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NanoWriMo No Mo Did you see the announcement that NanoWriMo is shutting down? I never participated, it felt gimmicky to me. Apparently one of the sponsors was predatory and there were other issues causing it to collapse from within. Thoughts and experiences? |
Sept 10 2024 I noticed today that according to the WDC visit counter I did not visit WDC on SEP 10 2024. I think that is in error. I parachute in twice a day sometimes more. It’s a habit. Not an addiction mind you, just a rigid habit. I would have remembered. Of course I would have remembered. Anyone remember seeing something of me on the site that day? Surely someone can vouch. It could happen to you next. A false broken streak. Search your archives! Find the evidence to vindicate me. |
Football (Trigger Warning: Sports Taboo and National Pride) Several years ago, a former colleague of mine, British, asked me why American men faired so poorly in ‘football’. By which he was speaking of ‘soccer’. He is a good natured, sensitive and intelligent fellow, but a tad bit sarcastic in this comment. We were living in the Middle East and it was Spring, there was a lot of TV coverage of US College and Professional Basketball Championships. This wasn’t the first time he made the observation and I was prepared with some statistics about ‘football’. First, I explained that for generations, America’s best young male athletes chose basketball, American football, and baseball. Track and field was more popular than ‘soccer’. That is changing in recent years. I asked him, why British men faired so poorly in soccer? He stared at me with a questioning look. Well, only something like 30% of premier league players are from the UK. 1 UK FIFA World Cup Championship in 1966 and last UK Soccer Olympic gold was in 1912. I added with my own sarcastic tone. Sorry for any offense. But Spring is back and basketball championships always bring back this memory. Yeah, I know soccer is the most popular game in the world and is played everywhere. That’s because poor people can’t afford expensive gear. Sorry, again. |
| I find soccer as boring as a lettuce sandwich with the crusts cut off. I had this argument with someone here because of my own sports of choice. He claimed that soccer was the best sport because it was the most popular. And, yes, it is the most played sport in the world because all you literally need is something to use as a ball. I countered with popularity does not mean good. He said what else could it mean? At the time, the Twilight books were at their peak, so I said that, in his opinion, Twilight was the greatest book ever written, McDonalds was the greatest food ever made and 'White Christmas' was the greatest song ever recorded, because they were the most popular at the time. He got flustered and said I was comparing apples with oranges; I asked why; he said because sport was different; I asked why; he got more flustered. Now, amongst that group of friends, we call it McSoccer, and he stopped hanging out with us about 15 years ago. As for sports (and sports science was my first degree before I went to physics, where I majored in biomechanics). Most complex - gymnastics. Uses most muscles in the body - gymnastics, swimming, decathlon. Uses most different skills - pentathlon. Ball sport most endurance heavy - Australian Rules football. Greatest distance travelled in a hoop sport over the course of a high level game - centre in netball. Fastest ball travel - jai-alai. And that's just my memory kicking in. Note: no soccer. Sorry... Fooootboool. |
Book Launch Anthology launched by Burial Books yesterday, including my story Silent Servants. Was in the top one hundred Amazon for Horror Anthologies.
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Absurdity of US Customary Units First of all, they aren’t American at all. It’s basically the British Imperial System, but Americans didn’t want anything to do with anything Imperial after the Revolution. To make it more absurd, the British themselves adopted the metric system in 1967. The US stuck with a system the Brits mostly abandoned. Maybe the United States is just part of a big bloc, you might think. Liberia, and Myanmar are the only countries that do not officially use the metric system. The system itself is arcane with peculiar subdivisions 12 inches = 1 foot 1 yard = 3 feet = 36 inches 1 mile = 5280 feet= 1760 yards 1 pound = 16 ounces Freezing point water 32 degrees F (standard atmosphere pressure) Boiling point water 212 degrees F (standard atmosphere pressure) For the metric system you only have to understand multiples of ten: kilo, centi, milli 1 meter = 100 centi-meter = 1000 milli-meter 1 kilogram = 1000 gram 1000 milligram = 1 gram Freezing point of water 0 degrees celsius (standard atmosphere) Boiling point of water 100 degrees Celsius (standard atmosphere) Reason for this. American bureaucracy and a sense of self-importance. People will protest, saying that it’s the cost of conversion. What about the cost of constantly converting when doing business with the rest of the world? Could converrting the rest of the world to US units be the next thing on the President's agenda? Brought to you by the Cultural Sensitivity Department of Taboo Publishing Services |
| Base-12 is a much more useful system than base-10 for timekeeping. It originated with, if I recall correctly, the Sumerians, who used base-12 in part because 12 has more divisors than 10, and they hadn't quite figured out fractions. (Actually they kind of used base 60, which is just 12*5.) Ever wondered why eleven is eleven and not oneteen? Twelve isn't twoteen? It's a remnant of base-12 counting. Hence the 24-hour day subdivided into two groups of 12. This is also related to the 360 degree circle. As there are just over 365 days in a solar year, they rounded that to a nice even 360, and partied on the other 5 days. This became the basis for our angular measurements. 360 is also evenly divisible by 30 (roughly the length of a month). Another oddity: the US adopted decimal currency early on, but kept the inconsistent Imperial measurements. In contrast, the UK kept their shillings, pence, farthings, and pounds (currency not weight) until the late 1960s before finally converting to decimal pounds. Now, I'm a big fan of SI units and would rather use them for mass, length, volume, etc. Except for timekeeping. The French tried to decimalize that, and failed miserably, but succeeded wildly in creating SI. |
Robert Waltz  - Curiously, SI units units came up in yesterday's post by Damon Nomad   on Quantum Day. He used electrovolts to calculate the value of Planck's constant, not Joules which is the standard SI unit. |
| Robert Waltz - I think another reason for the 12 hour day (and base 12 arithmetic) by the Sumerians is that they knew how to divide a circle into twelve equal parts using a compass and straightedge. THus, they could make sundials, for example. See https://opentextbc.ca/patterndevelopment/chapter/divide-a-circle-into-12-equal-p... for how to divide a circle into 12 equal parts. |
Where are the Fireworks, Cake and Balloons? April 14 is World Quantum Day. Yes, one month after PI day, 3.14. For those who say no, no only USA uses m,d,year. Not true, and check the internet! It’s World Quantum Day and the internet is never wrong. Why 4.14? Think…Come on. Energy of a photon related to its frequency. Yes, E=hv… Planck’s constant h, 4.14, the rounded first digits of the constant: 4.1356677×10−15 eV⋅s. Let the party begin. |
| Not a physcist, but isn't the energy of a photon more commonly measured in Joules per second than electronvolts per second? Using Joules, Planck's constant is roughly 6.63 ( 6.62607015×10−34 J⋅Hz−1). That would make Quantum Day 6/6, since it can't be 6/62. Different units give different candidates...exposing a different kind of uncertainty principle. |
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  - quite correct, I can only guess the ‘Quantumist’ wanted a one month bump in notoriety from PI day. |
Roll the Credits I’ve noticed some interesting things with television series credits. First, the order of things, Generally the beginning credits are the lead actors and the series creator. What a title, creator. The order of the actors? Alphabetical? Is it in their contract? The closing credits are more interesting. Again, the order is interesting. Lots of producers, and different types of producers. Writers, editors. The number of people on the screen at one time an apparent measure of their ego, I meant to say importance. Then the screen gets filled with a dizzying array of names and titles, and they move so fast only a mother or father would spot the name of a son or daughter who was the location coordinator or Boom Operator Post by Damon Nomad Omnipotent Sage |
| I always look for the Foley artists. Seriously, my biggest complaint with streaming channels is that they rush through or skip the credits to get to the next in queue. The credits are very important. I insist on reading them. The most important people in Hollywood and television - without whom movies and TV shows could not be made - are never famous, but they can be found in the credits. |
| I pretty sure, at least for actors, the positioning of names in the credits is contractual and negotiated by their agent. It has little to do with the actor's ego. The kind of billing and the positioning are signals of the actor's relative status. The opening credits for Cheers are an example. The two stars are Shelly Long and Ted Danson, and they got joint top billing, i.e., are the first names shown on on the opening credits. They are on the same screen, but offset in a particular way. Shelly long is in the upper RIGHT of the screeen and Ted Danson is in the LOWER LEFT. So, reading top-to-bottom, Shelly Long is first. But, reading left-to-right, Ted Danson is first. This kind of credit is common and signals they have *equal* top billing. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0nC3BkzPk Another coveted posistion is the LAST actor credited on the screen roll. In the Cheers roll above, it's George Wendt, but that *could* be alphabetical. On the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the series actors were in the *closing* credits with no actor credits in the opening roll. Well, except Mary's name is in the shows TITLE. Anyway, in the closing credits, Cloris Leachman is listed last as a "special guest star," even though she's a series regular. She was a distinguished actress who eventually won an Oscar in 1972, and she was already better known than any of the other supporting actors. Her agent almost certainly negotiated that position for her since it signals she's "more significant" than the other supporting actors. She eventually also won an Emmy for her role on MTM. There's an example of the MTM closing credits here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o3aWul6D9Y |
| Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 - I can't recall the precise details, but there's a story about a difficult agent trying to get his client's name listed in the credits after an "and", only to be told that if he didn't pack it in, it wouldn't be an "and", it'd be a "but". |
A Submission Misunderstanding Bubba was proud to tell people he was a writer. Pretty amazing since he hadn’t even graduated high school. Been posting stories on the internet for a month and now he was ready for the big time. He submitted a story for an anthology. He looked the word up. He was excited to see an email response the next day. Dear Bubba, We have received your submission for our new Horror anthology. Please never submit to us again. It is riddled with grammar and punctuation errors. There is no discernible plot and the dialog is simply horrible. Bubba quickly replied, Sorry thought it wuz a horrible anthology not horror. |
Come On WDC An old man, sitting on the sidewalk holding a sign ‘will work for food’. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration. Follow me. "Note: Follow Me and I'll Follow You Do you..." |
Follow Me and I'll Follow You Do you have books on Amazon? What about an Amazon author's site? I check my statistics for my pulbished works once a week or so. You can also see who is following you as an author. I don't have another followers to see who my followers are, yes it's embarrasing. if you send me a message or scribble in my notebook that you's started following me on Amazon. I will reciprocate if you provide me a link to one of your books or your Amazon page. https://www.amazon.com/author/damonnomad-books Just go to the bottom and follow. No expectations on buying, but hey if something suits your fancy. Come on it's free and exciting. |
The Perfect Crime? Imagine you had the power to push the entire stock market up or down. Say for example, by imposing world wide tariffs and then abruptly pausing them for ninety days a week later. Imagine being able to manipulate the market like that and profiting from it. To make this the perfect dream, imagine that these tariff actions are official duties for you as president and that The Supreme Court has ruled you cannot be prosecuted for official presidential duties. Sound like a dream? Or a nightmare? Or the Perfect Crime? Public Service Announcement by Taboo Information Services |
Down a Rabbit Hole I have become part of what I have often criticized , writing political commentary for an online news site. In doing research I have been researching sites that are news, there are so many it is shocking. This is where so many people now get their news, along with facebook, twitter… The tagline for one says in part ”the goal of our journalism is neither balance nor objectivity but” … Walter Cronkite, used to sign off . . . “that’s the way it is.” His goal and his generation of journalist prized balance and objectivity, there was no but. Sorry, Walter. |
| Unfortunately, it's hard to find any news organization now that does real news now. Forget about spelling, grammar, or even the W's and H's. (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and most importantly- HOW does this affect the reader or those impacted by it.) All things that were drummed into me when I worked on a newspaper but are lost now it seems. Everything is designed as click bait and the actual meaning of what news what about has been lost. It's one of the primary causes of the stupidity of America, right up there with elimination of the need to actually pass core classes in school, the removal of things like civics, and the introduction of the idiotic "cooperative learning" which just means group cheating. When the news stopped being considered an acceptable lost liter and public service and was turned into a "profit making division" all credibility went out the window. Now- half the news isn't even news- just celeb gossip, half-formed rumors, and out-right distortions with a simple job of getting people afraid of whatever is in the headline so they act with their primal brain instead of their logical brain. Not that people have a logical brain anymore. As a former teacher and a daughter of a former teacher, none of this is a surprise, but it doesn't lessen the sorrow of watching it continue to unfold, day by day. |
Don’t Forget to Check the Junk Pile A while back, it had been a few days since I checked my email junk folder for the account I always used for story and novel submissions. There it was, sitting there for two days, an acceptance for an anthology. Definitely not junk, for me. What’s the most important thing you have found in your junk folder? |
Rejection by Cancellation I recently had a new first in pulbishing. Well, a first for me. I have had some similiar experiences, where I never get an email and the project never seems to have been published, but never an explicit explanation. An email several weeks after the close of the submission window. My story wasn’t rejected or accepted. The publisher decided not to move forward because, "we've decided to take the unusual step of not moving forward with this anthology. We did receive many stories of good quality and great themes--however, in the totality, we did NOT receive enough stories that adhered to the requirements of the open call to fill out an entire volume." So they were not going forward with the anthology. I was puzzled, usually publishes are awash with several hundred submittals and their rejections or approval emails comment on the quality of submissions they received. Was my story one of the good ones? Drats! That’s what Charlie Brown would say. |
| In my (admittedly limited) experience, it means one of 4 things: 1) they're telling the truth. Too many who submit do not adhere to the submission guidelines because they think they are above them because they are just that damn good at this writing thing. And if what they were looking for was a rather niche topic/theme, then this becomes increasingly likely. 2) it's a cover story for the fact they have run out of money and cannot afford to publish. 3) they have grown frustrated dealing with the sheer volume of AI-generated slop and have given up. This is becoming unfortunately increasingly common. 4) they have discovered another anthology with the same theme has beaten them to it, and hence have gathered the better stories. Being negatively compared can hurt everything the company puts out, not just this one volume. Sorry to hear it, but as you can probably guess, it's happened to me as well in the past. Just one of the joys of settling in the trad-published sphere. |
A Strange Writing Experience For the past month, I have been writing daily political news-commentary articles for an online news site. An English language site in a foreign country about politics in the United States. I have long had an avid interest in politics and was surprised to get the freelance contract. I thought it might be fun, about a thousand words a day, every day, for 0.03/ word. This is a strange experience for me, in several ways. First of all, it’s a liberal leaning slant. Not that these labels mean anything. I find myself now left of center when I had considered myself slightly right of center most of my adult life. I felt things were right with the country when Reagan and both Bushes were elected, not that I agreed one hundred percent with everything they stood for. To me, I feel like its politics that changed, more than me. Anyway, I find myself writing articles about the danger of tariff wars, a president talking about a third term, alien enemies, late-night purges at government agencies, etc. that are considered liberal. As a relatively new, but older ‘writer’ or ‘author’: I find it strange to write to a daily deadline after having been retired for several years. It’s strange to write non-fiction, after having spent the last several years working on novels and short stories. Which I have not given up, and what I most enjoy. Finally, it is strange and somewhat disappointing that I will make more money in one month of political commentary than in chasing novels and short stories for more than five years. I can’t disclose the site name; the articles are only posted as bylines of the Editorial Team. Maybe if you search around, you might find some of them. I’ll see how long this lasts. |
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Besides, it's one less place to update my word count. I always do the Write-a-Thon on WDC, so updating the official NaNo site was just extra work. I never got into the community or did much with it besides update my word count and buy stuff from their store, so it's not a big loss for me.