Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 143
January 1, 2016
Hancock Dept.
A service calledAuthorgraphallows what they describe as "personal, digital inscriptions for ebooks". I've decided to give them a whirl, and so have added them to the sidebar. If you want to get digitally signed editions of my works, either click the link in the sidebar orgo here.
December 30, 2015
From The Top Down Dept.
There's this attitude, one I'm seeing a lot more of these days (or maybe I'm just more attuned to it than I used to be), that if someone can do something, what's to stop anyone else from doing it? It's a pernicious attitude, in big part because the truth in the statement is ruined by the way it's framed.
December 28, 2015
The End Of The Year's Road Dept.
Like many of the rest of you, the last few days for me have been one long whirlwind of holidaze [sic]. Now that the wave has crested and broken, a few bits and pieces of what's behind and in front of me.
December 23, 2015
Rough Unwanted Diamonds Dept.
Most of you Constant Readers know by now my whole spiel about how would-be creators need to not merely expose themselves to other examples of the kind of work they want to produce. This crosses disciplines and fandoms, meaning an aspiring comic artist is likely to gain perspective from getting out of his reading bubble in the same way an aspiring novelist will be enriched by a trip to a museum they normally would never go to.
December 21, 2015
The Disintegration Loops (William Basinski)
If there is an award for The Saddest Music In The World, I present it now and forever to WilliamBasinski'sDisintegration Loops. This isn't music that makes you weep; this is music-as-weeping, the sound of the lament of the universe itself, sorrow on the order of Miles Davis's "He Loved Him Madly". Some of the impact stems from the concept, both in its scope and execution, but at the end of the day (or the end of days, ha ha), it's the sound itself here that causes the tears to be shed. Anythi...
December 20, 2015
Wake Up, Force! Dept.
SawThe Force Awakens last night — no spoilers in this discussion, so no worries. On the whole, it was good-to-very-good, if not quite the sheer jolt of electricity that we got back in 1977 (but really, nothing isever going to be — not in the same way, certainly).
A couple of things come to mind:
December 19, 2015
Soliloquy for Lilith (Nurse With Wound)
Among my favorite records are the happy accidents. Out of some mistake, some fluke in the studio or some miscalculation, emerges an unduplicatable miracle. It happened with William Basinski's TheDisintegrationTapes (that's worth a discussion all its own), and it happened with Nurse With Wound'sSoliloquy for Lilith, an album far, far out of gamut even for those purveyors of the cheekily strange. Steve Stapleton and his revolving crew of merry pranksters had long been making bunny ears and funn...
December 9, 2015
I'm (Sort Of) A Believer Dept.
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Buddhist in Berkeley means the same thing as Christian in Foley. Most Foley Christians may be ignorant of basic Christian doctrines, and rarely if ever go to church, but thats not the point. Most Berkeley Buddhists may be ignorant of basic Buddhist doctrines, and rarely if ever go to a meditation group, but thats not the point. Thats not what Buddhism is for. Its a way of saying what sort of person you are. At least, thats one thing it is for! Wha...
December 8, 2015
Treknology Dept.
The Displaced Utopia — Matthew Buscemi
... in 1960's America, a story about a spaceship that ferries an ethnically diverse yet socially functional group of humans from one planet to another so that they might learn and discover not just more about aliens, but more about themselves, and who would only use force as a means of self-defense, never as a means of conquering or pillagingthis was sf, even if it was on television, and even if had to be supplemented heavily with baser content to appea...
December 7, 2015
Heard You Missed Us, Well, We're Back Dept.
This is Rumor Control; here are the facts.
Work paused on blogging systemMeTal for the month of December while I turn my attention back to another programming project I'd back-burnered temporarily. It's actually a rewrite of a much older C#./NET project that ended up rusting and growing moss, and since I'm no longer doing much on that side of the programming fence, the whole shebang is being reworked in Python/Django. (Some part of me regrets using Django — it is aheavy-ass framework — but I...
