Dandyfunk

Signs of Spring

The first crocus:

And some others on their way:

Now if only the deer would stay away.

YAQ

Yet another quiz -- two actually. One for spelling, and one for vocabulary.

DWT Spelling Test

DWT Vocabulary Test

I got 100% on the vocabulary and 75% on spelling. Thank goodness for spellcheckers!

more good stuff at Daily Writing Tips.

First Law Violation

An Australian man build a robot with total disregard for all three of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.
In fact, he built it specifically as a suicide machine to order to kill himself.
Read the story here.

Thanks for the trip, Arthur C Clarke

And I don't mean the head trip from the end of 2001.
I read the book many years ago after seeing the movie and leaving the theater both mystified and intrigued. I found and read the novel, the first one I ever read by Sir Arthur.
My favorite part was the trip to Saturn (Jupiter in the film) and the part that I always remembered was after HAL went homicidal and was disconnected, Bowman had to spend months alone on the ship. That showed what space travel between planets is -- not like space opera where ship zip between planets during commercial breaks.
2001 was the first book or story I ever read that dealt with realistic space travel, and it's in the back of my mind every time I write a story. Not the all powerful aliens, not the supercomputer with a Frankenstein complex, not the pre-history prologue. Just a realistic depiction of what life in space would be like in the next millennium.

Goldberg Variations

This is from chapter 56 of Wild Mind, "Whales."
Natalie Goldberg says: "The problem is that there are no good maps for the journey of a writer; each one goes it alone. Ultimately, that is always true, but it would be good to hear accounts of the process, so we know others have walked the path."
This is the reason that I read a lot of how-to books. I find that the writer writing about writing often says more about themselves than writing.
Every writer had a "first sale" story. There's a hunger among beginning writers to know and to find out just how it's done. And maybe later in the writer's career they'll be a break point, or a dark night of the soul. A much more personal moment, one where writing becomes something more than just a paycheck. Robert Silverberg's transformation from hack writer to Grandmaster as detailed in Science Fiction 101 is a perfect example.
I read how-to books to see another writer's path, not so much as a road map, but as an adventure story. How those story ideas formed, how that first sale was made, how chance brought an agent around are all more interesting than how to format a manuscript or how to develop interesting characters.

Confessions of a How to Book Junkie

Wild Mind, Living the Writer's Life, by Natalie Goldberg

Much like her previous book, Writing Down the Bones,  Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind contains short chapters and exercises about writing. They are not traditional exercises, they are things that usually begin "try this." She's not concerned with the plotting, manuscript formating or trying-to-find an agent aspects of some writing books, but the getting the thoughts down on paper type of writing. She does a lot a free writing, which is stream of consciousness writing without worrying about content or form. And every chapter has a nugget of a good idea at its core. This book leads you to write "wild" and get rid of the things holding you back.
I haven't done any of the exercises (yet!) but there were so many interesting topics here that I think I'll start a new series of post discussing them. I'll label them "Goldberg Variations."

Robots at work

Some robots get jobs in astronomy, like the Mars Global Surveyor.
Here's one of MGS's latest snapshots, a cool picture of earth and the moon as seen from Mars orbit.

Photo courtesy JPL, more photos here.

Not every robot is so lucky to have a cool job. Some robots don't have the academic background, and find earth-based jobs, most in the auto industry, and some in the security field, like this one:
Vigilante Robot fights drug dealers.

Celebrate pi day a new way

It's not just for geometricians anymore. This year, pi day (or 3-14, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about) is also Talk Like a Physicist Day.
It's also a nice day to celebrate birthdays, like Albert Einstein, Hank Ketcham (creator of Dennis the Menace), Diane Arbus and Kirby Puckett. See the full list here.

I always did have trouble remembering Eris

But not any more. Now I have a new mnemonic to help remember the names of the 8 planets and three dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris and the recently demoted Pluto), courtesy of the winner of the Nation Geographic Planetary Mnemonic contest, 10 year old Maryn Smith from Montana. She came up with My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.

Full story here.

Art School

I've been taking watercolor classes at Montclair Art Museum .
So far I've been mostly "experimenting" and don't have any interesting paintings to show, but my palette looks nice.