Yvonne Strahovski in Mass Effect 2

January 29th, 2010 fanaticalpupil

Mass Effect 2 Artwork

One of my friends just “shared this with me on Facebook”: ‘Mass Effect 2′ role departure for ‘Chuck’ actress. The long and short is that Yvonne Strahovski is playing “the woman” (aka Miranda Lawson – you might recognize her as the well-endowed woman in white from the commercials if you’ve watched any TV at all lately) in Mass Effect 2. BioWare even did the creepy thing where they scan the person’s face and then make the character look just like them. (Sorry, I like it when video game people look like people, but not people I know – unless they’re actually supposed to be that person)
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Frightened Rabbit on Chuck – Part 2

January 14th, 2010 fanaticalpupil

In Part I of this ongoing series, I was shocked by the seemingly magical appearance of Frightened Rabbit on Chuck. I had never heard of them before, and loved Twist so much that I bought their album and listened to it many times.

The first time it was on, Frightened Rabbit got the coveted spot of an emotional montage scene near the end of the show. The emotional montage scene near the end of the show is like striking gold for a musician who sells their song to a TV show. It’s like headlining a national arena tour. I know this simply based on the number of hits I got (and still get) from people searching for some combination of Chuck, Music and/or Frightened Rabbit.

Unfortunately for Chuck (note the italics), someone in charge of the music for the show fell in love with Frightened Rabbit as much as I did, and lo and behold, a year and a half later, here comes another Frightened Rabbit song in the season premiere of Season 3.

Oh, woe.

Woe.

Woe.

Why so much woe? Let me tell you.
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Tara Reid in Playboy? Really?

January 8th, 2010 fanaticalpupil

I was doing a search for magazine covers for another blog post when this turned up in the results:

Trust me, I was not looking for anything even remotely related to Tara Reid. And the only reason Playboy was related was because it’s a magazine.

Nevertheless, I was shocked and appalled. (And threw up in my mouth) (Just a little)

This is 2010, people! Does anyone really want to see what Tara Reid naked in 2010 looks like? I mean, how much is Playboy going to spend on airbrushing just to make her look presentable?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this is just a really abstract post about the decline of magazine publishing industry. Think about it.

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Sounds like Sarah Hoyt Could Write Horror

January 8th, 2010 fanaticalpupil

I mean, in this post about getting her latest book published (DarkShip Thieves which is available now and sounds pretty cool) she talks about how she went through at least 4 agents in order to get stuff published that publishers actually wanted to publish. Each one has a distinctly terrifying personality, and the story (even slapped together for a blog post as it is) will probably scare anyone who is even thinking about trying to become a writer.

I’m glad she persevered though, and not just because it gives me hope, but because it’s a fascinating story that is probably a good read for any aspiring novelist… and because Darkship Thieves sounds like it’s a lot more like something I’d like than her other books (no offense, since I haven’t actually read any of them, of course).

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Could NPH have saved Firefly?

January 4th, 2010 fanaticalpupil

My wife was scoping NPH’s bio on IMDB, which purports that he auditioned for the role of the doctor on Firefly. One has to wonder (okay, I suppose one doesn’t have to) if NPH had been the doctor (no disrespect to Sean Maher) if Firefly would have made it more than 15 glorious episodes. On the one hand, the doctor was the only character who wasn’t ever really funny, and NPH seems like he’d have to have some humor in the character – I just don’t see him playing a serious guy who only cares about his sister and is super serious all the time. On the other hand, NPH is awesome. On the third hand (since we’re talking about SciFi here, we can have a third hand, I think), Firefly started and ended before NPH launched himself back to the forefront of awesomeness in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (yeah, sorry, Starship Troopers didn’t quite do it). So, maybe he wouldn’t have made a difference without the extra built-in fan base…

On a related note… Too bad when they canceled Dollhouse I was kind of relieved, because, while it’s a decent show, I wasn’t all that into it, but as soon as they announced it was canceled the show has had some of its best episodes so far. Oops. (Sorry, gotta do the hands thing again) On the one hand, maybe we all should have been more patient to let Joss Whedon develop his fairly complex idea of a show before writing it off. On the other hand, Firefly was awesome right from the start, so… sorry, there is no third hand on that one.

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Project Runway Proves Parkinson’s Law

December 31st, 2009 fanaticalpupil

Wikipedia: Parkinson’s Law

It comes down to:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Most of the design challenges in Project Runway seem to be one-day things with a little bit of work on the second day when they have to present on the runway. And most of the time, the designers get it done.

Yet, when they give them 2 full days for a challenge, the designers still run right up to the deadline, even though it seems like with the extra time they shouldn’t be sweating it quite as much. Is it just that they spend more time designing at the beginning because they know they have more time? Even if that is the case, it only serves to prove Parkinson’s Law.

It’s sort of funny because it was started as an economic principle, but as a general rule it applies to time management in a way that I admit I hadn’t thought about until listening to Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek

Another example: I participate in a fantasy basketball roundtable, which is run on a weekly basis, with the deadline being Tuesday night. Guess how many people (including me) email their submissions at 11:59pm? Yeah. I realize that’s not an exact example of Parkinson’s Law, but if the deadline was Monday night, would it still take until Tuesday night to get it done? No. It would be done on Monday at 11:59pm – a full 24 hours earlier.

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Young Writers…

December 30th, 2009 fanaticalpupil

Weren’t we all once?

The Babbling Flow of a Fledgling Scribbler: Young Writers…ROCK ON!!.

I feel like I could have written this post myself…

I recently stumbled across a blog with a post written about college students and why they shouldn’t try so hard to get published while in college–because they’ll miss too much of the “college” experience. … After college I got a job in marketing. And then in Government consulting. And then in teaching (math, of all things). I wasted those five years, nine actually, if you count the four while in school. If I’d focused on writing during that time, maybe I’d already have a few books in the stores.

Myself, I did a lot of idea development during my college and post-college years. I guess if you count the start of my wanting to be a professional writer for real as 2007, then really, that’s only 3 years post-college, but I went to college for 6 years when you include undergrad and grad school. So, all told, I also “wasted” nine years, just like Sara.

My one comfort is that I can usually look up writers I like on Wikipedia and find that they are a lot older than I am. Of course, most of them also have a bibliography that go back a ways, but I try to ignore that so I can tell myself that it’s okay to if I have to write for a few more years before I actually get anything worthy of publishing.

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The Evolution of Romance

December 29th, 2009 fanaticalpupil

or: What Will/Has Become of The Mixtape in The Digital Age?

I’m working on a playlist for NYE. I also just recently watched Season 1 of (the excellent) How I Met Your Mother, in which (not ironically at all) Barney brings his “Get Psyched Mix” along for the NYE ride. His mix is on a CD. That was 2005.

While I firmly believe that giving someone a Mix CD was never even in the realm of romantic… what are the choices these days?

“Guys, I’m going to make her a mix SD card?”

I suppose if you wanted to make a “Mix iPod Shuffle”, that might say something since the cheapest Shuffle you can get is $59. Spending that kind of cash on a girl or guy when you’re in high school or college (or just out of college) means there’s some seriousity involved.

Now, sure, there is some coolness involved in this product (which, okay, might actually work):

I like that you can hand write the track list on there and make notes and put smiley faces, stars, and hearts in the margins. Still…

So much of the romance left when the mix went from tape to CD. Any chump can bring up iTunes, pick 14 songs, and click Burn. But do people even use CDs any more even to transfer music to someone else?

Back in the analog age, when you made a 90-minute mixtape, it actually took 90 minutes (at least) cause you had to dub each song over to the new tape. There was an obvious investment of time in the end product that was created.

Muxtape had it going until the Crushing Boot of Legal smashed them like infant flower. At least there you had to upload all the songs you wanted, so it took a little bit of time and patience.

My favorite site, Lala, lets you embed playlists on a website, but that requires that you have a website, or else you basically have to send it as a Facebook message. Of course, youngsters these days might think that getting a playlist sent in a Facebook message is the height of romance. I mean, there’s some that think that sending nude cameraphone pictures is a good way to seduce someone, right?

Posted in Music, Random Stuff Tags: , , , , , , , Comments

The WriteRunner: Iapetus999’s Top 9 Writer’s Blogs for 2009

December 27th, 2009 fanaticalpupil

The WriteRunner: Iapetus999’s Top 9 Writer’s Blogs for 2009.

Found this because I’m subscribed to the #1 blog on Iaepetus999’s (aka Andrew Rosenberg) list, Edittorrent.

I’m looking forward to adding a bunch of new writing advice blogs to my Google Reader.

I’m also fairly interested in subscribing to Mr. Rosenberg’s blog, because he says “Dawn’s Rise is the first novel that I’m going to publish” which kind of sounds like he’s going to publish it himself. As someone who’s trying to decide which route to go while finishing up a bunch of projects, I’m always interested to see how people execute on different publishing plans and the corresponding level of success they achieve. Also, since he’s writing Sci-Fi and Steampunk Romance, it’ll be kind of fun to be on the cutting of reading new genre work from a new writer.

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SF Signal: ‘Judgement’ – The eBook That’s Both Free and Cheap

December 23rd, 2009 fanaticalpupil

SF Signal: ‘Judgement’ – The eBook That’s Both Free and Cheap.

The story here obviously isn’t really about the book. You can click through if you want a description of thigns like plot and characters.

What really matters is that John at SFSignal says:

You can either buy the novel in various eBook formats at Smashwords for the more-than-reasonable price of $2…or, you can read it online for free.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says people will not pay for what they can get for free. Will it work? The thinking is that people will pay for what they like, especially if it’s cheap enough. I’d be interested in hearing a few months from now how well this works…

I have to point out, though, that the “read it online for free” part means you have to read it on the author’s website on a really, really, really… really, really, really long web page. So, really, it’s not an experiment to see if people will pay for something they can get for free because what they get for free is not the equivalent of what they pay for. It’s more of a test of how much people are willing to punish themselves before they spend a small amount of money.

Of course, I did a quick test, and was able to get a high quality version of the book simply by copying the really (really, really, really) long web page into an Open Office Writer document. I’m pretty sure there’s a script the author could embed on the site that would prevent people from selecting and/or copying text – if he really wanted to see if people would pay for something they could read online for free.

Of course (number 2), it would also be interesting to have 2 versions and do split testing to see if you get better conversions to the pay version from the site that doesn’t allow copying, or if people would just give up and not even read the book. As Tim O’Reilly says, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” (h/t: Cory Doctorow)

Posted in Books, Marketing Tags: , , , Comments
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