Become A Robot

I’ve used the same desktop wallpaper on my work computer for months now.  For me, that’s fairly unusual, as I tend to change wallpapers pretty frequently.  There’s nothing particularly special about this wallpaper (since I’m colorblind, it might even be ugly and I wouldn’t know), but I like it and it serves me well.

I wanted to give it a little credit here on the blog today, but it wasn’t saved in my DeviantArt profile, and the filename on my hard drive was “8b64a1a163d2f26ee5bf348671a98fd6″ which doesn’t turn up any Google search results.

So I did a search for “upload image find matches” and found a website called TinEye. I uploaded my wallpaper, and got a little lucky.  TinEye couldn’t find the wallpaper on DeviantArt (its real, original source), but it did recognize it in a little thumbnail at some website called wallpapers-room.com.  Thankfully, the person using that wallpaper and the wallpapers-room.com service had the file named Ascendence_Wallpaper_by_RedXen.jpg, which allowed me to find it on the artist’s page on DeviantArt.

So I guess this is more of a story about how I found the name and author for the wallpaper.  Here it is, in case you’re curious.

Ascendence by ~RedXen

When I comment on blogs and websites, I usually fill out the URL field with a link to this blog.  It occurred to me today that it might be traumatic for some people who click such a link to suddenly be assaulted with stories of my recent medical procedure and its after effects.

But thanks to Twitter, posting around here has become pretty sparse.  So I need to reach deep down if I’m going to find something worthy of a post.  Stay tuned.

I’ve always assumed that most authors dislike public libraries. Certainly some people are getting books for free from the library that they otherwise would have bought themselves (I know I am).

I mentioned this to my wife the other day, and she pointed out that our central public library (before it was all but destroyed) once featured posters of successful authors promoting libraries and reading. Good point. I realized there were answers to be sought, and I proceeded to forget about it for a while.

But something was nagging me in the back of my mind. Every time I went to the library, I felt a little like I was doing something bad. I certainly wasn’t heeding the citizen’s call to CONSUME in this act, and I wasn’t supporting the author who wrote these books I was reading for free (assuming the library circulation numbers don’t mean much to an author’s pocketbook). But the ability to save $10 to $25 for each of the 2-5 books I read in a month is hard to resist.

So today I set out to learn what I could of how authors (and yes, even publishers) feel about public libraries. I’m not sure if I should blame a lack of content or just my poorly written Google queries, but I couldn’t find much on the subject.

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It’s always a LOT of fun when some major, high-traffic blog links to me. I get a huge spike of traffic, with multiple comments a day. But I have to admit, the return back to normal traffic patterns as that major site’s post linking to me slips down in to the archives…well, it’s not fun; like coming home from technology camp and no longer being one of the accepted/cool kids.

Anyway, a big THANK YOU to my regulars (and a few new ones). As always, I’ll try to make things better around here (but not really).

I planned to write up a blog post about how science fiction books generally have stranger, less attractive covers than mainstream genre books, and how publishers seem to be taking steps to correct that lately. But then I got sidetracked on how sci-fi books shouldn’t need to have especially skiffy covers, as long as their cover fits some tone of the book.

As you can see from these covers for Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, it’s taken a while for a publisher to use a cover that’s not completely ridiculous (with the exception of the 1st edition, which I find kind of charming and interesting, and the latest edition which would look at home on the front table at Barnes and Noble).

But I’m thinking now that this isn’t an issue special to science fiction and fantasy. Sure, as sci-fi blog IO9’s Charlie Jane Anders illustrates, I’m not alone in thinking “science fiction books should have dignified covers that look less pulpy and skiffy” (but she closed with an unattributed quote “the bottom line…is that a cover should tell distributors and bookstore clerks where to shelve a book”).

But a fair amount of modern sci-fi books are coming out with beautiful cover art that, while certainly regulating them to the sci-fi section in appearance alone, is still dignified or artistic. Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness In The Sky comes to mind.

Am I crazy? Would that Vernor Vinge cover make non-sci-fi readers cringe? Will it seem ugly even to sci-fi fans in 10 years?

Or is this “being a sci-fi problem” all in my head? Do all genres have cover art cycles that suffer the same design/style cycles that make 1st gen iPods and 80’s cars look ugly? Can you think of a favorite book that used to have hideous cover art but now is available in attractive packaging?

Wow, I’m a cover art snob.

UPDATE: There’s a discussion thread on Tor.com about what people are looking for in a book cover (via SF Signal).

Not very newsworthy, but I figured I’d continue the series. Back in May I pointed out that Firefox 3 had a different image (and broken image) placeholder for the first time since the 0.1 BETA (which was copied from Netscape/Mozilla). It looks like 3.0.1 has changed it again.

I definitely liked the old-new one better:

But it’s still better than the original:

I imagine numerous essays and books have been written on the subject of art attempting to depict incredible things described in literature. From indescribable beauty to unimaginable horror, countless authors have included such elements in their stories with little or no effort. “A face more beautiful than any that of any man or woman who ever walked on the earth” is an easy enough phrase to write, but would probably not be done justice by any visual representation other than a photo of that very face (if it actually existed).

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While getting my 22-month-old daughter dressed after her bath last night, my wife directed my attention to the TV. The evening news was showing the first pictures taken from the inside of the Cedar Rapids Public Library after last weekend’s record smashing flood.

I had wondered and worried aloud about the status of the library and its contents repeatedly during the flooding, to a point that my wife had to mock me for being so focused on one part of the extensive destruction. But for days as the waters rose, the general public knew nothing of what steps were (or weren’t) taken to protect the library. Around the time the water was cresting, an interview with the library’s interim director came out, saying that they had used volunteers and the final hours before evacuation to move books on the 1st floor up to higher shelves. My wife and I were shocked that they didn’t just move as much as they could up to the second floor. There’s an elevator to make such a task easier, and lots and lots of room up there for materials. They were busy moving things out of the basement too, but there was never a call for volunteers on TV or radio or city websites or anything. We had no idea they didn’t have the manpower (or brainpower) needed to move things to the 2nd floor.

So I took my daughter to the computer and we looked at the pictures on the Gazette website.

Her response to the above photo was, “Books…oh no…” She knew something bad had happened to the books. Other photos like the one at the top of this post caused her to screw up her face in concern and confusion as well. We’ve spent hours at the library with her, and she easily recognized her favorite indoor place to visit.

Plans for a major renovation are currently on hold (although I suspect they’ll be getting new carpet, furniture, and computers now that they have none), and it’s possible that a tax levy will be utilized. I imagine a lot of citizens will be even more upset about the poor preparation for the flood (like not moving anything upstairs) if they’re asked to help pay for it.

Another one of many sad stories here in Cedar Rapids right now. This one just happens to hit a little closer to home for us than most.

I took another picture of the rising flood waters as seen from my work window on the 6th floor. Compare this one to the last, and you can see how the levels are defiantly creeping up.

Click the thumbnail for a full sized view.

Lots of crazy stuff has been going on here in Cedar Rapids. The Cedar River is flooding, and the city has had to enact its 500-year flood plan. Power is out over many parts of the city (our house was out for a few hours this morning) and power downtown where I work has been out since 7am CST (we’re running on generators here at work, and as a telecommunications company we have an independent internet connection).

My house is not in the expected flood plain, and now that power’s back on I really have little to complain about. But hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes, and dozens of businesses are going to have a lot of cleanup to do once these waters recede some day, all just in our town. Much more damage has occurred in other Iowa cities along the Cedar River.

Unfortunately, heavy rains here and further up the river mean water levels are continuing to rise. Here’s a bad camera-phone picture from out my office window on the 6th floor. I’ve marked how far the flooding has reached from the river in case you can’t make it out on the pic. It wasn’t nearly that high when I arrived less than 3 hours ago.