Yes, Thank You Cory Doctorow

Killing time, surfing Feedly feeds and saw this post from Willy-Bob Wheaton recalling a story about the time he sent his first draft of his a book he was working on Cory Doctorow to read and Cory gave him the honest truth: there’s a good tale in there but the writing ain’t so great.  Eventually Wheaton overcomes self-doubt generated by said tough love, and does the tough work of rewriting and rewriting until he gets his first book published.  Nice illustration of the first law of Ira Glass. Anyhow Wheaton linked to a site called  I Write Like which purports to analyze …

Simultaneous But Independent Creation

Sometimes a joke is just in the air: Interesting how their construction of the joke is almost entirely in different directions: Penny Arcade starting off with the inappropriately not stealthy character from The Last Of Us videogame and I Am Arg! using a similar image as its punchline.

British Baseball Telecast

Almost as funny as this video are the YouTube commenters who thought it was a real sportscast. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKY5fmDGVLs?rel=0] UPDATE: Same take on the NFL! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW4J-RiCZ2Q&w=560&h=315] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kdlHaNdSps&w=560&h=315]  

Apple Two Plus

One of these days I’ll write a real blog post about it, but I inherited the first family computer from when I was growing up.  It’s an Apple II+ from about 1980 I think (maybe 1979) and it was one of the most defining things of my childhood (with legos maybe being a close second).  I have it out in the basement, but powered down — I am not sure what to do with it.

Bookmark: Dicebox

Dicebox by Jenn Manley Lee is The Grapes of Wrath crossed with Star Wars.  And I’ve read large chunks of it at two different times – it just doesn’t always serialize that well.  It’s definitely a story that needs to be read in at least chapters to get sucked into it. I’ve been re-reading it from the start over at Comic Rocket which will help me from losing my place in it.  I’m only about a little more than a quarter of the way through it’s almost 400 page archive.