Top 20 Science Fiction Films

While we wait for Robert to finally give me his top comedy list, here is my top 20 list of Science Fiction films. They have to be good films and at least decent Science Fiction.

These are not in any order. I started with a popular list of 100 SciFI movies and picked off of that and then added the ones I like that aren't popular. Destination Moon made the list because of the great graphics and the fact that Heinlein consulted on the science. Enemy Mine was not an the list, but it is a good SF story, even if it is not the best movie. Terminator made it in spite of its popularity.

I have a definite preference for black and white movies form the 1950s when writing was more important than special effects.

The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951
Forbidden Planet, 1956
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, 1982
Brazil, 1985
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956
The War of the Worlds, 1953
The Thing (From Another World), 1951
When Worlds Collide, 1951
This Island Earth, 1955
Frankenstein, 1931
The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957
A Clockwork Orange, 1971
The Time Machine, 1960
Destination Moon, 1950
The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1976
Starman, 1984
Invaders from Mars, 1953
Enemy Mine, 1985
The Terminator, 1984

Teaching

I just found out that I am teaching ART-144 Web Page Design at RCC again. I thought that they had given the job to a full time instructor, but I play poker with the head of the department.

I was going to write a text book and publish it with LuLu.com, but there is no time to get started between now and next Thursday, so I decided to use what I think is a very good book. It has 500 pages of good stuff and is an excellent book for learning and is also good for reference. It's hard to find books that are both.

Gorey and Tribbles

I am a great Edward Gorey Fan. There is a fan site that just released the awful trek story The Trouble with Tribbles as drawings in the style of Gorey. It is very well done, except that there should be more of it.

From: shaenon: New Smithson!

Infostealer.Monstres

Someone hacked Monster.com. I had closed my monster account over a year ago, but I use USAJOBS to keep an eye on NASA programming positions. (Yes, I still think it would be cool to work for NASA.) USAJOBS uses the monster.com system to manage the government jobs in its database. The USAJOBS database is one of the db's that was downloaded.

I've been getting huge amounts of phishing scam email. Gmail mostly catches it, but once in a while one is getting through. It looks like that whoever got the data is selling it to the enemy.

For now, it would be best if you ignore any unsolicited job offers in your in box. DO NOT click on the websites even if the spam filter lets the email though.

Here's an example of the spam:

The qualifications and experiences you've listed on your resume prompted me to contact you regarding an available position we are attempting to fill for a client. Faro Inc. is looking for a Application Engineer and I feel that you may have the attributes they are seeking.

My job title on the USAJOBS db as Application Engineer. One clue that this is mass email is the phrase "a Application Engineer", notice that it should be "an". This refers me to a site with an official sounding domain, but there is nothing on the site but a form for me to fill out my sensitive information including Social Security number.

Here's part of the USAJOBS email

8/30/2007

Dear USAJOBS User,

Recently, malicious software, known as Infostealer.Monstres, was used to gain unauthorized access to the Monster.com resume database to steal the contact information of job seekers. Monster Worldwide is the technology provider for the USAJOBS website and regrettably, some of the contact information captured came from USAJOBS job seekers.

The information captured included name, address, telephone number, and email address. Monster Worldwide has assured the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that Social Security Numbers were NOT compromised because of IT security shields USAJOBS has in place.

Access to the data was obtained through the use of a private sector Monster customer's computer using legitimate employer credentials. OPM is working closely with Monster to quickly protect the USAJOBS data. Monster Worldwide already has identified and shut down a rogue server that was accessing and collecting the job seeker contact information. Further safeguards are being put into place.

We ask you to remain alert for counterfeit "phishing" emails that may appear to come from Monster.com asking you to click on a link. USAJOBS will NEVER request personal information via unsolicited email (i.e. not a response to an email sent by you). Monster has also assured us THEY will NEVER ask any site users to download any software, "tool" or "access agreement."

BloggerWave

As you may have noticed, I am up to $30 from bloggerwave.com - Capitalism, she is wonderful.

The other pay-to-blog sites don't seem to have as many jobs and they jobs that they have are for online pharmacies, porn or other obnoxious websites. A coke ad is as American as... well, Coca Cola.

One thing, the traffic on this blog has dropped by 50% in the last month. The RSS traffic is still at a few hundred a day, but the actual blog is not getting as many hits. I have to do a statistical analysis to see if Google is penalizing me for the ads or if it's just that all my regular readers are on vacation or taking a break. Besides the blog, I have the black hole extensions that screen scrapes the critters black hole, the Cliche List, and my essays. The only essay that gets any number hits is the Space Lab where I have many JavaScript formulas for doing space flight calculations. The Chesley Bonestell Venus Images get a few hits from time to time.

I recently signed up for DataFeedFile.com, which is an affiliate aggregator. You basically create storefronts using their affiliate links. I thought that they provided the affiliate ids so that I would not have to do all the work of applying to the programs that I wanted. It turns out you still have to apply and give them the affiliate IDs. I'll make my own affiliate links and bypass them. They want one of every four clicks, which would be good if they could improve my sales ratio, but they are not really offering me anything that I don't already do. Go to www.jt30.com and you'll see my tried and proved links at the bottom of most pages on the site.

Unless I can be convinced of some advantage to giving away one in four clicks, I will not be using DataFeedFile.com any time soon.

Coke Zero

I've been running through the diet drinks at my lunch Deli. I tried Coke Zero the other day. Diet Coke has been one of my fundamental choices, along with Diet Dr. Pepper and Hires Diet root beer. I am a strong believer that you should keep corn syrup out of your diet.

Coke Zero ain't bad. Here is the blurb from the promo stuff that I got from Coke:

Coke zeros campaign “Life as it should be” is real fun on the Internet. You can direct your own small movie and afterwards send it to all your friends. Coke has found some old b/w film clips that you, as the director, can manipulate by using an easy voice recorder. You can write “the conversation” to your own clip and say what ever you want. Afterwards your movie competes with other movies to be the highest rated. This is living “life as it should be”. Beat your friends to it: http://www.zeroismore.com
Coke zero

Internet bandwidth to become a global currency

Units of work, the economy, the silver standard and a story from Grandpa.

I wrote that title and I can tell that I feel like rambling a little this morning

I have a license plate frame that says "WILL WORK FOR BANDWIDTH". I used to say that the only reason that had a job was access to the Xerox machine. I then said that the only reason I had a job was access to high speed internet. Now, I have a job, but I am not sure why. I think it is because I have gotten used to the office chair and can relax. Also there is easy access to the Scarlet Deli around the corner where you can buy great pastrami sandwiches. Also the keyboard is at the exact right height and position for writing blog entries.

The link above explains an economic model where bandwidth represents a standard of exchange. Standards of exchange are economic fictions. William Jennings Bryant ran for president on the sole issue of switching from the gold standard to the silver standard. He felt that all the gold was controlled by J. P. Morgan and the eastern banks. Switching to silver, whose price would be harder to manipulate, would shift the balance of power to the west and the farmers. The robber barons, Fiske and Gould tried to corner the market and almost did until President Grant intervened on the "Black Friday". That they could very nearly buy enough gold on margin to effect the price proves Bryant's thesis. The truth is that the gold is not really very important as a medium of exchange or standard of value. Value remains the same even though the price floats. Changing to the silver standard might have stabilized prices for a while, but it would not have changed the relative value of farm work and the crops in the west compared to the manufacturing power of the east. Bryant's claim that silver would bring wealth to the farmers was a total fiction.

My friends Jim and John are very excited by the presidential campaign of Ron Paul. Ron Paul is bubbling to the top of the squirrel nut stew because of his off the wall ideas about taxes and government. They reek of W.J. Bryant's silver standard silliness. First, his policies stand exactly zero chance of ever being implemented, even if by some miracle he found himself to be president. Second, campaign pledges like eliminating taxes seems to be nothing more than saying what people want to hear. Stupid people look at their pay check and figure the money deducted should be theirs, falsely thinking that the money is going to unwed mothers in inner city ghettos. They don't realize that the deductions are the price of living in a country that has a government providing essential services that they would have to pay for out of their own pockets. Stupid people... but I digress.

My dad explained money to me as: a dollar is the equivalent of an hour's work. Back in the 1950s this was true. People were paid more because the value of their work was worth more. This is a very Marxist attitude and I think he got it from my grandfather, who was a communist. The idea that the true standard of exchange is labor has been debunked. The value of labor has steadily dropped until now only the very poor, or illegal immigrants, or slave labor in third world countries actually produce the manual labor that was so highly prized by Marx.

Value is a negotiated concept and is determined by demand and supply. Value is a very capitalistic notion. Connecting a standard measurement for value by tying it to anything concrete like gold, silver, labor or bandwidth is just stupid. People want a dollar bill to represent a stable value, but it isn't going to happen. Economic policies in the united states actually work against this. The other side of value is risk. Since value is a negotiated idea, the act of negotiation infuses value with risk. Defining a currency standard like gold is an attempt to mitigate the risk and it can't be done.

On CNBC this week all they are talking about is the collapse of the financial bubble do to high risk real estate loans. Real Estate has been an American standard of value with steady growth for a long time. The risk infused into the standard by speculation and bad loans has brought values back into line. For a long time Oil was considered the standard of value, but speculation, war, and greed has fixed that by increasing the risk in the value of oil. Even as the cost of oil goes up, the value of the dollars crashes, bring all things back into balance.

That's enough for now. I have to work here from time to time.

Ok, one more personal anedote. This is a story from 1907 from my Grandfather Leroy Hunt (not the communist Peter Graham, who in 1907 was working as a surveyor for the Panama Canal).

Grandpa came to New York in his teens to make his fortune and soon found worked in the Knickerbocker Bank as a runner. This was before the Federal Reserve system and checks cleared by physically bringing the check to the bank where it was drawn and exchanging it for gold. My grandfather's job was to bring the checks around to several banks and get the cash for the checks. As you can see, getting cash for a check involved the actual exchange of currency or gold coins. Banks would exchange paper, but many banks wound up with a net cash flow, which required that gold exchange hands.

In 1907 there was a run on the banks, know as the Banker's Panic. Depositors took their cash out of the banks and checks could not clear because the banks did not have the gold to cash the checks. My grandfather had to wait on long lines with his pile of checks and hope that the banks would give him the gold because if his bank failed, he was out of a job.

Standing on line at one bank, he watched the runner in front of him getting paid for his checks. It was several hundred dollars and the bank paid the man in small change. He had to borrow a wheelbarrow to cart the coins back to his bank. Grandpa was very worried because he had $500 in checks.

Just then, J. P. Morgan's great carriage drew up, and men in uniform came into the bank with sacks of gold. Morgan was trying to head off the panic by loaning the banks gold from his personal fortune, much the way that the Federal Reserve does now. When my grandfather came to the head of the line they added up the checks and paid him with five brand new hundred dollar gold pieces. He passed the man with the wheelbarrow on the way back to his bank.

Grandpa's bank never did recover from the panic, though, and he lost his job. He went on to have many more adventures, which I will write about someday. Grandpa was a great story teller and I remember many of his tall tales.

Internet bandwidth to become a global currency | Press Esc

What kind of extremist are you?

I was hoping that they had Radical Anarchist as an alternative. (note: this does not show correctly with firefox. Something in my css is over-riding the results.)

What kind of extremist are you? Your Result: Rational Person You consider these questions obvious straw men, designed to distract people from a meaningful investigation of facts and a serious discussion of relevant political issues. How boring.
Right-Wing Extremist
Left-Wing Extremist
Moderate Extremist
What kind of extremist are you? See All Our Quizzes

P. K. Dick in the New Yorker

Dick quote:

"I love SF," he said once. "I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if'—it's 'My God; what if'—in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

Somehow Dick doesn't belong in the New Yorker. Martians don't read the New Yorker.

Blows Against the Empire: Books: The New Yorker

Baseball Season

I am not a baseball fan. The reason is that they play too many games and the outcome of one game really doesn't matter. The exception is when the pennant race heats up. I start paying a little attention to the game after labor day. I expect to retire on the funds from websites and my MLBMagicNumbers.com sites including MetsMagicNumber.com are going to lead the way - for one month a year anyway.

The graph above is the traffic on Mets Magic Number showing how the interest in the Magic Number increases as the last day of the season approaches. I'll be getting 10,000 hits a day by the beginning of October. The chart does not show that right now I am getting 40 hits a minute on my JavaScript Magic Number calculator that is has been added on over 200 websites and blogs. No money on the javascript, but it is great advertising.

Endgame: American Options in Iraq

I have to admit that I read the blog at Defense Tech, mostly for the cool gadgets that only the military can afford. The two main drivers of technology are Military and Porn. The later tends to drive bandwidth and interface developments, but it is hard to keep up on the new trends at work. The former drives command and control improvements including fantastic tech such as super armor, smart bombs and unmanned drones.

Defense tech recently blogged about an article at Military.com that is the most rational discussion of the War in Iraq that I have seen. Military.com, in spite of its name, is for the rank and file military person, not the command hierarchy or soldier wanabees. The website is always a good read. It deals with problems such as the families of personnel serving in Iraq. It is a great resource for anyone in the military. It produces some well balanced criticism of the war, the military command and the president.

Most discussions of Iraq are fraught with emotion. If you want to read an unemotional and rational discussion, check out Endgame: American Options in Iraq. This article may not change your mind, but it presents the facts clearly and highlights issues, especially about Iran, that are left out of other discussions.

Realist cats

Better than LOL cats, here is a realist cat site where they jokes are in English. Unfortunately they are only funny because LOL cats are so dumb.


new “realisticats” internet phenomenon takes world by storm - top bloggers claim proper grammar next hot trend

J's cat

LOL cats are everywhere. One wound up on J's blog. As I understand this lol syntax, his cat is in his books stealing his words. I am not sure of this as I have never sent a text message in my life and do not even know how it is done or why they use the silly misspellings. I am not sure what LOL means. (Left out losers? Lots of limericks? Lost in Lichtenstein? Long on liberty? Limp over legs?).

J Alan Erwine's Blog

On the Road: The Original Scroll

Jack Kerouac is one of our great writers. I feel closer to the beats than any other literary movement. I used to say hi to Allen Ginsberg when I lived in the East Village. Allen hung hanging out at the church on first avenue that I passed every day on the way to classes. I really love Dharma Bums and On the Road. I have never been blind to the novel's faults. It is a generation book, kind of like Catcher in the Rye or Razor's Edge. It has great flaws because it is such an important book. No book could ever live up to what Kerouac wanted to write.

On the Road: The Original Scroll, written on three long rolls of tracing paper during a three week high on speed, has been transcribed and published. I am looking forward to reading it. Some reviews say it is better than the edited version that Jack eventually sold.

The US needs more maps

You've got to look at this to believe it. It is from Miss Teen USA and one of the contestants was asked a really hard question.

See Miss South Carolina explain why we need more maps.

Blog Anniversary

Tomorrow will mark four years of blogging. It doesn't seem like a long time, but in internet years it is an eternity.

In 2003, when I started this blog, there were about 1.4 million active blogs, total. It had been estimated that as many as 4 million blogs had been started by then, but most were abandoned. This is not a hard number because no one really was paying attention.

Today, Technorati tracks over 100 million blogs and discovers about 40,000 new blogs a day.

Blogs got their start in the late 1990s. In 1999, blogger started, but LiveJournal and other sites were already popular. Blogging grew steadily and then in 2003, when I started, there seemed to be blogs popping up all over.

Blogs are more sophisticated now. They used to be just online journals or a series of dated articles. Now blogs have rss feeds and all kinds of links and eye candy and extra functionality like ping backs. Blogs were used as spam for a while, but I think the software has caught up with that. Blogger.com still seems to be about 25% spam blogs. There are now Video blogs and Audio podcast blogs and the new little snippet blogs like Twitter. There are Blog Carnivals and blog aggregaters and every imaginable variation on online journaling.

I have actually had about a dozen blogs. The cat blog is defunct for now. It is hard to write about sick and dying cats every day. The tech blog was way too much work. The Rockland Community College blog for my class is gone as I am not teaching this semester. Sciencefictional and Johnny B's blog are gone. I still have StellaMaeve.com for my friend's daughter, but she never updates it and I won't. I post rants to another blog, but it is unknown and is there only to satisfy me, more of a holding place in case Johnny B wants to come back.

I have www.harpamps.com and www.jt30.com as my main harmonica blogs. These are each about three years old. I used a blog format for several years before I knew what a blog was. I used to add new material to the top of the page and let the old stuff work its way down. I did this before the idea of a blog had been invented. Turning them into a blog just added the extra features like archives and the feeds and the ability to search.

I use blogger.com for most of my blogs, but I host the blogs on my own websites. This offers me the ability to control the data and make extra pages. It also lets me use one of my many domain names. I actually prefer WordPress software, except that I worry about backing up the data. I change web hosts every few years and I don't like having to dump the databases and create a new DB every time I change hosts. Creating a WordPress theme is not as hard as making a blogger custom template.

I see blogging as a way to stay in touch with people that I would not ordinarily have a chance to talk with. I like to point to things and say "isn't this neat" and I want to be able to announce things that are important. I am always surprised at how many strangers comment on my blogs, but few friends and relatives check out the pages here. I've made a few blog friends that I might actually like to meet some day. (No, I take that back - I will not expose myself to actual human contact!)

Giornale Nuovo

One of the blogs I read every morning is an art blog. I came in this morning after being off a week and found that he had posted this picture of an Ivory Skeleton from about 1640.

It would make the perfect cover for a horror novel. Since it is a 1640 piece of art, there might not be much in the way of copyright issues. The actual image is from Giornale Nuovo, and I think the author took the picture at the exibition. I believe it would be safe, though, to manipulate the image to make it suitable for a cover. I am thinking that both images would be derivative works of a the original statue.

Click the image to see the original large size.
Giornale Nuovo

Cats

I have not had a cute cat post in a while.

Here is a cat video that John sent me.

To paraphrase Nietzsche: Life without cats would be a mistake.

Turkeys

There are six of them. Erica fed them stale bread and cookies and they ran right up to her. Gracie is currently stalking them. Since they are five times her size, this should be interesting. Gracie has definite ideas about the food chain.

Leaks, Turkeys and Heinlein

I've been soldering in the basement for five days. I turned on the water and there was only one leaky joint. Pretty good. Last time I had half a dozen leaks and two I never did fix.

We have wild turkeys in the back yard. I'll post the pictures tonight.

I am listening to "The Green Hills of Earth" collection on tape. I want to listen to all 8 hours at least 5 times over the next few weeks. I want to enter the Heinlein short story contest. I love these stories. None would sell to anyone except J nowadays. They are all perfect The Martian Wave stories. I am struck by how often Heinlein used first person. Most zines will reject a first person story out of hand because they teach that at Clarion workshops. I have rewritten perhaps four stories after a comment by an editor that they don't want first person. I will enjoy writing a few Heinlein style stories over the next few months.

Happy Birthday Ray Bradbury

Ray turns 87 today. He's the best.

My first writing attempts were all imitations of Bradbury. He, more than anyone, made me want to write science fiction.

The link is to the NY Times article which includes an audio interview.

Favorite story: A Medicine for Melancholy

What's your favorite Bradbury story? Leave a comment all you lurkers. I know that there about 100 of you who read this every day. Do I have to publish your IP adresses?

At home this week

I'm taking a week off to redo the heating pipes. I had dripping pipes all winter. I won't be doing too much blogging because I don't like typing on the small laptop keyboard.

I went with Erica to Adamstown Pennsylvania yesterday. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. It rained on and off all morning. We spent six hours in the truck and I was pooped. We went to three different flea markets, but there weren't many dealers and we didn't find anything interesting.

We listened to the last tape of Stoker's Dracula on the trip. I enjoyed the book, but I think Stoker rushed the ending. Someone should rewrite the last 5,000 words and make a novel of it. Dracula is a much better novel than the movies or the lady porn books would lead you to believe.

Jim complained about the youtube embedded vids. I see his point. I wasn't thinking about my readers with slower connections or older machines. Even new machines can bog down with a few flash movies trying to cache themselves. I will use screen captures for an image and a link to the page from now on.

I am going into the cellar now. I will bring the boom box and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers tape.

I Will Not Be Outdone

J Erwine took a picture of his books. I'm 20 years older and have that many MORE books so I took a picture of mine. What you can't hear is Erica asking me not to take pictures of the clutter on the enclosed porch where lots of my books are stored.

Blocking Firefox

There's a website that is trying to get sites to block the Firefox browser because of common plug-in that blocks ads. I use Firefox and I use AdBlock. It is great. I don't see any ads from doubleclick or google and all of those annoying animated ads are missing. Websites are much more readable without the ads. For me, one of the main reasons to use Firefox is get the AdBlock plug-in.

This creates a moral dilemma for me in that I make a good deal of money off of the same ads that AdBlock blocks. I have to turn it off in order to view my own sites to see if the ads are placed correctly.

I looks like a small consortium of website owners are using the browser header info to redirect Firefox users to a nasty page that explains why they were blocked. Their reasoning is that Firefox users are small in number and that they seldom buy anything anyway so it is best to block them. My question is why bother? If a Firefox user comes to a site he has a small but real chance of clicking on an ad. The cost of the bandwidth that the Firefox user is taking up is negligible and there is a possibility that he will make that 10 cent click and leave the site.

This is all very stupid. There are many better alternatives. AdBlock looks at off site urls to find images and javascript that comes from the ad companies. Commission Junction and Amazon have been experimenting with alternate ways to deliver ads including stealth websites. It might even be possible to block only browsers with AdBlock active. Ad delivery is taking up a good percentage of the bandwidth on websites. AdBlock cuts down on traffic and is generally a good thing. There needs to be a better method for delivering ads. Don't ban Firefox.

The bottom line is that blocking customers will only make customers unhappy. Blocking Firefox can only have a negative impact on sales. This has to be high on the list of stupid things that website can do. I hope someone hacks the site and replaces the home page with a picture of someone shooting himslef in the foot.

For J

From Crackle: Mr. Deity and the Evil - Episode 1

Vatican Apologizes For Torture, Murder Of Stephen Hawking

Vatican Apologizes For Torture, Murder Of Stephen Hawking

Another Reject

I received a reject today (after 86 days) that pained me a bit. One of my favorite stories is odd and doesn't fit anywhere. I have re-written it a dozen times to make it fit better with what editors are expecting, but it looks like it just isn't destined for publication. The main reason for rejection this time was the story didn't fit their format of dark fiction/horror. The story has been repeatedly rejected for being too dark for other markets.

The rejection letter said:

I would like to take a moment to suggest you take this story to a fiction writers workshop and have others review and comment on it. Critters.org or Zoetrope.com are both very good workshops that I feel this story could benefit from.
You have a very interesting idea here but the technical aspects such as grammar, spelling require some help. I also feel that with some workshopping this story could end up being a bit shorter without losing any of the imagery's impact.

This reads like a form reject, but I still take it personally. I wouldn't mind so much, but the editor has no credible writing credits. The dangling participle doesn't inspire. I prefer a form letter devoid of bullshit. The best rejects offer specific criticism. I don't need the generalities.

When I was submitting to magazines back around 1970, each rejection was followed by junk mail from "Famous Writer's School", a scam correspondence company. I realize now that the magazines sold their reject list in order make a few bucks. At that time I took it to believe that the editor thought that it might help me and I found it humiliating.

I am not a believer in workshops. At best they can teach you to write using a formula. I have heard people bragging about the five point writing method or the seven point system. I am sure that Clarion is like a boot camp where they break down authors and spit out writers. I've lurked at critters and zoetrope and the criticism is mostly stuff like "zombies would make the story interesting". These people on these sites know no more about writing than I do or they wouldn't be there.

Stories are like an author's children. They may be ugly to you, but we think that they are wonderful and full of promise. All of my stories are special, even the unsold homely ones that live in a trunk.

Don's Top Ten Comedy Movies

From occasional poker guy Don:

Here is my list of Top Ten Comedies. I loved all your choices but
I've decided to focus on movies after the 70's. Here they are in no
particular order:

Office Space
Napoleon Dynamite
Uncle Buck
Little Miss Sunshine
The In-Laws (with Alan Arkin)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Austin Powers (all three movies)
Take the Money and Run
There is Something About Mary
The Fifth Element

Only 10, but you get an idea of Don's taste. I could almost agree with him if it wasn't for the Ausin Powers movies.

So far everyone agrees on early Woody Allen movies, but we all like different ones.

One of the first dates that I took Erica on was to see "Play It Again Sam" on Broadway. Woody played himself in the play and he was well worth the $8 that I paid for the nosebleed seats. I was a fan for a while, but not today. I haven't seen his last few movies. He does not seem so vested in his movies as he once was. There seems to be less Woody Allen and more of what people expect of Woody Allen in the later stuff. You can watch the real person fade and the caricature replace him.

I just thought of two very funny movies that aren't black and white. Alice Doesn't Live Here AnyMore and Paper Moon.

Anybody else come up with a list???

SheVaCon 15 2007

I received an email from Steven B. Stanley about SheVaCon next February. It is an invitation to Spec Fic Bloggers.

He writes:

The convention is extending a special invitation for s-f bloggers to attend and do live feeds while here. SheVaCon is a Not-for-Profit (and soon, we hope, Non-Profit) organization which awards scholarships to high school seniors who will be majoring in college art or writing programs.

It sounds like an interesting approach. There are always bloggers at SF conventions, and I try to find blogs for the bigger ones, like WorldCon. SheVaCon sounds like a very small con, though, and suspiciously like one of those costume fetish conventions that you hear about.

The description of the con from their website is: SheVaCon is a Science Fiction & Fantasy, Horror, Costuming and Gaming Convention. I would go except for the Costumes and Gaming. I went to a con once and it seemed to be mostly strange people dressed as their favorite character from Zena Warrior Princess. There were fat girls as Zena, skinny girls as Zena and a few really ugly dudes dressed as Zena. There were people in costumes that I will never understand. I am not a herd animal, so I couldn't get into it. I left before I discovered that there were actual writers talking about writing hidden away in small rooms far from the costumers.


SheVaCon 15 2007

Crowther's original adventure source code found; photos from inside the real Colossal Cave

I went to work at the original Western Union in 1983. This was the Western Union that was the leader in data messaging, including telegrams and teletype. That company folded up and the money transfer business and the name was bought out by someone else. Western Union should have made a mint in the coming of the internet, but made bad choices and wanted to go into competition with email by charging an arm and a leg for something that was free.

I learned quite a bit at Western Union in the few months that I was there. They had an original IBM PC, one of the first delivered, and they had a Xerox Star workstation (the basis for Windows and Mac GUI). I fell in love with both of them. I carefully typed in the terminal program in basic and then used that to download a more advance version from an early BBS. It was the start of a long and infamous career. I wrote several chapters of a novel on the Star and printed it out all typeset and pretty.

My supervisor was an interesting character named Ken Murphy. I was pretty much useless, as I had lied quite a bit on my resume to get the job. It paid $25,000 a year, which was big bucks then. I worked with a great bunch of programmers, but I was out of my league. Ken tried to help me along, but after a year I felt that I had to find a new job or they were going to fire me. Ken and I got along and he might not have fired me, but he looked relieved when I quit to go to another job.

Ken had a map on the wall to his office. It was the original Colossal Cave done in india ink and calligraphy. On the computers was the original game plus several variations. I played the game and loved it. Every time that I was called into Ken's office I tried to memorize parts of the map so I could get through the maze. Ken knew Crowther and Woods. He knew everyone. He had worked for NASA and had met all 12 original astronauts. Ken was an Atari computer nut. Atari used to make computers in addition to their gaming units and he made them do things that you would never expect. He wrote a couple of books and a bunch of Atari shareware programs. I can't find what happened to him.

I searched around a while ago for adventure games. I converted the Scott Adams adventures to AJAX and I wanted to do the same for The Colossal Cave. The original game, however is not data driven, but a carefully hand crafted program that has separate routines for many of the caverns. I was not able to simplify it enough to create a nice neat rule driven game. This is also the game's strength. It is very complex in its own way.

The original source code for Colossal Cave has been discovered on a backup tape from 1976. There is a great story about the Colossal Cave rediscovery with pictures of the actual cave that it was based on.

I have download the source and I would like to look at it again. This original version was supposed to be simpler and might make porting it to JavaScript easier. I will see.

Adventure: Crowther's original source code found

God Program

I found this on the internet. I made it into a scriptlet so that anyone can put it on their web page.

Potter and eBay

If you will remember, I was frustrated when I did not receive Deathly Hallows until a week after the release date. I also made the mistake of reading the early spoilers, which were all bogus. I made some predictions while I waited and they were all wrong.

I finished the book a week ago. I listened to the last tape five times (The last three chapters and the epilogue). I enjoyed Deathly Hallows so much that I did not want the series to end. The last book of the Potter series is indeed, as Stephen King has put it, Rowling's magnum opus. It is a great and profound work. The books all fit together, at last. I have some minor problems with some style issues. Rowling is a great Story Teller, but not so great a stylist. For instance, I noticed the she overuses a word. I won’t tell you which one, but since I noticed it, the word shouts out at me ever other sentence. She can be forgiven because she is writing in a conversational simple way that is targeting younger readers. The one thing I love about Rowling is here wicked sense of humor. This is evident in even the most serious moments of the final confrontation scene.

I have decided to put off rereading the series for about five or six years. This will give me plenty of time to forget the details. I have read several of the books three times and most twice. This leads us to eBay.

I bought the Deathly Hallows Audio Cassettes at Amazon for $47. I preordered it back in May, and I took the free shipping option. This is why, I found out later, I did not receive the book on the release date. As soon as I finished the book, I told Erica to put it on eBay. I figured to strike while the iron is hot and demand is high. A few minutes after Erica put it out, it went to $36. I was happy, because this seemed to be the high limit to the audio version. The book would have cost me about $15, net after fees.

The book sold yesterday for $46 plus about $3 shipping. This is more than I paid for it on Amazon. Anyone could have gone to Amazon and bought it for $47 with free shipping, or walked into Walmart and paid $44. After eBay and PayPal fees, I will still be about $5 in the hole, but the tape is well worth that.

I intend to retire in 2013. That summer I will look in garage sales and flea markets for Deathly Hallows and the other tapes that Ward borrowed and never returned. I won’t spend more than a dollar for each book. I will spend an hour each afternoon in the shade with an elderly Gracie cat on my lap and listen to them, replaying the good parts. I will savor the books and look for nuances, jokes, puns and other things that I missed the first time around.

Gibson in the City

Gibson is going to read down at the Union Square B&N. Back before B&N was a mall chain store. I used to buy used text books there and saved a ton of money. I wonder if there are still places to do that. At the end of the term I would sell my books back to them. The thing was that you had to sell your books a few weeks before the final before the next edition was announced to get the good price. It took guts to cram for the final a week or two before the end of the semester just to be able to get the better price on the text book.

Spook Country looks like a decent read. I haven't been real happy with Gibson's books since Neuromancer trilogy. The books have all the cool and style of a Gibson novel without an interesting story.

I'd like to go down and listen to him. Parking around Union Square would run $50. I have to decide if it is worth it. I work right next to the Metro North train station, but I've never taken the train, but that might be an alternative. I'd have to take the subway to 14th street and I haven't done that since they did away with tokens, they have some kind of card thingy, now.

William Gibson reads from his
new book, "Spook Country".

WHEN: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 @ 7:00pm
WHERE: Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Union Square
33 East 17th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-253-0810

Cousin Steve

I've decided that I have discovered another long lost cousin. 55 year old Steve Graham is living in his car in Pittsburg, Kansas. He plays loud music, watches TV and uses the yard as a bathroom. His wife kicked him out so he is living in a 1989 Buick Century in the back yard, and evidently annoying the hell out of his neighbors. The guy has to be a cousin.

The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO - Neighbors petition city to prohibit car dwellers:

PITTSBURG, Kan. — Neighbors say they are fed up with a man who has been living in a parked car in his back yard for at least seven years, and who they say is disturbing the peace with loud music and obscenity-laced tirades."

The Memo

My friend from India, Kochumman Geevarghese, goes by the nickname of Koch here at work. In a recent email memo about the county vehicle Fleet System there was a typo where his name was unfortunately mangled.

Rather than ignore the blue spelling of his nickname, several people on the list began making comments and hitting the "reply to all" button. This has all been very business like. There has been much discussion about every aspect of the memo, but each responder has found a reason to quote the original message, often using a larger font and a bright color. This has gone through several iterations. A good many people who have nothing to do with the Fleet System are now making comments and asking for more information. There has never been so much discussion on such a minor point.

You see, the thing is that working for the County is basically boring. Everyone here is just waiting for their 20 years to be up so that they can retire with full benefits and salary. When something exiting happens, like Koch's name being misspelled, everyone wants to get in on it.

Perkins, Cash and Clapton

I can't stop listening to this video of Derek and the Dominoes on the Johnny Cash show. Carl Perkins shows up to jam. Very nice indeed.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/morehandcream/DerekOnCash2.wmv

Here's a blog with lots of this stuff. YouTube is blocked at work. I will have to listen to a few of these tonight.

Pavlov's Children

In a recent study, children were asked their opinions on the taste of food in various wrappers. The food was identical. Food wrapped in McDonalds wrappers ALWAYS taste better to preschoolers.

Study: Food in McDonald's wrapper tastes better to kids - CNN.com
"Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches."

By the way, dibs on the story title "Pavlov's Children".

My Second Assignment

This is my third post about BloggerWave and my second assignment. They are paying me $10 to post about Bloggerwave. I believe this is a good deal.

I hope that my kind and gentle readers consider BloggerWave monetizing their websites for a moment. I promise that I will get back to whining and complaining about my life in a moment. The process has been remarkably easy so far. I signed up, added a blog and a few hours later was able to make a little beer money by posting this and the previous article.

From time to time you will a sponsored post here, but I promise that it will not be spammy.

Bloggerwave.com is now live and is looking for bloggers!
Bloggerwave

MasterSeek Business Search Engine

Masterseek’s global search engine provides quick and free access to company profiles, contact information, and descriptions of products and services from more than 45 million companies in 75 countries.

You can also search in your own country or worldwide and find business partners, sales opportunities and new avenues to expand your business and increase your company’s profitability Enter your company profile and showcase your products and services to the global community.

masterseek

This is my first Bloggerwave assignment.

Justine is Going to Mars

J announced on his Blog that his name was going to Mars. I had completely forgotten that I had send Justine to Mars just before Christmas last year. Justine is now on her way to Mars (at least her name is), on the Phoenix, the first trip to explore the Martian Polar Icecap.

Justine's Registration

26 Sites That Pay You to Blog

I am looking for more ways to make money. The link is to another list of ways to make money on the blog. I signed up last week for one of these services, and I received stuff that looked like spam to put on my site. I ignored it. I am trying BloggerWave now. As soon as this blog is approved you will see semi-spammy messages that I get $6 to $10 each for posting. If this one only has spam then I will drop this project.

I have a feeling that there is a $50 minimum payout and then when you reach $49.99 they stop sending you projects. Please stay tune and I will post updates on my experience.

26 Sites That Pay You to Blog

Woman talked back from the abyss on Tappan Zee Bridge

Erica and I were coming home from the Flea Market and crossed the TZ bridge around 12:30. The traffic was backed up and moving very slowly. The reason was that there was a woman on the center span who had parked her car and was looking down into the water. She was was good looking and neatly dressed. She did not seem very upset, just interested in the water.

Erica thought we should call 911. The thought that she might be a suicide crossed our minds. I thought that it was most likely her car had just broken down. We passed her and I think we both felt uncomfortable. There were thousands of cars passing by and I was sure that somebody had called the thruway to get a tow truck out to her.

I was wrong and I should have listened to Erica. I should have called. I am also sure, however, that I was right not to stop. Dealing with distraught people is dangerous and I think that I might have made matters worse. Someone did stop, and luckily the would-be jumper really just needed someone to talk with.

Every year a half a dozen jump off the bridge. I am happy that nice looking woman did not. I hope she finds the help that she needs.

I have a friend who is a therapist sometimes one of her clients becomes suicidal. My friend stays up with the person, talking it out, keeping the person alive. I could not do that. I would not know what to say. The idea is being responsible in this way is terrifying.

Woman talked back from the abyss on Tappan Zee Bridge

Amazon Flexible Payment Service

Micropayments are small dollar amount transactions. Current payment methods like PayPal are designed to work best with large dollar amounts. For instance, most of my FreeNameAStar.com transactions are $2. I process through PayPal 4 or 5 of these per day. The PayPal fee for these is 36¢ and more for overseas transactions this come so 18% of my gross sales going to PayPal.

I could have integrated Google checkout, but these are not much better, and would also add to the complexity of the system which is too complex as it is. (FreeNameAStar needs far too much babysitting. Users continually find new ways to screw up their stars. The system needs a redesign.)

Amazon has gone into beta testing with their FPS - Flexible Payment Service. The same $2 payment would cost 15¢ for credit cards, less for debit cards and bank transfers. This is a maximum of 7.5% on my most common transaction.

I will be signing on with FPS. They have a daunting approval process and they require things like a Credit Card, a Drivers License, and a Checking Account number. You then have to send them a FAX to verify your information. I decided to wait a bit and think before I give away all of this extra sensitive information. I have used Amazon affiliate system for 6 or 7 years and I have bought thousands of dollars worth of books since Amazon first started up. (Actually Erica was the first person that I know to buy something from Amazon.) I think Amazon can be trusted with my private information. I will sign up, I just need to ponder this and discuss it with Erica.

With PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon FPS there is no longer any reason to use a credit card company. You should not have to pay several hundred dollars a month to take credit cards. Even brick and mortar stores can take credit cards through these services. Credit card companies offer services to large businesses and there has to be a cutoff point where they become cost effective, but I think that most small businesses could save money by taking payments through the online services.

I am going to design two alternate Name-A-Star sites using different approaches to registering and taking money. One of them will use Amazon FPS. FPS doesn't appear to have the tools that PayPal has. There is no Buy-it-now button or shopping cart. It looks like I will have to roll my own or look for open source solutions. I have not downloaded the documentation, but there will probably be a simple example that I can hack for my own purposes.


Amazon.com: Amazon FPS, Amazon Flexible Payment Service: Amazon Web Services: "Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payment infrastructure."

Story Writing Betting Pool

There's a new magazine starting up called Hammett Magazine that publishes Noir Detective Fiction. It only pays $10 or a copy for a story.

I am proposing a betting pool to make writing a little more interesting.

I say let's each write a story. It doesn't take long to put together a 4000 word story.

Let's make it a little more interesting. I say we each put in $20 and the each person accepted gets a share of the pot. Best case is that I win everyone else's money. Worst case, Poker Jim gets it all.

The deadline is November.

Leave a comment if you are interested. I don't know who we will get to hold the pot, but I've got $20 bucks just waiting to go.

Hammett Magazine

all ur sciantist r belong to us

Steinn Sigurðsson had some funny comments on his blog about changes in NASA administration. The white house has promoted a 20 something woman with no experience and, evidently, no science, to be white house liaison to NASA.

"man, the WH liasion up in the Admin office is a GS-15 level position, young Jane just doubled her salary to $110k - $143k, plus any performance bonuses.
Nice work if you can get it.
Wonder if she gets to order Mather around? Tell Alan Stern what the Science priorities are?"

Dynamics of Cats : all ur sciantist r belong to us: