Chris Branch

NaNoWriMo '09

2009-11-06T17:44:55Z

It's that time of year again, and they finally got the word count widgets working, so here's my progress:

I've made it to 100K each of the past three years, so that's my goal again this time! What the heck, I'll sleep in December.

Drop by and visit me if you like... http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/26935

rudeness

2009-09-15T01:30:35Z

I don't generally rant. But I think this one's fair.

To Joe Wilson, Kanye West, and Serena Williams.

At least two of you have apologized; not sure about the third.

Fine, apology accepted.

Now get off the stage, we don't want to hear another word out of any of you. Ever.

Being rude is not cool or funny, nor does it make you more honest or "real". And it should not be allowed to accomplish anything whatsoever. I hope that all members of a civil society will choose to ignore any further commentary or activity by people who have shown themselves not able to discuss things rationally.

On Stranger Tides

2009-09-14T17:24:04Z

Given my user name, I guess I ought to comment, so here goes:

I'm both a Powers fan and a POTC fan, but I think you can guess which one runs a distant second. So I'm just going to quote Powers on the subject:

"I believe all I can say right now -- God knows why -- is, "Ask the Disney
publicity department." I trust I'll be able to say more very soon."

I suppose that at least confirms that there is actually some sort of deal, as opposed to Disney having (as I read on some movie blog somewhere) "stolen this guy's cheesy puppeteer book". :rolleyes:

But I'm going to wait and hear more from Tim before getting too excited.

books read 2008

2009-01-01T17:24:00Z

Only made it through 41 this year; I'm in the middle of two that will count toward 2009.

As usual, re-reads are in parentheses and they're ranked by how much I liked them, 10 being best (and then just chronologically within each number ranking).

10 (The World Is Round), Rothman
10 (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency), Adams
9 Territory, Bull
9 (The Stress of Her Regard), Powers
8 The God Delusion, Dawkins
8 Napoleon’s Pyramids, Dietrich
8 Mad Kestrel, Massey
8 Look to Windward, Banks
8 (Midworld), Foster
8 The Forgery of Venus, Gruber
8 Clockwork Heart, Pagliassotti
8 The Pillars of the Earth, Follett
8 The Player of Games, Banks
7 Zodiac, Stephenson
7 Majestrum, Hughes
7 (Coyote Blue), Moore
7 Pushing Ice, Reynolds
7 The Songs of Distant Earth, Clarke
6 Tuck Everlasting, Babbitt
6 Sea Without A Shore, Russell
6 Sailing To Sarantium, Kay
6 (Archangel), Conner
6 The Stars My Destination, Bester
6 Heart of Stone, Murphy
6 Fleet of Worlds, Niven/Lerner
6 Mars, Bova
6 The Stuff of Thought, Pinker
6 Matter, Banks
6 The First Word, Kenneally
6 The City of Ember, DuPrau
6 Mainspring, Lake
6 Manifold Time, Baxter
6 Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, Al-Khalili
6 Consider Phlebas, Banks
5 Pilot Light, Ashbless
5 Fablehaven, Mull
5 The Resurrectionist, O’Connell
5 Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, Jonell
4 (Prince Caspian), Lewis
4 Head Games, McDonald
3 The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Cooper

NaNoWriMo '08

2008-11-02T04:20:38Z

Goal is 100K again this year. This progress meter should update throughout the month:

The site is way bogged down at the moment under the weight of a no doubt record number of participants, so I hope the image manages to stay displayed! Once I get further along I may have an excerpt posted, so if the usage lightens up at all, you can stop by at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/26935

Wordle

2008-06-20T01:45:42Z

Word art based on my "books read" list from 2002 through present.

Thanks to madkestrel for bringing that cool site to my attention!

books read 2007

2008-01-03T04:02:09Z

My list of books read for 2007 (45), ranked by how much I liked them on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best!). Re-reads are in parentheses, so you can see that my favorites this year were ones that I already knew I liked.
But the 7's and 8's were well worth my reading time too!

10 (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Adams)
9 (Watership Down, Adams)
9 (Anansi Boys, Gaiman)
9 (Three Days To Never, Powers)
8 (Bride of the Rat God, Hambly)
8 The Algebraist, Banks
8 The Book of Air and Shadows, Gruber
8 The Lies of Locke Lamora, Lynch
8 The Android’s Dream, Scalzi
8 Gatherer of Clouds, Russell
8 Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dennett
8 (The Golden Compass, Pullman)
8 Red Seas Under Red Skies, Lynch
8 World Without End, Russell
7 The Iron Bridge, Morse
7 The Initiate Brother, Russell
7 The Alienist, Carr
7 The Machine’s Child, Baker
7 (Infernal Devices, Jeter)
7 Hoot, Hiaasen
7 Altered Carbon, Morgan
6 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling
6 The Life of the World To Come, Baker
6 His Majesty’s Dragon, Novik
6 Snake Agent, Williams
6 Tuning the Rig, Oxenhorn
6 The Boss, Pottinger
6 The Raw Shark Texts, Hall
6 (Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, Archer)
6 Nine Layers of Sky, Williams
6 Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Priest
6 Map of Bones, Rollins
5 King David’s Spaceship, Pournelle
5 The Wizard Hunters, Wells
5 Darwin’s Blade, Simmons
5 The Prize, Yergin
5 Neuromancer, Gibson
5 Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer, Smith
5 The Somnambulist, Barnes
5 The Girl with the Long Green Heart, Block
5 Inkheart, Funke
4 Air, Ryman
4 The Children of Hurin, Tolkien
4 Orient Express, Greene
3 Project Pope, Simak

NaNoWriMo 2007

2007-11-14T14:20:30Z

Okay, just a note to report that NaNoWriMo was going just fine for me this year - sure, I have been extremely busy both at work and home, so I've been staying up until 1:00 or 2:00 every night (morning!), but I managed to keep to my word count goal every day, on track for a 100K word month.

Unfortunately, yesterday I had to call it a night at 800 words short. So, for the record, here's where I am:

Hmm, actually I don't think that's a snapshot; it will probably update as I proceed, so I should mention that it says 42564. And as anyone on a 100K pace knows, I should have been at 43333. Will I make up the difference tonight? Stay tuned!

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/26935

Rush

2007-06-20T03:00:34Z

Neil Peart can't pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend.

But Alex and Geddy are willing to give it a shot.

Believe it or not, this was taken last Friday - and if I do say so myself, I look pretty much like the kid I was in '83 when I got that Signals jersey I'm wearing.

strangertides @ 2007-01-02T23:00:00

2007-01-03T03:00:33Z

Normally I post this as a comment to lonesomenumber1's list, but I guess it more properly belongs here, and anyway my own journal has few enough entries as it is.

The number of books (about 50) is a record for me, which I somehow managed to do in addition to writing a record number of words for NaNoWriMo in November (100K) and thus doing virtually no reading during that month!

Rather than order them alphabetically by author or title or even chronologically, they're in order by my personal rating on a scale from 1 to 10 on the left side, thus also addressing the obvious question "Well, did you like them?" Books in parentheses are re-reads. Yes, I re-read Julian May's entire Pliocene Exile/Galactic Milieu series; it's one of my faves. And yes, I am aware that one book on my list is a children's book and that another is only 20+ pages long, and as long as I'm disclosing fully, the last three I did not exactly read cover to cover, nor did I rate them, as they were not read for pleasure.

9 Anansi Boys, Gaiman
9 Before the Dawn, Wade
9 (Diamond Mask, May)
9 Night of the Jaguar, Gruber
9 (The Golden Torc, May)
9 (The Many-Colored Land, May)
9 The System of the World, Stephenson
8 Improbable, Fawer
8 (Jack the Bodiless, May)
8 (Magnificat, May)
8 Mockingbird, Stewart
8 (The Adversary, May)
8 The Confusion, Stephenson)
8 (The Nonborn King, May)
8 The Story of the Stone, Hughart
8 Three Days to Never, Powers
7 Collapse, Diamond
7 Coyote Blue, Moore
7 (King Rat, Mieville)
7 Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Einstein
7 Resurrection Man, Stewart
7 Roadshow, Peart
7 Sammy’s Hill, Gore
7 The Coffee Trader, Liss
7 The Graveyard Game, Baker
7 The Language of God, Collins
7 The Log From the Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck
7 (The Metaconcert, May)
7 (The Surveillance, May)
6 Beyond the Outer Shores, Tamm
6 Eight Skilled Gentlemen, Hughart
6 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Clarke
6 Religion and Science, Russell
6 Spin State, Moriarty
6 The Calcutta Chromosome, Ghosh
6 The Codex, Preston
6 Toad Heaven, Gleitzman
5 Mendoza in Hollywood, Baker
5 The Bible Repairman, Powers
5 The Geographer’s Library, Fasman
5 The Planets, Sobel
4 Baudolino, Eco
4 Iron Council, Mieville
4 King Solomon’s Mines, Haggard
4 Saving Fish From Drowning, Tan
4 Sixpence House, Collins
4 Write Away, George
3 Cannery Row, Steinbeck
3 Towing Jehovah, Morrow
- Java Programming, Farrell
- Migrating to IPv6, Blanchet
- The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure, Kowalski

strangertides @ 2006-06-12T22:23:00

2006-06-13T02:44:35Z

More cat stuff. Since teddystutz has presented the pic of their new one, here is ours. Muffin (left) joins Peppermint so we are back to being a two cat household. As you can see, they are getting along just fine. As far as the cutesy food names, blame my eight-year-old. The last one I got to name was Juliet.

Juliet

2006-05-23T02:38:41Z

I mentioned on the Powers list a while back the passing of Juliet, our 13-year-old Maine Coon. I thought I'd just post one of the last pictures of her. As you can see, she was already contemplating a voyage. She will be missed!

primary politics in the US

2004-03-05T02:25:35Z

I was wondering... seems like this is something I should have wondered about before now - I guess I'm slow, but anyway, I was wondering:

Why are states given the freedom to choose a primary date when the primary leads up to a federal election? Isn't it obvious that this gives more influence to the primaries held earlier and makes all but irrelevant the later primaries?

I realize that states have many reasons for choosing the dates they do; that's not my question, I'm asking why there isn't a federal law that sets the date so that states must rearrange their business to conform to it. The inconvenience to the state governments would seem to be a lesser concern than having a system in which voters in all states are treated equally.

I have a theory, but I don't like it, so I'm curious what others think.

strangertides @ 2003-04-08T23:27:00

2003-04-09T03:27:16Z

Kind of silly to have a journal with no entries, I guess, so I offer this placeholder until I come up with something more significant to say.

Here's what I ought to believe, and sometimes even claim to:

"The bosses get talking so tough
And if that wasn't evil enough
We get the drunken and passionate pride
Of the citizens along for the ride

They shoot without shame
In the name of a piece of dirt
For a change of accent
Or the colour of your shirt

Better the pride that resides
In a citizen of the world
Than the pride that divides
When a colourful rag is unfurled"
- Rush, Territories (Power Windows, 1985)

But here's what I'm finding myself actually believing:

"If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known."
- George C. Marshall (1880-1959)

It's not cynicism, though - I'm the most optimistic person I know! It's a kind of scientific realism I guess. Anyway, for what that's worth!