I heard someone say the other day, that some universities and businesses were blocking face-book from their networks, because, it chewed up too much bandwidth because it was pulling data from so many different sites.

correct me if I’m wrong, but face-book, is for the most part fairly light on AJAX (I mean google apps and what not use a lot more AJAX than facebook), and really heavy on PHP, which means that all of the bandwidth pull and processing is happening server side.

It might take a long time to load, because their servers have a lot to process, but it doesn’t chew up much more bandwidth than any other site that you visit a lot…

right?

“Charge” is the second part in our five part finale for this season of Station Keeping, we’ll be posting a new part of this story every day for this week. I hope you enjoy, and `stay tuned <http://tychoish.com/hanm/>`_ for the rest of the week. As always we `encourage your participation <http://tychoish.com/partcipate/>`_, and stay tuned to `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ for news of the second season of Station Keeping (in a month or so) and all the other great TealArt content. Cheers--tycho

“Josh, do you think we could get those refinements processed by the end of the day, or we looking at tomorrow?” Talia said walking slowly from her office to her station on the command deck with a dark cup of very caffeine laced hot liquid.

“At least!” The younger officer balked. “I should think, at any rate.”

“Of course, of course, I was just being hopeful. It never hurts. I mean what’s a few days out here?” Talia chuckled, there weren’t deadlines this far from the core.

“Well, anyway,” Sian said after a moment, “Have a good shift,”

“You going somewhere?” Talia asked after fighting back a yawn.

“Yeah, looks like you have things under control here,” Josh stretched out his hand noting the general calm of the command deck. “I was going to look over the--”

Josh was cut off when he was thrown to the deck by some explosion. Everything hurt, “Wait, there wasn’t an explosion here,” Josh thought in the next instant, “Just the noise,”

“What was that?” Talia asked in the next moment, sounding about as dazed as Josh felt. The deck was louder now, but no one had answers, and most people seemed pretty dazed.

“What was that?!” Talia demanded when it was clear that people weren’t going to offer her an answer.

“No reports… yet” a young officer wearing Hanmish insigina said, her hands continued to work her controls, but she was having little success.

“Get the commander up here and get me an idea of whats happening,” Talia’s orders were directed at the entire deck. But they were clearly all doing their job, and Talia knew that this aimless strategy wasn’t going to help much. She turned to Sian who had made it to his feet. “Josh? Anything?”

“Lifts are down, Commander was scheduled to be up here by now, and this terminal isn’t telling me anything,” Sian looked over at Julia who was hooked up at her station in the computer’s system. She looked to be breathing within normal ranges, “Julia could probably tell us something when she comes out.”

“Can’t you wake her up or ping her out of it?”

“Yes,” Josh said shaking his head quickly, ashamed that he hadn’t thought of this. He sent the ping. The terminal sounded in protest, but the noise was almost drowned out by the rest of the bustle on the command deck. People were starting to report data to Talia, but there still wasn’t much.

“What now?” Talia asked Sian, without turning to face him, apparently having heard the alarm.

“Seems she denied the ping, she’s staying in.”

“God, this better be good. Any news of the commander?”

“Nothing yet. It’s your show.”

“Great.” Talia’s words were quick, but she clearly didn’t have a clue what to say next. “Well, Keep me posted,” she said quickly, but that was of course an obvious order.

Talia focused on her controls and tried to see if she could learn anything new, get any more information or response out of the system. Something. Anything “How can I direct these people what if I don’t know what’s going on?” She thought as she begain to work with the uncooperative system. “What a time to be stuck in command!”

“Ok, folks, can we contact maintenance squads with the intercoms at least?”

“I think so,” a young officer said. Talia didn’t know her name. Damn.

“Ok, we need comms and we need the lifts back on, no matter what’s wrong. Can you put people on it? Just core function, not regular service.”

“Yes, I’m on it.”

“Good. You,” Talia said, indicating another crew hand, get in touch with Doctor Perrin or Reese, they might no something, and they should be kept up to speed in any case." Without stopping Talia turned to another crewman, “Anyone willing to link in a see if you can get in touch with Julia?” Talia asked

The color on all of their faces faded. “Ok, hard sell, I wouldn’t go in there,” before she had a chance to respond though, Josh interrupted.

“I got the commander on the line. I gave him an update, but he’s trapped on the other side of an out-of-service lift. The crew’s are on their way.”

Talia took a deep breath. “Ok, guess we’ll have to make do,” she said as she turned back to the crew and her station to see what more could be done.

“Charge” was written by, `tycho <http://tychoish.com/tycho>`_, the creator of `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_. He is a student and knitter by day and a science fiction writer by night, you can read his work elsewhere on `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and at `~/tychoish <http://tychoish.com>`_.

I’m cross posting this to the livejournal so that former classmates can read it.

I’m starting classes today at the school I never really considered for undergrad, so I don’t have to pay student loans, so I can work on academic projects, and so I can stay in the mindset as I apply (again) to graduate school next year. That and there are classes here that my alma mater could never run, because of staffing and other demands on the faculty.

It’s also a very different kind of institution. Here are some of my observations:

1. Cars? What? The campus has a number of much higher trafficked roads than I’m used to on a campus. It also has stoplights. I approached a light, it said “don’t walk” cars weren’t coming, so I trotted across the road, passing two students who were standing there waiting for the light to change. I laughed to myself.

2. Male students all look like TKEs at Beloit, thus far. Must remember to not hold it against them. What happened to college student chic? I sense a distinct deficit of students wearing pajamas.

3. Fewer smokers? Or maybe it’s just raining. Or maybe all my old friends smoked.

“Stranded” is the first part in our five part finale for this season of Station Keeping, we’ll be posting a new part of this story every day for this week. I hope you enjoy, and `stay tuned <http://tychoish.com/hanm/>`_ for the rest of the week. As always we `encourage your participation <http://tychoish.com/partcipate/>`_, and stay tuned to `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ for news of the second season of Station Keeping (in a month or so) and all the other great TealArt content. Cheers--tycho

Eli Banner was standing patiently waiting for the lift outside of his quarters. He was perhaps more groggy than he would have liked, but he thought that it would be an easy matter to get Sian to run out ands get caff--

In the next instant he was thrown, face first, onto the deck. He would have sworn, but the fall had knocked the wind out of him. He found himself rolled in a fetal position. He thought, “Guess I didn’t break anything,” when he realized that he had moved all his extremities. He didn’t think that he had lost consciousness, he was pretty sure at any rate, but everything hurt.

With the woman upright leaning on the wall, and only a bit dazed, Eli walked over to a communications boxed and keyed in the channel for the command deck.

“This is Banner, What the hell just happened? Is everything alright up there? I’m outside the lift near my quarters.” He looked over at the lift, which didn’t give any indication of being powered. Blast. “It looks like the lift is out.”

“Sir, it looks like… most of the lifts are out.” Joshua Sian’s distracted voice hissed from the voice box. “Commander Garn just sent crews to the access tubes, so you’re cut off.” Sian didn’t cut the line, so a faint static poured into the corridor.

“Care to tell me what happened?” Eli said after a moment.

“Not sure yet. Will have a report when you arrive, we hope. Sian out.”

“Damnit” Eli deactivated the communication box. Well at least Talia Garn was in the command center, but that was little solace. His station was in crisis, and he was trapped with minimal report and nothing to do. Great.

“Stranded” was written by, `tycho <http://tychoish.com/tycho>`_, the creator of `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_. He is a student and knitter by day and a science fiction writer by night, you can read his work elsewhere on `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and at `~/tychoish <http://tychoish.com>`_.

It’s here. It’s finally here.

This week is going to be all station keeping, all the time, starting this very afternoon. This of course means that we’re going to be “off-the-air” come next week. I’ve been prepping essays/posts about science fiction, science fiction writing, and I expect to do some more in the “Keeping Meta” series of posts, while we wait and write the next season (and start thinking more long term about our story, for season three.) I’m going to give a tentative target release date of November first, but I might pull that date back a week or two so that we’re not having a big finale in the middle of the holidays. Planning… it’s weird.

I’d like to of course, thank Jo Goodman who’s writing appears in two of this week’s installments. It’s great to have such a fun (and different) perspective contributing to this project, and although the stories were just by me and Jo this season, I think it would be improper to go on without at least publicly thanking all the other people who have contributed to the development, planning, and thinking about the project. There’s something really great about serials, and something about a group that makes it even more fun to write for, in my estimation.

This isn’t to say that the first season of Station Keeping, is without flaw. Frankly I would have like to see more contributions from both the crowd, and from our own core, and thats going to be one of my big hiatus projects. For a long time, I would get cockamamie ideas for internet-phenomena and projects, and they’d sort of fizzle out when, inevitably, people wouldn’t flock to them. Now I’ll attribute this, at least in part, to youthful naivet√©, but it’s also true that web-phenomena need a certain sort of momentum, and that’s nothing you can summon out of thin air.

And Station Keeping is getting there slowly, and that’s all I can ask for. I suppose the main difference between this project and former projects is that I’m sticking to this one, because by god I think it can work. And sometimes that stubbornness is totally a good thing.

As always, if you’re interested in contributing to the Station Keeping project, either on a one off or a continuing business, please contact me, I’d love to work with you and include your stories in the project. My email is tycho@tealart.com, I look forward to hearing from you. Some authors are talking about fan fiction, and Matthew Wayne Selznick has even set up a site for fan generated content¹ to encourage such projects for his own work. I would, however, submit that it would be nearly impossible for you to write fan fiction for Station Keeping (well there’d need to be fans, but…) mostly because I think that anyone who wants to write fic, could probably write “real” station keeping, without much fuss.

In any case, stay tuned to ~/tychoish for updates about me and the site (also in the sidebar, here on TealArt,) and I’ll see you throughout the week for Station Keeping installments, but otherwise, I’ll see you next week.

Cheers, tycho

I wonder at what point I just gave up on my documents folder and started a new /text folder. There’s so much crap in documents that I never ever touch, because it’s irrelevant and old. Not throw away old, but old.

My ~/text folder is just the text files that I live in, and I have a simple, everyone in a single folder with a folder for “archives,” which are things that I’m done with but that I want to keep around. Eventually everything ends up on my DevonThink Pro Database and I’m a happy camper. :)

I need to rethink this a bit, me thinks.

I heard, somewhere about a hacking scheme where people would hack into your computer, encrypt your hard drive using PGP and then charge you for the key to decrypt it. clever-evil-briliant.

In addition to my usual saturday morning fiction writing, I got the gears rolling this morning with the beginning of an essay slated for TealArt in a few weeks. I got off on a little tangent, which will show up in the footnotes, but I wanted to reprint it here, because I rather like it. So here we go.

The essay is about trends and memes in science fiction, but the bit I’m posting here is about futurism.

Cory rehashes some of these ideas about futurism here, but I think on the whole, science fiction isn’t really about the future, and never has been. “True” to current understandings of science, or not, science fiction is always both future oriented (looking forward) and about the present. If you’re a contemporary setting using contemporary technology, or in a near future setting, using “accurate” technology, or if you’re writing a story ten thousand years in the future using wildly futuristic technology, it’s all to a certain measure irrelevant, and even more importantly, it’s all made up anyway.