate (the poor craftsman curses his tools) to describe the beauty of our coasts, but words are what I have available.

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It warmed up enough last week for me to start my sixth annual "how long will I last this time?" running spree. These have consistently started in April or May, and have lasted... well. For reference:

• 2006: kept up through at least October, I think; I remember running to the polling place to vote in early November
  
• 2007: aborted in late June due to Lyme
  
• 2008: aborted in July due to heat and laziness; started again in September, ended in October.
  
• 2009: stopped in September due to personal stress.
  
• 2010: aborted in early July due to heat and personal stress.

So far, so... far. Yesterday I was at the start of week five; I expect I'll stay there for at least another week. Stupid humidity. Stupid hills. Stupid lungs. I'm looking forward to the point (probably next week) where I have to stop running because my legs are giving out, rather than because I can't breathe anymore. I'm looking forward even more to less warm and humid in another month and a half.)