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Mark Danielewski in Portland!

I’m insanely stoked. Mark Danielewski is coming to Portland, and I get to leave work a little early to drive up there and see him. My plan is to get House of Leaves and The Whalestone Letters signed if possible, and buy Only Revolutions while I’m there. God I hope I’m brave enough to actually talk to him and ask him to sign my books. It was hard enough to be brave when I was part of CWS and meeting authors every month (omg, Dinner with Sherman Alexie!)… you’d think I’d be over my shyness by now.

Credit Where Credit is Due: Cepcion introduced me to House of Leaves a long time ago, and while I haven’t ACTUALLY finished it yet, it’s disturbing and powerful all the same. Amazon.com has a good editorial review that talks about the meta-novel structure and the crazy “sometimes you have to hold the pages backwards and in the mirror to read it” typography, or you can google Mark Danielewski and read about his crazy blue hair and social-networking++ way of getting fan participation for his new book, Only Revolutions.

I was a member of the Only Revolutions forums, but not an active participant because I joined way too late, and kept telling myself that I wanted to finish HOL before getting more involved… little did I know that time was running out.

So… according to the Only Revolutions Website (careful, lots of sound and animation!), he’ll be at Powell’s Books in Portland at 7:30pm TONIGHT to read from his new book!

I’ll be there.

Will you?

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Last.fm anyone?

If you’re on last.fm, you should add me to your friend’s list. :)

Just ignore all the Nightmares on Wax and Animal Collective I apparently listen to. Back when I had no idea what I was doing (like a year ago), I left a music player on loop for a while… oops. Can’t edit it now apparently. I still love them, just not as much as last.fm thinks I do.

Anyway, I’m stoked about the open source client, all the plugins that will scrobble anything from pretty much any player out there, and the suggested 3rd party apps like Yamipod for uploading tracks you listened to with an ipod. Haven’t played with that too much yet, but it seems really great.

For the record, I’m also a fan of pandora, but for different reasons. I love pandora for being minimal and for being a pretty intelligent recommendation/radio system. On certain days, I’ll use both last.fm and pandora–one to find totally new music based on what their database picks (pandora), and the other to learn more about my friends’ tastes and to explore tagged music (last.fm). Last.fm is becoming highly addictive, but on days when maybe I just want to chill and take a break from omg! social networking! web2.0! rounded corners!!11!!, pandora rules.

Different monsters, both awesome and world-rawking. :)

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Google opened Writely!

I don’t know why I didn’t see this before now (it’s been two whole days!) but, according to lots of news sources (news.google) google opened up Writely for general registration!

I’ve been a really big fan of writely for probably six months now… BEFORE Google acquired them! A friend of mine and I wrote a collaborative project last Winter (about online collaborative writing, no less) using Writely. (It was a very meta-meta written research project. good fun. sorta… actually, not at all. but that had nothing to do with Writely and more to do with the overwhelming nature of our project)

Anyway, I’m excited, aren’t you?!

Why I love Writely:

When my friend and I were searching for online collaborative writing software, Writely was the only one that seemed to be 100% aligned with our goals and interests in collaborative writing. At the time, Writely didn’t yet have the feature to track which writer made which change, and we thought that was a cool deviation from conventional writing tools because we were interested in truly blending two author’s voices and words (although, we’ve sinced learned that there is more to individual voice than a timestamp and a username attached).

Writely was also the only tool we saw that was apparently designed exactly for what we wanted to use it for: write an essay collaboratively. It’s marketed more generally, as an all-purpose wordprocessor instead of as something for technical writers or for corporate collaborative documents, or anything like that.

I loved writely because it was community based, open, and very easy to use. It represented a direction that I think more webbased tools should go in (and perhaps already are): target a specifically more general audience but keep the software simple and contained. Visual interfaces are GOOD when well-designed with “what people actually do” in mind. Keep the feature-set simple, intuitive and specific to the job it’s designed to do (feature-creep == bad). Use open communication forums like a web-forum or a blog to keep in touch with users and keep up with the “what people actually use/need” current.

It’s been my “mission” for a long time (well, since I met Alex Polvi, anyway… who made me realize that my perspective on technology isn’t worthless) to try and help bridge the gap between non-geek “end users” and the tools I know could help them. It started with me wanting to share OpenOffice.org with other English majors, or help them learn how to maintain their computer better so that stuff wouldn’t crash at 3am when they’re trying to write an essay. I tried sharing Ubuntu with some, but it was still too “intimidating” (read “different from windows/mac”) and “buggy” (read, when stuff does break, it really breaks, and sometimes its hard for someone like me to find a linux geek without feeling stupid, or annoying etc).

I want poor students (like I was) to know what’s out there and that they don’t have to pirate the most popular (corporate, closed source, buggy, vulnerable, EXPENSIVE) office suite in order to pass Wr121. They’re already paying enough on tuition and textbooks… their pencils, paper, and wordprocessors should be cheap, if not free!

I knew I was lucky, because I grew up geeky and knew how to search for free alternatives to what most other people used. I also had this nagging problem with pirating software after I left high-school age because I think that the need for piracy at all demonstrates that the industry isn’t meeting its userbase’s needs.

I want it to be possible to use powerful free things (like linux, OpenOffice.org) to do Whatever You Need WITHOUT the need to be a total tech-geek or experienced trouble-shooter.

Anyway, Writely seemed to be totally aligned with my views on collaborative writing, literacy, software, and openness, so I fell in love. Hard. :)

So obviously, I was thrilled when Google acquired them. And now I’m even more thrilled that they’re finally opening registration. Woo hoo!

Anyway, nothing but awesome can come of this… and I’m done blogging for now.

Oh, and btw, here’s the writely blog.

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LotD

Link of the day:

bookcrossing.com… a cross between “Pay it Forward” and those little random prizes you get inside cereal boxes… only literature style. And I guess you can go hunting for the books too! (over 1,000 books have been “set free” in portland… and 102 are in Corvallis alone! *wonders why one of them was released into the Valley Library*)

Well… as a literature geek, and a fan of free books, i’m digging it.

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Happy Tree Friends. Exploding Dogs.

explodingdog.com rules.

Which one is your favorite?

Note to Self: Since Val likes to see cute fuzzy things die nasty horrible violent and gory deaths, I should show him happy tree friends as soon as possible.

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Even 404 errors need love!

Tee hee. I just got hit on by a 404 error page. You can too! Click here.

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Link Link Link Link!

Everyone click here RIGHT NOW!

It is the most beautiful tree-filled and crisp-autumn-air website I have every seen! (Not just autumn air… spring, summer, winter as well as the time you spend on the site increases.)

It’s earthy and authentic… with elven highlights. Tee hee.

Ok Ok, I confess. It was created by a friend of mine. But that doesn’t mean it is any less awesome!

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requiem for a dream

This is the trippiest place to “play”…

I swear. But it makes more sense if you know what it is from. :)

arigatou vuaru-sama.

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