Archive for category Homelife
Website Changes: Now with Front Page!
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on June 24th, 2011
I’ve once again had a few spare hours to get into the website coding and put some things into place that I’ve long been planning on doing.
Most noticeable among these changes is the addition of a static “front page” for the site. Before, folks accessing www.michaellivingston.com were shuffled directly to the latest entries on my blog. Now, that root address goes to a static page with some basic “about me” information, and the blog is a click away in the tabs up top or a direct link on that page itself.
I’m now testing the feeds to be sure they’re set-up correctly, as I assume subscribers will probably want to follow the blog, not my front page.
So why make the change? Well, for one thing, I think it adds a veneer of professionalism. On top of that, it allows me to highlight certain news on the homepage. My latest book publication, for instance, might get buried in the blog, but it can remain highlighted on the front page.
If you see anything wrong with this set-up — especially if it has broken something on your end that cannot easily be repaired — give me a shout in the comments here, or via the Contact page.
Another Academic Year Done
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on May 1st, 2011
Sigh.
I’ve been in my semi-annual grade-induced silence around here for the past week or so. As each semester winds down, I’m inevitably hunkered down in my office, keeping the companies who manufacture red ink in the black (get it?).
Anyway, I’m pleased to say that it’s just about over now. There are (I hope) a few stragglers who will be turning things in this week, but otherwise I’m done. The end is here. (Not, as loyal readers will know, The End.)
I have quite a few projects that are awaiting my attention, but I’m probably going to let myself have a few days of light work-load decompression — during which I’ll likely decide in what order those projects will get my attention.
Chaucer first? Or Tolkien? This novel? That one? A short story, perhaps?
(Lest you think it completely random that I, an English professor, included a funny math problem answer as an illustration, I would point out that I often ask random history, science, and, yes, math questions on my examinations.)
Fiddling with the Site
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on April 3rd, 2011
It’s unlikely to be spotted by any but the most keen observers, but I found a couple hours to fiddle with the website yesterday.
Gone from the sidebar is the lengthy list of posts past (replaced by a drop-down archive). Ditto the list of categories (also replaced by a drop-down). Added is a list of Recent Posts, with a Popular Posts list forthcoming (just looking for the right plug-in for that — any suggestions?). I also dropped the recent comments list, though it may come back if I can manage to tweak its coding sufficiently (I didn’t like the way it looked).
I also did a lot of behind-the-scenes coding tweaks that have improved the look of things to my eye, and I’ve commemorated it all by doing a new logo at the top of the site, which is a bit bolder and cleaner than the old one.
Most of these changes fall into one of two categories: either (1) something was bothering me aesthetically, or (2) I’m hoping to make the site a bit more future-proof in terms of my long-term plans.
I’d tell you what those long-term plans are, but I really don’t want to spoil the surprise — though I will say that it may or may not involve a sun god temple with a thousand naked women throwing pickles at me.
The End of the World and All That
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on March 31st, 2011
It’s fairly common to hear somebody blathering about the End of the World these days.
And by “these days” I mean, well, whenever you happen to be reading this, because one of the few constants over the past couple thousand years has been folks’ certainty — absolute certainty — that the end is nigh. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.
The end will still be a-comin' in the future, too.
The end is nigh. Still. The date just keeps getting moved a little further down the road, a can kicked from one decade to the next — mostly by fire and brimstone preachers who, by the way, will accept cash, check, or credit card to make you feel better about the whole impending doom business.
At the moment I’m writing this, in fact, there’s a bigger surge than usual about Doomnation given the all-too-horrifyingly-real tragedy unfolding in Japan. Here, for instance, is an interesting mix of fundamentalist responses. I generally consider this kind of ranting rather silly on principle, but in the present moment, trying to imagine the horror the people of Japan are living through, I also find it bordering on despicable (as an interesting counterpoint, here’s an atheist’s response to the fundamentalist response).
New Camera: Sony NEX-5
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on March 27th, 2011
We recently spent most of the money we received for the past Hanukwanzmastide on a new camera. We had a Panasonic digital camera that we’d quite enjoyed, but it was starting to show its age a bit. Buttons weren’t as responsive as they’d once been, and the pictures it was taking were starting to look not so hot.
We’re not admittedly the most patient of purchasers. The Wife is a that-one-will-work-let’s-just-get-it sort of shopper, a characteristic she blames on her end-of-the-alphabet last name growing up (thanks to this study). Though blessed with a middle-of-the-alphabet name, I’m not much better: I’m typically pulled in too many directions to want to spend much time on the kind of in-depth research one ought to put into a camera purchase. Besides, I’m a medievalist; it’s all just magic to me.
That said, we did take a few weeks to check out our options and do a fair amount of fact-checking and brother-bothering (by some quirk, both of our siblings are incredible photographers). In the end we decided we wanted the lens-swapping awesomeness of a DSLR, but we didn’t want the enormity of one.
Productivity: How I Get Things Done
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Fiction, Homelife on March 16th, 2011
I recently finished my annual reappointment process here at El Cid, and I’m quite pleased to say that the Powers That Be have decided to let me hang around another year. Since I’m wrapping up year 5, this means that my next evaluation — less than a year away now — will be for tenure.
That’s good news, of course, but it’s not what I want to talk about just now.
No, what I wanted to talk about was a comment that one of the Powers That Be made in the evaluation process: How, this reviewer asked, do I get so much published?
It was a rhetorical question, and that’s a good thing because I had no answer for it. If you know anything about me, though, you’ll know that I really don’t like not having an answer for something.
So I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.
My first response to the notion, frankly, is that I don’t think it’s true. That is, I don’t think I get that much done. My tendency, at the end of any given day, is to wish I’d achieved just a bit more. (Not sure what that says about my psychology, but it’s the truth.)
My second response was to leave issues of relative amount aside and to try to objectively consider how I get done what I get done.
I hereby present to you what I’ve come up with: my Five Rules for Writing Productivity.
RULE 1: Have Multiple Projects. I can’t think when the last time was that I had only One Thing to work on. Right now, for instance, not counting things currently under submission or in production, I have two academic books afoot and five articles. On the fiction side, there are three books and, well, probably a half-dozen short stories. And all that’s to say nothing of things that are ideas for an article or a story or what-not.
A list like this can be frustrating at times, of course, because even if you knock one thing off the list it can be easy to feel like things aren’t getting done. (And, truth be told, it rarely happens that something doesn’t get added to the lists within a week or two of taking something off.)
At the same time, however, having so many things afoot means that there is always something to do. Got writer’s block on that short story about Quantum Physics? Fair enough, pick up the Chaucer article. Not feeling it? Okeedokee, how about niggling about the outline for this Fantasy novel, or that Science Fiction one, or chapter 14 of this other Historical Fiction epic? It honestly doesn’t take long of cycling through projects before your brain kicks in and says, “Ah! I have something to say about that one!” Because, you see, even if you’re not conscious of it, your brain is constantly fiddling with all these things, niggling away at the ideas while you’re sleeping or teaching or whatever.
RULE 2: Be Broad. Not in measurement, but in interests. I constantly read across a wide range of materials. Some of this is necessary because of my teaching — this semester I’m teaching a class on the literary history of Satan that has a crazy-wide reading list — but mostly it’s because I think it’s important to, well, know a lot. The last few books I read for non-syllabus reasons, for instance, were on Theodore Roosevelt, Chaucer, Writing Pedagogy, and Atheism.
Aside from any existential opinion about the need for knowledge, the simple fact is that this broad reading list helps make Rule 1 possible. While it’s only an idea at the moment, for instance, I’ve had some interesting thoughts on Chaucer and Atheism that could perhaps make for an article eventually. I don’t think this would have happened if I’d not read two books on the subject in such close proximity.
It’s also just really pragmatically useful to have such seemingly divergent interests. If I had, in accordance with Rule 1, ten projects that were all variations on the same topic — say, ten Chaucer articles — then if my brain froze up when it came to writing criticism of late Ricardian poetry it’d very likely knock out the whole block. Rule 1 wouldn’t function. Better to have something completely different to go to when that happens.
If I was a rich man, I’d relate this to having multiple vacation homes — you should have a place in the Keys in case you tire of the Alps, after all — but I’m not, so there you go.
RULE 3: Flexibly Prioritize. Keep an eye on deadlines, if you have them. And if you don’t have them, set them. Establish a priority list for your multiple projects: what must get done today, and what can wait until next week.
That done, be perfectly willing to change it up. If you’re inflexible, you’re going to fall victim to writer’s block, or you just won’t do great work. You sometimes have to ride the hot hand, even if it means that a low-priority item dominates your work life for a while.
RULE 4: Love It. If you don’t love it, why do it? You’ll have to do things you don’t want sometimes, of course, for the sake of something else you do want — I didn’t enjoy the reappointment process for my job, but I do want to keep my job — but if you don’t have a good, ultimate answer for why you’re doing something, you might not want to do it. Which brings us to…
RULE 5: In short, life’s short. Keep your eye on what is truly important in your world. Family, friends, faith … whatever it is for you. There should be, I think, a priority list that over-reaches all other things in your life. It’s the Ultimate Rule that arbitrates all else.
My son had his first tee-ball practice on Monday afternoon. Was there something more “productive” that I could have been doing for those couple of hours? Yes. Without question. I could have furthered myself along the path of one of my several career tracks. But would I trade those couple of hours at the park for some time hunched over manuscripts in my office? Hell no.
A Week of News: Robert Jordan, Brunanburh, and a Playground
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on March 12th, 2011
It’s been the proverbial one thing after another the past week. It’s good to stay busy, of course, but it’s also a bit tiring. Here’s the short of it all…
1. Last weekend was the TarValon.net 10th Anniversary event, at which I gave a talk about Robert Jordan and the Tolkien legacy. It was very well attended (170 people, maybe?), and I had a chance to meet some great folks. Everyone seemed quite pleased with the talk — to the point of asking for my autograph, which was unexpected, to say the least!
The other nice thing about the event was it gave me a great chance to catch up with a few folks whom I don’t see often enough, like Brandon Sanderson and the good people of Team Jordan (Jordan’s wife, Harriet, and his incredible assistants, Maria and Alan). I had a good time. I was asked in a rather unofficial way if I’ll give the talk at JordanCon either this year or the next. We’ll see!
2. Because of the weekend’s festivities, I didn’t get my mid-term grading done as efficiently as I would have liked. In the end I had to knock out a couple days in my office during the week to get things finished up.
3. Just as I was collecting my breath, editorial adjustments came back from the University of Exeter Press for my book on the Battle of Brunanburh. Nothing back-breaking (thankfully!), but enough to keep me busy for a bit. On the plus side, we remain on target for the book coming out by May.
4. I’m the head of the parent organization at my son’s school, and a few weeks ago we decided to spend a Saturday morning cleaning up and repairing the playground. I chose this particular Saturday — today — because it was the only one that was completely free this month. After three hours of shoveling dirt and sand, running here and there, and hammering nails … I’m tired.
Which is all a way of noting that I’m taking the afternoon off. 
Finger Scalping
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on February 13th, 2011
It seems I’m constantly apologizing for not updating too much. I blame having multiple careers. :)
I also, for the past couple of weeks, blame the lad. You see, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have scalped my finger.
Let me explain.
Two weeks ago was a glorious Sunday. The sky was blue, the air was fair, and the children were in fine moods. After a hearty breakfast of pancakes, I sat down to cut some magnets with a pair of 9.5″ Titanium Nitride shears. (This was for a 4xGuard product experiment that, as insult to injury, ultimately failed.)
Anyhow, I was trying to cut these magnets while also trying to talk to my 4-year-old boy. He’s a sweet boy, and he was in a genial, talkative mood. Alas, because he is still young, it takes a bit of concentration to follow his chain of logic at times.
All this to say that at one point I looked up to listen to what he had to say while also shutting the shears with a snap.
It didn’t take but a heartbeat for my brain to register that not only had I effectively cut the magnet, but I had also caught the knuckle of my left ring finger in the blades. Another heartbeat, and I was out of my seat and at the kitchen sink, hoping to keep most of the gushing blood contained.
It gets worse.
Because, you see, as I squeezed down on the flap of flesh to try to slow the bleeding, I had one of those epiphany chains of thoughts: This is my ring finger, and I have on my wedding ring. This is a bad cut, and it is going to swell. This ring needs to come off.
I took a deep breath, turned on the water: bracingly cold. Then I plunged the wounded hand under the stream, gritted my teeth, grabbed the ring … and yanked it off.
Squirting ensued.
To my credit, I said nothing disturbing as my family looked on.
After that, I headed to the ER.
Here’s a picture of the wound from around that time, cleaned of blood:
My finger, post-scalping.
Interestingly, the docs thought that I had so severely “de-vascularized” the knuckle that there was no point in stitching it. So they instead made me put the finger in a splint for a week.
After that, I got to take it off and start the process of painfully stretching and breaking and stretching the new skin. The docs were certain that the whole flap was going to be a goner.
Well, it looks like they were wrong:
My finger healing today.
This is my finger today. As you can see, the flap seems to be healing back into place. I’m like Wolverine, baby!
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