My Bad

By:  TempestThe Publishing Biz

It has been pointed out here and here that, back in late 2007, when I put together a roundtable on POC in Fantasy, I linked coffeeandink’s real name to her blog on the second post in the series.

I do not actually remember the circumstances under which I did this.  If my recollection is correct, back then I didn’t know that C&I wanted to keep her sf/fan activities seperate from her real name.  This may account for the linkage.  What I can’t account for is why there was linkage on part 2 but not part 1.  This indicates that there may have been a mistake on my part.  I am honestly not sure.

I, however, take full responsibility for doing so.  I removed the link, as I was asked to (I wasn’t aware of those two posts until after I did it), and was happy to do so.  My apologies to coffeeandink for that blunder.

I am highly amused to find certain parties waving a flag around about this.  It would certainly be a really bad thing if I had purposefully linked the name to the LJ knowing coffeeandink didn’t want me to.  It would also be a bad thing if, after being asked to remove the link, I stomped all over the internet like Godzilla raging about how horrible everyone is for even hinting that I should do so.  Or demanding someone should throw me a parade because I complied.  Really now.

I don’t have the energy to be erudite, so I’ll just rant some more

By:  TempestRants
I don't have the energy to be erudite, so I'll just rant some more

I thought about writing a long, thoughtful post about this recent flare-up of stupidity on the internet. Something a little more coherent than my last one. But, honestly, it isn’t going to make much of a difference. Will Shetterly never listens to anyone, he just rants, whines, cries, and then complains about how hard it is to be poor all the time. I don’t even know what Cramer’s problem is.

But I can’t stop thinking about this issue and I can’t pin down exactly why. Part of it is because, well, Will Shetterly. His mere name is enough to upset anyone. Also, I am upset that coffeeandink is so affected by this. Basically, because she said things that Shetterly and Cramer didn’t like, they get to use their power to complicate her life? And for what? What does that accomplish? Silencing tactics from people who ought to know better. Disgusting.

Continue reading “I don’t have the energy to be erudite, so I’ll just rant some more” →

Peter David: Class Act

By:  TempestBlog Against Racism
Peter David: Class Act

Allies like you we don’t need.

More proof that RaceFail is an ongoing occurance in everyday life.  Or, at least, on the internet.

(It’s actually been a long time since I considered Peter an ally.  After watching his liberal cred fly out of the window during a discussion about sexism a few years ago, I just count him amongst those white dudes that like to pretend they’re not sketchy but are, nonetheless, completely fucking sketchy.)

It Must Be Nice

By:  TempestElsewhere on the Internets
It Must Be Nice

To have a job where your fannish/SF/online life is not a detriment, but an enhancement of your professional standing. Or, it must be nice not to have a damn job at all, and thus say whatever crazy shit comes to mind whenever one wants.

It’s always great to hear from people who have nothing to lose chide people who have to walk a fine line every day of their lives about how they should be and do.

I’m so disgusted right now that I can’t even form a properly snarky post. You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

ETA: the first link used to go to a blog post by Kathryn Cramer, but she redirected the URL.  Classy!  Now it just links to her About page.  To understand why I linked to her with those words, I offer an excerpt from the post titled “I Am Appalled”:

“Kathryn Cramer has been linking my LJ to my full name on wikis and in other people’s blog comments ”

[coffeeandink’s full name] owes me an apology. Anyone interested in what I might have actually done to give such overblown offense should look HERE and HERE. […]

(I’ve seen strange tactics for protecting one’s Internet handle before, but I’m quite nonplussed at the tactic of flaming people who have actually acquiesced to requests for concealment of identity. What was she thinking?!?)

[…]

Can I just say, for the record, that I think it is wildly unethical to flame, under a fake name that you refuse to associate with your real name and history, your former boss and people you formerly worked with at a company, especially like claiming to take the moral high ground on an issue like, say, race. I am appalled, just really appalled, & even more appalled by people who think this is a legitimate use of an alias. It is not.

Google cache here, for now.

WisCon Netbook Meetup

By:  TempestConventions

So, over at my tech blog, Victoria mentioned that she wanted to have a netbook panel at WisCon.  I know she’d talked about this before, but I didn’t see it on the programming form.  I suggested that we have a luncheon or something similar where people who have netbooks can gather to talk about how awesome they are and people who are interested in netbooks can come, ask questions, and actually touch some of the beasts.  I’ll do my best to bring more than one, myself (though I don’t know if I will be allowed to do so).

Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else?  Shall we do it in an overflow room, head to Michaelangelo’s, or option C to be named in comments?  I think it could be a lot of fun.

So this is my week to get everything wrong on the internet!  :)  I think I will now just go to bed and not blog anymore for a while.  But yay netbook panel.

Dear TNT.tv

By:  TempestRants

I enjoy your shows.  The Closer?  Awesome.  Damages?  Very cool.  I would like to watch Leverage someday.  However, your online player keeps telling me that it needs to download some extra plugin in order to play your videos.

Um, no.

Users don’t like downloading extra shit.  They want to watch their videos when they visit your site.  I don’t know what this extra plugin does — something with DRM?  I dunno — but the fact that it’s necessary to enjoy this show tells me I’m not going to be happy about it.

You’re putting one extra step in-between me and the episode, and thus I will not watch it.  I’ll either wait and maybe rent it on DVD or just illegally download it like everyone else.

That’s what you get for putting an extra step in-between me and my entertainment.

Don’t do it.

No love,
Me

My Kingdom For Some Back Support!

By:  TempestWriting Life
My Kingdom For Some Back Support!

I am hanging out in a cute cafe around the corner from my apartment.  I really like it — they have good food at decent prices, know what a real smoothie is, and they play awesome music.  But oh my god, the chairs are AWFUL.  They are all leany back and provide no sitting up straight support.  Sigh…

Why must everything be almost perfect?

Also, I realize these people don’t have a lot of money, but no one could spring from some decent chairs in this place?  Beyond the leany back thing, they’re small, hard, wooden, and I think a bit low.  I guess they don’t want people to hang around.  I don’t understand cafe owners who take this mentality.  You have people who desire to sit in your establishment for hours and consume things.  Make it so they can!

Want To Be A Weekly TV Columnist?

By:  TempestNon-Fiction Publications
Want To Be A Weekly TV Columnist?

We’ve had some success with our TV columns and I would like to do more to cover TV on Fantasy.  However, I do not want to bombard our readers with a bunch of TV coverage all the time.  I think confining it to the end of the week is a good, and maybe not one post for every show.  So I have conceived a plan to have posts on Fridays and Saturdays where columnists discuss the latest episodes of the one or two shows they’re assigned and then open up comments on them.  I know a few of my current columnists will be interested, but in case there are other people dying to write up a short response to an episode of the shows they watch, I’m putting the call out to my readers as well.

As always, the job sadly does not involve pay.  It does involve committing to one season of the show in question.  Columns will be casual, like blog posts, filled with your opinion and a short recap.  You are not required to love a show to do this.  But fi you don’t like it, your dislike must be reasonable and not just “I want to stab Joss Whedon.”  I mean, it’s fine to want to stab him, but at least let’s lay out all the reasons why in a semi-calm way ;)

If you’re interested, send me a note at this gmail address: fantastictempest.  Tell me 1 – 3 shows you’d be interested in doing a column on.  If you have blog posts about TV or related, include a few links.  All SF or Fantasy shows are welcome.

I just realized my titles need to be more interesting so people on FaceBook will click

By:  TempestWriting
I just realized my titles need to be more interesting so people on FaceBook will click

Which has nothing to do with this entry.

Since I got my day job I’ve been struggling to figure out when I can write.  I don’t want to relegate all of my writing to the weekends because I have plenty to od then (Fantasy Magazine, mostly) and sometimes it would nice to just sit around and do nothing all day.  Anyway, I’ve been trying for a while to wake up earlier so that I can leave the house by 8, get to the general area of my office, then write until I have to go in (at 10).

Waking up is the hard part of this equation.  I am by no means one of those people who objects to getting up in the morning.  But I always struggle to set a new default wake up time for my body.  Current target: 6:30AM. I could write a whole essay on the ways my body attempts to trick me into getting more sleep.  I have the most whacked out and realistic dreams just before and after my alarms start going off.

I would also like to write in the evenings, but this presents a whole other set of challenges.  I need to go to the gym twice during the week (Monday and Thursday).  I usually have an Altered Fluid meeting on Tuesdays.  Once a month Wednesday is all locked up.  And Friday there is sometimes drinking.  This vexes me.

I think that I can psych myself up for flexibility when it comes to Wednesdays and Tuesdays — if I don’t have a meeting and if it’s not a KGB week, etc.  And on weeks when I have both, then I need to commit to writing an hour before I work out on Monday or Thursday and write on Friday instead of drinking.  Honestly, I’ll be with the same people if I do either.

Which brings me to: is anyone up for writing with me in the after work hours?  I work near Times Square, and there are actually several places around here that make decent writing spots (mostly hotels, but at least they leave you alone).  I’m willing to go a bit downtown or further uptown as well. Inspired by Livia, I’ll commit to 2 hours an evening, and then I will get myself home.  I usually get out of work between 6 and 7, so 7 – 9 would work really well for me.

I’ll write whether I have company or not, but it’s always nice to have company.

Projects, Projects, Projects!

By:  TempestGeekitude

You know what I could really use?  A robust To-Do List web app or software or Firefox Plugin or Thunderbird plugin or somesuch.  It would really help.

So: lots of things in the works.  I thought typing them here might force me to address some of them.

I recently bought ktempestbradford.com and ktbradford.com because I’ve been meaning to.  I doubt anyone else was looking to snatch them up, but I wanted to get on it, anyway.  KTBradford.com is already pointing to a subdomain of my site and that’s where I’m going to put stuff relating to my non-genre writing and web production/tech self.  Yes, it will be a blog.  I doubt I will be very prolific over there.  It’s more of a self-marketing/networking thing.  I still need to set up that blog, though, so I’ll get to it tonight.

I really wish had better graphic design skills so I could make the graphics I want.  Does anyone know where I can get my hands on images of old-time, round typewriter keys?

KTempestBradford.com will eventually point to this blog.  So ktempestbradford.com will be no more.  All old links will still work, though.  I think…

I’ve been needing to set up a new blog for my jewelry blog for a while, so I need to do that.  The gallery site is in HTML, but I think that I may want to make it all WordPress pages.  Maybe not.  I’m using the Market theme for the store part, definitely, though it offers little in the way of making it look nice.

As soon as that is done, I have a plan that I alluded to the other day.  I’m going to put up a poll with a short list of beads that I have and then a list of moods/emotions or themes or even a line from a story.  Then I’ll beg everyone to vote on their favorite beads and their favoite mood/text/theme.  I’ll use the winning combinations to make pieces of jewelry.  Isn’t that fun?

One non-public project I completed recently was getting an NYC bank account (long story why I don’t have one) and creating a budget.  I’ve been trying out Wasabe.com and Mint.com for keeping track of finances, spending, budgets, etc.  So far I like Mint better because it has budgeting tools.  I can say how much I want to spend on a category a month, then it will track how much I actually spend and alert me if I go over budget.  Plus, it keeps track of the money I have in all of my accounts — bank and PayPal.  Extremely useful.

I put my budget together for WisCon and discovered that I will need about $1,150 to cover airfare, hotel, food and fun spending.  Eep.  I am in need of roommates, by the way.  I Have a Gov. Club room and having two extra bodies in there to help with cost would be absolutely divine.

I’m sure I’m forgetting other projects.  Which is why I need a to-do list!