2004 in Review (books)
Best read, non-fiction: Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics, 3rd edition, by Stan Gibilisco. Over the summer I spent a fair amount of time mucking around with a pile of resistors and capacitors, trying to make an LED flash. As a student, I took a lot of math classes, but the only physics class I ever had was as a high school junior, so now, many years later, I find there was actually a reason for learning how to do differential equations. Gibilisco’s book is a sizeable 800 pages, but well organized into short chapters for easy reading. If you’re trying to teach yourself electronics, I’d suggest getting both this book and Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims III. If you’re having difficulty figuring out something in one book, the other might have a better explanation.
Worst read, non-fiction: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, 1990. Comments here. Complete rubbish, made worse by the fact that the concept appeals to some academics.
Handicapping the Great 20th Century Novels
About a year and a half ago I became interested in the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. A few months later I put together a little gizmo for handicapping the great 20th century novels.
It is still rather crude, and the book list is rather short (170 or so titles), and the categorization is incomplete, but it is fun to tinker around with the numbers.
I’m posting about this now because I’ve just added a new category: Ireland. Some list editors have a thing for books set in Ireland, so it needs to be included.
Suggestions, clarifications, and classifcations are welcome. You can view the data file if you are interested (note that I’ve misspelled ‘canon’ as ‘cannon’).
I’m a Winner, 2004
For the past 30 days I have been channelling my creative energies into writing a 50,000 word novel as part of National Novel Writing Month. Now, my novel is complete, with 50,022 words.
Now I’ll just let those hundred pages of prose stew for a few weeks and then, perhaps, start editing.
NaNo ‘04
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! Visit nanowrimo.org for all the details, support forums, &c.
The idea is to get people around the world to write a novel in one month. You know how you always say you are going to write that novel some day? How hard could it be? You could write it in the morning, before you go to work….
For the purposes of NaNoWriMo, a novel is 50,000 words. That means you need to write 1667 words a day for the thirty days of November. Most people emphasize quantity over quality — you can edit it later.
I “won” in 2003 with a 50k word detective novel. I’ve started making outlines for this years effort. I will perhaps update the blog as I make progress.
my to-do list
Gotta get this thing done.
- campaign game – rally: 1 hour
- campaign game – speech: 2 hours
- campaign game gfx : 1 hour
- campaign game – debate challenge: 4 hours
- campaign game – interview: 12 hours
20 hours to go.
ARGH!
Dear Electronic Book Review,
Please make your site usable.
Game Studies
This afternoon my attention was caught by an exchange between Julian Raul K
Political Campaign Games
A recap of this year’s political campaign simulation games, in alphabetical order:
- Frontrunner by Lantern Games — Released: July 30.
- The Political Machine by Brad Wardell, published by StarDock — Release date: August 2004
- Power Politics 3 by Randy Chase and Kellogg Creek Software — Released September 1.
- President Forever by 80soft — Released ?
I’m posting this partly as self-motivation to finish my own campaign game, Political Icon 2004. Right now my to-do list looks like this:
- campaign game – rally: 4 hours
- campaign game – speech: 8 hours
- campaign game gfx : 2 hours
- campaign game – debate challenge: 4 hours
- campaign game – interview: 16 hours
Videogames on the radio
News flash: the 10 September 2004 edition of The World features a segment on videogames, including brief interviews with Gonzalo Frasca and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.
There should be an archive of the story posted in the next day or so.