grahambinns.com

Whilst I feel his pain, it's good to know in some ways that Neil Gaiman suffers the same problems of the rest of us, even the massively inexperienced and by comparison untalented ones (Link):

... I am still somewhere in the hell that's either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of THIS DAMNED BOOK which seems determined to be longer than it was meant to be. (You're not a novel, I tell it. You're not even a novella. You're a novelette. And you're due in on Monday. But the story merely laughs and stretches ominously and I have no idea what this bloody pool is doing in the middle of the forest.)

Charlie Stross has a written a nice piece illustrating the difficulty of positing plausible possible futures.

Unpacking the Zeitgeist (via Simon Willison):

... it is making my head hurt because there are too many prior assumptions nested recursively inside it to unpack easily.

...

There are thirty years' worth of future shock condensed into this one news item. And the reason I'm writing about it is that I don't think I could get away with putting such an conceptually overloaded incident into one of my novels; it would take too much set-up and require so much infodumping that many readers would lose interest.

Motivation is lacking at the moment, it seems. I've spent the last two nights effectively just dicking around with the manuscript, writing bits and pieces and then removing them because they just didn't make any sense. It's depressing, but I suspect it's a similar condition to that which afflicted me when the word count was in the low twenty thousands: the feeling that you've come so far - is there anything left to give?

Well, there's 50,000-odd words between then and now, so I guess the answer is a firm yes. I just need to get back on track.

I was hoping to go to a coffee shop tomorrow, Cafe Nero or the Whale Tale, and get something written, but the car needs new brake pads so I guess that's off the cards, too. Irritating. Very irritating.

Anyway, today's links roundup (I have to do something with my time, right?):

BBC NEWS: Germans flock to see silent monks

An unlikely film has been filling cinemas in Germany in recent weeks: a three-hour documentary with hardly a single spoken word, set in a monastery.

(tags: news interesting research religion silence films monkscarthusian terrorofthebell germany)

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists

Someone took the time and trouble to scour America's wishlists for 'dangerous' books, with tongue in cheek.

(tags: datamining privacy security amazon data research terrorismantiterrorism)

My Bionic Quest for Boléro

A deaf geek tinkers with his cochlear implant until he can hear Ravel's Boléo again (via BoingBoing)

(tags: music software science deafness cool news geekery hackingjourneys)

Take a leap into hyperspace

Burkhard Heim produced a theory that may allow for the effects of gravity on an object to be mitigated using immense magnetic fields. This could (theoretically) lead to a propulsion system whereby spacecraft travel in, for want of a better word, hyperspace

(tags: space spacetravel spaceflight research sciencequantummechanics physics hyperspace scifi ideas travel)

Cheerleading can kill (El Reg)

Because jumping up and down with pom-poms is inherently dangerous.

(tags: cheerleading news humour elreg science medicine)

BBC NEWS: AA upsets dead driver's relatives

Bureaucracy gone mad

(tags: bureaucracy AA news stupidity death humour)

What is your most dangerous idea?

Lots of very clever people talk about their most dangerous ideas. (via Slashdot)

(tags: 2006 cool future futurology history humans ideas cultureinteresting philosophy science politics religion research scifi storiestheory thoughts reference writing weird )

Swansea IT staff shunted to Capgemini (El Reg)

This is a familiar concept to anyone who went through the L!beration at Pendle last year, although it was handled better than what has happened at Swansea. L!berata is one of the reasons I left, actually.

(tags: localgovernment pendle swansea privatisation egov)

Ian Pearson's guide to the future

A list of articles by BT's resident futurologist (via Warren Ellis)

(tags: research computers ideas science future futurism futurology trends ianpearson theory warrenellis)