Various on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Filmul cu ceainicul/The Teapot Movie [Ro + En]

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 18:18:18 +0000

Română:

Pentru că Eftimie mi-a zis că-i amintesc de Linda. Un filmuleț pe care l-am făcut pentru un curs din facultate (cursul de media predat de unul din profii de japoneză). N-are subtitrare încă, dar dacă-mi spune careva un program bun, sau dacă-mi aduc aminte ce foloseam eu, o să adaug.

English:

Because Eftimie said I remind him of Linda. A short film I made for one of my undergraduate classes (the media course taught by one of our Japanese teachers). It doesn’t have subtitles yet, but if anybody tells me a decent program, or if I can recall what I used, I’ll add subtitles.

In the zone/out of the zone

Sun, 29 Dec 2013 17:53:53 +0000

The following paragraphs were written with programmers in mind, but they’re absolutely true for me concerning writing, translating, blogging and everything else, as well. (source)

Here’s the trouble. We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into „flow”, also known as being „in the zone”, where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone.

The trouble is, getting into „the zone” is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity. Sometimes, if you’re tired or have already done a lot of creative work that day, you just can’t get into the zone and you spend the rest of your work day fiddling around, reading the web, playing Tetris.

The other trouble is that it’s so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers – especially interruptions by coworkers – all knock you out of the zone. If a coworker asks you a question, causing a 1 minute interruption, but this knocks you out of the zone badly enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble.

This is one of the main reasons I get impossibly cranky when interrupted from work. I am capable of spending 10 hours working and feeling okay about it, if everybody else forgets that I exist. After all, I love what I do. It makes me happy.

Also, whoever wrote this is optimistic. I need around 20 minutes to start working at maximum efficiency…or more. Depending on the day. But then, I’m a writer. Not only does the quality of my writing depend on my mood, so does the actual damned plot.

A short explanation of the Romanian Santa invasion

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 21:39:44 +0000

So, here’s the deal. I know you English-speaking people around the globe sometimes refer to Santa Claus as ‘Nicholas’ (Saint Nicholas). But Romania, along with a few other countries, is special. We have an abundance of old men getting into our homes in various ways and leaving presents in various places (even if one of old men doesn’t show up anymore).

First, Saint Nicholas, better known here as Old Man Nicholas. He looks sort of like Santa Claus, I assume, although I’ve always pictured him a bit thinner, probably due to religious paintings. He comes on the night between the 5th and the 6th of December, traditionally bringing sweets to good children and rods (usually painted silver) to bad children. If you’re a normal kid, he tends to bring both. He leaves all presents in kids’ shoes.

Then there’s Santa himself. You know him, he shows up on Christmas Eve and leaves the presents for Christmas morning. We call him something like ‘Old Man Christmas’ – Moș Crăciun, where ‘moș’ means old man, and ‘Crăciun’ means Christmas.

And here’s where the third Santa shows up: Romania was a communist country for a few decades and one of the ideas the Communist Party had was to eliminate religion from people’s lives. So in order to replace Santa and St. Nicholas, they imported Ded Moroz from Russia. What did he look like? Kind of like Santa. What did he do? Deliver presents, obviously. His name was translated literally into Moș Gerilă (Old Man Frost) and he showed up on New Year’s Eve. But, after ‘89 and the fall of communism, Old Man Frost vanished and Old Man Christmas and Old Man Nicholas returned.

So yes, we do have an invasion of old men dressed in red who come bearing gifts (one of whom is now obsolete). And they’re probably all just Odin in disguise.

A bunch of book offers tomorrow

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 13:49:29 +0000

For other book geeks like myself: The Book Depository is organizing another one of their book offers tomorrow, November 28, 2013. Starting with 12:00 noon GMT (7:00 AM EST, 11:00 PM AEDT), they’ll offer one book on discount every half an hour. So you’ll get one book when the clock strikes twelve, another when the clock strikes 12:30, another at 1 and so forth for 25 hours (50 books). Sometimes the discount might be 30%, at other times it gets to 70%. I’ve heard rumors that, during one time I wasn’t around, they offered one of Salman Rushdie’s books for free.

It’s kind of cool and worth a few glances. I’m not sure if this is their way of doing Black Friday (well, Black Thursday, more like), but you can think of it that way, if you like.

Last time they did this, there were a lot of cookbooks and children’s books and little that really interested me. But I did come away with A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line, The Beekeper’s Apprentice and _Anno Dracula: Bloody Red Baron, _all at pretty good discounts. And, of course, no delivery fees, because that’s how The Book Depository rolls: free worldwide delivery. It’s awesome when you’re stranded all the way in Romania and Amazon wants to bankrupt you with delivery.

I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet, being busy with writing my own book and reading Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, but hey. I’ll get to them soonish.

And yes, I am a sucker for books and book offers.

Writing, video games and so forth

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:55:18 +0000

I don’t often write blog posts because somebody says „Be part of this! Write about this topic!” And yet here we are, because I find a certain topic interesting.

Cathy Day, whom I’ve occasionally mentioned on this blog, wrote the following:

I’ve never played a video game, but I recognize that it’s a narrative experience that lots and lots of people value. No judgement. But in my fiction-writing classes, I often read stories and novels that read as if I’m watching someone else play a video game. There’s plot, action, scene, all great, but virtually no interiority, which for me is *absolutely necessary* in fiction. My students have always used films and TV shows to talk about fiction, but now they also reference video games. “This is like Bioshock,” for example, and I have no idea what that even means. I wonder if other creative writing teachers have noticed this quality in student fiction or these references? I wonder if people who play video games could give me some tips about how to help my students make the transition from gaming to writing narrative.

She wrote it on Facebook, then she posted it on her blog and asked for opinions. I like the question and it’s part of something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s a slightly different take, and I’ll start from here: what is up with literature, anyway?

I’ve run into endless discussions concerning whether listening to an audiobook counts as reading the book. Some say it’s less valuable to listen to a book than to read it – because it’s lazier. And then, of course, people often say that books are superior to movies/TV shows, because the latter are less valuable/more commercial/easier to follow. Theater is above TV, but I’m not sure where it is in relation to reading books. Probably a bit lower on the scale of values, unless you’re watching some damned difficult crap. Video games are, of course, at the very bottom of this scale of values, because Pacman can’t compare to Tolstoy, or something like that.

Which is all fascinating and, in my opinion, all wrong. I describe myself as a writer, but what I actually mean by it is that I am a storyteller whose main medium is the written word. But man, I love other mediums, too. I write my own novel and I do my own audio recording of it. If you read it yourself, you get to add intonations and moods yourself. If you listen to it, you get my interpretation of how the story and the characters sound like. You might think this is good, right? I am telling a story, I naturally want to get it across my way, no? No. Sometimes it helps me. At other times, I am very sad that my own voice, no matter how good, will never echo in your mind in the same way as your own soundless inner voice.

The fun part is that no matter how a story gets told, we never get the whole of it. We recreate it from what we have, but in the end we all see our own version of that story. Fans put this in practice: they often write their own crazy stories based on small gestures which are definitely there, but which meant something entirely different to the scriptwriter, director, actors. And that’s perfectly alright and normal and I love it.

So where am I going? Well, to this: there’s no ‘right’ way to tell a story. There is no ‘perfect’ medium. Art is a lie: it makes us think we’re getting the full story, but it’s always giving us more of something, less of something else. There will be things you will wish you had been able to leave out, but must add. A movie will never manage to have an indistinct background as well as a comic series can. It’s easier to hide background details in film than in literature: in literature you need to mention them, but keep the reader’s attention focused on something more exciting. In film, you literally put them in the background.

Here’s what I mean. Look at one of the pages of Exiles, a number of The Sandman, from the volume The Wake:

Look at the subtlety of the black and white, at the elegance of the drawings. The scenery is barren, or maybe it barely exists at all. Different fonts to suggest different types of speech, but they don’t tell you anything about what characters’ voices sound like. I can’t change fonts in a book: it’s too odd, it jumps at you. What you can’t do: add music; describe actual voice pitch; add every gesture. There is a lot of suggestion here – and in other mediums, that suggestion would need to be done in different ways. Literature would use vague words, cinema might use filters and carefully considered sets.

It is unfair to compare a medium with another from a value POV because they all do different things.

But what about video games and fiction writing and what Cathy Day said? I’ve taken you on a ride, but we’re finally arriving at our destination. She mentioned no interiority from the characters. Well…

In video games the main character can be a shell that the player enters (usually first-person games: shooters, Portal, Amnesia). Or s/he can be very clearly defined as a character (Monkey Island’s „Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate!”). In the first case, the player’s psychology substitutes that of the character’s, doesn’t it? There is still psychology going on, but you don’t see it because it’s yours. You put it all in. It’s something you simply can’t do with books, they need psychology.

Well, the problem with video games from this point of view is that they don’t teach you how books look like. Which is an odd thing to say, I suppose, but I think it’s the basic problem that Cathy Day encountered: her writers might have stories to tell, but they aren’t familiar with how literature tells stories.

Oh, no. What is there to be done?

Well, the short answer is: read books. Read more books. Look at what it is that books do. Grab books from various different genres, different countries, different times and see what they do and how they do it. What catches your attention? What makes them interesting? What makes you read on? Study books, don’t just read them. If you like a page, figure out why you like it. I am not saying you should do this as a reader. As a reader, you really ought to give in to the story and enjoy it. But as a writer, that’s how you learn how to do things. By studying others.

C. Day is asking about transitioning from one medium to another.

Well, transitioning is a bit like translating. The theory of translation says the following: a translator doesn’t go from language A to language B. Instead, he goes from language A to a certain meaning, which he then moves into language B. In other words, „Mary goes to the market” is English. It is then translated into the idea of Mary going to the market, in present tense, which then needs to be retold in, say, Romanian: „Mary merge la piață.” This can lead to several choices for the translator (Do I call her Mary, because that’s her original name? Or do I call her Maria, so Romanian readers can feel closer to her?).

The same is true for changing mediums, I think: you have the story in medium A, which you then translate to yourself as a complex web of plot, character and details, which you then try to get across in medium B, with medium B’s tools and techniques. But the story is, to my mind, the central thing.

I haven’t played Bioshock, but I’ll talk about Tomb Raider, which is new, shiny and well-known, okay?

Lara Croft struggles there against two types of opponents: ones who catch her and ones who don’t. This division is important because those opponents transmit two different things: the ones who don’t catch her are at a distance. They have guns and other such. They can shoot her and kill her, but you can evade them. They are there to underline her skills with a gun/bow and arrow/weapon of choice. They create a stealthy Lara, who works hard at not being seen, who is a scared woman, but a deadly woman. They make you feel strong.

The enemies who catch her are up close and personal. They grab her. They hold her. You need to hit a sequence of buttons at the right time to escape their grasp and you often can’t. This Lara is more scared than skilled, more desperate and in difficulty than on top of the situation. I did wonder for awhile why the hell I needed to press left and right in quick succession to evade a crazy psycho, but the answer is this: because it’s effing hard for her to escape.

This is how the story works for games: is it difficult for Lara? The player will struggle. Are stealth and skill needed? You get ten opponents and alarms everywhere.

Literature is more subtle. You don’t have to kill ten opponents to prove stealth. One or two are enough. Four are numerous. I will disbelieve you at ten. Explosions don’t affect us much, because it isn’t the idea of an explosion that really makes an impact on us: it’s the sound of it, the light, the way things fly all over and are destroyed. You need to describe that.

Video games are explicit. They need to hit you over the head with a hammer to get a point across. Literature is subtle and relies on small things, on details and observations.

Here’s how it can be done. Lara against opponents who don’t catch her:

My knee scraped against the ground as I fell, but I couldn’t scream. They would hear me, and then they would kill me. I hurt all over, but I needed to find a way out, so I searched for something, anything, a rope, a surface I could climb on, but seconds ticked away and they got closer and closer…

Lara caught:

She felt his hands running across her body as he whispered words in Russian that she couldn’t understand. Lara had no idea whether he meant to kill her or rape her, she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry either way, but that wasn’t an option…

If you want to transition, you need to switch modes of expression. What can literature do that video games can’t do (as easily)? References, thoughts, impressions, feelings, moods. It comes down to learning what your medium can do, what has been done so far and how. Which is why writers need to read books.

(But you can pick up stuff from other mediums as well, of course. And as for video games, I really recommend that people should play some. You might eventually realize that they Aren’t Your Thing, but they are an experience of their own, no? A whole new type of telling stories.)

Some sort of funny book sale

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 23:40:03 +0000

There's this site that sells books and ships them all over the world for free. It's called the Book Depository. It's kind of nice.

They'll have this interesting promotion starting Thursday, November 7 at 7:00 AM EST (12:00 PM GMT, aka 2:00 PM Romania time).

Every half hour, they'll offer some book on super-promotion. Apparently they sell out really fast, so it's best if you show up there in the first 20 seconds. Or so. Erm. Yeah, it's a click-fest. Anyways, they'll offer a total of 50 titles, spread over 25 hours.

Seems fun and potentially dangerous, if you like books. Which I do. Damn.

Anyways, they've done this before -- last time they had discounts for 100 books, one offered each 15 minutes. It turns out that last time they gave Salman Rushdie's Luka and the Fire of Life at a 100% discount. Which means free, shipping and all. They also had Camus, Jane Austen and Orwell on sale. Big names. And also some smaller names I've never heard of.

I loved a comment somebody made, that they'd bought Mary Shelley's Frankenstein -- which wasn't signed, alas 🙁

I have to agree: it would be awesome to have a freshly printed signed copy of Frankenstein, if only because Mary Shelley died in 1851.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 08:01:20 +0000

Soooo… Read the book, decided to check the film out on youtube. Ran into this 10-minute preview, which I thought perfect for satisfying my curiosity. And I saw the English literature teacher, Mr. Anderson, whom I liked so much in the book. Check him out from about 5:30.

Ermmm… What the hell was that?!

1. Which author invented the paperback book?
Answer: None that I know of. ‘Paperback’ is basically a term describing a really simple idea: soft, inexpensive covers for books, bringing the price down and enabling higher sales. There wasn’t much invention to be done there, considering that they already had papers and magazines. The idea sort of sprouted up with several publishers. I don’t know who was first.
It definitely wasn’t Dickens.

2. „[Dickens] also invented the serial.”
Answer: No, he didn’t. He just made good use of it and popularized it, with his first novel, The Pickwick Papers.

3. „In fact, at the end of the third chapter of his first novel, he had a man hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, hence the term ‘cliffhanger’.”
Answer: Who, Charles Dickens?! No way. His first novel was, as I’ve mentioned above, The Pickwick Papers. Which is a series about a few gentlemen and their (mis)adventures. Quite charming. Quite gentlemanly. Nobody goes through anything truly physically threatening, as far as I recall, although there’s a bit of an issue with prison.
The ending of chapter 3:

The dismal man readily complied; a circle was again formed round the table, and harmony once more prevailed. Some lingering irritability appeared to find a resting-place in Mr. Winkle’s bosom, occasioned possibly by the temporary abstraction of his coat—though it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that so slight a circumstance can have excited even a passing feeling of anger in a Pickwickian’s breast. With this exception, their good-humour was completely restored; and the evening concluded with the conviviality with which it had begun.

The cliffhanger scene happens in somebody else’s novel: Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes. It wasn’t his first novel – it was his third. But, to the teacher’s credit, it was the first one that Hardy put his name on. The scene is at the end of chapter 21:

As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation—the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.

There’s a bit of dialogue before the chapter ends. By the way, I haven’t read this particular book (although I knew of the scene), but Google was my friend. It should’ve been the scriptwriter’s as well.

Urgh. Movies about school shouldn’t, you know, misinform people.

Ce cărți le plăceau britanicilor în 2003 (BBC Big Read)

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:08:29 +0000

Acum 10 ani, în 2003, BBC-ul a făcut un sondaj de opinie ca să afle cărțile favorite ale britanicilor. Și s-au ales cu lista de mai jos (le-am bolduit pe cele pe care le-am citit):

[Mă întreb cum ar arăta lista azi]

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Dune by Frank Herbert
Emma by Jane Austen
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Stand by Stephen King
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Mort by Terry Pratchett
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
The Magus by John Fowles
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Perfume by Patrick Süskind
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Ulysses by James Joyce
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson
The Twits by Roald Dahl
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Holes by Louis Sachar
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Magician by Raymond E. Feist
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Katherine by Anya Seton
Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

101. **_[Small Gods][177]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 102. _[The Beach][178]_ by [Alex Garland][179] 103. **_[Dracula][180]_ by [Bram Stoker][181]** 104. _[Point Blanc][182]_ by [Anthony Horowitz][183] 105. **_[The Pickwick Papers][184]_ by [Charles Dickens][34]** 106. _[Stormbreaker][185]_ by [Anthony Horowitz][183] 107. _[The Wasp Factory][186]_ by [Iain Banks][187] 108. _[The Day of the Jackal][188]_ by [Frederick Forsyth][189] 109. _[The Illustrated Mum][190]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 110. **_[Jude the Obscure][191]_ by [Thomas Hardy][48]** 111. _[The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾][192]_ by [Sue Townsend][193] 112. _[The Cruel Sea][194]_ by [Nicholas Monsarrat][195] 113. _[Les Misérables][196]_ by [Victor Hugo][197] 114. **_[The Mayor of Casterbridge][198]_ by [Thomas Hardy][48]** 115. _[The Dare Game][199]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 116. _[Bad Girls][200]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 117. **_[The Picture of Dorian Gray][201]_ by [Oscar Wilde][202]** 118. **_[Shōgun][203]_ by [James Clavell][204]** 119. _[The Day of the Triffids][205]_ by [John Wyndham][206] 120. _[Lola Rose][207]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 121. **_[Vanity Fair][208]_ by [William Makepeace Thackeray][209]** 122. _[The Forsyte Saga][210]_ by [John Galsworthy][211] 123. _[House of Leaves][212]_ by [Mark Z. Danielewski][213] 124. _[The Poisonwood Bible][214]_ by [Barbara Kingsolver][215] 125. **_[Reaper Man][216]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 126. _[Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging][217]_ by [Louise Rennison][218] 127. **_[The Hound of the Baskervilles][219]_ by [Arthur Conan Doyle][220]** 128. _[Possession: A Romance][221]_ by [A. S. Byatt][222] 129. **_[The Master and Margarita][223]_ by [Mikhail Bulgakov][224]** 130. **_[The Handmaid's Tale][225]_ by [Margaret Atwood][226]** 131. _[Danny, the Champion of the World][227]_ by [Roald Dahl][65] 132. _[East of Eden][228]_ by [John Steinbeck][54] 133. _[George's Marvellous Medicine][229]_ by [Roald Dahl][65] 134. **_[Wyrd Sisters][230]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 135. _[The Color Purple][231]_ by [Alice Walker][232] 136. **_[Hogfather][233]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 137. _[The Thirty-nine Steps][234]_ by [John Buchan][235] 138. _[Girls in Tears][236]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 139. _[Sleepovers][237]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 140. _[All Quiet on the Western Front][238]_ by [Erich Maria Remarque][239] 141. _[Behind the Scenes at the Museum][240]_ by [Kate Atkinson][241] 142. _[High Fidelity][242]_ by [Nick Hornby][243] 143. _[It][244]_ by [Stephen King][95] 144. _[James and the Giant Peach][245]_ by [Roald Dahl][65] 145. _[The Green Mile][246]_ by [Stephen King][95] 146. _[Papillon][247]_ by [Henri Charrière][248] 147. **_[Men at Arms][249]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 148. _[Master and Commander][250]_ by [Patrick O'Brian][251] 149. _[Skeleton Key][252]_ by [Anthony Horowitz][183] 150. **_[Soul Music][253]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 151. **_[Thief of Time][254]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 152. **_[The Fifth Elephant][255]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 153. _[Atonement][256]_ by [Ian McEwan][257] 154. _[Secrets][258]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 155. _[The Silver Sword][259]_ by [Ian Serraillier][260] 156. _[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest][261]_ by [Ken Kesey][262] 157. **_[Heart of Darkness][263]_ by [Joseph Conrad][264]** 158. **_[Kim][265]_ by [Rudyard Kipling][266]** 159. _[Cross Stitch][267]_ by [Diana Gabaldon][268] 160. _[Moby-Dick][269]_ by [Herman Melville][270] 161. _[River God][271]_ by [Wilbur Smith][272] 162. _[Sunset Song][273]_ by [Lewis Grassic Gibbon][274] 163. _[The Shipping News][275]_ by [E. Annie Proulx][276] 164. _[The World According to Garp][277]_ by [John Irving][52] 165. _[Lorna Doone][278]_ by [R. D. Blackmore][279] 166. _[Girls Out Late][280]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 167. _[The Far Pavilions][281]_ by [M. M. Kaye][282] 168. _[The Witches][283]_ by [Roald Dahl][65] 169. _[Charlotte's Web][284]_ by [E. B. White][285] 170. **_[Frankenstein][286]_ by [Mary Shelley][287]** 171. _[They Used to Play on Grass][288]_ by [Terry Venables][289] and [Gordon Williams][290] 172. **_[The Old Man and the Sea][291]_ by [Ernest Hemingway][292]** 173. **_[The Name of the Rose][293]_ by [Umberto Eco][294]** 174. _[Sophie's World][295]_ by [Jostein Gaarder][296] 175. _[Dustbin Baby][297]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 176. _[Fantastic Mr. Fox][298]_ by [Roald Dahl][65] 177. **_[Lolita][299]_ by [Vladimir Nabokov][300]** 178. **_[Jonathan Livingston Seagull][301]_ by [Richard Bach][302]** 179. **_[The Little Prince][303]_ by [Antoine de Saint-Exupéry][304]** 180. _[The Suitcase Kid][305]_ by [Jacqueline Wilson][58] 181. _[Oliver Twist][306]_ by [Charles Dickens][34] 182. _[The Power of One][307]_ by [Bryce Courtenay][308] 183. **_[Silas Marner][309]_ by [George Eliot][50]** 184. _[American Psycho][310]_ by [Bret Easton Ellis][311] 185. _[Diary of a Nobody][312]_ by [George][313] and [Weedon Grossmith][314] 186. _[Trainspotting][315]_ by [Irvine Welsh][316] 187. _[Goosebumps][317]_ by [R. L. Stine][318] 188. **_[Heidi][319]_ by [Johanna Spyri][320]** 189. **_[Sons and Lovers][321]_ by [D. H. Lawrence][322]** 190. _[The Unbearable Lightness of Being][323]_ by [Milan Kundera][324] 191. _[Man and Boy][325]_ by [Tony Parsons][326] 192. **_[The Truth][327]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 193. _[The War of the Worlds][328]_ by [H. G. Wells][329] 194. _[The Horse Whisperer][330]_ by [Nicholas Evans][331] 195. _[A Fine Balance][332]_ by [Rohinton Mistry][333] 196. **_[Witches Abroad][334]_ by [Terry Pratchett][116]** 197. **_[The Once and Future King][335]_ by [T. H. White][336]** 198. _[The Very Hungry Caterpillar][337]_ by [Eric Carle][338] 199. _[Flowers in the Attic][339]_ by [V. C. Andrews][340]

Why Person of Interest makes me headdesk

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 18:30:14 +0000

So. Watching this show because my buddy Linda suggested it – „Person of Interest”. It’s about guy number 1, who’s some sort of super-agent James Bond whose vocal chords got set to „rough and mysterious” in childhood and who only ever loses a fight when plot demands; and guy number 2, who’s one of those genius programmers you keep hearing about.

This show takes a helluva lot of suspension of disbelief. I mean, sure, most film hacker/programmers are modeled after a 100-handed monkey with the brain of a thousand top programmers and thus manage to do in a single day what the entirety of Google does in a month, but this show’s programmer is just… yeah.

Look. The government told him to build a machine that spots the bad guys, ok? The terrorists. So he built a huge thing from scratch and made it check every surveillance camera, every phone, every e-mail, everything, to figure out who has criminal intent.

I can sort of suspend my disbelief for that.

He both constructed the thing as far as hardware goes, and wrote the program, as far as software goes. It’s 100% accurate.

I can sort of suspend my disbelief for that.

He initially made it work for New York, then it took him a pretty long time to get it working for the whole US (like, proportional time).

It doesn’t really work that way, but whatever. I can sort of suspend my disbelief for that.

The machine started seeing ‘small fry’ along with terrorists – you know, murderers and such. Which I can totally buy, because that sounds like one of the usual computer bugs. But for small fry, the machine doesn’t differentiate between victims and criminals.

…this is where my suspension of disbelief is starting to fail. What do you mean, it doesn’t differentiate?! There’s a huge difference between „I’m going to bash Johnny’s head in with a souvenir tomorrow at 8 o’clock” and „Lalala, I’m Johnny and I’m making fries tomorrow night at 8 o’clock”. I mean, come on!

And then there’s something else: the genius programmer/hacker/hardware person who built the damned thing is guessing as to its intentions. He supposes it knows what it’s doing. He ventures ideas about what the thing means to say.

This is where my disbelief grows too much to be suspended. It crashed down like a ton of elephants. So, the guy built the thing. From scratch. Did all the genius stuff to make it work. Wrote every line of code to make it function in the right way. Thought about every single aspect. And then… turned around and forgot everything he did? O_o

I’m starting to think the machine is actually a box with a psychic monkey inside, typing social security numbers and clapping for bananas. That would make more sense than the actual premise.

Reverse discrimination isn't less discriminating

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 09:06:19 +0000

Reading a very stupid „research” article in which 41 Turkish academics got questioned about their work environment to prove whether they were discriminated against or not. No research was done on men, all conclusions on the way women were treated vs. how men were treated are drawn from women’s answers about themselves. Which is dumb. Why? Because it is. You can’t compare two things if you only have data about one.

„none of the participants agrees with the statement that it is easier for women, compared to men, to succeed in academia. In contrast, 80.5% of the participants reject this statement which implies that women’s job is not easier than men’s, if not more difficult.”

Erm. Why would it be easier for women? This question is dumbly phrased and politically-oriented. It only proves that you, researcher, think it should be easier for women. Which it shouldn’t. It should be just as easy/difficult. If you had really wanted an honest answer, you should’ve said „Do you think men and women find it equally difficult to succeed in academia?” – and then asked for more details from people who answer „no”.

„The majority of the participants also reject the notion that women’s qualities match with the demands posed by academia more than men’s qualities do.”

I object to that question on principle. What are „women’s qualities”? What are „men’s qualities”? What is it that you are really asking and why?

Urgh. The questionnaire was just filled with crazy shit, some of which was taken to be gender-related, but really wasn’t (like low salaries, burning out because of the need to do research, being married etc.). And apparently reverse discrimination (in this case, discriminating in the favor of the woman) would be a good thing. Well, no. I don’t think so. I think if you want to stop sexual discrimination in the world, you really ought to stop preferring one sex to the other. You would think that’s kind of obvious, but it’s not.

Do you want to help women get out of their female bubble of uncertainty and little achievement (if you think that’s where they are)? Research. Find out why they aren’t achieving. Ask them stuff like „Why didn’t you publish more in your academic career?” or „Why didn’t you go for that ph.D.?” „Why didn’t you ever consider becoming a researcher?” Etc. See where the problem lies, don’t just decide you know where it does and then try to prove it.

Crappy research is crappy, but it might just be in line with the wave of reverse discrimination I’ve noticed around some circles.

(LE: Which is not to say that there aren’t a good deal of quality articles on the subject of women and engineering out there, but this is not one. Somebody should review stuff like this before it gets published.)

Discussions on literature (consider us drunk)

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 19:07:49 +0000

Linda’s come over, all the way from the other side of the country. Which is really cool. And conversations are getting really weird. We were talking Flight from Hell and we got to incubi and succubi.

Linda: Do you remember how incubi and succubi used to be so rare in fiction? And now they’re all over the place.

Me: I swear to God I didn’t know Amanda had a series called Incubus before submitting to the Big World Network.

Linda: Speaking of Incubus. *fangirls* I really, really like it. It’s fun!!! But no, I mean, all over the place. Everywhere.

Me: Remember where vampires were a metaphor for sex?

Linda: Yeah.

Me: So we just decided to drop the metaphor part.

Linda: Remember that English lit class?!

Me: YES!!!! O_O

*flashback*

15-20 students are sitting around a table during a literature seminar.

Professor: So, how would you like to die? [note: In her defense, we were talking about Emily Dickinson]

Student: By incubus.

Class: *stupefied silence*

Linda: Do you know what an incubus is?!?!?!?!

Student: Yes. *confused*

Class: O_O *more stupefied silence*

Professor: *starts snickering*

Student: I want to die peacefully in my sleep.

Professor: *barely stops from laughing out loud*

Linda: *dramatically* But they suck your soul and drag you to hell!

[…]

Me: But do you remember that class in which a professor asked what the fuss about vampires was?

Linda: *falls over laughing*

*flashback*

Professor: What’s the fuss about vampires?

Student: [something-something metaphors, literature, symbolism]

Professor: No, I still don’t get it.

Annoyed student: They’re hot, sexy hunks used as sex metaphors!

Professor: Ooooooooooooh. I understand now! *gets wistful look*

[…]

Me: *checks her blog stats* OMG, somebody came from Google Plus! That place is alive!!!!!!!!1 This is the first time this happens. I should write a special ’thank you for sharing my post, single G+ actual user out there!'

[…]

Me: I never meant to put any actual gay stuff in Flight from Hell. Aside from Ashmedai-the-pansexual-devil being a threat in the background. I thought I could just skirt the issue constantly and have Nakir escape him over and over. Then I realized, Ashmedai would go for him in immoral, creepy ways. He totally would.

Linda: *does that dreamy thing fangirls do*

Me: And Nakir’s weak and confused and trying to play reverse psychology at one point and Ashmedai, well… „Lead us not into temptation, because we’ve already been there and proved we were abysmally bad at it.” [note: I have a thing for that ’lead us not into temptation’ saying recently]

Linda: *wiggles her eyebrows*

Me: Not that anything actually happens, mind you. Not really. Not beyond this one thing, this short, clothes-on thing which ends fast and makes the threat and Nakir’s confusion so much worse.

Linda: *does a sad face* I would love to see them together. Maybe all three of them. That would be fun.

Me: Bad idea in the text.

Linda: *puppy eyes* How about in the Alternate Universe Christmas Special?

Me: There is no Alternate Universe Christmas Special.

Linda: There could be. Hey, I knew this author who wrote fanfic of her own stories, ever thought of doing the same?

*conversation dives straight into the gutter*

[…]

Me: So sometimes, I look at the editors’ comments, and they’re, like, so confused, you know? Trying to solve that old question, which for once makes perfect sense: what did the author mean to say over here?

Linda: I only ever get giggles in the margins.

Me: I get confusion. What did the author mean?… And then the author shows up and says, no, no, no, wait! That’s not what I meant! Oh, crap. Let me change it. In chapter two, I had the devil say that thing, you know? *quotes from memory* „For that I, and not your husband, must be their father.” Except the first time I said it like crap and it was confusing. So when the editor modified it for clarity, there was this confused scene between the queen and the devil. He was like, „I won’t be your husband.” And she went, „Good, I’ve already got one of those.” And I went, „ooooh, wait, he was actually saying ‘I’ll be knocking you up myself’. Which is a bit different.”

[…]

Linda: I never thought I’d say this, but I am so happy to get rid of the romance subplot with my story. It didn’t work. At all. So right now I’ve taken the romance down and I’m adding a lot more crazy.

Me: Like?

Linda: Well, there’s a whole new plot with the Physics Department. Some klutzy students did some experiments and that’s why it’s… missing. Carmen goes off to search for the missing South Wing.

Me: You have a vanishing university.

Linda: Pretty much. Oh, and I have to figure out how to put in the vampire bounty hunter. Because I said there would be one – and there will be, dammit.

Political correctness and linguistic improbability

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:49:18 +0000

I can’t wrap my tongue around ‘African-American’. I usually end up with ‘Afro-American’, which is apparently somehow more remarked upon as a mistake than ‘black’. So I think I’ll stick with ‘black’. If you insist on my saying ‘African-American’, I will make you call me ‘Eastern-European Caucasian’. Because if I suffer, so should you – it’s more politically correct that way.

I’m generally against removing random terms from a language just because somebody might find them bad. Sure, some terms are meant to be slurs and those should be avoided in polite conversation – but if a term is used both politely and impolitely the problem is obviously not the word’s.

But this isn’t about that. It’s about linguistics. PC terms can be quite the annoying little buggers because they’re long and unnatural and they’re fighting a losing battle against a basic principle of any language: common words tend to be shortened (where possible). Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s economy, maybe it’s practicality, but whatever the reason may be, common words are usually short.

Now, I live in Romania where there are very, very few black people. It doesn’t really matter what we call them because we won’t be using the term too often. I can say, „Oh, yeah! The last supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-African-Romanian I saw was in a pharmacy in Cluj a few months ago.” Do you know why? Because I’m likely to mention a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-African-Romanian only once or twice per year. I can dedicate him/her 21 syllables when I do. It’s like honorificabilitudinitatibus – how often am I going to mention the state of being able to receive honors? I don’t know. (and I’d call it ’the state of being able to receive honors’ then, but that’s another story)********

Americans, though?… They actually have a black population in which people don’t know each other by name and occupation. They might actually need to refer to black people every once in awhile. Trying to take away a short word and replace it with a long one isn’t really that great of an idea. Actually, it might be begging people to have two ways of speaking about blacks: one in public, where they pompously call them ‘African-Americans’ and that can be a way for them to feel like proper citizens or whatnot… and one in private, where they’ll use something more comfortable. It doesn’t dissolve tension, it creates it. It’s unequal treatment – yet again! Whites gets to be called ‘white’, which is comfy and straight and never really questioned, while with blacks you have to watch your tongue and learn how to avoid both being a stuck-up idiot and somehow impolite (although you never meant to be).

The term also has another issue: it mostly refers to black people who’ve been there awhile. It’s charged with the need to describe citizenship and race at the same time – but since Africa is a location as well, it implies that black people in the US are necessarily connected just to Africa and America and that’s all there is to it. But what if a French black couple emigrates to the US? Presuming that they are African and American alone might offend their French roots.

It’s a term that just makes things more complicated than they really need to be.

P.S. If you somehow managed to ban the word ‘black’ from use, you’d probably have people start using ‘Afs’ or some other such word to save time and effort. Just saying.

AU Bleach via hijacked subtitles

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 21:03:10 +0000

Many years ago, I ran into this fan-subtitled version of the Bleach anime. The subs were good – until the second half of episode 41, where they were hijacked by someone out to troll, who replaced perfectly good lines with gangsta „You owe me money, bitch!” and sex-related themes.

In other words, this nice, clean anime about loyalty and friendship and fighting for what’s right turned into its complete opposite under my terrified eyes, thanks to the insane ideas of whoever was in charge of the subtitles. Poof! There goes your innocence.

I don’t know who the people/person who did this were/was, but I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. That version of the second half of episode 41 is one of my favorite things ever. The subs just work with the images perfectly – and this was long before Hitler was taken over by Youtube and turned into a meme. And, by the way, Hitler was easier to do, because it mostly just him talking. Here we have a number of characters, with emotions going everywhere, a flashback and so on and so forth – and yet the crazy subtitle person went ahead and created a perfectly coherent if extremely deranged plot.

Whenever I’m in the mood for complete crack, I play it to see the improbable ’everybody owes Ichigo money’ plot, combined with the way more improbable secondary plot of Byakuya being an abusive, perverted, gay (or bi and incestuous?… hard to tell) weirdo.

There’s a few brilliant lines in there. By the way, the first time I watched it, it was probably the following line which tipped me off that the subs were fake.

So, the deranged, gay, money-owing plot goes like this: Byakuya (pictured above) has a bit of a fight with Ganju over money and sex – which is when Byakuya says that line above. Ganju is defeated and ends up in a pool of blood. Byakuya is about to keep attacking, but white-haired Ukitake shows up to complain about being cheated on – and about their relationship in general:

And to drop a bomb on Byakuya (related to, say, the actual plot of Bleach XD):

Then Ichigo shows up on the scene. And he apparently came for a very important reason: to get his money back from Hanataro!

But Hanataro doesn’t have it, so Ichigo turns to Rukia, who has a sudden flashback of the event – we find out she owes Ichigo a lot of money. Like, 50 yen (that’s about half a dollar). Unfortunately, she can’t pay him back.

We switch back to the present, where Ichigo finally notices Ganju lying around looking dead. And he remembers that „that dead guy” owed him money as well. What to do, what to do?… He tells Rukia she’ll pay with her debt with her body. She complains a bit, then says yes. Ichigo is pleased, of course.

But, oh no! Byakuya thinks he also has rights to Rukia. He argues with Ichigo and it gets to drawn swords. Perverted Byakuya takes his out and wants to play this game called „drop your and pants”. He explains it to Ichigo:

Ichigo, as you can see from his expression, isn’t very happy about it. The tension builds and builds – and it turns out that Byakuya owed money to Ichigo, too, because he borrowed money from Rukia!

Luckily, just about the time disaster is about to happen and the perverted, creepy Byakuya is about to fight hard and good with the money-lending pimp-ish Ichigo, Yoruichi shows up to stop the fight with a devastating revelation: Byakuya owes her money.

…to be continued!!!

Seriously, this is some of the most hilarious crack ever. It’s amazing what you can do with the wrong set of subtitles. It’s brilliant without knowing the show and it’s even more brilliant when knowing the show and knowing that Byakuya is probably the most law-abiding, rule-following, elegant and proper person. And the ‘you owe me, bitch, I’ll kill you’ Ichigo is in perfect contrast with his real ‘I will protect you and save you’ anime hero self.

Although I do believe the real Yoruichi would be thrilled to say the „you owe me, too” line.

So, thank you to whoever created this absolutely vulgar, deranged, gangster parody of Bleach. It is in horrible taste and it’s bloody amazing. You are part of the reason why I know how to create subtitles in the first place. And you’ve cheered many an evening for both me and my friends.

Three nights of sex, one morning of rice cakes: Marriage in old Japan

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 11:56:54 +0000

Marriage in the Christian world is a pretty clear thing: you go to a priest and there’s a ceremony. Ritual things are said and done – and at the end, you’re married. The secular marriage us Westerners have is pretty much the same: you go to someone, declare your intent and then, through the power invested in the ritual by tradition and common convention, you’re married.

In old Japan, things were… different?… Very different. Hugely different. So different that if old Japan rules were applied today, you’d probably be polygamous by now.

Okay, to clear things up, when I say ‘old Japan’, I mean, oh, 9th century to 12th century – Heian Japan, when Japanese literature became interesting and prose started flowing forward like a river of inky goodness; when women were admitted to court and became poets and writers, when society was elegant and beauty in art was of the utmost concern.

And from this period of beauty and elegance comes a novel, The Tale of Genji, where the handsome, astonishing prince has affairs with beautiful, refined women who adore him (more or less). The story eventually grows into strangeness, but one thing that got me confused from the moment I first started reading it was marriage.

Although Genji is declared married at one point, he never lives with his wife. There’s no ceremony that you can notice. He kidnaps a girl and grows her into the perfect wife, but does he ever marry her?… Who knows. At one point he builds a huge palace for his ladies – but are they wives? Concubines? Tolerated illicit affairs? Friends with benefits?…

Turns out that, erm. Well, erm… „Erm” is the best way to describe it.

The wedding ‘ritual’

Heian Japan didn’t have a public wedding ceremony. It didn’t have a particular ritual with a priest or monk (Buddhist or otherwise). It didn’t have much at all. There was a courtship consisting of exchanging poetry and messages, or maybe the parents arranged for the marriage – the couple didn’t see each other in either case (the woman had to remain hidden; accidents did happen, but that was the principle).

After months or years, or however long, the ‘marriage’ would happen. The man visited the woman at night and left at dawn. He returned the following night and again left at dawn. On the third night, he’d stay until daylight, when he’d be ‘discovered’ by the bride’s parents. Then the couple would be offered breakfast – third day rice cakes. (source)

That’s pretty much it. Three nights of sex (at least theoretically), one morning of rice cakes. The only reason I myself am not married by Heian standards is that there’s never any rice cakes to be found for breakfast.

So, did they announce it to the world?… Well, if this happened with the aristocracy in the capital, they didn’t need to. The nobleman had a retinue, he traveled in ox-driven carts, it was a small city and gossip traveled with the speed gossip usually travels. People would know. (same source)

Living arrangements

The couple wouldn’t live together – initially there would be a long time when they’d both be living with their families and the man would visit at night. If the time came for them to live together, the man would move in with the woman. Sometimes the parents of the girl would leave to live in a new home, or they would provide the couple with a new house – in either case, it was the woman who owned the property and it was she, with the help of her parents, who raised the children.

Her parents also helped her husband in his career – so a man would usually want to marry a woman of high rank, for the political help her family could provide him. The children would belong to the wife’s family, but they were part of their father’s clan, interestingly enough. Towards the end of the Heian period (the end of the 12th century), women started to move in with men instead and things became more patriarchal. (source)

Polygamy (polygyny, really) and divorce

Theoretically, a woman was only allowed one husband, but a man was allowed multiple wives. One would end up as the ‘first wife’ – traditionally, the first he married, although some exceptions existed. Other wives had a lower rank in the household and their children received less support at court.

Divorce was a piece of cake – this time not literal. The couple just stopped seeing each other, if they lived in different locations. If they lived together, the man would leave – in very rare cases, it was the woman who left. No rituals, no forms, no signing anywhere. Pretty easy.

Divorce (or death) also made it possible for lower-ranking wives to replace the ‘first wife’ from the point of view of position and importance (same source).

All in all…

Kind of a thorny issue for women (especially if you add to the above that they were supposed to never manifest clear erotic interest in men). They could be married against their will – technically, so could boys, but only when they were young enough. They could have property, but not hold jobs, so the death of their parents and/or husband could lead to inability to cover the expenses – and therefore poverty.

A thorny issue for men, too – they needed to marry into good families, to make sure that they remained in good standing with their parents-in-law for political and economic support. And they needed to make certain that they treated their high ranking wives with the respect due to their and their parents’ positions.

Plus, everybody had to be elegant, to play an instrument, compose poetry and understand art to strike a good match. And even if I love the arts…

Sorting algorithms are… strangely cool?…

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 09:42:42 +0000

I learned computer science for four years in high school. One of the teachers didn’t know what arrays were for at one point, but if we had had somebody who was any good at programming, or teaching, or preferably both, I really wish they’d shown us this:

Sorting algorithms. All sorts of sorting algorithms. Done visually! With added sound! I have never felt more tempted to run off and learn how they’re done and how quick each of them is in my life.

*stares in fascination*

Coffee, milk and whipped cream

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 07:26:28 +0000

It’s what I need after last night. It’s not that I went to bed at 2 AM after playing around with tanks in one of the most memory-greedy games on my computer (I suspect with every update it leaves stuff it doesn’t need anymore lying about). It’s not that I looked at all the courses I’ve abandoned on Coursera and got a headache.

No. It’s the fact that I had a nightmare. An honest to God scary nightmare that go me waking up and going *gulp* and then convincing myself that just didn’t happen.

I dreamed that Justin Bieber had linked to my site and I had teens pouring in in tens of thousands, messing up my site statistics forever.

…the fact that this counts as a scary nightmare somewhere in the really odd back of my mind means I really need some coffee with way too much milk and whipped cream to regain my good opinion of myself.

Steampunk apocalyptic dreams

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 08:41:19 +0000

I had this crazy, complicated dream last night. Of which I can barely remember anything, which is a problem since I can remember the plot was awesome and the settings were so perfect they could make Hollywood cry.

I’m talking about huge buildings with their walls crumbling off and their metal structures rusting in the sun. About vines taking over depopulated neighborhoods, growing impossibly green against reddish rubble, against metallic glints of bared pillars. I’m talking about clouds that throw the sky into amazing patterns of darkness and light, of shadows and sunbeams. I’m talking about factories spreading their industrial smoke over buildings and about clockwork that solves technical problems, though I couldn’t tell you how.

My apocalyptic-looking dreams take place in Bucharest, for a reason I’ve yet to determine. In a past dream, the building belonging to the University of Architecture had moved across the boulevard and had taken over a nearly empty factory – yet again with its metal side showing – which lacked windows, but did not lack the stray student spending time there overnight, working on plans in a large, echoing space with rubble in the corners.

This dream took me to the Obor Market, which I’ve visited three or four times at most in my life. Full of people, with little gypsy children playing on mounds of rubble, while merchants and buyers went their usual ways. I can’t remember what I needed, or if I needed anything at all. The city stretched on in all directions, seemingly endless. I didn’t know what came after it, but knew I was heading there, for some important reason. It had been a complicated way there and I could sense a number of things that were going to come to a close before I reached the end.

"Flight from Hell" on August 4th

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:01:45 +0000

Just a short announcement: my novel, „Flight from Hell” will be launched on the 4th of August on the Big World Network. Keep an eye out for Roxana Kiril 😉

The genre(s): Horror/Supernatural.
Rating: 18+. Apparently I can’t write stuff for a general audience even if I try. Not that I was particularly trying to.

The first episode (chapter) will be available for free. After that, reading is subscription-based, but the subscription is barely $3. And you can get the audio version as well. I’ll be reading it (I’m not that bad).

When the novel’s all said and done, it’ll (probably) be gathered into a volume and sold as paperback, audio and full electronic version, in some sort of pricing combos.

Yeah… Not feeling up to writing anything more fascinating in this blog post right now. So laterz.

Department of redundancy department, exhibit A: Windows

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:00:32 +0000

I was cheerfully typing a blog post about my novel being launched in less than two months, when my laptop did that thing where the screen turns blue and you just know you’ve been BSOD-ed.

I restarted. And this is the error message that appeared: „Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown”. Well, I never would have guessed. Ok, well, I’ll bite, I’ll click on the ‘View problem details’ button. Because thus far I’ve had a clear description of exactly what I saw, surely the details will either clarify or throw so much gibberish at me that I’ll understand it’s a Computer Thing, Don’t Ask.

So here’s the details:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen

Next thing you know, it’ll tell me: „Actions taken: User restart”.

I wonder if Windows prepared these messages for the case in which I let the computer lie there for awhile, get a tech person, call them over, then am unable to describe the BSOD phenomenon. Or maybe, you know, I’m typing and suddenly my lamps falls on my head and I get amnesia. Or maybe I’m in the bathroom and it BSODs while I’m not touching it (no, really! I didn’t touch it!) and then I try to find out why my computer isn’t playing Led Zeppelin anymore.

Or maybe Windows is super-prepared for the colorblind.
„Tech support? My computer just died. I restarted. Now it sort of works.”
„How did it die?”
„Well, it threw this screen at me with lots of words and numbers.”
„Was it a blue screen?”
„I don’t know. I’m colorblind. Does it matter?”
„Well, if it’s a blue screen, it’s ok. But if it’s a red screen, it means your cat died in there, since we don’t do red error screens.
„I don’t have a cat. And it’s a flat screen.”
„Well, your upstairs neighbor then, and the blood dripping down from the ceiling. There was this case a few years back, maaaaan, that old lady from Murder: She Wrote would have been terrified to see that cat at the murder scene… It was all messed up, I tell you.”
„Oh, no! How do I find out?!”
„What does the error log say?”
„That it’s a blue screen.”
„Good, it means you’re fine. Thanks for calling. Please pretend the power went out and proceed as usual, that tends to solve it. Goodbye!”

Why the 10,000-Hour Rule is wrong

Tue, 28 May 2013 22:14:32 +0000

You’ve probably heard it: in order to attain true success in a given field, you need to spend roughly 10,000 hours practicing in that given field. If you’ve googled it, like I have, you will know that the principle comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s book „Outliers: The Story of Success”. This article isn’t about that book as a whole. It’s about the Rule as a meme.

Here’s what I think: the 10,000 hour rule is wrong for the same reason why a million monkeys with keyboards will not definitely produce Shakespeare within a dozen years. Success isn’t something that comes just because it’s about time it did. It’s something much more elusive and interesting than quantity.

We like to think that quantity is enough, sometimes. That given enough quantity, we will eventually have an increase in quality. Hence, 10,000 hours. Or monkeys. Comforting? Yes. It means that if we try enough, we will get it. True?… Not necessarily. I remember that in my early days of googling I wanted to reach a certain story written by a certain person on the internet. And I thought, „My god, how can I ever reach it? There’s a lot of people writing out there writing all sorts of things, who knows how many results I’ll run into!”

I ran into that exact story on the first try. Here’s the quote that can get you to that story: [something that happened] „little more than a week ago, still gave him nightmares, so he spent most of the night watching the stars.” Do you want to know the funny bit? „so he spent most of the night watching the stars.” – this would have been enough. 10 words, not even amazingly special. Unique on google. (well, not unique, but the second result is the same story; and I suppose once this article gets indexed, there will be three results – all concerning the same story)

It’s been a long time since the internet started and pretty much everything is on Google. There’s more than a million English-speaking ‘monkeys with keyboards’ out there, I’ll wager, and yet I can find a given book by putting in approximately 10 words, in the correct succession, within quotation marks. Or make that 20, just in case.

What do the monkeys of randomness have to do with 10,000 hours of work in an area? Well, they prove that quantity doesn’t necessarily produce a certain result. I have unfortunately known people working in the same domain for many, many years who have reached a point where they no longer develop. In some cases, they even go backwards, becoming less competent as they go along. Managers who ‘already know’, artists who are ‘great’… You know the sort.

It’s not just about the number of hours, is it? It’s about affinity, cleverness, having the right people to turn to and hard work. All together.
If you have an affinity for the domain, you’ll make progress faster – I would probably need longer than the average person to become a good artist since my ability with visual things is quite bad (I often don’t recognize people; once I didn’t recognize a high school teacher out of context, especially since she’d cut her hair).
However, if I were to go about it the clever way, counting on my strengths and studying the theory behind reproducing images, as well as teaching myself to recognize angles and proportions and to really see things in terms of lines and shapes, I’d probably do better than if I simply grabbed a pencil and started trying to reproduce things.
If I had good teachers to resort to and to help me with things such as ’no, no, the shoulder lines go down, not up’, I’d probably progress even faster.
And then there’s hard work.

One route to success in a field is not equal to another. You can take shortcuts in places where comprehending a system will propel you forward. Or you can choose a direction where hard work really is a lot of what you need to do (sports?… learning a new language?… But even there things vary). And you can, of course, go about it the wrong way without realizing it.

So how long does it take to reach success? Well, that depends. More or less time. Depending on the field. And depending on whether you’re just a monkey with a keyboard, stuck pounding with little to no direction.