Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 66
March 27, 2011
getting what you pay for
[In sff.net, talking about quality in optics and other things . . . ]
Abso-definitely true with optics, Bud. A couple of hours ago I carried my little Questar out and enjoyed looking at and sketching the sun for awhile. The 3.5-inch Q is light enough to pick up with one hand, but steadier than my 150-lb. 9-inch. And optical quality? It's like Ford versus Rolls Royce.
(To be totally accurate, it would be a Rolls Royce versus a Ford muscle car that's somewhat out of tune. It would win a quarter-mile, but wouldn't you rather be in the Rolls?)
Sketch posted in LiveJournal.
Joe
Abso-definitely true with optics, Bud. A couple of hours ago I carried my little Questar out and enjoyed looking at and sketching the sun for awhile. The 3.5-inch Q is light enough to pick up with one hand, but steadier than my 150-lb. 9-inch. And optical quality? It's like Ford versus Rolls Royce.
(To be totally accurate, it would be a Rolls Royce versus a Ford muscle car that's somewhat out of tune. It would win a quarter-mile, but wouldn't you rather be in the Rolls?)
Sketch posted in LiveJournal.
Joe
brush with the past
[In sff.net we got to talking about watercolor brushes, of all things.]
There's a family story behind that Series Seven brush, Dave.
When I was still in graduate school in the seventies, my mother handed me a circled ad in American Artist, asking if I'd like this for Christmas. I thought the ad was for a package of 200-lb. watercolor paper, which would be handy, so I said sure. But no, it was for a Windsor & Newton Series Seven watercolor brush, the absolute Rolls Royce of brushes.
A size 8, 7/32" in diameter, lists for $252.99 (though Dick Blick sells it for a mere $91.08), but it may last a lifetime or longer. A no-name size 8 might run you ten bucks and last a couple of months.
I'm still using that brush, forty years later. Some of the black paint on the handle has stripped off and I have to stick a piece of tape under the metal ferrule to keep it steady. But the hairs from the tails of those Russian foxes who died when Krushchev was premier still snap to a point and hold a respectable amount of paint.
You can't beat quality. You do have to pay for it, but sometimes it pays off.
(As a necessary footnote I should admit that I have professional artist friends who would rather throw themselves in front of a bread truck than pay a hundred bucks for a brush. I mean, get real. A brush starts to get fuzzy, you get a new one – and put the old one in the fuzzy-brush can, to use for feathering clouds and stuff. But I love that brush, and when I pick it up I touch my mother and her love for art, and her love for me.)
Joe
There's a family story behind that Series Seven brush, Dave.
When I was still in graduate school in the seventies, my mother handed me a circled ad in American Artist, asking if I'd like this for Christmas. I thought the ad was for a package of 200-lb. watercolor paper, which would be handy, so I said sure. But no, it was for a Windsor & Newton Series Seven watercolor brush, the absolute Rolls Royce of brushes.
A size 8, 7/32" in diameter, lists for $252.99 (though Dick Blick sells it for a mere $91.08), but it may last a lifetime or longer. A no-name size 8 might run you ten bucks and last a couple of months.
I'm still using that brush, forty years later. Some of the black paint on the handle has stripped off and I have to stick a piece of tape under the metal ferrule to keep it steady. But the hairs from the tails of those Russian foxes who died when Krushchev was premier still snap to a point and hold a respectable amount of paint.
You can't beat quality. You do have to pay for it, but sometimes it pays off.
(As a necessary footnote I should admit that I have professional artist friends who would rather throw themselves in front of a bread truck than pay a hundred bucks for a brush. I mean, get real. A brush starts to get fuzzy, you get a new one – and put the old one in the fuzzy-brush can, to use for feathering clouds and stuff. But I love that brush, and when I pick it up I touch my mother and her love for art, and her love for me.)
Joe
March 26, 2011
iPhone raised from the dead!
I had an iPhone miracle! It plain died a couple of days ago, and nothing conventional worked, and I was about to discard it, or at least take it into the store. But I googled around and wound up at the MacRumors Forum, and a combination of suggestions worked beautifully. It is so much "hold your mouth right" . . .
1. Don't use the fancy USB cable with two buttons on the side. Use the plain one. Fortunately, I was able to find one. But that didn't work, so
2. Disconnect the cable from the USB extensor and plug it straight into the Mac, and
3. Hold your mouth right.
It restored the program and transferred all my dozens of programs and thousands of musical pieces in the course of a few minutes, and now it works like new! Google saved me a couple of hundred bucks.
This morning revealed another factor of why I felt so beat-up yesterday. I'd forgotten to take my morning pills, a pain-reliever and the anti-anxiety Klonopin. (I should have figured that one out. After dinner I was feeling all annoyed and depressed, for no real reason. Klonopin has a long half-life, 35 hours, but it was starting to burn out of my system.)
A final physical factor. Day before yesterday I realized my bicycle tires were a little soft, so before I took off, I pumped them up to iron hardness. Great for efficiency, but no wonder when I got home I felt like I'd been through a concrete mixer. The 12.5-mile loop I took to the VA, around campus, and back was also a lot bumpier than the previous (14-mile) day, which was mostly country roads.
I'm only couple of weeks out of surgery, and should turn down the macho controls.
Anyhow, no biking today; take the car to drawing studio. I will drive nothing heavier than a Windsor & Newton No. 7.
Joe
1. Don't use the fancy USB cable with two buttons on the side. Use the plain one. Fortunately, I was able to find one. But that didn't work, so
2. Disconnect the cable from the USB extensor and plug it straight into the Mac, and
3. Hold your mouth right.
It restored the program and transferred all my dozens of programs and thousands of musical pieces in the course of a few minutes, and now it works like new! Google saved me a couple of hundred bucks.
This morning revealed another factor of why I felt so beat-up yesterday. I'd forgotten to take my morning pills, a pain-reliever and the anti-anxiety Klonopin. (I should have figured that one out. After dinner I was feeling all annoyed and depressed, for no real reason. Klonopin has a long half-life, 35 hours, but it was starting to burn out of my system.)
A final physical factor. Day before yesterday I realized my bicycle tires were a little soft, so before I took off, I pumped them up to iron hardness. Great for efficiency, but no wonder when I got home I felt like I'd been through a concrete mixer. The 12.5-mile loop I took to the VA, around campus, and back was also a lot bumpier than the previous (14-mile) day, which was mostly country roads.
I'm only couple of weeks out of surgery, and should turn down the macho controls.
Anyhow, no biking today; take the car to drawing studio. I will drive nothing heavier than a Windsor & Newton No. 7.
Joe
March 25, 2011
It Came From Outer Space . . . I mean the garbage pit.
Oh mercy me. I think I just saw the dumbest movie of the year. If it isn't . . . please warn me away from the next one.
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. The previews made it look like another big-budget brainless skiffy epic. But the previews didn't include the dialogue. It was less than brainless; it was brain-sucking. I went in with an IQ of 200 and came out unable to find my car.
If one line of dialogue encapsulates this film, it has to be the one where a bunch of soldiers are watching huge fucking alien flying saucers blow the shit out of everything from horizon to horizon, bodies lying everywhere, and the square-jawed sergeant looks to his men and says, "This is not a drill."
No, it's a fucking air hammer.
The movie could have been completely saved by either of two inexpensive fixes. One would be to completely amp up the stupidity and turn it into a droll comedy of excess. The other would be to run it with no dialogue at all, and (thus) no attempt at a plot – just a montage of strikingly brutal high-tech images. Let the audience try to synthesize a story out of it.
The story that does try to animate this lifeless noisemaker is such Grade-D automatic writing that it makes STARSHIP TROOPERS (the movie) look like Dostoyevsky in comparison. The Screen Writers Guild should host a public burning of the script.
At least it didn't desecrate any existing sf novel. There are scenes and gimmicks that are so old-hat they could come from that 1975 antique – oh, yeah, THE FOREVER WAR. No check in the mailbox, though, darn.
For your own sanity, stay away from this movie. Or at least wear earplugs.
Joe
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. The previews made it look like another big-budget brainless skiffy epic. But the previews didn't include the dialogue. It was less than brainless; it was brain-sucking. I went in with an IQ of 200 and came out unable to find my car.
If one line of dialogue encapsulates this film, it has to be the one where a bunch of soldiers are watching huge fucking alien flying saucers blow the shit out of everything from horizon to horizon, bodies lying everywhere, and the square-jawed sergeant looks to his men and says, "This is not a drill."
No, it's a fucking air hammer.
The movie could have been completely saved by either of two inexpensive fixes. One would be to completely amp up the stupidity and turn it into a droll comedy of excess. The other would be to run it with no dialogue at all, and (thus) no attempt at a plot – just a montage of strikingly brutal high-tech images. Let the audience try to synthesize a story out of it.
The story that does try to animate this lifeless noisemaker is such Grade-D automatic writing that it makes STARSHIP TROOPERS (the movie) look like Dostoyevsky in comparison. The Screen Writers Guild should host a public burning of the script.
At least it didn't desecrate any existing sf novel. There are scenes and gimmicks that are so old-hat they could come from that 1975 antique – oh, yeah, THE FOREVER WAR. No check in the mailbox, though, darn.
For your own sanity, stay away from this movie. Or at least wear earplugs.
Joe
March 24, 2011
Lewis Black reigns
I missed this on Jon Stewart, but it showed up online the next day. I was laughing
so hard I could hardly breathe --
www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-...
Joe
so hard I could hardly breathe --
www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-...
Joe
March 22, 2011
loose the dogs of war
Holy shit! I go out in the late afternoon to see a cute movie and when it gets out I turn on the car radio and find out we're at war with another country! That makes three? Hey, only 190 left . . . or no, that would include the United States itself. 189 or so, depending on who's counting.
Not that the pus-bag villain who runs Libya is worthy of support. But there are another six and a half million people there, who seemed all right when we visited a couple of years ago. In fact, that was one of the half-dozen best days of my life – a total solar eclipse in the high desert and then a long comprehensive tour of the huge pristine Roman ruins at Leptis Magna. With lots of smiling charming people.
There was also the graveyard at Tripoli, with its share of American Marines. As their song reminds us.
I hope they're aiming those missiles carefully. But I guess ruins are ruins, whether they're 2500 years old or 25 minutes.
Blood dries; the desert moves in. The oil beneath the sand waits patiently for our money.
Joe
Not that the pus-bag villain who runs Libya is worthy of support. But there are another six and a half million people there, who seemed all right when we visited a couple of years ago. In fact, that was one of the half-dozen best days of my life – a total solar eclipse in the high desert and then a long comprehensive tour of the huge pristine Roman ruins at Leptis Magna. With lots of smiling charming people.
There was also the graveyard at Tripoli, with its share of American Marines. As their song reminds us.
I hope they're aiming those missiles carefully. But I guess ruins are ruins, whether they're 2500 years old or 25 minutes.
Blood dries; the desert moves in. The oil beneath the sand waits patiently for our money.
Joe
March 19, 2011
flash fiction?
The kind of wake-up call you don't need in a hotel . . .
For years I've been making tea in hotel rooms with a red metal teapot, a precious souvenir of Romania. I just stick the insulated immersion heater in there and get the water boiling, and then throw in a couple of pinches of loose tea. Steep for a few minutes and enjoy the real stuff.
Packing to leave, I didn't see my old immersion heater, but there was a new one sitting there in a bubble pack. I took it along.
It wasn't insulated. I filled the pot with water and set the immersion heater in it and plugged it in – and there was a huge flash of light and loud explosion and a shower of sparks everywhere. Of course I unplugged it immediately and threw it away . . . and went back to lie down for awhile.
So here I am stuck in Orlando with no tea and no Gay and no Judith. There are panels, though, like "Steampunks, NeoPagans, and FailFen: Ethnography, Economics, and Engagement in Fan and Fantastical Communities." I may drop by that one just to find out what it's all about. Ah, but it's the same time I'm meeting Locus for a podcast interview.
Hmm. Better shave for that.
Joe
For years I've been making tea in hotel rooms with a red metal teapot, a precious souvenir of Romania. I just stick the insulated immersion heater in there and get the water boiling, and then throw in a couple of pinches of loose tea. Steep for a few minutes and enjoy the real stuff.
Packing to leave, I didn't see my old immersion heater, but there was a new one sitting there in a bubble pack. I took it along.
It wasn't insulated. I filled the pot with water and set the immersion heater in it and plugged it in – and there was a huge flash of light and loud explosion and a shower of sparks everywhere. Of course I unplugged it immediately and threw it away . . . and went back to lie down for awhile.
So here I am stuck in Orlando with no tea and no Gay and no Judith. There are panels, though, like "Steampunks, NeoPagans, and FailFen: Ethnography, Economics, and Engagement in Fan and Fantastical Communities." I may drop by that one just to find out what it's all about. Ah, but it's the same time I'm meeting Locus for a podcast interview.
Hmm. Better shave for that.
Joe
P.S.
Oh, my piece is way down on page 24. Should have been specific.
Joe
Joe
Mike Glicksohn
Our old friend Mike Glicksohn died today. He'd been ill with cancer for a long time, so no surprise. But always a shock, a blow. Our hearts are with Susan Manchester, whom he left behind, tonight.
A Facebook page about him notes that he published me before I was a professional, and it reproduces a page from his fanzine Energumen, with a poem and drawing I sent to him from Vietnam in 1968. I wasn't much of a poet then, but the last couple of lines are poignant.
http://efanzines.com/Energumen/Energumen01_s.pdf
Rest in peace, Mike
A Facebook page about him notes that he published me before I was a professional, and it reproduces a page from his fanzine Energumen, with a poem and drawing I sent to him from Vietnam in 1968. I wasn't much of a poet then, but the last couple of lines are poignant.
http://efanzines.com/Energumen/Energumen01_s.pdf
Rest in peace, Mike
March 17, 2011
under the winter sky
I just went out and peered around with the telescope for awhile. Bright moon interfering with deep sky stuff, but an interesting telescopic sight in itself. Very steady air, holding 400X easily. Nice detailed rubble along the lunar terminator. And I spent about 45 minutes visiting double and multiple stars in Orion and Canis Major. The bright background sky mutes the color differences but otherwise doesn't hurt -- it might make stars like Rigel easier to split, where the bright component is hundreds or thousands of times brighter than the dim one. Glare's a factor if the sky's really dark.
Off to Orlando in the morning.
Joe
Off to Orlando in the morning.
Joe
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