I’m not sure if the term “SF” for speculative fiction as an umbrella term for genres related to science fiction and fantasy is still in vogue (and I know that the usage of the term in recent years is distinct from the way that Hienlin et al initially suggested, but I’m not completely up on that), but I’ve been thinking about the distinction between science fiction and fantasy of late. In part because I’d like to be able to speak more intelligently about what I write (and hopefully write better as a result,) and also as a keen observer of the community, I’d like to do a little reflection. And hell, this is supposed to be my notebook, so there!

On some level, all science fiction worth reading is fantasy of some kind. Reading about science or technology’s cutting edge would be incredibly boring, after all. Having said that, I guess I’d carve the sci-fi/fantasy world into a few groups: the sword and sorcery fantasy, other fantasy stories built on some mythological convention (like vampire and super hero stories, which offer variations on some sort of common or shared tropes. In a lot of ways, any more I’d probably be more inclined to put Star Trek in this category) and science fiction. I tend to call just about everything science fiction: the hard stuff, cyberpunk, space opera, alternate histories, time travel stuff, though I think there’s some overlap here with the shared myth category.

How does that sound to you all?

The yarn store opened yesterday, and I--unsurprisingly--didn’t get any writing or reading done last night. Here are my thoughts from yesterday.

We failed, I think, to take pictures of the new sweater and other things. I wore another sweater, there’s at least one picture that I’ve spotted on ravelry of the shop that I’m in. More pictures as the come.

Being in the yarn store all day encouraged some sort of perverse desire to knit plain sweaters. There are a couple of yarns that I have my eye on. Mostly I’m thinking of Cascade Venezia Worsted, a lovely silk and wool blend, and some Lorna’s Laces Superwash. This is weird, because I don’t really enjoy making such plain sweaters, and what’s more I’ve sort of sworn myself to a constrained palette, as a creative/artistic experiment. No matter, there are a number of things that I have to finish before I will even think about starting a new project, and I’m thinking that it might be February before I get to that point.

The Latvian Morocco sweater deserves a new picture, and is now… 13 or 13.5 inches long. I have about 4-5 inches to go before the underarm point. Because the sleeves are going to be set in (and saddled), the rows will get a bunch shorter at that point, and it’ll go faster. Also, because the saddles are going to be really wide, and I mean real wide (like 8 inches total, 4 front and back), there’s not a lot to the yoke section of the sweater once I get there.

In any case, I’m taking a break from that sweater to knit a sleeve to finish a red and black plain sweater that I started in May or June. It’s worsted weight Patons Classic Merino that I bought to knit a sweater on commission that never came to fruition. So I made the sweater for myself. It’ll be a cozy one to wear once I finish it, but I’ve been dragging on the sleeves for months, and I’ve finished one of them, and I hope to finish it this week. I have a lot of Law and Order stored up for this purpose.

That’s about it, on the knitting front. I have today off of work, and I have a bunch of writing and reading things to do, but I’ll probably be in touch with some non-knitting related thoughts later in the day as I have them.

• Hijacking a Ravelry thread with lines from the Buffy Musical Episode, leading to the posting of a cat macro.
• friends
• Writing almost 1000 words on the novel project.
• Clean Spaces.
• Tea (goes without saying).
• Shoes with good support.
• Gmail IMAP
• twitter

It’s finally, I think, getting cold for real here which is nice. I can wear sweaters again, for real, mostly.

The new yarn store has its grand opening today, and although we were open yesterday, it’s for real today. That’ll be exciting. I got a/the copy of Sweaters from Camp, and I quite like the book, and always have, so it’s time that I actually got it. I think it might solve my indecision regarding my next big project.

My intention to get up early and write was foiled by chores and whatnot, but that’s ok, I guess, I’ll be thinking about things today, and maybe I can take some notes, during off moments, to counteract the certain “omg I can’t think about words now,” feeling that I get after a long day.

There was sweater blocking last night, and though I’m not wearing it today, I will have it with me and I suspect there will be pictures.

Also, there’s been a problem with the RSS feed for a few days, so if you’re used to reading the site by RSS (one way or another) then you may have missed a few posts. I think it’s all fixed now. I’m still not sure about the TealArt home page, but there’s no time to worry about that now.

Have a great day, I’ll report back in a bit!

So one of the great things about Tumblelogs, particularly the automated variety profered by jaiku and Tumblr is that they’re all about collecting your wonderings on the internet and presenting those wanderings in a way that’s entertaining and, well, cool. The problem is that there’s something missing: the comments that you leave in other people’s blogs.

Part of the issue is that it’s decentralized. Many people run their own blogs on their own servers using their own systems. There are conventions but not standards, really.

Collecting blog comments is, I think a better marker of the sort of semantic network that makes up the internet, at least a better marker than whatever we remember to tag on Del.icio.us, which for me only seems to happen every six weeks, if I’m lucky.

For better or for worse I can’t think of any really good way to accomplish this in an automated way. Maybe technorati could be used as a source for this kind of data, but it’s beyond me, that’s for sure.

Anyway, thats what I was thinking about as I was rolling out of bed, time to go angst about the GREs and my future. But first, a hot shower.

Cheers!

In lieu of anything about my day--which was mostly uneventful; or my knitting progress, which hasn’t been; or my plans for tomorrow, which are frightfully dull--I’m going to post the punch lines of a couple of theoretical issues that I’ve been tossing around and half starting blog essays about for a while, because I want to, and I can think of no good way to to frame or present them, and no good textual sources to talk about, so here goes.

1. Reorganize sociology (and the way that people approach queer studies) so that race/sexuality people are more likely to occur than race/class and gender/sexuality people, because I think that this direction provides a much needed paradigm shift, it helps intersectional projects and it’s way way more interesting. I have the beginnings of an essay that I have no real good way to ground on the subject, but it might be interesting to think about

2. Someone should do some study of technology that compares arcane computer interfaces like the command line, with arcane automobile interfaces like the manual transmission. I insert little bits of this when appropriate into my stories, but I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition, and I think speaks to some key issues in efficiency and the use of technology.

Thats' all for now, I woke up this morning in a panic about the GRE, I think I’m in pretty good shape, particularly if I continue to work on it, but it’s just scary. Also, yarn store work. Egad folks. I have some firewallable time on monday that I think I can do whatever I want with, but I haven’t decide if I should write or study for the GRE. Short term I want to write, long term, GRE is more important. Just gotta memorize those Pythagorean triplets.

I was able to procure empty teabags today at a very swanky kitchen store. I went with my father to pick up an Areopress for my mother, after I saw the recommendation on Boing Boing TV. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Why tycho, in the world would you want empty teabags, and the answer is that I want to be able to make loose leaf tea, but I find most of the methods around to accomplish this are somewhat flawed. I’ve never had a tea ball not explode mid use, and I prefer to not be platform dependent (that is, I don’t want to have to brew tea in a particular pot, because it’s the only one that will make the tea.) Anyway. Now all I need to do is buy some tea of this variety.

I have not woven in the ends or blocked the sweater yet, though I am for the first time all day in the same room with both the sewing up needles and the sweater so it might happen now. What I thought was going to be a short in and out sort of day, somehow turned into errands and doodling about. I hate days where, at the ned you wonder, “what the hell did I do today.”

In that vein, the Morris team is set to do it’s usual Halloween hurrah. It should be fun, but it can be a tedious sort of engagement. I have not ironed my white shirt, and I don’t intend to. It’ll be dark, and if you can see the wrinkles in my shirt, you’re missing the point.

Onword and upword!

I promise to post more than once today, with something that isn’t just a list, but I have a few thoughts that I think would be good to get out:

• I finished the sweater. Pictures to follow. On a scale of 1 to 10 I rate this one a 7, because of the way the sleeves/shoulders fit, but I suspect that I’ll quite enjoy wearing it anyway.
• I’m at 2,000 words on the novel. It’s hard to justify to yourself and the world that you’re writing a novel when you don’t even have ten manuscript pages, but I am I swear. I’m getting a hold of it slowly, damnit! No more novella editing yet, but soon. Round two readers, get ready!
• I need to figure out what I’m going to try and do with the novella once I get it to a point that I’m comfortable marketing it. The publication I was thinking of sending it out to has closed submissions until March (they have a good “new writers” program, potentially accept longer pieces and my parents knew the editor in another life so my name will stand out--my real name has a way of doing that. If not, I think the Marx quote will earn me points). There’s an indi-press that I’m interested in that looks like it’s the real deal, and I don’t think that it will be too long for them. Other markets don’t have provisions for works between 25,000 and 40,000 in their submission guidelines, so I’m at a loss.
• I read the entire Ars Technica Leopard (OSX 10.5) Review yesterday, and it was great. I have to say that he didn’t talk about the RubyCocoa bridge thing that bsag talked about and the, I think the term is, “scripting hooks” in AppleScript for python and ruby, and the fact that Ruby on Rails and RubyGems ships with the new operating system, which I think is totally awesome, and a really good move on Apple’s part. Having said all of this, I’m not in any rush, and probably won’t upgrade until after I finish the graduate school application. What I have works now really well, and while I very much want to get rid of all the brushed steel windows, I don’t want to have to worry about anything breaking or a massive backup for a while.