Author Archives: Jerry

A Science Question

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While living in Prague I probably drank more tap water than anyone else I knew, but I drank plenty of bottled water as well. Since I was a) environmentally aware and b) lazy, I ended up with a large collection of bottles waiting to go to the recycling bin up the road. After a while I began to observe a pattern, and as I packed up the apartment to move back to the states I took a brief timeout to document the phenomenon. Please observe exhibit A:

shrinking bottles

The bottle on the left is the youngest, the oldest is on the right. The burning question for today is, “why are the bottles shrinking over time?” All the bottles were stored with lids on, some with dribbles of water in them. Sometimes the water had been carbonated, other times not. Bottles do not puff back up when the apartment is particularly warm, nor can I find any other thermal explanation that would not even out over time. Age (on the scale of months) is definitively a factor.

So what’s going on? Is there a chemical reaction with the plastic that is reducing the number of gas molecules inside? Is there a sort of one-way membrane effect going on that lets air molecules out but not back in? Most likely the pressure is lower in the bottles than outside, due to the plastic wanting to revert to its original shape — unless there’s something about plastic that makes it want to shrivel up like that.

Any chemists out there want to hazard a guess? Physicists? Mechanical engineeers? UFO conspiracy specialists? Science Fiction writers? I’ll listen to any theory you care to offer.

Thanks!

Filming Murder, Sincerely

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It was a gray Saturday morning in Los Angeles, with the occasional misty rain. My costar and I were running a bit late for our breakfast meet-up with the director, a delay caused largely by my inability to get out of the hotel room with everything I needed. We were both groggy, having not slept well despite a comfortable bed at the Hilton (a hotel whose motto should be “we charge extra for that”). Chalk it up to anticipation for the events of the day.

Yours Truly stretching his acting ability to the limits by putting on shoes

Yours Truly stretching his acting ability to the limits by putting on shoes

Breakfast was nonetheless pleasant. Eggs over-easy (flipped too soon) and decent pancakes at a place called Twain’s on Ventura Boulevard. fuego, Harlean, and I managed to communicate while blessed caffeine worked its magic. fuego told us stories from the previous days of shooting. I’m really looking forward to seeing the other episodes — especially the one I wrote. Eventually fuego had to go pick up our Director of Photography and a bunch of gear. He left us with a map to the day’s location and an hour to kill.

Getting a shot of the prop script over my shoulder

Getting a shot of the prop script over my shoulder

The location was a beautiful house overlooking Universal City. (The sound guy later pointed out the set for ‘Desperate Housewives’ below us.) The crew set to work and they all seemed competent as far as I could tell. While this was not nearly the size of production as “Moonlight Sonata” there was still plenty of stuff to set up. Once again we were shooting on a Red, although the lens kit and lighting package were more modest. The sound guy and his assistant were on the ball. While that was going on my costar/make-up tech went to work on my face. Soon we were ready to shoot.

fuego frames the shot of the producer coming up the stairs

fuego frames the shot of the producer coming up the stairs

The first few shots had no dialog, which was good. It gave me a chance to get comfortable and get in the flow of things. At the same time, I haven’t the slightest idea how my facial expressions work onscreen. Too much? Not enough? I guess I’ll know soon. In the end there were quite a few shots to put the action together, getting me from reading a screenplay up the stairs with an extension cord and into the bathroom where my wife was bathing.

There was a rather long break while the crew put gels over the windows in the bathroom to adjust the light color. Meanwhile Harlean took care of her own makeup and we went over our newly-redrafted lines. (The original lines were overtaken by events, particularly the time of day we could shoot.) Finally everything was ready, the special effects guy and his helper showed up and went to work, and we broke for lunch. At that point I was ready to just get going with the dialog, but the ribs were delicious.

Tinting the bathroom windows.

Tinting the bathroom windows.

The afternoon went smoothly, as far as I could tell. Nobody complained about my acting to my face; and Harlean did a great job — such a good job we added a line to let her exercise her pissed-off/sarcastic vocal tone (the one that will make her all the rage in Hollywood). A blow-dryer took a bath, sparks flew, breakers popped, and I said the line “This is awkward” about a dozen different ways over the course of the shooting.

One thing I can say as an actor, I’m not the sort of guy who complains about doing another take. There’s always something I want to fix about the last performance. In fact, as I sit here now, I think I’d like one more go at the speech that leads up to the blow-dryer toss. I think I could have been a lot more expressive, with more expansive gestures. Generally more mood-swingy, edging toward euphoria.

Preparing the bathtub

Preparing the bathtub

Next time.

The day ended with director, DP, and the two actors enjoying a beer in a Studio City living room, watching the sun set over Universal City. It felt good, having it behind me, having a general feeling that I didn’t mess things up too badly. Over dinner that night we made plans to get back together when a rough edit is done. I wonder what I’ll see.

Note: You can see a bunch more pictures at my gallery.

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Road Trip Supplies: Then and Now

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The following is a simple table of the food I bought for my solo road trip a few weeks ago and the food my sweetie and I packed for our trip together this weekend. You may draw your own conclusions:

Solo With my favorite road-trip partner
Beef Jerky Honey-Roasted turkey sandwiches on sourdough mini-baguettes
A big container of cookies A big container of cookies
Half-gallon of cranberry juice A whole bunch of fruit juice boxes
Almonds The same package of almonds
I could swear there was something else baby carrots
grapes
Packed in the grocery bag they came in. Packed in insulated bag with blue ice.
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Wakey wakey!

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This morning I awoke abruptly to the beeping of an alarm clock. There ought to be a law. The annoying sound chased away the dream I was having; my sweetie and I had gone to the moon and we were setting up in a nice little house. I was trying to figure out how to take a video to prove we were there, one that couldn’t be faked. As the beeper beeped I was trying to juggle in low gravity. It wasn’t going well.

Six minutes later, as the snooze alarm tried to convince us that yes, it really was time to get up, I was turning down the opportunity to be a drug distributor in Prague.

Six minutes after that… Let’s just say that there was a lot of snoozing this morning.

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Road Trip!

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That’s right, kids, tomorrow my sweetie and I will be hitting the open road, just the two of us, a few clothes, and a cooler full of munchies. Good times!

We’re heading down to Los Angeles where my brother is currently hanging out. He was working on a movie, but it got canned, so instead he’s devoting his time to making a series of short films all tied together thematically. My better half and I will play a married couple, in a very very short film based on a story that first appeared right here at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas — though I didn’t write it. (The story was posted as a comment before I moved the blog to the new platform, so it’s in the old comment system.)

fuego and company will also be filming a short based on the original blog episode that inspired the comment, and a couple of other shorts as well. Filming is under way already, but I haven’t heard how it’s going. They have a good crew of people and a good camera, though, so I’m optimistic.

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Upgrading the Search Function

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The other day I wondered how many times I’d used the phrase “You don’t have to thank me” in this blog. No problem, I thought, I’d just pop the phrase into the search feature over on the sidebar and let it tell me.

The only problem was, it didn’t give a very good answer. It also included partial matches, which would have been all right if it had either a) ranked the results, or b) shown a little excerpt of the resulting matches with the searched-upon words emphasized. The built-in WordPress search function does neither. Off I went to find alternatives.

One option was to hook up Google to do the search. That’s a pretty good option from a functional standpoint; nobody is as good at ranking results and showing you a bit to help you with your decision. The downside is that it’s pretty ugly. My (very) brief search made it appear that I wouldn’t be able to do much with the results. My search for Google-based solutions was brief because I found another WordPress plugin called “Better Search” which did in fact return ranked answers. Hooray!

Only, not so fast, Sparky. The plugin is still young, and doesn’t provide much in the way of customizing the look of the results, either. The good news was that the source code is right there and I thought it wouldn’t be too tough to rearrange things a bit to make it much easier to customize. The plugin author had already done the mysterious, magical steps to allow a template file to work, all that was left was giving the template the power. So I did that, and sharpened up some PHP skills while I was at it. Now if you do a search, you will see that the results include a relevance ranking. The result page is still pretty ugly, because I haven’t finished tweaking my new template for my site. (I tried to start with a general one that would be useful to others.)

Then, I typed “You don’t have to thank me” into the search box and got… No matches found. What? I know I’ve used that phrase before. I tried removing the word with the apostrophe, in case that had something to do with it. Nope. Eventually I got down to the word “thank”. No matches.

Here’s the thing: MySQL, the database I use, has built this fancy full-text matching thing (which I learned an awful lot about yesterday), but they’ve optimized it for huge sites. There is a list of common words they throw out to reduce the number of matches. Six of those words are “you”, “don’t”, “have”, “to”, “thank”, and “me”. Wow. To make things worse, I can’t change the list. Only the big boys who have their own servers can control the list. Those are the ones least likely to want to change the list, but there you go.

There were some other annoying “features” of the MySQL Full-Text search (exact phrase matching doesn’t work like you’d think, for instance), but some of those I suspect are the result of my provider using an older version of the database.

Now, I can put up with the limits of MySQL (this morning i was coding in my head the algorithm for showing an excerpt with emphasis), or shift focus and let the Goog or it’s new arch-rival bing do the heavy lifting – and the formatting. Why can’t this stuff just be easy?

Edited to Add: Well, that blog episode went obsolete in a hurry. I’m currently using a Google sidebar thingie that is visually acceptable (and adaptable). Play around with it!

There is a feature of the Better Search plugin I was using that I will miss – it kept track of recent searches and produced one-click links in a cloud that showed popularity. I guess it’s not a major loss, since not that many people search here, but I liked it.

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Night of the Avenging Blowfish

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The first thing you notice about Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love, and Luncheon Meat by John Welter is the humor. The book is downright funny, and not just a one-note sort of funny. At the start we are with a group of Secret Service agents who may (or may not) have been challenged to a baseball game by the CIA. The game will be played at night, in an unknown location. The challenge on the bulletin board may be a prank. The Secret Service men are eager to form a team, primarily because their boss doesn’t want them to. Silly? Perhaps, but no less silly than living your entire life ready to shoot anyone who looks like they might want to harm the president. No less silly, but a lot less painful.

Doyle is one of those agents. He and the other bachelors in the service sometimes go out drinking, to look at the women in the bars they will never meet. It’s hard to have a romance when you can’t even say where you work. Doyle has another secret, one all his own, to share with no one. He’s so desperately lonely that he’s starting to crumble. He’s also in love with a married woman whom he can never, ever tell about his feelings.

He’s also in a bit of a pickle at work. One night during a visit to the White House kitchen, he finds the chef preparing Spam for a state dinner. The president, it seems, made a comment that the chef took personally. The chef also tells Doyle that tonight’s paté will actually be cat food. Doyle decides that Spam poses no threat to the President so it’s not up to him to interfere. In fact, he’s amused by it all. Unfortunately, the Spam is exposed (though not the cat food), the chef is fired, and Doyle’s inaction angers important people. Eventually (with Doyle’s help) the episode develops into a political scandal (“The president is an elitist!”) that leads to the Chief Executive eating all sorts of awful local dishes, which in turn leads to protest from animal rights groups…

It gets complicated. Meanwhile, the baseball team, dubbed the Avenging Blowfish, continue to practice playing in the dark, and Doyle learns that the object of his unrequited love might — just might — return his affection.

The dialog in the book is crackling sharp and very funny, even when dancing around dark subjects. People speak almost in code, conversations twisting with deliberate misinterpretation of others’ words, layers of negatives, and an understood agreement to not understand. This is particularly true when the Secret Service and the CIA talk to each other. I was reminded of Joseph Heller several times while reading, and then noticed that Heller was quoted on the cover, endorsing the writer.

For all the silliness, the book has a heart. It’s a love story, and Doyle, speaking privately with us, feels emotions with a force that threatens to break him, and he can never, ever tell anyone about them. Occasionally I thought the author went a bit overboard with Doyle’s private expressions of hopelessness, but the language was powerful enough to pull it off. Doyle is a good man, and he’s in a tough place for someone who has emotions.

One thing I can say for Welter: He ended this novel really well. Progress made, understanding reached, but life is still complicated, the way life is. Doyle does his job, supports his friends, and hits a home run.

Or does he?

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Blogs and Bloggers

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A Facebook friend of mine posted a link to a NY Times article about the high failure rate of blogs. I couldn’t read the article without registering (so I didn’t), but that won’t stop me from commenting on it! You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

As I pondered the short life span of the typical blog, I decided that bloggers fall into a few categories, and failure can (usually) be predicted just by identifying what class the blogger is a member of:

  1. People with nothing to say. Unscientifically, I’d say this is the vast majority of blogs. Many of these blogs might better be described as journals; the content is really meant for the consumption of the writer, not any audience. After a few weeks, anecdotes about the crazy antics of Fluffy the cat get old. After a few months these stories get old even for the blogger and he quits. Some people have a treasury of a few really good stories, and those will keep them going for a while, but when the well runs dry the blog fades away.
  2. People who lack the skill to say what they want. I suspect that this group is fairly small, as most people who lack language skills probably don’t start blogging in the first place. The exceptions to this rule, I suspect (having done no research) are found in sport blogs and political blogs, where passionately held beliefs are undermined by the complete inability of the writer to express himself.
  3. Interesting, articulate people with unrealistic expectations. When the blog doesn’t become famous overnight and the blogger realizes she must devote time to it almost every day for months for it to have even a remote chance of catching on, they quit.
  4. Interesting, articulate people who embrace the medium and do it for the pleasure of doing it. They produce what we in the industry call “good blogs.”
  5. People who, despite having traits from categories 1-3, continue to blog, rehashing old material and catering to a microscopic audience. Even as readership remains constant for several years these writers delude themselves into thinking that their blog sucks less than most blogs.

On a purely unrelated note, as Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas celebrates its fifth year of contributing to the noise of the blogosphere, the MuddledRamblings.com business cards I designed say at the bottom, “Sucks less than most blogs!”

Fundamentally, I think most bloggers want to be read. A growing audience is the payoff — more people reading, more people commenting, lively discussions triggered by the words of the blogger. It seems obvious, but when it comes right down to it, most blogs are not read. Personally, I don’t read that many blogs, and comment on fewer still. There are just too many of the damn things. Blogs that don’t produce consistently excellent posts, with some thematic connection between posts, are not going to grow big audiences. (The exception to this is the celebrity blog, where people read just for the name.) I’d have a much better chance at a large readership if I wrote a blog strictly about software engineering on a particular platform rather than just posting whatever drivel pops into my head.

I just like writing drivel, is all.

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New “About” Page is up.

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My “About Jerry Seeger” page is now a long, rambling muddle, as befits the rest of the blog. Let me know what you think! Any mysterious incidents from the past I neglected to distort mention?

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Table Manners

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I am not renowned for my grace. While I’m not infamous for my clumsiness either, when pressed I’d have to admit that on the scale of dexterity I have a definite sinister leaning. Thinking back on my life, I’m pretty sure I’ve always been that way, but it’s only recently that I’ve come to really appreciate my awkward ways. My spazticity is particularly obvious when I’m eating salad.

Take tonight, for instance. I was eating salad, from a plate, using a fork. As I raised a mouthful toward my maw a leaf of spinach leapt from the fork, and flew at my head. I dodged and the leaf hit my shoulder before falling into my lap, leaving red spots of raspberry vinaigrette behind. My sweetie, who caught all the excitement in her peripheral vision, reacted with alarm, perhaps because I had already dropped a steak knife on the floor near my bare foot.

Salad seems to be particularly tricky. Often as we sit sharing a big bowl of salad, I end up dropping significant chunks in my lap, or dripping salad dressing on my clothes, or finding some other way to get food where it was not intended to go. I’m not sure a fork is even the right utensil for eating many of the items we put in a salad, anyway. As I ponder, I wonder if something with more of a grabbing action would be appropriate for items that are difficult to pierce when they’re in the bottom of a bowl. Maybe a miniature version of the tool we use to serve the salad in the first place; a hinged tool with a pair of sporks at the end that could be used to both grab and scoop. I think that would increase the percentage of items that reach my mouth, but the transfer at that point might be tricky.

Still, I think I may be onto something there. In the meantime, I’ll make sure I have towels handy.

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City of the Sun

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This will be a quick review, because there is another book I have a lot more to say about. So it goes. I picked up City of the Sun by David Levien in a bookstore in the Atlanta airport after spending many hours on a plane with no reading material at hand. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I grabbed three books (one for fuego, two for me in case one blew) as we waited to board. On the flight I made it perhaps ten pages in before falling asleep.

I did read the book once I got to my new home in San Jose, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a detective novel, and it does have some good action and there is suspense, but the story really revolves around two fathers, both dealing with the tragic loss of a son. It is the chemistry between the two that drives the story, and the gradual healing we see (or at least coming to terms with their losses) is the real payoff of the story.

As far as the writing itself goes, the style annoyed me at first. There is a lot of present tense and some shifts that didn’t take me with them. I thought about that later, as I was tearing through the pages, how I wasn’t annoyed anymore. Then I realized the author had stopped doing that stuff and had just settled down to write the story. As soon as he did that I was along for the ride. Hopefully in subsequent books he won’t feel the need to start out fancy. Once he got rolling his prose was almost invisible. There was a story going on, not words on a page. Now that I pay so much attention to the mechanics, it’s really refreshing when the story just takes over.

As interesting as the progress of the characters and how they dealt with their loss was, I found the plot payoff at the end of the story to be rather annoying. I won’t go into detail, but there’s one bit of good fortune that doesn’t belong and actually undermines much of what came before. It would only take a small twist to provide a chance to really get inside the guts of these two men and provide a powerful finish. As it is, we really don’t get the detective’s take on the final events.

It’s a quibble, but often the detective seems a little too perfect — there’s a bit of superman to him that a few demons can’t hide. Maybe in the sequels his former drinking problems will resurface, he’ll hit someone he shouldn’t have, or something else will jump up and blindside him. Here’s hoping. The sequels will certainly be worth checking out.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Writing I Read When I’m Feeling Bad About My Writing

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There are times I look at the product I’m putting out and there’s just no pretending. It’s not that good. Other times I read something I used to think was good and it turns out to be a disaster of poor communication. At times like that, it’s easy to think I suck. Not just think it, to know it to the core of my being. I suck. Suck, suck, suck! Nothing I write is any good and I’m just wasting my life trying to make a living at something I suck at.

It’s not a pretty thing.

It’s hard to work when you are absolutely certain you suck. What I need at times like that is some glimmer of hope that maybe, sometimes, on the best of days, a brief moment of not-sucking is possible, a fleeting flirtation with not-so-bad that can fuel the hope I need to create the next hyperbolic, rambling train wreck.

A long time ago, on one of my first-ever golf outings, I hit a magically beautiful shot. Now I think of that shot as I search through the cactus for my wayward ball. Most of my shots end up in painful places, but there’s always that one… Likewise, when I’m scrounging through the rough trying to find any reason to keep working on a story and by extension keep working at being a writer, I think of the good shots I’ve hit in my day. Those are the stories I go back and read when I need to get myself back to the happy place.

I’m nervous when people around me are reading my work, but last year I was with my dad as he read “The Tourist“. “That’s really good,” he said. I’m not sure it stands alone; it’s better I’m sure if you’re familiar with other Tin Can stories, but I read that and it still gets me. I really like that story. Oddly, I have a hard time putting my finger on why.

The story that started the series, that the good folk at Piker Press had to call to my attention, was “Tin Can“. It’s a simple story, but subtle enough it fooled me for a while.

Then there’s Crazy Blood. It’s been rejected, so maybe others don’t see what I see in it, but I read it tonight and I have to say that I am on occasion surprised at my own word choice. I haven’t the slightest idea who might pay me money for this story. Crazy Blood might appeal to no one but me, which begs the question of whether it’s an example of writing that demonstrates that I have what it takes to be a professional, but that’s OK.

A user of Jer’s Novel Writer sent me a message after reading “Serpent“. The title of the message was was “Holy Crap!” I was already happy with that one, but that unsolicited feedback didn’t hurt. It’s a cool story, a little clunky in spots I think now, but with a sweet conclusion. It will definitely and appear in my “Piker Years” anthology, after a couple of minor tweaks.

And the novel, The Monster Within, awaiting the latest set of revisions to make it something others can love as much as I do. I wrote the damn thing and I’ve never got tired of it.

Usually, when I’m feeling that every word I write is worthless drivel, I can read some of the above and tell myself, “no, only most of what I write is worthless drivel.” That seems to be enough to keep me going.

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Some Pictures I Took

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Harlean Carpenter, photographed by Jerry Seeger

Harlean Carpenter, photographed by Jerry Seeger

Harlean Carpenter, the woman behind PoeticPinup.com, has a new photo gallery up. The big news about this particular gallery is that I’m the photographer. Yep, that’s right, I pulled out my big ol’ camera and entered the world of fashion photography. Some of the pictures came out pretty well, thanks mostly to the experience of the model knowing what she wanted and how to get it. Still, every once in a while I came up with some good advice.

I learned quite a bit while I was at it. I’ll have more opportunities to work with Harlean, and hopefully over time my skills will improve. Also, someday I might have better lights and a better tripod. Crazy!

Harlean Carpenter is a fiction created to create fiction. She is also a pinup model, though still a fiction.

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Gimp my picture

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Are you muddled?

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Habits

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For a couple of weeks now I’ve been living with my sweetie, an arrangement that takes some getting used to for all concerned. It’s also an opportunity. What I do for the next few weeks will likely form patterns that shape the rest of my life. No pressure or anything.

Generally I’m a pretty agreeable guy, not a bad roommate overall, but I can be lazy. I like having someone take care of me, and the love of my life enjoys doing it. Over fifty years, however, that could get old, so I’ve tried to find a couple of things I can do to make life go more smoothly, like drying and putting away the dishes. That one is fun because we’re in the kitchen together, and it’s something that doesn’t have a lot of “you’re doing it wrong!” potential (at least once I figure out where everything goes).

That and I carry stuff. Hm… maybe I need to find a couple more.

Other new habits I’ve inherited. I now work out three times a week. It still seems a little odd to me to stay indoors walking on a treadmill when it’s a nice day for a walk outside, but the exercise excursion is a group thing, which means I actually do it, rather than idly think about what a nice day it would be to take a walk.

Diet has also changed dramatically. Where I would prepare myself a dish, my best friend makes meals, complete with the healthy parts. Friuts consumption is way up, and also leafy greens. Even… broccoli. A while back my girlfriend said, “if I could change one thing about you, it would be to have you like broccoli.” Considering all my other warts, it was pretty generous of her to put that at the top of the list, so I figured I’d give the nasty things another shot. And you know what? Add broccoli to the list of things that should never be cooked. Whoever first cooked the stuff and then did it again knowing the result is a sick individual. I won’t say that the broc is my favorite veggie or that I go out of my way to get the biggest chunks in the salad bowl, but I’ll eat the stuff and know that it’s making me healthier and my sweetheart happier.

Tonight is steak, with other stuff, and a big bowl of salad that we share after the main meal. The salad part is a new tradition that I really like. It’s healthy and fun! Now we just have to break the bad habit of watching tv late and sleeping too late in the mornings. It’s just so nice hanging out together in the evenings, eating salad or other snacks, and enjoying the company.

So here I am, a dish-towel-totin’, broccoli-eatin’ dude, in charge of opening the wine. Don’t worry, though. I still say ‘hefti’ after I belch.

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