changes
All posts and notes on this site, sorted by most recently updated/modified.
Finished Moon Witch Spider King
[Last Updated: 2022.03.06]
[Originally Posted: 2022.03.06]
I finished reading Moon Witch Spider King yesterday evening.
I finished reading Moon Witch Spider King yesterday evening.
There is a strong pull to re-read Black Leopard Red Wolf, but I have so many other books to read that I’m reluctant to give over another potential month or so of reading for this series right now.
But I don’t know if I can let this world go quite yet, and it’s going to be another couple of years, probably…
Standalone post link: Finished Moon Witch Spider King
[]
Now (February 27, 2022)
[Last Updated: 2022.02.27]
[Originally Posted: 2022.02.27]
Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…
Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…
-
Just finishing up a ‘February Break’ with my kids, who had the week off from school.
We did a ‘staycation’: went sledding by Donut Falls in Big Cottonwood Canyon, rode the train downtown to the planetarium and the mall, and will probably go to the Natural History Museum of Utah later today. Also spent a lot of time just chilling at home, video games and what not. -
In my work, I’m hoping to renew a focus on creating, curating, and sharing resources with colleagues, and ultimately teachers, students, and parents.
I feel like this was a strength area of mine that I have let languish in the last couple of years, and I hope I can make a useful or valuable contribution with this type of work again. -
Reading Moon Witch Spider King by Marlon James.
I’ve also started A Little Devil in America, but I’m so obsessed with Moon Witch that I’m picking it up every time I have a moment to read. Been a minute since I’ve been so engrossed by a book. I’ll probably re-read Black Leopard Red Wolf once I’ve finished, though I also have a lot of other books in the queue to read next. -
Not on a big listening project or obsession at the moment, but may take on a full artist discography soon.
-
Playing Gris and Pokemon Legends: Arceus from time to time these days.
-
Looking to buy a car soon.
Maybe this one? My idea of a midlife crisis car - possibly the most consumer-reports-friendly responsible purchase on the market, but lifted an extra inch with slightly chunkier styling and poorer gas mileage.
This page was last updated on February 27, 2022. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.
Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I had envisioned a page of this sort for my new website, but my concept was vague and I didn’t have a clear way forward until I happened upon someone with a ‘now’ page and followed the trail back to the source. I think you should make one too.
Standalone post link: Now (February 27, 2022)
[]
Big Cottonwood Regional Park Photosphere with Deconstructed Puppy and Ghost Girl
[Last Updated: 2022.02.25]
[Originally Posted: 2019.09.29]
My daughter really wanted to be immortalized as a ghostly figure on google maps so I decided to make this photosphere public. See also: our deconstructed puppy’s detached floating tail.
My daughter really wanted to be immortalized as a ghostly figure on google maps so I decided to make this photosphere public. See also: our deconstructed puppy’s detached floating tail.
If you spend much time on Google Street View looking at the photospheres this kind of stuff often pops up and my kids love it and have started looking for it. They are usually accidents or mistakes but we decided to make one this way on purpose.
At some point I might start a Pinterest board to collect screenshots of some of the weirdest ones we have found.
Standalone post link: Big Cottonwood Regional Park Photosphere with Deconstructed Puppy and Ghost Girl
[]
5 Things I Learned by Stealing and Reading the Earthsea Trilogy
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2014.08.19]
A few weeks go I was at my wife’s family’s cabin and I was lurking around in a bedroom browsing my in-laws' old bookshelf. Hidden in the midst of a notable collection of Louis L’Amour novels, with an old framed photograph sitting on the shelf in front of them, I discovered copies of the original Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore.
A few weeks go I was at my wife’s family’s cabin and I was lurking around in a bedroom browsing my in-laws' old bookshelf. Hidden in the midst of a notable collection of Louis L’Amour novels, with an old framed photograph sitting on the shelf in front of them, I discovered copies of the original Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore.
I believe I have read the first chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea at least three or four times over the course of my life (the first time was probably when I was about 10 years old.) For whatever reasons it never took and I never continued and finished, but it has always been on my list to get back to sometime (right up there with Moby Dick, Swann’s Way, and the Old Testament.) So, it appeared the time had finally come for this book, and I spent a good chunk of my cabin weekend reading that old copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. As the time came to leave the cabin, I still had about 15 pages left and the story was completely unresolved. What else could I do but steal the book and take it home? And then since I was already stealing, I might as well steal the whole trilogy.
Although I had various other reading plans, I put them aside to focus on this trilogy. And now that I’ve finished, I am having a hard time finding anything else from those other reading plans that engages me and forces me to make reading a priority like these books did.
So, rather than a review (because I’m [bored with book reviews](http://kidlit.froztfreez.com/bored-with-book-reviews/ ““Bored with Book Reviews”")), here are five things I noticed and learned from these books, mostly from a would-be writer’s perspective:
-
You don’t have to show everything. You can tell some things. And you don’t even have to tell everything. You can skip time, even and especially across volumes of a trilogy, across years, across great deeds only alluded to or sketched out briefly. You don’t have to share the whole history of the world you build or the whole lives of the people you bring to life. You can cover wizard school in three chapters rather than seven books.1
-
You don’t have to end books with cliffhangers. Not even the second volume of a trilogy. Each book in a series can be a stand-alone snapshot of a much larger world.2
-
You don’t have to write high fantasy that is obsessively Euro-centric; you can have high fantasy with people of color. These books actually set a precedent for this 40+ years ago that I didn’t know existed. Our hero and the majority of the characters are dark-skinned people. For the most part this isn’t a major focus of the narratives, but it is definitely there and it is intentional. It’s just one subtle detail of her world and character building, which makes me love it even more. I didn’t realize this when I started reading A Wizard of Earthsea as a child; it certainly isn’t reflected in any of the cover art I have seen for these books over my lifetime. Depressingly, that downplay was probably a sound marketing decision for the times. Hopefully the #WeNeedDiverseBooks meme is changing the calculus for those types of decisions and will result in new book covers even for old books such as these. I’m definitely not well-read in fantasy and most of what I have read was a long time ago, so I recognize that I am ignorant and maybe others authors have been engaging in diversity in fantasy for a long time as well.3
-
The varying ethnic and cultural details are just one example of how LeGuin is a master of using fantasy and other speculative fictions to explore, describe, confront, come to terms with, and rebut ideas we have about culture, race, social norms, politics, religion, sexuality, etc. I had learned this years ago from reading her The Left Hand of Darkness as a teenager, but I had forgotten since then or taken it for granted. Speculative fiction provides such capability and opportunity to explore these kinds of issues in a very real, emotional way without the potential for the story and ideas to get bogged down by all the messiness, politicization, and need for research and accuracy that can come with tying a story or character to a particular place and time in the actual historical or contemporary world. LeGuin is practically an anthropologist of new cultures of her own creation, and I like her approach.4
-
I love reading paperbacks from the 70s. They just don’t make them like that anymore. But more than just the physical-ness of the books themselves, it is good to read something from a different era with a different writing style that is not really trending. A nice widening of perspective from the more contemporary middle grade novels I have been focusing on in the last year or two. I am reminded that there is so much more to read and learn, I can’t just try to keep up with the new stuff. I need to read what I need to read, even if it is old mass paperbacks hidden behind a picture frame on a bookshelf in someone’s cabin.5
Footnotes
-
Not to say that there’s anything wrong with writing seven whole books about wizard school, it’s just nice to see that there are other ways to do it. ↩︎
-
Not to say that there’s anything necessarily wrong with cliff-hangers; it’s just nice to see that there are other ways to do it. ↩︎
-
Not to say that there’s anything wrong with writing fantasy books all about light-skinned people steeped entirely in European traditions, it’s just nice to see that there are other ways to do it. ↩︎
-
Not to say that there’s anything wrong with realistic and historical fiction, it’s just nice that there are other ways to explore serious themes. ↩︎
-
[footnote]Not to say that there’s anything wrong with reading newer middle grade fiction books, it’s just nice to know that there is a lot to be gained from older books as well.[/footnote] ↩︎
Standalone post link: 5 Things I Learned by Stealing and Reading the Earthsea Trilogy
[]
Following Through
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2019.11.12]
When you go for an annual physical for the first time in several years and your doctor informs you that you are outrageously overweight, but you’d already planned to go to Popeyes for lunch because you were going to be on that side of town, so you have to follow through.
I posted this on Instagram and then deleted it 6 minutes later while stuck in traffic driving away from Popeyes. I wish I had archived it instead, as I kind of want to bring it back but I don’t want it to have a later timestamp. Oh well.
Standalone post link: Following Through
[]
Luna and the Moon
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2019.11.12]
Standalone post link: Luna and the Moon
[]
Balloons Outside My Cubicle Window
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2019.11.12]
I made this super-inspiring video and just had to put it somewhere in the archives, and this is that somewhere.
The funny thing was that one day a whole bunch of balloons actually did float up outside my cubicle window in exactly this way. I didn’t get a video of them when it was real, so this was an animated re-creation of that moment.
I made this super-inspiring video and just had to put it somewhere in the archives, and this is that somewhere.
The funny thing was that one day a whole bunch of balloons actually did float up outside my cubicle window in exactly this way. I didn’t get a video of them when it was real, so this was an animated re-creation of that moment.
The real balloons had what appeared to be postcards tied to them, so I believe that some students from the elementary school adjoining my building must have been doing that thing where you tie a pre-stamped postcard to a balloon and let it off to see if you ever get the postcard back from someone but instead you just cause a duck to choke to death or something.
(This was just for a work blog post to illustrate how simple it is to edit video in Windows 10 and add silly effects and animations.)
Did you know that there is an easy-to-use video editor already installed and available on all PCs with the Windows 10 operating system? Learn more about it in our latest #gsdedtech blog post: https://t.co/qmQl2inD9n
— Granite Educational Technology (@GraniteEdTech) November 25, 2019
(It even has magical 3D animation effects.) pic.twitter.com/tC89lI6uhT
Standalone post link: Balloons Outside My Cubicle Window
[]
Luna Waiting for Will to Finish Gathering Rosehips
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2019.11.16]
Gather ye rosehips while ye may?
Standalone post link: Luna Waiting for Will to Finish Gathering Rosehips
[]
Holiday Fun
[Last Updated: 2022.02.21]
[Originally Posted: 2019.11.27]
I forced the kids to listen to my Sung Tongs vinyl today while they made snowflakes and swung around.
I forced the kids to listen to my Sung Tongs vinyl today while they made snowflakes and swung around.