point5b

"Fanwank" is a term to explain creative (and sometimes dubious) justifications or explanations fans come up with for inconsistencies in SF/F settings in the name of the beloved willing suspension of disbelief. It's not necessary to do, but it's sometimes fun.

"Antifanwank" is a term that has very few hits on Google, but has the intuitive opposite meaning - people falling over themselves to offer (sometimes dubious) arguments as to how something just can't work in a setting.

I bring this up because I liked Firefly (and Serenity more then I expected), and over on RPG.net, the matter of just how awful a single-system 'Verse with no FTL is has come up once again. While there're've been some intelligent critics of this impulse, there's still far too many flat denunciations of the concept by people with no standing to make such astronomical proclamations. Ah, well.

Personally, I find it more fun to play at making sense of something I enjoy than to fret about its impossibility. The Serenity flies at 1.0 * Speed_plot, and how they eat and breathe (and other science facts) only really matters when it does. If you don't like it, lump it. :)

Now, on the plus side, I did come across this lovely-looking "Official" map of the Verse. It's much like I reasoned after I thought about the opening Serenity monologue - it's a multi-star system. Throw in terraforming, modest constant-acceleration drives, and Bob is, indeed, your uncle who will let you run around in the Firefly setting... (OK, I just did a horrible thing to that poor metaphor.)

Anyone happen to have that map and have an opinion on how nice a poster it is? I might just pick that up...

I'm still recovering from a bad chest cold I got last week. I feel mostly OK now, aside from the interminable coughing; at least my chest and throat are no longer sore from coughing.

In sad (but not unexpected) news, my mother had to put her very elderly dog Muffin to sleep. We'd had Muffin, a schnauzer-terrier mix, in the family since before I went to college. In one of my happiest memories of the time, I woke up from a nap on the couch to find a little puppy deposited on my chest.

16 years later, she was still astonishingly active, but she'd gotten cancer that hadn't responded to treatment. Mom and her boyfriend had gotten her one surgery, but it was horribly rough on her. So, when it came back, they let her be comfortable until she wasn't, anymore. So, it was something we were all waiting for

I'd always sort of imagined that Muffin would die suddenly during the paroxysms of yipping joy she gave when someone she knew came to the door. She'd actually calmed down in the last few years, though, I could still tell she was happy to see me when I saw her last, the weekend before last. I'm glad I got to see her, then.

Here's what she looked from a handy snap-shot from a few Septembers back:



And taken at the same time, here her was more flash-adverse companion, a largish Yorkie named Gizmo. I'm afraid that I didn't mention his passing some months time back. His personality sadly changed when he got very old and his senses failed, but for most of his life, he was an equally sweet, friendly, and playful dog:



This would be a less warm post, but even when I first got the news about Muffin, I knew she'd lived a long and happy life. Both of them were good and well-loved dogs.

While looking for an old graphic posted in an issue of Wired in the mid-90s, I stumbled upon this page. I invite you to look and to gander, blink, and marvel. Then look at something current on it, say, this.

On one hand, the first is horrible. It's the sort of eye-straining design that's bad in print and worse on the web...but that horrible mash of colors triggers a surge of nostalgia and memory and thoughts. I refuse to call that good design or art, but damn, it had personality, and it surely left a mark in my brain.

On the other hand, the second is dull and over-cluttered...but almost cool, creamy balm after looking at the other too long (ie, any duration). But it's pedestrian. Corporate. Dry. Right, inner frosh geek of the past?

Oh, huh. My inner 18-year-old took a moment to oooh at the design and ask when Wired stopped hurting peoples' eyes. Now he's going on about a Newton that plays music and asking about whether it's using DAT tapes or some high-capacity mini-CD format. What is Twitter, who is JJ Abrams and why it's worth mentioning that he's guest-editor for an issue? What's a blog? iPhone? Netbook? ...Oh, crud, he's figured out how to open tabs. And now he's giddy about my DSL speed.

...Yeah, he's gonna be there awhile.

OK, I guess the future remains cool. Moving on!

Man, as I said in a thread on RPGnet, I do lurk far more than I post in most venues - even my own.

( But when I post, it turns out to have a paragraph-long footnote, so here's a cut. )

A coworker of my aunt has some kittens needing adoption, so I'm going to pick up one later this week, when I can arrange it around the major days, nights, and weekends craziness that's been work the last week and a half.

It's been a very long week, and I'm still in the office. So, some unrelated pokes at the world.

1) MoCo Loco, show me a home design that isn't meant to fit within in a packing container, be (supposedly) terribly eco-friendly and use few resources in construction, and yet somehow cost four times the price of my own home.

2) William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, please follow the example of Def Jam's farewell to "def" and give a long-overdue public funeral to the suffix "-punk". (No offense, Doc Blue. ;) )

3) Search Engine Optimization, pare yourself down to the 2-3% useful information you contain and shed the idiocy and outdated lore than convinces gullible people that if they engage in enough page-design voodoo, their tiny company's site can be the #1 Google result for every common English noun related to their business.

4) United States Postal Service, I know junk mail is the thing keeping you afloat (even more so than the first class mail monopoly), but when I got my mail yesterday...damn. Damn!

5) Blue laws - just die. (They're hardly a major strike against liberty, but it's annoying when you're not working exactly 9-to-5 and go to pick up some beer...and because it's 20 minutes past midnight, they can't legally sell you any, lest you go on a Fat Tire-fueled rampage on the two-block drive home.)

I don't drink much. I've liked some dessert wines, Irish creams, ouzo, ciders, and kinda liked a few no-name beers I've tried.

I am interested in expanding my palate, though; any recommendations, if you please? :)

Oof. I'd been fighting off a sore throat for the last couple of days, then started coughing my head off this evening. Being easy on the cough drops, since it's not a dry cough.

It's that time of year; I knew something had to get me.

Made me think of



Just less orange and more pingu.

But when they're lovingly crafted, custom-rendered bits of machinima using World of Warcraft models to make an action-packed story, I kinda have to share:


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.


(I recommend clicking through to the Vimeo page to see it in full HD; it's worth it.)

...Or continued Hanukkah, or Solstice, Saturnalia, or Yule. :)

I've had a nasty few days leading up to today, but this afternoon and evening with family has made up for a lot of it.

I read Slashfood, which has a lot of ads aimed towards and comments from the crazier ends of food ideology. I don't bother reading the comments, and ignore most of the ads.

However, I struck by one that started "Control Diabetes the Natural Way..."

Isn't the natural way to handle that known as, er, dying?

That is all; don't feel terribly verbose, but that's no fault of the pleasant holiday I've had. :)

After a long day at work, draining 10-mph drive home through holiday traffic, grocery shopping around the corner, and taking care of various things around the house, I boot the box. I check web-comics, and I hit this.

There's a little joke here, but it's a gentle one. The rest of it hits the sentiment-putz part of my brain, and I both smile and get watery-eyed.

The guy who made the donation and got the comic said of his cat, "He was fuzzy and good."

They are, aren't they?

I didn't vote; Texas is not what they call a "swing state", and I've voted too many times for Libertarians to have any interest left in symbolic voting. (Not interested in arguing about how only a sociopath wouldn't stand in line for a one-in-a-googol chance to change the electoral votes of a safe state, why I didn't want vote for Barr, etc.)

I'm guardedly glad about the result, though, and good on y'all voters in the states that were in play.

...And that sentiment goes to the woman who rear-ended my car, then took the opportunity to make an illegal U-turn and zip off while I was looking for somewhere to pull over.

Last night's post was about last night. This is about my cat.

Sasha was a sweet, if utterly spoiled black cat. (I think I took a picture of her once, but I'd thought to take others after getting home...) She was elderly - and when I got her, quite fat - and not inclined towards jumping much. Even a jump of a few feet required buildup and focus, and she never hopped up on my desk or on counters. Often, she liked to curl up at my feet.

She did like to explore floor-level cabinets, and I'd often hear the rattle of her coming in and out of the ones in the kitchen or downstairs bathroom. If I opened a closet, she would quickly trot up to explore it. She only played with dangling toys that she could bat at; a laser's Evil Red Dot or anything rolled by her just got a curious look, followed by what I rather imagined to be a questioning look back at me.

Sasha loved attention - in fact, she demanded it, as anyone would know who heard her on Skype before I'd pull her into my lap or told her to hop on the seat beside me. She only slept with me when I was sick in bed (when she'd never leave my side), but if she heard me move in bed after waking up, she'd find me and demand petting and belly-rubs. She'd do the same while I tried to get to sleep at night. If I stretched out on the couch, she'd hop up to curl up beside or on top of me.

If I didn't give her as much attention as she wanted, as occasionally happened, she'd let out an annoyed mowww and stalk off to the other floor. Ten minutes later, she'd usually return to curl up with me.

She was very overweight at first, so I slimmed her down by care with her feeding, but aside from a couple of attacks on the garbage that earned her squirt-gunnings, she adapted well. Even days on I'd come home and find her food bowl empty, she'd ignore the newly-poured food until I'd cuddled her for several minutes and she was purring at loud volume.

Sasha never tried to leave my house. I found I could leave the front door open while I brought in groceries, and I'd only have to worry about her getting underfoot by the kitchen. It was only in the last few months that she'd even come up to the front glass door to peer outside if I went out. Windows were another matter entirely; she liked to look out of them, especially the backyard and into neighbor's yards from the back upstairs window.