You know, if you search my posts for "Jonathan Coulton" you'll notice he's become my latest musical obsession. I don't apologize for that because the man is talented. But I did see him at PAX and then see him in San Francisco about a month later and I started to think. Look, there are some parallels between his career and my so-called "writing job". We're both programmers that had something something happen that caused to say "Is this it? Really? This is my career?" Difference is that Coulton made his gig work and about a year and a half later I backslid and started coding again. There's also Ze Frank. I mean just look at them. Coulton wrote a song a week for a year. Ze Frank did five videocasts a week for that same year. And I'm too busy playing Bioshock and Guitar Hero II to do any writing for weeks at a time. Well no more. It's not just the music. Coulton was on the Merlin Show both here and here and on The Sound of Young America where he talked about how Thing a Week made him control his muse, as opposed to vice-versa. This makes a ex-Code-Monkey think. Code Monkey want write his muse, not play games all day. So how hard can it be? (The obvious answer: it's incredibly fucking hard you damn idiot. What's wrong with you?) I'm committing to it. Every Friday, starting tomorrow, I'm going to post some fiction. This differs from Captain Arcolier in that I'm not committing to writing a new installment every week, I'm committing to a whole new story - beginning, middle and end. Every Friday. Even if I have to goddamn open the post window on Friday morning and and free-associate until something is done. I have tomorrow's post done already and I really like it. Next week I'll probably be hating my idiot self. But screw it. I should either give up and program full-time or fucking write. I can go either way, but it's time to stop pretending. I've promised myself I'll play Thing A Week until I go insane if that's what it takes. Tomorrow's post has robot monkies, so I'm off to a fabulous start!  

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Tags: JonathanCoulton, ThingAWeek, fiction, ZeFrank

A bunch of random thoughts that don't warrant their own posts but in the aggregate? Maybe there's gold! Let's check!

• The holiday onslaught of gaming has begun in full force. Halo 3, Bioshock, and now PGR4. Mad I tell you, just mad!
• I picked up Guitar Hero II again. I'm comfortable saying that I think GHII is the Best. Video. Game. Ever. Made. At least until GHIII and Rock Band hit the streets.
• I've been sort of drifting lately. I knew I had a bunch of stuff to do, but I wasn't able to tackle it. I've had a couple of days lately where Karin came home and I was all "What? That was a whole day? Well crap!" Today I sat down and started re-reading Getting Things Done. What a great book. The funny thing is I knew what I needed to do, but somehow touching base with the basics cleared my head so I actually did it and now it's as if I had a bad head cold and suddenly all my sinuses cleared. My desk is clear, my inbox is empty and things are happening again. (For those who are curious, my Weekly Reviews had stopped being the right thing, and I got so paralyzing by figuring out the right thing to do that I did nothing. Took a couple of hours of cleaning out all the mental "Oh yeah" tags, and enough of a push through the rest of my system that I'm comfortable saying it's all captured again.
• "The bad news, which we knew was coming, is that according to Reggie, "given the level of demand and given the fact that the more we put in, the more we sell, it is still going to be difficult to get your hands on the Wii."- Reggie: Wii Holiday Hardware Supplies Will Be "Unprecedented" - Kotaku. Good god, somebody needs to smack the crap out of Nintendo. I generally try to avoid tinfoil conspiratorial declarations of manufactured shortages but here we are a year later and Nintendo still can't figure out how to make overclocked Gamecubes? No way, I don't fucking buy it. If Microsoft starts selling more 360's than Wii's I'll bet Reggie finds a way to crank up his production. I might should write a whole post on the Wii - I played a fair amount of Wii on my vacation and I'm even firmer now in the fact that I really dislike the thing. I had been saying I'd pick up one to play Mario Galaxies, but now? The only thing on it that I've played that doesn't feel impossibly sloppy is Wii Sports. (In fairness I must disclaim - I did not play either Zelda or Metroid. I'm basing this mainly on Mario Party, Rayman Raving Rabbids and using the OS itself (I was working at my parents on getting it online, so I did a lot of typing WEP passwords and the like.))

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Tags: gaming, GuitarHeroII, GettingThingsDone, Wii

Rock Band for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 will retail for a more affordable $169.99, a price that includes the game, a drum kit, the microphone and a guitar controller. MTV games blogger Stephen Totilo broke the news earlier today of the final price, also tossing us a release date bone of November 23rd, making for an extra painful Black Friday shopping experience.

Budget Rock: Rock Band Officially Priced & Dated - Kotaku On the one hand: WOOT! And on the other hand: Black Friday? Really? Damnit! I can't remember the last day my shadow darkened a retail store on Black Friday. Guess that streak will end. Sadly I was still holding out for Rock Band + Drum Kit bundle, but they don't seem to have announced that. I'm not sure I need a second guitar and microphone for my own home usage, where I will play Rock Band mostly solo or online. But I guess I'll break down and go ahead and preorder the big bundle. I was sorta wanting the other guitar anyway - since it has the new five-way switch.

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Tags: RockBand, VideoGames

Well, DirecTV turned on the first batch of new HD channels today. You can see the whole list here. Nothing I really cared about, and actually most of it is either premium movie channels I don't have, or sports channels I don't have. (sigh) DTV has updated their stupid-non-linkable page so they show what just launched, what will launch in October, and what will launch "by end of year". SciFi and Food Network are both listed for October. Sadly the two shows I'm currently watching on SciFi (Eureka and Doctor Who) have season finales next week, so they will likely both be done before the switch is thrown. But it should be thrown before Battlestar Galactica starts back up, so I guess that's a plus. And just for Tony here's yet ANOTHER picture of my satellite dish, this taken from my backyard. It's a little easier to see the size because that turbine and chimney are both pretty much a "standard size" so that helps see the diameter. You can click the thumbnail to see a bigger copy over on Flickr.

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Tags: DirecTV, SatelliteDish, HD

OK, you monkeys, let's get back on this book reviewing train. I had the stack of books-to-review down to one, but it's crept back up to three. Unacceptable. Today's book is The Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross. This is the sequel to The Atrocity Archives, which I reviewed previously. I'll follow my usual protocol of not spoiling anything in TJM, but I won't worry overmuch about spoiling the first book. I don't think I'll need to much, but I also write these on the fly with minimal editing so who knows? To quickly recap: these stories tell the adventures of Bob, who works in the Laundry. In this universe advanced math can open portals to alternate dimensions and nasty Things-Man-Was-Not-Meant-To-Know lurk there. So any computer geek with too much free time can start playing around with math that will end the universe. The Laundry is the secret British organization that is dedicated to making sure that doesn't happen. But it's also a government bureaucracy and that means that Bob also has to worry about paper clip audits, and arguing with HR about needing a new computer and so forth. At a stylistic level, the first book was the juxtaposition of Len Deighton and H.P. Lovecraft, whereas the second keeps the Lovecraft but replaces Deighton with James Bond. I wondered how this was going to work, and the truthful answer is that I don't think it does completely. Parodying Bond is straightforward, but Bob is a well-established character and he's not Bond. Nor is he a Bond parody, or does he even think he's James Bond. The answer ends up being a little clunky - it's actually explicitly handled in the text. That is to say, there's an actual plot explaining why Bob is going to become James Bond. There's a twist to it, but to be honest it's a twist that I thought was telegraphed ahead of time. Other than that, it's a pleasant enough book. I really enjoy the world overall. I'm not a big fan of Lovecraft, but it's certainly a DNA strand that runs through Sci-Fi these days, and the gentle mocking tone works for me. As for the demonology hacker fighting dark forces and HR at the same time . . . well what's not to like there. I enjoyed TJM, but the whole James Bond Macguffin issue means I didn't like it as much as TAA. One thing I will note: the hardcover of TJM also includes a short story with Bob called Pimpf. Pimpf was published in Jim Baen's Universe and I really enjoyed it there. Pimpf tells the story of when Bob is working on computer gaming - specifically at the intersection of the occult and Neverwinter Nights. It's a real gem of a story, and I'm unsure whether it will be in future paperback versions of TJM. If you like the universe then you might want to at least get TJM from the local library.

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Tags: CharlieStross, SciFi, BookReview, TheJenniferMorgue, TheAtrocityArchives, Pimpf