h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for visiting my multitude of web spaces :P. I'm glad you liked my various bits of writing and tutorials :D Do try to fight that procrastination demon, he's a nasty one and I've had some fairly spectacular battles with him. (oddly enough they all happen late at night... weird eh? :P). Do you do a good deal of writing? If so where can I find it, I'm always interested in reading something new. Hope you defeat the cold and feel better soon!

PS: Did you check out the booklist on PhiftyNet? It’s a bit behind, I haven’t had the chance to edit it lately, but it still has a few of my favorite books there. (and I’m always open to suggestions to add more). Buy anywho… yea I’m a BIG cyberpunk and sci-fi reader, it’s cool to find someone else who reads cyberpunk in this day and age, it simply aren’t as popular as they used to be.

Yes, I do do a great deal of writing, unfortunately it's all in my head. What you say about writing it all down makes a great deal of sense. Usually when I do write it down, it peters out into nothing. I imagine scenes and bits and pieces. I'm battling with my brain to come up with a complete story.
I probably should write down the bits in my head when they occur unfortunately it's usually on the train, or when I'm walking. My two favourite thinking places. Writing on the train, I have done. Can't really do it while I'm walking.
Also late at night is when I do some of my best thinking, but by then too lazy to do anything about it.
See, I'm really good at making excuses, huh?

On the other hand I am an extremely prolific letter writer. My friend in Sydney and I have written letters to each other that have sometimes gone on for 30 pages!

Yeah, I did check out your booklist on PhiftyNet. That's how I knew we liked some of the same authors. I have some of my all-time favourite books listed on my Space, here at hootoo. I've got Ken Kesey's 'Sometimes a great notion' listed right at the top because I recently re-read it. It's such a great book. Have you ever read it? It's one of the very few non-SF/F books I would ever include in my list. I like it better than 'Cuckoo's nest'.

Am feeling better today. I'm thinking I'll go back to work tomorrow. Still a bit chesty, but should be okay. I hope.
Defeating the cold bug is easier than defeating the Procrastination Demon. Most probably because when you've got a cold all you have to do is lay in bed and do nothing.

What are you currently reading? I'm reading 'New York City Nights' by Eric Brown. I read his 'Penumbra' a while back and liked it so thought I'd try this. It's kind of an old fashioned type mystery (Sam Spade stuff) only set 40 years in the future. It involves virtual reality, and other nifty gadgets. Unfortunately it's book one in a trilogy, and at my library they don't have the other two books. Fortunately I work at the library and can order them.

I carry around a pad for writing down my ideas when they come up (though I can't always do it late at night). When I do go on just a walk (a relaxed one where I can think of something other then how late I'm going to be to where it is I'm going :P ) I've got an iRiver IHP40 which is a mp3 player with a lot of extras, one of which is a mic. That way when I brainstorm during my walk I can record my thoughts. The only problem with that is I feel really really weird walking around talking to myself, so I usually do it at night. :P

I know what you mean about having ideas that peter out to nothing. I have so many ideas and scenes that I think of but I never do anything with. I have 10 single-spaced pages just of ideas for the my Search Word universe of stories (if you don't mind a really huge flash file, I made a cool little flash thing about the Search Word universe @ www.sw.net-station.org back when I taught myself flash.) and most of them haven't come out to anything. At one point I even outlined what I hope would one day be the first book of three in that storyline but I never actually got any farther in my writing then the first few paragraphs. I have so many ideas but it's very hard to self-motivate. Of course my other problem is once I start writing It's very difficult for me to convince myself to take a break till I hit the end. Which can be a problem considering how long some of my stuff can get. In the end I don't really do that much writing on a steady basis, just bursts when I feel like I can't keep an idea in my head anymore.

I must admit I envy your ability in letter writing, I was never very good at it and when I transferred over to email I must admit to writing long emails but long for an email is perhaps only a few pages. The upside is that they go back and forth more frequently I suppose.

I did take a look at your list and I've not read all the books on there though I think I'll probably go and take em out, you seem like someone with good literary taste :P

I must admit to not having read anything of Kesey's other then Cuckoo's Nest, though I really liked that book. I'll have to check out Sometimes A Great Notion. If you're looking for a really good "hard sci-fi" book you should check out Permanence by Karl Schroder, which is, without a doubt, one of by favorite books ever, it has all the good elements and a splash of some very interesting philosophy in the mix as well.

New York City Nights sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out, I've always had a soft spot for filmnoir type mysteries. I naturally speed read (it just sorta happened, I never learned it. It's not skimming, it's reading everything really really fast) so I usually read more then one book at once. Right now I'm reading Starfleet Corps of Engineers #50, Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace, ( a very strange light sci-fi book with a sense of humor and a very twisted plotline, it's a lot of fun.) The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (a non-fiction that I'm rereading) and last night I just finished The Cabnit of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincon Child, a mystery story crossed with a bit of history and the supernatural with a very interesting cast of characters. (It's part of a series and one character, Special Agent Pendergast, is very cool)

Hey speak for yourself, I spend my sick days watching Star Trek and Alias episodes off DVD while laying on the couch :P Its good to know you're getting better, I recently defeated a cold that caused me to loose my voice so I know how it feels.

Because I'm at work, and theoretically should be serving the public, (I've already been interrupted three times, pesky people!) I can't respond to this posting as fully as I'd like. So, this is just a bookmark so I remember to get back to it later. Probably tomorrow. I'm thinking I'll take tomorrow off, as I'm working in a freezing building today, even though it's more than 30°C (86°F) outside, and I'm starting to get that awful chesty sore throat feeling again. So, I'll try reply more fully tomorrow.
(seven times interrupted now. Can't these people tell I'm busy!)
I did manage to look for 'Permanence'. We didn't have it on our catalogue, so I made a request to get it on Inter-Library-Loan from another library service.

Best go, or I'm gonna start yelling at people for interrupting me

Well, I'm at home now. Lounging about on the couch with my iBook.
I carry around a notepad too. Unfortunately I'm usually stupid enough to think, 'I'll remember that' and not write it down.
The recorder thing is a good idea too but I'd feel pretty stupid talking to myself as well. (Man, I'm sooo good at making up excuses.)
I have an mp3 player but it's an iPod shuffle. Doesn't do recording. It holds songs and data, that's about it.
I do have notepads where I've been diligent about writing down ideas as they've occurred. I've even written down overheard conversations to get ideas for dialogue. Never did anything with them though. (Speaking of overheard conversations http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/ is a great site I've recently been introduced to.)

Had a quick look at you're Search Word thing. It looks good! Will have a longer look at it later. You really like that Star Trek font, huh?
I do have a story that made it up to 22 pages before it died. Well, it didn't actually die. I had enough ideas to probably extend it into a novella. Probably one of the very few stories I had a beginning middle and end for. I just lost my enthusiasm for it.
Yeah, getting myself to take a break before I hit the end is a real problem for me too, and not just with writing. Anything I do, I like to keep going until it's done. Maybe in the back of my mind I think that if I don't, I won't get motivated to get back to it again.
I'm actually a trained visual artist. I love painting and drawing, but haven't done anything for years. Space is my biggest problem. I keep saying when I get my own place, I'll start painting again (I even have an idea for a new painting) but I wonder if I will.

Letter writing is a funny thing (and you don't seem to be doing too bad a job of it here. This is one of the longest, if not THE longest posting I've ever replied too.) The length and quality of the letter depends on who you are writing too. I can easily write a couple of dozen pages to my friend in Sydney. However some of my other pen friends, I struggle to write a page or two. I guess it depends on mutual interests, how much you have in common, and how much waffle your reader can handle
I like putting pen to paper too. There's something aesthetically pleasing about it. Perhaps it's the artist in me. Then again, it's not as if I have the best handwriting in the world.
Funny thing is, I email my friend in Sydney just as much, if not more often than writing to her.

Hey thanks. I like to think I've got good literary tastes too. Though I did break down and read 'The Da Vinci Code'. (Which I enjoyed, but didn't think it was worth the hype.) 'Sometimes a Great Notion' may be a little hard to find, but it's worth the effort if you do.
We studied 'Cuckoos Nest' in my last year of high school, which kinda spoiled it for me. Although, as far as school texts go, I did enjoy it. One of the assignments we had was to write an additional chapter, which I enjoyed doing. My chapter was about how the Chief managed to speak to McMurphy (I think in a dream, or something) and McMurphy forgave him for ending his life. I also enjoyed that, while in keeping with the character, I was able to write the work f**k in my school assignment and get away with it. (I wonder if I still have that assignment? If I do, It's written on a piece of loose-leaf somewhere. It was well before I ha access to a computer. My god, I never even used the internet back then!)

'New York City Nights' did turn out to be good. I've put an order in at work for the other two in the trilogy. Thankfully though, the story isn't a cliff hanger. The novel could stand on it's own. This is good, because it could be a while before I see book two. Interestingly, as the title suggests, it's set in NY city but the author is English. Didn't really notice until I was halfway through, and read the back flap (I do that sometimes). I would've noticed in the end though. If not from the spelling (he had the letter 'u' in all the right places, and wrote aluminium instead of aluminum) then from the way he called the short front bit of hair a 'fringe' instead of 'bangs' (I'm always puzzled why Americans do that, it's an odd expression). Mostly he uses American expressions. "Sidewalk" instead of "Footpath" for example. Well, I find it interesting at least. Small things, , ,
New York seems to be a theme for me lately. I also recently read Bright Lights, Big City’ by Jay McInerny (not my usual read. They referred to it in CSI:NY and I wanted to see if it was a real book.), it was okay. Then there's that overheard in NY website that was recently recommended to me. And you appear to be from NY. My friend from Sydney and I tend to refer to these sorts of occurrences as the 'interconnectedness of all things'. I think we lifted the idea from Douglas Adams.

I read fast too. Don't know that I'd call it speed reading. I probably read faster than most. I often read more than one book at a time too. Sometimes up to five. People are astounded when I tell them that. But I don't think it's any different to watching different TV shows. You pick up the story when you get back to it. I've haven't got them mixed up yet. At the moment I'm only reading two books. 'Traitor' by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (one of my all-time favourite authors, ever.) and 'Death sentence : the decay of public language' by Don Watson (which is about how management talk tends to be creeping in everywhere).

I haven't read any of the SCE books yet. They didn't really appeal. Though, at first I thought the same about the New Frontier books. I ended up loving those. I should've known I would. Peter David is one of my favourite Star Trek authors. He has the best sense of humour! Do the SCE books need to be read in order?
I just put a hold on 'Infinite Jest'. What did I ever do before the internet?

Feeling better now that I'm at home, out of the refrigerator. Still don't think I'll go to work tomorrow though. Hopefully I'll be right by Monday.



P.S. I just added you to my 'friends' list on my space.

Yea... I tend to type during lunch or at home myself... even then it's hard to get the time to type :P

If you like Permanence, its author has another book that’s equality as good, when you get it, you'll have to tell me what you think, it's one of my favorite books.

I'll have to check out the overheard in NY site a bit later, unfortunately I'm currently behind a firewall and unable to visit it at the moment.

Yea, I love all the Star Trek fonts, a while back I went out and purchased a huge Star Trek font pack and I later found quite a bit of free downloads to add to my collection. I threw in some Deus Ex font also. (if you are ever going to play a "first person shooter" computer game, Deus Ex should be it... a great sci-fi/role-playing cyberpunk type game, I think I linked to it in the SearchWord site)
My favorite thing to do is to create the universes and environments for my stories, but the problem is that I tend to wind down as I get to the end, so I know what you mean. During the summer I was able to write about 2 pages a day for the For The Spirits serial story. (funny thing about that, I recently put the entire thing together in one big pdf file which I put up on my website, when I was about to convert it I somehow discovered that I had misspelled (or perhaps Word auto correct had got me) Sword as Sward every time! For 35 pages!! Thank goodness for Word's Find and Replace function :P) However, now that the year has started again and I have work and school, etc... I just can't make myself the time. I've barely written anything in the last few month beyond a few contest entries for DeviantArt. And of the few things I did write only a few pages were for the For The Spirits series, just as bad I just wrote the first Search Word story in almost a year, two weeks ago. I have everything layer out in my head I just sort of want to skip straight to the best parts and forget about the important stuff in-between. (which is good, but not quite as good as the major turning events and endings) So I end up doing all sorts of various other things, fact sheets for the Angels Fall First project that I'm in (that the For The Spirit stories are for) or random short stories. In fact, I even went off and created an entire new fictional universe (when I say universe that I mean what’s going on in the story as opposed to a physical universe, like the Star Trek Universe, the Star Wars Universe, ect...) in the Knight story in the Realistic Fantasy mode. It seems that despite the fact that I have great ideas, I even write a lot of them down :P, I never really finish what I start when it comes to long pieces of writing. (I'm hoping to prove myself wrong this summer and finish the For The Spirits story and polish it, we'll see. :D ) In my case its not as much enthusiasm as it simply is concentration, I end up going off to do something else before I finish the first thing. In the back of my mind I'm probably thinking the same thing about needing to say motivated, though considering how much writing I do late at night (then edit in the morning :D) it may be simply keeping myself from falling asleep
It's cool that you're a visual artist I do some digital art stuff not that much pure artistic stuff as I could. As for physical painting or drawing, I'm always envious of people who can pull off a good drawing at all, I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. :D

It's nice to now I'm already at the top of the long poster list :P It comes from my constant debating. I'm very interested in politics and always take the opportunity to join into any public and private debates. :P When I debate of course I take every point and refute it (or if I'm really out to make my point and the person on the other side is really being dumb about whatever the subject is... twist it :P) So when I answer posts on any forums I always try to address every point in the previous posts which means it can end up being quite a long post. The worse of course, is the political debates on forums... the worst I've done so far is one response post that took seven pages :P. I honestly haven’t written a piece of mail, outside of birthday cards, by hand in years, or even sent something by snail mail at all. I can understand the attraction, but as someone whose handwriting is bad (and trust me, no matter how bad yours may be, mine is worse :D) It's true that different people seem to require different letters. I have friends who I can't seem to write more then a paragraph or two for. I tend to put a lot of humor in all my communiqués simply because it's the only way to counter my latent cynicism towards the world at large :P which is why I use the :P smile quite a bit... it's not funny if people misinterpret humor for insult.

I thought the Da Vinci Code was ok, definitely not as good as people made it out to be. It also blinded people to some of his other books, my favorite of which was Digital Fortress which was better then I thought. (but then again I am a computer person so... :D)That sounds like an interesting idea for a piece. It's always interesting to work off of other authors styles, it allows one to see how one's own is in comparison.

I'll have to reserve New York City Nights from my own library it sounds very good, I just haven’t gotten a chance to stop by. It a lil weird to see what should be one language changed depending on location. I've always gotten a kick out of the difference between UK English and American English. You're right, it IS the small things. Though I must admit to being equally as puzzled to some UK words as you are to US words. Though you are right about fringe making more sense then bangs there are others (footpath among them) that seem a lil strange. It's fun to read them anyway though.
Well if one must have a theme NY is a good one. I currently consider myself a new Yorker :P I live just outside the city and am in the city plenty. (my joke is 20 min and 20$ by train... they've really been pushing up the prices around here.)(In afterthought I just noticed something... the real way to tell a new yorker from a from those who only live somewhere in NY state is that those who live in or near NYC call it "the city" instead of "New York City." Once again... the little things :P)


The interconnectedness of all things? Very Zen, very Adams also. :D Sounds like something from his Holistic Detective series :D

Yea, I find it weird how surprised people get when I talk about reading more then one book at once. Management talk? You mean adding those weird -izes and -ings to words where they shouldn't be added? I tend to find that annoying for the most part, their not creating new words just screwing up old ones. What's Traitor about? I've never heard of the author before.

The SCE books get better and better the deeper into the series you get. However it's probably wise to read them in order because while some of them don't mention past events at all many of them do, if only in passing, and half way through the series there was a major event that is a character building point for every book afterwards. It's also fun to read because they bring in all sorts of stuff, from Scotty to the Landru computer from ST:O.
Peter David is, without a doubt, one of my favorite Trek authors as well. He has a very good sense of humor and he also has a very unique writing style. I remember reading a book and thinking "jeez this feels like a New Frontier book" and looking at the cover and seeing Peter David as the author. It's a very recognizable style.

When you get 'Infinite Jest' be ready for a long read, I still haven’t finished it myself, it's a huge book and pretty complex, though it does have a unique sense of humor. (one of the characters is a Canadian Wheelchair assassin :P )

If you take off hope you enjoy the break from work :D and get rid of that annoying chest 'n' throat deal. (And look it's Monday, so I hope that you're avoiding too many requests on your time at work :P )

PS: It took me about half a minute to figure out where it was, but I added you to my friends list as well.

Wow! Another long one. Not that I mind, I quite enjoy delving into a long post. I wonder how long a post can be on h2g2? I wonder if there's a cut off point? Hmm. . .

I'll certainly let you know what I think of Permanence. It could take a while before I get it though. If I remember rightly not that many libraries held it.

The overheard in NY site can get a bit crass, but there are some gems in there.

I used to have all the Star Trek fonts on my old windows computer. When I got my Mac last year, I never put them back on. I wonder if I still have them on a disc somewhere.
Not into games that much. I tend to feel guilty while playing them, like I should be doing something more productive. Just the other day I discovered my iBook came with two free games. (Marble Blast Gold and Nanosaur 2) I didn't even know they were there until I was going through my applications folder.
My iMac came with two free games too (Ottomatic and some space thing I can't remember the name of.) I played about with them for a bit, but haven't gone back to them.

I created a universe recently. (Just whipped something up in my quantum soup pot) If it were a painting I'd say I've done the broad strokes, but haven't been able to fill in the details. You know, little things like characters and plots.
Maybe I'll get to do something with it eventually.

Sward! Just as well you proof read. I've noticed quite a few novels lately getting through publication with funny little errors in it. For instance, in 'New York CIty Nights' twice I spotted the word 'river' spelled "rlver"
I guess skipping straight to the best parts is okay. You can always put the rest of it in place later. At least you're moving forward with the story. I tend to get bogged down in details, trying to explain every little thing instead of letting the reader discover things as they go along,
I recently read a novel (my Sydney friend recommended it to me) 'The Dark Beyond the Stars ' by Frank M. Robinson. It is written from one character's perspective. In the beginning the character has amnesia and the reader learns about the characters, the ship and the universe as the character figures out what's going on.
It taught me that it's okay not to explain everything straight away, that things can become apparent in due time and that the reader can have a pleasant experience discovering how it all works.
I remember Isaac Asimov saying that he writes a story from beginning to end and rarely has to re-write any of it. (Well, I read that he said that, he didn't actually talk to me).
Bragger! Then again, there's not many people in the world that could brag as much as he did and get away with it. Usually what he said about himself was true.

He also said the only way to write is to force yourself to write, and write, and write. Easy to do if you're him and you've got some idea of what to write about! I tried it once. Writing just for the sake of practice. I couldn't think of a topic, so I wrote a short piece set in the Star Trek universe. It would never have been published, because the main character was one that I made up- not a standard character. Also, it had aliens in it that I made up, and there was a lot of drivel exploring that main character. The aliens were kinda interesting though.

Hey, if you like Realistic Fantasy (I'm interpreting that to mean, set in our modern world with a fantasy edge to it.) you might like 'Fantasy Life' by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Trying to think of how to describe it in just a few short sentences. Can't really (I'll never make a blurb writer) you'll just have to trust me when I say it's a great read. But then, all her works are.

No one can draw a straight line with a ruler, you need a pencil to do that . Sorry, bad joke. Hey, if you feel like you want to paint or draw just do it. Doesn't matter if it turns out good or not. Check out a few galleries and you'll notice there's a huge interpretation of what's 'good'.
I've done a little bit of digital art. The last thing I did was meant to be an attempt at smoke, it ended up looking more like flames, so I changed the colour and turned it into fire. It's one of my desktop wallpapers now.

I'm not that interested in politics. I keep an eye on what's going on, but I get the overall feeling that, other than my vote, there's not an awful lot I can do about things. I didn't even get the government I wanted. Instead our Prime Minister is Little Johnny Lap-Dog. Have you ever seen that Looney Toons cartoon with the big dog and the little dog bouncing about it saying 'What we gonna do now, huh, huh?' I picture Bush and Howard like that. No need to mention which is which.
You're right about using smileys. It's easy to misinterpret the written word. I think emoticons were a good invention. Hootoo has a great selection of them. I know a lot of the codes of the ones I regularly use off by heart. Did you know that if you click on any smiley it takes you straight to the smiley page?
Humour is a great way to cover latent cynicism. I use it with the public sometimes. Once a teenage girl came up to the information desk at work and said 'I'm looking for Andy Warhol" I said "You won't find him here he's dead." She thought I was serious. She had no idea who Warhol was. Didn't really want to know, she had to do a school assignment.
Sometimes I really have bite my tongue with the public. I didn't know how many morons there are in the world until I started in customer service.

I started to read 'Digital Fortress' but returned it after a couple of chapters. I'd already read 'Angels and Demons' as well as 'the Da Vinci Code'. It seemed like the same formula, and the characters seemed similar. Couldn't really get into it.

What's strange about footpath? It's a path for feet.
In Australia we tend to favour the UK English. However there are interesting differences between Australian and UK English too. For instance, what we call a lolly here is a sweet or a candy (not chocolate) and in the UK it's what we would call an icy-pole.
It's fascinating really. I've always thought I'd like to explore the differences in a story somehow. There are some funny differences too. I've seen some Americans get rather embarrassed over here when they've referred to their rear end as a fanny. In Australia it means something else. a different part of the body.

Public transport is rather cheap here. It costs me between $6-$9 dollars to go to the city for the day. (Depending on which zone I start from). Petrol on the other hand is insane. It's about $1.10 per litre at the moment. (I think a litre is about half a gallon. That's another thing that puzzles me about the U.S. The reluctance to implement the metric system. It's a much easier system)
We tend to do that in Melbourne too. Call Melbourne 'The city' that is. When you get into the rural areas, they all refer to it as Melbourne. I have family that live in the country. They all introduce me to people there as being from 'Melbourne' even though I actually live in an outer suburb.

Management talk- I mean when people use phrases like "strategic initiatives", "enhancing the bottom line", "best practice", "key indicatiors", "benchmarks", you know the sort of thing you'd see in a business presentation. It creeps into everything now. You see it in letters from the bank and the phone company. It's gibberish. It's refreshing to get a letter from a company that's written in plain everyday English. The only company that appears to be doing that at the moment is Virgin. Even then they try to sound 'cool' to appeal to the younger demographic.

'Traitors' kind of a fantasy/ mystery / romance. It's set on a planet that had been settled by humans quite some time in the past. The main character , Diate, escapes his homeland 'The Kingdom' after his family is murdered by the Queen. (He's only 15 at the time) His father was a rebel, and activist. Diate is a 'talent'. Talents are highly prized in the kingdom. He makes it to a place called Golga where 15 years later he has made it to head of the detectives. And the story goes on.
There's an interesting combination of Fantasy, yet with modern technology mixed in.
You may have heard of the author and not realised it. Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes Star Trek Novels with her husband Dean Wesley Smith. Though her non-trek novels tend to be far more involved and interesting. 'Traitors' is one of her older books. I decided to re-read it when I ran out of books to read.

I'll have to start reading the SCE books. I wonder if they'll somehow ever work Trip Tucker into a story.

I did go back to work. Still feeling a bit chesty, but not too bad. Thanks,