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From the Blog

Aug

I don’t know you, you don’t know me

Posted by Perich at 6:58 am

This week I finished writing a novel.

If you’ve known me a few years, that’s not news. I’ve finished several novels. I average about one a year. What makes this different, though, is that this is the first novel I’ve put concerted effort into revising.

This week I finished the third draft of a novel. I brought it from 55,000 down to 52,000 words, and then up to 67,000. I followed up on all the notes I’d left. I read and re-read until I found myself making fiddly little changes just for the sake of making them.

Now I need your help. I need beta readers who can take a look at this penultimate draft and give me honest feedback.

What am I looking for in a beta reader?

Someone who can read a short novel in two to four weeks.
Someone who’s comfortable giving honest feedback. I don’t want line-by-line corrections (though if you find lots of grammatical errors, let me know). I want a sense of what you liked and what you didn’t.
Someone who has some familiarity and comfort with the thriller genre. You don’t need to be the world’s biggest Harlan Coben fan, for example, but if you consider the thriller genre to be irredeemable trash, this book won’t appeal to you.
OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY VALUED: Someone who has some familiarity with the law, journalism or the city of Boston.

If this sounds like you, please let me know via comment (I’ll see your e-mail address) or e-mailing me (perich AT periscopedepth.com).

And thank you either way. Thank you either for volunteering to read something I’ve made or for simply understanding and supporting me while I’ve worked on it. I talk a lot about how lonely a calling art is. It’s always comforting (and surprising!) to know that when I leave my desk, I still have friends waiting outside.

Jul

is there an app for that?

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

I’m sure the following exists, but I can’t find it. And I can’t describe it well enough to Google it^*, a maddening feeling in its own right. I throw myself at your feet, Internet, a supplicant for better productivity.

Picture a corkboard with index cards full of notes tacked up. I can rearrange the cards on the board in any order I like. I can group them together in any categories I want. In these categories, I can put them in different order. But the cards themselves remain distinct. I can separate them out and scatter them around.

What I want: an application that’ll let me do that for text files.

To save you some trouble: MS Word isn’t what I want. Sure, I can write each of my segments out as separate Word files, and visually move them around within folders to categorize them. But I can’t merge and separate them with ease. If I marry two Word files together – ctrl+A, ctrl+C, ctrl+V – I can’t untangle them again. And I can’t put the same file in two different categories without making copies, and then each copy will be its own animal.

I want an application that will let me create pages of text as a single “note.” I then want to be able to take these notes and visually arrange them in categories. I don’t want these notes to have a character limit of anything less than a few hundred thousand. I want to be able to combine the notes easily, yet leave each note distinct if I want to separate them out again later.

This seems so screamingly obvious that I’m confident something with this functionality already exists, and is well known, and within the first three comments someone will point it out. But I’ve been staring at Word so long that I can’t think of it, and I’ve outsourced so many of my mental cycles to Google that I can’t think of what to call it. A project management organizer? A productivity visualization aid? A mind map? Please help me, or I will go mad and kill everyone I see. Thank you.

__________________
* A problem unique to this century. And they say there’s nothing new under the sun!

Mar

love you, mama, but you’re too proud to change

Posted by Perich at 7:40 am

While I’m thinking about Netflix, a quick question: why does Netflix care so much about improving their recommendation system?

Netflix made headlines years ago when it announced its Netflix Prize, a $1,000,000 bounty to whoever could build an algorithm that would improve the accuracy of its recommendations by 10%. When this award was claimed in 2009 by BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, Netflix gave them the million. They then announced a new prize for whoever could improve the system further (which was later canceled.

What’s in it for them?

My understanding of the Netflix business model is low fixed costs (giant DVD warehouse) plus low variable costs (envelope stuffers, postage, replacing scratched DVDs) vs. hefty subscription fees = profit. Even if Netflix buys its DVDs at retail prices – which they don’t – they only need to rent out each DVD three times to make back its cost. The margins are in the low transaction costs and the quick turnaround time.

I don’t see how a more accurate recommendation system adds value to that.

Someone help me out here? What am I missing? Netflix knows more about the video rental market than me, obviously (or even Blockbuster), so I’m willing to bet they know something I don’t. But what is it?

Jan

you hit me once, I hit you back; you gave a kick, I gave a slap

Posted by Perich at 12:54 pm

I referred to the escalating protests against the Mubarrak regime as a “Twitter revolution” to Marie. She thought I was trivializing it, but I meant the opposite. I think the use of Twitter as a means of coordinating protest against a dictatorship elevates Twitter, rather than demeaning the protest. I’m excited to see this happen, both in the short run (possible regime change in Egypt) and the long run (new means of circumventing informational control).

That being said, news that the Egyptian government has blocked Twitter inspired the following thought experiment. I’m not saying it’s a parallel case. I don’t even have a rhetorical aim in mind. I just want to know how people would respond.

So let’s just say that the joint Lieberman-Collins “Internet kill switch” bill passes. This bill would give the Executive power to shut down networks and “information providers” in the event of a “national cyber-emergency.” Such power would, per the bill, not be subject to judicial review.

And let’s just say that [Tea Party radicals / Islamic sleeper agents] turn violent in the summer of 2012 and begins staging attacks on federal courthouses, governor’s offices and other U.S. buildings across the country. They coordinate these attacks through Twitter and Facebook. This isn’t a stretch, given the role of Twitter in spreading their agenda over the last few years.

Would you want the President to pull the “kill switch”? If so, why? If not, why not?

Again: this isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m not asking it to prove a point. I’m genuinely curious to what people think.

Jul

I wear thirteens, know what I mean?

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

I asked the same thing yesterday, but now I open it up to the sphere-o-blog as a whole: anyone have anything to say, pro or contra, about the Acer Aspire 532h? They’re on sale at Target for a song. I’ve been considering a netbook for some time and this might be the price point. I’d use it primarily to blog while on the road, checking out occasional documents or streaming videos while away from my desktop computer.

My one lingering doubt: how well does it work for someone with giant hands? Will I give myself premature carpal tunnel? Can’t quite palm a basketball, but something much smaller than a regulation keyboard might induce some cramp.

acer-aspire-532h

Apr

our hopes and expectations; black holes and revelations

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 8:34 am

Today begins the last year of my twenties. Anything I should do before I become a for-real adult? I’ve already seduced and betrayed, and been done unto in turn. I’ve been to Iceland and I will have been to London. I’ve written a few novels; haven’t sold one yet. I have a job and a nice car. Got a 401(k). What have I missed?

May

one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

People of the Internet! I declare the final showdown. I give you the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

This is your one and only chance, ever, to convince me that Joss Whedon lives up to the hype.

I’ve long maintained that Whedon scripts dialogue beyond his actor’s capabilities, putting A-list screwball in the mouths of B-list actors. That his much vaunted “strong female roles” simply put a new gloss on the same girly stereotypes that we’ve seen in every sitcom for the last fifty years. That his cutesy moralizing is, well, cutesy and moralizing.

But I could be wrong! It’s happened before.

In order to give Joss Whedon the full benefit of the doubt, I will watch an entire season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I’ll watch every episode, beginning to end. I’ll even take notes.

So what do you, Whedonophiles of the Internet, have to do? Easy. Tell me which season to watch. Because I’m only going to watch one.

“Oh, but you really have to watch these episodes from Season X-1 in order to get Season X.” If that’s true, then Whedon fails as a writer and everything I’ve ever said about him is true. Network television is episodic – it uses a formula to fill a structure. A viewer should be able to pick up any episode of a good TV show and follow along. I might laugh a little more at recent episodes of (say) The Office if I knew that Dwight and Angela used to sleep together, but the episode should still work as a story if I don’t know that.

“Oh, but they’re all good.” Then pick the best one.

“Oh, but you should watch Firefly instead.” I’ve seen Firefly. Fun, but hardly amazing.

I’m a busy man and I’ve all but made up my mind on Whedon. But I’m holding out because of the incredible passion my friends have for him. So, in the interests of fairness – and because it’ll make good weblog fodder, if nothing else – I’ll give him a shot.

So, discuss with your Slayer friends which season I should watch, fill out the attached poll, and make me a believer!

[polldaddy poll=1604043]

May

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:38 am

poll

Sorry to cut and run, guys, but they’re firing up the time portal and I’m about to jump sixteen years into the past.

Quick question, while we’re on the subject: what three pieces of advice would you give your twelve-year-old self?*

* “Invest in Google” doesn’t count.

Apr

superstar, but he didn't get far

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

I’m visiting family in Baltimore, taking the train down this morning and back on Monday, so don’t expect much.

If you’d like to contribute, please recommend a book that’s available on the Kindle. Please note: anyone who recommends one of the first twelve items listed at that link gets five across the eyes.