Month: April 2019

In which my own marketing nearly kills me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Writing1 Comment

I am not normally the type to read instructions, at least not at first. I’m perfectly happy to go over them once I’ve taken a shot at something, but my usual method is to muddle in and see if I can figure things out before touching the instructions. I’m not stubborn about it or anything like that; I just don’t go for the instructions first.

My new banner arrived today. I like it! It looks nice! And I should take a second and thank Jamie Noble Frier for the amazing artwork and Michael J. Martinez for the cover blurb. (Have you read Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3 yet? Get on that.)

The new banner is built into that base. It did not come with instructions.

Have you ever used one of these things before? There is a tension rod behind the banner itself. It hooks into the metal piece at the top of the banner, but 1) you need to know the feet are there (they rotate underneath the base for ease of transport) and 2) you need to be standing on the feet before you try and pull the banner up because otherwise the base is going to snap up toward your hands after a second or two and the whole thing becomes very unwieldy and also 3) it is not immediately clear how to hook the top of the banner into the top of the tension rod, especially if you do what I think is the natural thing and try to pull the banner up while standing in front of it, meaning that you’re obscuring your view of the tension rod while you’re pulling the banner up.

This means that two or three times you will either lose your grip on the banner or you will not seat it properly and it will crash back down into the base at what is frankly a terrifying velocity and volume and you will yell loud swears and your son will ask you what is wrong in a vaguely frightened tone of voice that you will be ashamed for making him use.

So. For future reference:

  1. Rotate the feet out from underneath the enclosure so that they are perpendicular to the base.
  2. Stand on the feet, behind the banner.
  3. Insert the extended tension rod into both of the holes in the base. There are TWO holes. The second one is invisible and it will take a moment to get the rod into both. FIND THEM BOTH.
  4. While continuing to stand on the feet, lift the banner up over your head and insert the tab on the tension rod into the slot on the banner. TEST IT to make sure it is seated properly.
  5. Walk away slowly, terrified that your footsteps will transmit a shock to the banner through the floor and it will snap back into place.
  6. Do not touch the fucking thing again until you are ready to take it down, and when you are, do it very carefully.

Learn from my mistakes, y’all.

Still here

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Monday was a bloody nightmare. I didn’t get a single second of sleep Sunday night– little enough sleep that it would normally trigger my Required Minimum Sleep for Showing Up at Work rule, but I feel like I can’t follow that rule on the first damn day back after Spring Break. I spent the whole day as a zombie, basically– most of the time there’s a shot of adrenaline that gets me through the day even if I come in kind of run down, but there was nothing that was going to make me human yesterday– not my coffee, not a couple of periods teaching (oh, yeah, I’m back in the classroom for those two periods for real for real this time,) not nothing.

My wife basically felt the same way, and we were both in bed before nine last night. I still didn’t really get the kind of sleep I wanted; I’ll try again tonight, I guess. Today was a better day, complete with some nice classroom success– these kids are chatty but I’m still a big fan of my honors class, and I’m getting there as I figure out the mix of personalities in my other class. One way or another, though, there was no way on earth a blog post was happening yesterday other than maybe some sort of primal scream thing and I pretty much did that on Sunday so two days in a row seemed kinda excessive.

Interesting thing: I’ve gotten emails from two different agents in the last week offering me books and asking if I’m willing to review them on the site. This is very much a thing I’d like to encourage! I like books! If you happen to be someone with the ability to make these things happen feel free to get in touch and send me stuff.

Also, uh, if any of y’all wanna represent me, let’s definitely talk.

Graaaaah

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I’ve alternated between three different moods today: generalized frustration; free-floating, directionless anger; and reading.

Why yes, I am back to work tomorrow! How’d you guess?

In which let’s go to bed and start over

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment
Lots of overgrowth, plus a goddamn tree fell down onto our fence.

Nothing today has gone quite right, y’all. My wife and I went out to clear some overgrowth along our back fence (a task that has to be done every year, at least, and which we do every two years, at most) this morning and I managed to whip myself in the eye with a tree branch somehow. Damn thing went perfectly under my glasses. Do we own safety glasses? Yes, we do, and my wife is an honest-to-God safety professional. Was I wearing them? Hell no, they get foggy and my glasses were supposed to be enough.

Hah. Dumbass.

It doesn’t hurt anymore but there is a visible scrape on the white of my eye and I spent a good several hours this morning and afternoon with the deeply weird feeling that I couldn’t see out of that eye when, in fact, I could. I don’t recommend that. People on Twitter were literally telling me to go to the ER. It was alarming.

Yes, I hurt myself, and then told Twitter about it and didn’t go see a doctor. Shut up.

Also our chainsaw is electrical and my wife managed to nearly cut the power cord in half at one point. It is possible that we shouldn’t be trusted around power tools any longer.

We tried to go to the zoo, but it was The First Nice Saturday of the Year, and holy shit was the zoo crowded. Like, “can’t get into the parking lot, the line to get in the door is a block long, don’t even bother looking for a parking spot” bad. So instead we ended up at the 4-H Fair’s Ag Days thing. The boy may officially be too old for this; I’m not sure. I was still weirded out by the whole eye thing and it’s possible that I wasn’t in a properly receptive mood to be surrounded by obese white Republicans with shitty tattoos.

My GOD, the shitty tattoos you see at Ag Days. Lord, y’all. I’m not usually the type to stealth photos of people in public to make fun of them on social media, but Ag Days makes that difficult.

Anyway. Cows, pigs, bunnies, alpacas. Never trust an alpaca. They’re all assholes, every last one of them. He didn’t really want to pet anything this year and was more interested in crawling around on the farm machinery that was scattered around. I took great pleasure in preventing him from crawling into the cargo end of a manure spreader by telling him what it was. Y’know. Family stuff.

Point is, today really hasn’t quite gone like I wanted it to, and I started a book on Monday or so that I’ve been saving for Spring Break because it’s long and I knew it was gonna be a tough read, and I finally gave up on it and put it down today because it’s just bad, and … bleh. I need to go to bed early tonight and find a way to do something fun with my last day of spring break, because I know my tendency is going to be to spend all day tomorrow in a bad mood and I don’t want to inflict that on my family.

So. Yeah.

In which I am a supervillain

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

This picture is either a testament to Apple’s utter dereliction in terms of innovative design over the last eight years or a sign that they believe they’ve achieved actual perfection in the iMac’s form factor. From where I’m sitting, the 2011-model iMac in the middle and the screaming beast I purchased today to finally replace it look exactly identical. From the side, you can tell that the newer one is much thinner, but if I’d simply replaced one with the other and not told my wife I’d bought a new computer I doubt she’d ever have noticed.

If you were reading this and thinking Luther, weren’t we just talking about your tendency towards poor financial decisions earlier this week? that’s not unfair, but: I submit that I got this computer for fifteen percent off because it is actually the flagship of last year’s model and not this year’s, that I have enough cash on hand to pay for half of it at a single go, and that with all the overtime I’ve been making at work lately paying it off by the end of the summer is a very reachable goal despite the nice chunk of change I dropped on it. Am I going to do that? Probably not, actually, because it’s not strictly necessary– but as I’ve also said this week my initial desktop has been making worrying noises at me and generally behaving in a somewhat untrustworthy manner and I’d rather replace the computer at a time of my choosing and not because it decided to go away.

The third monitor on the right is just a monitor and will be remaining on the desk; I mostly use it to display TweetDeck and iTunes while I work on the primary monitor. I may look into if I can just use the older computer as a secondary monitor– I don’t think I can, at least not in the same plug-it-in-and-don’t-worry-about-it fashion that I can the actual monitor does. I can’t convince it that it’s just a monitor and not a computer, in other words.

Next step: move my actual keyboard and the touchpad over to the new computer. I’m typing this on the bullshit tiny wireless keyboard they included with it, and while it’s a substantial improvement over any other wireless keyboard I’ve used, it’s also tiny and ridiculous and I demand size and a number pad and high degrees of clickiness from my keyboards, and the Das Keyboard that I have on my desk is perfect for me. The wireless mouse also has to go. I don’t use this as a gaming machine, so I don’t need a mouse at all, and the touchpad is wonderful.

Welcome to the new hotness, I guess.

SHAZAM! Non-spoiler #Review

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies, Reviews2 Comments

This is going to be a non-spoiler review (I’m only directly discussing stuff revealed in the trailers) because I did manage to see this early, even if it was only the night before general release. Honestly, the movie did catch me by surprise a couple of times and I feel like I want everyone going in to have the same chance at that that I had.

Also, continuing with the Facebook blustering: do not expect me to call the superhero “Shazam” at any point in this review. The movie is named Shazam! The wizard is named Shazam. The superhero is named Captain Marvel, and I don’t give a damn what DC or Warner Brothers’ legal departments have to say about that. If having two superheroes named Captain Marvel confuses you in a world where three superheroes are played by blond white men named Chris, I can’t help you.

I also have bad news for you about who the real “Captain Marvel” actually is.

Onward!

So. Yeah. Go see it. Go see it go see it GO SEE IT GO SEE IT GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW. This is exactly– exactly— the movie that I wanted to see, and you should go see it right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, standard disclaimers; I get enthusiastic. But I’m having a really hard time right now imagining how a movie about this Captain Marvel could have been any better than this one was, and I’m starting to have some hope that at least some corners of the people involved in making movies for DC have a clue about what they’re doing. They’ve now produced two great movies (Wonder Woman and Shazam!) and one (Aquaman) that … well, wasn’t actually good really but was awfully enthusiastic and fun. Okay, the rest of them have all been some flavor of hot garbage, but … progress, right?

Here’s the thing: You can’t do grimdark Captain Marvel. You just can’t. It doesn’t work unless, like in Kingdom Come, the point is that absolutely everything has been corrupted and fucked up. Captain Marvel’s childlike innocence and faith are at the core of the character, and while they’ve wisely made Billy Batson a bit older than usual for this movie they still get what he’s supposed to be. Much like Wonder Woman, this movie actually understands the character they’re making a movie about(*), and it remembers the very fucking important fact that Captain Marvel is supposed to be a Goddamned superhero and superheroes are supposed to save people.

And they kept Zach Snyder and his cancerous-ass direction as far away from this movie as they could, and they did it a hundred percent right, and they very much should be rewarded for it. I want this movie to make a lot of money, and I want the people responsible for DC’s movies to learn from it, dammit. There is no trace of the Murderverse in this movie. It’s wonderful.

The acting in the film is across-the-board phenomenal, particularly the two leads and the kid who plays Freddy Freeman, and if the movie has a flaw it’s that Freddy almost seems like he’d make a better Captain Marvel than Billy Batson does. He’s the heart of the film, though, and while Captain Marvel is an inherently cheesy superhero (one of his nicknames is literally The Big Red Cheese, y’all) the movie dips into the cheesiness without ever being overwhelmed by it. The action is well-shot, the effects are phenomenal, and– rather unexpectedly– the bad guy and his minions are scary as hell, to the point where I’d caution against taking anyone under 10 to see this without previewing it first. It’s PG-13 for a reason. Is it weird that a movie about a kid superhero can’t be seen by kids? Maybe a little, but again: they aged Billy up a little bit and the movie is a bit more mature than one with an 11- or 12-year old Billy Batson might be. This movie isn’t PG-13 because they say “shit” a few times, even though they do. The movie is PG-13 because Dr. Sivana is too scary for a PG villain.

If you are the type to be irritated by Superhero Physics, where a bus can fall off a bridge and be caught by a man standing underneath the bridge and no one in the bus is harmed because the superhero caught the bus … well, remember that Captain Marvel’s powers are literally magical and maybe be prepared to have to roll with that. Because there is a lot of Superhero Physics in this movie. He’s magic. You’ll be OK.

So, yeah: we’re seeing a great trend recently, with Into the Spider-Verse and now Shazam!, where studios that aren’t Marvel are finally starting to figure out how to make superhero movies that aren’t crap. This is what we’ve been telling them we want, guys. Reward good behavior, and go see this one.

(*) Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry is not remotely the Arthur Curry from the comic books, but frankly Aquaman himself has always been treated as such a flat character that it barely even registers. I’ve been reading comics since I was nine and I couldn’t tell you how Aquaman might react to a situation differently from any random human selected from the side of the road other than a vague commitment to environmentalism. I can’t tell you how a movie that “gets” Aquaman might look different from one that doesn’t. I can for damn sure do that for most of the rest of DC’s heroes, and they’ve fallen down repeatedly on this front.

In which I get lucky

On By Luther M. SilerIn art, Geek, movies2 Comments

My wife and I get to see Shazam a little bit early tonight, which is super cool. I kinda lucked out getting the tickets; the folks at the comic shop had an extra pair that a customer had given them to “give to a good home,” and I guess we’re a good home.

I’m spending the day fiddling around the house trying to accomplish minor things– the impending end of my Spring Break is starting to weigh on me a bit– so in lieu of an actual post today, have this Superman/Captain Marvel short comic, which I found on imgur yesterday and am frantically trying to find the source material for because I must own it. “Who did this to you?” is the most Superman reaction ever:

(EDIT: This is from Superman/Shazam: First Thunder, by Judd Winick and Joshua Middleton. It came out in 2006.)

(Oh, what the hell– while I’m at it, these pages from Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, one of the best Superman/Captain Marvel stories ever published. Context: it’s in the future, Superman has returned from retirement, and Captain Marvel has been brainwashed into villainy by Lex Luthor, which is why they’re fighting.)

Okay this is a banners and finance blog now

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

And video games. Because sometimes I talk about Sekiro. Which I discovered today I’ve put forty hours into since it came out … twelve days ago.

*coughs*

This is why I can’t get anything done.

So anyway. My computer is from 2011, right? It’s not dead yet but I’m looking at replacing it this summer sometime. I created that banner in GIMP, and the first thing I had to do was download the newest version of GIMP because the old one wasn’t compatible with my operating system any longer. The new one is giving my computer hiccups. Then I pulled up the template that I used to create my original Skylights banner and created the new banner.

I then tried to upload it and got barked at because of the resolution of the image– which, remember, they’ve already printed a banner from this exact template. Which, it turns out, was 100 DPI. They wanted 300.

Oh, and also a pull-up banner has slightly different dimensions than the one I originally had made. Oops!

I created a new version of the file at 300 DPI. My computer said “Uh, you know that’s 2.2 GB just for the template, right? And that I’m old?” And then it made some noises I’ve never heard before, and everything took a lot longer than it had on the original images. And I dunno if my images are gonna look right scaled up quite that much, although my cover file was supposed to be 300 DPI itself, it was also for a cover that was only like a foot wide and not three.

And then I dug around some more, and found their template– meaning the one the printer I want to use provides– and it’s 150 DPI.

So my computer will explode if I made the file 300 DPI, my original file was 100 DPI and the image looks fine, and their own templates are 150 DPI.

This will be fine, right?

In accordance with the advice received from many of you yesterday, I will not be cancelling the card. Interestingly, after griping about there not being some sort of simulator online I dug around and discovered that Capital One actually has a “what will this do to my credit?” tool on their website. Their suggestion was that cancelling that card will drop my credit score 5 points, and considering that it’s gone up 21 points in the last six months I can probably afford the hit.

Nonetheless, I’m following instructions.