Spontaneous ∂erivation

As Cleolinda points out, Van Helsing talks… a bit… randomly.

Captions only slightly modified from the original Dracula.

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The New Yorker: Finding a Better Way to Grieve

Feels particularly relevant today. And by today, I actually today, not “in these modern times” or such thing. Although it’s also relevant for that.

FiveThirtyEight: Enough is Enough

Deeper analysis of Obama’s recent bully pulpit session with the Republicans (with video link). I like one of the bullet points of the Tom’s analysis: “My bipartisanship is bigger than your bipartisanship.”

Occupation: Girl: More on Dracula

More of the wonderful Cleolinda’s thoughts on Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Dracula. My favorite insight: “Van Helsing talks like a lolcat.”

The Economist: How Power Corrupts

Why do smart and powerful people sometimes do really stupid things? I don’t mean taking stances we disagree with, necessarily, I mean things like… well… basically everything Mark Sanford has done of late. (Daily Show reference videos.)

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The very interesting history of the HeLa cells that are used in medical research laboratories worldwide. They’re immortal cells, having been taken from a cancerous tumor, and have been used without permission for many years. The story is really rather incredible.

Bad Astronomy: Give Space a Chance

Phil Plait starts with “For criminy’s sake. What is it with people and all the rending of garments over the impending doom of NASA?” and it gets even better. Also, why we shouldn’t yet grieve for Spirit, who may indeed one day go home. That poor little face is a great reason for a manned mission to Mars, isn’t it?

John Scalzi puts it better than I can.

I’m going to stay off the Twitter, though. I really can’t stand two halves of my Twitter stream violently disagreeing with one another. It makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

P.S.: It’s Macmillan, not any other spelling or capitalization.

She is gone.

Green Man Review
SFWA Announcement
News on John Scalzi’s Whatever

Marty Halpern’s lovely tribute to Kage

Added:

The Bohemian Astrobleme by Kage Baker
Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key
The Empress of Mars

Added:

Kage Her Page (Internet Archive)
Kage Baker on Wikipedia

Update: It’s Over. However, Calibre is still awesome cool, and so is Feedbooks.

Hello there.

I admire a lot of you. On the other hand, I have a Kindle. And so do others. Without access to the Kindle store, the question of how to reach Kindle readers may be thought about.

What I’m saying is that this can be done outside of Amazon Kindle distribution. You don’t get the nice “buy directly” capability, but on the other hand, your readers who love you can still read you.

Disclaimer: ebook rights are still something owned by your publisher, though. So you mayn’t be able to sell files, probably in most cases. I don’t know what you should do in that case; likely your agent or editor knows, or knows someone who will know. Maybe some negotiating can be done. I have no idea.

Perhaps this little article is useful for Macmillan imprints too. I don’t know. Or maybe Lulu (it would be so neat to see Lulu and Feedbooks work together, I think).

Here are some tips.

Tip #1: The Kindle reads Mobipocket books. Mobipocket is a format that is offered by Fictionwise and Webscriptions and Books On Board and many other places, as it’s a format that has existed for quite some time. You just need a Mobipocket offering somewhere—but without DRM. ‘Cause DRM for Fictionwise is incompatible with a Kindle, but they offer an open version as well.¹

Tip #2: Use Feedbooks if you aren’t hip on creating a Mobipocket yourself, and/or don’t like Fictionwise’s Mobipocket conversion (which leaves a hell of a lot to be desired). Their interface is nice, and will give you multiple formats, in fact, to download, all with a linkable table of contents. You don’t have to make your book openly accessible on their site either (they don’t sell books), so you can just have them automatically create files to sell. All for free.

Tip #3: More for readers. But you can email your files to your Kindle (which incurs a cost, though, base of $0.15 these days, increasing if your file happens to be over 3MB), if you don’t want to use the old USB-to-computer-and-copy method. Webscriptions and Fictionwise even, I think, have a way for purchases to be automatically sent to your Kindle in this manner.

Tip #4: EPUB books without DRM can be easily converted to Mobipocket books. The Mobipocket free commandline utility, mobigen, does this. Here are some instructions I wrote. I can also convert EPUB books on a one-by-one basis if people would like this; even if you tell me I gotta buy the book before I convert it for you.

End of tips. Back to authors:

You can also just give the finger to those with Kindle devices, but that’s only possible if you use DRM or refuse to use both Mobipocket and HTML formats, which will screw over a much larger audience than Kindle owners. Though business is business, or something.

Personally I keep using my Kindle, because of my eyes (sorry, can’t help my eyes, they hurt horribly from LCD screens too long, which is why I couldn’t use an iPad anyways) and because I like its interface and its screen better than the Sony Reader or the Nook (respectively). And, well, a lot of publishers and authors still want DRM.

Anyways, the Kindle itself is not that closed. (Neither is the Nook, for that matter, although the Nook is based on EPUB, not Mobipocket.) Could it be closed off? Well, it hasn’t been yet, so I figure one might as well try to make money from all possible avenues. If it does become that closed, then this article is of no more use.

But remember that a lot of people still use Mobipocket reader on other devices, like cellphones.

1. Yes, I know there are ways to crack this, but most readers will not do that. [↩]

The Image

Thunder on the mountain.

Thus in his conduct the superior man gives preponderance to reverence.

In bereavement he gives preponderance to grief.

In his expenditures he gives preponderance to thrift.

The Judgement:

Success.
Perseverance furthers.

Small things may be done;
Great things should not be done.

The flying bird brings the message:
It is not well to strive upward,
It is well to remain below.
Great good fortune.

Nine in the third place:

If one is not extremely careful,
somebody may come up from behind and strike him.
Misfortune.

The Future: 16. Enthusiasm

Thunder comes resounding out of the earth.

Thus the ancient kings made music in order to honor merit,
And offered it with splendor to the Supreme Deity,
Inviting their ancestors to be present.

It furthers one to install helpers and to set armies marching.

Practically Speaking

One of the joys of the I-Ching (or not) is how all oracles contradict themselves.

The I-Ching is not of an oracular nature; rather, it is of a meditative nature.

What does not apply, should not be applied. One’s own judgement of any given situation must be used.

I am going to be blogging purely about tea, Sherlock Holmes, SF reviews, and you know, my usual Dancing with Psychologists posts.

You are the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)

Your sharp, irreverent humour both amuses and exasperates people. You’ve got a roving eye and keen mind – you’re definitely going places…

Which doctor are you?

Notes:

I think the decisive point for me was the answer to what kind of companion I would choose….

Dear Fans of the new Sherlock Holmes movie:

Let me apologize on the behalf of older Sherlock Holmes fandom for the bits of it that have been generating get-off-my-lawn reboot wank, not five days after the release of the movie. The Sherlock Holmes fandom has thrived for over a hundred years and multiple generations, and every generation has its… special snowflakes.

But fortunately, every generation has also produced creative fandom work (though they may not see it that way), from the solidly analytical to the wondrously fanciful. I may not agree with all of them, or even remotely like some of them, but they all occupy a place in my heart, because there wouldn’t be a Sherlock Holmes fandom without constant re-interpretation of the works. Yes, even the fic pastiche where Moriarty is a vampire who falls madly in love with Holmes.¹

I present to you the more amusing pieces of Holmesiana I’ve gathered throughout the years. I’ve strived for a varied collection here that is at the very least sometimes accessible, even if it knocks out some of my absolute favorites. Too much of the fandom is out of print; I hope that changes one day, so that reading all the ’ship wank doesn’t cost 500£.

[Love and adaptation: that's how legends survive.]

Session the 13th with the bartender did not happen. Oncall got the better of me, not because things happened, but because my insomnia means that a night of no sleeping pill is a night of no sleep. I have to get that fixed somehow, but I suspect it’ll fix itself as we move farther away from the holidays. So I very reluctantly canceled the appointment, a slippery slope that has gotten me in trouble before.

However, I did have a session with the candy man—my psychiatrist. Psychiatrists prescribe the medication—hence I call mine the candy man—whereas psychologists are the ones you talk to (bartenders).

Currently, things are generally looking up, and the medications I’m currently on seem to be working: one to smooth out the bipolar disorder I have¹, and one for the anxiety I can never quite diagnose myself with, because my senses are always cranked to 11 with my PTSD. This is true even when my PTSD is technically not “active.”

He commented that no amount of medication could have stopped the PTSD onslaught of the holidays. And that’s very true. This is why PTSD treatment is a combination of medication and talk. He told me to keep seeing the bartender regularly, because every year I forget what happens during the holidays, and thus every year I walk into the holidays unprepared, and walk off emotional cliffs and suchlike.

This year, my bartender can help me prepare for the times that we know are hard (especially since he remembers previous sessions, which impresses me to no end).

So the dense schedule of bartender meetings continues, maybe getting slightly less dense, but I can’t see going below two sessions a month. I resolve not to cancel these meetings, no matter what, for the rest of the year. If I have an oncall night before an appointment, I’m going to try my hardest to not be silly and switch ahead of time with another member of my team.

1. Which I used to think of as “mild” up until the 500mg dosage, which is 100mg below the maximum dosage. Sigh. [↩]

On IMDb there’s a report that one Andrea Plunket, furious over Downey and Law’s interviews playing up possible homoerotic subtext in the Sherlock Holmes canon, is threatening to withdraw sequel permissions if Guy Ritchie keeps this up.

Plunket comments, “It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books.”

Dear Ms. Plunket: allow me to introduce you to the concept of shipping wars. Because you’ve just put your foot right into one of the longest ones in unofficial existence—one that is, in fact, over a century old at the time of this writing.

[I mean, just look at the hats!]