Ultimate Post - The Llamas Have Been Sacked

I'm a bit late on this but I put it down to wearing out in the last mile. I was also having a great deal of trouble figuring out what to title my new personal blog. I've got it knocked now, and more on that later. I've really enjoyed my Composition II class, but then I've always enjoyed English classes that don't involve angry humorless nuns. That deserves a bit of explanation, so before I tell you more about wonderful this term was, lets talk about my worst English class ever.

It was my senior year of high school, and my English teacher was in fact, a former nun from Ireland. I didn't hate her or anything, but her class was not fun. This is how things started out - we were assigned a short essay on Beowulf. We were to say what we believed the message of the work was, the central theme. I was, as I am now, a bit of a smart ass. Much in the same way the ocean is a bit wet.

So I wrote my take, that Beowulf was a cautionary tale (much in the same vein as an After-School Special) about the dangers of alcohol abuse. I used direct quotes and paraphrases to support my position and I thought it was quite clever - funny, even. I realize that wasn't why the author wrote the piece, but that wasn't what she asked us to write about. My grade? A ZERO "F." It would've been better to have gotten a bit of extra sleep than to work on the assignment. I'll concede it was an unconventional take on the story, but it fulfilled the conditions of the assignment and I enjoyed writing it. Of all the papers I've done for school, that is the one I'm most proud of - though sadly I don't have a copy of it.

On with the positives now. The thing I enjoyed most in this class was the blog you're reading. If SPC offered a class on blogging (or perhaps online writing), I'd take it in a heartbeat even if it weren't part of my program. I received some very nice compliments from my instructor - both in class, and in the comments here (thank you, by the way) but I still feel I have a lot to learn.

I need to be better about planning ahead. I tend to work "on the metal" - I write a post, I do a little (very little) proof-reading and post. This was an area I got cited on in regards to my papers in class as well. I think I'm a somewhat competent editor . . .  with other people's work. I have a lot of difficulty spotting errors in my own; worse - I find it hard to work up enthusiasm for editing a piece. When I'm ready to write, there isn't anything that can stop me; when it is time to proof-read, I start thinking that it's been a long time since I've organized my blank CD collection by age, brand name and logo.

Follow through is a problem area for me. There were a lot of things that I wanted to do that I never got around to, for instance my piece on Star Trek. I will try to pick some of these up on my new blog. I think part of the problem here was that I had an insane schedule - three express classes, one that had a workload designed to crush your spirit and remove your will to live (Thanks LAN Concepts!)

I need to be more regular. Is it wrong that snickered as I typed that? What I mean is, I need a regular schedule for posting, and to stick with that. I need to be realistic about what I can do while I'm in school. I originally wanted to post here every day. In addition to that I was writing on 750words.com (which is still awesome - I completed the challenge for April, but I've decided to slack a bit this month), in addition to all the other nonsense that I usually pursue in a day. As much as I love writing, I think I may have pushed myself a little too hard.

As to the class itself, I really enjoyed everything I did. Particularly the research paper and the critical interpretation, though those are also the assignments where I had a few "off the hinges" moments. I really liked the fact that the instructor was unafraid to try new things. Seriously, she could teach the instructors of my more technical classes a few things about being innovative. Office hours on Skype was particularly great.

I enjoyed the poetry section more than I expected to, and I ended up showing the poetry slam pieces I selected to a few of my friends. Alas, I still have no sense of rhythm, so I don't think I'll be the next Poet Laureate. I think it might be fun to try sometime though.

As to what I'm doing now blog-wise now that the term is ended, I'm writing a blog for my Javascript class here, and a personal blog here. I decided to keep them separate because I understand that not everyone shares my fascination for Wonkery. I hope you enjoy them, and that you have a great summer!

Walking on the Moon

I only have a week to go before my critical analysis paper is due and I'm panicing a bit. I want to do a story from Sex and Violence in Zero G, but I'm not sure which one. I'm now leaning towards the first "Captain Future" story. First, let's take a look at the Near Space saga as a whole:

- Influenced by Robert A. Heinlein

The Near Space stories are a tribute to Heinlein's Future History stories. The first story in Near Space is "Walking on the Moon", a homage to Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon" an early tale in Future History. Like Future History, Near Space is told from precommercialized space travel in Walking in 2010 to "Mister Chicago" which is near the end of the timeline in 2093.

Heinlein is featured in the wall of photos at Diamond Back Jack's, with Jack Baker the proprietor of the bar at a science fiction convention when he was a kid.

- Not A Randroid Stroke Book

Heinlein's characters were often two dimensional. Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" was typical, a coiled spring of "Can Do" and all the positives of big "C" Capitalism in action. While I think an argument could be made that this was the gold standard of science fiction pulp writing at the time, you can see that Ayn Rand used this style as a model for her characters.

Steele is clearly a Heinlein fan, but takes the opposite tack. The big space companies as a group are portrayed as being obnoxious, meddlesome, clueless and occasionally sinister. Skycorp (later ConSpace), the first space company is the most directly portrayed throughout the series. Whereas Harriman himself is a focus throughout Future History, McGuiness the CEO of Skycorp never gets any screen time and is only referred to in a few stories.

Our first view of Skycorp is in "Free Beer and The William Casey Society." This story shows Skycorp (and NASA) as stodgy by enforcing a "no booze" regimen in space.

Later, in "The Return of Weird Frank" (my favorite Diamond Back Jack story, for the record) when the author describes the boredom of working in space ("People often compared the wild nightlife on Skycan to that of Deadhorse, Alaska.") and when discussing The Sex Monster. "Skycan was a small, closed environment, and the company frowned on sexual congress in space ('insurance problems' was the catch-all phrase, as was for almost everything else which was fun.)"

In "Sugar's Blues" another corporation with operations in space is portrayed as sinister. The story compares the spacers who hang out at Diamond Back Jack's with company men "They were company men. Any company; pick one, they all look alike." Attired from JC Pennys, flat top haircuts and used car dealer mustaches - that is more or less how the author describes them. Versus the workers who are in jeans, Skycorp caps and cowboy shirts.

The company, Spectrum-Mellencamp a biological firm, frames Sugar ('because everything I do comes out sweet') Saltzman and his crew for drug use after they destroy a space station module containing the company's plans for the first street legal recreational drug. After Saltzman allows the narrator (a journalist on the space beat) to publish what happened, the company gets revenge by burning down Diamond Back Jack's.

In the novel Orbital Decay, we see Skycorp collude with the National Security Agency to place a satellite in orbit that will act as a tap on every line of communication in the world. It is tested on American citizens.

- A Paen to the Working Man

Steele's Near Space stories take blue collar workers and put them in the role that test pilots and astronauts filled in Wolfe's The Right Stuff. His characters are bawdy and weird where test pilots and the early astronauts are seen as the figurehead of America.

This contrast is particularly sharp in Orbital Decay and Clarke County Space. Decay has its protagonists many of the spacers mentioned in the Diamond Back Jack stories:

- "Virgin" Bruce Neiman, a former biker on the run from the law.

- Lisa Barnhart, a shuttle pilot.

It also adds

- Popeye Hooker, a depressed former shrimper, believes he is on the run from the law.

- Jack Hamilton, a botanist who is more than he seems, and the narrator of the story.

Their antagonist is Captain H. G. Wallace, the project supervisor of Skycan, Skycorp and the National Security Agency.

Captain Wallace is a deliberate twisting of a sci-fi trope. When Hamilton first meets Wallace, he recalls seeing him in interviews. He looks like someone who just walked out of The Right Stuff. Crew cut. Rugged build. Lots of talk about man's destiny in space.

Upon meeting him, he has crazy eyes, sallow, sunken features - he seems a shadow of his former self. Note Wallace's initials H. G. W. - it is a reference to Herbert George Wells, an early science fiction author, and the first author to write a fictional account of a trip to the Moon. Wallace could easily be compared to Captain Queeg from the Caine Mutiny, or General Ripper from Doctor Strangelove. It isn't simply that all three of these characters go insane, but the way they go insane - they live in a particular reality, informed by their prejudices and enforced by their role as commander.

Wallace believes that those who settle in outer space are the next step in mankind's evolution. They must be morally and physically superior to average men. This is similar to Wolfe's The Right Stuff, in that Wolfe suggests that test pilots and astronauts are a breed apart, that they possess a special quality that most men and women do not have. His crew are mostly blue collar workers, odd ones at that, who have been driven nuts by isolation and boredom. The clear difference between what should be and what is drives Wallace around the bend.

This is apparent in a number of places in the novel, and as the story winds up Wallace begins to isolate himself from the crew. He has a Queegesque moment at the end of the novel when he claims that the crew's demands to keep the offspring of two cats brought up for research purposes is the beginning of the mutiny.

In Clarke County Space, the conflict is between the New Ark - a sort of hippie commune and Clarke County Corporation, the company which built the Clarke County Space Station. There is also a conflict between a mafia hitman (the Golem) and the Sheriff of Clarke County that intertwines with the main plot - the struggle between the farmers (New Ark) and the tourism board (3C).

This story is an homage to the Heinlein novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In both stories we have a revolutionary struggle. In Mistress, the average Lunar citizen is a prisoner - either criminal or political. New Ark party members can be readily compared to them, Clarke County was written during the Reagan years when being referred to as a "hippy" was an insult and the political left was on the wane. In both novels, the colonists use weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent force - in Mistress the colonists actually use the weapons. In the case of Mistress, this weapons takes the form of large chunks of the regolith hurled from the lunar surface by catapult at the Earth - these catapults were formerly used to send raw materials to Earth orbit for processing. In Clarke County, the weapon is an illegal 100 megaton nuke that was secretly placed in Earth orbit. In both revolutions help is given from an unexpected quarter. In the case of Mistress it is given by the Moon's central computer which has been sentient for some time, though this is not known by society at large. In Clarke County also has a secret artificially intelligent computer who styles itself "Blind Boy Grunt" after Bob Dylan, because he wishes he was Dylan. Of the two, Blind Boy Grunt has a more developed personality and a very hackish sense of humor. Both end with the founding of the first off world nation, in Heinlein's work it is just the Moon, in Steele's it is an alliance between Clarke County, Descartes Station on the Moon and Arisia Station on Mars called the Pax Ad Astra. The actual formation of the Pax is not shown in the novels, but Steele shows us a seen from the later independence struggle in The War Memorial. The War Memorial is a stark contrast with the scenes of combat in Mistress. Death is swift, horrifying and impersonal in The War Memorial. The memorial referenced in the title is a person whose combat space suit malfunctions after a nearby artillery strike renders his suit immobile. He watches as the invading force he is a part of is slaughtered by the Pax Militia's long range guns, helpless to save his comrades or himself. He dies in his suit, which except for a piece of piping in the CPU housing of the suit (shrapnel from the artillery strike), is completely untouched by the ravages of war. When a Pax Militia patrol finds him, they leave him untouched except for a small circle of stones at his feet to remember the fallen.

Heinlein was a product of World War II, combat in Moon and all his novels is idealized as a righteous struggle. Action sequences are always a matter of good versus evil. Steele is a product of the baby boom, and Vietnam - the first televised war. In "The War Memorial," the conflict of Pax versus Earth is not shown in this way, but through the eyes of the protagonist - full of fear and the knowledge that death can strike at any moment before his suit malfunctions; afterwards is the knowledge that he will die, and very soon.

The main character of Clarke County, Jenny Schorr (later Jenny Pell) bears examination. While she is one of several protagonists, Schorr is the one who changes the most, and moves the plot forward. She cuckolds her husband with Sheriff Bigthorn whom she is in love with. Her husband Neil Schorr, is both distant and unfaithful to her - both with his female admirers and the New Ark Party itself. She pushes forward the idea of independence for Clarke County when she sees that there can be no compromise with the Clarke County Corporation and that her husband is content to fruitlessly debate with them. She declares her independence from him and 3C. While Heinlein is noted as one of the few pulp era authors who had strong female characters in the leading role, they often resembled his male characters - coiled springs of can do and resourcefulness, often unemotional or critical of emotion. They were essentially his male characters with a sex change. Schorr is convincing as a female character. While she has moments where she is confident, she is also uncertain, emotional and even self-criticizing. I am not saying these are feminine attributes, they are human attributes. Jenny Pell is more believable as a person than Heinlein's protagonists.

- The Palace Coup

This isn't directly covered in a story, but is treated as history after a certain point, we see it discussed in "Zwarte Piet's Tale." Pell's Pax Ad Astra falls to a palace coup. Pell's party attempts to rule by consensus, which is nigh impossible considering the distances involved between Clarke County, the Moon and Mars. Her former husband Neil Schorr and a number of conservative elements within the Pax form a Monarchist party, supporting a constitutional monarchy. There is a coup. Mars and the Jovian moons declare their independence from the new Pax. The constitutional part is a sham, after Queen Macedonia is crowned, the government of Pax shows an active disregard for the rights and happiness of its citizens.

This is seen in "Zwarte Piet's Tale," the Pax tells would-be defectors to Mars that the Martian government will shoot down any Pax lander in their air space.

In "Kronos," neither the crew of the Intrepid nor the Royal Rapid Response Militia sent to Titan are trusted with the particulars of their mission. The crew is felt to be untrusted because they are "superiors" (humans bred with adaptions for space travel) and many superiors sided with the Jovians when they declared independence. The Royal Militia is deemed untrustworthy because it is made up of common citizens, drafted into national service.

Later in the Captain Future saga, Pax Naval Intelligence blackmails the protagonists into a kidnap attempt on Jenny Pell. They want to bring her back to the Pax to face treason charges and to interrogate her for information regarding the Earth facility on Mercury - the only colony owned by an Earth company in the inner Solar System. This also appears to be an attempt at revenge by Neil Schorr, her former husband who is now Prime Minister of the Pax Ad Astra.

If the original Pax represented the political left, the new Pax represents the American right. While they are more efficient at accomplishing their objectives due to the authoritarian structure of the government, they are also seen to be petty, corrupt and indifferent to the needs of the citizenry. Their primary goal is the perpetuation of the monarchy and the extension of its power by any means necessary.

This part of the Near Space saga is more in agreement with Heinlein's work. Heinlein was also anti-authoritarian, though the views presented in his novels come closer to small "l" libertarianism than the traditional left. Both author's used their series to decry prejudice. This can be seen in Heinlein's work in Stranger in a Strange Land; in Steele's work it can be seen in both The Pink Triangle and in the Captain Future saga. In particular, Steele highlights that it is okay to be different, and even to be uneasy at the differences in others, but that you are ultimately responsible for your actions.

Okay, game off - I know this is talky, but I wanted to get some of this out there so I could figure out how I want to approach this. I'm still not one hundred percent sure of which Near Space tale I'd like to do, or even if I'll be allowed to do it. There really isn't anything in the literature text that excites me. Ursula K. Guinn? Yuck.

Research Survey

I have to be careful how I discuss this, because I don't want to influence the results of the survey I take, but I need to set my thoughts in order regarding my survey. I'm going to be doing a survey to examine viral messaging habits on various platforms and to produce a picture of the average user who sends these messages. Obviously, I can't discuss the actual structure of the survey here.

Which is frustrating, because that is one of the areas I am having a lot of difficulty with. I'm also not sure how I want to distribute my survey. I have considered using Survey Monkey, but I'm not sure I will be able to convince my subjects to go use it. Which is a pity, I've heard it's great software for just this sort of thing. I've also considered using Facebook to distribute, but frankly it doesn't seem that people spend much time communicating on Facebook. It seems like it is mostly dedicated to broadcasting messages of your own, or more commonly playing poorly designed, scammy games. I don't have enough reach on Twitter or Buzz, so that's out as well. I suspect I'll be distributing via sneakernet.

I'm really slammed at the moment with the two express classes that are wrapping up next week, but I'd really like to have a good draft of my survey done by the end of the weekend. I then hope to beg, wheedle and plead for help from a few classmates in my American National Government class who are taking statistics. This sort of thing really falls far outside my purview, though I don't regret stating that I would do this when I sold my topic. Working outside of your comfort zone is something I think you really ought to be doing as a college student.

Public/Private Permissions: Is Privacy Dead?

Welcome to another day, ladies and gentlemen.

I really want to follow up on my experiment with Google Docs, this blog and a few of the other experiments I'm working on with technology and education. Also, I have some new theories on my research topic to run by you. But, I was puttering around last night and ended up watching Penn Says on Youtube. I'm a pretty big fan of his as a magician, I used to play around with stage magic back in the day, but I wasn't very good at it. I also think he's an interesting person. We agree on a lot of fundamental issues, we disagree strongly on a lot of others.

Penn Jillette is a pretty famous person. A celebrity, in fact. He does stage shows in Las Vegas, has a series on Showtime. I recall that he's had a few network TV specials as well. With his partner Teller, they've put out two or three books as well. The Penn Says series is basically his video diary. He puts it out on Sony's video platform, and it eventually trickles down to YouTube. He talks about whatever happens to be on his mind that day, and often addresses comments from the audience. Pretty cool.

In a previous show, he talked about sending his kids to a fancy private school in Las Vegas versus his lower middle class background. The episode is called "Have I Revealed Too Much," and there's a lot of harsh language in it - so if you're at work, or offended by that kind of language, I'd recommend not clicking the embedded video below.



For those who didn't watch: Mr. Jillette, after making that video I described above went to the parent's orientation night at that private school, and it turned out the principal was a fan. He watched Penn on his Showtime series, and on Penn Says. He said he hoped that they could make Penn feel good about sending his children to this private school. Penn felt uneasy about the principal watching him in a program he puts out for the public.

Now I want to contrast this with Penelope Trunk. I don't know that I would call myself a fan of her work, but I think it is interesting. She seems to write about her life, especially her personal life in a very open fashion out here. She's been called on it by commenters on her blog, people on twitter, and people in her personal life.

One interesting difference between them - Mr. Jillette is only a bit younger than my parents. He would have been entering high school the year after they graduated. Ms. Trunk is a bit older than me, there are about seven years between us. According to this article, and several like it people younger than me are very willing to share personal information online. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was recently raked over the coals for saying "Privacy is Dead" or "Privacy is no longer a social norm" depending upon which site you're reading. The only issue here, is that he didn't say that. He essentially said that social norms regarding privacy are changing, and that people are willing to share more of their lives online. This is not immoderate statement and I would challenge even my most critical reader to deny it.

If the social norms are changing, and I believe they are, what does that mean for us? I can see a few advantages to a more radical version of this change through the lens of my upcoming paper as being a relative "good thing." I can also see why it would scare people, and even I find it a bit unsettling at times.

Welcome to the future, ladies and gentlemen, cake will be provided shortly.

Modern Myths and Legends - Jean Shepherd

So this morning I'm chasing my textbook for LAN Concepts again. I have one of two, and I've been searching for the other, LabSim for Network+ for some time. I've been to the Clearwater bookstore, where a clerk assured me they had it in stock. Nada. I went to the library over the weekend, where my instructor told me they had a copy on reserve. Nope. So now I'm off to Gibbs campus, to once again attempt to purchase it. Wish me luck.

But my text book puts me in mind of another book. I, Libertine by Fredrick R. Ewing, a book on nineteenth century erotica which was published in 1956. It was a runaway bestseller, bookstores couldn't keep it on the shelf.

The only problem with that, is that of all the facts presented above, only the publication date is true. Even that is only true because the hoax gained so much momentum. I, Libertine was a hoax born out of frustration. It was created by Jean Shepherd, best known as the co-writer and narrator for the film A Christmas Story. At the time though, he was a radio disc jockey in New York. He was annoyed that New Yorkers would only patronize art that somebody else had vetted first. A city run by lists.

Shepherd was working the graveyard shift show at the time, and on this particular show he discussed these lists. The ten best dressed list was a big deal in New York at the time. "Top 40 music" had just arrived. The Top 40 music format was born in 1949 and was the dominate broadcast industry until the late 1980s. The New York Times bestseller list came into being only a little more than ten years earlier on August 9, 1942. Jean Shepherd had doubts about this system. Rightly so.

His theory was that were two kinds of people in the world. Day people and night people. Day people led a very orderly and uncomplicated existence. All the lists acted as the teeth in their clockwork. They told them what plays, books and songs were worthwhile. They never considered for a moment that these lists were not the truth-with-a-capital tee handed down from on high. As Mr. Shepherd put it: "They believed in file cabinets, they believed in luncheons, they believed in meetings . . ." By contrast, night people had some doubts. Doubts about whether any of this was worth taking seriously.

He decided to test out his theory with the help of his radio audience. He asked them to go into a bookstore the next morning and ask for a book that did not exist. Together, Mr. Shepherd and his audience ironed out the details. The title, the author's life story, and the publishing house. Soon enough, people all over New York were talking about this fantastic book, many claimed to have read it. The archdiocese of the Catholic church in Boston put it on proscribed works list. In the end, Ian Ballantine, head of Ballantine Publishing after a desperate search for the author of I, Libertine, he wanted to secure the paperback rights. He met with Shepherd and author Theodore Sturgeon over lunch and they revealed the truth, after which Mr. Sturgeon was hired to write the book under the pen name of Frederick R. Ewing. When it was published it sold quite well, even making the bestseller list. All of the proceeds were given

I think this might be the greatest hoax of the twentieth century. But don't listen to me, take it from the horse's mouth. You can listen to an interview with Jean Shepherd on Long John Nebel's radio program from 1968.

Publisher's note: I originally intended to cite this up properly as practice, but I am far too tired after several days of catching up for another class. I apologize for the lateness of this post, I really do want to try to produce something interesting every day. Rather than delaying this post further still, I want to move on to the next item in the series. My primary source for this article is the interview with the author linked above. I'll be back soon with a remarkable set of coincidences that happened while researching this post, and another interesting character that writers ought to know about. Coincidentally, it involves a hoax too.

My Library and an Introduction of Sorts

Hello! Welcome to my Composition Two class blog. Keeping this journal is my extra credit assignment and I'll try to stay pretty regular with it. How about some introductions? I'm Chris Demmons, I'm a human being (citation needed), a student at SPC, a geek, and a bit of a writer. I am currently working on my web development certificate and my associates degree concurrently, which may well qualify me as crazy.

To start with, I want to talk about some of the things I enjoyed in Comp One. Then I'll talk about my library, some of the things I've written over the years. There will be some rambling, a really dumb disclaimer and perhaps some cake.

I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed Comp One, I had it and an online C++ programming during the summer term of 2009. I very much expected my programming class to be the main attraction, but really it was kind of dull. I felt we went over the basics far too frequently "This is a variable, this is an array, etc" - this is all stuff that everyone should have learned in the one thousand level class.

Composition One was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the quote based free writes though I think I could pick better quotes to write about. We also did a sensational piece based on A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. I think everyone but my partners felt like backing away a couple of feet from me after we wrote that one. Our modest proposal was an essay about potential solutions to a rising wave of senior citizen violence, using the strategies aimed at young people as a model. At the time, there were a number of cases of shocking criminal behavior in the news where the perpetrators were older than fifty-five years old. I think the most difficult piece was the first assignment, because I had fallen out of the habit of writing. It really is a skill, and if you do stop doing it, you will lose it.

I really enjoy reading, I have a huge library and a trip to bookstore is as much of a bank account killing endeavor for me as a trip to the local EBstop. Truthfully, I don't think video games and books are very far removed from one another - but I'll save that for a later post. I have a love-hate relationship with my local library. I love the fact they exist. I hate the fact that they never have, or have very limited stock of the books I want. But seriously, support your local library. Speaking of which, I love science fiction, fantasy, and mysteries in terms of fiction. In nonfiction I read a lot of things related to technology - programming manuals mostly, self-improvement, history, and current event related titles. You can see my aNobii bookshelf here, it's only a fraction of what I own, but hopefully this will motivate me to catalog and review the rest of my collection. That collection is just one shelf, I probably own ten shelves worth of books easy. I also spend far too much time reading things on the web, and I'll share those with you soon.

I've spent a lot of time writing, mostly as a hobby, but one fool actually paid me cold hard cash to put words to paper. But let's get a little context first. I started out writing as a kid, just because I wanted to be like my heroes. Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, R. A. Lafferty and a few others that I can't recall. I wrote for my school paper in High School from tenth grade until graduation. I really loved journalism class, even though I had a pretty difficult time getting my articles to see print. I was probably the most censored journalist in my high school, though my collaborator during that time can claim almost as many red marks from the administration. Our advisor loved us and was completely amazingly great, though. Mostly we wrote humor and table-top role playing game pieces. I occasionally produced some science fiction back then too. I wrote a few things for a student run literary magazine - which was also censored by the school. Noticing a pattern here? After I graduated I wrote a one shot magazine. Short magazines were a really big thing back then, and I had a great time with it. I'll probably put on my rose tinted mirror shades at some point later and wheeze on about it. More recently, I've been writing a few articles using the Notes application on Facebook - mostly directed at friends and family, but I might post a few here as well.

Lastly, I may spend a little time talking about the publishing industry and intellectual property issues. This might be a little out of scope for this blog, so I'll tag each piece with these words ("publishing", "intellectual property") but I believe that both are highly relavent. When I talk about that, I'll be discussing how books are published now, the crisis facing the industry, some of the changes brought on by the internet, and how authors should be paid.

I shouldn't have to say this, but I will. Obviously everything on this blog is not representative of Saint Petersburg College (SPC), my instructor, or any other person connected with that institution. These are my opinions, and they are to be used for entertainment or annoyance only. So if you're looking to dice a potato, you've come to the wrong blog. With that said, I'm looking forward to class and hope you enjoy my work!