Archive for October, 2008
New Old iPod Touch
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on October 11th, 2008
Picked up my replacement iPod Touch today. Though the old model (just like the one that broke), it’s brand new and shiny. Excellent service, Apple!
I’ll not get to play with it until morning, I suspect. It’s been syncing up all my songs for a couple of hours now, and at the moment it’s on song number 742 of 3185.
Oh, and I played some more with the new iPhone in the store. Lord a’mighty, that’s a nice piece of equipment!
Finding an Agent
Posted by Michael Livingston in Fiction on October 10th, 2008
Now that I’m feeling pretty good about my novel and started work on its sequel, I’ve begun looking to find a literary agent to represent me (and the book). I have to say, agent hunting is an incredibly daunting process. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of literary agents (there is no authorization required to claim the title). Some are reputable, some are not. And, as in nearly every other part of the publishing biz, the numbers stacked against the writer can be staggering.
Take Jennifer Jackson, for instance. Ms. Jackson is an associate with one of the most reputable literary agencies, the Donald Maass Literary Agency. She has a very impressive client list. She also, as luck would have it, keeps up an excellent blog wherein she provides well-considered insights into the agenting world. Among these many morsels of wisdom is her “Letters from the Query Wars” series of posts, in which she points out the numbers of queries she’s getting and how many inspired her to seek more information from the writer. This week she read 152 queries. Of those, she requested more information on one, a historical fantasy.
Taken as a general predictor, then, we might say that odds of a good agent asking for more information on a query are 150 to 1 against. She gives no indication of the odds after that point — clearly, not every request for more information will result in the agent offering a contract to the writer — and I don’t even want to hazard a guess on what they would be. Suffice it to say, the numbers can be a bit knee-quaking.
Still, nothing for it but to lean into the wind. Then it’s just a matter of walking…
My Vote, My Money
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on October 9th, 2008
Warning: The following is a deeply personal opinion about this year’s election. The short of it is this. The long of it follows.
You’ve been warned.
iPod Touch Dying
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on October 9th, 2008
For the past couple weeks my beloved iPod Touch — a device I increasingly don’t know how to live without — has been intermittently pausing when plugged into something via its iPod connector. It’s fine just carrying it around, listening to music on the headphones; but when I plug it into the Kia Rondo via the JVC cable I pimp’d into place, odds are it’ll pause just randomly enough to drive me crazy. Then today I tried to sync up some stuff on the computer and discovered that the iPod dock, which uses that same connector, wasn’t recognizing the device. Bummer, but at least it showed me that the problem was with the iPod, not my pimpin’.
So this evening I headed downtown to the Apple Store on King Street and showed it to the Geniuses thereabouts. Turns out that the iPod connector is indeed bad. One fellow thought that it might be the result of the connector getting moisture into it, but he wasn’t sure.
I, ahem, might know how moisture got into it. But I ain’t saying.
At any rate, the lovely little device is still under warranty, so I have a nice fresh one coming to replace it. Good news. I just can’t imagine life without this little wonder … which makes me very frightened to think about how captivated I’ll be by the iPhone when I get it.*
* Soon, I think. I don’t want to own a cell-phone, but life is sure getting complicated without one. Citadel employees now get a 15% discount on AT&T plans, so my excuses for not picking up an iPhone are dwindling to non-existence.
Grading Done – 12:51am
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on October 7th, 2008
Had a big surge that pushed me through the last stack — which was tough at times, since I just handed out a semester-low of a 6% on an essay. I’d like to say that it was the lowest grade I’ve ever given on an essay in my life. I’d like to.
On the plus side, the same class saw a 95% grade, too. So that’s good.
Now, to bed.
And Still Grading
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on October 7th, 2008
I knew when I wrote my syllabi that the first weeks of October would be rough. All my classes have had papers due, and I’m trying to grade them as quick as I reasonably can — I hated waiting on grading as a student, so I long ago swore never to put my own students through interminable waits. The papers I picked up on Friday, thankfully, will get returned tomorrow. But the ones I picked up on Monday … not so much. Friday for those, maybe?
One way or another, I need to get my plate cleared by the weekend. It’s Parents’ Weekend hereabouts, which is always fun. Plus, I have some writing of my own I need to attend to, and dozens of stories to review for the latest Paper Golem project.
O Grading, How I Hate Thee
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on October 5th, 2008
I love to teach. Love, love, love it. I’m constantly learning new things — which as anyone who knows me knows, is something I can’t get enough of. I’ll yak about the things I know and listen to the things I don’t for free, so getting paid to do it all is sweet.
But the grading … oh, how it is the bane of the teacher’s existence! Sure, there are moments of wonder, even of beauty, when a student performs the metaphorical equivalent of the steady approach to the end of the diving board followed by a confident bounce and a springing, spinning, entrancing leap out into the blank before slipping seamlessly into the waters.
But other times — more often, I’m sad to say — I am faced with sentences like this:
[One critic] approaches this from a transvestite Pardoner perspective, being a desperate cry for an “organic relationship with the group from a position dependent on hierarchy, can hold the tenuous together.”
You’d like to think that makes sense, wouldn’t you? I mean, those are all real words. And individual phrases here and there really do sound decent. But strung together they’re like so much Palinspeak. I spent a good five minutes of my life trying to figure it out before deciding that the only thing I could conclude was that we shouldn’t ever disregard the transvestite Pardoner perspective on things.
Oh, and then I decided to go ahead and ask Sarah Palin about it, seeing how she is soooo gosh-darned excited and all to be president and stuff when McCain, ya know, kicks the ol’ bucket-a-roo 
Q: What is your feeling about the transvestite pardoner perspective?
PALIN: He’s also known as the bailout, as the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the size of LAX, that platform of land and it’s a matter, too, of some of these countries, especially Russia.
That’s why he has embraced offshore drilling.
Well, it wrong.
Ah, yes. That makes sense. Especially the part about the drilling.
(I don’t care if you brand yourself blue or red, that Palinspeak site is brilliant! And, just for fun, here’s the site’s “about” page that points out how the n-gram Markov model “seems well suited to Sarah Palin statistical language modeling” given that they use the same methods over at interviewpalin.)
Robert Jordan’s Katana
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on October 4th, 2008
As mentioned earlier on these pages, I was fortunate to borrow one of the most beautiful katana from the Robert Jordan estate to use as a prop during my recent lecture at the Charleston Library Society. It was magical (the moment, not the weapon — though the latter was really, really cool).
When I returned the borrowed sword, I was offered another of the Jordan weapons to take home with me on a more permanent basis. So I am proud (and a bit staggered) to say that I now own one of the late Mr. Rigney’s katana; in fact, it seems that this weapon was one of the earliest replica Japanese swords he ever acquired. It’s beautiful, and I’ll post pictures of it when I can.
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