Nathan Tyree: Things are going great

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So, I just learned that two bookstores in my area are going to be stocking my book (that's Mr. Overby is Falling, in case anyone wants to know). Hastings in Joplin, Mo has ordered three copies. The Hastings in Pittsburg, KS has ordered five copies, and asked me to do a book signing. It's going to be next month.

I'm very happy about this.

Mood: hungry
Music: neon light buzzing
Browsing: me

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Nathan Tyree: More on Flame War

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So Terry was working on title cards for the short film (Flame War) when his computer had something of a hiccup. Now he has to start over. GRRR.

Oh well, Buy my book

Mood: Pissed
Music: Lester Banks
Browsing: you know

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Nathan Tyree: On being a geek.

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Last night a friend and I were having a conversation about languages. It stemmed from an episode of Penn a Teller Bullshit. This dumbass Nostradamus pimp dude was explaining that you could find the name of the anti-christ in one of old Nostra's quatrains if you inserted a "silent Latin H." The friend and I both knew that Latin has no such thing as a silent H.

Discussion of this led to talk about the evolution of the Indo-European languages (primarily we were interested in the Romance languages). Then, suddenly Star Trek Enterprise was mentioned.

I exclaimed (with great vitriol) that the universal translator was an absurd idea. I argued that as the translator was often shown to function in the show, it was an impossibility. For those who don't know, this device seems to be able to extrapolate an entire language from a few sentences.

I argued that although it seems likely that the computer could glean the rules of sentence structure from such input, it would still be boggled by vocabulary. Some languages (like English) have millions of words (many with several meanings). The computer should take days (if not months) to learn an entire language.

I further argued that the machine shouldn't be able to learn at all by just listening to native speakers of a language talking. A language must first be taught referentially. Displacement (the ability to talk about things removed from us in time or space) comes later.

After some time, my friend and I realized: We're geeks. Oh yeah, Look at this
And This

Mood: Geeky
Music: Something about aliens in love
Browsing: Geeks with guns

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Nathan Tyree: Smoking

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"Wish I had all the money we used to spend on dope"
-Tom Waits
So I need to quit smoking. I'm up to two packs a day, and wake up coughing every morning. These are deep, hacking coughs.
"Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo"
- Statler brothers
Three flights of stairs about does it. After that I'm out of breath. I smoke more when I'm alone. Or when I'm driving. Or when i'm bored. And mostly, when I watch TV (which I try to avoid).
"aint got no cigarettes."
-Roger Miller
I've tried patches, gum, Zyban, candy, and cold turkey. None of these have worked. When i get up, I can't function until the first smoke. I have a cigarette before I brush my teeth.
I need to quit. Badly.

I wrote a vignette about cigarettes once. It's here:
Cigarette Burns

Mood: Smoking
Music: Raindogs
Browsing: The end is near

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Nathan Tyree: Flame War

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So, tonight jestmeister, our friend Terry and myself are working on looping the dialogue for Flame War, a short film. I have completed looping my lines, now Jest is in the "sound booth" (that's a car, a Saturn to be specific) recording his dialogue. I'm killing time until this phase is complete.

As the writer of this little endeavor I'm excited to see how it all works out in the end.

Mood: over medicated
Music: Probot
Browsing: Movies

Comments (4)