June 2009
44 posts
“Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers’ worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.”
—io9 - Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie
“Not only is the sleep deprivation utterly crushing for the first couple days of Uberman-adjustment, but maintaining the schedule requires the kind of anal-retentivity that you usually only see in damaged people (like Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom).”
—
Probably why I won’t be adopting the Uberman polyphasic sleep schedule. I’m just not evil enough.
Aimee Mann: Daytrotter Session →
daytrotter.com
There’s an Aimee Mann Daytrotter session and I didn’t know about it until now!? I would be so mad right now if I didn’t have free Aimee Mann mp3s to listen to.
“So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I’m hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be. That music is a physical force”
—Paul Auster, on this neat site about writers’ and artists’ Daily Routines
Bookbinding →
en.wikipedia.org
I mean, of course it is, right? But the bookbinding page on wikipedia is kind of amazing.
Infinite Summer » About →
infinitesummer.org
Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat.
I think I’m going to do this. Um.
“this is why it has become so helpful to me to perceive everything as an experiment.”
—wish jar : try anything
“‘Sentimentality is subtle. C.S. Lewis once told a young writer: “Instead of telling us a thing is ‘terrible’, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was a ‘delight’, make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (‘horrifying’, ‘wonderful’, ‘hideous’, exquisite’) are only saying to your readers, ‘Please will you do my job for me.”’. Lewis complains that authors of gushy and sentimental words are tyrannical because they tell the readers how they must feel rather than letting the subject work on them in the same way it did the author. Sentimental worship leading works in exactly the same way that Lewis describes. With typical comments – “Isn’t he just wonderful?” “Isn’t it such a blessing?” – the leader tells people how they ought to feel about God instead of telling them about God.”
—
Tim Keller in ‘Worship By The Book’ edited by Don Carson (p209-10). CS Lewis quote comes from Letters of CS Lewis ed. WH Lewis (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1966), 271.
h/t Simone: another something: sentimentality
requoting for two reasons:
- as good an explanation as I’ve ever read about why (and how) you should show, not tell, when writing.
- excellent points to consider about worship leading
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Last Year's Model →
lastyearsmodel.org
Great idea. And new favourite tagline too.
“I think the breakthrough for me came when I started writing comics — because I believed in them. Because sometimes I would be using characters I hadn’t created, but simply cared about. And over the next few years I learned that if you cared enough about your characters, what happened to them was interesting.”
—Neil Gaiman’s Journal
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Windosill →
windosill.com
So beautiful. Like a children’s book from the future.
Nick Hornby » Blog Archive » “Sleep All Summer” by St. Vincent And The National →
nickhornby.campaignserver.co.uk
If you knew about this and didn’t tell me, I…I just don’t know what to say. I had to wait for Nick Hornby to tell me, dagnabit.
It is a beautiful song, yes indeed it is. Who knew Matt and Annie would sound so sublime together covering someone else’s song? Go and listen. Looks like there’s some other amazing songs there too.
Edit to add: I tried to buy the mp3 but it’s available in North America only (seriously, what is it with that?!) So of course I did a search and found that although it’s no longer available on I Am Fuel, You Are Friends which is where Nick Hornby got it, it was up on Pretty Much Amazing still. So there.
“Dream strange things and make them look like truth.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, via Jonathan Carroll
“Remember the thrill of your own voice.”
—I feel like quitting writing | Salon Life
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Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread →
motherearthnews.com
gonna try this…always wanted to bake bread but been daunted by the task (and refused to buy a bread maker, knowing that would be the last straw of my unnecessary kitchen gadgetry fetish).
via Lifehacker
Little Wheel →
fastgames.com
Uber-charming little game.
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“I wanted to be an illustrator very early in my life; to be involved in books in some way–to make books. And the making of books, the touching of books–there’s so much more to it than just reading; there is a sensuousness. I’ve seen children touch books, fondle books, smell books, and it’s all the reason in the world why books should be beautifully produced.”
—Maurice Sendak, via We Love You So
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“SF operates language differently than most other forms of literature. What SF does, which annoys most people, is subvert the sentence. Changing one word can put you in a new place. The usual example is from Robert Heinlein: ‘As the door dilated…’”
—Warren Ellis, via jim rossignol
admission
i’ve never seen the breakfast club all the way through
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Craftzine.com blog : Ask CRAFT: The TSAs of Crafty Air Travel →
blog.craftzine.com
Potentially useful info for those of us wanting to take crafting materials with us on holidays (it’s US specific, I’m not sure whether the guidelines here are similar or more rigid - seems basically airport security can confiscate whatever they like, depending on their mood).
Craftzine.com blog : Maker Faire Through The Eyes of a Pre-Teen →
blog.craftzine.com
I so wish I could go to Maker Faire! It sounds like four kinds of awesome.
“
Now what about Twitter? I find Twitter to be a kind of taunt: “Okay, truth-lover, see what you can do with 140 characters! You say your mission is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things! Well, this is one of those ‘all things.’ Can you magnify Christ with this thimble-full of letters?”
To which I respond:
The sovereign Lord of the earth and sky
Puts camels through a needle’s eye.
And if his wisdom see it mete,
He will put worlds inside a tweet.
“
by forcing users to commit their thinking to the bite-size form of the public tweet, Twitter may be giving a powerfully productive new life to a hitherto underexploited quantum of thought: The random, fleeting observation.
What new cultural forms and institutions may emerge from this development could be as hard to predict as all the consequences of the book have been. But for one of the more intriguing examples, consider the emerging Twitter practice NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen calls “mindcasting.” It may begin as just a seed of an idea — a thought about the future of online media, say — tossed out into the germinating medium of the twitterverse, passed along from one Twitter feed to another, critiqued or praised, reshaped and edited, then handed back for fleshing out on a blog, first, and then, perhaps, in a book. It’s not that tweet-size sparks of insight haven’t always been part of the media ecosystem, in other words. It’s just that Twitter now has given them a vastly more exciting social life.
And that may be all the point that Twitter needs.
” —Wired | Dual Perspectives Article
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May 2009
50 posts
xkcd - Troll Slayer →
xkcd.com
I’m so glad the guy behind xkcd uses his powers for humour and not for evil.
