A Conversation with friend Andy (but, not we should point out, this andy.)

Andy: You know we’ve never talked on the phone.

tycho: yes, blessedly. Don’t take this personally but the phone is overrated, and I assure you that I’m a real person.

Andy: Yeah, I don’t really like the phone either.

tycho: no the truth is that I hate the phone with an undying passion.

Andy: I gesture and make faces when I talk on the phone--which is just fucking ridiculous and makes me look like an ass.

tycho: --and perhaps the biggest problem is that I have trouble talking on the phone when I think people can see or hear me: because it’s so wierd “yes let me talk into this plastic thing to someone who isn’t there…” I mean dude it wasn’t too long ago that that sort of behavior could get you locked up.

Andy: A very valid point you make, sir.

tycho: … and I think if I was going to be guilty of some sort of historical crime I’d much rather it be sodomy…

Andy: Amen.

I finished the sixth chapter of my novella yesterday. I had a scene that I planned for the end of the sixth chapter, that I think I need to push to chapter seven, but even still I think I’m on track. (In truth, there isn’t much in the last chapter, and I think it’ll help the pacing to have the “bang” of the last chapter, happen as the second or third part. And in truth, I’ve never quite been neck and neck with the outline. I’m ok with this.

I’m thinking of starting a counting down “crap-o-meter” on the premise that everyone has a million words of crap in them. I figure I’ve probably at about 120k of fiction by now, and the current project probably has another 10k in it.

Sigh.

This is from a collection of “laws” from Larry Niven

If you’ve nothing to say, say it any way you like. Stylistic innovations, contorted story lines or none, exotic or genderless pronouns, internal inconsistencies, the recipe for preparing your lover as a cannibal banquet: feel free. If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn’t get it then, let it not be your fault.

I like it, so I copy it here. I also think that this sums up one of the chief reasons that I didn’t major in writing in college. Just saying. Sorry H.

From a comment I made to this post on lifehacker:

I have a laptop (powerbook 15 g4) and it’s a great computer, and despite it’s age (2 years) it basically does everything I need it to. And 90% of what I’m doing is:

• editing text files
• reading rss
• email/websurfing
• reading pdf files
• command line things

The portability is really helpful, but, frankly, I often feel like I’m pulling around too much, and would like the computer that I lug around with me to not have to have everything on it, and I think that having a desktop to be able to manage the libraries database (pictures, video, music, pdfs, etc.) could make a lot of things easier. I mean truth be told, when I’m at home, all the computering happens at a desk, so having a desktop wouldn’t hinder things.

If you were just going to have one computer, given what the author said, for a lot of people, particularly given how powerful a lot of laptops are, it makes sense to get a laptop.

I’d add to this, that there are lots of situations where desktops continue to make a lot of sense (other than production environments), particularly where a computer is going to be used by more than one person. That’s something we don’t tend to think about a lot these days, but I think it’s totally an issue.

As I’m tooling around this morning and working on getting things done, and since as I said yesterday I finished a chapter, and need to spend some time getting things planned out and sorted for the next bout of writing, I’m realizing that I need to get started on another project at some point for a number of reasons.

1. So you I can avoid getting stuck if a project sticks.

2. So that I have something when this project is done, which it’s getting closer and closer.

Knitters (among others I assume, it not being terribly original,) talk about project monogamy. The idea begin that if you concentrate on one project at a time, you’re more likely to finish things. Typically I’m pretty narrow minded with regards to my knitting projects, but of late I haven’t worked in this way--I think that my trials with “sleeve knitting.”

This isn’t to say that fiction writing and knitting follow the same sort of creative cycle; similar, for sure, but it’s hard to translate from one to the other. For instance, while in both there’s a lot of up front work, in fiction writing the end stage requires about as much work/attention/time as the beginning, but in a sweater, you can think a lot about the next project, as you’re finishing the present project, because you need to buy new yarn, and have a plan. To make matters easier, I would point out that by the end of a project, it goes “faster” than the beginning: you generally have the pattern memorized, anything that can go wrong already has, so you don’t have to worry about that.

The problem is that while I know I should and I want to, I’m a little worried about distraction and “what next.” Anyway…

I was listening to FLOSS Weekly 19, which was about the git version control system, but also touched on how Git compared to other such programs like CVS and svn, which I use.

I wanted to clarify something and talk/think about this a bit. Also I’m sorry about not subtitiling this very much. All of the things I mention, from the programs to jargon things like commits, checkouts, repo(sitories), merges, and diffs, and what not, are all easily googleable.

It sounded a lot like the kinds of criticisms that they were making of CVS they were making of subversion as well. For instance, in subversion, when you rename or move a file the you don’t loose versioning history. I mean I think, I’m not a programer, and I’m a pretty new subversion user. I think the attic/delete issue is also better in SVN than CVS.

I’m intrigued by the git, but I don’t have a project that I could ever imagine using it for: git becomes worthwhile, it seems to me, when a) you have a large team, and b) when you want to encourage incremental commits, without having commits seem too much like publishing.

Given that my main use for svn is to maintain backups and progress snapshots of my writing and notes (in plain text files), a lot of the places where svn typically falls down, are things that I’m not pushing it to do. But it seems entirely logical that if people are working off of remote repos, then then using a local repo to “work in” makes some sense. Hell you could probably script it someway, but I do understand how this is a kludgey sort of response to the problem, but there it is. I’m actually starting to keep a remote copy of my repo syched to the one on my hard drive, for safe keeping.

I’m still learning a bunch about these tools, and I think that there are a lot of things that programers do in terms of organization and collaboration (from versioning systems like this, to the way branches/tags/merges work, to the social organization of distributed collaboration and so forth) that I think are useful in other contexts.

Maybe it’s just me.

While I’ll never be WendyKnits, in terms of up-to-datenss, or what not, I just took a picture of my current knitting.

It’s Joyce William’s “Morocco” sweater from Lativan Dreams. I’m the first person with a blog, that I can find, to be knitting it, though I think that this is more in the realm of “uniqueness to the point of obscurity,” rather than “trendsetter” it’s a start.

While I’m still knitting from the chart, it’s gotten to be less adventurous than it was at the beginning. I’m using Old Mill Yarn, “Domy Heather”, which I discovered at camp.

I’ll keep you posted on it as it progresses.

Celebrate in Good Health!