S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 119

Writing Advice and Methods

I have a guest blog post on Imogen Knight's blog talking about how I write.  See it here.

Scientific Thinking

I guess we have a science theme going this week.  Yesterday we discussed why you don't like science (assuming you don't).  Today I want to talk about thinking like a scientist.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I'm on a diet.  As part of this diet I drink a lot of water.  And I mean a lot.  Up to one gallon per day.  To facilitate this water drinking, I have a 1/2 gallon Tupperware pitcher I use.  I fill it with ice and water, I fill my glass with ice and water, then as I drink the water from the glass, I re-fill it from the pitcher.  I do this twice and between the first glass of ice water and the melting ice in the glass and pitcher, I am probably drinking about a gallon of water every day.  This helps stave of hunger and some claim it flushes toxins.  I do know I get more exercise running to the bathroom every 15 minutes or so.

So I'm sitting at my desk working on something (or goofing off) dutifully drinking my water when I hear a squeaking sound to my left where the pitcher rests on my vinyl notebook which serves as sort of a mega-coaster.  And I wonder what the heck is going on.  Why is my water pitcher squeaking.

Now if I were a non-scientific thinker, I might conclude it's haunted, it's alive, or there's a little invisible mouse on top of it.  But, using Occam's Razor, I immediately reject (even without thinking about it) any supernatural explanation.  There must be a logical, scientific explanation, I realize.

I decide the squeak could be explained by the Ideal Gas Law based on the data I empirically gathered.  Okay, I see your eyes glazing over.  So follow me on this:
The pitcher is about half-full of ice-water solution at equilibrium which means the liquid is at almost exactly (because of my altitude and the water not being 100% pure) 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius).The room temperature is about 72 degrees F (22 degrees C). My water pitcherThe pitcher is sealed (see picture) so the volume in the pitch is constant, therefore, between pouring out water, the volume of the ullage is constant (scientists tend to use unfamiliar words because they describe things more precisely).Nature is always trying to reach equilibrium so the warmth of the room will be warming the ice water and the air above it (in the ullage).  As long as there's ice (which will slowly melt to compensate for the warming water) the water should stay at 32 degrees F.  But the air will warm.  This is called "thermal equilibrium."

So here's the Ideal Gas Law:

PV=nRT
I know, gibberish.  So let's break that down.

P is the pressure
V is the volume
n is the amount of gas (measured in "moles" but don't worry about that)
R is the "Ideal Gas Constant" which means it's a number that doesn't change.
T is the temperature.

In the case of the pitcher of water, volume (V) of the ullage is a constant (between pours of water), the amount of air in the ullage (n) is a constant (again, between pours).  The gas constant is always a constant (funny that), but the temperature (T) is rising because it is probably around 32 degrees F but it wants to be 72 degrees (the temperature of the air around it) because it wants to reach thermal equilibrium.

This is, to me, the beauty of science and engineering, that something as simple as the Perfect Gas Law can describe real-world happenings.  (And if you don't think the Perfect Gas Law is simple, take a look at Bernoulli's equation!)  Basically, if V, n, and R are constants, and T goes up, then our math teacher (oh, no, not math!) taught us that P has to go up.  Or to use algebra:

P=(nRT)/V And that can be simplified as: P=KT (Because everything but T and P are constants, I just wrapped them up in one constant I called "K" and if you care: K=(nR)/V Clear as mud?) So from P=KT, if T goes up, P must go up.  So what is happening in my water pitcher is that the temperature of the air in the ullage is rising so the pressure is increasing but the seal at the top is not perfect and the higher-pressure air, again, due to nature's preference for equilibrium (this time of pressure), is trying to escape to the lower-pressure region outside the pitcher, and a little is getting past the hole cover, and it's squeaking as it escapes. Quod erat demonstrandum. And yes, that was a long ways around to "the air is warming up, increasing in temperature, and trying to escape."  But, math and science can be used to explain the phenomena and that works for so many things in the world.  The math gets tough (believe me, I took Chemical Engineering classes) but it's the same principle.  You think like a scientist and describe the world around you in terms that can be modeled mathematically. So next time you're faced with a mystery, approach it scientifically.  Maybe then you won't believe in ghosts.

Why You Don't Like Science

I've often wondered why so many people don't like science because I love science.  I love learning about my world and how it works.  I also love science fiction that involves science, that is known as "hard SF."  When I wrote Rock Killer I was trying to write a hard SF novel.

And I was wondering what would have cause most people to not like science.  Watching my kids grow up (who are all grown, now), I could see in them that they were little scientists.  They would sit and experiment for ages learning about gravity, friction, force all during their early play.  My oldest once stuck his head an a bowl and yelled.  I assumed he was seeing how the sound changed when he did that.  It was also hilarious to watch.

So if we're all born curious little scientists, why don't most people, it seems, like science?  I have a theory:

When you were a baby you were sitting in your highchair and you accidentally drop your spoon off the edge.  It falls to the floor.  And you think, "wow, that's interesting."  Your mother picks it up and sets it on the highchair tray again.  And your little mind is thinking, "I wonder if that works on the other side of the tray."  So you pick the spoon up and drop it off the other side of the tray.  And sure enough, it falls to the floor.  Your mother, a little bit exasperated now, picks it up and puts in on the tray.

Now you're really thinking.  You think you need one more data point to draw your curve.  Does it do the same off the front of the tray.  So you pick up the spoon and drop it off the front of the tray.  And your mother picks it up, puts it on the tray, and says, "Don't do that again."

Nonplussed, you think you've got this down.  But like all good scientists, you want to confirm your theory with reproducible results.  So you toss the spoon and it lands with a clang on the kitchen linoleum.  Pleased with your result you are shocked when your mother puts the spoon back on the tray and yells, "DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!"  And you suddenly decide with one data point that science is scary and no fun.

And that's why you don't like science.

I Am Hopeful that You Use "Hopefully" Correctly

When it comes to grammar and words, I have pet peeves when people use words incorrectly or use improper grammar.  One word that is almost always misused is "Hopefully."  People say "Hopefully the sun will be shining tomorrow" when what they mean is "I hope the sun will be shining tomorrow."  What you can say is, "I am hopefully looking forward to sunshine tomorrow."

Why is that?  We all know that "hopeful" means "full of hope" just like "joyful" means "full of joy."  And "joyfully" is the adverb form of "joyful" and means "as full of joy."  "Hopefully" is the adverb form of "hopeful" so it means "as full of hope."  It doesn't mean "I hope" as so many use it. 

So this would be correct:

Dave hopefully asked Susan to marry him. Now, they way most people would read that is to mean: "I hope Dave asked Susan to marry him."  But what it really means is "Full of hope, Dave asked Susan to marry him." And this is also correct: Susan joyfully said "yes" when Dave hopefully asked her to marry him. And that's how you can remember the correct usage of "hopefully": it's like "joyfully" except being full of joy, you're full of hope.  So I hope from now on you use "hopefully" correctly. Now don't get me started on "take" and "bring!"

Huskies are 4-0!

For the first time since 2001 the University of Washington Huskies are 4-0 after defeating Arizona last night in a game marked by wind and heavy rain.

I didn't write about last weeks' victory against Idaho State because it was a pretty dumb game.  I don't know who scheduled a small, FCS school against UW but is was very much a mismatched game.  When the score hit 42-0 in the second quarter, Coach Sarkisian pulled out the starters and put in the second string players.  And the backup quarterback looked pretty good against ISU.  And the Huskies still won 56-0.  They moved up in the AP poll to #16 as a result.

Last nights' game against Arizona was really the Huskies' first real test and was their first Pac-12 game.  When the game started it was raining hard.  Rain in Seattle is usually not hard, just incessant.  But last night it was pouring and the wind was blowing.  This made the passing game nearly impossible due to the inability to catch a sopping wet ball.  So the running game became important.  There were unusual mistakes: a missed PAT, bad snaps (one that led to a Husky safety), and punts and kick-offs that looked like they'd been sliced, all most likely due to the rain and wind.  Things looked shaky the first half but by the second half the rain had slowed (not the wind) and the Huskies found their stride, pretty much dominating the game both offensively and defensively.  And in the end they won 31-13, most of Arizona's points coming in the first half.

Another positive trend was there were a lot less penalties on the Huskies.  Sarkisian must have worked hard on that the week prior.

And this morning the Huskies were #15 in the AP poll.

The Pac-12 is a very strong conference this year.  Right now after the fifth week there are four undefeated teams and only one team, California, has a losing record.  Five teams are ranked including Oregon (#2) and Stanford (#5).  And next week the Huskies meet Stanford in Palo Alto and the week after that play Oregon in Husky Stadium.  It would be wonderful if they won either of those games (especially Oregon) but I'm not getting my hopes up.  The Huskies are strong this year, but Phil Knights money bought Oregon a very good team.  But we could be looking at a 10-2 season for the Huskies, which would be remarkable just five years after going 0-12.  Too bad Keith Price is a senior because the starting quarterback has just come into his stride, it seems.

Also, traffic in Seattle must have been worse than usual.  The Mariners were at home in Safeco Field in the afternoon.  The Huskies played at home in Husky Stadium at 4:00 P.M.  And at 7:30 the Washington State Cougars played Stanford (and lost) at "home" in the Seahawks' venue, Century Link Field, across the street from Safeco.  Add to that sheets of rain, and it probably gave a new meaning to the term "gridlock."

iOS 7 After a Week

Last week after I'd had iOS 7 for about 24 hours on my iPhone 5, I did a review of it.  Now I've had iOS 7 for a week and I have some further thoughts and updates.

Probably because I'm getting used to it, I'm liking it better.  I've used AirDrop a couple of times just to try it out but when I tried to do with it a friend for an actual use (sending him a contact) it didn't work even though he had it turned on, he said. 

My biggest complaint is still the simplified, primary-colors graphics.  They seem a step backwards from the old OS.  For example, still, setting up an appointment in the calendar is difficult because the rollers are hard to distinguish as shown in this picture:
 Siri seems smarter and able to understand better.  And she doesn't say "Would you like me to search the web for that?" every time she doesn't know how to respond.  She (he, there's a male voice option now) actually is probably more useful (I've already used her to text while driving).

I have no idea why Apple decided to change the delete protocol from swipe left to right and change it to swipe right to left.  At first this really annoyed me.  But I'm getting used to it.

The camera has two options for picture size and a bunch of filters that no one is going to use much unless they are really into photography (like my wife).

The thing I like best is this: in an app I can hit the home button twice and this brings up the "close app" function (have no idea what to call it) and you flick the open apps up to close them, including the one you were just in!  Used to be you had to hit the home button to get out of the app, then hit the home button two more times to open the close app function.  This was, actually, one of my wishes for the old OS so I'm really happy to see this.  Also, you don't have to hit the home button again to exit the closing app function, just touch the small home screen.  And groups can be exited without hitting the home button again, just touch the screen outside the group.

So all in all a good upgrade, if only the graphics were better.

I ordered an iPhone 5S yesterday (the fingerprint reader sucked me in) so maybe when I get that I'll blog about it.  It comes with iOS 7 preloaded.

Publisher Facebook Party

My publisher, World Castle Publishing, is having a week-long Facebook party!  Click here, then click "Join" and get wrapped up in all the fun.  You can ask our authors questions or just read all the responses.  WCP has an eclectic mix of writers offering all sorts of different genre of novels.

There's giveaways including signed books, ebooks, swag, and I'm giving away a limited edition Space Resources, Inc. T-Shirt available in size L, XL, or 2XL.  Space Resources, Inc. is the fictional company that mines asteroids in my science fiction novel Rock Killer.

Hop on over.  As the creepy lady said in Poltergeist: "All are welcome."

iOS 7 . . . So Far

I've had iOS 7 on my iPhone now for about 24 hours.  It took a while to get it to update.  Completely refused to do it via WiFi on the phone (probably due to server overload) so had to go through iTunes and that needed to be updated and the computer rebooted.  It was a bit of a hassle and not in keeping with Apple's "easy as pie" reputation.  But once I got the file to download (it kept erroring out again probably due to server overload) it installed on my phone with no problems.  The whole process (not including updating iTunes) took about 15 minutes starting with the time the file finally downloaded.  (Hey, Apple, how come when I'm downloading a file and the download stops, I have to download the whole dang thing again and it doesn't start from where it stopped?)

A bit a of warning: I love my iPhone.  But I've only had three smartphones in my life: an HTC Fuze, and iPhone 4, and an iPhone 5.  After how truly awful the HTC was, the iPhone 4 was just amazing to me.  And the iPhone 5 was even better.  I've never had an Android phone so I have no baseline to compare the iPhone to an Android.  I've heard good things about the Samsung Galaxy series.  But it'll take a lot to get me to give up my iPhone.

As I said, I've had iOS 7 for about 24 hours now and my first impression is: I like it, but it's not an amazing upgrade.  They seem to have simplified the graphics giving them almost a cartoonish look perhaps to speed up the processing and thus the phone (it does seem faster).  It uses a lot of transparency which can be distracting (even if it looks cool).  And it has this cool thing where the background picture (wallpaper) moves in relation to how the phone is moved, giving it a 3-D effect.  But after about a day or two, I suspect no one will care.  There's a lot of other graphic silliness that will soon fail to impress.  And some of the sounds have changed. 

What I likeI like the way you shut off apps better.  Anytime on an iPhone you close an app (by hitting the home button) it is still present in the background and my OCD nature is driven nuts by knowing there were there.  So I will close an app, then hit the home button twice to completely close the apps (not sure what the correct technical terms for these functions are) and then hit the home button again to get back to the home screen.  And I did that a lot, often after having only one app closed but lurking in the background.  The new method you hit the home button twice like before, but now the apps are to the side and you flick them up to close them completely.  It's faster then holding one down until they wiggle then touching the "x" on all of them to close them.  Plus, to get back to the home screen, you touch it on the screen, not hit the home button.  Which means I'm hitting the home button 1/3rd less times meaning it might not wear out as fast as it did on my iPhone 4.

I like how Safari now handles multiple webpages, seems faster and easier to use.

Typing seems easier and more accurate.  They have put the security code input on one screen by itself so the buttons are bigger and farther apart.  I used to have a lot of trouble typing the code in if I did it quickly.  Since I've gotten iOS 7 I've miss-typed it only once.  And for texts and emails the typing seems better.  I used to almost always hit the backspace when trying to type an "L" or "M" but I haven't done that since upgrading.  While I don't like how the calculator looks, it seems I make less operator errors (hitting x instead of +, for example).
What I don't likeI wish I could change the color schemes on the text messages as the simple blue and white scheme seems too plain.  And Siri sounds more human (and comes with a male voice option) so she seems to have lost some of her quirky charm. And they've changed a bunch of the icons so you have to re-learn what the icons mean.  That's a bit annoying.  Putting an appointment in the calendar seems to be an exercise in frustration because the rollers for changing date and time aren't distinct and I found myself moving the whole screen trying to move a roller.  A little over-simplified.

Some of the old cool effects are gone.  For instance, when you delete and email is zooms down and gone very fast.  I like the way it seemed to get sucked into the garbage bucket in the old OS.  I have to admit, it's faster.  And if I leave the mail app in an email, when I get new mail and re-open it, it opens in that email, not in the inbox.  I don't remember the old OS doing that.
Bottom LineI've read that this OS update is to make the iPhone more up to date to compete with Android phones.  One thing that is very risky for a company to do is imitate the imitators.  Perhaps the iPhone was getting staid but some of the changes seem to be a backward step in graphic beauty, not a great leap forward.  Also, there was, for me at least, a bit of a steep learning curve on some things.  I couldn't figure out how to erase email from the inbox until my wife showed me, for example.  And it took me forever to figure out how to put my favorites in Safari favorites that it opens automatically when you ask for a new webpage (that can be turned off but I liked it, just wanted my favorites in there).  I thought the old OS had a very beautiful graphic interface. iOS 7 seems to dumb that down with lots of primary colors and no shadows or reflections.  There's nothing hugely wrong with iOS7, it's just not amazingly great.

Movie Review: World War Z

Back in February I had a post on this blog about how I "don't do horror."  And I still don't but I decided to get World War Z from Netflix despite it being labeled a horror movie.  It wasn't really a horror movie, more like an action thriller with some horror aspects.  And it was a pretty good movie with intense action, scary but not over-the-top gory moment, and it pulled at your heartstrings just enough but not too much.  Brad Pitt stars as a retired Jack Bauer type but he worked for the UN which doesn't seem very authentic (what would the UN need with a hard core kick ass guy?).  The movie builds the tension starting with an family outing gone horribly wrong.  It gives you clues before revealing exactly what's happening.  It's a frightening scenario.  The movie escalates from there with startling imagery and fast-paced action.  It does, however, suffer from something a lot of action movies and books seem to have: the climax is less exciting than what came earlier (viz: Olympus has Fallen ).  And the ending, once they set it up, became quite predictable.

Another problem I had with the movie was military hardware.  There was a helicopter in the movie supposedly U.S. military that I know is not in the U.S. military inventory.  And the Israeli military was using the same helicopter (might have been the same aircraft repainted)  A C-130 cargo plane (the actor was credited as "C-130 pilot") was not a C-130 cargo plane.  The plane they used was close but it was too skinny and the nose was all wrong.  I suspect it was an An-12 Soviet-era cargo plane.

I gave World War Z four starts on Netflix because of the intense action sequences that kept me on the edge of my recliner.  And don't be scared off by its "horror" label.  The horror and gore are kept in check and the action is what this movie is all about.

Pet Grammar Peeves

I have this pet peeve when it comes to grammar.  Well, okay, I have more than one especially in these days of social media where people who are supposedly educated don't know the difference between "to" and "too" and "your" and "you're."  And while I'm a pretty bad speller (and the typo king) I do try to keep my grammar accurate and correct (although I have typo'ed "to" for "too").

My peeve is the misuse of "I" and "me."  As in "He's taller than me" and "She gave the money to Jim and I."  Both of those are wrong and exactly backwards.  I think what confuses people is that in some cases "I" is correct and in some "me" is but they don't know which is which.  So here's how I remember (without getting into that "I" is used when it is the subject of a sentence and "me" when it's the object).  If you can take out the other person you wouldn't say "She gave the money to I" (at least I hope not) but "She gave the money to me."  So when you have Jim (or someone else) added, you still use "me": "She gave the money to Jim and me."

To know if you should use "I" add a verb: "He's taller than I am."  You wouldn't say (I hope) "He's taller than me am" so you'd use "I" there, just don't say the "am" (or do, it's perfectly acceptable).

People look at me funny when I said things like "He's taller than I" because they are sure I'm wrong.  But I'm not.

Which brings up another peeve: "like" and "such as."  This is so abused I don't even know if we can save it.  If you are comparing things that are similar but not the same, use "like":  "The Chevy Malibu is a mid-sized car like the Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonota, and Dodge Dart."  If you are comparing things that include all the items, use "such as": "Mid-sized cars such as the Chevy Malibu  Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonota, and Dodge Dart are popular with young families."  Use "like" for comparisons, use "such as" for encompassing lists.

Okay, done ranting.