Tiny Notebooks Ahoy!

By:  TempestWriting
Tiny Notebooks Ahoy!

Last week at KGB I was chatting with Mary Kowal about her new and shiny Eee PC.  Yet another writer joins the tiny notebook cult!  Huzzah!  We were discussing the merits and drawbacks of the 901 model and she asked me which one I would get were I getting a mini notebook today.  Without hesitation I said: Samsung NC10.

Cuz I’m an expert and stuff now.

I recently had to write up a piece for the day job comparing the top five 10-inch models.  There are probably some on that list you’ve never heard of and, of course, the familiar Eee PC.  In ASUS’s defense, the more expensive 10-inch models they’ve brought out recently don’t have the same problems then 1000H has, but they are, as I said, more expensive.  (The S101 is $700 or some crazy shit.)  All of the netbooks I compared are $500 or less.  Some way less.

But for those just getting into the netbook game, I suggest you skip the 8.9 inchers altogether and head straight for 10 unless price is a major, major consideration.  In that case, the 8.9-inch with the best keyboard is the Acer Aspire one.  It’s a great machine in other ways, too.  I hear that up-and-comer Genevieve Valentine has one, and everyone wants to be just like her.

So there you have it.  The two best netbooks out right now are the Samsing NC10 and the Acer Aspire one.  So says the queen.

Burning Question

By:  TempestWriting
Burning Question

I have an editorial up on Fantasy today that I think you’re all qualified to discuss :) It’s about the lack of comments on fiction in this here Internet age:

I’m really happy we have such a high level of participation from our readers, but we can’t help but notice that the comments section of our fiction is sparse or non-existent in many cases. We know you’re reading the stories (I’m obsessive about stats), but you rarely comment on them.

This is not limited to Fantasy, I know. Most online magazines offer a way for readers to comment on stories, whether on the page itself or in a forum topic. The only place where I see consistent commentary on stories is the Escape Artists forum. The audience there is vocal and brutal, but very engaged (which is awesome).

Recently, Sheila Williams mentioned that though the Asimov’s forums are very active, readers rarely discussed the stories.

“…mostly they get on there and argue politics; we call it the basement. …they hardly ever talk about the stories. There are a handful of dedicated readers that talk about the stories, but they are the minority. What I have seen in the past in the ’70s and the ’80s, there were dozens of letters coming in a month. We don’t get the letters anymore. I think back in the ’80s we had more correspondence coming in on the stories than I see in the comments on the forum.”

You would think that there would be far more commentary on stories on the Internet, considering how easy it is to broadcast your opinions to the world. Yet in the case of SF/F mags, we seem to see less.

This doesn’t include comments that happen elsewhere. For instance, last week I got several comments on my post pointing people to SH plus some emails and IMs (all of which I appreciated a lot, thanks!), but no comments on the SH forum. No idea why. I also found, through the magic of Google Alerts, some comments here. Again, yay for me! But I wonder why they didn’t also comment in the forum. ‘Tis a mystery, but one I’d like to explore (over at Fantasy, not necessarily here).

That Time Of Year Again…

By:  TempestGeekitude

The time of year when a girl’s fancy turns to finding more interns.

This semester I had three awesome interns who are full of interny goodness.  I get to keep two of them, but I’d like a few more, including one who can do marketing stuff.  If you know a college or high school student in search of an internship for next semester that has flexible hours, is all online, and that offers the opportunity to possibly see movies for free, interview famous people, and attend cons as press, send them to this page, where the description and application instructions are.

What do you people have against winning money?

By:  TempestElsewhere on the Internets
What do you people have against winning money?

Blog for a beer damnit.

Earlier this week I went to see the musical Wicked on Broadway for the first time. I’ve been vaguely aware of the show since it premiered in 2003 and knew it was based on the Gregory Maguire book of the same name. I’ve read about Wicked, but never read the book itself. Still, I was familiar with the plot enough going in that I was put off a bit by the many, many liberties the musical takes. In fact, the stage plot has very little to do with the plot of the book at all, mainly taking the characters and turning them into archetypes while morphing the story into a typical geek girl and popular girl grow to understand each other and discover their personal power tale. Also, they fight over a guy.

Adaptations are generally a touchy subject. Many original creators bristle when asked about adaptations and derivations of their work while others just shrug and note that they were paid well to have their story and characters mangled. Audiences reactions vary depending on the medium, the nature of the adaptation, and the depth of their love for or ignorance of the original.

Take the original ending to Little Shop of Horrors our Video Vicar pointed out earlier this week. It’s the same as the successful stage play’s ending, just acted out instead of just described. But test audiences, who had probably never seen the play, hated the fact that Audrey II killed the protagonist and his love interest. The director, Frank Oz, had a theory as to why: “In a stage play, you kill the leads and they come out for a bow — in a movie, they don’t come out for a bow, they’re dead. And the audience loved those people, and they hated us for it.”

Changes in medium obviously have a huge effect on adaptations. But is it preferable for the second or third medium painstakingly recreate even the tiniest details of the original, as the director and producers of Watchmen seem to be doing?

Well?

Fashionista

By:  TempestElsewhere on the Internets
Fashionista

I think that Genevieve and I are probably the only people in our circle of friends who will find her column today (Fantasy’s Guide to Holiday Fashion) uproariously hilarious. Back in the day we both worked for S/h/e/F/i/n/d/s, though she was a writer and I was a web monkey. We actually first met at a holiday cocktail party for the in-NY cadre of employees that featured some of the most expensive (tiny portions of) cheese ever.

Genevieve perfectly captured the style and tone and feel of our holiday fashion guides with her piece. I mean, really, if those clothes were actually in style, this seriously would have been published at SF. I’ve leave you to determine what that says about the state of our culture.

Obsessive Stats Monitor Here

By:  TempestRants
Obsessive Stats Monitor Here

Is it just me, or has Google’s blog search been kinda broken lately?  Like, I’ll look at the dashboard of a WordPress site and it will load some links, but then if I reload or come back 2 seconds later there will be none.  And then it will list a whole bunch of links to individual blog posts that do NOT link to the site in the post, but somewhere in the sidebar.  Used to be Google could tell the difference.

This is seriously putting a cramp in my style, people!  How can I obsess over stats if things are wonky?

Dear Keyboard Manufacturers:

By:  TempestRants
Dear Keyboard Manufacturers:

It seems to me that while you’re spending a lot of time creating special keyboards for gamers, you could be putting a little of that R&D and design know-how to use in creating special keyboards that would be useful for, oh, people who have to use them all the time at work. “But regular keyboards are fine for that,” you say. I say: no they aren’t, you asses, else I wouldn’t be making this post.

Let’s take my job, for example. I’m a Web Producer. I spend 75% of my day doing repetitive tasks like copying and pasting, performing the same three functions over and over in photoshop, and clicking between windows and tabs. You know what would be nice? A set of keys on the left side of the main key area that are programmable. One click access to the 10 most important functions would save me a lot of time and stave off carpal tunnel for a few years, at least.

There are many, many web producers and print producers and graphic designers and data entry personnel and other people in other jobs who could use such a thing. I don’t see why gamers are the only ones who get special keyboards. Most of them can’t be appropriated to business use because the special keys are on the right side of the keyboard (except this one), but right-handed people use that hand for the mouse. You suck, keyboard manufacturers!

Instead of spending time rolling out natural keyboards that aren’t really all that ergonomic or useful, try designing something actually helps someone.

No love,
Me