Timewaster's Guide Archive

Quote

This poll fails.

According to you. Which, because only you said it, means practically nothing to others.

Those are your favorite Sandler movies. Not everyone elses. So you can't say that the poll fails in general; it just fails for you. So if you don't like the poll options, don't post.

No, really, my opinion is the only one that matters. Didn't you get the memo? 

My post was meant to be lighthearted. Sorry you took it the wrong way.

Wait...Austen wasn't already a horror writer? Her works sure fill me with dread...

OK. I listen to a bunch of stuff that nobody I come in contact with ever knows about before they met me. And a lot of it is great.

How much great stuff am I missing, because I've never heard of it?

So, let's try this. What obscure bands/albums do you love? Crap you're sure nobody listens to but you?

I'll go first: J Minus. Download the free songs off their (sadly, entirely flash-based) web site. Be happy.

Also, I envy you your domain and webhost. Free servers tend to give you exactly what you pay for.

I use nearlyfreespeech.net. They charge only for what you use, so if you don't use any resources, you don't get charged. Domain registration with privacy costs about $12 a year if you go through them, and email forwarding (you need an actual inbox to forward to, but you get as many aliases as you want) is a penny per day. Even a poor college student like me can afford that.

So, can I get in on this? I'm working on something and should have enough for a submission soon. My email (well, one of the ones that I post in public places - you know, gotta keep ahead of the spambots) is nospamplease +at+ ryanballantyne dot name. (One of the nice things about having your own domain and web host is you get to make as many email addresses as you like.)

I'll be happy to read and crit anyone's stuff - time allowing, of course. In fact, I think I'll be more active as a reader than a writer, but I *am* joining because I want to submit something.

Is JoseB still around? I saw he was looking for Spanish-language readers. I speak Spanish pretty well (served an LDS mission to Nicaragua), and would love to read his stuff. I may not be the best at critiquing mechanics, but those are (so I'm told) the easiest parts of writing to fix.

Edit: Actually, I've got around 1700 words I could submit. That seems like a good size. Is there room for me to submit on Monday?

So yeah, I just read this book in one sitting. Instead of finishing the big project I'm supposed to have done tomorrow. In my defense, I've been working on it practically every waking moment for the past five or six days, and I needed a break, even if it meant me not making the deadline.

I loved how downright benign the Curators turned out to be. The Library of Alexandria was built up as this horrible place, but really, it's probably the safest library they could have chosen to infiltrate. Besides, you know, the drastic consequences of accidentally disturbing a book. I have this mental image of them looking like Xykon (google it if you don't already know), only without all the nastiness.

The cover is, sadly, atrocious. Yeah, I went there. Sure, the glass dragon is beautifully rendered, but the proportions of the people are off just enough to give me a tingling feeling of wrongness whenever I look at it (rather like Alcatraz sensing a blood-lens being used). Alcatraz is way too big - if he were inside the dragon, he'd scarcely be able to stand. Bastille is, comparatively, too small. I know he's supposed to be the focus of the cover, but as rendered it's just too disturbing.

I love the possibilities of Alcatraz's gift. When focused and controlled, it becomes more than just breaking things - it's the power to change things, in whatever way you wish. Could Alcatraz use it to fix things that are already broken? I don't see why not. After all, you could make a case that fixing something is really just breaking its brokenness.

Then again, there are all the dire warnings about it twisting things and being an unstoppable force of destruction and all that. Kind of like Sauron in Lord of the Rings: poor guy couldn't create, only twist and break.

Edit: I also love all the poking fun at other books. Like the dig at Harry Potter at the end of the first. The Scrivener's hybrid fighter plane seems like another subtle jab at Harry Potter - one thing that left me unsatisfied about those books was the largely unfulfilled crossover potential between wizard's magic and Muggle technology. You think Voldemort is evil when you hand him a wand? What do you think he'd do if he ever found out about the atomic bomb?

Thanks, everyone!

Yeah, the list of issues goes on and on. Perspective is hugely off. Vin's proportions are off and the pose is stiff and kind of flat.

Ideally I would spend more time on my art. But I'm lucky if I get 5 hours of free time per week to paint.  And if I have the time, sometimes I don't have the energy to focus. If I let myself, I think I could work on these for months and never finish. I've got a lot of other things that I want to make progress on, so I sacrifice some quality in order to do so.  The artist in me cringes.  The pragmatist in me says to keep moving forward and do better next time.

"I think making art is always about setting up boundaries for yourself. If you paint a picture, you decide, 'I'm not going to paint anything outside of these four edges.' If you make a song you can decide a few basic things...and in every artistic situation you have to figure out the bounds between a freedom to explore and create without criticism and then you're going to have to figure out the other side, which is reality. How long am I going to take to do this? I can't work on the record for ten years; I'm not going to work on a painting for 50 years. I mean, some people do, but they only have one painting at the end of their lives."  --Isaac Slade of The Fray