The_Lex v. The Wisconsin Historical Society: Weekend Two

This looks pretty advanced compared to what I was using

Took another trip to The Wisconsin Historical Society this past weekend. This time, I reserved a Zipcar, drove up Saturday morning, studied all day then drove back after a Nepalese dinner. Proved more efficient, more affordable and heck, even more fun as I got to listen to my iPod over car speakers.

Even after the $10 in tolls, $5 max per day parking fee at State Street Campus Ramp and mileage costs, the Zipcar route ended up more affordable than the bus and hotel route. Top that off with driving a hybrid Honda Civic that averaged 40 mpg even on the highway, I think I did quite well, even by environmental standards.

I decided to take the trip spontaneously. The last weekend I went felt kind of disappointing. Not only did I not find anything that felt useful, I didn't even finish looking at everything, just a bunch of letters with really bad handwriting. Leaving, I planned to come back some day. . .when I budgeted for it.

Come the past Friday, though, and I hankered to get back up there. All week I had been studying the books in my home library on the topic of Brook Farm, George Ripley and the controversy between the old school Boston Unitarians and The Transcendentalists. I had first gone up to The Historical Society to find a source that would shed a light on Ripley's inspiration to start Brook Farm. By Friday, I hadn't found the answer to that question at home, either. The compulsion to do more research at The Historical Society had dug its feet into my attention, and it wouldn't go away until I scratched the itch.

I get crazy like that.

During the five hours at The Historical Society, I spent them all in the microfilm room, reading those damned letters with bad handwriting.

First off, I want to thank JohnnyHank for the tip about using the microfilm machine from the last entry. The ability to move the part that holds the microfilm, the lense and the light helped a ton.

Since Ripley occasionally wrote upside down, sideways and whichever way he desired to end his letters back on the first page, rotating the view could prove valuable. Sure, whoever made the microfilm would put another copy of the first page at the end of the letter, this time upside down or sideways. Reading the upside down stuff out of order had its uses, nonetheless, especially when trying to find my place on the microfilm when I first arrived at The Historical Society.

The biggest benefit from JohnnyHank's tip was that he got me to question what I knew about the microfilm machine. When you don't know much, questioning what you know has its benefits.

Last entry, I wrote in the comments that I thought I was projecting the wrong side of the microfilm until I put it through the machine in reverse. At that point, I realized the text was printed on the microfilm at a 90 degree angle, and I thought that was the only issue.

Boy, was I wrong. The text was on the right side of the microfilm, but I had loaded the film incorrectly! I probably should have realized that originally when I couldn't rewind the film. The way I had loaded it, I could only advance the film.

This past weekend, though, while rotating the lense/film holder, I noticed a diagram on the machine that showed how to correctly load the film into the machine. After loading the film correctly, I could move it forwards and backwards, providing me a lot more freedom. The "prehistoric" microfilm reader also made for easier reading than a computer screen.

It makes for easier reading, at least, when you have the correct kind of light. The first machine I had was in a pretty bad position. It had too much overhead light from the fluorescents up above. I don't know exactly how to describe other than imagine driving at dusk time, when it's the hardest time of day and night to see. You think you know what you're seeing, but you're not so sure. Everything is obscured and illusionary. You have to concentrate and spend a lot of cognitive energy to make sense of everything around your car that you just want to pull over, take a breather and wait until the sun sets to see better again.

Or maybe I can better describe by saying the text looked especially smudged and blurry. It looked like someone wrote something with a pencil, erased it then smudged it all over the place with their hand when they tried to brush away the remnants of the eraser on a piece of paper.

The whole lighting situation got so bad that I had to move to another microfilm reader. Less light rained down on it, so I had an easier time reading it. The handwriting still sucked, but I didn't have to squint or think so hard to try translating what I read. I didn't have to try figuring out whether light was causing the problem with the interpretation or if I just found the handwriting troublesome.

Within a couple hours I had read or scanned through the rest of the letters and picked out ones that I wanted to scan onto my flash drive. I chose a long one written while in Europe that mentioned Brook Farm and a bunch of other ones that proved especially difficult to read. Most of those amounted to ones written by Ripley's wife at the time.

Scanning from microfilm proved a chore in itself. I zoomed the view of the microfilm much bigger than "fit to page" or 100%. I would guess that I had zoomed it into 125% to make reading it easier on the eyes once I had printed it out on paper, which I plan on doing, too, to further help not damage my eyes. Biggest problem with scanning the pages in at 125% is that I had to take two scans of every full page.

Things get even more complicated from there. I had to highlight part of the view on the computer of what I wanted to scan. This part got tedious because the person who made the microfilm copied the pages in a weird sequence. Maybe Ripley has some responsibility for the strangeness of the layout. The letter would start out with a view of one page, the next page on the microfilm would have two pages of the letter on it, the next microfilm page would only have one letter page, then two letter pages, one letter page, two letter pages, etc. etc.

To scan these varying layouts of one page, two page, one page, etc., I had to keep manually moving the microfilm reader attached to the computer. Advancing, rewinding, rotating, changing the brightness and a whole bunch of features I could control with the computer. Moving the microfilm side to side, though, I had to play with the reader manually.

Whoever makes that hardware and software needs to add in controls to move the film side to side. Not only would it be more convenient. Having that capability would also help to navigate the film more precisely.

Fat chance programmers will listen, though. In my experience these days, a good user interface has gone out the window as a priority.

I ran into a weird issue after a bit. The external microfilm reader for my computer had somehow slid too close to the reader connected to the computer to the left of me. The source reel for Ripley's kept getting stuck on the other machine, causing my reader to hiccup and fail to advance. The reel on the right would try to pull over some film, it hiccuped then just stopped.

After awhile of just trying to work with it, not knowing the problem and not wanting to bother the attendant, the reader and the computer simply stopped communicating. The computer wouldn't acknowledge the existence of the reader. The software shut down. The attendant fixed the communication issues by turning off the reader then turning it back on.

The collision between the machines kept occurring, however. Enough frustration led me to figure out the problem. Separating the two readers from each other fixed the problem for the rest of the day.

So by the end of my session there, with only a half hour left until The Society closed, I had scanned five letters, half page by half page. Even more annoying, each half page has its own PDF file. If I had Adobe Acrobat and not just the Reader, I can merge these files together instead of having these files all over the place.

Right now, I have all the half pages in separate folders according to which letter they correspond to. Handling the scans in this fashion gets on the nerves of my anal side. Beggars really can't be choosers, though, can they.

The scans I got, sadly enough, may not be very useful to me. In fact, the collection of letters may not help much with my paper. I've already written enough tonight, however. This part of the story will have to wait until another day.

Relevant Links: Adobe Acrobat, Brook Farm, microfilm, George Ripley, JohnnyHank, The Transcendentalists, The Wisconsin Historical Society, Zipcar

My Trip to the Wisconsin Historical Society: Another Shout Out to Historians

I'm typing this one up on the Smartphone on the way home from Madison, WI. I came up last night straight out of work on a bus (with the L in Chicago su-cking!), stayed a night in a hotel that couldn't filter out the sounds of revellers at the bar across the street then got up this morning, had breakfast and got to the Wisconsin Historical Society at 10ish. An hour behind schedule, but it's the weekend.

I spent the day doing my first ever active historian work. A young guy and an older guy gave me an intro to the archives room then fetched me the commonplace book for George Ripley from the years 1822 to 1840.

George Ripley pretty much founded the Brook Farm Association of . . ., the socialist-Associationist community I'm currently trying to write about. I've written a little bit here and there about Ripley and Brook Farm. Most of what I've written lately has been to complain that Ripley should have kept more journals or, at the very least, provided much more articulate reasons as to his motivations for starting Brook Farm and why certain organizational processes were started there. That way, people like me could evaluate the results of Brook Farm better.

Ripley used his commonplace book to write down quotes, his thoughts on philosophers and critics and, near the end, he used it to work on projections for calculating, budgeting and figuring out the feasibility of crop growing on Brook Farm. I used to use my Palm Pilot for the same thing and have started to do so with my Smartphone.

I pored over the commonplace book for a half hour or so. Ripley organized it by subject pretty well. He probably did so for his own benefit, but it certainly helps the historian. He should have put more of his thinking and kept writing in it. I have the feeling that he just got too busy after 1840, trying to publish magazines, working on cyclopedic collections of philosophical and critical writing, trying to make Brook Farm work then working his ass off to pay debt leftover after Brook Farm dissolved.

The biggest faux pax on my part consisted of planning to use pens to take notes. The Society asks researcher not to. Doesn't take too much thought to understand their reasoning. Pens have a higher chance of leaking and exploding ink all over these mostly one-of-the-kind artifacts. Pencils and hands may smudge graphite on the documents, but I think there's a much smaller chance of the happening. I didn't to take any notes, though, so I didn't break any rules.

Even though if I destroyed that copy of the book, it wouldn't be as bad as other documents. Harvard University has the original copy, and this is just a copy. Yeah, getting another copy would probably be a huge pain the ass, but at least I wouldn't have been responsible for destroying a one-of-kind artifact that makes up our cultural heritage.

Doing that would just make me feel like a big jerk.

Done with the commonplace book for the moment, I went down to the microfilm room. No problem finding the microfilm I wanted since the older guy from the archives printed out a page that had the information for me. Just took me a minute or two to figure out the organizing system.

The first microfilm machine didn't help me, but the machine didn't do anything wrong. It was an old school machine that pretty acts as a projector on a screen with user interface device to navigate through the microfilm. The problem lay on the film: the text was published on the film so it was rotated 90 degrees to right-side up. I would have to twist my head 90 degrees on end then put some cognitive load on me to translate rotated print into correctly angled print. Gravity and our sense of balance really makes things difficult for us that.

Now that I think about it, my neck wouldn't have enjoyed twisting itself like that for hours on end.

I wandered aimlessly around the room until I discovered something amazing: computers set up to read microfilm. I've never seen that before! One of the staff helped set up one of the computers, showed me how to load the film then set up the computer so the text was rotated correctly. The coolest feature which I didn't have the opportunity to use: the microfilm computer will scan directly to a flash drive (hopefully in PDF form). Awesome!

The microfilm contained letters that Ripley and his second wife sent his sister, Marianne. First challenge from the outset: no table of contents, no index and no search feature. I have to find what I'm looking for by reading/scanning the whole text in some systematic fashion. I took probably the most obvious system: start at one page then read until there are no pages to read.

The second problem, and by far the worst of the two, all the letters were handwritten. Even worse, Ripley had horrible handwriting. His wife had more aesthetically pleasing handwriting, looking all neat and uniform, but she didn't allow for any white space in her letters. She made everything as tight as she could. Without the white space, it just looked like little pretty scribbles.

Ripley didn't even bother to stay neat with his handwriting. He wrote his letter like he signed it at the end. He had plenty of white space, but he just in a script and didn't think about making it easier to anyone else to read it. Sure, maybe he wasn't thinking of me or another historian when writing his sister, but how easily could his sister read his handwriting.

For both Ripley and his wife, reading the English was like reading another language that I'm trying to learn. There was stuff in there I could understand easily enough. As I learned different scrawlings I could read those particular scrawlings better.

When I came upon a scrawling I couldn't understand right away, though, I went into translation mode. Sometimes I just stared at the word until I could make it out. Other times I stared at the word, tried to pick certain parts, tried to pick out letters or just let the first word that it look like catch my attention. I would just keep whispering that word or let the parts that I picked out run around in my head. That sometimes worked.

A more holistic approach generally worked best, though. I would take chunks of words, legible and illegible, then through my understanding of the words I could, the logic of English syntax, sentence structure and probably other linguistic words I don't know or can't think of at the moment, and also visual pattern recognition of words, I could translate most of the gibberish.

Remember me saying that reading text at a 90 degree angle because the microfilm was published that way would cause a large cognitive load? I can't imagine how well my brain could on top of reading text at an angle, handle essentially having to interpret chicken scrawl. I think my brain might have exploded all over the microfilm monitor!

There's just one more element that made the microfilm research difficult. This one probably comes from reading any microfilm, however. The quality of the copied pages varies, from page to page. To adjust for easier reading, I had three settings: zoom, brightness and contrast. Zoom and brightness helped a lot, but I have no idea if the contrast setting even did anything. Having to change these settings for practically every page su-u-cked!

I sat at the microfilm reading computer for about four hours and didn't read the whole microfilm. I started reading it word-for-word. I didn't think I could just scan because the squiggles on the screen didn't even look like they spelled anything. Just squiggles!

I had set my phone to have alarm go off at 3, though. The last bus from Madison to Chicago left at 4:30, and I wanted to make sure to grab a bite to eat and some water before leaving on the 4 hour ride home.

When that alarm went off, I snoozed it for 5 minutes. I started scanning. Of course, I started finding references to my research topic at this point. None of them held relevance to the my writing, though. Argh!

I don't know if reading the microfilm word-for-word for about 3 hours primed my visual pattern recognition or not, but within that last half hour, I was able to get through quite a bit and get enough gist of it. Enough of a gist to know that what I'm reading didn't have anything.

Nonetheless, at 3:30, fighting against my nature, I accepted defeat and got out of there. I had just enough time to grab a burrito and some water then get on the bus home.

I will have to visit Madison at least once more to scan the rest of that microfilm. If what I believe is on there is on there (as another historian cites in a book on George Ripley), I must get that information!

After my experience today, I must give a shout out to historians out there and exhort my readers to do the same. Researching and writing history is a labor intensive vocation. The reward for it probably doesn't provide nearly the compensation that equals the labor power that goes into it.

So, historians, my hat goes off to you.

Movies Being Run by Venture Capitalist Attitude

My parents' generation complained about the music my generation listened to. I think as my generation grows older, we will complain about the movies made McG and the other moviemakers and today and onward. And apparently I come from the MTV generation.

A rant about the dearth of crappy movies in the theaters these days:

You know what probably makes for the crappy movies today? It has to do with a venture capitalist attitude rather than a quality craft attitude (I almost said quality art attitude, but these days, that means someone thinks the statement is more important than the entertainment factor).

The studios probably just throw money at these directors, producers, actors, etc. etc. thinking that something 1 out of 5 movies will make enough profit to make up for the crappy movies put out. Issue is that it probably costs more money to think critically about the talent to hire than to just throw money at a few of them.

Then they probably make the argument that they need to follow this model because the consumers have the demand for quantity rather than quality.

And the thing is, the mass consumer hasn't done what it needs to do to tell the studios to value quality over quantity.

I think some kind of organized movement needs to occur. A movement that will write letters to movie studios to value quality over quantity, and a movement that will work to enrich the population's ability to judge movies, literature and other artistic craftwork rather than just gobble up this crap that is even lower on the food chain than pop art.

Marxist criticizes art as a tool to manipulate the masses into accepting the status quo and power of the dominant class. Either the entertainment of today does a great job of getting the masses to accept the dominant class by making the masses dumber, or Marxist criticism could not have foreseen that capitalism did something worse than control the masses. . .it just made classes dumber and accepting of crap.

Well, I guess if being dumb and accepting of crap means inactivity, then I guess that's control in its own type of way.

Let's get smarter, people.

Malnutrition Posing as Burn Out

Around the time that I stopped writing, my consciousness felt like it was spinning out of control. I lost a lot of motivation. I felt down. I think I may have even felt a little paranoid or attributing unrealistic motivations to people, especially the wife. I intelligently didn't act overtly on my discontent except to voice my frustration about not understanding the things happening around me or engaging in healthy habits.

Feeling out of touch with my myself in all sorts of way, I started journaling privately again. I had a need to turn inward. If I couldn't pinpoint an issue with the world around me, maybe the issue lay within me. I also had plenty of things I wanted to write about that this blog would provide an appropriate venue, whether because of privacy issues or because my topics and meanderings wouldn't have appeal to a public audience. Frankly, I didn't feel as if my thoughts, reflections or activities really would fit here.

Actually, I didn't engage in many habits other than journaling until a few weeks ago. Going to Jamaica with the wife for a long weekend could possibly prove a healthy habit, but we've only done that once. If only. . ..

A few weeks ago, though, I really had hit a bottom. My wife had gone away for the weekend on a business trip. I pretty much just sat at home, watching tons and tons of TV. All the while, I wondered why I couldn't get my ass off the gear. I told myself to do it, and I just didn't do it. I wasn't physically sick, I just didn't do things that I told myself to do. I could move my arms, wiggle my fingers and toes and all that. I just didn't have the willpower to do the things I wanted to do.

A friend of a friend even was putting on a concert to fund raise for cancer or some other important cause. Many things I value there: a cause, socializing, bar and checking out new music. Did I want to go out? Nope, not one bit.

By the end of that weekend, I remember that I had taken some "whole" supplements to deal with coming off an ADHD medication. I had just come to Chicago, didn't have health insurance, didn't have a job and only had limited money to live on until I got a job. I didn't have to worry about losing the roof over my head or anything, but I still wanted to watch my money. . .and having an expensive medication to help me perform better didn't make it to the top of my list of priorities.

Funny thing: I performed better and accomplished more on the "whole" supplements rather than on the ADHD medication.

I had stopped taking those "whole" supplements, however, because I ended up dealing with another problem using something else. I thought that something else interacted with the "whole" supplement weird and that that something else would actually help fix what the "whole" supplement had supposedly fixed. So I went on my merry way for about a year.

Looking back, now, over the the last year or so, though, I can see that my performance and productivity had suffered. A couple weeks ago, though, I just needed something to kick me in the ass and get me going, doing the things that I needed and wanted to do, to bring that shininess back to the world, too.

I started taking the "whole" supplement again. It helped immediately. I started having the ability to focus a lot more.

When the wife and I went to Jamaica, I ended up taking the primary vitamin/mineral in the "whole" supplemented that I needed. I didn't want to face anything going through customs by bringing this "whole" supplement with me. It's a perfectly legal "whole" supplement, but I didn't want to have to deal with any trouble. I get anxious enough just flying in a plane or going through security. The pure vitamin/mineral had some interesting side effects that didn't make me too uncomfortable, and it still helped me to focus.

I started doing some more research after coming back from Jamaica. Since then, I've been making sure to eat foods with a lot more healthy stuff in them, from more protein to more minerals to more vitamins. It's some exciting stuff to read about and even more exciting to live through.

I feel great! I've got more energy, more focus, more happiness. I haven't been able to keep it up steadily, but I think that's just because I haven't been doing a great job getting enough protein for awhile now except at lunch. Tonight I made sure to have a protein shake, and I feel much better. My mood feels good and pleasant.

Too bad I've had a time crunch of spending some extra time after work, getting my grocery shopping done, cleaning the dishes and making lunch for tomorrow. At least I'm not getting down on myself for never having enough time. Tomorrow will be a better day, and I'll get home earlier since I don't have to grocery shop. Then I've got the weekend to work on my projects.

All is good, just as long as I keep making sure I put the good stuff in my body. Think of that next time you're feeling down, unfocused and unmotivated, find out what the good stuff is and put it in you.

Unfortunately, I can't provide advice on the good stuff because my professional capacity puts me into a strange capacity that might convince people to listen to me. I don't want someone to get all screwed up because I said try something, and they trusted me. I found out all this stuff by doing my own research and listening to my skeptical common sense about it all. I think you can do it, too. It just takes time and effort. It's not that hard.

So yeah, that's how I thought I was burnt out but was probably malnourished.

On Figs and Bunny Pre-Mating Rituals

An e-mail I wrote to the wife in reference to some glazed and roasted figs she bought me on Monday from Pastoral:

Now I know why figs have become so mythological and "evil." These figs you got from Pastoral is the vegan answer to caviar. It's as sensuous as eating at Boka.

I probably won't be getting them to eat everyday, but they certainly make a good treat worthy of their infamy.

In other random inconsequential news: On Sunday night, the wife and I saw two bunnies performing a pre-mating ritual in the courtyard of a Catholic Church. It struck us as somewhat ironic.

I never thought pre-mating rituals could look so cute. The boy bunny would try to sneak up behind the girl, she would do this jump roundhouse kick, jump on his head and scratch it then she would go off to graze somewhere else. It went on like this for a couple minutes until we got bored and went home.

Highly entertaining, this thing we call nature, especially when it happens in the city.

The Smartphone: A Great Writing Aid

I wrote the last entry mostly on my new Smartphone during my commutes to and from work. It works great since it has an application for creating and editing Microsoft Word documents. Using it I can do more productive things than reading.

I love reading, and reading can help me gather information to use later. I don't have any hard copy books or magazines that have relevance to my current projects to read. My Smartphone can't access Google Books in a useful way so can't read any relevant out of print books.

Reading the news would probably enrich and enlighten my life, but I need to move forward with my ambitions to actually use newsworthy information to make a difference in the world. I don't really have much power to make a difference beyond my immediate social and professional circles. No offense, family, friends, acquaintances, associates and customers, I want to change the world in a bigger way than we could do through in any association that you would also find fulfilling or useful.

I've done some work drafting up a new outline for the last paper of the bachelors project. I can't even remember the last time I had worked on an outline for one. Over the last I don't know how many months, I've been doing tons of research, trying to get a better idea of the intentions, goals and the rationale of the organization the founders of Brook Farm had for it.

I don't really have an articulate answer for these ruminations yet. Right now I have a jumble of information and references to get the information in my mind. All the information doesn't have an organizing principle yet, though.

The outlining I've done over the past couple days plus some mental ruminating has helped me a little to come closer to an articulate explanation. It has also helped come closer to figuring out yet another hypothesis to try exploring through the exploration of historical evidence through reason and rationality.

Using the Smartphone to work on the outline allows me to actually generate something during what would have been unproductive time or distracting productivity in the past. The ease of transferring work I do on the Smartphone to my phone helps to cut down on the unproductive work of transcribing something I wrote in one place onto a file in the computer. It also helps me avoid the hassle of copying and pasting, too. I just connect the Smartphone to my computer, open the file, edit it as usual then save it where I wish.

Yay for me finding another writing, organization and productivity aid. Now my brain and mind, the tools that generate and articulate the ideas can produce stuff so these aids can really help!

The Indeterminacy of Serial World Building

As I mentioned in the last entry, I weaseled my way into copyediting a friend's entries on his Wiki, The Lands of Shadow. I don't believe I'll get credited anywhere, but that's cool. I've already received some benefit from working on it: brushing up on my writing skills and getting exposed to a couple interesting themes.

Working with a "living document" certainly fascinates me while irritating me somewhat (this is not, in any way, a criticism or bitch session). The wiki acts as a source document for my friend's Dungerons & Dragons campaign world. As a living document, it could change depending on how he wants the direction of his campaign storyline to go, how different parties relate to each other (player characters, non-player characters, institutions, social groups, kingdoms, nations), the storyline, landscape of the world and whatever else may change.

Allowing the wiki to have this kind of indeterminacy complicates matters for me, as a writer and as something of a Type A personality. My friend has passed over to me for editing an entry about one of his kingdoms. A part of the entry pertained to the process in which the kingdom's government appoints people to a particular post.

I found the explanation of the process vague and asked him to provide more details about it. He reiterated that he intends the wiki to act as a living document and that he's not sure entirely where he wants to go with the appointment process and how it will relate to the campaign plot. My personality flaws don’t like this feature, but my rational side says it’s cool.

The fact that I get a little worked up about this matter amuses me. Allowing indeterminacy into something that has drama as a main characteristic has at least one positive aspect to it. It allows for freedom.

In a blog entry I read about TV writing one time, the author encouraged telling only as much as needed about a character for that part in the story. As an example, they used a situation where a show introduced two brothers for a character but never mentioned any other siblings nor did they mention that the two siblings were the only siblings the character had. Not limiting the number of siblings allowed the writers to throw in another sibling when it helped the story.

In the case of my friend's campaign setting, not limiting the political appointment process allows for numerous possibilities. Maybe if it gets limited early, a player couldn't get appointed to that position but getting appointed to it would lead to a more interesting story.

Tension regarding the process for appointment could make an interesting plot point, especially if it gets shrouded in mystery. Revealing the process could take away the mystery and, thus, take away the tension.

Simply put, the creation of a story in a role playing game doesn't lie solely with the person running the game, the dungeon master or game master, whichever you prefer. Everyone plays it for fun and everyone comes to the game with different expectations of fun.

Setting up the appointment process to this one position in one way could appeal to one type of player but turn off another player. Having the appointment some other way could appeal more to another player. Leaving this detail open allows for adaptability, to mold the game into a form that allows maximum enjoyment for all.

This kind of freedom works to the advantage of serial storytelling or role playing. Explain just enough to allow things to progress in a fun and satisfying way, but don't explain so much that the options for more fun and satisfaction close off in the future.

When writing, I generally stick to a closed form with a limited run. I have a novel in progress along with a short story that has will require a lot of revisions. I also five papers written and another one to write for my bachelors project, all of them rough draft.

The novel and short story plan on having a good, tight story but won't reveal absolutely everything. I leave out mostly what happens after the story ends. Even though I leave both of them open to possible sequels, I plan on writing pretty tight stories. I won't tell the smallest details or anything like that, but I plan on establishing most of the setting and the events in the stories timeline.

Then again, telling the whole story and providing full details of a timeline allows freedom for change in future writings. After all, if the author wants to have fun and "experiment" with a different system or setting, they just start a new piece or even set a new story in the same setting, just in a different time period than the original story.

The important aspect probably comes down to continuity. Science fiction and fantasy culture focuses a lot on continuity in the fiction they follow. Breaking continuity in these genres can often frustrate fan culture to no end, so much to the point that some writers need to create a disconnect with their fan base to continue writing without compromising the story. I can be guilty of the over analysis vice, at times, even when I try to use it to try defending loose interpretations created by a show or piece of writing.

Fans can sometimes forgive the break from continuity or they can tolerate enough breaks until too many of them occur. Often the show or piece of writing has enough other virtues to make a wait-and-see attitude easy to follow and possibly worthwhile to slog through the irritating parts.

A lone movie or a solitary story without any continuity outside of the celluloid or the two covers proves easier to have consistent continuity. With no set intention to continue within that continuity for longer than a certain period of story, the plot, character, setting, culture, norms, practices and so forth can all be balanced for the good of the story told. As long as the story doesn’t have a sequel or prequel, the single story doesn't set a precedent for a continuity canon that future stories risk breaking or expose itself to over interpretation by a fan community.

Stories told by serial, however, which obviously can include ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, expose themselves to breaking continuity the longer the story continues. I have major respect for storytellers and TV writers that stay within continuity or break continuity well. Writers of serials that break continuity in a non-major way don't lose my respect if the story continues well enough.

I willfully concede that staying within continuity provides a big challenge. It grows even more difficult when multiple story lines exist and as the story progresses. Add to that all the different characters, nations, personalities, locales and the multitude of factors that exist. Increase the details and increase the interrelations of those details, keeping the continuity increases in difficulty.

I can't blame someone who wants to create a source document (or bible, as they call it Canada TV circles) for not filling in all the details. It allows for more freedom and adaptability in case interesting and fun storylines would require different details than had been originally conceived.

It would especially suck if a minor detail like how many siblings a character has only just bit you in ass because of the over determinacy. That situation might just possibly motivate a writer to break continuity in a very frustrating way rather than just not provide one small detail in the beginning. Wouldn't that just suck, having the writer “cheat” after the fact rather than not create a fact until it was needed?

Trying to Make a Comeback

Been awhile since I've made a post. Lack of time has been a big contributor.

Over the last month, though, sending the laptop back to the manufacturer for repairs has been the biggest discouragement to do anything computer related. I had to depend on the old desktop for computer-related crap, and I probably ended up wasting a half hour to an hour a day just waiting for it to process tasks. Not worth it.

Unfortunately, I still have to deal with that crap at work. Hopefully some recent initiatives will get someone's ass into gear to replace my computer that still runs Windows 2000. Ugh.

Anyway, I got the laptop back just under a week ago. I spent the majority of the early week reinstalling most everything and organizing things. I still have to go through the stuff that Windows Easy Exchange transferred to delete things I don't need anymore. Nothing time sensitive there.

Dealing with computer crap contributed to bad time management this week. So did having to address bills. Add to that Chicago's Restaurant week where fancy restaurants set up inexpensive menus for commoners like me to sample, enjoy and possibly get addicted.

I had some good food but nothing convinced me to come back with my credit card on a regular basis and charge it to its limit. Nope. The wife and I still plan on just setting aside money at every paycheck then going out for a nice restaurant after saving up enough money.

Doing much else than working on a new long term project didn't really enter my mind. I got too distracted by random things. Plus, I had fallen very much behind on the new project, which has gotten me fairly disappointed.

I've wiggled my way into informally copyediting entries for the Lands of Shadow Wiki, the wiki for the D&D campaign world started by a friend and that I participate in.

Nothing recently edited by has been posted yet. I've been doing little by little over the last week or so. I asked for a deadline and got Thursday since we had plans on playing sometime this weekend. Because of my lack of discipline, I'm still working on it at 1:30 AM Saturday when we plan to play at 12 PM today.

I think I'll be going to bed now, though. I've edited a large majority of it. I've got something like a page or a page and a half to address it. Most of the time, people get to his place at staggered times. I'm hoping to get there before a lot of the other players then take the opportunity to finish as much of it as possible. Will have to see how that goes.

Copyediting a living document with the objective of world building interdependently between multiple parties certainly has brought some interesting topics to my mind. I hope to take more opportunities to post here and address some of those topics. Hopefully it leads to some good insights and discussion.

Through Hard Work, Historians Will Outwit You

This entry is a loose sequel to another entry, Please, Do It for the Historians.

Historians will easily outwit you if you use a credit card or debit card to buy stuff. According to an NPR story from the other day, people with access to your purchases can already paint a good picture of you from the buying habits they can track. But that's not what I'm writing about here.

I've decided to address you people who don't really write personal journals, articles for publication or letters to other people (I don't know if e-mails or blogs count -- possibly another topic to explore). Maybe people who won't do much or don't plan on doing much to impact history the future don't have to apply for this one. Who will remember you, anyway?

For this topic, I'm thinking about mostly about George Ripley, the guy who established the community I'm studying and will write a paper about soon. Mr. Ripley wrote plenty of letters to people and articles that got published in at least Boston and New York periodicals throughout the 19th century. He apparently wrote in a personal journal during the early part of his life, but he discontinued that practice in the 1830s or around the time he established Brook Farm.

Maybe Mr. Ripley just got too busy with life. After all, he had to start ministering to his church and after he resigned from there, he had to administrate Brook Farm.

I know how it is. I used to write a personal journal back in high school and during parts of college, but I have a hard time remembering the last time I actually wrote in a journal. Life can become a busy enterprise. I can't blame Mr. Ripley.

But for amateur and professional historians, this kind of situation gets difficult, even though I'm willing to bet that professional historians learn how to cut through the distractions and that stuff that isn't useful. Nonetheless, there's something to say about the serendipity in find a factoid you wouldn't have found without reading through a whole book or even by reading something again with more insight built up by the understanding found through other texts on the topic or person.

But lately, I'm finding myself having to study Mr. Ripley through indirect means. I have to try finding information and insights into him by reading about the people around him, his friends, relatives, colleagues and so forth. Mr. Ripley had the tendency to write in ways to try convincing people to do something or believe something. However, he didn't write in a way that revealed himself and touch upon his real motivations for doing something or believing in something. Like many people, even in the present, he just did and tried to bring people along with him on the ride.

To remedy this problem, I've tried reading about people in his life along with people and movements that may have inspired him. This list includes: William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (whose history for some period also comes indirectly through what people around her wrote about her), Charles Fourier, Victor Cousin, Theodore Parker, the German Romantics, Albert Brisbane and Andrews Norton, just to name a few references.

And now I've moved onto Orestes August Brownson, a fiery hulk of friend who became very good friends with Mr. George Ripley. In Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia, Sterling Delano quotes either a text written by Mr. Brownson or Mr. Ripley that if not for Mr. Brownson, Mr. Ripley would not have established Brook Farm.

Thus far, I've stayed away from Mr. Brownson. From what I read previously, he always seemed to exist on the periphery of the Transcendentalists, someone they gave a trial membership to their, but he was even too crazy and out there for them!

How was I wrong. Apparently, Mr. Brownson had more influence on Henry David Thoreau than Mr. Emerson, which came as a shock to me.

Mr. Brownson still ended up being a little too rowdy for most of the Transcendentalists and his later conversion to Catholicism and conservatism makes one wonder about his intellectual and idealistic consistency (but I guess that's also what makes him a little interesting). Despite his larger than life presence that made them uncomfortable around him and cut down on their exposure to him, he may become a major source of information about one of his best friends, Mr. Ripley.

At least, hope so. . .

And this story, my friends, shows the kind of difficulty you will put to historians when they try to understand you better and write you story when you don't write a personal journal or something else that will transmit your true motivations, ideas, beliefs and feelings. Don't do it. Don't make life difficult for historians in the future. After all, they're the ones who will tell your story to the future. Just hope their resentment won't affect the tone of that story. It's not something you want to regret.

Dream #13

The wife and I are traveling cross country on buses. Reaching some small town, we decide to strike out either for some adventure or see a friend before we have to make our next connection.

Flash forward to finishing what we would be doing and/or realizing that we need to rush or we'll miss the connection. We get lost or realize that we can't make it back in time going the route we know. The wife stops as many people as she can to try getting directions or a better route home. She gets some directions, then we head off following them.

It's snowing out. We emerge out of some woods where a bridge spans over a river or a lake with a big ravine between the bridge and the water. I remember that we were told not to fall into the water.

I start my way over the bridge and notice that the bridge isn't in the best condition, there's holes in it, etc. etc. On my way over, looking down, I notice two gorillas jump up from the water and land in it, standing up, then amble over to the side of the shore where the wife was. At a loss, I let myself fall through one of the holes then land down in the water near the other side of the shore.

I need to get back to the wife and help her against the gorillas. Running through the woods, a panther emerges some distance away from me and doesn't notice me. Right! The guy who gave us directions told us to watch out for the gorillas or panthers!