A Little Bit of Reason

Who is to blame for the dead in Mazar-e-Sharif?

2011-04-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, in the northern Afganistan town of Mazar-i-Sharif, an angry mob attacked a UN compound killing at least 9 people, some reports say as many as 12. This was a response to Pastor Terry Jones burning a Qur'an (Islam's holy book/bible) in Gainsville Florida on March 20th.

Jones had threatened to burn a Qur'an for some time, but delayed after an appeal by General David Patraeus, leader for the US forces in Afghanistan.

Who is to blame for this horrible action? I say the responsibility for these crimes rests solely on those who committed them.

Does Jones shoulder any of the blame? While I agree that Jones is a nut-case, with more than a few delusions, I say that he does NOT. I agree with Sam Harris in this blog post, that anyone suggesting that Jones be punished is off the rails. Does a free country remove freedoms from its people in response to the irrational and illegal and threatening actions from some loonies in another country?

Would we have punished Harriet Beecher Stowe for writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" because it may have led to the American Civil War and the over 600,000 dead? The freedoms we enjoy today were earned through the deaths of many who fought for them. Should the deaths of more people remove those freedoms? That is an insult to the people who died.

Nanowrimo 2010 - here it comes again!

2010-11-07T20:22:00.000-08:00

I am very excited about this year's National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) and another chance to write a first draft.

I can't believe that I have never thought of this before, but this year is a superhero novel. This will be my ninth first draft and I am determined to finish the 50,000 words even if I nearly missed my first four days at a management training course in Sydney and I'm behind by 6-7000 words.

I have been reading superhero novels running in the months leading up to November, and really liked "Soon, I will be Invincible" by Austin Grossman and "Karma Girl" by Jennifer Estep, but didn't like "Leaper" by Geoffrey Wood or "Hot Mama" also by Jennifer Estep.

I have also bought two other superhero novels from the Whitcoulls on-line e-book store to put on my Kobo e-book reader. I just bought "From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain" by Minister Faust about a psychologist to the world's best superhero team, and "Masked" by Lou Anders (Editor), an anthology of superhero fiction.

My novel features The Wingman, a superhero whose powers allow him to be second best at everything. He has a mimicking power that allows him to copy abilities, including super abilities from those around him. However, he let his team down years ago and they were slaughtered by a team of villains. Now, he's a pariah to the world, including other superheroes. Worse, this has spilled into his own mind and he doubts his own value.

At the beginning of the novel, the Wingman finds evidence for a serial killer who is killing aliens who live on earth. With his only remaining superhero friend, Raymond Taylor, aka "the General", leader of The Famous Five, they begin tracking down who is responsible.

SpecFicNZ Blogging Week – Day 3, the Bible

2010-09-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

The Bible is the greatest work of speculative fiction ever written. Greater than the Iliad or the Odyssey, greater than the Epic of Gilgamesh or any of Shakespeare's plays.

There are Gods, prophets, magicians, miracles, conflict, betrayal, love, good Samaritans, villians and so much more.

As a source for ideas, there aren't any better places than the Bible.

SpecFicNZ Blogging Week – Day 2, superhero novels

2010-09-14T05:13:00.001-07:00

I have recently read "Soon, I will be INVINCIBLE!" by Austin Grossman, a fun jaunt into superhero novels. I enjoyed it enough that I decided that it would be my genre for November's Nanowrimo novel.

If any genre defies Specfic boundaries and bleeds between sci-fi, fantasy and horror, it's superhero novels. A woman in a high tech battle suit teams up with an alien gladiator to fight a villain using an ancient Babylonian artifact to kill the Prime Minister of Uruguay for his own evil plans. What a lovely combination!

I think I'll enjoy November - I have never written in that genre and I am a huge comic book fan. There is so much material to choose from and so many directions it can go. I can do almost pure fantasy or pure sci-fi or a combination, introduce vampires or werewolves, have sorcerers turning the streets of New York into a replica of ancient Greece and have it all observed by an immortal alien sent to earth to observe, but who feels the need to interfere.

Indeed - very fun November. I think I'm excited enough to do the Kiwiwriters Prep-challenges in the archive before November.

SpecFicNZ Blogging Week – Day 1, the term "Spec Fic"

2010-09-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine already. "Spec fic" or "speculative fiction" is a term being used to include "science fiction", "fantasy" and "horror".

Why is anyone using this term? I don't know. It's like using "Violence Fiction" to describe "War", "Spy" and "Detective" genres.

However, it's "specficNZ blogging week", so I thought that I'd contribute.

I think the term "speculative fiction" is lame. I like any of the other terms better. Firstly, if you say you're writing "speculative fiction", people are bound to ask "Are you writing science fiction, horror or fantasy?". It's the kind of term that nose in the air, hoity-toity science fiction writers would use to describe their work. "Oh no, I don't write science fiction, I don't have ray guns and googly eyed little green men, my work is speculative fiction, you know, stuff that could really happen."

This does remind me of the trailer for "Gentlemen Broncos" though. Doctor Ronald Chevalier (played by Jemaine Clement) says, "I'm assuming you love to write fantasy fiction, but the character names in your stories are suffering. Need thou not be afraid. We can add 'onius', 'ainous' or 'anious' to just about anything and it becomes magical."

I can hear Dr. Chevalier using the term "Speculative Fiction" instead of "Fantasy Fiction" and it would fit right in with the poncy tone he uses.

Mr. Spock goes to Church

2010-07-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Una had a big birthday in July and we had a fancy dress party with "Legends" theme.

Once Una suggested the idea of Mr. Spock, there was no going back. All the costume places around town have suitable outfits (they have the blue, red and golden outfits and have for decades). I settled on The Costume Company on Willis Street.

I bought some ears on line that look just like these ones.

On the day, I decided to try and fix up my eyebrows, nothing too fancy. Una was going as Elisabeth Taylor and had arranged to have a professional makeup artist come around to make sure she looked suitably glam. When Claudine arrived, I asked her for some eyebrow work, but she said that she didn't have any gear for it, but knew someone in town who had just taught a movie special-effects makeup course and would still have all of their gear out and on the table.

Meet Church Haley, willing to do Spock eyebrows in the hour (literally). He did an absolutely amazing job and if you need something like that done, I can highly recommend him. He saw my little rubber Spock ears and said "I can do the ears for you to if you like." and then "Do you mind if I cut them up and make them better?" - could I say no to that?

Results below:

Why women take their clothes off

2010-07-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

Due to an interesting mistake on Facebook, one of my posts was confused with the title of this post.

So, an interesting exercise is to come up with reasons why women take their clothes off:

1. when they take a shower
2. when they change (shopping, gym, spilled something on their clothes, going out for the evening etc...)
3. when they have sex
4. sometimes when they go to the doctors
5. when they get a massage
6. when they want to go streaking
7. just for the hell of it
8. when they are actors and are acting out any of the above...

Thanks for the great idea Graham.

Why do women still change their names when they get married?

2010-07-12T14:10:00.001-07:00

I posted the following article by Catherine Deveny on facebook and had the most emotional and largest number of comments ever on my facebook wall. Deveny received a huge response and posted a follow-up article a week later.

I agree, the original article is inflammatory, but this doesn't dismiss the points she made.

The question, "Why do women still change to their husband's name when they get married?"
Gets the answer: "It's easier."

Of course, it's true. There are so many problems that just go away when you change your name. From children having the same last name (most people want this), to no more questions at immigration or customs or health insurance or schools or wherever. These hassles go away when everyone in the family has the same last name.

The thing is, if "it is easier" were the complete answer, then men would be changing their names to their wife's last name just as often. BUT THEY DON'T. This is Deveny's entire focus, which almost everyone talks around. This was also true on my facebook wall by the way.

There are only a small number of options on the table in our culture (the West in general). I don't have numbers for New Zealand, but in the US, around 90% of women who get married take their husband's name. Of the remainder, the vast majority keep their names (this is apparently in decline), some hyphenate the two names together and some tiny fraction create a new name with their husband.

What percentage of men take their wife's last name? The funny thing is that it's so new and rare, that it's never been studied and no one actually knows the number. There is no doubt that it's rare, but exact numbers are elusive. Here is an interesting article about men adopting their wife's last name and the backlash of doing so.

Of my friends on facebook, one knew 5 (holy crap Batman! 5!) men who had adopted their wife's last name. Interestingly enough, a few of them did it because "It was easier." All were European, which is no surprise, since Europe is far more liberal than the US, Canada or New Zealand.

If we were seeing "It was easier" equally from men and women, it would make perfect sense, but when 90% of the women are changing their names and almost no men are, "it's easier" just doesn't cut it. Clearly, there are strong social pressures.

The simple answer seems to be that we live in a patriarchal society and not an egalitarian one. The custom of women taking the man's name after marriage is completely one sided in favor of the man, with all the sacrifices coming from the woman. The social pressure is incredibly strong, with most people having a strong opinions, especially the men who mostly wouldn't even consider changing their names.

I know that as a man, I have absolutely no interest in changing my name to my wife's last name. It's not that it's a bad name, but I've owned my name for a long time and it is unique on-line. I never expected my wife to take my last name either and we didn't even have the discussion when we got married.

But, if you want a real egalitarian society, there are only a few options:

1) everyone keeps their name
2) someone in the couple volunteers to change their name
3) failing 2, flip a coin to decide

In the case of 1) and when a couple has children, 2) and 3) apply to the children as well, so either you flip a coin for the children, or someone in the couple volunteers.

If you want everyone in the family to have the same name, then only 2 or 3 work.

I think that all the other options, like hyphenated names or made up names are ultimately failures. Hyphenated only works in the first generation and fails in the 2nd generation with grandchildren having four part names and great grandchildren with eight part names, which is just silly. Made up names is the worst of all possible worlds, since not just one member of the couple loses their name, but both do, and find themselves unattached to their family history, which is the best part of having a name.

SoCNoC - just caught up!

2010-06-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

I finally caught up on SoCNoC after lagging behind for the last few weeks. After losing a day early on, I've struggled a bit to focus and at least keep my lag down to one day only.

It's funny, I keep imagining that I'll wake up early and spend a few hours catching up, but in the end, it's always after the TV shows are done and it's 10 o'clock and I write until 12:30.

Still, caught up is caught up and by day 21, here I am at 33414 total and over 3200 words written today.

I can't say that my story is working out that well, but I have managed to pull all the 5 different threads together into one. I consider that alone an accomplishment. It's the first time that I've had so many separate threads before. I kept it very simple and just cycled through them, bringing them closer and closer together, merging first two, then three and four and finally five. Very satisfying.

SoCNoC - halfway mark

2010-06-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

I hit the halfway point with SoCNoC (Southern Cross Novel Challenge) last night. That means I've written 25k words so far in June and am just one day behind the expected pace.

Here's how I got there:

day date total today
1 01/06/10 1694 1694
2 02/06/10 3615 1921
3 03/06/10 5352 1737
4 04/06/10 6197 845
5 05/06/10 6829 632
6 06/06/10 8861 2032
7 07/06/10 9741 880
8 08/06/10 11597 1856
9 09/06/10 13342 1745
10 10/06/10 15736 2394
11 11/06/10 16755 1019
12 12/06/10 19205 2450
13 13/06/10 20068 863
14 14/06/10 21301 1233
15 15/06/10 23511 2210
16 16/06/10 25096 1585

Not exactly stellar, but despite being a little lazy, I've managed to stay only one day behind every day. I keep telling myself that I'll catch up on a weekend day. Maybe this weekend. :(

Good luck to all the other SocNoCers and HalfNoCers out there - I hope you're having a great June.

English weirdness - plurals

2010-06-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

I quite often get into discussions about the weirdness of English. Things like "fluff" rhyming with "enough" and "threw" rhyming with "through", "taut" and "thought" etc...

Other oddities are words that can't possibly be pronounced without context. Examples:
1. minute
2. tear
3. bass
4. sewer

I got into a similar discussion on the weekend. This time, it was English plurals. Because English is a mish-mash of different languages, happy to borrow from almost any other language ("English is to language what Microsoft is to computing" from "Xenophobe's guide to the English"), it has lots of ways of pluralizing words. I claimed that there are at least a dozen ways of pluralizing in English. The smart (smart-ass?) people I was with said, "Oh? That sounds like a lot. Come on then, give them to us." Another request was for me to have all the examples on my blog - so, this is it. NOTE: There are possibly even more than a dozen here, but I quite often group them together.

straight s:
1. car->cars

es:
2. dish->dishes

ies:
3. cherry->cherries

irregulars - I will count them as 1
4. dwarf->dwarves , hoof->hooves, similarly rooves, leaves, elves

5. deer, moose, fish etc.. (some odder ones are species and series which don't change either)
6. ox, brother, child-> oxen, brethren, children
7. foot->feet, goose->geese, similarly teeth, mice, lice, men, women etc...
8. formula->formulae, indices, matrices, vertices
9. axis->axes, crisis->crises
10. criterion->criteria, phenomenon->phenomena
11. datum->data (similarly media, medium, millennia, memoranda)

Some other odd ones out:
12. alumni, cacti, fungi

even more odd
13. beau->beaux, or bureaux, chateaux

So there you go Ed. ;-)

4th annual SoCNoC continues...

2010-06-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've had this story in my head since November's Nanowrimo. I've mulled it over and talked about it with some friends and read a book that had some similar ideas between then and now.

Strangely enough, for such a fully formed story idea, it's been slow going. I'm at 11,597 words so far, which is a full day behind yesterday's required pace (13,333), let alone today's (15,000). Probably the slowest I've had in the first 9 days of any novel writing month, since I always tend to hover around the slightly ahead mark (last year was a little wonky, since I had a house move, but that's exceptional and only later in the month).

Oh? You want to hear about the story?

I have five, count 'em, five threads all with the same main character happening at the same time. The settings are a soldier in a war, the member of an Antarctic expedition, a monk in training, a software developer in Montreal and finally, a businessman working with a scientist. Eventually, they begin to meet each other. The question is, why are there duplicates? Who made them? What is their purpose?

4th Annual SoCNoC starting tomorrow!

2010-05-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

SoCNoC, to those who don't know, is "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge", which is to some of you, a difficult, challenging, novel writing competition where competitors write 50,000 words in one, 30 day month. To others like myself, it's a giddy, beautiful, roller coaster ride of excitement and fun. Not that I would ever imply that these things can't overlap!

I'm sure that there are people reading this saying, "What Travis? Another novel writing month? I thought you did one in November?!"

Indeed, November is a novel writing month, but that's "National Novel Writing Month" or Nanowrimo, is a completely different beast. SoCNoC is set up for people in the southern hemisphere, where the weather cooperates during June to keep people indoors and writing (true for the last three weeks!).

SoCNoC is special to me since it is, at least partially, my creation. This is a photo of the original Kiwiwriters crew dreaming up something that would let us do writing challenges all year round:

I'm not in the photo, since I was taking it, but that's my old place, I swear it is. Left to right, it's Andy, Chris, Jane and Kerryn. Andy came up with the name "SoCNoC", which is one of his many, brilliant contributions. Kerryn is still the energy that keeps the site going.

Although I haven't done a thorough check, I believe I am the only person to have completed every single SoCNoC (three so far), and I plan to finish this one as well. I have an idea lined up and I'm ready to go. Tomorrow is the day.

I'll see you all in the writing trenches!

The Cuba Street Garret

2010-04-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

I am a stoic guy. I don't often get excited. About anything. When I first saw the Cuba Street Garret, I got excited.

What is the Garret you ask? It is a space in Wellington where writers can rent a small space, free of distraction and sit down to write.

It isn't just that there are private offices for writing or that it's a lovely space with lots of natural light and style that makes you want to take a clean, fresh breath. It's not that it's free from distractions like children or television or traffic noises. It's not that it's free from spouses asking for you to take out the garbage or do the dishes. That is just the start of the excitement.

This is a space that collect authors! This is people who write and publish. The idea of exchanging information with these people is intoxicating to me. The information doesn't have to be about writing either. It usually isn't, but doesn't matter and you always learn something new and go away feeling better.

In the interest of supporting something I find worthwhile, I am happy to talk about the Garret and get as many authors interested as possible. Come by, see what it has to offer. Contact me any time and I'll be happy to show you around. If you feel even 10% as excited as I do, you'll be happy you did.

Thanks to Douglas Wilkins, for first showing me around and thanks to Martin Haughey for taking the photos.

Evolution versus Creation debates

2009-12-30T12:19:00.000-08:00

"evolution" is one of my google alerts. Along with "The Evolution of Special Effects" and "The Evolution of Tom Cruise" I see scientific articles/blogs on evolution along with blog posters taking pot shots at evolutionary theory.

One that I took note of was a Jewish Blog called Chabad, which had a short piece on evolution followed by various people agreeing or disagreeing with the original blog entry.

In my mind, the article had nothing to do with evolution and the facts of the theory, but of how morally speaking, believing in God is better than believing in evolution.

I don't actually know if this is true or not. I have no idea (in general, I think truth is superior to delusion). The thing is, does that have anything to do with whether evolution is correct or not? The big, bright, shiny word that springs to mind is "irrelevant".

What if believing the laws of motion allowed you to launch missiles into third world countries? Oh wait! It does! We shouldn't believe in them! My reaction in a posted comment said pretty much that. What does the morality of the question have to do with evolution?

The funniest thing about the blog is that as I tried to post corrections to people's misconceptions, the moderator seemed to get annoyed with me and started disallowing my posts. That was after quoting me incorrectly and then removing the comment when I corrected him.

I guess with a moderated blog, you can allow and disallow whomever you like and colour the responses in a certain light. As obvious as that is, I hadn't considered it before and thought that moderation was more about filtering out bad language and abusive comments.

I have rarely worried about evolution dissenters before, after all, what does scientific illiteracy really matter? These people still use computers, cell phones and cars, all of which were produced through the same science that produced evolution. No one seems to notice that and by posting on line, they are nearly self refuting.

Kiwiwriters returns!

2009-12-22T17:15:00.001-08:00

Far less mysteriously than it disappeared, Kiwiwriters is back up and running, albeit with old data.

If you've joined the site since September, please create a new log-in account. I just realized that this is perfect if you were unhappy with your original username. Now's the chance to fix it!

And, if you haven't thought about any writing for the new year, may I suggest the 20k Novella challenge we are offering for January?

Kiwiwriters disaster!

2009-12-20T12:47:00.000-08:00

Well, for the last week or so, Kiwiwriters has been completely down and out. Go to the link and nothing - just an error.

Now, since getting in touch with the hosting company, we realize that it's even worse than we thought. Not only is the current page no longer working because of a hardware problem on their main server, the backups are also corrupt.

The latest full backup that we have is from September! That's over THREE months old!

So, blog posts, discussion boards, news items, challenges, membership data etc.. etc... are all gone.

This entry is just to let you know, if you are a recent member, you will have to re-join kiwiwriters, since your username and passwords are all missing.

Sorry guys.

testing google maps

2009-11-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

I'm helping someone to put a google map point on their blog.

So, I will test it here first!

Una is doing a yoga class at the Massey Memorial near Miramar on Sunday, Nov 29th.

It is at this exact location:

View Larger Map

That's it.

Oh the news! Where to start?! Nano, Twitter and a sci-fi reading challenge

2009-11-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

NANOWRIMO

Firstly, it is Nanowrimo yet again, and here I am writing another novel (this will be my 7th - I've finished all of my Nanowrimos and SocNocs so far).

I've gone sci-fi again. This time, the story is set about 80 years in the future. The main character is Paul, a physical trainer. In the future where most people spend all of their time "inside", i.e. plugged into a virtual world, physical trainers take over people's bodies, exercising the limp and atrophied muscles that lay around while their owners are plugged in, which is most of the time.

Paul is a bit of a Luddite and spends as much of his time as possible "outside", living his life in the "real world" except where his job requires.

Paul is thrown for a loop when he lets someone take over one of his clients for a few minutes and the client ends up dead. He is then pulled into a civil war he never knew was happening where some people who spend their time "outside" are trying to bring down the network, which they feel is gradually leaching people of their humanity.

So far, I'm 1 day and 2300 words in. I'm quite excited about what I see as a good idea.

Funny story, I had a part of my whole novel idea (the "physical trainer" part) through October - it's an idea that's been sitting around in my brain for a few years, but I've never used it before. Then, I go to bed on October 31st, thinking about the story. While I sleep, my subconscious chews on it and when I wake up to write around 7:15 on Sunday morning, another story idea I had buried in my brain came up to merge with the first and I'm pleased with where it's going.

The 2nd idea , also a few years old is about someone living "outside" of the network when most of the world is plugged in. The outside is now a museum, where buses run and the infrastructure is maintained via high-tech trickery, but almost no one lives in the real world. It started with a scene where someone goes out to look around, day after day, week after week and is alone every day. One day, on a bus driving through empty streets, out of the blue, he meets another person who is doing the same thing as he is. This idea just seemed to gel with the first, so I've merged them together.

TWITTER
To change the subject - I've started to twitter. My username is traviscottreau (appropriately enough - I tried to put a dot in the middle to match my gmail account, but it wouldn't let me). I figured that I would use it to report my nano stats and keep in contact with other Nanoers.

SCI-FI CHALLENGE
And finally, a science-fiction reading challenge. I am a member of Shelfari, an on-line book club that I quite enjoy and while browsing on that site, I found a science-fiction reading challenge in one of the groups. There are 40 categories of books that you have to read in the next year. With a few double ups allowed (no triple ups allowed), it comes out to a minimum of 35 books that have to be read in the next year. I am keeping track of my progress on a google docs spreadsheet that I've made public for viewing. I'm quite excited about this, since I have a few sci-fi books at home that I haven't read and have been procrastinating about - why not add a challenge to get through them and announce it on my blog?

If anyone sees a category that I haven't filled in, but have a suggestion for, I'm more than happy to listen. I'll keep some progress on here and probably on twitter I imagine.

I am starting with "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which counts as my "young adult" category in the challenge.

Evolution as simply as I can explain it

2009-10-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Evolution says that all life forms are related.

I have 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins and if you go back further, my more distant cousins include everyone on earth.

In EXACTLY the same way, all animals are related to us if you go back even further, so are plants and bacteria. There is no difference in the relations except how far back in time you trace the ancestors.

Little changes creep in over time. We can easily see the physical differences between Chinese and Europeans. If you go back further, the differences are even greater and you have apes, monkeys, dogs, mice, worms and eventually plants.

Everything else is just details.

To poll or not to poll...

2009-10-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

From the mouth of the discovery institute comes "The More They Know Darwin, The Less They Want Darwin-Only Indoctrination" where they say that polls show that the more a country knows about the Theory of Evolution, the more they want to teach "alternatives" like Intelligent Design or Creationism.

Hmmm... I can't think of anything LESS relevant to the entire topic of evolution and education. Since when do we go out polling the population to see what should be taught in science classes? Imagine a physics professor in front of a group of university students saying, "Hey kids, instead of teaching the intended String Theory class, I'm going to give you how atoms are controlled by little fairies kept in bottles on the moon. The US population has decided that it should have equal weight."

Seriously - it is completely irrelevant.

Ken Miller was dead on when he said "If I had to give a prize for the best idea that anyone in the antievolution movement has ever had, I'd award it to whomever came up with the term 'Intelligent Design'."

The term itself is all anyone usually knows about it. After that, all the BS and sciency sounding jargon is enough to fool most people. What's the alternative to 'intelligent design'? Something un-intelligent and non-designed I guess.

Some things cheese me off. The Discovery Institute is one of them. They are a bunch of scientific minded individuals, who are smart enough to know better, but practice spinning lies to the population in hopes that they will convince some people to believe their BS. I doubt there are more than one or two in their think-tank who actually believe what they are saying. Certainly not Michael Behe or William Dembski, both of whom are complete and utter liars who aren't just misguided morons, but know enough to realize that what they are saying just isn't true.

You'd think that Behe would go away after having his books completely trashed by intelligent five year olds with a passing knowledge of evolution, or that Dembski would finally man up and produce some math that other people could actually see. Dembski's promise of an equation that can tell the difference between designed and non-designed items (genetics, mountains, sculptures?) has been in the works for 10+ years and is still just a no-show. Strangely enough - there are people who still take him seriously.

Scientifically speaking, intelligent design and creationism are the same as astrology and voodoo for what they add to an understanding of the complexities of life. The world would be a better place if they didn't exist.

New Zealand News

2009-08-31T20:14:00.001-07:00

I love New Zealand. I moved here eight years ago and it was one of the best decisions of my life.

However, TV news is pretty bad . Two things that get me:

1. A half hour news program has 10-15 minutes of sports coverage. Rugby is the hot topic, even high school rugby gets in-depth coverage. Cricket is a close second.
2. If there is any sports related news, some scandal or even a high school rugby fight, it is presented not as sports new, but as regular news, eating into the ACTUAL regular news.

It is almost like the producers and writers are little kids who can't help but talk about the stuff they love, happily putting aside more important news, like shootings or catastrophes.

The only positive that I can say is that it is better than US news, which pretty much dumbs down information to the point where it's actually taking information away when you watch it.

Treating Maori like everyone else

2009-08-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting quote from wikipedia on the state of Maori (for those not from New Zealand, Maori are the native population):

"Despite significant social and economic advances during the 20th century, Māori tend to appear in the lower percentiles in most health and education statistics and in labour-force participation, and feature disproportionately highly in criminal and imprisonment statistics."

A few things of note here - one, if you treat a sub-set of the population like they are different from everyone else and as if they always need government social help, they are going to continue to act like they do. You can't expect welfare to correct a poverty problem. At best, it's a stop-gap to make sure people don't starve.

There has also been a recent controversy over Auckland city council seats where Maori would automatically get seats on the Auckland super city council when all the "cities" of Auckland merge into one. This is the perfect example of treating the Maori like they need handouts from the government. If I were Maori, I would be dead set against it - it's a handout and an obvious one. It's an insult to Maori and tells them they don't have a clue about getting elected to seats in the first place. I find it amazing that Maori leaders are so up an arms and demanding that the seats be given freely. It is a victim's attitude.

The more that we treat Maori differently, the more we have Maori parties (we don't have an "Asian Party" for example, despite them being a significant minority), the more we make an issue of the differences between Maori and others in New Zealand, the longer the trends in health, education and employment will continue.

Anti-smacking referendum results

2009-08-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

New Zealand recently had a referendum on hitting children, the notorious "Smacking" referendum, which, unfortunately cost nearly $9 M and did absolutely nothing.

The question on the referendum was "Should a smack, as part of good parental correction, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"
- yes
-no

Well - how can you vote against good parenting? You can't. A normal person would say "No" to this, which was by far the vast result as seen in this "Stuff" article. Nearly 90% said "no" in fact.

That doesn't mean that people are pro-smacking, not at all. It means that the question was loaded and there was no way to answer it sensibly.

Say I answered "yes" - that means that I just said that an aspect of good parenting was illegal.

Who the hell worded this question? What kind of morons are they hiring for the phrasing? I can't believe it got by an editor.

This isn't the only issue with the smacking law, it's meaningless anyway. Child abuse has always been illegal - it hasn't stopped abusive parents in the past!

I'm disappointed that the law was made and that a referendum that cost so much went through (seriously - they could have given the money to me - I would have done something with it - promise), and not only that, it isn't going to change the law anyway, since the referendum doesn't have that power. The prime minister said no to a law change.

Kiwiwriter's collection has arrived in the post

2009-08-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've been involved with Kiwiwriters since its founding. My participation lately has waned, but every once in a while, I throw out an idea, usually just for the name of a challenge (the zing thing, the collection challenge).

The Collection Challenge finished months ago, but there was lots of work after that to organize a printed book (fantastic work from Cassie and Kerryn by the way) and getting the PDF file together, the introduction and the cover designed etc... It eventually went on sale at lulu, a self publishing site.

Cassie Hart, Kerryn Angell and guest judge Philippa Ballantine went to work and the end result was "The Challenge Collection", which I ordered as soon as possible and got in the mail recently (while I was on holiday actually, so I had to wait another week!).

While you can buy it, you can also download the collection for free. Check it out here.

I bought two copies - one for myself and another for putting into the Wellington City Library.

There is no logic

2009-07-22T21:06:00.001-07:00

Of course logic exists, but no one uses it.

As an experiment, I have tested various sayings and words. For example, UK and NZ people say they take a "maths" course, whereas people from North America say they take a "math" course.

Which one is better? Quick answer - neither. Words are arbitrary by nature and it doesn't matter if I call something a "blork" or a "bleen" as long as we all know what we mean.

However, note that all NA people take the "math" side and try to justify their use, and all the NZ/UK people take the "maths" side and try to justify their use.

The same is true for every other arbitrary spelling or wording there is - so, "boot" versus "trunk", "colour" versus "color" etc.. etc....

Even though we know these are arbitrary examples and don't really matter, emotion come out and I am amazed at how certain everyone thinks they are (Read "On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You're Not" by Robert Burton for a very cool discussion of this phenomenon).

Imagine what happens with more complex issues, like capital punishment, legalized abortion, legalized marijuana, not to mention deciding if a religion is "right" or not. Can anyone actually KNOW they are right on any of these subjects? I contend that they can't really.

The Chapter One Rewrite Club

2009-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Kiwiwriters has a new challenge posted that I thought was too fun to ignore. The challenge is called "The Chapter One Rewrite Club" and the challenge is this: Read and re-write the first chapter of Lord of the Rings and post your re-write on-line. Here I am, posting the first bit.

It runs from July 1st (now finished! I didn't write a thing!) to July 11th.

So, the beginning of Lord of the Rings starts with a Poem:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Which I have re-written:

The One Ring - a beat poem

A ring, just imagine, the thing that brings, doom
Like a groom leaving his chick behind in a room at noon
On his wedding day

Rings, three more, says the lore, for Elf lords
Rings, seven more, says the lore, for the Dwarf lords
Rings, nine more, says the lore, for the Mortal lords

Then the one, just the one, no more, says the lore, sits in Mordor
With the dark lord, on his throne, in that dark zone
Like a crone droning on whispering a Zen koan

Pour over the lore and if you can avoid a snore, it will say that the one is more
More than just a ring, but a thing that will bring, the doom to Middle Earth
Like the birth of the dearth, like the door's boom in a tomb
Shutting behind you

SoCNoC Novel - 2009

2009-06-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

SoCNoC, or the Southern Cross Novel Challenge is in its 3rd year. This is my third one.

I have been behind on this SoCNoC more than I've been behind on any novel challenge, but a 5,000 word flurry of activity last night brought me to 46,861 words, only 3139 words off my 50,000 word finishing count. As long as I don't get distracted with anything else, I should be fine. There are a few big scenes planned, including an army attacking a city made of diamond weaved buildings. The words should just flow.

I have never been so ill prepared on one of my novels before and procrastinated in May for coming up with an idea and working out some kind of outline, so it's pretty random stuff. I decided to try an idea I'd had back in high school (this is a long time ago - probably 20+ years). Also, part way through the novel, I switched from third person to first person, just because it's faster to write. I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but here I am within striking distance, so it wasn't too bad.

I took the novel out just now and started reading it from the beginning - not something I do until well after I finish, but it was almost 30 days ago, so I decided I'd try and see how bad it was. To my surprise, I enjoyed the voice and writing style. It was clear and had some suitable metaphors, but wasn't overloaded with them. I was pleased. I know it gets much worse later when I was stuggling to get my word counts in, but really, I couldn't have asked for much more.

Storyline summary: Victor, the main character (his name is Victor because of a funny story I will tell in another blog later), finds himself in a new world full of aliens and alien landscapes. Very little explanation is given as to why he is there, but he finds himself talking to alien people who have left their worlds and come to this new one and who are opressed by a group of humans from earth who have come through from various periods in Earth's past. There are Romans and Phoenicians, Babylonians and Vikings, none of whom have a problem massacring aliens who they consider sub-human and just animals getting in their way. Not only that, but the humans have access to the super-technology of the world's original inhabitants who died of a plague a thousand years before.

All a little seat-of-the-pants but some of the scenes are just really fun to read over again.

One of my more satisfying efforts, although quite stressful. Throw into the mix that I moved house over June and had to work late a few days (5 days where I added exactly zero words and another half dozen or so where I added just 200-300, and I would say I did pretty well).

Fur Patrol - free concert in Frank Kitts Park

2009-02-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

I really enojyed Fur Patrol this past Thursday downtown in Wellington. It's certainly the best free concert that I can remember going to, and I was stunned that there weren't more people there. They remind me of the 90's Irish band, the Cranberries, with a similar sound and lead singer. Love Julia Bains' clear, powerful voice. I feel bad I didn't get a photo of the drummer, Simon Braxton, since he did an excellent job on some creative and non-standard beats.

Julia Deans, lead singer and rhythm guitar

Andre Bain, bass player

Hello, my name is Travis and I'm a recovering book addict

2008-11-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

I am subscribed to the Borders mailing list (just ask, they can add you too). This week until Thursday, there is 50% off coupon available to people on the list. It looks like this:

After my Nanowrimo weekly write in today, I dropped by Borders and brought this coupon. Just so you know, I have a large pile of books that I am trying to read that I might never get through, since I keep adding to it and can't read as fast as I add.

Anyway, I'm proud to say that I did NOT buy any books. I feel like a recovering alcoholic who accidentally wandered into the beer isle at the grocery story who got out without buying anything.

I have made it a resolution to reduce my book pile several times, but after a reasonable start, I pretty much forget about it and go as normal. This feels like a step forward.

It's "Sign up a friend week" for Nanowrimo!

2008-10-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

It's November next month. And you know what that means? It's Nanowrimo, and that means yet another novel.

Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who might read this has probably already decided yea or nay on this, if anyone reading this has ever had an tickle of an idea that they might have a novel in them, I can't recommend Nanowrimo enough to you.

It is a rush and a pleasure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you are done.

I'm as excited as I've ever been about my story idea, and I can't wait to get writing. I have already started outlining and that's unusual for me!

Here's to a great novel writing month!

Is human evolution over?

2008-10-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

I have rarely posted any of my discussions on evolution and God or religion on my blog. I don't know why - it's bound to produce a lot of interest, but I have avoided it because it feels like it would end up being a lot of work. Anyway - here goes nothing.

In a recent bold statement, British geneticists Steve Jones said that human evolution has come to an end. He puts it down to 3 basic facts:

Older men are having fewer children (older men have more mutated sperm, so this influences the mutation rate)
A vast majority of people are living to reproduce (not dying before they can reproduce like the "good old days of low life expectancy")
Small populations that don't mix is pretty much a thing of the past, spreading out genes and "averaging" everyone out

Having read a lot of books about evolution and having a keen interest in the evolution versus creationism/intelligent design "debate", I have to say, I would expect more from a guy like Steven Jones. He is supposed to understand this stuff.

All of his points are correct - all of these things are true. Yet, why would he reach a conclusion like that? I don't exactly know.

Firstly, even according to his own words, mutation rates have lowered, not disappeared, so even according to his own facts, evolution has slowed down, not stopped.

Also, as someone who has played with genetic algorithms, I know that selection, not mutation is the driving force behind evolution. Has selection stopped?

Jones would say yes, since people aren't dying early like they used to. However, dying before reproduction is only one part of selection - there is another part: How do we choose mates?

People are very picky (even after taking alcohol into account) - what kind of things do people like in a mate? Both men and women have strong feelings about who they would pick to have children with.

I have no doubt that human evolution is proceeding in complete ignorance of what Dr. Jones concludes. No doubt, in a few years, the idea that human evolution has stopped will be look at like an earth centered universe.

LHC - the Large Hadron Collider

2008-09-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, everyone is talking about this and discussing it and talking about the end of the world etc.. etc... I'm sure you've all heard enough about the Large Hadron Collider!

For me, it's a little different. Seeing the LHC come on line makes me sad. Sad for the simple fact that we could have been so much better off if both the LHC AND the superconducting supercollider had come on line together.

Comparison:

LHC	SCSC
length=27kms	length=87.1kms
collision strength=14 TeV	collision strength=40 TeV

This means that not only would the superconducting supercollider be 3 times longer but it would have very nearly 3 times as much colliding power. So, for example, if the Standard Model of Particle Physics is wrong, and more power is required for detecting the Higgs Boson (the so-called God particle), then the LHC will NEVER find it. Not to say they can't make other contributions - of course they will, but that would be a real bitch.

The LHC is still pretty cool though, not counting the LHC Rap.

You know you're a geek when...

2008-04-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

If you've been following my blog at all, you know that I just bought a microscope. "What the hell does Travis need a microscope for?", you might ask.

I will give you an example.

I'm playing with my cat Fred yesterday, and she accidentally scratched me hard enough to draw blood. Did I do what any sensible person would do and suck at my finger and moan at the soreness of my finger?

No, I said, "Hey! I could do a slide of this!" and rushed off to the microscope and prepared a blood smear.

Results below.

Fred pre-scratch:

Blood cells under the microscope at 400x magnification (the blurriness is due to the camera - it looks much sharper under the microscope - upper left is the clearest):

And, just to give you the full coolness of looking at your own blood under the microscope, here is a video of the blood being moved via capillary action between the slide and the slip:

Some really cool things to note:

The cells stack in single file, even after they are on the slide. Red blood cells can only move in single file in the smallest capillaries like the ones at the end of your finger. So, since these came from the end of my finger, they stayed stacked that way.
This is the very tiniest drop you can imagine. I barely was able to squeeze it from the end of my finger and yet there are THOUSANDS of cells. The blood covers about 1 cm x 1 cm on the slide and the view here is only a small portion of that, yet still there are hundreds, probably even thousands of cells in view. It's pretty impressive that they all work together.
Not visible here, but I noticed after looking for a while are little spiky balls mixed in with the red blood cells. I thought they might be dust on the slide or something, but after looking it up on-line, they are, indeed white blood cells. They are pale, but more yellow than white and actually look like a burr that catches on your clothes in the bush.
Even after trying hard to thin out the drop of blood, the group of cells is 3d and under full magnification, you can see the top layer and move through the layers by playing with the focus. For the first few minutes, the blood is continuing to move around.

First images with my new microscope

2008-04-12T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures I took with my digital camera over the eye-piece.

So, at 40x magnifiaction, here is an insect wing:

Interesting things that I have learned by looking at this - insect wings (of this insect - I don't even know what it is - I found just the wing in a spider's web on the outside of my house) is covered in tiny hairs. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting that. Also - as you zoom in closer and closer, something as big as this insect wing will only have small pieces in focus at a time.

And some table sugar crystals:

These are very much 3D through the eye piece and even at low magnification, you can only focus on a bit of the crystal. I added a drop of water and watched it gradually melt away - very cool.

The sharp, black arrow on the right hand side and extending into the middle is a part of the eye piece and lets you find things after you've changed the magnification.

As you can probably tell from these images, it's actually quite difficult to get a perfect image through the digital camera. I will almost certainly get a tool to connect the two so I can take better pictures. BUT, for now, this is pretty cool.

Got my new/old microscope today

2008-04-11T21:26:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot about biology and evolution and decided that I wanted to see some of it first hand. I know this is geeky, but I haven't been so excited for any purchase in a while, so it is worth it.

I went onto trademe and bought a cheap kid's microscope that magnifies up to 900x. This was a big mistake, since it was cheap with a poor design (I could go on for a page about it) and the optics were so crap that it was unusable and I would have smashed it if I'd HAD to keep it too long.

So, I asked if I could return it and Pipsqueaks took it back. I have to say, their service was excellent and they didn't do anything except contact me to ask what they could do to help out.

I then went looking on trademe again and found someone selling their grandfather's old microscope for a reasonable price. I knew from looking previously, that any lab microscope of similar quality would cost $400 or so, so decided to go for the buy now of $120.

Now that I have it, I am glad that I did. Take a look at my microscope:

Note the coarse and fine focusing and note also that the optics don't move, only the specimen tray does. The eyepiece also revolves a full 360 degrees, so without moving the base, you can view from a different positions.

There is a 10x eyepiece and 4x, 10x and 40x objective lenses (totals of 40, 100 and 400 times magnification).

The optics are high quality so I have no complaints and I've been cutting up things to take a look at them. I think I will look for an attachment so I can mount my digital camera on there. It is very cool.

Nanowrimo 2007

2007-11-29T01:55:00.000-08:00

I have been quiet on my blog of late - not a whole lot to say... well, not true, lots to say, but I've been putting all my words into my latest novel for National Novel Writing Month. Nano is the greatest thing ever and I plan to do it until I die. May I finish every year.

I struggled this year, and for the first time, I've reached the end of my 50k words and NOT finished my story. I plan to continue, because I liked the writing and love the idea.

This year, my novel is called "The Holy Book of Janus" and is about a far, far future where a space man is stranded on a primitive planet and becomes their messiah. This time around though, he gets to read what all the gospelers are writing about him. How will it turn out? Well, it's not done yet, but I have a good idea now that I've hit my 50,000 words.

Winning means giving!

2007-11-10T21:37:00.001-08:00

I read Andy's blog regularly. Recently, he had a post called "Free Stuff is Good", and I was one of the first to comment on his blog, so I won this bottle of wine.

I am now trying to come up with a list of 5 things to give away.

Things that I'm thinking of giving:

- books
- cell phone (just bought a new one, need to give away the old one)
- mp3 player
- radio pen
- skype mike/headphone combination
- Master of Orion III video game

Look for my up and coming blog - I will post what I decide on along with photos.

That bloody pen

2007-10-31T20:23:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I'm in Paper Plus at the Johnsonville Mall and I asked for a reasonable priced pen that was really comfortable and wrote well.

This is the pen that the guy there suggested:

I have to say, I have been more than happy with this pen, it was pretty expensive for a plastic pen ($9), but as promised, it is super smooth and very comfortable.

So - why am I writing this? Is it because the pen is great and I want to talk all about my fantastic pen? No, unfortunately not.

The pen, as most pens do, is running out of ink. I've probably got about a week at most left in it.

So, I go back to the same Paper Plus and ask for a refill - no issues right? NO! They don't have refills for that pen, they don't know where I can get them! Why, why, why!!! would that guy recommend me a pen if they don't even sell refills? I have paid $9 for a throw-away pen. Any time I spend looking for a re-fill is going to be effort to save pennies. I am unimpressed!

I can't believe how annoyed I was with this. I haven't been that angry in some time. I know I am taking this too seriously, but I like my pens and it's something I've very fussy about. I can't believe that I'd actually have to ask, "Can I buy refills too?" on a $9 pen!

Have Faith in God

2007-10-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

Downtown Wellington, Lambton Quay, there's this old guy handing out pamphlets. There were two pamphlets, one folded inside the other. The outside one was labeled "Have Faith in God" and the inside one was labeled "Specially for you!".

While Una was shopping, I read through every bit of it and every quote. I have been reading lots of biblical scholarship lately, preparing for my fictional bible during National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) next month.

"Have Faith in God" was just various quotes from the New Testament while "Specially for you!" was one quote plus description.

It described that it had a message for me, and said, "First of all, let me emphasize that this message is absolutely true, because it is God who said it."

It then quoted John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The ridiculousness of the description sentence bowled me over. "... because it is God who said it."

Don't get me wrong, while I'm an atheist, I feel that the King James Version of John 3:16 is one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language. It's a lovely sentiment and there's a reason it's one of the most recognized passages from the bible.

However, to say that God said it means two things:
1) God speaks in the third person, which is unacceptable, since anyone who speaks of themselves in the third person is completely annoying
2) The guy who actually wrote it isn't getting any credit at all. Surely, God would want to give credit where credit is due.

Throughout the Old Testament, God speaks in first person all the time, "for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" for example. So why would He switch all of a sudden? I think the most likely thing is that the pamphlet was wrong. Comments?

SoCNoC is over until next year

2007-06-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

I hit 50,294 words by about 11PM on June 28th, a couple of days ahead of deadline!

This novel is about the far future in New Zealand. It's a dystopian sci-fi where different species of humans war with each other and live their difficult lives. The machines play an important role, and interact with the different species in mysterious ways that no one seems to understand.

I've enjoyed writing about the ruins of Wellington, the odd church in the wilds around Nelson, the b-mod city around Napier and the g-mod military installation in the bay of islands.

I still have a few thousand words to write to finish my story. Then, let it sit and edit it later, maybe sometime next month.

Thanks to everyone at kiwiwriters for the encouragement, and congratulations to all those other winners. It's been a great month to write a novel!

I'm looking forward to SoCNoC next year. I'm sure it will do nothing but grow each year.

SoCNoC day 21 and 22 - word wars

2007-06-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

My best days so far this June for writing kiwiwriters's SoCNoC have been during word wars. You sit there for 10 minute spurts and get as many words in as you can. Having a group of crazy friends around usually helps. I do war with myself on occasion, but it's nowhere near as fun.

One thing is that you learn how fast that you can type, especially if you've got the scene you're going to write outlined in your head already. You also get lots of words out for completing the challenge, which is 50,000 words in one month.

Here are my word amounts - all are in 10 minute increments except where noted:
21st June:
736 (15 min)
828 (15 min)
531
548
551
489

- my goal that entire night was to hit 600 (in 10 minutes) at least once. Never happened.

I joined up with Andy and Kerryn tonight and got a couple of ten minute word wars going before I had to leave and watch a movie. Here are my word counts for tonight:

22nd June

612
573

Got my 600 in 10 minutes! I was very pleased. My fingers were relaxed and finding the keys. It was also lovely in the room, since I moved to the back room and blocked every route for the heat to escape, turned on a heater and loved every minute.

Oh - found an ok timer on sourceforge. It's called tea timer. It was useful and has a lot of features. It pops up while I'm typing and that gives me accurate measurements of how fast I'm typing. It's gotten faster over June actually. :)

SoCNoC, the drama!

2007-06-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, backup your work. I can't tell you how often I've heard this in the past.

I did back up my work, I did, I did, I did. Unfortunately, I backed up an older copy over my newer copy and lost about two thousand words of my SoCNoC entry. I did it last night and stubbornly stayed up late tonight to correct it. I went from about 31, 000 down to about 29,000 in one stupid mistake. I wrote about 3000 words tonight, not quite catching where I could be, but at least I made my quota (19 * 1667 - the number of words you should have on the 19th to meet your 50k by the end of 30 days).

It isn't just backing up your work, it's about not being stupid about it! Geeze, I've been around computers long enough now, you'd think I'd figure out how to drag and drop.

Still, the worst thing is that my re-written scenes felt awkward and not as good as the ones that I wrote last night.

Anyway. I'm off to bed now (2AM). Bummer of a night.

Novel writing: SocNoC day 19th - nothing so far

2007-06-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

SocNoC, Kiwiwriters own novel writing challenge has been going on all of June.

I thought that I'd breeze through it and be done by now (or close), and here I sit at about 31,000 words. 50,000 is the goal, so I'm pretty close to pace, but it's 10 to midnight, and I know that I should go and write a bit and at least get to my daily word count.

I know that I'll get through it, but I really have to put aside a few nights where I can really push the word count up. I had a word count over 4,000 one day... I need a few more like that!

Anyway - off to write a thousand words or so.

First day of SoCNoC completed!

2007-06-01T05:10:00.000-07:00

If you're been following my blog, you are aware that it's Kiwiwriters SoCNoC novel challenge time. I started at midnight and here I am 24 hours later sitting at about 3500 words (about 7% finished). I spent about 3 hours of writing total, although there was a lot of unfocused sitting around picking at my writing.

The television is such a distraction, and I write in the same room as the TV, since otherwise, it's somewhat anti-social. The mp3 player doesn't seem to help. I might have to go back to Avril Lavigne songs, since that is all I could write to during Nanowrimo last November.

On the plus side, I got some good writing food from the grocery store. While I tell myself that it is stock-piling for the month, I'm just kidding myself and it will be gone in a week. Chips and dip, tim-tams, macaroons, trail mix, juice... I think I sampled one of each today - no way, it won't last long.

I also went to the gym for the first time on my new membership which I got on trademe just the other day. With winter coming, and it's pretty nasty today, it will be nice to have a way to exercise without getting myself cold and wet. It also helps me focus with the writing, and I'll be spending lots of time at the gym throughout June.

Good luck to the rest of you kiwiwriters!

SoCNoC has begun!

2007-05-31T17:28:00.001-07:00

I did a midnight start on SoCNoC (the Southern Cross Novel Challenge) last night. I managed to get in about 1300 words and continued this morning and got my quota. I will continue today and try and get a head start going into the weekend. It's a long way to 50,000 words, but making my quota every day will do it nicely, even if I'm more ambitious than that.

If I can get 10,000 words by Monday, I will be very happy and well on my way. It would be better to get even more, but considering how much I'm struggling with the current storyline (it feels like it's going quite slow), I'd be surprised if I got over 10k over the weekend.

Still - very exciting and I'm wondering where my story will go in the end. I've only sketched out the world roughly and some of the characters.

I have gone away from the first contact/telepath story, to a different one which I did on the kiwiwriters easter challenge. That story, which was never finished, is almost exactly like my current novel.

It is set in an alien land (I think it's New Zealand 1000 years from now), with many types of humans roaming around and big, mechanical creatures that aren't so friendly any more. Oh yeah, and there are packs of wild dogs all over the place. What would your pet do if all the people went away?

What is science fiction?

2007-05-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

For much of my reading career, I've been reading science fiction and fantasy.

I have noticed a trend among science fiction readers to discriminate against fantasy as if it is some sort of lesser fiction.

Well, it is quite ironic that science fiction readers would do this, considering that science fiction itself has been considered inferior for most, if not all of its existence, something that continues to happen now.

It brings up the question of "what is science fiction?". Most people know it when they see it, but having discussed this in detail with a group of friends, I realize that there is disagreement and no clear definition.

Is there anything that automatically makes a novel science fiction? I think there is... time travel, stories set in the future, stories with technology that doesn't exist yet. That all seems reasonable to me. Still, there are probably plenty of examples of these where a novel or story has these elements but aren't considered science fiction.

Some examples of "disputed science fiction" are: "A Handmaid's Tale", "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "Slaughterhouse Five". The only reason that they aren't considered science fiction is because their author says that they aren't, or they don't "feel" like science fiction. I think they all are.

It is possible for a story set in the future NOT to be science fiction? Is is possible for a story with time travel in it not to be science fiction? What about aliens? What about new, future technology?

I'm tempted to say "No, it's not possible.", but I'm willing to listen to counter arguments.

Snippet of my writing

2007-04-30T02:14:00.000-07:00

I don't post many pieces of my stories, but I've been in the mood to write, and have been gearing up for The Southern Cross Novel Challenge in June and decided to have a play with some of the characters from the novel. This one is part of "The Station Challenge" from kiwiwriters a few months ago, as well as "a small descriptive challenge" some time later.

So, take a look at the short piece called "Natasha".

Signed up for SoCNoC 2007

2007-04-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

What are you doing this June? Me, I'm writing my 2nd novel.

Seeing as Nanowrimo happens in November, just when the weather is getting more and more like summer, Kiwiwriters decided to set up a novel challenge more in line with the Southern Hemisphere. So, June it is.

50,000 words and a massive rush of accomplishment, Kiwiwriters brings you SoCNoC, "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge".

Here is my participation certificate... I'm sincerely hoping for a winner's certificate at the end of June!

I highly recommend that you join us. Good luck!

Best Cinemas in Wellington, 2007

2007-04-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

I finally visited the SkyCity Cinemas in the WestField Queensgate in Lower Hutt. Now, I feel qualified to say what the best cinema in Wellington is.

There are a few factors that I could consider, like ease of parking, number of cinemas and so on, but really, the only thing I care about is pure cinema experience, that is, comfort and quality (sound/picture etc...). What cinema makes you feel the most like you are in the theater?

These are my picks in order:

1. Embassy theatre (great ambiance, beautiful quality everything - the only problem is that there aren't more like it.)
2. Courtney Central (big screens, top notch quality and sound, comfy seats)
3. Skycity Cinemas, Queensgate, Lower Hutt (just slightly less good than Courtney Central - parking is free, carpet is LOUD).

Got my winnings!

2007-04-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

Lynn Viehl, paperback writer, had a contest back in march called "Last Call". I won that, as posted here. Anyway - got my goods today (actually yesterday, but only checked the mail today - mail doesn't come on Anzac day).

Got a copy of "Blade Dancer" in hardcover, signed, along with the last of her "Stardoc" bookmarks.

When given the choice of any of her novels currently in print, or an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) of her latest novel, I asked for her to send her favorite novel and to say why it was her favorite. I got back exactly what I asked for, and here are some photos. I'm tickled pink over this - I think it's very cool.

Book cover and bookmark

Signatures inside and back of bookmark

My Bookshelf

2007-04-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of our bookshelf. It's pretty much only the books that I've acquired since arriving in New Zealand, and I've held myself back considerably. I have significantly more back in Canada.

I posted this idea a few months back on this Kiwiwriter's page as a way around typing all the titles and authors into some kind of book database, as it's much quicker and requires much less effort (i.e. the lazy way).

Here is it in all its glory - feel free to browse and ask questions. :-)

Oh - and this includes all of Una's books too - she's the massage therapist with all the anatomy books btw.

Seth Godin's blog: pro-business=anti-change?

2007-04-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

I read this the other day on Seth Godin's blog. I'm a bit of a fan of Seth Godin, and this is one of his best blogs.

Why, why, why do businesses fight change so much? With change, there is a huge opportunity for money - guaranteed. Seth's examples here are excellent and show that the world of business is somewhat ass-backwards in their thinking.

I was introduced to Seth Godin with this video. I highly recommend it.

100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

2007-04-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

This isn't strictly a review, since I haven't finished this book yet, but I thought that I'd mention it, since I'm sort of using this book as a guide for novels to read for the next little while.

"100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels" by Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison is a small, attractive looking book which has, what seems at first glance to be a solid list of recommended science-fiction novels.

Going through it, I see that I've read less than 20% of the novels in there. Here is my list of 19:
author, title (year), my rating 1-5 stars
Azimov, "Foundation" (1953) , ****
Banks, "The Player of Games" (1988), ***1/2
Card, "Ender's Game" (1985), *****
Egan, "Permutation City" (1994), ****
Haldeman, "The Forever War" (1974), ***
Heinlein, "Orphans of the Sky" (1941), ***
Heinlein, "Starship Troopers" (1959), ****
Herbert, "Dune" (1965), *****
Keyes, "Flowers for Algernon" (1966), *****
Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969), ***
Le Guin, "The Dispossessed" (1974), ***
Lem, "Solaris" (1961), ***
Miller, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (1959) (unfinished)
Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (2002), ***
Niven, "Ringworld" (1970), ***1/2
Orwell, "1984" (1949), *****
Stephenson, "Snow Crash" (1992), ****
Verne, "Journey To the Centre of the Earth" (1864), ****
Wolfe, "Shadow of the Torturer" (1980) - book1 of "The Book of the New Sun", **

Considering that I have 4, 5 star ratings and 5, 4 star ratings in this list, I think I agree strongly with the authors so far, so will continue to read from their list - once I finish all my borrowed books of course. :-)

Of the other books, I don't quite get the inclusion of "Altered Carbon", which I read recently, nor "Player of Games", which while fine novels are hardly "must read". Then, there are things like "Shadow of the Torturer", which I never understood being written in the first place - pretty dull stuff mostly. Maybe I'm thinking of the 2nd or 3rd or 4th books, but they all blur together actually.

Also - "A Canticle for Leibowitz", while brilliant, killed a main character part of the way through and I couldn't bring myself to finish at the time. I promised to go back and finish one day.

"That's not where I wanted it to go!"

2007-04-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

That was one of the many exasperated sentences from Una on her first actual golf round recently. Other were, "I want to be better!" and "If it stays like this, I'm not going to play." and, of course, "Where's my ball?"

We've been to the driving range lots lately, but haven't spent much time out on the golf courses until last weekend, when we finally got a round in. It was at Ohariu Valley golf course and we played again this weekend at The Kapiti Golf course, but we were interrupted by a support call at the tee of on the 6th, so that blew. I was having one of the best scoring rounds ever, and that's my old home course.

They were doing some kind of upkeep on the greens though, and they were all covered in sand, which made for some strange putting results. Still, it didn't seem to affect me badly, although Una was another story - she wasn't happy at all with the sandy greens.

The outing were good enough that we will continue, and Una is still eager to get out to the driving range and work on her strokes, so that's a good thing.

Pavlov's Determinist

2007-03-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

I carry a support phone for my company. It usually rings at inconvenient times, like at a restaurant or at 3AM in the morning. It has a distinctive ring, I think it's the default one on that phone.

The people on the other end are looking for solutions to their problems, and are usually facing a telco company that could be losing money or don't have a phone service for their two to twelve million subscribers. There is a bit of pressure involved and calls from a CEO or head of some department are pretty common.

On a walk to work the other day, I went by a bus stop and someone else's phone went off and they had the same ring.

Late nights, slogging through source code, looking at customer configurations, being tired to the point of hallucination all came back to me and ruined my morning.

Pavlov knew what he was doing. It doesn't mean we have to like it, but it probably means that we respond this way to everything. Think about the last time you were in a bad mood and see if there is anything that triggered it.

My cats

2007-03-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

I talk about my cats in my blog, but haven't posted many pictures.

Here is a picture of Fred (Princess Winnifred)

And here's a picture of Gordon (that's Flash Gordon to people who don't know him):

Una's a golfing natural

2007-03-10T03:43:00.000-08:00

I took Una out to the driving range in Petone now that she's got her nifty new golf clubs.

Because of her yoga, there are so many things I don't have to bother with teaching, like relaxing and good posture. She has stunning posture both before, during and after her swing, and a wicked follow-through.

It's hard for me to pick up on little adjustments because she's a lefty, but there's not much to adjust really.

Speaking of adjustments, I may have to adjust my estimate of when she'll start beating me on the golf course.

She's keen for another trip to the driving range too.

Cartoon Entry in Cartoon challenge

2007-03-10T03:13:00.000-08:00

I created a cartoon challenge on the kiwiwriters page.

Here is my entry.

copyright Travis Cottreau, 2007

Dialog font: "Steel City Comic" by John Greyson.

I won a contest

2007-03-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

Paperback writer, a blog by Lynn Viehl often holds give aways and various contests, often having her own, signed books as prizes.

One she had recently was called "Last Call" giveaway. It's a good read about how she has been trying to get rid of a large number of professionally printed bookmarks (big mistake) since she started selling novels and she's down to the last one. That, along with the novel of the winner's choice are the prize.

Here's the winning announcement... me, me, me... hahah...

As I said in an earlier musing, I attract books. This still seems to be the case. :-)

Una has golf clubs

2007-03-07T22:48:00.000-08:00

Can you believe this? I actually convinced Una to get golf clubs. She suggested it herself actually. This was after following me out for a few rounds just to walk the course. Now, she's decided to ruin her walk by golfing too - but I will never complain.

Now - how long before she starts beating me? I give it 6 months.

Bookstores without a Science-Fiction section

2007-03-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Whenever I go into a bookstore, I almost always end up in the sci-fi/fantasy section. When I don't find a sci-fi section, I end up wondering why.

Is it that they don't think that sci-fi qualifies to be in their bookstore? isn't literature? Something else?

Bookstores like this are usually filled with what other bookstores would put in the "Literature" section, either classic or contemporary.

It makes me think that the bookstore is stuffy, and ruins my browse, even if there are other books that I'm interested in reading.

I hit two bookstores like this during my weekend in Auckland... fortunately, there is always a Borders and a Dymocks there for me to browse.

"Do you have any other pants?"

2007-02-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

Golf - it can grind down your determination, it can kill you just a little bit, it can steal your soul one shot at a time. Then, you hit one good drive, one good chip or one good putt, and all of that goes away.

Still - there are apparently some obstacles to get through before even getting on the golf course.

Saturday, noon, I drive out to The Ohariu Valley golf course. There is a club event going on and it's 3 hours before I can get on to play. Ok, there are lots of courses around - piece of cake. I'm off to the Hutt valley - I've never played the Shandon Golf course, I'll play there. Thirty minutes later, I'm walking up to the club house. I walk inside, clubs ready to go and ask, "Can I pay for nine holes?".

The guy behind the counter is young, maybe 20 and packing bottled water into a glass front fridge. He looks me up and down and asks, "Do you have any other pants?". I am somewhat aghast and shake my head and say, "No."

"Well, we've got a dress code here and you can't wear jeans.", meanwhile, every single other person I've seen on the course is wearing shorts. I don't debate the difference in formality between shorts and jeans, I just walk out, swearing all the way to the car. When I have my mind set on something, and have been thinking about it for days, I don't take that kind of thing well.

My wife consoles me by saying that we can head up to Kapiti on Sunday and I can play on the Kapiti course. This calms me down. That was my home course last year and I like playing there. We play mini golf at the Porirua Pirate mini golf place instead. I get my best score ever with a 41, 1 under par for the 18 holes. Michael Campbell has played at this mini golf course, and his best score there is only 37. :)

Sunday arrives and I insist on calling the Kapiti golf club because you never know when they might be closed for a club event. Sure enough - closed to the public until 3:30PM. How about The Ohariu Valley? They were closed Saturday, what's the chance of being closed again today? Well, pretty high, because they are closed to the public until at least 4PM.

Arraaaggghhhh!!! This isn't a golfing weekend at all.

I didn't really want to, but I head off to The Berhampore Golf Club. It isn't that it's a bad course, but man, it's a lot of hill climbing. For the same cost as everywhere else, I get 18 holes instead of 9. Did I mention the hills? It would be hard without carrying the 25kg of golf clubs.

I play really badly for the first 9 holes and get a 53. My best is something like 47, so I've done a lot better. Still, I console myself that I was regularly scoring 60 last summer. AND, it gets better after 9, I get a birdie on the par 5 tenth and par the 12th.

Still - a brutal golfing weekend.

Bush administration sweeping science under the rug

2007-02-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

I read a disturbing editorial in the latest issue of "New Scientist" (Feb 3rd, 2007) which stated, and there is no reason to believe he is lying, that the Bush administration is deliberately covering up scientific results that might not agree with their political agendas, specifically anything to do with environmental problems or global warming.

Most governments, and this is true everywhere, regularly ignore scientific results. This, I think, is pretty normal. However, trying to cover up results, is a completely different thing. Tactics include, delaying press releases or canceling them completely, re-wording press releases to either sanitize them to reduce the impact, or make them too technical or bland to be understandable or even just changing the information completely.

If you want more details on this story, I suggest buying the magazine, it's well worth the read.

The thing that gets me about this is how dumb it is. Who exactly are they serving with this kind of behavior? Even if there was one single iota of usefulness in doing this kind of thing (I don't think there is), you'd think that they'd be smarter about it than this - after all, they've been caught doing it.

If the Bush administration were to simply ignore the scientific results like all the past governments, they would probably be treated like all the other past governments, i.e. they're politicians sure, but they aren't any more evil than lawyers. This way, they are worse than lawyers. I don't get it - why be so stupid?

I can think of a couple of reasons why you might NOT behave this way:

1. It's easier to let the scientific information flow. After all, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, since down the road, you're making your population more ignorant, and that's where your scientists come from in the first place.
2. Free flowing information makes people feel better and improves morale, after all, imagine the scientist who has this happening to him. What's he supposed to think? "This is the best government ever!" - I don't think so.
3. The more you lie, the more you have to keep your facts straight. Telling the truth is so much simpler, since you can then just let everyone verify your facts.

As I said, I can't think of a single good reason to do this. In the end, it's a lot harder to pull off than shooting straight. Una thought of something that hadn't occurred to me, but is an excellent point. With the Bush administration hiding scientific facts on global warming, it might explain why Al Gore decided to help push "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006, since he's bound to know what the current administration is up to.

It isn't even a matter of saying, "Shame on you!" to Bush and his friends, but really, they deserve a, "What are you thinking?". It's a silly, transparent, ultimately self-destructive behavior.

Determinist - the name

2007-02-14T20:49:00.000-08:00

A few people have asked me why the name "determinist". Does it mean I believe in a deterministic universe? I get the impression that most people aren't determinists by nature, since being a determinist usually means that you don't believe in things like a soul, free will, God and these kinds of things.

This is true for me as well, and I'm comfortable with that. And, I think that everyone is actually a determinists whether they like it or not.

One of the recent issues of "New Scientist" discusses "The big questions" like religion versus science (like there is a conflict!), life, death, free will, the theory of everything and so on. I read two different pieces on free will that I found quite interesting, and the bits that struck me were well put.

Generally, free will can be put this way, and I quote, "A rigid philosophical tradition claims that no choice is free unless it is uncaused; that is, unless the "will" is exercised independently of all causal influences - in a causal vacuum. ... The problem is that choices are made by brains, and brains operate causally..."

That sums up most of the entire argument about free will, even though I go one step further with determinism, which says that everything that will happen is determined here and now, i.e. everything is cause and effect.

This doesn't take away any of the magic of the universe, since we still can't predict this determined future, and that's where the magic is. Eventually maybe we will, but until then, we can live with the illusion of free will and that's good enough for most people.

Mr. Jingles - a reveal

2007-02-12T02:44:00.000-08:00

I'm just getting used to this blogger, so am starting to play a little more with photos and other images.

The neighbor's cat who used to visit and eventually showed up on a "missing cat" flyer comes by to visit occasionally now that he has been set free.

Here is a picture of him from a month or so ago:

He is a mix of English short hair and something else. He has a beautiful demeanor, even if he steals the other cats' food.

This looks like a cat stalker

2007-02-12T02:27:00.000-08:00

Recently, our cat Fred (that's Princess Winnifred in long form) wanders over to the neighbor's place and activates their motion detector. This turns on a light and she sits there looking for moths to come into the light so she can eat them. It looks something like this:

From this picture, it very much looks like a cat stalker staring into our windows. She sits in one place until the light goes out, and then when she decides to come home, re-activates the motion detector and decides to stay. This goes on for quite a while or until the neighbor drives a car into the driveway and in that case, she bolts for home.

wwwW - the end?

2007-02-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

I finished my 7500 words for the Waitangi Weekend Word Wace (wwwW) on the kiwiwriters site. I was luke warm about the progress and as I've already said, I struggled to finish.

We do get cool icons for finishing though. Here's mine:

When I say "finish", I don't mean finish my story, oh no, I mean finish my 7500 words in 4 days, which is a completely different thing.

So, there is more work to finish, and I'm not sure how I'm going to end it. I have a few ideas, but maybe I'll heap a little more trouble onto the main character and see if he comes out the other side.

Waitangi Weekend Word Wace - the struggle

2007-02-05T05:05:00.000-08:00

The first official site-wide challenge is up on the kiwiwriters site. This is the Waitangi Weekend Word Wace. For any non New Zealanders who might be reading this, Waitangi day is the equivalent of the 4th of July in the US, Canada Day in Canada, or Australia Day in Aussie. Basically, Waitangi day represents the country's anniversary.

Our fledgling writing site will have several challenges each year, including this one. Being most of the way through it so far, I have to say, it's much tougher than I was expecting. It's 7500 words in 4 days, which is slightly more words on a per day basis than Nanowrimo was back in November, but during Nano, I was hitting an average of over 2200 words per day, and hit the 5000 word per day rate a couple of times, so I thought that it would be easy.

Not so... I guess life is just getting in the way, but I was experimenting with some of my writing, and that made it harder, especially writing in the present tense. I noticed slipping back into past tense many, many times and I would always go back and fix it.

I picked up some of my favorite novels sitting on the shelf behind me and took a look at their styles. This isn't something that you notice while reading, but now that I'm writing, I'm noticing more and more. My favorites are almost exclusively written in 3rd person and done in the past tense. I have read in various writing books that writing in the present tense adds to the impact of the writing, but strangely enough, none of the novels I've picked up are written that way. If I notice any, I'll post some comments on here.

Kerryn, a friend of mine (Writing Angel Blog) suggested writing the same piece (page or paragraph) several times, each time in a different tense. This is too smart to ignore, so I will try it shortly.

New writing resource page

2007-02-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

It was the end of November, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) was almost over and a small group of Wellington writers got together to celebrate the insanity of writing 50,000 words in one month.

As it turns out, we got along so well that we decided we have to extend this insanity, we have to share it with the rest of the world, well, the southern hemisphere anyway. November was over - long live November!

So, like gears turning, our little minds went to work, scheming and plotting, planning and organizing, making check lists and checking them off, putting notches on our bedposts, creating a googlegroup and buying a domain name.

Two months later, we have a new web page ready to unveil! Muahahahaah... it's alive! It's alive!

The goal of this page: Nanowrimo has been so good to us, why have that feeling confined to November? We are gradually adding functionality to the page to let members issue writing challenges to everyone interested. The site will have "official" challenges like weekend short story writing (Waitangi Weekend Word Wace this weekend) to a full, Nanowrimo like novel writing contest in June ( Southern Cross Novel Challenge or SocNoc for short), but the real fun is in issuing your own challenge and seeing how everyone does and how many people you can get to join you! Want to write a travel guide for Palmerston North? Want to write that love letter to your partner that you've been putting off? Why not make it official and get other people to spread the love?

Join us in craziness, join us in fun - for whatever reason, please join us at kiwiwriters.org

Australian Open Tennis - the end for 2007

2007-01-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

As I expected, Gonzalez didn't quite come through. He lost a quite tight 3 setter against the world's #1 Roger Federer.

I think both these guys probably would have beaten any other players and certainly did a good job with the other contenders.

It was an OK match, and the first set was really close with Gonzalez leading by a break for part of it (Federer broke back immediately). Until that point, I had hopes that it would actually be a great match.

Still, except for the first set, Federer was holding serve more easily (lots of love games) and threatening more on Gonzalez's serve. Except for the odd point, we never quite saw Gonzalez open up as he did in so many other matches. We knew it would be different against Federer, and Federer's speed, somewhat under rated meant that he was getting to balls that a lot of the other players wouldn't have. 7-6, 6/4, 6/4 was a little better than Roddick's semi-final of 6-4, 6-0, 6-2.

Ah... my best news is that a Canadian got a title this year at the Aussie Open. Daniel Nestor got through a solid 6/4, 6/4 win with his partner Elena Likhovtseva. I've followed Daniel Nestor since he was 19 and played Davis Cup for Canada. Ranked 400+, he beat the then #1 player in the world Stefan Edberg in 5 sets. Good day for Canada. :)

Australian Open Tennis - a great year

2007-01-26T20:20:00.000-08:00

I'm been a tennis fan since the late 80's and the first match I remember seeing (just as I was starting to play) was the 1989 French Open final. Michael Chang versus Stephan Edberg.

This year has been very interesting with the injection of Fernando Gonzalez into the mix. Sure, sure, he's been around a while, and he IS #10, but no one, and I mean no one expected him to roll over Hewitt, Blake, Nadal and Haas the way he did. It was almost like they weren't on the court with him.

We expect this kind of thing from Federer, after all, check out the semi against Roddick. It was painful to see such a dominating performance, especially against a guy as good as Roddick.

Still - that means we get a final with Gonzalez and Federer. Gonzalez is the only guy playing well enough to challenge Federer at the moment, and if he can continue playing the way he is, it will be a fantastic final. I'm expecting Gonzalez to go away, but in last night's semi-final, just as Gonzalez wins match point, the Australia day fireworks go off - a sign maybe? Here's hoping for a match that goes down in history, no matter which way it goes. I'll be cheering for Gonzalez.

Unfortunately, the women are nowhere near as interesting, with Serena Williams playing only 4 tournaments all last year and yet comes along and beats everyone, including Maria Sharapova, the world's #1 - and in one of the most dominating wins in the last decade. It's sad that there is so little depth in the woman's game.

Mr. Jingles - a follow-up

2007-01-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

It seems that Mr. Jingles owners have allowed him access to his cat door again, and he's wandering the neighbourhood.

He showed up 2 days ago and said hello, got some pets and left again. We were happy to see that he wasn't cooped up in his house any more.

We've seen him every day since then, but he never stays long, he's in to say hello, rub up against us and leave again. The longest we've seen him for it probably five minutes.

It's a huge relief that he's allowed to wander again.

The Neighbour's cat, Mr. Jingles - the saga

2007-01-07T19:06:00.000-08:00

Back in October, when we moved into our new place, we got a neighbor's cat visiting. I remember the first night getting up at 4AM and carrying this cat outside under my arm because he'd gotten into the house through the window we'd left open for our own cats to get in and out of (we used to do that at our last place).

Since then, we've installed a cat door, and while I tried all kinds of things, chasing him away (once when I chased him away, he circled around me in the dark and went back to our door), locking the cat door (it takes about 5 minutes before my cats get annoyed at that), hiding the cat food (he jumps up on the counter top) and so on and so on.

In the end, after a few days of these things, we gave up and accepted that this little guy was going to be a regular visitor. He has a bell on his collar and we took to calling him Mr. Jingles (not related to the mouse of the same name from "The Green Mile).

Well, Mr. Jingles became a regular visitor at our place and was over almost every day. He eats our cat's food, but at the same time, he was not particularly intrusive, so it could have been worst. AND, he is adorable. A little gray, English short-hair with a lovely personality.

After a few days of Mr. Jingles visiting every day, Una found a pamphlet in the mail box, "MISSING CAT - we haven't seen him for a week". Of course, he was sleeping on our bed. AND, his name is Cyrus, which isn't as cute as Mr. Jingles, but everyone can't have the perfect name.

Una called them and chatted and said that we'd seen their cat. Someone came over to get him and take him away. Cool - it's always nice to reunite a missing cat with their owners, even if they weren't really missing.

So - weeks go by, and we haven't seen Mr. Jingles at all. We were expecting him to at least be around in the yard or something - no, not at all. It seems like his owners have decided to keep him inside and not let him out again.

For a cat that has always been indoors, this isn't an issue, but for one who has been an outside cat, it seems awfully cruel. It also wouldn't be as cruel if someone was always at home to keep him company, but we drive by that how every day, multiple times and there is almost never anyone home. It's a very odd thing to do, and is hardly the act of a loving owner.

We worry about Mr. Jingles regularly and hope that he's not going insane in his house now that he isn't allowed outside.

We noticed that our cats missed him too, since Fred has been meowing for no real reason. She really enjoyed Mr. Jingles, since he didn't beat her up like Gordon does (Fred is short for Winnefred).

So - what to do? I guess we can't really do anything, it feels like we should do something, but no idea what. Does anyone have any suggestions? They would be appreciated. :-)

English, plurals and why foreigners go a little crazy

2007-01-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

English, I remember being young enough to think that English was a great language, and so much better than French, since there are fewer exceptions. Hahah... it's funny when I look back.

While I still prefer English to French, I realize that it's just because I know it better and spend more time reading, writing and generally working with it than I do with French. The French generally have it right when they go back and revise once every few years.

English speakers' general take on English is one of apathy, and we'd rather let the language evolve than try and fix it - anyone who tries to "fix" English comes across as pretentious. Not that you'd know what to fix anyway - there are many, many places where English is the first language, and there will always be a few who wouldn't want to speak any differently anyway. And, if enough people speak a certain way, it becomes the normal way of doing it and the new standard (try pronouncing the "t" in often, and then realize that you don't do it in soften - ever)

Think about this - how do you make a word plural? Sure, you can just add an "s", but then you have:

child - childs
sheep - sheeps
woman - womans

These are all wrong.

Of course, then there are words that have two plurals, like brothers and brethren, people and persons (not to mention peoples).

Then there are the words that imply plurals, but are actually singular, like "stuff" - there is no such thing as "stuffs", since stuff implies a group. Just like "beef" has no plural (cows maybe?).

This isn't even getting into weird words like through... which somehow sounds like "threw", or "throo" (which isn't even a word, but the only one which looks correct phonetically).

How about words that are pronounced differently depending on how they are meant to be used - "It was a minute amount of time, maybe a minute or so.". "Sewer" is a place where sewage goes, or something who sews with thread and needle. "Address" is pronounced differently if you are writing it on an envelope or if you are addressing someone. In isolation, these words are impossible to pronounce - think about "polish", "tear", "lead", "produce", "present" and so many more.

I had a boss who is Brazilian, and thus speaks Portuguese. She said that two Portuguese speakers looking at a word that they'd never seen before would pronounce it exactly the same way - that sounds reasonable to me.

Of course, everyone talks about the problem, but no one does anything about it. I would like to say that I'm solidly in this category as well, and will probably do nothing to fix English, but I like to complain.

I do one thing regularly, and that's use the American spelling of color, flavor, neighbor and so on. I get a lot of flack for this, since I'm a Canadian, and I'm living in New Zealand, neither country goes for the American spelling, and generally aren't warm to Americans anyway. The thing is, it's fewer keystrokes to write "color" rather than "colour", which no one pronounces that way anyway - all the Brits in the office say "callah" anyway. And the Canadians say "color" just like the Americans. It's shorter and I hear that these shorter spellings came first too. It isn't very often that Canadians side with Americans, but I'm doing it on the spelling.

Of course, if I ever write a book that sells overseas, I'll have to go and do a massive search and replace on all the words that I spell differently from everyone in the non-American world... it could happen. I look forward to the opportunity.

Anyway, while English is screwy, I still like it. I regret not living long enough to see English change in the various countries, so that the Americans and the English won't understand each other any more - that would be funny, since they barely understand each other now.

Summer in New Zealand

2007-01-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

I would like to think that it's summer here in Wellington, but it's hard to feel that way when it is EXACTLY like winter outside. We're running the heater the same as we do in winter, we're getting all the same kind of cold wind we do in winter. My cats are even eating more, like they do when winter starts.

I heard on TV the other day that it's the coldest winter in NZ in 50 years. That's amazing. But, then I look on TV and there is tennis on in Auckland, the ASB classic, and all the women playing are in short skirts and don't seem to be freezing. AND, the people in the audience are also dressed for hot weather.

If anyone has any ideas about what to do with my summer, I would love to hear it. AND, I've already thought of leaving the country, or just moving to a warmer part of New Zealand - this is a brutal summer. Summer in Wellington is usually warmer than winter, but not this year.

I don't mind the odd cold day, but weeks and weeks of it are hard to take. I'm sitting at the computer now and my hands are cold... my hands are COLD! In the middle of summer! Who has heard of such a thing?

"Based on a true story"

2006-12-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

I don't know about everyone else, but I find it annoying to see this on the jacket of a DVD or at the beginning of a movie.

As far as I can tell, the "based on a true story" = fiction, but for some reason, supposed to be more interesting. I challenge anyone to take a "based on a true story" movie, versus one that is just made up and see if they can tell the difference.

It's just a silly distinction that annoys me regularly and plays no part in whether the movie is good or not.

Then, there are a group of people who say, "But it's true!", which it isn't. I guess that's the target audience.

Book progress - new year's resolution

2006-12-29T22:53:00.000-08:00

I know it isn't the new year yet, but my New Year's resolution is already on track days before the new year has started.

I just finished "A Talent For War" by Jack McDevitt, and Freakanomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in the last two days! They will both be reviewed shortly I'm on to the next set of books, all of them borrowed.

I feel that it is the right thing to do to go through the unread books on the shelf in the following order:
1)Library books first (I don't have any of those)
2)Books borrowed from friends
3)Books borrowed from work
4)Books I own

The technical books can be read as I'm reading novels and non-fiction, even though they are actually non-fiction themselves. They somehow FEEL different, even if "Genetic Programming" is as non-fiction as "The Big Bang", they aren't equivalent. I mostly borrow technical books from work, although there is a set of fiction in a sort of "lending library there" that I have dipped into.

Just checking in to give an overview of my progress...

This is my borrowed books and the order I plan to read them in:
“Coraline”, Neil Gaiman
“The Life of Mahatma Gandhi”, Louis Fischer
“What Your Accountant Doesn't Tell You – Tax, Wealth & Equity”, Fiona Clayton-Law
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”, Mark Haddon
“The Shining”, Stephen King
“Six Easy Pieces”, Richard Feynman
“The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”, Richard Feynman
“The Amtrak Wars – Book 1: Cloud Warrior”, Patrick Tilley
“The Mosquito Coast”, Paul Theroux

The following technical books (also borrowed) will be mixed in as I go:
“Embedding Perl in HTML with MASON”, Dave Rolsky & Ken Williams
“Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering”, Robert L. Glass

New Year's resolutions - ha!

2006-12-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hello all and Merry Christmas. I wasn't expecting to blog on Christmas day, but what the hey - I'm waiting for my family back home to skype me for a warm, fuzzy Christmas conversation.

Anyway - New Year's resolutions - I almost never make them, or if I do, it's just somewhere near New Year's, and not in the new year. This one is no exception.

When I watched the movie "The Secret", which you can find in my review blog, I learned about the law of attraction, which is a pretty good rule to know. After that, I realized that one of the things I attract is books. I have books on my mind a lot, and I really, really do love books and think about them a lot, so naturally, I attract them. If someone was ever going to ask me what super power I'd like to have, I could say, "I already have one - I attract books!", it is so true.

After watching the movie, the next day I walked into work and there was this gorgeous book sitting on my desk just waiting. "World Changing, a User's guide for the 21st Century", it had a book sleeve and everything - absolutely stunning. After that, I took notice of the books that I attract - someone hands me books on the street (Hari Krishna sure, but still - I had never seen them there before or since), every time I am at someone's house, we discuss books and I get another loaner... I just moved to New Zealand five years ago and I probably already have fifty books that I haven't read yet.

Once I realized that, I made my New Year's resolution (in November - of course), that I would finish the books that I have before I borrow or buy any more. I have failed so far, because my ability to materialize books is stronger than I thought, but I have started staying away from the library and bookstores, and now, it's only people passing me books, so I am sure I can keep up with it.

My next step, get a full inventory of the books I haven't read yet, prioritize them, and start reading through them - there are enough for a year if I read every single day, so I better get started.

If you read this and want to drop your own book related stories, or your own new year's resolutions, or better yet, your own book related new year's resolutions, please feel free.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Recording movies I've seen

2006-12-16T13:03:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I got a bright idea to write down all the movies that I watch, that way, when someone asks, "Have you seen any good movies lately?", I don't go, "Ummm... ahhh... I saw something. Was it last week? Well, I saw a bad one last night, but I'm sure that I saw a good one recently."

So, I found a mini-binder that I'd had for a while, and started writing down movies that I watched. It is now more than 10 years later and it's a habit, so much so that I obsess about writing down the movie name in the book and if I don't, it feels weird. I realize to anyone listening, and in fact, anyone who I mention this to that it sounds very anal retentive. I'm sure it is.

I have a standard format as well: type (i.e. theater, DVD, video, tv etc...), Title, star rating (1->5 in 1/2 star increments - someone mentioned that this is exactly like a 10 star rating, but I ignored him), and date watched.

The first movie in my book was in the theater, "From Dusk Till Dawn" with George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino. I gave it a 2 star out of 5 and saw it on Feb 4th, 1996. I realize that I'm actually closer to 11 years of record keeping.

My lowest rated movie ever is "Crash", the David Cronenberg one from 1996, not the recent one that won best picture at the Oscars (which I also saw). I finished the entire movie and gave it zero stars. I sometimes rate a movie (u) as unfinished, which is arguably the lowest rating I can give, but occasionally, I don't finish for a valid reason and not just that the movie was monkey turds. I saw "Crash" on October 4th, 1996 in the theater.

I have a few 5 star movies, but have to say, they are few and far between. I second guess myself a lot and I look back at and regret giving higher ratings. Sometimes movies that rated lower, I would like to increase. I am not sure if it's because I've talked to other people and they've said either "That movie sucked", or "I really loved that movie"... both of which influence me quite a lot.

I give higher ratings to movies that evoke an emotional response, so higher rated movies have either made me cry or made me laugh long and hard.

5 star movies:

- Dead Man Walking
- The Green Mile (I take a lot of grief for this one :-) )
- Galaxy Quest (a 2nd viewing got 3 stars)
- Almost Famous
- Lord of the Rings - the Fellowship of the Ring
- The Matrix (previous viewings didn't rate this high, this is my 4th I think)
- Whale Rider
- Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- Love Actually (made me laugh - the DVD extras really, really takes away from this movie)
- The Last Samurai
- About Schmidt
- Sin City
- The Woodsman
- My Life Without Me
- Brokeback Mountain

Of these, I would take away a 5 star rating from "The Green Mile", "Love Actually" and "The Last Samurai", and that was only my initial reaction. While I still liked them and found them good movies, I would rate them lower a 2nd time around.

After Nanowrimo - downer

2006-11-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

I have to say, the Nanowrimo, novel writing month was a huge high... the beginning, the progress, the finishing - all exciting and life changing.

Here I am, at the end of the month, rough draft in hand, feeling a little down. I still feel like writing, but unlike when I was working on my novel, there seem to be good excuses to not write!

I'm hoping that a new novel writing group with spur me on (maybe not a good approach! Ha!) . All I need is something to read to them when we gather, and that will probably work out.

Also - I'm reading and almost done "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty - a good book for sure. A real preparation manual for Nanowrimo - I wish I'd had it before I'd finished my novel. I will be reading it again before the next novel writing month - likely to happen in June, although I'm sure there will be other writing before then.

A few key items in the book that I found good ideas that I never followed in my month:
1) Outline for a week or so before the novel writing starts (I worked on the fly all the way)
2) keep a "novel ideas" file open at the same time as the novel to put random thoughts
3) Some word processor ideas to mark bits and pieces as being "bad", i.e. transparent etc..

Otherwise, I think I did pretty well - I regret not outlining more, as it left my novel in a sorry state - not publishable without sizeable edits, large sections removed or relocated etc... A jumble of ideas. I like the ideas though - so that is a huge accomplishment. I'm just having trouble going back to it.

Someone did offer to do a novel swap though, and I'm reading "Shark" by atomic_willis, although I'm still days away from a real review.

Nanowrimo 2006

2006-11-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

If you're ever, ever, ever even remotely considered writing a novel (I have for years - since I was a teenager), then I highly recommend trying out the Nanowrimo competition. The 2006 one is almost over - it happens in November every year, but there is always next year.

It is a competition with yourself, there are no prizes except that if you finish, you have a nice, shiny new rough draft of a novel. The support network is amazing, full of like minded, delusional people also trying to finish a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Check out www.nanowrimo.org site.

I was roped into this by my good friend Andy, who casually pointed me to the web page one day in an email, subject line: “Interesting Challenge”. So, something like 3 or 4 months later, we're chatting about it in the weeks leading up to November.

Andy: “So, are you going to do it?”

Travis: “Sure! Why the hell not?”

My first day, November 1st. I couldn't sleep, I'm up just after 6AM, wired (I don't drink coffee - this is caffeine free!). I am at work by 7:15AM (unprecedented outside of a support call). I start writing. I was a purist – while the site says you are allowed all the outlining you want before November, as long as you write the prose starting midnight Nov 1, I didn't even know the main character's name going in. No outlines - nothing but a concept that had come to me while watching a mediocre sci-fi movie.

8:30AM, I'm at 1400 words and completely stoked. I know, know that I will finish this. It is one of the greatest moments of my life! That made it all worth it, that first morning.

I never duplicated that feeling for the rest of November. However, it was pretty close, when at 6:45 on November 22^nd, I check my word count and I'm at 50016 words! It is awesome, and I love my ending – I can hardly ask for more!

Check it out – you will thank me!