Yes, welcome to bad pun central.
A series of dreams about societies have prompted me to wish to write a collection of short stories, each featuring one of the societies I have dreamed up. So far there are three, and each can have quite a different story to it. You've already seen one of my dreams. I feel with careful planning and proper words, I can turn these odd societies into a lovely or Hellish image depending on the situation.
Step 1: Setting
I have the setting for what I wish to do, or at least parts of it. There are a solid three good societies that can be used.
Step 2: Storyline
This is the step that I am at as of now. Unfortunately none of the dreams really gave me a clear viewing of plot; just a great view at the landscape. For two of the societies I have a pretty decent idea as to what the stories shall be, however for the last and in my opinion the coolest I haven't the slightest clue as there are so many variables that come with that landscape.
Step 3: Editing
Later on down the road I will ask for people to proofread my piece, so anyone who enjoys being an editor, now/later is your chance!
Step 4: Publishing
A very neat side feature that has come from the entire eBook market is the concept of self-publishing your work. Same concept as publishing an "app" to the App Store, you create something, people go over it, they sell it. This I hope will inspire writers from all over to publish works, also it serves for a great entryway for the author into stardom. Amazon's Kindle Store lets you do this with ease. I have found places for the iBookstore publishing, however most wish to charge you to submit it to Apple's store. Hopefully once I am done there will be some easy way in there, same for the Nook's store.
Step 5: PROFIT
The nice return for the joy of writing.
Anyway, my back is killing me from work and need a massage. Time to go rest/plan a story!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Word Order
Word order can make all of the difference. Typically, unless holding one in suspense, you will go from most important to least important. Another way could be giving some details too, but when people say something they always go for the first thing on their mind and then branch off of that. And this is just how I ended up with sun poisoning, albeit, it was my own fault.
On Saturday I was invited to a friend's house to hang out and maybe go swimming. I took the "maybe go swimming" as we might just go down for a little bit, not 3-4 hours in the middle of the day. Then of course I didn't have sunblock on and well got badly burned, again my fault.
My point is this though, at least for me, I feel the most important of matters should be put out first and then you go from there in whatever it is you do.
On Saturday I was invited to a friend's house to hang out and maybe go swimming. I took the "maybe go swimming" as we might just go down for a little bit, not 3-4 hours in the middle of the day. Then of course I didn't have sunblock on and well got badly burned, again my fault.
My point is this though, at least for me, I feel the most important of matters should be put out first and then you go from there in whatever it is you do.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Electronic Communication
Does anyone remember the days of AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo! Messenger? How about ICQ? It seems almost as if today everyone has forgotten those in favor of a rather primitive (if only the chat feature is looked at) version of the once dominant instant messengers?
That's right, I am talking about Facebook Chat. Facebook Chat reminds me a lot about the early days of IM where everyone would be having some issue, back when I was on BigBlueBall.com. However now it seems the only problems you hear about are from Facebook, and really the only problems you experience are on Facebook's Chat. Recently(ish) they have switched over to an XMPP protocol for their chat which improved the experience seven-fold. XMPP is also known as Jabber which Google Talk uses, for those of you who have seen it in Gmail.
Why care about Facebook Chat? Quite simply: People see that as the only instant messenger now. I can not remember the last time I had a conversation on AIM or MSN. It is a shame really as I prefer client based instant messengers, not web based. I like that notification on my desktop and not having to always have that browser window open.
AIM solved this for me as in their latest stuff, as I have probably said before now lets you connect to Facebook Chat. You can also do this with Pidgin, Trillian, and Digsby, although I have had less of a success rate with those.
But is it just me or do you miss the days of AIM/MSN/Y! and desktop IMing?
That's right, I am talking about Facebook Chat. Facebook Chat reminds me a lot about the early days of IM where everyone would be having some issue, back when I was on BigBlueBall.com. However now it seems the only problems you hear about are from Facebook, and really the only problems you experience are on Facebook's Chat. Recently(ish) they have switched over to an XMPP protocol for their chat which improved the experience seven-fold. XMPP is also known as Jabber which Google Talk uses, for those of you who have seen it in Gmail.
Why care about Facebook Chat? Quite simply: People see that as the only instant messenger now. I can not remember the last time I had a conversation on AIM or MSN. It is a shame really as I prefer client based instant messengers, not web based. I like that notification on my desktop and not having to always have that browser window open.
AIM solved this for me as in their latest stuff, as I have probably said before now lets you connect to Facebook Chat. You can also do this with Pidgin, Trillian, and Digsby, although I have had less of a success rate with those.
But is it just me or do you miss the days of AIM/MSN/Y! and desktop IMing?
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The 24 Hour Clock
Why do we not use this? I recently switched my blog to display times on a 24 hour clock as it is just what makes sense.
If someone tells you they want to meet you at "8", typically you will have to ask "AM or PM?" Not on my watch (get it?), they just say "20:00" and you instantly know that it is during the night, unless you are not familiar with the 24 hour clock and you have to subtract "12" to find out what time this is. But seriously why do we not use this?
One reason is that in original "clocks" or simple ways to mark times, Egyptians divided the day into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Thus you would be counting up to 12 twice a day. However the only reason they used 12 is because of this:
There are other theories as well as to why it was simply 12 hours, but at either rate it was 12 hours. In an ancient world it makes sense to know that if it is light there are only up to 12 hours left and that if it is dark the same as before.
But wait a minute! Are we not in a modern world? Why I think we are. This is why we should use a 24-hour clock, people are up at all different times with the invention of lights, computers, tv, etc which keep us up way past when we probably should be up, then have us sleep way past when we should get up. With our technological advances, there is no reason to just count "12 hours of night" or "12 hours of daylight."
Then of course you could wonder why we don't just switch to base 10 time if the world basically runs on a metric system except for the US. Well quite simply it would be a huge change to everyone as you would have to learn brand new units, every clock would have to get replaced, etc. However, a simple switch to a 24 hour clock would be much easier as we already have compatible clocks and it uses a system already in practice.
What is stopping you now? Go out and learn it! Start off by switching your computer's clock to a 24 hour format, you will learn it in no time.
If someone tells you they want to meet you at "8", typically you will have to ask "AM or PM?" Not on my watch (get it?), they just say "20:00" and you instantly know that it is during the night, unless you are not familiar with the 24 hour clock and you have to subtract "12" to find out what time this is. But seriously why do we not use this?
One reason is that in original "clocks" or simple ways to mark times, Egyptians divided the day into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Thus you would be counting up to 12 twice a day. However the only reason they used 12 is because of this:
The Eqyptians were fond of counting in base twelve (instead of base 10 which is commonly used today). This is thought to be because they counted finger joints instead of fingers. Each of your fingers has three joints, so if you count by pointing to finger joints with your thumb you can count to twelve on each hand. This might seem arbitrary, but is actually just a strange as counting in base ten simply because we have ten digits. -- Source
There are other theories as well as to why it was simply 12 hours, but at either rate it was 12 hours. In an ancient world it makes sense to know that if it is light there are only up to 12 hours left and that if it is dark the same as before.
But wait a minute! Are we not in a modern world? Why I think we are. This is why we should use a 24-hour clock, people are up at all different times with the invention of lights, computers, tv, etc which keep us up way past when we probably should be up, then have us sleep way past when we should get up. With our technological advances, there is no reason to just count "12 hours of night" or "12 hours of daylight."
Then of course you could wonder why we don't just switch to base 10 time if the world basically runs on a metric system except for the US. Well quite simply it would be a huge change to everyone as you would have to learn brand new units, every clock would have to get replaced, etc. However, a simple switch to a 24 hour clock would be much easier as we already have compatible clocks and it uses a system already in practice.
What is stopping you now? Go out and learn it! Start off by switching your computer's clock to a 24 hour format, you will learn it in no time.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Learn How To Run A Business
While working at McDonald's, I got an idea to write about the wonderful "peace" you go into after about an hour or two of working where you can just quickly take orders, get it all right, and it is a nice relaxing bit. If you have seen in Futurama where Fry drinks 100 cups of coffee then finally gets to this golden zone, that is what I am talking about.
However
Not long after this "golden zone" came did it go. We have a manager that slipped and fell and injured his arm in the freezer about 3 weeks to a month ago. Every day I am working with him he complains and complains about how he can only work with one arm and how everyone else is doing sub par work. In doing this a guy who was just trying to cover his stations ends up getting blamed for not doing his job, and at first he shrugs it off and takes the warning that he didn't deserve. Then he kept getting blamed and they got mad.
Manager and him both go back and forth using strong curse words, and then that gets everyone else rallied up. I however am in the front, only maybe 5 feet from where they are shouting this and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the customers who were subjected to this.
Also, the family friends of the manager who work there were allowed to slack off, use cell phones, etc. All the while I finally found out why the manager is so bitter. He used to work at another McDonald's nearby which according to him was so much better than this one, never getting a rating under 99/100.
Look, I'm not used to the working world so if this really is what it is like everywhere well then as they would say "fuck me." I'm going to go to the "good" manager and bring this issue up with her as that really is not the kind of environment I want to be in, nor associated with. We'll see how the issue goes once I bring it up.
However
Not long after this "golden zone" came did it go. We have a manager that slipped and fell and injured his arm in the freezer about 3 weeks to a month ago. Every day I am working with him he complains and complains about how he can only work with one arm and how everyone else is doing sub par work. In doing this a guy who was just trying to cover his stations ends up getting blamed for not doing his job, and at first he shrugs it off and takes the warning that he didn't deserve. Then he kept getting blamed and they got mad.
Manager and him both go back and forth using strong curse words, and then that gets everyone else rallied up. I however am in the front, only maybe 5 feet from where they are shouting this and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the customers who were subjected to this.
Also, the family friends of the manager who work there were allowed to slack off, use cell phones, etc. All the while I finally found out why the manager is so bitter. He used to work at another McDonald's nearby which according to him was so much better than this one, never getting a rating under 99/100.
Look, I'm not used to the working world so if this really is what it is like everywhere well then as they would say "fuck me." I'm going to go to the "good" manager and bring this issue up with her as that really is not the kind of environment I want to be in, nor associated with. We'll see how the issue goes once I bring it up.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Twitter: The Social Resource
My experiences with Twitter since beginning the blog have been very interesting. I have gotten more and more followers on Twitter simply based on what I have in my blog. Some might think that this is just, "Well you said 'iPhone' in the blog title so a small tech blog will follow you."
For some of my followers it is that, however today I got a notification that The Yosemite Blog was following me. This was interesting as I never posted anything about Yosemite in my blog titles, however I did talk about the place in my posts. And what does this mean? People are actually reading my blog.
Twitter is a semi-decent tool to measure this with. If people reply, retweet, or follow you then you know someone is actually paying attention, assuming that it isn't one of the Twitter spam accounts. What you get with Twitter isn't the typical "You got x number from US, y from Canada, most visited page was z," no, what you get content specific highlighting.
Content specific highlighting is a great way to get the opinion of what people enjoy based on what key words you can grab from their Twitter account and the connections you can make to your own blog, site, service, etc. I had always thought of Twitter as simply s social network, but it could even be a greater resource then one at first thought.
Just another neat way to figure out what the hits and misses are.
For some of my followers it is that, however today I got a notification that The Yosemite Blog was following me. This was interesting as I never posted anything about Yosemite in my blog titles, however I did talk about the place in my posts. And what does this mean? People are actually reading my blog.
Twitter is a semi-decent tool to measure this with. If people reply, retweet, or follow you then you know someone is actually paying attention, assuming that it isn't one of the Twitter spam accounts. What you get with Twitter isn't the typical "You got x number from US, y from Canada, most visited page was z," no, what you get content specific highlighting.
Content specific highlighting is a great way to get the opinion of what people enjoy based on what key words you can grab from their Twitter account and the connections you can make to your own blog, site, service, etc. I had always thought of Twitter as simply s social network, but it could even be a greater resource then one at first thought.
Just another neat way to figure out what the hits and misses are.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Updates
I'll be messing with the design of the blog for a while, so if you notice the difference and it doesn't seem "done," just know I am working on stuff. This won't be posted to Facebook or Twitter.
EDIT:
Blogger's tool is somewhat restricting, so when I feel better I'll seriously dive into it. Until then, you have the current layout, which is better than a lot of the newer ones in my opinion.
EDIT:
Blogger's tool is somewhat restricting, so when I feel better I'll seriously dive into it. Until then, you have the current layout, which is better than a lot of the newer ones in my opinion.
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