A couple vignettes:

 

 

 

This Sunday I’m getting on the Ritual Roasters Tour Bus to go to Petaluma for the Western Regional Barista Competition- Whoo hoo! I’m pretty sure this doesn’t make me a groupie (hey! I’m not putting out!) or a fangirl (well, I am going to ask for autographs and take photos) but I might be a roadie (hey can I help with that?). Either way- I am totally freaking psyched about this! Whoo whoo serious barista magic!

And for all of your Steampunk fans out there- Wholphin has a pretty awesome film by an Australian team, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.  Their website, Gothia Gazette is a steampunk lover's dream come true.

Read this description by the writer on IMDB:

Since I have a little downtime before I begin working again- I've been playing a lot of Civilization 4, and working on my metafiction/False Document. I've been having a lot of trouble on that front- I have notebooks full of notes- sketches, research, etc for my stories- but it is entirely fragmented. Basicly- I have the following:

• A long (about 170 pages) backstory which was originally intended to be a stand alone fantastic fiction with a historical/biblical background.
• 20 postcards I designed 2 years ago that all have encrypted messages related to a larger storyline with an encryption I designed.
• 15 Essays written by "experts" on the various subjects in my book- mainly dealing with martial arts history, archeology, paleontology, linguistics, anthropology, plastic surgery, and swarm intelligence. Basicly, these were written as a way to convince the reader that the things I am writing about are plausible- as well as to throughly educate myself about the plausability and limitations of the subject matter I was writing into my fiction.
• A long timeline of events in the form of a journal by one character experiencing all of the above, either by creating it, hearing about it by another character, or merely interacting with someone that will later have input upon those subjects.

So the problem is- "what now?"

How do I take all this stuff and make it into something a person would want to read? What would the format be? Something like Griffin and Sabine? More like House of Leaves, or Dictionary of the Khazars? What do I do?

Does this sound interesting to any of you? Thoughts?

pps: If you haven't already- read Myths over Miami from the Miami New Times in June of 1997. I just reread it yesterday- still one of my favourite things.

Recent updates:

• Invited to ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. They are paying for me to build kiosks, and for the airfare and hotel costs for the three of us.


• Classes begin on Sept 7th, so hopefully I can get back from Linz in time to make my first class. Lets hope.


• Initial interview with Time magazine- we'll see if that goes anywhere.


• The Wired article came out, "The Other Turing Test".


• "BitTorrent for Dummies": I was the technical editor for this book, and it is about to be released!


• Bennington has given me an all but full scholarship this year. (My new comp sci professor (this_old_man ) just met Björk!)


• I updated my résumé a little bit, but I'm having trouble figuring out where to put the above stuff.


• I really need to figure out how to go to pop!tech for free this year. fie fie.


• I have a school break from October 21-23, and then another November 23-27 (When I am supposed to be at the conference in Surrey.) Classes end on December 15th, and then I have to be back to school by February 20th. I need to get a Field Work Term organised.

In other news- I have the following two weekends free, and then I'm (supposedly) off to Linz. The excitement never ends.

And forrzr_grl 's benefit, since she thinks I am majoring in underwater basket weaving, I thought I'd clarify my plans!

I'll be working on my thesis: An Illustrated Primer: Design and Implementation of a digital mentor (clearly a working title)

I'll be taking Calculus, a computer programming class, intro Japanese, a Bio 400 class, and a thesis credit. According to Bard, I've already fulfilled the requirements for a double major in Biology (Cognitive Neuroscience) and in Linguistics (Cognitive), and I am just two credits short of a Computer Science degree (AI).