A quick note
Posted on | April 23, 2012 | No Comments
I know it’s been a bit quiet here the last few days. Lots going on keeping me busy–and away from the computer. That said, I just wanted to drop in and say hello and give a preview of some of the upcoming posts this week:
- Tomorrow will be my next installment of my Going Paperless series of tips. The first three have been process-based. Tomorrow’s is a downright practical tip that has helped me out quite a bit.
- In one week, my Vacation in the Golden Age returns with Episode 37, covering the July 1942 Astounding.
- I’ll also have posts this week on my kind of science fiction, as well as a post on my thoughts on timelines.
I’ve been working my way through In Memory Yet Green in an effort to finish that book, and it’s companion volume, In Joy Still Felt by the end of the month. In May, much of the reading I’ll be doing will be for some upcoming book review columns and my Vacation posts so I’ve really wanted to get through these books. I’ve missed them.
So I have not fallen off the face of the earth (in case you were wondering). And you can expect things to return to normal here no later than tomorrow.
A beautiful day for baseball
Posted on | April 22, 2012 | 1 Comment
Yesterday turned out to be quite a remarkable day for baseball.
Early yesterday morning, the Little Man and I walked to our neighborhood Target to pick up some whiffle balls and a bat–his first–so that we could play with them later on that morning. The entire family hauled our way out to Bull Run Park for an event there in support of fallen fire fighters. The Little Man got to see all kinds of fire trucks and we even watched a helicopter take off. He wore a white t-shirt with a fire truck on it and there wasn’t a fire fighter that we passed that didn’t compliment him on his shirt. I got to spend time with the Little Miss, dancing around the field with her as the band played music. The Little Man didn’t seem too interested in baseball, what with everything else going on, but he swung the bat a few times before losing interest. We all had a blast and we all managed to get minor sunburns.
Later that afternoon, I turned on the Yankee game to find the Yanks down 9-0 against Boston in the 4th inning. Given the history of those two teams, I couldn’t imagine the Yankees coming back from that. Of course, that was superseded by the fact that Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox was on the verge of pitching a perfect game. The whole family watched the bottom of the 9th inning and I, at least, could not sit down. When Humber went 3-0 against the first batter of the inning my heart was in my throat. But he managed to come back and strike him out! Next out was a pop fly. Finally, the 27th batter struck out but the ball got away from the catcher. The catcher made the throw to first, recording the final out–and Humber had his perfect game! The 21st in the history of baseball. I was ecstatic. It doesn’t matter what team a pitcher plays for; when they throw a perfect game, it is a momentous occasion for anyone who is a baseball fan. And this was the first one I’d ever seen happen in real time.
Once I turned back to the Yankee game, I saw that the score was now 9-5, thanks to a grand slam. Another 3-run shot made it 9-8. What happened next was an implosion the likes of which I have not seen in a long, long time. The Yankees had 2 consecutive 7-run innings in which they batted around both times scoring a total of 14 runs and they ended up beating the Red Sox 15-9. Just remarkable.
I cannot remember the last time the Yankees were in first place and the Red Sox were in last place but as of this morning, that’s how things stand.
It was, indeed, a beautiful day for baseball.
Using words
Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 3 Comments
I take some occasional heat from friends, family and coworkers for my vocabulary. There are, it seems, times when I use a word that those around me are unfamiliar with. I am asked what the word means, and give the definition to the best of my ability and then try to move on. It is not always that easy. Sometimes, I am accused (mostly by close friends or family) of using a “fancy” word when another more common word would have suited. This is not at all my intention and I generally have two responses to this:
- I try to use words that precisely convey my meaning. Often times the word I chooses means exactly what I say, whereas substituting a simpler word subtracts from the meaning.
- What is the point of learning all of those SAT words if not to put them to practical use.
I sometimes get the feeling that people think I am joking when I make that remark about the SATs, but I am not. I try to put to some practical use everything I have learned. Else, what’s the point in learning it in the first place? There has to be more to learning than just grades and degrees.
This is on my mind today because I had the need to make use of the word “holographic” in its pre-modern sense this morning and hesitated to do so, thinking of the grief that people give me. A coworker had sent me an email which contained a scanned-in article upon which he’d made some handwritten comments. In forwarding the article to my boss and grandboss, I asked them to take particular note of the “holographic comments” in the article. Most people today are probably familiar with the term holographic as a trope of science fiction. But it has an even older definition that means “of or being a document written wholly in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears.” Clearly the term “holographic” in this sense is a much more succinct description than a phrase such as “so-and-so’s handwritten comments.”
Charming Asimovian modesty
Posted on | April 19, 2012 | No Comments
Isaac Asimov was known as a bit of an egoist1 but this was something that he openly acknowledged. He called these “charming Asimovian immodesties” and later referred to his attitude as “cheerful self-appreciation.” However, once in a while, he could come across as brilliantly modest. For instance, this quote from him which I read a few days back. I think it is especially applicable today, when the Internet acts as a gigantic megaphone-without-filters and we see follies magnified all around us, from those within and without the spotlight.
It is always a little difficult for me to laugh freely at the follies of mankind. If I look closely enough, I find that I share them all.
Would that we could all take this attitude from time-to-time before making dumb decisions.
- That is a bit of understatement. ↩
Space shuttle serendipity
Posted on | April 17, 2012 | 2 Comments
I was out for my 10am walk as usual. Walking up Joyce Street, just south of 395 and the Pentagon, I looked up and saw the space shuttle Discovery taking a piggyback ride on 747. That’s when I remembered why there was so much traffic heading into the District this morning. I didn’t take a picture, but when I rounded the corner onto Army Navy Drive, it came around again, and I snapped two quick photos. This is the better one, zoomed in as much as I could manage. (The first flyby was much closer than this second one.)
Click to enlarge
That blur at about 11 o’clock above the shuttle is a military fighter escort.
What was remarkable was that traffic on 395 had stopped. People had pulled over and gotten out of their cars to watch and take pictures. I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.
Going paperless: securing your digital file cabinet
Posted on | April 17, 2012 | 3 Comments
When I started writing about my experience going paperless more than a year ago, I was frequently asked about my concerns for the safety of my paperless data. After all, much of that data is stored in the cloud, on servers over which I have no control. The questions fell into 2 general categories:
- Are you concerned that your data might be compromised?
- What if Evernote (or whatever cloud service you might be using) suddenly went away?
I’ve always followed some best practices for my online activity, such as using strong passwords, SSL (encrypted) connection, virus-scanning, a good spam filter, etc., but nothing is foolproof. That said, I developed some habits and practices that allow me to balance risk and reward to my own satisfaction. Here are some tips for protecting your digital file cabinet.
Ingredients
- Tools of the trade
- A good paperless process
- A “local” notebook in Evernote (I call mine “Local filing cabinet”)
Creating a “local” digital filing cabinet
If I have sensitive data that I don’t want in the cloud, I keep it in a local notebook in Evernote. (I don’t have very much of this type of data, so that helps make this process easy for me.) Local notebooks are not stored on Evernote’s servers. They exist only on the machine on which they are created. Once you create a local notebook, you cannot switch it to a synced notebook. That said, premium users of Evernote still get the advantage of search data for their scanned documents even when the documents are stored in a local notebook. That makes the notebooks searchable on the local machine. For me, searchability is critical.
Last week I wrote about my process for spending 10 minutes a day going paperless. There was a “Scan to Evernote” box in the middle of the process that acts as a kind of subprocess for me. Here is what goes on inside that box. For each document I scan in, I ask myself a question:
Does this document contain sensitive information that I don’t want online?
If the answer is no, it gets scanned into my main “paperless filing cabinet” in Evernote, which is a synced, online notebook.
If the answer is yes, it gets placed in a local notebook, a kind of “locked” filing cabinet that is only available on my local machine.
Click to enlarge
By following this process, any documents or notes I consider “sensitive” are not stored on an Evernote server but they remain searchable from that machine on which they reside. This is a good balance for me.
It’s such a beautiful day
Posted on | April 16, 2012 | 1 Comment
I mean absolutely gorgeous here in the metro-DC area. Mid-80s, low humidity with a wonderful breeze blowing. It’s very difficult to be stuck in an office on a day like today, and I’m reminded of Isaac Asimov’s story “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (Star Science Fiction, 1954) in which teleportation devices allowed people to travel anywhere without ever having to go outside. On a day like this, I’m sure glad those teleportation devices haven’t been invented yet.
I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a 15 minute walk at 10am to clear my head and get some air. I’ve been doing it for five weeks now. Today, not only did I do my walk at 10am, I did it again at 2:30pm just to get out an enjoy the weather for a few minutes.
And it was totally worth it!
Reminder: Episode 37 of my Vacation in the Golden Age delayed to April 30
Posted on | April 16, 2012 | No Comments
Just in case anyone missed the earlier announcement and was looking for Episode 37 of my Vacation in the Golden Age today: it has been delayed 2 weeks to April 30. I’ve updated the schedule accordingly.
My annual Isaac Asimov autobiography reading
Posted on | April 16, 2012 | 1 Comment
Last year, I skipped my annual Isaac Asimov autobiography reading. I was busy with writing, blogging, and my Vacation in the Golden Age reading and it was all too much for me. But I didn’t want to skip it two years in a row, as I so enjoy sitting down with In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt. I’ve cut back on some writing and the fact that I delayed Episode 37 of my Vacation in the Golden Age to April 30 has given me the opportunity to squeeze in this reading. I started this weekend, sitting in my back yard with a beer and cracking open In Memory Yet Green. This is my 15th time reading the book since I started keeping records on January 1, 1996. And indeed, I have much of the book memorized. So why read it again and again and again?
I’ve written before that one regret I have is not having entered active fandom sooner than I did1 for the singular reason that I never got to meet Isaac Asimov. Perhaps, if I had been active as a youngster in the 1980s, I might have had a chance to meet him. I love his books, fiction and nonfiction alike and I was breathless after reading his memoir, I. Asimov for the first time in the spring of 1994. (He’d already been dead 2 years at that point.) When I discovered he’d written an even more detailed autobiography, I set about obtaining copies at once and they were even better than I imagined. The voice that Asimov uses when writing about himself is unique. I haven’t seen it with any other writer. His words disappear and it’s as if he’s sitting in the chair next to me, sipping from a mug of coffee, and rattling off one story after another about his life, about writing, about science fiction, you name it. When I read these books, I hear his Brooklyn accent and it’s as if he is talking directly to me. So it really doesn’t matter that I’ve heard the stories more than a dozen times. Reading these books is the closest I’ll ever get to sitting down with the Good Doctor and listen to him speak.
The books have had a queer side-effect. There are countless people in the science fiction world mentioned in the books, and I felt like I’ve gotten to know some of them quite well, albeit through Asimov’s lenses. So reading these books is like a mini-convention for me–a rather remarkable one, granted, at which all the lights of science fiction have gathered around me and decided to share their stories. It is a remarkable experience every time I do it and just when I start to think that maybe I’ll skip it this year–the urge to dive into the books becomes unbearably strong.
I imagine that most people have some book that they could read again and again and again for the sheer pleasure of it. These just happen to be mine.
- I only entered active fandom after I made my first professional story sale back in January 2007. ↩
Personal analytics: 7 years of personal email activity
Posted on | April 13, 2012 | 2 Comments
Last month, I posted some analytics on my behavior over the course of 12 years of work emails that I’ve sent. At the time, I had data for just my work email and just for sent messages. I wanted to look at my personal email activity as well, but there were two things preventing me:
- I didn’t have the time.
- I wanted to do it all in Mathematica, which I am slowly teaching myself from scratch.
Well, I found a little bit of time, and I only required a little time because Paul-Jean Letourneau, a lead developer at WolframAlpha, wrote a post on how to use Mathematica to do the kind of email analytics that Stephen Wolfram posted about last month. This was great because the post contained all of the code needed to do this kind of analysis and all I need is some good code examples to quickly learn a new system. The code provided worked almost without change on my own MacBook instance of Mathematica. I had to make a few minor changes to get the mailboxes I wanted. And I had to add the following line to increase the heap space for Java:
ReinstallJava[CommandLine -> "java", JVMArguments -> "-Xmx3024m"]
Without that line, the code executed fine for sent mail, but ultimately resulted in an out-of-memory error for incoming mail.
The resulting data is a pretty good look at my personal email use over the last 7 years. We’ll start with email that I’ve sent. This goes back only to 2009 because that is when I switched from Panix to Gmail. The code looked at my Sent Mail folder in Gmail and looked for email sent from my Gmail address. I had years of imported mail from Panix, but the sent messages are from a different email address and I decided not to move things around or change the code to include these. It’s still 3 years of sent mail data which is good enough for some analysis. Here is the diurnal plot of my sent email, a total of 4,382 messages:
Episode 37 of my Vacation in the Golden Age delayed to April 30
Posted on | April 12, 2012 | No Comments
I’ve had a busy week and I’m behind in my Vacation reading. I’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of me and rather than stress over whether or not I’ll get my reading done in time for Sunday’s post, I’ve decided to use one of my chits and delay this Episode until April 30.
As I wrote in my post on the schedule for my Vacation this year, I aim for 26 Episodes a year, but plan for 24. The realities of life sometimes creep in and as much as I hate delaying these Episodes, sometimes it’s the only way to stay sane.
So Episode 37–which, incidentally is the first Episode of the 4th Vacation year–will be posted on April 30. I will update the schedule to reflect the changes going forward. And I apologize for the delay, although I must admit that, being behind, it feels like the right decision. Already a small weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
In the meantime, this is a good opportunity to catch up on any Episodes that you may have missed. And don’t forget, links to all of the episodes are also now available on Pinterest.
I’m the newest interviewer/book reviewer for InterGalactic Medicine Show
Posted on | April 11, 2012 | 7 Comments
Seeing as how I got the okay to make the announcement: I will be doing some interview and book review columns for Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. I’ll be doing the interview columns for the July and November issues of the magazine. I will be doing the book review columns for June and July. It’s pretty exciting for me not only because I get to interview some very cool people, but also because I once again have the opportunity to work with Edmund Schubert, editor of IGMS. Edmund bought my first story, “When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer” which appeared way back in the July 2007 issue of IGMS.
For the book review columns, I’m just pinch hitting for Alethea Kontis while she is off on a book tour for her novel, Enchanted.
There you have it. I’ll be sure to post a reminder when the issues with the interviews come out. And I’ll also post a reminder when the book reviews are online.
Recent Publications
For "In the Cloud", 40k Books, January 2012. Cover by Roberto Grassilli.
For "If By Reason of Strength...", 40k Books, September 2011. Cover by Roberto Grassilli.
For "Take One for the Road", Analog, June 2011
For Descended From Darkness, Apex Books, December 2009
For "Hindsight, In Neon", Apex Magazine, April 2009. Cover art by Stephen Rider
For "When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer", IGMS, July 2007, Cover Art by Jin Han
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- Going Paperless posts now pinned on Pinterest
- Recent blog stats: an interesting trend
- The sound of wheezing: or what’s been keeping me busy
- The physical impossibility inside my refrigerator this morning
- Reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to the Little Man
- Signal boosting: Benefit for Baby Eric
- Going paperless: tips on how I use Evernote to “remember everything”
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- Home and in bed. Post on Nebula Weekend, day 1 will have to wait because I am beat! #Nebs2012
- Ran into Stan Schmidt as I was leaving the hotel. Heading home from a fun evening at #Nebs2012
- Here is @Scalzi and @MykeCole in the uke. See what you are missing @scottedelman. #Nebs2012 http://t.co/9HTltEsu
- Just finished a fun interview with @NancyFulda for @sfsignal.
- Heading back to my office to park the car, and then I'll be walking over to the #Nebs2012 hotel.
- RT @NancyFulda: Attention VA residents: It's not too late to plan for the #nebs2012 signing session. Snag a date to impress with how man ...
- Heading off to get ready for the Nebula Weekend. Have some things to do first. Should arrive at the hotel around 4pm. #nebs2012
- @lesleysmith Some people post videos (with permission, of course). I'll see if I can find out...
- @lesleysmith Of course! :-)
- @lesleysmith It does sound fascinating and it's good a good set of panelists to go along with it. Should be fun.
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