I finished the long awaited first round of edits for the novella I wrote earlier this year, Knowing Mars, this morning. I’ve sent out a draft (after some failures of my email sending ability) to 6 initial readers. Some or all of whom read this website. (Thanks folks, and sorry for the mess of emails).

If you wanted to read an early copy of the novella and haven’t drop me an email and I’ll get you a copy of it. I should warn you that reading such an early draft could potentially be arduous, and there’s no real reason rush into reading this version. There will be other drafts.

One part of the project after I got the edits done, was to recompile the files into LaTeX (a markup langauge for making pretty documents with the TeX typesetting engine.) I’ve gotten pretty into LaTeX these last few months, because it means I don’t have to use Microsoft products (it’s a pragmatic issue, they don’t run well on Zoe and the interfaces don’t work well), the documents look better, and thanks to some templates I’ve come up with I can write papers and letters (and so forth) in consistent, easy to read forms much more quickly than I ever did when I was a word user.

I mean LaTeX isn’t the end all and be all. I’ve still not exactly figured out how to insert images into documents, nor have I figured out how to use the beamer class to do presentations (but I hate doing presentations with slides, so it’s not a big loss,) but I think I’m making progress, and some day I’ll be a master of LaTeX.

One of the nifty things about LaTeX is that, I have yet to come across a document format that someone else hasn’t already created a class for. APA papers? Check! Every other Academic Style? Check¹! Letters? Check! And my latest discovery? The manuscript format demanded by the Science Fiction Writers of America (and many of its varriants)sffms Check! The issue is that I had to spend a little bit of time reformatting how I did section headers so that it would all play nice. That’s really my fault for writing in markdown to start with and then using maruku to convert to LaTeX. This leads me to my next non-geek-speak topic below the fold:

The Point

I’m thinking about switching the formating of some of my files away from doing everything in Markdown, and just going full boar into LaTeX particularly since the next book is in it’s beginning stage. The main reason for doing this is that Maruku, translates a few things oddly, particularly in places where quote marks precede italics. In terms of just writing the main difference (other than bolds and italics) are in quotation marks. It’s not a big deal, and actually as I’m thinking about it, there are some good reasons to keep things in markdown, but the thought lingers.

One thing that would be generally nice is if any of you out there in geekland know where I might learn to write a script (either in ruby/python/perl/etc or in bash with sed) that can string together a series of standard find and replaces? It shouldn’t be that hard, but I’m that much of a beginner.

Anyway. That’s what’s I’m thinking about. Also, I did like 10 subversion commits this morning, which is way more than I’d done in a long time. I’m going to get going. Thanks for reading. More coming later.

I’m trying out a new Monospaced font called “Droid Mono” which is Apache liscenced (yay!) and pretty nifty. It was designed for the googlephone, Android, which I fear may be a flop (it puts too much authority/freedom in the hands of the cellphone makers, who I’m convinced are truly evil). But the existence of a really good monospaced font makes me happy.

I know this is supposed to be a knitting blog. My sweater is now about 17" long. In the end It’ll be a 30 inch jacket, so I haven’t even started the arm holes. I ran out of my first skein of the lighter color last night and have decided to switch over to some sleeve knitting, but I’m well into the second skein of dark. I suspect that I’ll need to order more dark yarn to finish this project.

This puts me in a yarn buying mood, which is odd because I work in an awesome yarn store, but the yarn company in question wont sell wholesale, and the price is pretty good. My mom wants this yarn to make a shawl, and I think I’ll probably get a couple of colors for another sweater because there’s a bulk discount.

Initially I had thought that this was odd yarn and was somewhat disappointed by it, but as I’ve knit more I’m pretty pleased with it. No signs of pilling quite lofty, and finer than shetland so it doesn’t look as blocky. I mean I still really like shetland, but, it’s nice.

I have class today but there isn’t anything due, so it’s pretty low stress, I also have chores to do, and I need new ipod headphones, so we’ll see how that works out. (For the record, I’ve been saying ip-od in my head rather than i-pod.)

Anyway, I fear this madness has gone on long enough, I’ll be back later, I trust.

…mostly that I don’t do it enough.

I’m about 20 pages from the end on Samuel Delany’s Babel-17 novel, and I have to confess that I don’t entirely get it, but I’m enjoying it quite throughly. I’m also, thankfully not worried about groking it in its fullest. This is a book that I expect to reread a number of times, and a book that I think will add an interesting dimension to a class discussion about linguistic relativism, so I suspect I’ll get plenty of chances to revisit this text.

Despite my failure to grok the book entirely it’s been a good learning experience. Delany is a great writer. Really great. At the same time, this is a pretty structurally straightforward book, and there isn’t literary experimentalism to get in the way of the plot or the characters, and that’s the way I like it. That’s what I like so much about science fiction.

Anyway, I really like reading, and particularly at times like this, where I’m sort of scattered brained and dealing with a lot of demands on my time and energy reading fiction can be really good for getting focus and inspiration back, when the getting seems hard. It’s a shame, then, that I don’t read nearly as much as I might like to. It always seems like the internet or knitting or writing or spinning or academic work gets in the way, but that’s foolish. Really foolish.

After I finish this Delany, I have a Tiptree to read, but it might be time to read a more recent Melissa Scott book. We shall see what I grab for.

I’m so going to write a post about how piss-poor the databases for scholarly articles are when I have time. They need to hire a web 2.0 developer, for real, because whatever their using (some arcane home grown perl system no doubt) blows. And there’s no reason that they couldn’t offer desktop clients, which for this kind of service makes a hell of a lot of sense. It’s an interesting development question, because their business model is so different from every other web service. Coming soon!

I have to go to class soon (and take a test! on speech production and language learning, but I’m feeling pretty good about it) and then work in the yarn store which is going swimmingly. Spinning group tonight, but I’m not going to have a wheel there. Interestingly I have a hard time working on my own projects when I’m there, and I come home and I’m not incredibly interested in knitting or doing much spinning. The end result is that I haven’t been working on my own projects very much, but I seem (somehow) to be getting lots of things done, so there’s nothing really to complain about.

Onward and Upward!

I did a networking email exchange this morning. Woot, being productive. I also asked a professor for a letter of recomendation. I realize that I was expecting one of my letters to come from a former former advisor that hadn’t had me in class in a long time, and wasn’t really connected to the work I was interested in doing these days. The new letter writer is much more connected with what I’ve done recently (they had me in two classes last semester) and I think we have a pretty good rapport.

I’ve also filled out the form and written the check to get transcripts for this application cycle.

I did some reading and some other stuff, but have generally feel pretty unproductive.

Oh wait, I did get some minor edits done on two chapters of the novel. This leaves three more chapters to do. I’m going to go over the ending to see if I can frame it a little more clearly, but I don’t think I’m going to change it much, between this and the next draft, because all the responses have been pretty spot-on, even if people say “wait a second.” So I’m going to give it time, and I think after it hits the second round of readers, it’ll be good enough to start sending out to editors/publishers.

One thing that I need to do, is to work on notes and what all of our 6th grade english teachers called “pre-writing.” I’m pretty good at being productive, as long as I’ve spent even the merest amounts of time thinking through things first. I just need to spend some time with the moleskine.

I’ve also been spinning a bunch. I’ve done about 4 of a total 6 oz of some tencel-merino in something approaching jumper weight. I swear to you, if I spun a pound of this, I’d have a sweater. Interestingly this is my entire fiber stash. Which is appropriate because I’m just using my mother’s wheel until sell some more spinning related things and can afford a wheel of my own again. I like spinning and think that I need to figure out how to work this into my routine.

In terms of knitting, I’ve done about 3-3.5 inches on my sweater, and I think I’m going to go back to sleeve knitting after I knit another 3-3.5 inches while I figure out how far I want to set in the shoulders. After a bunch of meandering about, I still have no clue what my next project is going to be.

Anyway. Cheers!

Another response from a potential advisor person. Not amazing like the last one, but good and encouraging.

I must admit that I had thought until I saw the email (along with the attached in press articles/chapters), that this professor/lab was a bit of a stretch for me. It’s also kind of perfect, which is a pleasant surprise.

More later.

680 verbal 490 quant

Note: For H.’s benefit: one of my passages today mentioned Paula Gunn Allen. No lie!

Also, as a note to myself, I have to pay 15 bucks to send the scores to a certain northeastern former research powerhouse.

last time I got:

580 verbal 460 quant 6.0 writing

(I think).

Scores range from 200 to 400; except for the writing which is on a scale of something to 6.0 (6.0 writing scores account for 5% of the sample.) The percentiles are skewed against folk like me on the quant, because (likely) more engineering students take the GRE than english majors. So the quant section is comparatively harder, and equivalent scale scores (so I think 500 verbal is a 50th Percentile, and 500 quant is a 30th percentile.) FYI.

This isn’t astoundingly wonderful, but it might not be incredibly bad either. It might be good enough, which in these things is all that matters. It’s probably not worth worrying about overly much.

I don’t think it’s worth it to take it again, given that I couldn’t take it again soon enough to really matter this time around, and I don’t think that getting a higher quant score would help anything in a theoretical 3rd cycle (which probably wouldn’t be next year, but rather 2-3 years hence.)

Sigh. I’m officially going to take the rest of the day off, there will be knitting, spinning, reading, perhaps writing, and some definite television watching.

… but it’s all intentional.

I’m taking the GRE today, so my week is intentionally getting off to a false start. I’m not, and haven’t been, writing a whole lot, and I’m trying to slip into the right mindset. My scores have had a practice-test range of about 150 points, all of them better than what I got a year ago. Here’s hoping for the best, I think I know what to do to make this work, but a little luck never hurt anyone. This afternoon, I’ll be ready for putting more things on my plate.

I’ve been spinning again (on my mother’s wheel; I’m still trying to sell the two of mine that I have remaining so that I can get a wheel of my own.) And I’m really pleased with the product. It’s about sport weight or so. It’s going pretty quick now that I have the hang of it, and the yarn is going to be pretty swell to knit with. It should be enough to knit socks with, but I’m not sure that I will, I think not having plans about your hand-spun (so long as you spin enough to at least theoretically make something with it,) is one of the key’s to success.

Knitting also continues apace. My sock projects, which are supposed to be fun little things that don’t require much thought and always work out, aren’t working out the way I’d want them to. And I figured out a key part of the sweater design which I’d been avoiding heretofore. I’d say I have about 15 inches left to go before the shoulder saddle starts, but a bit less than 5 until the armhole starts, and I’m thinking that I’m about half way there, length wise.

It’s something. I’ll post here this afternoon when I have an idea about my scores, and things seem to settle down.

Here’s a mostly accurate conversation I had with a friend the other day. Once the secret is out, I’ll tell you more about the actors, and it might make sense, but for now, lets just go with it.

Jon’s someone I’ve known since high school, and though, as you might have guessed, we’ve bounced around the country a fair bit, and changed a lot, we’re still right there.

jon: I promised him I’d keep this between us for right now tycho: whatever, I’m practically you jon: true that: a much more together version of me… and cuter tycho: psh… I mean, __________ is cuter than you, but whatever jon: hahahaha. at least you’re honest tycho: I think dating cuter people is ok, I’m ok with that jon: yeah, I’m fine with ______ being cuter than me too.

conversation proceeds

tycho develops a nickname for ______, a mutual friend: I’m so calling him that henceforth jon: CENSORED tycho: whatever, whatever jon: I promised! tycho: I think you need to say to ______ something like “so, I have this brother that knows me too well, but he’s trustworthy,” because we’re basically family, duder. jon: I know

pause

jon: my mom told me that she’s always wanted a jewish son, when I told her that you and I were brothers, basically… tycho: oh dear…. funny though.

Like most conversations this one doesn’t have some larger purpose, and sort of meanders around. But that’s the joy of conversations, right? I’ve also done some artistic touching up to make it flow a little better with the missing parts, but otherwise it’s pretty spot on.

I’ll post some more coherent thoughts a little later.

I twittered something about how Ellen DeGeneres filmed her show despite the fact that the WGA is on strike, after only canceling one taping. I ended this twitter with the phrase “bad queer.”

A little background:

My second semester in college I took a class on race and sexuality that some of you might remember quite well. Anyway, it was an english/women’s studies class and we met in a class room in the geology building. This lead to far too many jokes about rock throwing, but at some point the prof talked about a class that she took it grad school called “bad queers” that was a night class that met in some distant corner of campus on the top floor of a building that was otherwise unused. It was funny, or at least funnier than what we were studying at the time.

The idea of a class about “bad queers” was interesting, so it was an ongoing joke between some of us, in part because we never got a good explanation of what the class would actually be about, or more importantly what could you spend an entire semester talking about on the subject.

I always took the opinion that it was to be a class about false (queer) consciousness, but I’m not sure that was everyone’s opinion, nor do I know that that’s accurate. I think roommate H.¹ took the side that the class was more narrowly about the element of the queer community that makes the conservative argument that queer people are just the same as straight people save homosexuality, this argues against diversity, and for greater social strictures, and that was appropriately enough, to our minds “bad.”

Anyway, I bring this up, only because I was writing a paper this weekend about sexuality and aging for my adulthood and aging class that I’m taking now (more on that in another post, possibly) and I found myself putting a small rant about a certain fairly well known “bad queer” (in the second, narrower sense.) And while I’m not sure that it’s completely crucial to my argument, and thus is now a footnote, it sort of felt good.

But I suppose more importantly, it’s a fun exercise, if not entirely productive. Thoughts on bad queers, anyone?