Author: Peter

I’ve been a science fiction and fantasy fan for a long time. (This is notable mainly because I hated the first SF&F I can remember seeing, the Tom Baker-era Dr. Who. I’m better now, thanks.) Although I’ve been more of a fantasy reader, I started reading Alfred Bester a few years ago, prompted by references from J. Michael Straczynski and Harlan Ellison.

The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination had just been reprinted, and I ate them up. The former, which Bester wrote twenty years before I was born (and which won him the very first Hugo Award), is sort of a funhouse mirror image of Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report (which was written five years later). Bester’s representations of the telepathic conversations of espers are wild, and his psi-blocking song (Tenser, said the Tensor) is as persistent in real life as in the book. It’s also interesting how psi slang (e.g. @kins for Atkins, Wyg& for Wygand) is mirrored in the so-called l33t speak that pervades the web.

As other volumes were reprinted, I grabbed them all; I’ve currently got Virtual Unrealities, The Deceivers, The Computer Connection, Redemolished, and Psychoshop in my reading stack. Unfortunately, that’s where they’ve stayed since I bought them. The only one that I’ve made a stab at is Redemolished, and it’s taken me a good month to make it through Hell is Forever. I can’t seem to make enough time to get to these books, or any of the others in the growing stack. I don’t think I’m succumbing to a shorter attention span–if anything, I’m more focused than I’ve been in some time–and I don’t enjoy the books any less when I do get to them, and I’ve had more free time recently than ever, so I’m at a loss to explain it. I’m starting to identify with HAL:

Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it.

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Continuing yesterday’s rant on television trivia games. Today will be short, as I’ve lost my train of thought somewhat; rest assured that I am going somewhere with this.

The Regis-less Who Wants to be a Millionaire? started tonight. I’m glad to see they’ve sped it up, although I’m still not much interested in the game itself. (And it is just me, or does Meredith Vieira push the real answer?)

I’m going to reveal myself: I’m a trivia snob. I see multiple-choice games like Millionaire as brain candy, but not much more. At the moment, Jeopardy! (the regular series, not the back-to-school, teen or college tournaments) is the closest thing to my ideal trivia game show on television, closely followed by (the recently-cancelled) Win Ben Stein’s Money.

What makes the ideal trivia-based program? There are a number of elements.

It occurs that the phrase kind of ambivalent is redundant.

The graphics staff at CHUM (CityTV, Bravo!, Space, et al.) have really dropped the ball in the last few months. Hardly a promo goes by that doesn’t have at least one major error in its onscreen text. One of the first I noticed was an ad for Grey Owl, starring Pierce Brosnon (Brosnan). Next it was Gandhi, a story of one man’s truimph (triumph). Tonight it’s the upcoming Stephen King movie marathon featuring Cristine (Christine). These are simply the first three examples to come to mind; there have been more than I’ve cared to keep track of.

It’s not like these names and titles are hard to look up; odds are the text is right in front of the person putting the promo together. It’s not like they’re unknown words. It’s not like it would take a long time to actually read the six-to-twenty words that you’re about to be broadcast to millions of potential viewers so you don’t make an idiot of yourself and your company.

I just finished editing the text of a brochure for a friend, and yes, there were minor errors in the 782-word document. But I’ll tell you something. It took ten whole minutes to read over five times, including looking up the correct spelling of two names and Strunk’s rules for comma placement. (Remember, this is over 35 times longer than the text in the promo advertisements; by my calculations, then, it would take about 17 seconds to check the ads.) She asked me to look at the document because she recognizes that the quality of the text reflects on the author. It’s a lesson the people at CHUM need to learn.

I’m hardly perfect in my writing–keep your snarky comments to yourself–but I strive to be as good as I’m able, and to learn when I make mistakes. I edit and re-edit even the simplest e-mail message, to say nothing of these weblog entries, and I correct the errors I’ve made when I notice them or when they’re pointed out. It’s a point of pride, but more than that it’s simple courtesy to the (few) people that (bother to) read what I write.

BMO’s response: no Linux support (not that the OS matters, it’s the browser), and due to the unsecured nature of email they could not respond to previous inquiries (which were, by definition, more secure than most mail that goes through their servers). A word to the wise: it’s just about impossible to send viruses as text/plain (even if you use Outlook). It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Citizens is the only bank left on the list, but they’re also the only bank that hasn’t responded to my questions.

Why are things that should be easy always so hard?