A Fishdragon's Ramblings

Julia Serano speaks at Northwestern this Thursday at 5:30

2008-05-13T23:30:53Z

I've been reading her book Whipping Girl recently, and it's one of the most accessible, sensible, and thoughtful works of feminist thought I've run across in a long time.

Seriously. If you can go hear her speak, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, all my Thursday nights are spoken for for nearly a month yet, but MAN I want to go ...

So behind on my blogposts

2008-05-10T22:15:33Z

Things I should post about soon, but am not going to right this moment:

Garden update, with pictures. I have the pictures, I just have to edit them and write the post. Actually, several weeks' worth of pictures, showing the PAVOOM of growth we've had in the last couple of weeks.
Birdfeeder post, because we have FOUR NEW SPECIES since last Friday! A goldfinch, a nuthatch, two white-crowned sparrows, and a single white-throated sparrow, specifically. Also, a house finch checked in -- not a NEW species, as we had a single one last fall, but new this year. [edited to fix sparrow name -- thanks, tigertoy!]
Guitar class stuff.
Book recommendations of things I've read recently. Short version: Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and Julia Serano's Whipping Girl.
Summer semester class choices and such.
What I look like with short hair -- my userpic is increasingly inaccurate. :->

First day back in guitar class in years

2008-05-02T19:45:21Z

All hail mon462 for noodging me into registering for guitar classes at the Old Town School once more, after a multiyear hiatus where I only seldom touched my instrument, and then only to whizz through very basic accompaniments for songs I already knew how to play. All hail!

So yesterday was the first class of the new session, and I'm taking Guitar Ensemble Skills and Guitar 2-Repertoire (a techniques class). When last I was enrolled, I'd made it as far as 3-Rep, but my hiatus and general rustiness encouraged me to drop back down a level for this first toe-dabbling exercise, and I'm glad I did. I am (reasonably so) rather farther advanced than my classmates who just came out of 2, but I can see that the skills we're going to work this semester are precisely the ones that are scariest/weakest for me: treating my left hand's motions as not just simple presets, but variable, and doing Different Things (picking bass notes, different strum rhythms) with my right hand.

Guitar Ensemble Skills is also shaping up to be one of the most fun classes I've ever taken, as well as being 'useful'. Well, and hard. And encouraging me to practice stuff I've gotten extremely rusty on. Which is good! :-> Ensemble classes in general, at OTS, mean students with a range of instruments in a room working up arrangements to perform songs provided by the teachers (often themed -- there's a Guns'n'Roses ensemble, a Bangles ensemble, a jazz fusion ensemble, etc). Usually, this means 2/3 of the students present play guitar, you're lucky to get a vocalist, bassist, drummer, or Something Else Weird, and many of the teachers have been taken aback by the fact that one of my favorite things in all the world to do is to sing harmony vocals. So you often get six guitars all doing mostly the same rhythm part, with one Really Good guy doing leadlines, and a lot of unison singing.

Not in this class -- lawdamercy, no! And I'm glad of it. Firstly, I'm one of only three people who brought guitars to the class (and the least skilled of the three, which I anticipated), so there's actually a desire for me to learn and perform steady-but-basic rhythm lines. Drat it. Which means I have to actually practice my C#m chords at speed, and so on. However, the teachers are also massively in favor of multipart vocals YAAAAAY. And we have a drummer. And the gal who came to class without an instrument entirely, who said she wanted to primarily sing, turns out to be a classically-trained pianist in her 'other' musical life, so can put nifty keyboard riffs on things to substitute for, say, horn lines in the original artist's arrangement.

Yesterday we worked up a serviceable, really neat arrangement of Paul McCartney's song 'Jet' in an hour and a half -- I can tell you, it's really nice working with pros. :-> Now I just need to get home and practice my fingers off trying to get those barre chords back ... now that I have a shiny gaw-juss (to steal Eric Coleman's pronunciation) guitar with low enough action to make them unpainful.

Oh, and do my math writing assignment before Tuesday, and practice my piano class homework before Monday, and ... did I mention next week is the last week of classes at HWC? Argh. :-> Still, good argh.

To-morrow To-do

2008-04-26T00:28:26Z

~~Assemble wheelbarrow~~
Use wheelbarrow to mix up big batch of potting dirt
Pot baby beans
Top up strawberries, palm

~~Cut holes in bottom of new big planter~~
Repot cherry into new big planter, if still have energy by then
~~Run dishwasher at least once~~

Here's hoping for not pouring-down-rain-all-day. :->

Edited on day-of to add
It eventually got gorgeous, just in time for me to run out of energy and start having to prep to leave ...

Other things done:

Raked and mowed back lawn
Weeded back (3 dandelions, 1 maple tree)
Pruned elderberries
Prepped pot for repotting palm into
Refilled bird feeders
Discovered that Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job is really, really good

Spring is busting out all over

2008-04-23T15:36:17Z

The past week has made all the difference in the garden. We've clearly crossed a quantum threshhold for green-ness. :-> Probably helps that last weekend was supposed to be constant rain (except when it was snow), and instead was bright and sunny and 50degF or higher.

Two weeks ago, the front yard was mostly hard-packed clay (and moss, near the house), the violets were alien-looking green masses of rooty tuber, and all the bushes and woody plants were bundles of sticks awkwardly standing around in sheepish clusters. This morning, the violets all have leaves bigger than loonies (and we have a LOT of violets!), the bushes are budding out or leafing (the spicebush up front looks like it's been flocked chartreuse; the nannyberries and elderberries out back are quite respectably leafed already -- in a week flat!), and even the new fruit trees I just planted are showing signs of wanting to make themselves to home and settle in. The columbines, even the ones that were just babies last year, all have at least three leaves out, and the older ones are knee-high mounds of foliage. The beans I've been sprouting inside have two creditable leaves each, and are almost ready to go out. And we have our first purple tulip bloom!

I need to go around and take pictures when I get home, document how it's boinging, and maybe even make a 'Welcome to my garden! Here, have a virtual tour' lj post. We'll see.

An activity-full weekend

2008-04-20T14:21:07Z

My in-laws were in town, so as usual, I'm underslept and have had no time to myself for days, but I enjoyed it. :-> This weekend, we:

Ate at Nueva Leone, which is yummy cheap Mexican food, and highly approved by John's mum.
Went to the Field Museum, where I saw the Mythical Creatures exhibit and the George Washington Carver exhibit. In that latter, they have a piece of netted embroidery mislabeled as 'crochet'. Arghhh! And this from a major research museum with a textile department. Sigh. Whatever. The rest of the visit to the museum was great. :->
Ate dinner at Barcelona Tapas/Tapas Barcelona in Evanston, with my aunt-in-law MJ added to the pre-existing party of five.
Went back to MJ's to fix her computer, examine her sewing machine, and, as it turned out, watch most of an episode of 'ShakespeaRe-Told,' a nifty BBC series that I think I need to own.
Planted my mailorder fruit trees yesterday morning before getting Out and About.
Saw "Under the Same Moon" up at Old Orchard in our party-of-six. OMG good movie. Funnier than I expected, and less sad; I was thinking I'd come out dripping tears and wrist-slittingly depressed, but it was really uplifting, as well as emotionally intense. Highly recommended.
Bought me a new cellphone ... because, aside from already considering replacing the one I had, it, um, took an unauthorised swim. So. The new one's black, sexy, and has nicer menu software than the old one. Win! :->
Ate dinner at Addis Abeba -- first time I've had Ethiopian. It was yummy. The in-laws look at me funny when I said it was "Kind of like Middle-Eastern food, only the bread is different," but that's how my head files it. The bread WAS very different than anything else I've ever had, rather like edible thin sheets of foam rubber.
Went back to MJ's for more computerfixing, and then home.

Brief footnote, in re the fruit trees: I mailordered apples (and an accidental cherry) from Trees of Antiquity. A highly recommended buying experience, if any of you are in the market for fruitbearing woody plants; they have a whole range of really neat, really old varieties, on modern dwarfing and semi-dwarfing rootstock.

And now I've blogged it so I don't forget to, whew.

Today's tasks: water all the trees, the strawberries, and the back lawn. Run the dishwasher at least once. Help John get all the sheets into the wash and back out and folded. Eat something. Practice my piano homework. Write up my concert report for class ...

To-Do list, this weekend

2008-04-12T01:37:20Z

Many tasks include subtasks. Reserve the right to continue to add on to it as tasks occur to me. :->

Go to Vogue. Get:
- Cheap dark fabric
- Black thread
- Thin white elastic
Go to home center. Get:
- Bags of dirt-makings
Plant Strawberries
Connect with UPS about the delivery next week, so they don't truck it all over and try to deliver it when I'm not home
Go to the Thing in Oak Park tomorrow night at 5 (because if I don't post it here I'll totally forget)
Run dishwasher at least once.
Put away suitcase and all its current contents.
Club-project prep
- Posterboard(s)
- Research! Also collation!!
- Put razorknife in bag sometime before Thursday

I'm on twitter now

2008-04-11T02:16:23Z

... so if you are too, add me (my real name, with no space between first and last), or comment below and I'll add you.

Since clearly LJ, facebook, and del.icio.us aren't eating enough of my time!

Ceci n'est pas un rapport de convention [1]

2008-04-08T15:31:27Z

... it's really more a collection of dissociated babbling. Perhaps my standards for something deserving to be properly CALLED a 'con-report' are too high, but they're mine, and I like them. :-> So I'll just tell you about my weekend and we'll see what happens, shall we?

I attended FKO this past weekend, and I enjoyed myself. I took Amtrak to Ann Arbor on Thursday, spent the night at peteralway's house (starting the convention early by staying up until well after 3AM geeking about sheet music and dulcimers and whatnot! Silly us), and carpooled with him across the border Friday afternoon.

Apparently we were suspicious, as immigration wanted to pay special attention to our papers. Ahh, well. So we spent about 1.5 hours in a glass-walled waiting room while they ran things through the computers and whatever else goes on in such situations. However, we checked out, and went on our merry way ... until The Traffic. Apparently, there was a fatal traffic accident on a particular stretch of the 401 Friday afternoon. We spent over 2 hours going roughly 25km, only to have the traffic jam apparently evaporate into nothing by the time we reached the end of it.

I have very few specific memories of songs I sang or things I did or people I spoke to (aside from 'everybody'); this is more due to me and the way my brain works than to any of the people or circles I participated in. :-> A few particular highlights that do come to mind, as special times for me this weekend:

Tony and Vixy's concert: specifically, some wonderful songs off their new CD that I hadn't heard before, but also her lovely rendition of Jonathan Coulton's zombie memo song in French ... followed by her asking the audience, in French, to prepare to serenade Tony with Happy Birthday in unison! Word to the wise, Tony: don't let her say things in front of you in a language you don't understand unless you want her to pull devious surprises on you! I'd love to have a recording of the whole French portion of the concert to show to my Canadian-born husband, if anyone has one I may have.

Heather Bruton's slide show: FKO often brings a non-filker, filk-friendly, fannish guest in, and this year it was artist Heather Bruton. She gave a lovely presentation Sunday with blow-ups of lots of the very diverse, highly skilled paintings and sketches she has done, and it was wonderful. Check out her website; buy her stuff.

My Sunday dinner run, with three East-Coast Jews, three British filkers, a German, and me, at Montana's Steakhouse. An amusing and informative venture into comparative food anthropology, among other things.

Peter and I wrote a song! About 2 hours before the songwriting contest concert, as it happens. Still, it's a really neat song. We performed it into his Zoom player before he flang me on the homebound train, so you can hear it too. Phil Mills got a photo of us singing it in the contest. (mp3, lyrics)

Spending time with Marilyn Miller, the Interfilk guest. I'd met her at some California con or other, but barely got to speak with her then; this weekend I had a good long lunch with her and several sit-next-to-in-circles. That woman has an amazing repertoire, even aside from her performing skills (and the witty repartee of her bandmate, Mac!). Someone not to be missed, should she ever be at a con in your neck of the woods.

I think most of the rest of my fanac around this weekend will be in comments to other people's journals and entries; I'll link 'em in below as I find them and comment.

Other FKO 2008 Entries:

Lots of pictures on Flickr: tagged 'FKO' and '2008'. (So if you tag YOUR Flickr photos with those tags, they'll show up automatically!)

peteralway: 1, 2, 3, 4.
hsifyppah: a quickie
shaddyr: 1, 2
vixyish: 1, 2, Part 1 for real, Part 2
ldwheeler: a quickie
mdlbear: He's now in the Filk Hall of Fame.
andpuff: a quickie
tfabris: 1
jodimuse doesn't write con reports.
markbernstein, briefly.
billroper: 1
avt_tor: a quickie
blank:
blank:

Footnotes

Or are con-reports feminine? Babelfish says masculine, but who knows. :->

The Feeder Files: Spring 2008 baseline

2008-03-20T19:02:03Z

As Bird Season gets back into full swing (the redwings just returned, so clearly THEY think it's spring, even if it's not time to plant veggies yet), I thought I'd take a moment to make a post about frequencies and visitors, so I can look back later and see what changes this year.

A lot has certainly changed since we first put up the feeders!

Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They've been around since before we put the feeders up. Not terribly skittish, even when cats come into view. Ground foragers in the main, though they also will sit on the feeders. Prefer safflower and millet-mix to black oil sunflower seed.

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) Commonly seen, more than one pair. We saw our cardie pair before putting up feeders, too, but only around the tree we theorize them to nest in. I've seen two females at once, but never more than one male at once. Unknown total number of individuals in the neighborhood (but clearly at least 3). Prefer black oil sunflower to almost anything else; the females will rarely ground forage, but mostly they eat from the feeders. Not very bold -- anything except the sparrows or squirrels can spook them.

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) Commonly seen, in enormous numbers. I think I've seen upwards of 30 birds in our yard all at once, mixed genders. They scatter at any hint of predator or disturbance, but also come back pretty readily. Prefer millet mix. Readily ground forage.

Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They eat anything, on the ground or on the feeders. They'll eat suet, and when the other feeders are empty they'll even (with great effort) squirm their beaks into the thistle-seed sock to try to eat nyger seed. Ground forage or feeder-perching, no difference. They chase off any birds smaller than them, and flee from the parrots and redwings.

Monk Parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus) Commonly seen, in large numbers. Impossible to miss. Never ground-forage. Prefer black-oil and safflower to millet-mix; will sometimes take exploratory bites of fruit if I have some out there. Like raisins. At least 24 individuals in neighborhood. Last year they nested up on the cell tower at the end of my block; this year I saw a couple of crows up there, clearly making a territorial bid to wrench it back (since this year finally the crows are starting to bounce back from West Nile). It'll be interesting to see how the war comes out. :-> Fairly bold, but cautious -- the parrots won't descend upon the feeder in their tens until after a scout's sat on the telephone wire keeping an eye on things for at least an hour, and they don't come to the feeder at all the first day I fill it (if it's run dry). Willing to bully off any non-parrots present on the feeders.

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) Commonly seen, in large numbers. They seem to like most of the stuff I put out there; the females will eat from the whole-peanut feeder, but mostly not the males (no idea why). Never ground-forage. At least 15 males in neighborhood, and presumably a like number of females, though I never see that many in the yard at once. Not present in winter. According to the lady from the birdfood store, redwings only became feeder birds in the last five years or so, in Chicagoland; before that, they lived primarily in wet wildlands. I wonder what changed. Maybe West Nile opened up a niche they could exploit? That's about the right time-frame. Quite charismatic and fun to watch; the boys like to play King of the Castle dominance games all over my feeder setup.

Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) Commonly seen, few. There are at least 3 individuals (two male, one female), because I've seen at least one female, and John once saw two males in the yard at once. Eats only the suet and whole peanuts. Never ground-forages. Last year, the woodies were *extremely* skittish, not coming to the feeder at all, and hiding behind branches if anyone came out on the porch. This year, though, they're bolder than anything but the parrots: they'll sit on the feeder and defend it until I get within about five feet of it! It's adorable how they hammer on the peanut shells as if they were insect-ridden bark. As the weather gets warmer and I spend more time on the porch, I expect to get some really lovely pictures of them.

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) Commonly seen, few. I think I've seen five or six at once in the yard. Ground-forages almost exclusively. Stays away from the porch; fairly shy. Likes to hide in the midst of massive sparrow-flocks.

Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) Regularly seen, few. The jays are the most skittish of our regular visitors; I'll see one about once a month. It will ZOOM in from somewhere, snatch up a single peanut or sunflower seed, and ZOOM off into the foliage down the block again, as if it thinks I'm lying in wait for it with a sniper rifle. Never lingers; strictly a hit-and-run situation. Never shows up at all unless the feeders have been continuously full for over a week.

American Robin (Turdus migratorius) Regularly seen, few. They don't seem to have come back into town yet, but even in high summer they never sit on the feeders. Purely a ground-forager. They seem to like to have dominance battles with the squirrels over whose lawn it is. I've seen five or six in the yard at once.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheuticus ludovicianus) Occasional visitor. I saw one individual at a time, a few times, last season. Hopefully they'll come back this year.

Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus) Occasional visitor. There was one sighting of something that was probably a purple finch, on the feeder, last year, but it was gone by the time I got my camera from the front room.

American Crow (Crovus brachyrhynchos) In neighborhood, occasionally seen. They never come down to the feeder, but they're around on the more 'commercial' streets and in the empty lots. Maybe they don't like having tree cover over them?

Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) In neighborhood, commonly seen. They circle overhead, and hang out over by the used car lots, but never come into my yard.

()

Spring is impending

2008-03-14T16:22:21Z

Well, it's not spring YET (because there are still slabs of ice in my front yard), but it's been over 50degF for two days now and the plants are starting to insist that spring is COMING. There is, for example, a cluster of crocus foliage determinedly poking out of a snowbank.

Also, the birds agree; the redwings have arrived, and they're seasonal migrators. Over the fall and winter, juncoes and downy woodpeckers have firmly moved from 'rarely seen' to 'feeder regulars.' The downies have even gotten so bold as to refuse to fly away until I get within five feet, which is especially impressive given how skittish they were last spring.

Soon the ground will thaw and it will be time to start digging frantically, and time to put all my mail-order garden plants in the ground for the season. I should probably get a head-start on all that by ripping down the old dead morning glories, and generally tidying up fall's leavings, but I think I'll just sit on my porch in the sunshine with my dogs and eat breakfast, first. :->

My Social Science midterm

2008-03-02T18:00:52Z

... was in the format of an essay test, plus some 'identification' (meaning, she gives a term and we define it).

I'm actually kind of pleased with how my long-form answers came out, because I generally suck at extemporaneous writing -- I tend to babble and ramble and then it ends up being thorough but not elegant. I will now multitask, and turn homework into blog content in a vain, desperate attempt to look like I'm posting more than I am. :-> Plus, then you guys can stick an oar in.

Questions are paraphrased, because I don't have a copy of the original test sheet.

Essay 1: How do the ideas and movements of Enlightenment thought affect our lives in the US today?

The ideas of the Enlightenment not only had profound influence on shaping the roots of today's society, but also continue to affect our thought and society in the present day. In the Enlightenment, much discussion and analysis revolved around the concept of "rights" -- what rights we deserve to have respected, who deserves to have them, who should protect/enforce them, and of course what one's recourse is when rights are infringed or denied. This debate is still current and vibrant today, and its very vitality proves the Enlightenment's continuing effect on us.

During the Enlightenment, John Locke and others formulated a radical, nigh-sacrilegious position in regards to rights. It is twofold: first, that the purpose of government is to ensure and enforce the rights of its citizens; and second, that if a government has failed in this mission, that its citizens have not only a right but a duty to revel against it.

What was unspeakably radical in Locke's day is now a widely-accepted standard in international discourse. From Iraq and Pakistan to Darfur and Myanmar, the question of what should be done when a government disregards or abuses its own citizens is still very pertinent.

To move from the geopolitical to the very personal, the nature and universality of rights is also still a hot and contentious topic. In the Enlightenment, many thinkers listed rights that "all" humans have, or should be allowed to have. As time passed, society came to realize that "all" should be more truly universal: that all shold include persons of color, women, prisoners, the disabled, and so on. Even today, there are marginalized groups (immigrants, non-straight people, and the mentally ill, just to name three) still fighting for the right to be part of "all."

Essay 2: Explain the United States' system of government.

The United States' system of government was created by men who revered Enlightenment thought, despised dictators, and feared that complete, direct democracy would lead to mob rule and chaos. The choices of the Framers, and their wish to prevent any single constituency from seizing complete power, led to a system of great flexibility that is -- by design -- deeply divided against itself and controlled by the competing selfish urges to power of the three branches.

In second-grade civics, I was taught that "The Legislative Branch makes the laws, the Judicial Branch interprets the laws, and the Executive Branch enforces the laws" -- which is true, as far as it goes. However, the borders in practice between creation, enforcement, and interpretation of laws and statutes is inherently muddy.

Congress can pass any law it can find sufficient votes for, but the President has a veto ... and recent use of signing statements to describe and limit how the executive branch will choose to enforce it skirt dangerously close to usurping not only creative power from the legislature, but interpretive power from the judiciary as well. Likewise, the Supreme Court are the final arbiters of constitutionality, but the other branches raise a hue and cry when they think "activist judges" are outstepping the bounds of their authority. The legislative branch is far from innocent, either; they write and pass laws designed to control how the other two branches perform their duties every year.

The innate, divisive tug-of-war between separate-but-equal powers is exactly what the Framers intended. If each branch yanks as hard as it can to clutch at more power for itself, then as long as all three branches are doing so, it forms a self-correcting, homeostatic system, capable fo long-term overall stability.

Two of the three branches -- the legislative and executive -- are elected "by the people;" for the most part, judges are appointed and approved by the other two branches. However, since the Framers feared mob rule, and did not want the uneducated masses to be able to impose their will on their better-qualified superiors, only legislators are elected directly (now; senators didn't use to be either). The President is elected indirectly, through the intercession of the electoral college.

Essay 3: Why do you think so many Americans choose not to vote?

It is a well-documented fact that, in modern America, far from all people who are eligible to vote do so. Why? There are probably as many reasons as there are nonvoters, but a few specific examples occur to me.

First, the larger a total population, the less statistical weight any one vote can have. Some Americans view their choices as insignificant on a national scale; after all, if your vote will just be "cancelled out" by someone else of the opposite opinion, what harm comes if you both just agree not to vote at all and save everyone's time and trouble? This is also the underlying fear that sparked so many states to shove their primary elections into January and February 2008: they wanetd to get "their say" in before a decision was arrived at by a numerical majority not involving them.

Second, many Americans feel that the things decided in Washington and Springfield [state capital of my state]are remote and strange from their biggest concerns in everyday life. Why should I care about the subtleties of a federal bill restricting the amount of mercury a power plant can put out if I'm having trouble putting food on the table and clothes on my kids' backs? If there are no candidates talking about your issues, it is hard for some voters to care which lying, smiling rich white man gets elected.

Third, as presently designed, it can be difficult -- or seem difficult -- to physically get to the precinct and cast a vote. Time off work and transportation are non-trivial obstacles for some voters. Thankfully, on this front there is hope. New voting methods and wider acceptance of early voting may, within the next few elections, help turn around the current voter-apathy trends by making it simpler and more attractive to cast your vote.

Query to the peanut gallery: who's your favorite famous mathematician?

2008-02-26T21:10:03Z

My College Algebra professor has just given us our 'some writing, as appropriate to the discipline, may be required' assignment. I have to write a few pages about the life and mathematical achievements of 'some famous mathematician.'

Problem is, there are far too many for me to have any realistic way of choosing -- the bounty is too appealing. So, if you all would be helpful friends and make suggestions, you'd keep me from wasting hours and HOURS of time when I could be doing homework instead wandering the back-alleys of Wikipedia (and stranger places) reading up on tens of mathematicians trying to decide who to pick.

It would be most helpful if, in addition to their name, you give me at least one reason you think they're the most interesting choice. :->

More on why I haven't been posting later. Maybe.

Seeking new books by theme: suggestions?

2008-02-21T13:49:45Z

Actually, this started with me tagging books on Paperbackswap.com as to setting, series ordinality, and so on, when I realized I could also tag on subject or theme (no spoilers, of course), and that it might help people find more books they like.

So, if a book comes to mind for you that bears any of the themes below, that you think deserves to be more widely known, tell me about it. I'd love to know, for my own reading, and I'm trying to reach past just the books I know well in my Paperbackswap tagging.

Gender Issues
First Contact
Strong Women
Space Navy (I already know about Nick Seafort, Honor Harrington, and Elizabeth Moon's two space opera series)
Theater Setting - this means the book is set backstage, among actors or producers.
Stage Magic - not the real stuff, legerdemain. Or, of course, it can have the real stuff, too, just not instead. :->
Alien Overlords They've conquered Earth, now what?
Animal Protagonist Nonsentient animals preferred. Think Watership Down, or Richard Adams' Plague Dogs.
Metafiction Books about fiction. Think Princess Bride, or Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, or the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde.

Chicago folks: c'mon over to my place March 8

2008-02-10T15:11:31Z

John got me Rock Band for Christmas; come help blow away all our high scores in it for my birthday. :-> I've set up an evite page for it, to keep all the details in one place, and also because it makes managing RSVPs so simple, but all the usual ways of letting me know you're coming are also, of course, available. :->

Marc 8, my place, starting a fannish 7ish, going till a fannish 'whenever'.

There will be boardgames upstairs for those not interested in the Main Event, and a big pot of something for all to share for supper. Let me know ahead of time if you have dietary needs.

Grampa, Grampa, the Magic Day is here!!

2008-02-06T21:46:22Z

When I was a child, I was what is politely called 'precocious.' [1] This had advantages, but it also meant that when I *didn't* pick up a new skill quickly, I got very frustrated very fast, threw tantrums, and generally just didn't understand why it had to be so hard.

My Grampa Beltz sat me down and explained it to me, over and over. Some things are easy. Some things are hard. But even the very, very hardest things, he said, I could learn. The trick was to make sure you made a big enough hole to put the magic in.

Magic? Ah, I should explain. There are fairies and leprechauns and other tutelary spirits in the world. [2] They want to help us, honest they do, but sometimes things are hard even for them. So you have to help them help you by pushing as hard as you can to open yourself up inside to make room for them to put the magic in, and then all sorts of things can happen.

I thought he was kidding -- or worse, humoring me -- until the day I learned to read.

I could 'read' before that day, if you mean could I look at a sheet of paper and pronounce the (sufficiently simple, of course) words on it, and then explain what the paper said. But it was hard. Worse, it was unfair. EVV-ryone else in the household would sit down after dinner with a novel and give every evidence of enjoying themselves. They'd even read aloud to me, if I asked ... but I wanted to read it *myself* (For full effect, insert here a visual of an indignant, wild-haired 3-year-old stomping one foot, with a thunderous look on her face).

Grampa sighed, and hugged me, when I complained, and then promised it'd get better, if I kept making the space for the magic bigger. And I *did* want to know what those pieces of paper said, so I doggedly kept puzzling it out, phoneme by phoneme, working each word like a separate, complex math problem, and then going back over my work to try to grasp the whole. But it annoyed me no end, and, as I said above, I was more than half convinced he was just trying to keep me quiet and biddable, and that it would never, ever get any better.

Until the Magic Day came.

One day I pulled out my favorite book about the Loch Ness monster, [3] the one with all the pictures of the various 'reconstructions' people had suggested might be what the creature 'really' looks like, and sat down to puzzle through it again. My eyes went zooming along, like I wasn't even reading it, and a voice showed up in my head out of nowhere, and I knew what the book said. I couldn't believe it. I did it again. And on a different picture. And then I sprang to my feet and ran into the front room, pages flapping from my hand, calling out, "Grampa, Grampa, the Magic Day is here!"

He hugged me, and had me demonstrate my newfound skill, and let's just say words haven't given me much trouble since.

It's been a long time since I had a Magic Day -- a real one. When you're a grownup you've already learned to do so many things that almost nothing is hard enough to NEED a Magic Day anymore, after all. I'd even forgotten what they feel like, for the most part. So it took me utterly by surprise, a few hours ago, when I suddenly discovered that some quantum ledge in my journey of learning to read music had been surmounted when I wasn't looking.

The Sheet Music Fairy has finally gotten a big enough hole made for her to pour the magic in, and I can fix my eyes on the staff lines, figure out where my hands are supposed to go, and suddenly those stupid, mute marks are, via my fingers, making *sounds*. With no intervening calculus or Sisyphean shoving of boulders up cognitive hills. Just voom, music. It's not perfect. I still need a lot of practice, of course. Still, the line between 'no idea what I'm doing' and 'basic competency' has now been crossed, and it will never again be as hard to do as it was yesterday.

I miss my Grampa so much, some days. But if he were still alive, I know I could come running to him with my piano book, pages flapping, and tell him. If I close my eyes, I can even feel the enormous, proud hug he'd give me, if he could.

The Magic Day is here ...

Footnotes

Politely called 'precocious' ... and sometimes impolitely (but truthfully) called a smartass little know-it-all brat. I got better. Mostly.
Fairies and leprechauns Even as a 3-year-old, I understood that the fairies with all the different jobs Grampa told me about were somewhere between a metaphor and "just for fun" -- I certainly never expected to really see one, though I would pretend to and have great romps about it. My grandpa, besides being Irish, was also an inveterate kidder, a punster of supreme skill, and the posessor of one of the best deadpan eye-twinkles it has ever been my honor to encounter.

I do, however, still solemnly ask Parky the Parking Leprechaun to help me find a space when I'm circling ... even if I don't speak aloud. And it's still the Bruise Fairy's fault (with her spiky mace-like fairy wand) when I wake up with bumps I don't remember ever getting!
I still have my favorite book about the Loch Ness Monster. It was intended for a middle-school reading level, I think -- about where the Ramona Quimby books are aimed. We had a rule in my childhood that in thrift stores or used bookstores, for each visit, I could pick any ONE item that I wanted, that was no more than $1 in total price. I very seldom went to the picture-books section. I'm not entirely sure why, in retrospect; 3-year-old me is long ago and far away, and she didn't exactly leave me her memoirs. Most of the books I picked did have some pictures in them, but they also had a lot of text, and were often of the sort considered 'unsuitable' for children my age. Luckily, my mom and Grampa Beltz didn't care.

Of course, nobody ever told me dictionaries and encyclopedias weren't like other books, either, so once past my Magic Day I would do things like sit down and read one cover-to-cover, then ask for a harder one, with more words in it ... probably explains a lot about me, in retrospect.

Unexpected talents and comforts: Rock Band.

2008-01-29T05:19:25Z

John found, unexpectedly, one of the utterly unobtanium-coated Rock Band box sets with a PS2-compatible game in it [1], and he and I enjoyed playing some two-guitar multiplayer songs. Then he did guitar while I did vocals, which was also fun, and unexpectedly challenging. I never even considered trying the drum set, because it looked likely to caterpillar's-dilemma me badly.

One morning last weekend, however, John decided to start trying out drum parts. I was sleepily lying on the couch with both dogs, half-watching ... and suddenly I not only realized why he was having trouble, but somehow knew I knew how to do it. Or, at least, I got that videogame-fan impulse that says, "Ooh, ooh, lemme try, I can beat that level!"

Three songs later, I was consistently getting triple his scores, and he said from across the room with an admirable lack of bitterness, "Ok, so you're definitely going to be playing the skins from now on!"

I'm finding it surprisingly meditative. [3]

However, skill at playing Rock Band's drum parts is interacting interestingly with my piano class ... which I should have, perhaps, anticipated. Today we learned a technique called 'intervallic sightreading' [4] to which I have never before been introduced, despite a moderate past experience with taking piano lessons. It is STAGGERINGLY USEFUL. My ability to play cold (meaning, sit down with a piece I've not seen before and get mostly close first try) has quintupled, at least, since start of class today. YAY!

However, something else that's gotten staggeringly easier since yesterday is following certain kinds of drum lines on the note crawl in Rock Band.

I think I'm reprogramming my brain.

Which is cool.

Rokk on!!!!

Footnotes

PS2-compatible Rock Band *exists*, but is very hard to find. Xbox and PS3 versions are easier to come by. The PS2 one (which RockBand.com claims does NOT exist) was, apparently, only made in limited amounts -- most stores that wanted to sell the game at all got a stack of 10 or 20 PS2 ones, plus a larger number of each of the other two platforms, in November. Many sold out before December 1st, so when John and I went looking for one circum-Xmas, there were none to be had. Even online. Everyone was sold out.

Until just a week or so ago, John walked into an FYE [2] for a CD and found an intact stack of 10 ... apparently nobody ever goes to FYE to buy RockBand. Score. :->
FYE is a small music-and-movies-etc store. Around here it seems to have eaten the former local chain Coconuts, which was similar but with different logos on the signs.
Drums as meditation However, unlike OCD-sufferer Hannelore (see 1, 2, 3, et al.), I'm not in it for the counting. I'm actually not counting at all, in a numeric or verbal sense; I'm vibing, just like I do when I'm playing guitar or singing. Which of course gets me into trouble when the 'extras' beats do something silly over an intended-to-be-constant 'skeleton' beat ... but I'm working on that.
Intervallic sightreading (which means 'sightreading using intervals') is a skill in which, instead of the page-to-sound cognitive process looking like: [1. See staff. 2. Translate note position to letter. 3. Translate letter to keyboard position. 4. Press key] it looks more like this: [1. See staff. 2. Choose initial hand positioning carefully (aided by notes on staff of learner sheet music). 3. Locate precise position of first note. 4. Proceed thereafter by relative gaps between said note and next notes: a third means 'skip one finger,' etc.]

You don't play the notes at all; you play the distance between the notes. In many cases, I never even have any idea what letter-note I'm playing until I look down. I bet this is some cool secret Advanced Technique that all you experienced musicians already knew about, but nobody'd ever mentioned it to me, not once. STAGGERINGLY useful. I loves it, my preciousssss ....

First day of school. AAAAAGH!

2008-01-15T03:40:43Z

Don't worry, I'm better -- or will be. I'm just amidst the emotional tumult and overscheduling and lack-of-cope that always comes on the first day of a new semester, no matter how 'prepared' I thought I was last week. :->

Short takes on my classes, just for history's sake:

Speech 101 I think this will be simultaneously a fascinating class and an insanely difficult class, but not one that sends me into scared wibbling circles of 'I suck at this.' Most of my classmates are Chicago natives; there's a couple of born-in-Mexico kids (lived here since babyhood), one born-in-Romania (lived here since middle-school), and one born-in-Tokyo (and lived there most of his life; he was a teacher. He moved here 3 years ago speaking no English at all at the time). The teacher had us give impromptu little 'Hi, here's who I am' speeches of introduction; the only question in it I didn't expect was, "Who is your favorite speaker?" My classmates' choices were about half banal (MLK, Obama, Bill Clinton, Jay-Zee), and half really interesting, especially if they actually mentioned some real reason they chose who they chose.
Group Piano Today was "read the syllabus" and then "go over skills I learned in piano class at age 5," namely hand position, which end of the piano holds higher notes than the other, and what letter-names the various keys have. That latter I could stand to drill on, as I mostly do it by counting on my fingers (as it were) from C, which I DO consistently spot. Also E. I need to memorize F -> B, though.

There's quite a range of skills in the class, and the teacher has her work cut out for her trying to keep it challenging for the folks who can sight-read the grand staff effortlessly while not freaking out the one girl who's never sat in front of a piano or played any other instrument before in her life. I expect to have some mental anguish as I try to learn ways around the transcription errors my brain insists on throwing between my eyeballs and my brain, and my brain and my fingers, when I try to turn sheet music into sounds.
College Algebra First day of an incredibly condensed class that will, if I am successful, teach me two semesters of math in one semester. They do this by meeting 4 times a week instead of twice. It also means we have two quizzes a week ... and my textbook hasn't come yet! The one for the second half of the class HAS, but not this one. It's en route; I expect it to show up soon, and meanwhile I can copy out the homework problems from a file copy kept in the Math office.

This class, I expect, will send me into inadequacy wibbles at least twice a week; it almost did it today, 'cause in her "review" the teacher ran into three separate instances of problems that I do remember passing tests on ... but which I no longer remember how to work. Or didn't until she went over them. Also, I discovered today that there are entire swathes of math-info that I did not memorize in Math 099 -- instead, I referred to my formula sheet. I hope to goodness I don't have to memorize them this time; I suck at abstract memorization. Numbers tend to swap around and mess up their signs if I have to pull them out of my memory.

Tomorrow I get to find out how bad (or good) SocSci 102 and Current Issues in Physical Science, plus of course another dayful of math.

I need to eat a big breakfast, and maybe bring a snack in my bag; I found myself getting low-blood-sugar sleepies in math, which does not bode well for my ability to concentrate on the material, unless I solve the issue.

Upcoming Logistics: ConFusion 2008 in Detroit (... ok, in Troy)

2008-01-10T17:18:51Z

So, I'm going to ConFusion (Jan 18-20). I'd like to use all you nice fannish folks (those of you who are fannish, that is) to network.

I need: [Edited to reflect comments below.]

A ride from the Amtrak station (at 11 Columbus) to the hotel ~~ca. 3-3:30PM Friday,~~ and back Monday before noon -- if all else fails, I can catch a cab, of course. [Thanks to peteralway for Friday -- Monday still sought]
Someone to roomshare with, ~~Friday, Saturday, and~~ Sunday nights. I pay up promptly and can provide references. I come in late, but am a quiet sleeper. I'm not averse to gender-mixed rooming situations or four-way splits of double-double rooms. [Thanks to tanac! Still looking for a Sunday-night, though of course that can be figured out at-con if need be.]

Plus, of course, who else is going? Wanna conspire about, well, anything? See you at the con, if nothing else. :->

One of these days I'm going to actually get all this stuff lined up months ahead of time, honest ...

Books I Read in Jan 2007 -- the month in review

2008-01-10T00:31:55Z

Since I never got around to actually reviewing books as I read them last year, I'm going to try to do it after the fact. :-> Any comments I did make at the time are italicised; today's more detailed musings are below.

Ideally, I'm going to get through all 133 books I read in 2007 in month-at-a-time posts, but we'll see. :->

1. Jan 6: Fables, Homelands and Arabian Nights, by Bill Willingham
          I love the Fables graphic novels, I loves them forevers. I'm a little shaky on how far we are into the series (which numbers these two are, ordinally), but I am now finally caught up and am very glad to be so.
          For those of you who haven't yet been bitten by the bug, the basic premise behind the series is that (a) there is another universe where all those fairytale stories really happened to actual people, (b) there was a massive war there, and (c) some of the losing side fled here, making an enclave in New York City (among other places), where they live their lives to this day, and continue to fight the war. Snow White, Jack Horner, and both Beauty and The Beast are fairly major characters throughout. However, the versions of their stories WE got aren't necessarily always the whole story, as we discover. :-> If you're looking for somewhere to start, the first volume (Legends in Exile, I think) is a good place, but not always available; 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a more recent anthology volume that contains no spoilers for the series at large.
          I've been reading Fables since my long-lost corporate job let me maintain a sizeable comic habit and a box at my local store; now they're a rare treat I let myself buy in compendiums, and try to devour as slowly as possible.

2. Jan 7: Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom (Crumrin vol. 3), by Ted Naifeh
          I love Courtney Crumrin, too, and not just because Ted Naifeh's art is wonderfully compelling to me. She's a spunky, often disagreeable little girl, who turns out to have sizeable magical power and a rather more-interesting-than-she-was-told family history. The graphic novels are about her adventures with that magic, and in the Twilight Kingdom, which is roughly Faerie. Tone is grownup and dark, but not grim -- stupidity has consequences, often lethal ones, but hard work and care can beat back failure and despair.

3. Jan 7: Angel Sanctuary, vol. 1, by Kaori Yuki
          Fully made, end-to-end, out of the Japanese Weird. I'm still not sure I'm following it; there are all kinds of shortcut conventions I clearly don't know, because it'll introduce characters in ways that confuse the hell out of me and only explain who they are and why they were there pages later. I'll stick with it and continue trying to understand, because of the reviews of it I've read elsewhere from people much more into manga than I. NOT a beginner title. Try Fruits Basket. :->

4. Jan 8: The Wizard of London, by Mercedes Lackey (Elemental Masters #4)
          I have problems with Lackey's writerly choices, but in general I really like the Elemental Masters series. The magic system is original, interesting, and consistent, and I like the stories she's told with it. This one's not my favorite but I still liked it quite well. This book's storyline is more about intrigue and politicking; Serpent's Shadow and Fire Rose were more character studies (and in the latter case, fairytale pastiche).

5. Jan 10: The Little Ice Age, by Brian Fagan
          Nonfiction. I know, gasp wheeze surprise, me reading nonfiction! Admirably crunchy and data-full, but still quite readable. Gets into a lot of detail on man-made climate change (and how it's NOT new), including statistics and tables, but still engaging and friendly in tone. Highly recommended. Had lots of stuff I didn't already know (and I thought I was well-read on the subject).

6. Jan 12: Finity's End, by C.J. Cherryh (reread)
          I loves me some Alliance-Union ... and this is some Alliance-Union. :-> Specifically, it's more 'Merchanter' than 'military,' and has no azi in it.
          It's about a young man who, though born on a merchanter ship, was raised on Pell Station, and in adolescence has decided to devote his life to studying and living with the Downers, the native life on that planet. Then, of course, his family ship, the Finity's End, shows up out of nowhere and decides to reclaim him, will-he or nill-he.
          It's an interesting instance of the 'Third-Culture Kid' phenomenon, where a child brought up in multiple cultures often ends up feeling at home in none; he also does a lot of growing up in the course of the novel, in some very difficult circumstances.
          A good stand-alone, if you want to dabble your toes into her huge multibook universe and see if you like it.

7. Jan 12: Marley & Me, by John Grogan
          Funny, sad, and wonderful. Just what a book of anecdotes about a past family pet should be. Well-deserving of all the hype it got.

8. Jan 23: Agent to the Stars, by John scalzi (You can read it on the web if you like)
          Absolutely hilarious and pitch-perfect. Premise: What would happen if, instead of showing up on the White House lawn, a ship of aliens realizes (from our entertainment broadcasts) that their appearance and characteristics might be a problem, in terms of acceptance by most humans ... so hires themselves a Hollywood agent to do the public relations and control First Contact.
          I'm discovering I love everything Mr. Scalzi's ever written, even though the novels are all very different from each other.

9. Jan 24: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
          The sheer length (and WEIGHT) of this novel put me off trying it, as did the bestseller must-read-it hype, but I finally did, and I actually quite enjoyed it.
          Note: if you have no real experience with British novels of the mid-to-late 1800s, you may be VERY LOST, as a lot of this book is meta-in-jokes on the genre. The plot is familiar to any fantasy fan: the nature and politics of magic between two practitioners of the art, in a world that believes magic no longer exists. However, the HUMOR of the book lies largely in its digressions and footnotes and cultural asides. To me, anyhow.

10. Jan 27: Merchanter's Luck, by C.J. Cherryh. (wikipedia) It amuses me (and startles me!) that this one is apparently set immediately after Finity's End, which is the last Cherryh I read, though I think it was written nearly 20 years earlier.
          Set among characters originating on the Merchanter side of her Alliance/Union universe, though the military side and its intrigues underlies the plot. Plucky Powerless Folks Intrigue to Save the World, or At Least Their Skins.

11. Jan 30: Voyager in Night, by C.J. Cherryh. An unusual, claustrophobic character study. Very unlike any of the Alliance/Union books I've read.
          Imagine getting bamfed off your little mining ship and being lost in dark corridors run by some unimaginably alien, ultimately powerful intelligence that's messing with you, perhaps to learn about you -- but maybe just to be cruel. That's where the protagonists start in this novel. Sort of a psychological character study of what happens to people when you break them. Interesting, but not recommended for everyone.

Laptops I Have Known

2008-01-09T20:57:38Z

I am typing this entry on the fourth laptop I've ever owned; before that, I used a desktop machine exclusively.

My first laptop was silver and blue, and I called him Rolan. I've forgotten his make, model, and cause of death (as it were); he was replaced by a slim black number I named Raven because he was very like a writing-desk. :-> Long-term, deteriorating failure of the power supply led to his replacement with Widebody, a silver compaq, and my first widescreen-format laptop. This was a year ago last late summer.

Then Widebody got posessed -- it acted as if the right arrow key was constantly held down. It didn't do it constantly, though; there would be times when everything was fine, times when it intermittently experienced the behavior now and then ... and periods where I couldn't do anything that involved pull-down menus, or edit textfiles at all. Then the periods of posession grew worse, and longer. Its unusability contributed to my lack of any progress to speak of on my NaNovel this year, among other factors.

When we discovered Widebody's warranty was expired, John took an opportunity to whip out the screwdriver and try to fix it. He cut the trace to the right-arrow key, which fixed the problem ... but also took the rightmost eight keys of the array with it. Oops. :-> So he ordered me a new keyboard on eBay, which, once installed, solved the problem entirely.

So why do I have a new laptop, when the old one still works? I tend to be the kind of person to run a machine utterly into the ground and then have to have it pried from my fingertips -- I dislike change, and dislike settling into a new computer or operating system worst of all.

No, I have a new laptop, running Vista, because my mother-in-law needed a laptop that would run WordPerfect 5.1 that she could use at her office.

We discovered it would run on Widebody quite handily; we had no information on how Vista would handle it. So my mother-in-law bought me a laptop, we baselined my old one, and installed and set it up for her use. Complicated, but not nearly as much so as some of the stuff we come up with in this family. :->

Meanwhile, now I have my new lad, a sleek black Presario, called Ateva (yes, I'm reading Cherryh's Foreigner novels at the moment), long may he serve. Now to re-upload and re-install and re-customize all my most-used applications, spread my files about, and generally litter up the place and make it homelike.

Praise be, Vista's only about half as insanely annoying as I've been led to believe. Though if any of you folks have suggestions on where to find its customization settings, do let me know? It seems bound and determined that I don't need to worry my pretty little head about a whole lot of things I enjoy knowing about.

New Fiction over in 100treasures

2007-12-26T05:31:45Z

I had a new setting stampede into my half-awake mind this morning, leave muddy footprints all over the place, and rearrange all the furniture, but despite it having left all the necessary ingredients of a compelling short story scattered about, I lack the skill to reconstruct them and hand 'em to you.

However, on a friend's recommendation (Hi, dormouse_in_tea! *waves*), I'm going to be posting at-least-one-and-maybe-many snippets set in that world over on the 100treasures writing-prompt community in an attempt to solve some of the unanswered questions in my mind about how, exactly, said new world works.

Here's the first installment.

This will likely be far more episodic and broken-up than last year's NaNovel pieces were, so no promises ... but the more people talk back to my work, the more of it tends to get written, so feel free to drop a comment on the entry if you like it. Or hate it. Or think it's incoherent. Or whatever. :->

This concludes today's Shameless Promotion Special.

For those of you celebrating any special days this week, Merry Happy Joyous ones to you! And to everyone else ... all the best anyway, since there's just not enough Merry Happy in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

Tiny little striped scarves ...

2007-12-19T05:01:20Z

For reasons I'm not going to get into at length, I've been knitting a variety of Hogwarts house-livery scarves sized in the range for beagles and teddy bears, and it occurred to me ...

Would any of you like one? I'd have to charge a nominal amount, to cover yarn costs and shipping, because I'm a broke student with no income at the moment.

Necessary variables: neck circumference and neck-to-knees (or other length metric), in inches, and which house you want.

A beagle-sized (hereafter 'medium') version would cost $5, US shipping included; more for longer, and a little less for shorter (though not too much less, as postage is the fixed cost). I suppose I could even work to human scale, though of course that has a lot more yarn and weighs more to ship.

Talk to me, if you're interested. :->

Good news, bad news on the doggy health front

2007-12-17T17:54:45Z

So we took Boston to the vet Saturday morning. The good news is that he is definitely not diabetic.

The bad news is, now all the symptoms he has that seemed to add up to an obvious diabetes diagnosis (excessive thirst, constant urination, low energy, et al.) are now unexplained. I feel like I'm in a vet-med episode of House or something. :->

Our vet (a lovely little old Eastern-European man) noticed some matter on Boston's catheter while we were in the office, so provisionally suggested there might be an infection in there; Boston's on a regimen of two different antibiotics for a week, and then we'll bring him in for another consultation.

Ajax is amusingly jealous of Boston's pilling; Boston, while not gobbling them down like treats, is taking my thrice-daily liberties with his mouth tolerantly. He's really a very good dog about putting up with us doing things he doesn't want us to do.

Why graphic design matters

2007-11-15T02:10:53Z

This entry brought to you courtesy of Prof. Figueroa, my Stats teacher, who asked me a bunch of questions that got me babbling, then thinking, and now babbling again. Only in text.

Why on earth do I care about graphic design? Why should anyone care about 'design' of any sort, anyway?

Because design is the study and manipulation of how people use stuff, and that's important. [1]

Specifically, graphic design is the study of how people use stuff with their eyes, most especially focussing on how people use and absorb information. Doesn't that sound more interesting?

Prof. Figueroa gave me a bit of an odd look when I told him that the theory behind how I lay out the school newspaper is actually a psychological discipline, but it is.

What we humans see is not, necessarily, what a camera sees. Cameras are frighteningly literal-minded; what we see STARTS that way (what the eye sees), but then passes through multiple layers of what my geeky self insists on calling 'software' interpretation. There's the facial-recognition coprocessor, the edge-detector, the motion-detector, the bit that instinctively follows the direction-of-gaze of someone we're looking at, etc.

And graphic design, at its heart, is about making information easier for *humans* to see, and to comprehend. [2]

Some of what I do in layout is universal across all graphic design. A lot of that part, actually, is also taught to visual artists: rules of composition, among other things. One important guideline of all kinds of design is, "If it's meant to match, make it match. But if it's meant to be different, make it different." If something almost lines up but-not-quite, the human brain's attention is disproportionately drawn to (and confused by) it. This margin is far too small to contain all such rules; check out websites on composition (or Design by Non-Designers by Robin Williams [no, not that one, a different one]) if you're interested.

Some of what I do is specific to text, and even specific to newspapers, because of the differences between 'how people use newspapers' and, say, 'how people use novels'.

Newspapers are different from book-length pieces of text:

... Because most people browse newspapers, rather than starting right at the beginning and reading every single word of it, in order. This affects both how they're written and how they're laid out.

Newspaper stories are written in an 'inverted pyramid' style, starting with a magical piece of literary condensation, 'the lead'. A lead is a single sentence, set off in a paragraph by itself, that basically sums up the entire following story. In the inverted pyramid style, whose capstone is the lead, each successive paragraph of a story should contain progressively less important information. It's like a long, informative prose haiku, in a way; its style is utterly rigid, and incredibly hard to learn.

Why on earth would journalists torture themselves by requiring all reporters to write in such a stylized, artificial way? Because newspapers are browsed.

If a person reads the lead, they should have a solid idea of what the story to follow is about. If (let's say we have a 15-paragraph story) they read the first three paragraphs, they should have almost 90% of all the information conveyed by the story. Why? Because, let's be honest, most newspaper-readers skim. And lots of them read just the beginning of a story and skip all the rest.

This isn't to say the other 12 paragraphs aren't important or interesting; merely that they contain supporting details to the things conveyed in the lead and first two non-lead paragraphs. No professionally-written newspaper story introduces completely new information or arguments near the end of a story.
Partly because of the style in which the content is written, and partly because of the way people read newspapers, they are laid out differently.

Newspaper-article paragraphs are, compared to prose paragraphs, very short. Most quotes are set off in a paragraph by themselves (to make them easier to read), and few paragraphs are more than two or three sentences long. Because paragraphs are short, columns tend to be narrow.

... Because newspapers are way more variable than novels. They contain a large number of completely separate pieces of information (not only the various articles, but things like ads, and so on, are also what I'm talking about here). Since this is true, people have to be able to quickly grasp where different bits start and end, what's important about each one, and why they might want to pay attention to it.

The larger headlines (which go with the more important/interesting stories) go towards the top of the page. Ads go towards the bottom or inside edge -- because people fold newspapers when they're reading them, and those are the parts of the page people are more likely to ignore. Similarly, an ad is never placed above a story.

It is important to drop nonprinting guide lines on your page while you're laying it out, so you know right away where the fold is. The fold is a natural boundary, and if bits of information are stranded across it from the bits they belong with, it can get confusing.

Getting your gutters, justification, and leading [3] right also helps guide the eyes of browsers, showing them 'how to read' the page.

I keep feeling like I ought to have more to say on this subject, but I've been writing this for two hours, and I've lost track entirely of where I was going. If you guys spot any inadequately-explained bits, or have a question, do let me know? :->

Footnotes
Design is how people use stuff. Srsly. Interior design? How people use home/work spaces. Fashion design? How people use clothes -- both in a practical sense and in a cultural/social/competitive sense. Video game design? How people use video games ... well, ideally it is, anyway.

Graphic design is about making information easier for *humans* to see. Or, sometimes, making sure the humans you're aiming your information at see it in the precise way you WANT them to. This, of course, can be used for good or for evil; most of the greatest dictators (or, rather, their propagandists) had very good graphic design on their side, whether an instinctual sense of it or studied.

Gutters are the spaces between columns. Inadequate gutter design causes the eye to try to read the line horizontally next to the line you just read, instead of wrapping down to read the next line in the column you're actually reading.

Leading is the space between one line and the next -- between the drooping bits of the ps, qs, gs, etc, and the protruding bits of the ts, ds, and capital letters of the line below. Too little leading is a problem for reasons obvious even to the totally design-naive: if you cram lines of text together, anyone can see it makes it hard to read. However, excessive leading is ALSO a problem, for the same reason as insufficient leading. Excessive leading breaks up the page and confuses (we're speaking of instincts and reflexes, here) the reader about where their eye is supposed to go at the end of each line.

Justification is all about how the edges of your columns line up. If it's straight on the left but jaggy on the right, it's 'left-justified,' and if the opposite is true, it's 'right-justified'. Straight down both edges is called 'full justification,' and is done by messing with the spacing between the individual letters (called 'tracking'), as well as the spacing between words. Most newspapers are full-justified, because when columns are narrow, those straight lines (with appropriate gutters and leading, of course!) help guide the eye where it's meant to go, as well as making clear the boundaries between one story and another.