I’m a sucker for data association and visualization blogs. I’ve found a new favorite.
So what's on the to-do list? Typesetting FANG 4, design work on SoFurry and that iPad app, editing and uploading the videos from my Description and Dialogue panels from Eurofurence, balancing 2K photos from the Serbian Wedding, investigating whether I need to re-license stories from FANG and ROAR before they can be released as ebooks. Oh yes, and Heathen City 4 needs writing, a job I've been putting off for a year because, when I start it, that's going to eat up another year of my life...So of course I'm thinking of starting a podcast. Skip's boyfriend Bun suggested the title *Alex Vance Demands Your Attention* and I love it. It would be an interview show, run over Skype, with every episode featuring a pair of guests related to a particular theme. "Publishers Demand Your Attention", "Voice Actors Demand Your Attention", that sort of thing.I just can't for the life of me figure out when I'd be able to actually do it. I'm blessed with enough local friends that we have guests in the house four or five nights of the week and I'm already on a sleep schedule that averages 5.5 hours a night. What to do, what to do?
They said their vows, exchanged their rings, signed the registry and were man and wife. In addition to the witnesses, two of the kids were invited to sign as child witnesses as well. These siblings, a boy and a girl, both blonde and bilingual, were natural born stars; there wasn't one picture on any of my cards where they didn't look stunning. The girl would later confide in me that she didn't actually have a signature and just made one up, writing her name with a few flourishes through it, and gave me a stern look when I asked her if she drew a little heart too. Obviously I don't know how to talk to celebrities.
The sky was rather dramatic today, so on the way home I went up to the roof terrace of Schiphol Airport to shoot some shots for a stitched panorama.
Because the sky seemed so stormy I made sure to increase the vertical coverage on the sides, and when I ran all the shots through Photoshop its magical algorithms produced the effect I'd hoped for: the world seems to undulate, like waves on a stormy sea.
The blocky building in the middle is fully straight, though unfortunately there were some stitching errors in the windows on the left side that I just couldn't find a way to fix. Still, I'm quite pleased with it for a first effort!
At EF 2011 in Magdeburg, the third of three panels I held was on the topic of Voice Acting.
We started off with a quick presentation on vocal technique, mic technique, posture and performance, then invited some volunteers to try their hand at performing a short script written for the occasion.
I had the pleasure of being accompanied by Shay, whom I'd invited as Special Guest. He was still reeling from the rather successful premiere of Bitter Lake the previous night, which I'm sure contributed to the fact that the panel was standing room only.
At the end of the panel, Shay and I took some rather excellent questions from the audience and to finish it off, did our own run-through of the script.
Thanks to all who came!
It is our mission to chew the gay rights as part of a larger strategy to dramatically embrace our grey haired second hand cars in order to the intensive perfect joke professionally hug the weeping progress.
Absolutely wrong Jerry Springer adepts innovate cutting-edge hairdryers so that hopefully we may expertly innovate a viking.
It is our goal to maximize the weeping aquatic ballet to permit us to vigorously maximize a moron and make intensive beavers professionally turn upside-down cutting-edge grey haired seaguls.
Liquid super waldorf salads turn upside-down the extensible apple pie as the first step in our scheme to successfully smash a typeface.
Our mission is to expertly enhance itching mind blowing priests so that we may successfully chew our grey haired hitchers and have the hitchers enhance the weeping hand luggage.
The outdated mobile home aggregate a grey haired Big Brother as part of a larger strategy to vigorously flip our super straycats.
Just some quick observations at Schiphol Airport, the hub of my daily commuting grind.
Her Maj had just entered her twenties when these young whippersnappers were born. I wonder if she appreciated their contribution to the English music scene at the height of their power, being that she was approaching middle age by then.
One of people in this photo is also an astrophicist, having completed their PHD as a sexagenarian. Can you guess which one?
'Awesome people hanging out together' is one of my favorite blogs, and this is why.
I love how he showed off and looked around to check whether we all saw how special he was :)
A lot of people have mentioned that we need a video to help explain the idea. What’s the point in having a great app if no one really knows what it does?
So… to that end, we’re now releasing the first of several videos. We plan to have a few videos showing off the different concepts, so that it’s more than just words and pretty pictures.
Pretty cool ad, wouldn't you say?
Whoever made that must be very smart and attractive. You should probably buy him a drink sometime.
Also a damn useful app for the iPad-toting photographer. Just sayin'.
TeamBachmann Michele Bachmann (Follow).@140townhall TY for this forum. I'm running 4 POTUS 2 bring the voice of the people back to DC. That voice requires fundamental changes.
Now guys, you know me a bit. You know I'm crazy about the Twits, Tubes, Faces and Google Plii. So you'd think I'd be all for American politicians embracing the interwotsits and engaging via a new, vibrant medium in the first presidential debate via Twitter some six hours ago.
Ignore that it's a Tea Party thing. Ignore, even, the prevailing tired diatribe of righteous outrage at Big Government / debt ceiling / degrading American values / unemployment / piranhas / chemtrails.
(disclosure: I have not read the entire stream and do not know for sure if 'debt ceiling' was mentioned, but I stand by my statement nonetheless).
Ignore all that.
Imagine these are smart, rational people honestly and sincerely presenting the ideas they feel are the best for the people of their country. Now imagine them sitting in chair on a stage facing an audience. and imagine that this 140townhall.com bullshit is a transcript of that event.
Listen, with your mind's ear, to how empty and hollow their overly short, acronymized sentences are, how they neither acknowledge nor respond to one another, how they talk over each other when some need to say several sentences in a row. Every word serving one or two purposes: self-glorification or blaming someone for something.
I honestly couldn't even make it a quarter down the page; in my head I heard them chattering in studious discord, in complete ignorance of one another, each vapidly addressing the audience directly resulting in something that can only be described as a demented cacophony of utter bollocks.
Which, I guess, brings us back to the Tea Party...
- Alex F. Vance
Brian Anscomb, 37, force-fed the gizmo to his 23-year-old gal pal in their York Avenue apartment early Saturday, bruising and cutting her mouth, court papers say.
The whole patent litigation scene around software in general and lately Apple in particular seems to have driven a patent attorney to insanity.
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.
And yes, his poems are terrible. Some only grudgingly rhyme (even in his Dundee accent), all are bereft of linguistic sophistication, and on those occasions where he's moved to actually try his hand at metaphor or at least non-literal imagery the result is a plodding disaster. Universally, his poems' meter defies human scansion.
But I plumb love this guy.
Just as the terrible opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins, whose absolute lack of musical facility, sensitivity to tone, breath control or emotive delivery couldn't deter her from renting concert halls and selling tickets to very select groups of friends, McGonagall just wouldn't quit. And the literary world is just a little richer thanks to his tenacity.
As a struggling weaver of 52, with a snapper for a daughter to make life just a little more inconvenient, he discovered himself to be a poet.
"seemed to feel a strange kind of feeling stealing over [him], and remained so for about five minutes. A flame, as Lord Byron said, seemed to kindle up [his] entire frame, along with a strong desire to write poetry."
Until his death just after the turn of the 20th century (in his birthplace near Edinburgh, rather than Dundee where he'd spent his life) he was mocked, disparaged, rejected and sometimes rather cruelly pranked. He sought his fortune first in London and then New York, returning from both with empty pockets, but his chin held high.
The pinnacle of his career as a poet came when he hired out his services to a local circus, where he earned fifteen shillings a night for reading his terrible poetry while the audience were permitted to throw food at him. And this suited him fine. When the local magistrates shut down these disorderly events he wrote a public protest (of course, in verse) and this more than anything illustrates why I love this old coot.
He was indomitable.
Any writer who plucks up the courage to share their work or submit it for publication faces the very real risk of rejection. We're gradually hardened against it, but every fresh "no" chips away just a tiny little bit on our confidence.
And then here there is William McGonagall, who was genuinely terrible, and received gentle rejections, cease-and-dissist missives, open mockery and utter rage from publishers and audience alike, and he simply never quit.
Maybe his worldview was a bit skewed. Modern students of his work suspect he may have had Asperger's Syndrome. Who's to say.
Not only did he take rejections in stride, he apparently read them with rose-tinted glasses (with an anti-glare coating made of concentrated optimism). He wrote to Queen Victoria, hoping to secure her patronage, and was tremendously encouraged by the rejection letter he received from a functionary because he took "Thank you for your interest" as a great compliment to his talents. When an obviously fake letter from representatives of King Thibaw Min of Burma told him that he had been knighted in absentia he took it at face value and proclaimed himself a Sir from then until his death in penury.
Very, very few of us can hope to suffer such persistent insults to our talents, such frequent requests for us to please, please stop writing. Sure, we may not ever be satisfied with the size or the responsiveness of our audience, and we may water down our whiskey with manly tears when we receive another "thanks, but no" letter from a publisher.
"Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah", a weaver's son and a Dundee boy, should be an example to us all: if you believe in yourself, honestly and sincerely, then you'll live and die proud and happy -- and the world's barbs be damned.
- Alex.
Full text of the Tay Bridge Disaster here: http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/disaster.htm
Selected bibliography here: http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/
