Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Month: September 2004

  • Literary Impossibilities

    Jeffrey Bahr has compiled a list of literary awards along with a survey of literary journals. It really is mind boggling that any literary-minded person would prefer traditional routes of publication rather than weblogging.

  • Hidden Costs

    Hidden Costs of Credit Cards by Peter Davidson. 4. Two-cycle billing. While most card issuers use the standard one-month method to calculate interest charges, some use a method that calculates interest on two previous months’ balances. Companies compute interest charges on your average daily balance by adding each day’s balance and then dividing that total…

  • Pontecorvo’s Telephone Book

    Voline wrote a piece about how Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers is being studied for its insights into urban warfare by the Bush Administration. Speaking of which, here’s a marvelously entertaining interview with Gerald Pontecorvo by Gerald Peary, who I included as a character in a forthcoming short story of mine. It’s true I make one…

  • Illusion of Creativity

    “On the whole publishers do a very good job. Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.” J.G. Ballard. Remind me never to read his novels. “You are much more likely to depict a character who is a recognisable human being, with his own individuality, if you have a…

  • Musical Possibilities

    Kevin Kelley on the future of music

  • Who the Buff are You?

    Buffy personality test. Susan Lenfestey writes, We’re watching the biggest jujitsu flip ever seen in American politics. President Bush, a slacker, a draft evader, a failure in business, a man so devoid of world curiosity that he rarely left America’s shores (even checked “no overseas service” on his Air National Guard application) and a president…

  • Redoing and Remaking

    George Lucas about why he changed the original Star Wars: AP: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s? To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It’s abandoned or it’s ripped out…

  • Library Bookmarklet

    Amazing bookmarklet for looking up a book in your local library when surfing on amazon.com. I found Houston Public Library under the Innova cataloguing system. It works!

  • The Profitability Threshhold for Web Publishing

    You know, it just occurred to me that there’s not a lot of collaborating going on with the literary side of the web. The old model was to write your masterpiece, then submit it to a prestigious journal that hopefully will pay you something. Next stage of development: bloggers “steal” from commercial publications by linking…

  • Bloggers and Advertising

    Kinsey Wilson on the effectiveness of online ads.: The market already has taken these differences into account. The New York Times, for example, charges a $20 CPM (cost per thousand ad impressions) for old-style banners, a $30 CPM for vertical banners and leader boards, and $40 for its poster units. That latter highest rate also…

  • Why do Politicians Hold Mikes?

    Here’s the answer, according to a reader on Virginia Postel’s weblog, Here’s my theory about why politicians use hand mikes (and I will ignore the obvious phallic implications of the practice). A lavalier mike is fine in two situations: (1) where your words are being recorded for television and not being amplified to the audience,…

  • Reality TV Speak

    Kevin Arnovitz writes a guide to reality TV conventions. . People complain about reality TV shows, but if they treat it as a game, they are in a better position to appreciate its dramatic tensions (as well as the production challenges of staging events to provoke spontaneous reactions). These shows are imaginative, and I would…

  • Personalizing Campaign Contributions

    This Actblue website has done something amazing: allows users to make custom pages of political candidates to donate money to. Here’s my friend Chuck Kuffner’s donation page. This solves the problem of knowing where one’s donation will be most effectively used.

  • Sci Fi Predictions:

    Sci fi writers predict the future. Tom Delay doesn’t win a BoyScout award. (More ). Here’s an interview with his challenger by Chuck Kuffner. Richard Adams on how small online booksellers are carving their own niche. Greg Jarboe over Geico’s patent case. Steve Outing reports about how web surfers look at a web page. (Don’t…

  • RSS and Web Publishing

    Recently I’ve been trying out bloglines, a rss aggregator. I’ve tried two aggregators and heard a lot of hooplah about rss and the practicality of scanning lots of different blogs. But I still have not figured out the advantage. Yes, I understand why content management systems would want to be aware of feeds and why…

  • Eye into one’s Sole

    Linux migration tips. . Also how to configure linux for new users. Altweekly, a good aggregator of weekly newspapers. Quoting Kenneth Champeon in full: 10 September 2004: Waiting for the bus on Portland’s Burnside Avenue early this morning, I was approached by a man who claimed to know where I had bought my running shoes.…