Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Win8 Phone Home

28 Jan 2013 by KRAG

Apologies, folks. Last week I was “on call” for work, and didn’t get to my “The View from Here” installment. And I’m not going to post it now, either. Other things on my mind.

Namely, the new Windows 8 phones.

After a long campaign, my wife has succeeded in dragging me into the Smart Phone Era. Last week, we turned in our old pay-as-you-go clamshell phones and spent some times trying to decide between iPhone, Android, and the new Windows 8 phone.

iPhones are expensive. Android was a “possible,” but Verizon had a deal on the Win8 phones. The deal was for a package with phone, case, and screen protector for $50 (cost $100, with a $50 mail-in rebate). Not bad. We listened to the spiel about how the phone will synch up with all our contacts and calendars in Outlook (a must, for me), and how the “SkyDrive” (the MS version of the iCloud) could hold all our documents, music, photos, etc. We played with the demo phone, customizing it, navigating the new interface. It all looked pretty slick, and having heard good things about the new MS_OS, I (as resident “techie” and thus the person who’d be setting this all up) decided to go Win8.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Hi Tech | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The View from Here: Like a What, Now?

25 Jan 2013 by KRAG

Stack of BooksPeople have told me that I’m too tough in my critiques. Privately, I’ve been told that these “The View from Here” posts are too harsh, too critical. “New writers will make mistakes,” I’m told. “That’s what editors are for.” Poppycock.

A number of years ago, I used to read slush for a magazine. It was unpaid intern-type-stuff, but it taught me a great deal (as all good unpaid intern-type-stuff should). It taught me about deadlines and time-management. It taught me a lot about publishing, as I was able to see a lot of it from behind the scenes. It taught me the truth of the adage: The only way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large fortune.

But most of all, it taught me to think like an editor.

An editor is like an alcoholic in a 12-step program–Let’s skip right over the joke about how most of them actually are alcoholics in 12-step programs and move right to what I mean by that.–i.e., editors read MSS one page at a time. Screw up on Page One, they’ll never read Page Two. After all, why go farther? Why read any more if page one just sucks? They won’t. Screw up on Page One–hell, screw up in Paragraph One–and you’re done.

So yes, I’m tough. And now, onto the next item I see a lot in some of the fiction posted out there: Bad metaphors and stupid similes.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Little Birdies Say

24 Jan 2013 by KRAG

One thing I adore about Seattle is its proximity to the natural world.

This morning, en route to work, I got off the bus at Convention Place Station (as usual). CPStation is at the north end of the transit tunnel, through which many of the downtown buses (and eventually light-rail trains) travel. The station is not in the tunnel, but at its northern entrance, and so when you leave CPStation, you climb up not through a series of underground passages, but up staircases in the open air.

The architecture of CPStation is primarily tubular steel and glass. Sort of an amalgam of I.M.Pei’s Pyramid at the Louvre and the Crystal Palace of Victorian England. Well….sort of. A really small-scale sort-of.

ANYway… Continue Reading »

Posted in Seattle | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Something Old, Something New

23 Jan 2013 by KRAG

As I’ve often mentioned, I do not like single-taskers in my kitchen. In order for a single-tasker to remain in my kitchen it must:

  1. do its job very well
  2. take up a minimum of space
  3. be inexpensive

Today, I’ve got two of them. One was a gift from this past holiday season, and one is an old stand-by that has proven itself time and again. Continue Reading »

Posted in Food, Low Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Shrouded City

22 Jan 2013 by KRAG

Think Seattle. Think rain? Think again.

For the past fortnight, Seattle has been wrapped, swathed, and swaddled with fog. It’s been like living in a cloud. Foghorns call across the Sound, echoed by ghostly ferries out on the cold waters. Hillsides disappear, the Space Needle is missing its top half, and the sun has been replaced by a vague drear that illuminates the mist but provides no aid to vision. Heading up to the park-and-ride this morning, visibility ended a block up the street. Streetlamps, stop lights, and brake lights defined the roadway with glowing balls of light.

Overnight, temps drop into the 20s and the fog freezes as it touches down, creating slick, invisible ice and limning everything with hoar. During the day, the mercury barely gets its head above freezing, and the frost persists near houses and fencelines, wherever the weak sunlight cannot reach.

Drive up to the mountains, though, and you’ll break through the inversion layer. At 1000 feet, the sunlight coalesces into an orange ball above. At 1500 feet, you break through into open air and a cloudless sky. Temperatures soar, and you remove your gloves, your scarf, your coat, and walk in shirtsleeves through the warm sunshine. Below you is a sea of fog, bright white stretching from mountain to mountain, from the Cascades to the Olympics.

Tomorrow, Seattle will be reprieved. Tomorrow, a storm comes.

Think of Seattle. Think rain. Tomorrow.

Posted in Seattle | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Ripping New Series

21 Jan 2013 by KRAG

There’s a new television series, coming from Britain to the U.S., courtesy of BBC America. It’s called “Ripper Street” and we watched the pilot last night.

British TV has a reputation for creating series (well, some anyway) that don’t talk down to the audience. They have a reputation for high-quality productions. They have a reputation of fine actors playing complicated characters.

This show is all of those things.

What immediately makes this show unique is that it is set in London circa 1889, in the months immediately after Jack the Ripper’s killing spree. The policemen, the criminals, and the populace all have those gruesome crimes fresh in mind.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Television | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

The View from Here: As You Know, Bob

18 Jan 2013 by KRAG

Stack of BooksIt’s virtually unavoidable, this one. Seriously, virtually unavoidable, just like the old show/tell chestnut. It takes a mountain of diligence, discipline, and work for me to avoid it. And in the end, if I am successful in removing its stain from my story, the result might not be any better. So, as with that old “Show, don’t tell” adage, this one is largely a matter of degree. Too much, and my prose is comical. Too little, and…what’s that? You don’t know what I’m talking about? You mean I didn’t explain something to you?

And there’s the rub. If you haven’t from the title or the above gleaned my drift, let me spell it out for you. I’m talking about the dreaded expository block. Yes, that clunk-fest where the author steps right into the story, takes you (poor Reader) in hand, and gently explains to you what’s really going on. It’s that section which, when put into the mouth of a character, usually starts with a phrase like, “As you know, Bob…” It’s when Steven Spielberg paints a little girl’s coat red in an otherwise black-and-white film, just to make sure that you and he are on the same page.

But exposition is often necessary. My readers aren’t psychic, and just as I can’t “show” every last detail and nuance, neither should I take my story back to the beginning of, well, Everything, in order to expose my reader to all the backstory and context that imbues my heartbreaking work of utter genius. So, it’s another balancing act, another vague artist’s equation wherein phrases like a lot and too much prominently figure.

Some examples after the jump:

Continue Reading »

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »