Oh that’s JUST GREAT

On September 11, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy6 Comments

I will never stop being entertained and/or completely creeped out by the search queries that lead to my blog:

I want so badly to know what the unknown search terms are each day, guys. So badly.

Tonight will be an interesting test; my nerdery will be put head-to-head against my advancing age and inertia. I want to stay up to preorder an iPhone 6 (12:01 AM provided no technical issues, and we allll know there are gonna be technical issues) but I am old and I like sleep and I have to work tomorrow. Will I make it? Or will I go “fuck it,” and get up a little early tomorrow, and maybe omg end of world have to wait an extra week for my new shiny to arrive?

Keep in mind that I waited in line for three days for tickets for Episode One, and do not regret it. I am an old hand at this shit. The problem is the “old” bit is literal.

We’ll see what happens.

In which gimme gimme gimme

On September 9, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek11 Comments

No one is more surprised than me– mostly because no one but me cares– to discover that Apple’s big nerd prom today has probably sold me a Pebble Steel. I love my Pebble– it is, hands down, my favorite piece of technology since my first cell phone– but I was fully expecting to trade it in for Apple’s smart watch when they finally got around to introducing one, mostly on account of I’m wearing what looks like a piece of cheap plastic on my wrist. I didn’t want an iWatch because of the functionality; I wanted one because it would look more like a watch a grown-up should be wearing.

Reactions are unsurprisingly mixed, but I love the look of the thing, and I love the word “fluoroelastomer,” but I don’t love the fact that they didn’t mention battery life other than, apparently, claiming that you’d charge it “every night.” I have gotten used to wearing a watch to bed because my watch is also my alarm clock. I don’t ever want to be awakened by a sound again, folks; that’s how much better a wrist vibration is as an alarm clock. It’s wonderful. And if the Apple Watch doesn’t have at a minimum four or five days in between charges (which is about what I get with the Pebble) I don’t want it. I won’t spend $350 (minimum!) on a watch that I can’t use as an alarm clock. That’s half the reason I have a smart watch.

Now, the iPhone 6, on the other hand, is an auto-buy. My phone is reaching the end of its useful life (I’m having to have to have a charging cord with me at all times) and plus I’ve long since accepted the fact that I’m the guy who gets a new phone almost every year anyway. So there is no if dimension to the upgrade, only when. And I could go into the details of the when except I’m pretty sure this post is already nerdy enough. Needless to say it involves deciding whether I’m less pissed at Sprint for having shitty service or Verizon for generically being assholes. I’m tilting toward going back to Verizon except that involves porting my number over in time to still preorder the phone, which is, uh, kinda complicated, blah blah blah nerdwank nerdwank.

What did normal people think about today?

Writer’s Ink: Luther Siler

On August 25, 2014August 25, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek7 Comments

Normally when I blatantly steal an idea for a post from an author, it’s Scalzi– in fact, some of my highest traffic posts in the history of this blog have been topics I got from him. So I’m proud to announce that this particular blatantly stolen topic has Jim C. Hines as its originator instead. I have never read a word of Hines’ fiction, and I do not have any idea why, because I feel like I’ve been following him on Twitter and through other means (which, mysteriously, I can’t recall) forever, and he entertains me, so what the hell, man, go buy some of his books.

Anyway. He’s been doing this series called Writer’s Ink, which are short interview posts where he interviews a writer about their tattoos. Jim C. Hines has never met me! He’s never heard of me, either! Which makes it unlikely that he’s going to be interviewing me about my tattoos. But I’m a writer! And I have tattoos! So I’m posting about them, because I’m pretty sure posting pictures of my Great Hairy Pastiness is something that I’ve not done around here yet. And, as it works out, nearly all of my tattoos are book related.

So, working more or less chronologically:

LEGS:

That is, and have fun wrapping your head around it, my right leg on the left and my left leg on the right. The tattoo on the left is the first tattoo I ever got, and it’s a Bible verse: Genesis 4:9, to be specific. It says “Am I my brother’s keeper,” which is what Cain famously says to God when God asks him what happened to Abel. Why I got it is a post in itself; needless to say I used to be a biblicist in a former life and I find this particular phrase specifically as well as this story in general endlessly fascinating.

If you don’t recognize the other tattoo, we can’t be friends anymore. It wraps completely around the leg.

LEFT SHOULDER:

This is my only hand-drawn tattoo; I drew it myself, which is kinda fun. It’s an ibis, the Egyptian symbol for the god Thoth. (For the record: I read Hebrew, so I know that one was right. This tattoo I had checked out by a buddy of mine who is a literal Egyptologist. So this ain’t like me showing you a Chinese letter that is actually the character for dim sum and saying it means “Strength” or “Honor” or some shit like that. Never tattoo yourself in a language you or someone you trust can’t read.)

Why Thoth? Thoth taught the Egyptians language and mathematics.

RIGHT SHOULDER:

El-Ahrairah, from Watership Down, which you should read if you haven’t yet. This image is directly from the film version of the book, and if you’ve seen it you know it’s from riiiight around the time he pisses God off, which always entertained me. Watership Down is one of my favorite books ever.

There’s also a tattoo on my left wrist, which I won’t be reproducing here because it incorporates part of my name. It’s in backlight ink! It’s really cool! Sorry. 🙂

I feel like I should be tagging somebody. Other people! Tell me of your tattoos!

In which read the disclaimers

On July 22, 2014July 22, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek3 Comments

Warning: Geek content substantially higher than normal.

I genuinely consider getting rid of my old-school D&D rulebooks to be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my adult life. I’m serious, here: I experience active regret about getting rid of my first and second edition D&D rulebooks at least three or four times a year, and sooner or later I’m gonna break down and just go find used editions somewhere and pretend I never got rid of them. I still have my original Dungeons and Dragons boxed sets (all the BECMI books, from the red “Basic” set through the gold “Immortals” box) although I don’t have the boxes anymore. I know exactly where they are in the house and I’ll never get rid of them. But I never really played basic D&D, whereas I spent most of high school and college playing 2nd edition. I’m such a 2nd edition nerd that I’m convinced the only reason I’m any good at adding and subtracting negative numbers is because of THAC0.

Also, I still think THAC0 was a good idea, to the point where I’ll fight you if you say otherwise. I’ve played a few games of D&D under the 3rd or 3.5 edition rules, and for some reason I could never wrap my head around how anything worked under the new rules. I bought the full set of core rulebooks when 4th edition launched a few years ago, read through them once, and put them away, because 4th edition was a videogame-saturated horror and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Point is, when I left college I knew I was moving somewhere where I wouldn’t be playing anymore, and in a weird fit of altruism where I wanted the books to be with people who would use them more often, I either gave them away or sold them to the guys in my gaming group. Never shoulda done it.

(Hell, I may just have to go to The Griffon tomorrow. They carry used rulebooks. I might get lucky.)

(Also, have I said this? Grond, one of the two main characters of The Benevolence Archives, was originally one of my D&D characters.)

I downloaded the .pdf of– what the hell are they calling it?– the new basic rules for the newest, we’re-not-gonna-call-it-the-fifth-edition version of D&D. The .pdf is free; their “starter set” is, I think, in stores now, and the traditional hardcover books are gonna trickle out over the next few months– no jump straight to the three-hardcover box set like the 4th edition did.

(Note that I still have my 3.5 and 4th edition rulebooks– the ones I hate. Just not the rules for the game I played.)

Anyway, this is a really long lead-in for a really short observation: based on what I read in the .pdf, they’ve gone a long way to strip the obnoxious video-game and wargaming elements out of the game, which was my biggest problem with the 4th edition. I no longer feel like it’s required to use a mat and miniatures with the rules. I’m a purist, remember; I’ll draw out a map on graph paper if necessary as I play, but I’ll be damned if I’m counting hexes to decide if something’s in range or not, and the positioning rules were a God damned sin against man and nature. Fuck did I hate 4th edition.

Right, got distracted: I think I like how this game looks like it plays. I know at least one person who has already expressed some interest in running through the adventure that comes with the starter set, and it looks like only one person has to actually buy that to run through everything. I may have to go ahead and join. I miss playing D&D every now and again, as I said, and I miss enjoying D&D rather more often than that. Finding the time is always tricky, but I think in this case it might be worth it.

Casting call!

On July 15, 2014July 15, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Politics9 Comments

So I’ve been thinking about superhero movies lately. This isn’t surprising; if I’m being honest I spend roughly 20% of my waking hours thinking about superhero movies, so… yeah.

For some reason, though, for the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about casting. And I’ve got this big list sitting next to me of actors that I think should be immediately cast in particular roles. Some of them are super obvious and some are not. One or two have actually already been cast, but I’m including them anyway because perfect. Some of them are never going to happen because they’ve already been cast in other superhero movies– some of them even in the same franchise. I don’t care. Feel free to include others in the comments if you like.

These are in no particular order. Wait, no. I’ll start with villains since I don’t have as many of those. Also, I take no responsibility for formatting here. It’s gonna be a mess. I apologize.

Laurence Fishburne as Lex Luthor. This one is the least likely to happen because the dummies already cast him as Perry White. Laurence Fishburne should obviously have been Lex Luthor. Come on, guys.

Tommy Lister as the Juggernaut. They cast Vinnie Jones as him in whichever X-Men film he was in; I think Lister is both bigger and scarier.

Rosario Dawson as Harley Quinn. Harley hasn’t been on the live-action big screen yet to the best of my knowledge despite being essential to every animated Batman and also a mainstay on the cosplay scene. Rosario would be perfect.

Ken Watanabe as Doctor Strange. I think Doctor Strange has already been cast, although I don’t know for sure and don’t feel like Googling it. Whoever they chose, it’s wrong. Should be Watanabe.

Jason-Momoa-Aquaman-Getty-Images-DC-Comics

Jason Momoa as Aquaman. This one has supposedly actually already happened. I’m including it anyway because it’s fuckin’ perfect. Speaking of Batman v. Superman, or whatever it’s called…

Idris Elba as Batman. Because fuck a Batfleck. Yes, I know he’s in the Thor movies. Chris Evans was the Human Torch and Captain America. We’ll be okay.

(Actually, Ben Affleck wasn’t that bad an idea.)

Gina Torres as Wonder Woman. Because she is already an Amazon goddess. They gotta fix the costume, though.

(Fair question: Why am I not casting Superman? Because it is essential to me that any actor playing Superman be someone I have never heard of in order for me to take him seriously. Superman must be an unknown; ergo, I can’t play this game with him. Plus, I really really want an Icon movie. Hmm. Chiwetel Ejiofor would make a great Icon.)

More? ‘Kay:

Naya Rivera as Zatanna. Yes, from Glee. Zatanna’s got a stage background; somebody who can sing and dance would work well, depending on how they wrote the movie. Again with the costume, though.

I’m only partially convinced about this one, but I’m going to go with it anyway:

Will Smith, preferably in bulked-up Muhammad Ali mode, as Captain Marvel. Yeah, okay, this one’s a little odd. Why do I like it so much? Because then we also get…

Jaden Smith as Billy Batson. Which, c’mon, having a father-son team play Billy Batson and Captain Marvel in the same movie would be kind of awesome. Even if I do kinda think Jaden Smith sorta sucks a little bit.

Okay, yeah, still potentially a little weak. I will fight you if you don’t like this one:

Donald Glover as Spider-Man. A choice so obvious that the actor himself has campaigned for it and if you type his name into Google “Donald Glover Spider-Man” comes up on its own. Yes, I know about Miles Morales. I love Miles Morales. More than Peter Parker, actually. But I still want Glover as Parker.

Speaking of people named “Captain Marvel”…

Aisha Tyler as Captain Marvel. The awesome one. Come on, she’s perfect. PERFECT, I tell you!

Orlando Jones as Reed Richards. I feel like at some point I didn’t like Orlando Jones; I don’t remember why and now think I was crazy. He doesn’t immediately scan as somebody who should play a superhero… but neither does Mr. Fantastic, really, and he’d be great as a super scientist. Do this, Marvel.

Speaking of actors from Sleepy Hollow…

John Cho as Hank Pym, preferably in his white-trench-coat, gadget-growing incarnation from The West Coast Avengers. Hilariously, getting Cho cast as Pym is actually far more likely than the Pym from the Whackos ever getting acknowledged on-screen.

Speaking of Hank Pym…

Dascha Polanco as The Wasp. Mostly because I want to see Dascha Polanco everywhere I look for the rest of my life, as she’s adorable. Also considered, because hilarious: Dazzler.

Two more. This one may be slightly controversial. And, speaking of actresses from Orange is the New Black:

Laverne Cox as She-Hulk. At first I was a little nervous at the idea of casting a transgender woman as She-Hulk, because it feels just a teeny bit wrong. Then I came to my senses because Laverne Cox is God damned awesome and she gets to play She-Hulk if she bloody well wants to.

And, finally…

Lupita Nyong’o as Storm. Which, okay, you may have noticed I sort of have a theme going here, and this casting sorta breaks it. But still. No one alive gets to play Storm on-screen again until actual literal African goddess Lupita Nyong’o does. And I know I used that phrasing once already, and I don’t care, shut up.

More suggestions in comments!

In which I do the math

On July 9, 2014July 9, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

$keep-calm-and-do-the-math-25$ Okay. That’s a 3.5 gallon tub of RedGard. Per Google, 3.5 gallons is 808 cubic inches. Let’s assume that between the rollers, the paintbrushes, the paint tray, the sides of the container, etcetera that a full third of the RedGard has ended up wasted in some way or another.

Therefore there are 808 x .66 = 533.28 cubic inches of RedGard on the walls.

The two side walls are roughly 32 inches wide by 80 high; the back wall is 58 inches long by 80 high. That’s 32 x 80 x 2 = 5120 square inches on the sides and 58 x 80 = 4640 square inches on the back for a total of 9760 square inches.

Divide the RedGard’s volume by the wall’s area to determine the thickness: 533.28/9760 = .0546 inches thick.

One mil is 1/1000 of an inch, therefore the coating of RedGard is 54.6 mils thick.

The coating is supposed to be 30 mils thick.

We good.

Edited to add…

On January 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Interesting follow-up to the math post here. Stay tuned for a few more minutes; there’s another chunk of the Benevolence Archives coming. All violence from here on out!

On math and feminism and societies

On January 18, 2014January 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Politics3 Comments

Feeling a little grab-baggish today. First things first, watch this. Shut up and do it, dammit, it’s Saturday and you can spare eight bloody minutes:

You didn’t watch it, did you? Jerk. Fine, I’ll sum up: the fella in the video is a British physicist, and he demonstrates a couple of interesting properties of infinite series: first, that the sum of 1 -1 +1 -1 +1… out into infinity is actually one half. Then, to further screw with our brains, he demonstrates that the sum of the series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5… is negative one twelfth. Which is completely absurd, but the demonstration he works through is elegant and relatively simple even for non-mathematicians (which, for the record, is a category I’m including myself in) so long as they have some recollection of how algebra works.

I came across this here, at Phil Plait’s awesome Bad Astronomy blog. The article touched off a bit of a shitstorm in the comments and elsewhere on the Interwubs for what is probably a perfectly obvious reason; it doesn’t make a speck of logical sense. The math concepts being applied are apparently actually useful in string theory. The problem, of course, is that most of the people involved in the argument don’t have the faintest goddamn idea what they’re talking about– which, surely, is the first time something like that has ever happened on the Internet. This makes the argument not terribly enlightening.

Me, I’m inclined to trust the experts– while I agree that neither answer makes a drop of intuitive sense, I’m also sympathetic to the counter-argument that infinity itself doesn’t actually make a drop of sense to our non-infinite brains and that therefore “this doesn’t make sense” isn’t actually a valid knock against the math. In fact, if I’m being honest, I find that argument fascinating.(*) The guy in the video also points out that you’re right that if you stop at any point along the sequence, yes, you’re going to get a certain number, either 1 or 0 in the first instance and something really big in the second– but that if you extend the series to infinity, a concept that doesn’t rightly fit in our brains, you get these wonderfully unexpected results. It’s cool. And he’s kind of adorable. So go do what I said and watch the video, because I know you didn’t watch it the first time.

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Complete change of subject: I need a feminist, or at least someone with a bigger vocabulary than me, to ‘splain me something, and to do it out of the goodness of her or his heart, because I’m perfectly aware I can research this myself but I’d rather ask the Internet for some reason: is there a specific term for a society that is patriarchal in practice but not by law, other than “de facto patriarchy”? Like, a single term? The example I’m thinking of is America, obviously, where there are no longer any laws preventing women from, say, high office, or corporate boards, or other offices of high power that are currently occupied either nearly exclusively or literally exclusively by men, but that nonetheless all or nearly all of those offices are occupied by men.

To phrase it differently, I’m looking for a term or set of terms that distinguishes what I’ll call for the sake of argument a “hard” patriarchy– where women are literally not allowed access to positions of power via specific religious or legally enforceable and punishable prohibitions, from a “soft” patriarchy where the barrier is culture and not law. Note that in a practical sense the effects can be exactly the same, which is why “de facto” and “de jure” would work if they weren’t phrases and not individual terms.

And maybe also you can see why I’m not trying to stuff this into a Google search, too. 🙂 Anybody got anything for me?

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(*) We’re gonna leave my inconsistency re: theology there aside, although now that I’ve noticed it I may think about it harder later.