I like that last sentence.

One advantage of the electronic age is that when Lisa asks me “How far into the book are you?” I can answer her. The book actually tells me how far into something you really are. Or does it? I mean, what, exactly is 21%? The book will stay on 21% for several “page-clicks” so technically it’s 21.X%. But then I wonder if the algorithm truncates. Will it read 21% all the way until I cross the 22% barrier? Or, does the algorithm round? Could it be 20.7%? I don’t know. in the old days I could have looked at the page number, then flipped to the last page and read that number. A quick bit of mental math and I would have known exactly where I was, which would make my engineer’s mind happy. But now I’m left to wonder whether I’m 20.50000001 percent through the book or 21.999999%.

Of course, the next question is whether it uses words or characters or something else completely in its calculations. Clearly it cannot be using the definition of “standard pages” since that definition doesn’t apply.

I suppose I’ll have to Google a bit to see if the calculation algorithms have been publicly vetted. Just what I need. Something else to do.

Damned e-book.

Never mind that when Lisa asks “How far into the book are you?” she’s not asking me for a measure of distance. Sure, my mind interprets it in numbers and pages, but she means “what’s happening in the story?” So she gets a bit annoyed at times when I reply with a nearly perfectly correct “21%.”

Hey, it’s not my fault she’s not an engineer at heart.

That said, I’m enjoying the stories. And, yes, the reader is nice, too.

—–

I picked this out of Kris Rusch’s feed, so you might already have seen it. But I thought this was a great commentary of criticism … but then, Roger Ebert kinda knows what the heck he’s talking about.

Things change so quickly, but I enjoyed this quite a bit at the time. Very different way of experiencing a story.

In this case, I quite enjoyed “Best Western“, a short story by Anne de Marcken (read by Laura Esterman). It’s the second story in this podcast. The first is good story–Rebecca Curtis’s “Twenty Grand” as read by Jane Curtain. But “Best Western,” in my opinion truly shines.

I can also vouch for “When Sparrows Fall,” which has a deep power to it.

But, honestly, I really, really love “Rena 733.”

Try one, I’m sure you’ll want them all.

Next, the observant of you will notice I’ve added a Newsletter page.  I promise to only spam you when it’s really spam-worthy.  [grin]

And, finally, I’ve fixed the broken link in my last post that went to the Multitasking game.  Sorry about that.  Guess I lost my focus there.

Strange Horizon’s published it in two parts, so be sure to read them both.

It’s a really nice piece that touches on humanity, business, gender and sexuality, and the differentiation of species in a far-future setting.

I very much enjoyed it, and I thank Tobias and this piece for making an hour of weights and treadmill walking go by in what seemed to be a few moments.

Now we’re on to lunch, and–if I get my motivation kick-started again–back to the manuscript I was working on.

For those of you who mow the lawn with self-propelled push mowers, here’s a little learning I had last night…when the self-propeller dies, those things are a pain in the tush to use. Yes, I passed up a trip to the gym yesterday after work in order to take advantage of the weather and cut the grass. I was actually bemoaning the fact that I wouldn’t get a full workout in, but the fates apparently listened. An hour’s work pushing along a 9,000-ton piece of equipment can totally kick your butt.

I know, my life is tough.

Progress:

I’m coming to the end of this little dalliance of mine to clean up my pilot sub-story–at least I’m coming to the end of this pass at it, anyway. I’m liking how the characters are working, but my spider-sense is tingling and I’m thinking I’ll need a later pass at it to make the rest of its message resonate at the book’s scope. Bottom line at this point is that I’m feeling myself learn again–which is great. Attempting to pull this bit into a stand-alone short story was a great decision, regardless of whether it ends up fully working or not.

If you have an iPod or other MP3 player of your choice (and, let’s face it, who doesn’t?) and a half-hour drive anywhere, you could do worse than listening to a few of these:

Rememberance is Something Like a House by Will Ludwigsen published by PodCastle.

This is a really nice tale of a house that takes a trip from Ohio to Florida–a premise that sounds funny, but is most decidedly not. Highly recommended.

The Next Invasion by Robert Reed published by TOR.com

Robert Reed is one of my favorite short fiction writers. Of course, since I don’t have tons of time I read mostly short fiction, so I guess I should say he’s one of my favorite storytellers and leave it at that. “The Next Invasion” is interesting in every way.

Progress Today (so far):

Now that I’ve got the basic story of my two pilots pretty much figured out and two-thirds of their story told, I took the morning to fix up the world around them. I also received a special gift of about 300 words that jumped into the last part of their story. I love it when that happens.

Assuming my brain is still working this afternoon, I’ll go back and see what damage I can do to their story.