Bryce Moore's Blog, page 94
March 2, 2020
Adventures in Robotics
Tomas headed down to New Hampshire over the weekend to participate in a robotics tournament. He’d done this last year, but somehow I ended up having no clue what it was he was doing. This year, he sent me a link so I could stream the event on Twitch, and that made a huge difference.
For the uninitiated, the goal of a robotics competition is to build a robot designed to do certain tasks. The league tells everyone what the tasks are ahead of time, and then you get to work designing a bot that will do whatever you need it to. This year, the goal is to gather up yellow nerf balls and shoot them through various goals, then go and grab onto a pole and lift itself up in tandem with the other robots on its team.
Does that not make sense? Here’s a video:
All the teams get the info on the season challenges at the same time, and then there are rules as to when you can work on the robot. Make more sense?
Thursday was a snow day, so Tomas headed over to school before they were leaving for the event, and he spent hours working with his team on their bot. They drove down to NH that evening and spent more time working on it that night. Going into the competition, they were pretty worried, since their still hadn’t tested the bot out and weren’t even sure if it would be able to do anything. They still didn’t have a working arm (to lift the robot off the ground at the end), and they didn’t have a working turret (to fire the nerf balls.) Of course, the other teams were also under the same time restrictions, so it was likely many of them were having issues as well.
Once things got underway, I actually found the whole thing a ton of fun to watch. It was great to see the many different approaches different teams had taken to solving the same problem. 40 teams had shown up, and they were randomly put into trios for a series of 80 rounds of competition, with each round pitting two trios against each other. Some of the robots were clearly further along in design than others, but it was fun to see how different teams compensated for their flaws. Tomas’s was particularly good on defense. Since their shooting turret wasn’t working, they would go and interfere with the other teams’ ability to shoot the balls, and they did a great job with it.
After the 80 rounds are over, the top 8 teams get to select alliances. They invite lesser-ranked teams to join them in the quarterfinals. Tomas’s team was literally the last one selected, but that meant he was on the alliance that featured the first place team. By then, they had fixed their arm and were able to lift themselves off the ground, and they’d perfected their defense. Things were really looking up.
Sadly it wasn’t meant to be, however. All that defense had taken a toll on their bot, as they’d been repeatedly slamming it into opponents for two days straight. It shot a gear loose, and then the bot quickly self destructed to the point that it couldn’t move, which spelled doom for their alliance.
Still, it was a lot of fun to watch, and I look forward to hearing about upgrades they’re making for their robot in preparation for their next competition in a few weeks.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 28, 2020
Religion in Politics
As the political season ramps up even more(!), I’m already seeing plenty of posts on social media citing religion to back up political beliefs. You’ve got people who cite quotes from the Bible about the importance of independence, or the sanctity of marriage, or the evils of legalized marijuana, or the need to be more compassionate. And when I see these posts, I have a mixed response.
On the one hand, I’m a deeply religious person, and so it’s natural that my politics are influenced by my religious beliefs. On the other hand, I try to avoid making religious arguments, and I admittedly bristle when those arguments are made online for a number of reasons.
First of all, if you make an appeal to religion as a way of “solving” a political issue, you’re only going to further polarize an already polarized topic. If you have people who agree with you, they’re going to nod and give you a solid amen. You might have people who aren’t religious but still agree with you. They’ll likely just go wander off elsewhere, because why bother. If you have people who aren’t religious and don’t agree with you, they’re going to yell at you for bringing something irrelevant into an important conversation. (At which point you get to begin to argue about religion AND politics at the same time.) Finally, you also might have people who are religious but disagree with your conclusion. (In which case you’re back to arguing about religion and politics again.)*
Second, there’s no really good way to interact with a post that uses religion to prove a point. If you critique it based on religious grounds, then you’re called a heretic. If you critique it based on secular grounds, then you’re just a heathen who hasn’t properly been enlightened yet.
Again, I can and do have political beliefs that are influenced by my religion. But do I believe God agrees with those beliefs? To me, that’s what’s happening when these sort of posts are shared online. They’re saying “God wants you to vote against _________” or “God needs you to protect ___________.” And that kind of argument is really tenuous at best.
What if it’s a Muslim making the post? What if it’s a Jew? A Buddhist? If you would dismiss those religious posts as irrelevant, then why post your own version of them? Because your religion is right and theirs is wrong? If that’s the case, then we’re right back to arguing about religion and politics again instead of just politics.
It can feel very cathartic to find a religious quote or argument that really resonates with us, and that’s fine. It’s when we go on and use that quote to try and convince others that things just fall apart for me. Because a religious quote is using an appeal to an ultimate authority to prove your point. It’s saying, “Not only do I think I’m right, but GOD thinks I’m right too. So if you disagree with me, you’re just flat out wrong.”
“But, Bryce,” I anticipate some of you saying. “There are certain ultimate truths out there. Why *shouldn’t* I post something if God is clearly in favor of it or against it? I need to make sure everyone knows they’re wrong.”
To which I respond, “Unless God has decided to make you His ultimate mouthpiece on earth, maybe deciding to speak for Him on social media is a bit premature.”
If actual church leaders aren’t throwing up posts left and right in favor of a candidate or against a position, maybe we could learn a thing or two from that and follow suit. If they *are* putting up those posts, then go ahead and share and like them, I suppose, but don’t expect that post to be the sort of a Mic Drop post online that you want to think it will be.
Generally speaking, I believe there are good people with deeply held religious beliefs on both sides of the aisle. No party has a monopoly on virtue or faith. Almost every single hot button political issue I can think of is a thorny mess of contradictions, with no clear right and wrong answer.
I’m not sure what I think this post is going to accomplish. I fully expect to continue seeing posts from both sides drawing religion into politics. Maybe my best approach to dealing with it would be to just decide not to say anything on any of the posts. Probably safest for me . . .
But if you’re thinking about posting something in this vein, and this post makes you think twice about it, then maybe I’ll have done some good.
*If only we could somehow throw in a divisive sports reference into the same posts. Something like “God said the Yankees need to lead the country against socialism.” Maybe that could make things even more spicy in the Facebook comments.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 27, 2020
Dungeons and Dragons: New Commons Project Nomination
Around two years ago, the university where I work was awarded a grant to start something we called the New Commons Project. I wrote about this a while ago, but if you’ve forgotten, it’s an effort to select works that are important to us today for a variety of reasons. For example, finalists so far have been everything from the FEDCO Seed Catalog to the Canoe to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony to The Wire to The Simpsons to Persuasion. Tons of variety, with each work nominated by a person in Maine.
Finalists each get a month of programming here at UMF, with guest speakers and events and lectures to discuss why the work is important. I’ve nominated a few things over the space of the last while (True Grit, Arrested Development, and Libraries themselves), but I really wanted to put something together that would push the envelope in terms of nomination videos. I wanted something that would be fun to watch. Something along the lines of a lot of the videos I enjoy watching online that combine humor, media, and thinking in one.
Six months ago, I decided a nomination for Dungeons and Dragons would be perfect for this. I wrote a script for the video, and I even photoshopped some pictures of the faculty members involved in running the program, but after that, I just ran out of time. I’ve made enough videos to know how much work can go into making one, and I just didn’t have it in me to get over that final hump of sitting down and getting it done.
The deadline is March 15th, however, so I finally decided that needed to change. I recorded the narrative and pushed myself to complete the thing. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. For one thing, I discovered that the script I’d recorded was really bland and boring. When I’d recorded it, I thought I was reading in an interesting tone and that it would be fine, but when I played it back, it just sounded like snoozeville. So I rerecorded it, this time trying to push things over the top. Honestly, I felt like an idiot, reading it in that tone. Like I was doing way too much. But when I played it back, it sounded much better. Lesson learned. To make things really interesting, I need a ton more animation in my voice.
From there, I needed to figure out how to import movie clips and GIFs into my video. Movie clips could be done pretty easily with a Chrome add-on called Steam Video Downloader. (It doesn’t play nice with YouTube, but it’s great with Vimeo.) Then I taught myself how to capture video on my screen with QuickTime Player. Once that was done, I was off and running.
In the end, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. It’s a great mashup of all sorts of things that could have been good nominations on their own, but it makes my argument well: picking Dungeons and Dragons essentially picks a ton of works that it was influenced by and has influenced in turn. I would love to see the programming that would come from a D&D selection. Crossing my fingers that it will happen.
Also, now that I’ve done the video and know what goes into it, I’m tempted to try my hand at a few more. I’d like to do some video essays around different topics. We’ll see if that ever comes together, though. It took me forever just to do this one . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 26, 2020
Everyone Needs a Reset Now and Then
I use my computers day in, day out, each and every day. And if there’s one thing I don’t like doing, it’s sitting around wasting time. However, I also still do some amount of technical support off and on, and I have years of experience in that area in the past. And if there’s one thing I know when it comes to tech support (and you probably know it too), the first thing to always try before you get too frustrated with anything that plugs in is to . . . try turning it off and on again.
Just today, I was trying to get something done on my work laptop (a Mac). Things were dragging. The colorful spinning wheel was popping up left and right, and it was seriously impacting my ability to get things done. I knew what I needed to do: it had been a couple of weeks since I rebooted the computer. (I usually just put it to sleep and wake it up.) I didn’t want to reboot it, though, because I knew doing that would mean I’d have to wait around for a few minutes doing nothing while it got itself back in order.
Eventually, however, enough was enough. Five minutes later, the computer was back in business, with nary a colorful spinning wheel to be seen. The best thing I could have done for my productivity was taking that time to reset the computer, and I should have done it much sooner.
The thing is, I firmly believe the same thing can be said for me as a person. If I don’t have the time to reset myself on a regular basis, my operating system just starts to behave strangely. It takes me longer to get work done than it should. I get frustrated more easily. I get distracted. I feel overwhelmed. In the grand scheme of things. taking an hour or two off each day isn’t a big bite out of my productivity, though sometimes it can feel like if I don’t take that time, I could get so much more done.
It’s just not true, however.
So today, consider this your reminder to take the time you need to reset. Read a book. Play a video game. Play an instrument. Watch a movie. Play a board game. Go for a run. We each know what resets us, and we should be given the time and space to get that reset in on a regular basis.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 25, 2020
Back in the Writing Group Saddle Again
I’ve been in a number of writing groups over the years. For a long time, it was the main way I made myself feel like a writer. Eventually, my hectic schedule managed to elbow writing group out of my life, and it’s been about four and a half years since that happened. In the intervening time, I haven’t really found a good mechanism for getting feedback on a regular basis. When I was out in Utah in January, I was talking to some authorly friends about it, and I decided to give it another whirl.
The current plan is to meet via Google Hangouts (or something like it) once a week. There will be 4-5 of us total, and submissions are capped at 5,000 words each. That means each week I’ll have up to 20,000 words to read and critique, which will certainly be an added item on my To Do list, but in return, I’ll get 5,000 words of my writing critiqued. Yay for that.
Better yet, the plan is to have our meetings during the day. Lunchtime here on the east coast. One of the biggest drawbacks of my last online writing group was that we typically didn’t start our meetings until around 9pm my time. (As I remember? I could be wrong on the exact start time . . .) We had members from Utah to Maine, and so it had to be late enough for people to get home from work in Utah and get kids squared away before we began. With this new writing group, we still span the country, but a good number of the members (all but me? not sure on that one) are full time writers. And if there’s one thing full time writers have going for them, it’s flexibility of schedule. So they’re all able to meet in the morning in Utah/Idaho, so that we can meet at lunch for me.
How am I going to carve out time to do this? Well, I already spend time each weekday jogging in place. (Yes, I’m still doing that.) I’ve actually been known to mute myself during phone conferences so that I can jog in place during them as well. Usually I’ll watch movies, tv shows, or Magic: The Gathering videos while I jog and eat my lunch. On Wednesdays I’ll just jog and offer writing critiques. In other words, my hope is that all I’ll be “giving up” for this is the time I’ll spend reading the submissions. And since I’ll count that toward my yearly goal of a book per week, even that won’t really be giving up time. The whole endeavor shouldn’t make an impact on my overall busy level.
In theory.
But even if it does, in practice I think it’s worth it. My approach to writing right now is to write a first draft of a novel and then shelve it for 6 months, at which point I drag it out, reread it, and give it a second draft. The only person’s input I typically receive on it is my own. From there, I send it off to my agent, and we bounce it back and forth for a while. My hope is that with some good critiques from a writing group, this will show a marked improvement in the process. Plus, writing is often a solitary process. It’s good to be able to hear from other writers. Double plus, I’m already a fan of two of the writers in my group, meaning I read their stuff anyway, and I really respect their skill level. (Even if one of them already admitted that they liked Parasite. I’m trying not to hold that against them . . .)
All-in-all, I’m pretty excited for the new adventure. Wish me luck!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 24, 2020
Giving Up on Outlander
I always assure people that yes, I do have standards when it comes to what movies and media I’ll consume (even though my standards might be different than others’). Generally, my standards adhere more to quality than to content. The fact that something is well-written, impactful, and well-executed–storytelling at the top of its craft–is more important to me than anything else, and I’m willing to go a long ways with a show or movie the more it adheres to those high standards. I’m much more likely to abandon a show if I feel like it’s wasting my time. If the plot is formulaic, or if it all seems to just be running on rails, or if I feel like I’ve already gotten everything I want to from a show, then enough’s enough.
(In general, I’m an advocate for everyone deciding where they draw the line on what they will and won’t watch. I recognize that where I draw the line will be different from where other people draw it, and I have nothing against that (just as I would hope others would have nothing against where I draw the line). I respect people’s ability to decide for themselves what works and what doesn’t.)
But there are still times when I just decide even quality isn’t enough to keep me hanging around. Fleabag was one such instance. I’ve heard great things about it. It’s won multiple bit awards, but in the end, I just felt like the content of the show was something that was more than what I wanted to keep coming back for. There are so many wonderful things out there that I want to watch. Why should I spend time with something that I don’t just love? So I get that there’s likely something there I’m missing. That’s okay. I don’t like lobster, either. And just because everyone else thinks it’s an awesome food doesn’t mean that I have to order it from the menu ever again. It’s not you, lobster. It’s me.
I just gave up on another show over the weekend. I’d hung around with Outlander for a season. I enjoyed the time travel aspects of it, and the scenery was always worth a watch. It seemed to dwell on gratuitous sex and violence more than I would have preferred, but I’d heard good things about the show as a whole, so I kept with it. It’s done by Ronald Moore, the same creator behind the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and I was very curious to see what it was going to do with time travel as the series progressed. Yes, it’s heavy on the romance, but there was enough fighting and intrigue and historical tidbits to keep me interested.
The finale of Season 1, however, really pushed things beyond what I was willing to put up with. Some spoilers ahead, so if you’re thinking of watching the show in spite of my experience, you’ll want to selectively read the next part.
I have a fairly strong stomach, and a fairly strong bias against censoring things. I don’t recall the last time I skipped a scene for any reason. But Outlander’s first season finale made me lose that streak, as it spent something like 15-20 minutes dwelling on a sadistic torture/rape scene. It just kept coming back to it over and over and over. I finally started hitting the fast forward button, and I was glad I did, since the scenes lasted a long time even in then.
That scene was enough to make me begin to question just what was in store for me in the rest of the season. Was it worth hanging around for? I checked out the reviews on AV Club, and I discovered that while there were some A’s and B’s in the future, there were also a fair number of Cs and even some Ds. In spite of my hesitation, I watched the first few episodes of the next season, which trades Scotland for a Parisian setting. (Filmed in Prague, actually, but who’s counting?)
It took away one of the main draws the show had for me (that cool scenery) and traded it for a bunch of random subplots that didn’t really connect to anything. To compensate, it upped the sex, throwing it in gratuitously whenever it felt like things were getting slow. (Which was often.) Game of Thrones made the term “sexposition” famous, since it would throw exposition into the middle of sex scenes, so that people didn’t get bored. Outlander decided to ditch the exposition altogether and just have sex.
To make things even worse, the show started dipping into pure soap opera territory. Characters died and then came back from the dead. Dramatic developments abounded. Random coincidences left and right, all designed to heighten the tensions even more.
Enough was enough. There was no longer anything I could see worth hanging around for. Yes, I was still interested in the ultimate fate of the characters, but I wasn’t willing to slog through the rest of the show to get to those answers, especially when I wasn’t sure the answers were going to be worth the slog once I got there.
So I turned it off.
I know there are fans out there. More power to you. Let’s just say I’m leaving more of the show for you to enjoy. For now, I’m watching the third season of Mrs. Maisel. After that’s done, I think I’ll head over to the latest season of The Crown.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 19, 2020
Green Eggs and Trump
For the past while, I’ve been toying with a Green Eggs and Ham approach to the election this year. Why? Because I’m easily amused, I suppose. And going on the assumption that some of you are easily amused as well, I now present to you:
Green Eggs and Trump
I’m a Chump. I’m a Chump. Chump for Trump.
That Chump-for-Trump! That Chump-for-Trump!
I do not like that Chump-for-Trump!
Would you like to stump for Trump?
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that horse’s rump.
Would you like his trades or wall?
I would not like his trades or wall.
I would not like that man at all.
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that pimple bump.
Should he stay inside the House?
He has such a lovely spouse.
I do not like him in the House.
Who cares about his lovely spouse?
I do not like his trades or wall.
I do not like that man at all.
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that racist lump.
Would you like him, for the Court?
Our judicial last resort!
Not for the Court. No last resort.
Not in the House. Not for his spouse.
I would not like his trades or wall.
I would not like that man at all.
I would not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that rotten grump.
Would you? Could you? For some cash?
Democrats will make us crash!
I would not, could not, for some cash.
You may like him, you will see.
Only he can contain Xi!
He cannot, will not, contain Xi.
Not for some cash! You let me be.
I do not like him, for the Court.
I do not like his golf resort.
I do not like him in the House.
I do not think about his spouse.
I do not like his trades or wall.
I do not like that man at all.
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that garbage dump.
The corps! The corps! The corps! The corps!
Could you, would you, for the corps?
Not for the corps! Not for XI!
Not for cash, Chump! Let me be!
I would not, could not, for the Court.
He will not be my last resort.
I will not like him in the House.
I will not like his trades or wall.
I will not like him in the fall.
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that moral slump.
Say! For health care? For good health care!
Would you, could you, for health care?
I would not, could not, for health care.
Would you, could you, for a war?
I would not, could not, for a war.
Not for health care. Not for the corps.
Not for some cash. Not against Xi.
I do not like him, Chump, you see.
Not in the House. Not for the court.
Not for his spouse. No last resort.
I will not like his trades or wall.
I do not like that man at all!
You do not want to stump for Trump?
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
Could you, would you, for the oil?
I would not, could not for the oil!
WIll you wear this hat tinfoil?
I will not wear that hat tinfoil.
I will not, will not, for the oil.
I will not like him for a war.
Not for health care! Not against Xi!
Not for some cash! You let me be!
I do not like him, for the Court.
He cannot be our last resort.
I will not like him in the House.
I do not think about his spouse.
I do not like his trades or wall.
I do not like that man at all!
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I do not like that Forrest Gump.
You do not like him. So you say.
Try him! Try him! And you may.
Try him and you may, I say.
Chump! If you let me be,
I will try him. You will see.
[Three seconds later]
Nope.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Joe Biden or Buttigieg
Either one I won’t begrudge.
Michael Bloomberg has my vote.
Warren is an antidote.
Tulsi Gabbard, Thomas Steyer:
Better than a garbage fire!
Klobuchar or Bernie Sanders
Vote for both! They would be grander.
I would vote for my friend, Daniel.
I’d elect a Cocker Spaniel!
I will not wear that hat tinfoil.
I will not, will not, for the oil.
I will not like him for a war.
Not for health care! Not against Xi!
Not for some cash! You let me be!
I do not like him, for the Court.
He cannot be our last resort.
I will not like him in the House.
I do not think about his spouse.
I do not like his trades or wall.
I do not like that man at all!
I do not like him, Chump-for-Trump.
I’ll never vote for Donald Trump.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 18, 2020
Book Review: Interface
Back in 1994, Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George (writing jointly under the pseudonym Stephen Bury) wrote a political thriller based on a sci-fi “what if” scenario. What if there was a technology that let people know exactly what other people thought about things? What they were scared of. What they longed for. What they liked and disliked. What if a that technology were then placed in the hands of a political consultant who knew what to do with it and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, so to speak. What if he could then tailor his candidate’s message on a microlevel to make it appeal to as many people as possible? The result would be a campaign that looks for all intents and purposes like it’s totally unorthodox. It breaks the rules, but it somehow keeps winning against all odds.
Of course, in 1994 it was impossible to think that people would hand this power over to someone else without a cost. In the novel (Interface), the political hacks cull through a huge subsection of the country, breaking it down into 100 basic subtypes of citizens. They then find a “best representative” of each of those subtypes and pay them $10,000 to watch political programming with a sensor attached to their arm that will then tell the hacks what each person thinks of what they see.
Today, this is just called “social media,” and people do all of it for free. They’re just thrilled to see people care about what they think on a variety of topics. While the novel takes it perhaps a notch or two beyond what is completely plausible, the framework of the concept is strong and illustrative of just the sort of power these companies can wield now. Not just Facebook, either. Google can have a huge impact on what people think based on what they have show up in search results. Wikipedia can literally make millions of people believe something just by changing a few paragraphs on its site. Whether these companies are using these “powers” for good or evil is up for debate, but the fact that power exists shouldn’t be.
I enjoyed the book a great deal. It had been recommended by Cory Doctorow at last year’s Maine Library Association conference, so it took me a bit to get to, but I was glad to finally read it when I did. As I said, there are times when I felt like it went a bit too far, straining credulity in places beyond what my typical willing suspension of disbelief is up to, but the set up behind it all was still so compelling that I didn’t mind that much.
8/10 Definitely worth a read if the topic interests you.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 14, 2020
1997: My Peak Valentine’s Day Celebration
I’m a fairly well established public disdainer of Valentine’s Day. But as I was sitting here in the lead up to the big day this year, I was thinking back on the various ways I have celebrated it over the years. When Denisa and I were dating, I made her a card with the picture of a smiling cartoon pig on the front. It said, “This Valentine’s Day, Porky hopes,” and then you opened the card and saw the message “You have a better day than he did.” This was accompanied by a picture of the same pig’s head on a plate, with Xs for eyes. What do you think? Etsy-worthy? But as I traipsed down memory lane, it became clear that the year I did the most for Valentine’s Day had to be 1997. I was 18 in my freshman year at BYU.
At the time, I was living in Deseret Towers, these six story monstrosities that were at the north end of campus. (They’ve since been torn down and replaced with much more aesthetically pleasing buildings. DT had blue lunch trays outside the windows. It’s hard to go anywhere but up when your baseline is “blue lunch trays.”) At the time, I was also dating Kristi Strong who happened to be the roommate of my best friend, Sue Stone. In hindsight, being best friends with your girlfriend’s roommate is not exactly the recipe for a smooth and conflict-free lifestyle, but remember. I was 18.*
Anyway. That Valentines Day, I got both Kristi and Sue a present. For Kristi, I gave her a stuffed teddy bear. Except I tied a noose for it and hung it in her closet. (“Tone deaf” is a very good way to sum up 18-year-old Bryce, I think. He was also a great deal more sheltered than he had any clue.) For Sue, I gave her the Dover thrift edition of Taming of the Shrew. (Both cheap and tacky. I was a treat.) Sue got me what remains my favorite Valentine’s gift ever. She worked at the BYU flower shop, and she hated Valentine’s Day for a much more straightforward reason: it was a day that she was insanely busy as she put together roses and bouquets and corsages for dances, etc. She gave me a dozen dozen red roses. Except they were just the stems, because she’d lopped off the actual roses to make all those corsages. I thought it was perfect.
Not to be outdone, I also wrote a sonnet for Sue. Before any of you accuse me of being even more idiotic than I was (a sonnet for the best friend, and not for the girlfriend? Did I have a death wish?), I’d already written one for Kristi. And yes, it’s horrible, and no, I won’t share it with you, but yes, I still have a copy, because I’m a digital packrat. And actually, I’d already written one for Sue (also terrible, having just re-read it), but she’d challenged me to write a sonnet that was as insulting as possible.
I’m sure some of you are reading that and realizing what a bad idea it was to ask 18-year-old Bryce to write an insulting sonnet. But remember, 18-year-old Bryce didn’t really have brakes on his train.
Challenge accepted.
So without further ado, here’s the end result I came up with:
Dear Sue,
Did you know that you really piss me off
With your incessantly annoying whine?
At one mere sonnet you can only scoff–
Do you think that I worship at your shrine?
For me to waste my time to write just one
For an insipid little pest like you
Is just enough for me to want a gun
To put an end to nauseating Sue.
But here I sit, composing once again,
This time allowing truth to see the light
For now I have good cause to use a pen:
I gave you praise, but you–you gave me slight.
The next time that I see your face I’ll snap:
In my opinion you’re a piece of crap!
There you go, folks. I somehow managed to even tie in another threat to physically harm/kill a woman. Way to go, 18-year-old me! (As a side note, it’s always interesting to see how, while we might think we haven’t changed that much over the years, and that we’ve always been level-headed and practically perfect in every way, when we’re forced to look at who we were, what we said and did, and how we did it, the truth doesn’t always line up with how we remember it . . .)
In any case, that’s about all the time for self deprecation I’ve got today. I don’t still hate Valentine’s Day with quite the same gusto that I once did, but I also still don’t have any pink or red decorations up. There are no candy hearts in my house. And Denisa and I won’t be exchanging gifts or having a candlelit dinner. On the other hand, I’m also not making fun of suicide and using veiled death threats to woo women any more.
Progress?
*This was also the year I went on three dates in one evening. Which, again, was not the wisest choice, since I had to come up with reasons to end one date so that I could make my next date in time, and even I was sane enough to know telling your current date you had to go date another girl was just asking for trouble. And while you might be able to get away with that once in one night, you’re really spitting in the face of fate to try it twice. And if that doesn’t sum up who I was at 18, then you’ll be relieved to hear I also broke the leg of not one, but *two* girls. Who were roommates. Apparently I had a thing for roommates and destruction.**
**Because I’m sure you’re going to ask how it is I, a generally non-violent person, ended up breaking the legs of two young women, allow me to elucidate. The first happened on a swing dancing date. It was my first time, and my date (Jessica Franciose) and I were learning various moves. Jess was a much more adventurous dancer than I was, but I liked her a lot, and so I was pretending to be more daring than I had any right. We were working on this one move where I would grab her across her stomach and then flip her in a somersault over my arm. (Clearly I didn’t yet have back issues at age 18.) We had just gotten to the point where we felt like we could do it pretty well, so we decided to show off to her friends. It went off without a hitch . . . until she landed on my foot instead of the floor. My foot was fine, but she fell, badly hurting her leg in the process.*** We found out the next day that she had a hairline fracture in that leg.
***Because Jess was an awesome person (and still is, I’m sure), she insisted I keep dancing without her while she walked off the pain. So I then danced with her roommate, Tiffany Ensign. At this point, I had come to the sound conclusion that perhaps the world wasn’t ready for a Bryce who flipped girls in somersaults over his arm, so we tried out simpler moves. There was this one where you held onto each other’s hands and spun in circle, offsetting each other’s weight in a perfect balance. Whee! That seemed pretty tame, so we tried that. It all went well for the first turn or two, but then I maybe turned a bit too fast. It’s a blur. All I know is that Tiff’s legs kicked out from under her, and instead of us twirling around in a happy little dance move, I was holding onto her hands while she stared at me in wide-eyed terror as I swung her around in a move closer to pro-wrestling than dancing. She was pretty much in the superman pose, horizontal to the floor. I had no idea what to do, so . . . I kept spinning. Unbeknownst to me, there was another couple happily dancing behind me. I used my new dance partner to literally sweep the girl behind me off her feet. She went flying into the air. I was shocked, and in my shock, I let go of Tiff. She went sailing off in the other direction, leaving me staring at the other girl’s date . . . I didn’t go swing dancing very often after that.****
****Keen-eyed readers will note that I didn’t actually break Tiffany’s leg in that story. That’s because it was a different girl whose leg I broke. One of Jess’s other roommates, whose name escapes me at the moment. Tracy, maybe? We’ll go with that. In any case, Tracy came into their apartment one day wearing a T-shirt with cow spots on it. I, in my 18-year-old naïveté, cheerfully blurted out the obvious: “You look like a cow!” Yes, in hindsight, telling a young woman that she looked like a cow was not, perhaps, the wisest move for a lone young man in an apartment full of girls, but I didn’t yet have the same experience with tact that I hope I have today. In any case, I got in no small amount of hot water over that statement, and Tracy didn’t forget it. Days or weeks later, I was sitting on that same couch in that same apartment, minding my own business, when Tracy took a glass of water and dumped it over my head. Vengeance for the cow comment. Anyone who knows me well, though, knows that while I’m generally cheerful and polite, I also come with a few basic instructions. First, never feed me after midnight. Second, limit my exposure to sunlight. But the most important is to never ever get me wet. You know how Bruce Banner hulks out when he gets angry? I get sort of the same look in my eyes when someone purposefully dumps a glass of water over my head. I leapt from the couch and raced after Tracy, who had the good sense to run away from me as fast as she could. This being BYU, there was a hard rule about being over at a girl’s apartment: no men in the bedroom. If Tracy could make it to her bedroom, she would be safe. (Safe from what, I’m still not sure. I have no idea what I was planning to do if I caught her. My mind wasn’t thinking that clearly.) In any case, she darted away from me, but she also discovered that a wet Bryce is a fast Bryce. I caught up to her just as she was turning into her room. To stop her, I grabbed at her t-shirt. What I didn’t know is that she was wearing a sports bra. I didn’t just get her t-shirt with my grab: I got a good hold on the back of her sports bra, too. When she turned, she didn’t compensate for me holding onto her clothes so tightly, and her turn ended up being way faster and tighter than she expected. Instead of making it into her room, she slammed into the doorframe. And broke her leg. Tracy, I’m very very sorry.*****
*****This is all making me look much worse than I hope I actually was in my freshman year of college. I’m proud to say I’ve never broken a woman’s leg since, though I did break my son’s leg when he was two.****** I also stopped dating roommates of my best friends, and I never went on three dates in one evening again.
******Okay. I can’t just leave that there, because now I sound abusive. I broke Tomas’s leg when the two of us went down a spiral slide on a playground. His leg got caught under 230 pounds of Bryce. And that’s how I learned that you’re never supposed to go down a spiral slide with a toddler. You think you’re being more careful by going with them. You’re actually just increasing the odds that they break something.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
February 13, 2020
When Projectors Explode
It’s been over three years since I set up my movie room in my house. Over those three years, I’ve had no complaints. It’s been a splendid experience, and it remains one of my favorite things about our house. (Yay for successful renovation projects!)
Last Friday evening, however, MC was up watching Netflix in the movie room when suddenly the projector let out a loud sound, as if it had been shot. She came running in, crying and scared, saying she’d broken it somehow. Of course, she hadn’t actually broken anything. The bulb (“lamp” if you’re being picky, Steve) had given up the ghost, exploding into a lot of little glassy pieces. (All of which remained in the projector casing, thankfully, so no one was injured.)
It was at that point that I realized just how much I’d come to take that projector for granted. Being able to go upstairs, press a button on my remote, and have a lovely viewing experience was just something that had become par for the course. All at once, the largest screen I had in the house was my laptop. Going from 105 inches down to 13 is . . . quite the jump. Especially when you were planning a family Oscar party for that weekend.
I got online, hoping there would be an easy fix for this. When you live in the hinterlands of Maine, there is no easy fix for anything, unless it’s “I want to go for a hike.” A brand X replacement bulb would be $100, and a name-brand one would set me back $250. I went with the name-brand, because I wasn’t confident enough in the no-names that I wanted to save money risking them. If one bulb lasts me 3+ years, then I think I can shell out $80/year or so to keep my movie addiction satisfied.
It didn’t arrive until yesterday, even paying for 2 day shipping. In the meantime, I checked a projector out of the library, and I sat it on a table in our movie room, hooking my laptop up to it and then my laptop’s sound up to my surround sound. It got us through the Oscars and a few nights, but it was far from ideal. (Mainly because I didn’t have an easy way to control the thing. Pausing meant getting up from my chair and walking across the room. #firstworldproblems)
I swapped the bulb out last night, and it was a smooth, easy process. I just had to unscrew three screws, take out the whole bulb package and swap it out with the new one. Once that was done, I just screwed it all back together and pressed power. The whole thing was back to normal.
When I originally went with a projector over a television, this was the part that had scared me the most, to be honest. What if they bulb blew, and it was hard to replace? Now that I’ve done it, I know the scariest part of the whole thing was when the actual bulb shattered, just because it was loud. If I’d bought a replacement bulb and had it on hand, I could have been up and running again an hour later. (Just need to give the thing time to let it cool down, because who needs bad burns?)
Hopefully I’m good for another three years!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
