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May. 27th, 2008
03:00 pm - cleaning house
Over on my Real blog I have decided, in the interests of running a civilized web salon, to Clean House. For too long, my blog's had a slight surfeit of right-wing trolls, and I'm not happy about this. So I'm working out a moderation policy ...
So far, the rules of thumb I'm looking at are:
* I, Charlie Stross, pay for this server out of my own pocket. I don't accept advertising from third parties -- insofar as there is any advertising content at all on this blog, it is advertising me. (And my writing.)
* This is my soap box. You're welcome to say anything you want -- on your own soap box. If you post here, you do so only by my consent.
* This blog is hosted on a server in London. If you post anything that may be actionable under English libel law the moderators will delete it as soon as they notice it.
* There is a line in the sand drawn between polite contradiction and ad-hominem attack. Observe it. Or else.
* The management will censor or delete anything they damn well feel like if they think it's inappropriate, trolling, or otherwise liable to drag a discussion off-topic.
* If you assert that global climate change isn't happening, that peak oil is a chimera, that the invasion of Iraq has been good for the Iraqi people, that George Bush is doing a great job, or that you don't see why abortion should be legal because surely any woman who's already pregnant can cope with it for a few more weeks[*], don't be surprised if your deathless prose is deleted. Because? We have a problem with trolls.
* There are two kinds of people in this world; those who see in black and white, and those who can cope with shades of gray. Note that black and white are also shades of grey. This blog is for the grey scale folks. We tend to take a dim view of people who deny the existence of the middle ground.
Anyone got any additional suggestions?
[*] Yes, one poster really did say that.
UPDATE: Unlocked so that ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
james_nicoll can link to it in a good cause.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Awake.gif)
awake
May. 2nd, 2008
10:04 am - The New Eclectics
matociquala linked to Richard Morgan's call for peace and amity within SF, and thus invited the usual ideological flame war to come roost in her LJ for a while.
Me, I read the Mundane Manifesto and felt called to write a Mundane SF novel.
(So for an encore, I had to do a Space Opera, in late Heinlein mode.)
I am sick of all these soi-disant Movements in SF. So I am hereby considering establishing my own.
My Movement is to be called the New Eclecticism, but you're very welcome to paste your own label on it and claim responsibility. (Schismatic sects welcome; the more, the merrier!) Our key tenet is to embrace and extend: "exclusivity is futile, your movement's tropes will be assimilated and remixed with gay abandon".
You, too, can be a New Eclectic! All you have to do is write something obeying the conventions of an SF movement you wouldn't normally be seen dead with. It feels weird and kind of icky at first, but as your sense of postmodern irony develops you will learn that trangressing boundaries of genre and taste can be both fun and creative! Cyberpunks? Try writing a 1960s psychedelic New Wave story, or an urban fantasy! (Better still, turn your hand to a 1960s psychedelic urban fantasy New Wave story!) Mundane SF folks? Let your hair down, strap on your, er, strap-on whatever, and indulge your filthy and ideologically impure appetite for flesh-penetrating luscious technophiliacal cyberpunk! (Fans self.) Paranormal romance folks? Just for once, how about a story where everybody is human?
We welcome splittists, schismatics, and fundamentalists of every stripe. You, too, can be part of our Official Opposition! All you have to do is denounce us as an impure, mongrel, non-serious, revisionist, or insert-other-derogatory-term-here bunch of no-hopers and you can contribute to the success of the New Eclectics by attracting attention to us! You can enjoy the self-righteous glow of puritanical zeal while knowing that secretly you're helping out!
Innovators are welcome too! If you can think of a new, strange, and hitherto inconceivable, indigestible or just plain immoral twist on SF, please contribute it! Metaphors happily mixed here! The iron jackboot may absolutely be cast into the melting pot while the fascist octopus sings its swan-song (words © and ™ by the Weasel)!
So, to reiterate: everybody is welcome to join the New Eclectics. The only rule is: Embrace and Extend. Opposition is, by definition, internal. You're one of us: live with it!
CAN HAS CHEEZBURGR NAOW?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Sydney0.gif)
mad
Apr. 23rd, 2008
03:04 pm - Science question
((POSTING UNLOCKED FOR FEEDBACK AT james_nicoll's SUGGESTION))
Let us postulate a very long-lived civilization, not equipped with magic wand technologies, resident on this planet from, oh, a couple of centuries hence until the planet ceases to be inhabitable.
How long until the planet ceases to be inhabitable?
Note: this is a trick question; I am assuming that this civilization will take a very (gigayears!) long view and play astronomical billiards using repeated asteroid fly-bys to keep Earth habitable for as long as possible. Notably:
It is assumed that plate tectonics will cease at some point in the next 2Gy unless steps are taken to bring the Moon back close enough to churn things up again via tidal drag. (Otherwise Luna's going to go wandering off into solar orbit eventually.)
It is assumed that some mechanism will be needed to drag Earth out from its current 1AU orbit when the Sun enters its helium burning phase, and another planet (Mars?) will have to be expended to drop Earth back close to the Sun when it departs from the red giant phase of its life cycle.
So: what kind of radius is the water zone around the eventual white dwarf resulting from our sun going to be, and where should the Earth end up? (And, come to think about it, what kind of orbit do we need to boost it into for safety during the red giant phase?) If we stick the Earth in close orbit around a white dwarf, do I have to worry about tidal effects slowing the Earth's rotation, or radiation effects? (Pulsars are Bad Things to orbit close to, due to their magnetic fields and polar radiation jets. What's the current state of knowledge for white dwarfs?)
How long is a white dwarf likely to continue emitting heat for (at least at wavelengths suitable for terrestrial life)? Are we talking 50Gy? 100Gy? Longer? Is a 1Ty span conceivable, and if so, what sort of weird effects would we expect? (Cosmological smoothing erasing evidence of the big bang; isotope depletion in the crust -- the U238 will have decayed; that sort of thing.)
Current Mood: far-sighted
Jan. 23rd, 2007
03:17 pm - antipope.org is down
Just a public note in case you're reading this: my colocated server, home of www.antipope.org and various other domains (including www.writers-bloc.org.uk, stross.org.uk, and so on) is down right now.
It's been rebooting intermittently since before Newtonmass, at ever-decreasing intervals. UK2.net support have replaced the RAM, SCSI RAID controller, and one of the hard disks ... nothing fixes it. It's now rebooting at roughly five minute intervals and saying up for less than one minute, so it's effectively DoA until UK2 can provision me a new server and transplant the old one's hard disks (so I can recover the data on them -- most recent backup is about four or five days old, but recovering from backup is a pain and I think we missed out the mailman setup). Then it's going to take me anything up to a week to get everything nailed down and working again. (Hopefully more like 24 hours, but you never know.)
In the meantime, mail to my main address (and feorag's), and DNS service for our domains, and our web sites, and the mailing lists, are all down.
(lrc, any chance you can forward this to the peevers list?)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Angry.gif)
annoyed
Current Music: dying computers
Oct. 3rd, 2006
01:19 pm - "Where do your book covers come from?"
This is mizkit's fault; she posted on her LJ about how Harlequin deal with author input on book covers, and I felt the need to respond. Go read what she said, it's enlightening: Harlequin have a formal Art Fact Sheet that authors have to fill in for each book, which goes into the pipeline to the art director who presumably does the usual shuffling of commissioning cover artwork, graphic design for the text overlays, getting the blurb writer to supply copy, and so on.
No two publishers work the same way, and Harlequin are quite different from those publishers I've dealt with in the SF/F fields. In particular, I'd like to say that no author is responsible for what ends up on the cover of their book (unless they publish it themselves) but the degree to which they're consulted by the publisher varies wildly.
Here are my experiences:
1. Ace. $editor says, "do you have any preferences?" (Preferences can be vague -- "make this book visually different from the last, so readers don't mistake it for a sequel" [or vice versa] or explicit, but basically all that happens is $editor mentions the author's preferences to the art director, who rules with a whim of iron. (No disasters so far.)
Interestingly, Ace bought THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES after Golden Gryphon had put it out in hardback -- and it looks like the artist actually read the whole thing, cover to cover (and Got It). I've rarely seen a cover that worked so well or reflected the contents of the book so accurately. (I can't wait to see what they do with THE JENNIFER MORGUE!)
2. Tor. "Here's the cover for your next book -- do you like it?" Art director briefs external artist to prepare painting; no advance input solicited from author. On the other hand, feedback works: "if that's the heroine, you got her hair colour wrong" resulted in a subtle re-work on the final DJ. (I'll give them credit for being extremely busy but not large-corporate enough to implement something systematic like an AFS, and move on.)
3. Orbit. See Tor, above. My first two covers were great, my third cover sucked mildly (but not enough to scream and stamp and hold my breath over -- they were trying to go for a mainstream/crossover effect, and it didn't work in my opinion, but it wasn't a gouge-your-eyes-out mess that would justify risking pissing off my hard-working editor: it was merely low-side-of-average).
4. Golden Gryphon. Here, in small press land, the artist is as much of a major draw as the author, and gets his name on the DJ too: Steve Montiglio. And in both the books they published, we went through an exhaustive process whereby Steve would knock out some roughs covering a range of visual themes, and $editor and I would play "hotter", "no, colder" until we zeroed in on a final design. This was very much a case of the artist imposing their style on the concept (but having an MS to work from), rather than being given a brief by an art director, and while I can see this process being too time-consuming for a publisher with a busy schedule, it worked well. (The cover of THE ATROCITY ARCHIVE then had a horrible font dumped on it by the typesetter, but I whinged about this and THE JENNIFER MORGUE's DJ looks a whole lot better -- while still saying "I am a sequel to that other book".)
5. Subterranean Press: again, as with Golden Gryphon, the artist is a big draw; in the case of MISSILE GAP I got J. K. Potter, who read the novella then decided what he was going to do thematically. Again, there was some to-ing and fro-ing while $editor and I worked out what we wanted. I'm fairly happy with what we got.
General conclusion: if you demand input, the small presses will let you have it -- but they'll pick the artist, and they'll be demanding input, too. Larger publishers are less likely to give you much input, but if you express preferences they'll listen, and if you spot a big mistake, they'll often try to fix it.
If you're a published author, feel free to add your own experiences!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Energetic.gif)
waking up
Aug. 19th, 2006
09:32 pm - Repeat entry: why you can't read this journal
This isn't my official blog. It's a watering hole for self plus friends, rather than somewhere you'll find public announcements and ex cathedra statements.
A while ago I discovered some people were directing strangers to it as if it was my official blog. At that point, I took it friends-only, to reduce the risk of misunderstandings.
If you want to read it, AND CAN'T SEE ANY ENTRIES ABOVE THIS ONE[*] feel free to post a comment here and tell me who you are. (Note that by doing so you are agreeing that this is not my -- Charlie Stross's -- official public blog, and that you won't describe it as such or treat it as some kind of authoritative news source. You should also note that stuff discussed here may be either less interesting or more controversial than stuff I discuss in public.)
([*] Or indeed, any other entries since June. Because, y'know, if you can already read my LJ there's no need to ask me to add you to the list of readers, right?)
Jun. 5th, 2006
11:56 am - This journal will vanish for tomorrow
After thinking about it, and after taking into consideration the fact that the whole breastfeeding/nipple thing was started by a troll ... I've decided to join the protest and delete my LJ on June 6th.
The final straw was discovering the LJ policy on breastfeeding and userpics extends to works of fine art. That's just plain bone-headed, folks. Six Apart are incorporated in a state where the law that specifically permits breastfeeding in public; and if a user icon is hanging in the Louvre the chance of them being prosecuted as purveyors of pornography is ... slim. It suggests a philistine lack of respect for our shared cultural values and a craven willingness to bow the knee to even the most remote, imagined, threat of censorship. Worse: it suggests that, in the boardroom at Six Apart, a decision has been made that keeping their paying advertiser customers happy (and mainstream advertisers don't like to pay for placement in content that blue-noses find distasteful) is more important than preserving their users' freedom of expression.
I'm a paid account holder, not a captive pair of eyeballs. But my scribbling on LJ must be generating some advertising click-throughs for Six Apart, judging from the number of people who've friended me. And I'm not happy with the prospect of my freedom of expression being restricted so that somebody else can make money off the sweat of my brow.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Determined.gif)
determined
Current Music: bathroom fans
May. 14th, 2006
09:44 pm - LJ Community
There now exists an LJ community, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
charlesstross, for talking about me in public. I'll hang around there and answer questions; this LJ will remain somewhat more private (i.e. friends-only).
Current Mood: chipper
Apr. 19th, 2006
05:50 pm - Friends-only
This LJ is going friends-only as of now. If you want to read my main blog, go here. (Or here, but don't blame me if/when it breaks. RSS sucks, and LJ syndication sucks worse.)
Use this discussion to talk to me if you want to be on my flist and read subsequent postings.
(Anyone who had friended me as of this morning is already on the flist. No need to ask.)
Apr. 18th, 2006
07:51 pm - Annoyed
Someone who should know better posted about this LJ, describing it as my blog, in public, on usenet.
Please do not do that.
This originally started as an anonymized way for me to interact with personal friends on LJ. Then one of them (who should also have known better) blew my identity. But it's still not my official blog, which is http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/, and I don't want random strangers dropping by in the mistaken impression that it's my public face.
If you keep spreading word of it around in public -- meaning: to strangers, in magazines, on usenet, on websites or other blogs -- I'll eventually have to delete all postings and discontinue my use of LJ completely.
Current Mood: deeply irritated
02:12 pm - Got home
Absolutely exhausted after the wimpy 45-mile drive. My cold is nearly over, my chest isn't going bad (much -- the aircon in the convention hotel is drier than the Sahara at noon and I can still feel it), and the infected/inflamed toe is responding to chlorhexidine and TLC. If it wasn't for the Clarke awards next week I'd be looking forward to spending a month at home, recovering and then getting into the work groove again.
No disgruntled feline presents this time, thank Chthulhu, although Frigg is still sulking under the living room coffee table and Mafdet is following me around from room to room, meeping excitedly.
The weather is so good that if I didn't feel crap I'd get into a mad flurry of spring cleaning. Which really would fuck up my lungs, due to the dust I'd kick up. So I'm being cautious, and instead of attacking the junkyard I've simply opened all the windows and bought a roll of heavy bin bags. I'll hoover first and try to avoid kicking crap into the air, then tackle things slowly over the next week or so.
Meanwhile, here's a little list:
( Stuff available to anyone who wants to collect it (Edinburgh area) )
I'll update this list as I think of stuff that needs shifting. If you want anything, email me or post here.
Current Mood: thankful
Current Music: Heartland - U2
Apr. 17th, 2006
11:48 pm - Authorial suicide notes, #1
"The ayatollah realized it was going to be hard to explain when she woke up in bed with a hang-over, the Israeli ambassador, his catamite, and a burst condom."
Current Mood: silly
Current Music: air conditioning
Apr. 16th, 2006
10:06 am - To those who believe in such things ...
Happy God-On-A-Stick Day.
And happy Pesach, too.
(I now need to go in search of a bacon cheeseburger on sourdough, with or without a topping of Marmite, to revalidate my negatively-defined ethnic identity.)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Sad.gif)
hungry
Current Music: air conditioning
Apr. 15th, 2006
02:47 pm - Woozy ...
To anyone reading their LJ while at Concussion in Glasgow:
I began coming down with a cold last night. Which meant I was up every half hour, draining my sinuses, instead of sleeping. I am now out of my box on a mixture of sleep deprivation, prescription medicines, and decongestants; exactly like being stoned, only not in a good way. If I sounded disjointed during the 11am panel on Lovecraft, it was because I was so woozy I could barely stand, much less string two multi-clause sentences together.
This is not a nice sensation, so if you run into me please make allowances for me being crap.
(I am shortly going to go downstairs from the hotel room to hoist a pint with the journos from SFX, talk shop with my editor from Orbit, and maybe go along to the Space Cleavage panel to provide moral support for feorag.)
Current Mood: high
Current Music: air conditioning
Apr. 13th, 2006
05:39 pm - A mild concussion
At the eastercon -- the Volvo started, in the end -- and about to register then bugger off to the Trout meeting at the Ingram Bar on Queen Street in Glasgow, more or less opposite The Counting House. (There's a reading thingy going on; I'm not reading tonight, but a load of good folks are.) feorag and I just went for a swim: the hotel pool is 14 metres long which means I really am crap and need to get back into shape.
More news as stuff happens.
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: police helicopter taking off outside the window
Apr. 12th, 2006
04:13 pm - Eastercon approaching
So I went out this afternoon to make sure the car was still there, and it was indeed still there, albeit covered in cobwebs and dust.
Did it want to start? Did it buggery. The central locking on this model of Volvo has a known fault (it drains power constantly, albeit at a low rate), and the beefy 2.5 litre engine means that the starter motor sucks amps. Luckily I have a solution, in the form of a big yellow brick with a spare battery and jump leads in it, because I'm used to its eccentric habits.
Only this time, the jump-start box was flat, too. So it's sitting in my study, plugged into the mains, and hopefully in another hour or so I'll be able to get the Volvo to splutter into life. A run over to Glasgow ought to put enough juice in it to let it start at the other end, and the run back should leave it in condition for another week or two. But I really need to reconsider whether I really need a car, if I use it so little that the battery goes flat between journeys.
What this does mean is that the boot of the car is still stuffed full of empty beer and wine bottles -- an entire season's worth, which was waiting to be driven to a bottle bank. I don't particularly feel like jump-starting the engine, driving two minutes down the road, parking up, then betting on it starting again right away. Hmm ...
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Nerdy.gif)
thoughtful
Current Music: Of course I'm lying - Yello
Apr. 11th, 2006
03:06 pm - Exhausted
So I went to see my folks at the weekend. It turns out I'm not as over the flu bug from last week as I thought; a four hour train journey felt more like a four hour death march and I ended up sleeping for eleven hours afterwards.
Situation not aided by the fact that the less often I visit my parents, the more excited they get when I show up, leading in turn to more rushing around and doing things and/or emoting, leading to more exhaustion, leading to a greater delay until I can face visiting them again. Which is a bad cycle to be in, so I'm making a memo to myself to go see them again in three or four weeks, rather than three or four months.
On the plus side: I made arrangements for the delivery of my mum's old Mac (the G4 cube she's had since 2001) to Glasgow at the Eastercon. This will allow me to (a) get it fixed (we replaced it with a G5 iMac when it began throwing kernel panics every half hour and barfing up video hash on boot), and (b) turn it into a server for my office. (It may be underpowered by modern desktop standards but it's totally silent and it looks extremely cool, and if all it's going to be doing is acting as a print/usenet/mail/file server for two people, why would I need more than a 450MHz G4?)
The MacBook Pro has named itself Aineko; I think this means it's here to stay for a while. While it's not the latest rev 3 or rev 4 model, and it runs quite hot, I seem to have dodged the usual faults associated with this model: it makes a very quiet sizzling noise when on battery (as did my original TiBook G4, some years ago), and a couple of unported PPC apps seem to insist on chowing down on as much CPU time as possible, but overall it's fine. Periodically, while it's sitting on my desk, it makes a little ghostly "whooo ..." noise as it spins up a cooling fan then spins it down again almost immediately. Most strange -- a haunted laptop!
Must get back to work on HALTING STATE, as soon as I can muster up the energy. (Situation not assisted by my guts deciding to protest over a diet of cheese sandwiches; so I'm mostly holed up in the bathroom, reading THE FORENSIC CASEBOOK ("The science of crime scene investigation") while Mafdet rubs her head all over my right foot and complains that I'm not feeding her enough cat treats.
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: bathroom fans
Apr. 7th, 2006
01:23 pm - How my laptop sees me ...
( not for the squeamish )
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: computer fans
Apr. 6th, 2006
07:43 pm - Attn: friends of Feorag
She's going to be in the Porterhouse, in Dublin, tonight from about 8:30pm onwards. Company welcome.
Current Mood: working
Current Music: computer fans
02:02 pm - I forgot how slow this would be ...
So, the shiny(!) new(!) MacBook Pro is hooked up to the old skule Powerbook 17", trying to suck its' brains out through the straw laughably known as a Firewire 400 cable. "About 3 hours and 16 minutes remaining" it taunts me. And this, after I near-as-dammit spilt blood getting the dealer-installed memory to, like, actually sit properly in the sockets so that the machine would boot.
Aieee, what's a guy to do? I'd go to the pub with free wifi and decent coffee to work, if I'd remembered to back up yesterday's work onto the wimpy (but servicable) 12" Powerbook.
All this, just so I can play World of Warcraft for work purposes ...
Current Mood: bo
Current Music: computers copulating
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