in which i’m interviewed by comicmix

Posted on By Wil

About six weeks ago, I met writer Chris Ullrich in Pasadena to be interviewed for ComicMix. We talked for about two hours, and he ended up with a transcript that’s so long, they’re splitting the interview into three parts.

Part one is up today, and rather than excerpt it heavily, I’ll just quote my favorite bit:

[TokyoPop] asked me if I would write a Next Generation Manga, and would I write a Wesley Crusher story, and I didn’t want to do it because it felt to me like there was no way in that equation that I could return a positive result.

Ultimately, I’m just not interested in Wesley Crusher anymore. It’s been a long time and he’s sort of frozen in amber in a certain state. I don’t have anything to add to that. I don’t have anything new to bring to it at all.

CMix: No thoughts about killing him off?

WW: No. I’m way more interested in working on my own original stuff. And there’s a finite number of time/energy/creative units that I can gather on my “collect resources” turn. I would rather put those into building my own story than into repairing the Wesley Crusher building.

There are times in my life when I wonder if I spend a little too much time gaming. I frequently decide that there’s just no such thing as too much gaming . . . then I read something like this, a faithful recreation of my actual thought process, and I think I should just step away from the bag of dice for a few turns.

Wait. Not turns. Days. I meant to say days.

Sigh.

that’s no moon . . .

Posted on By Wil

. . . that’s an awesome T-shirt!

Just in time for Comic-Con, one of my favorite Threadless shirts of all time has been reprinted!

Dark Side of the Garden - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever
As always, if you buy it via the image above, (or buy anything via this link) I get shiny gold rocks that I can trade for other awesome Threadless shirts of my own, like this one:
Training - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever
It occurs to me now that I haven’t gone on a T-shirt buying rampage in several months. Hmmm . . . maybe it’s time to pay a visit to Think Geek.
(You know, when I go to Think Geek, it’s like a suburban mom going to Target or Costco. I go in there for one T-shirt, and I end up leaving with a ton of other stuff I had no intention of buying when I walked through the door. Please note that I’m not complaining.)

the ghosts in the machine

Posted on By Wil

SpamSieve is the best spam filter I’ve ever used in my life, and it’s made my e-mail reading much more efficient and pleasant than it once was.

A few bits of junk sneak through, but it’s probably one every two or three days, instead of several daily offers for luxury Rolex watches at 80% off, or various ways to take advantage of the ATTRACTIVE PRICE on Cializ and Viagre, so she won’t laugh at my noodle every day.

Recently, however, this managed to evade the filters:

mort You computer was infected by our software!
If you will not buy our software – you will bee lost all data on your PC!

It closes with a URL to purchase the software, presumably so the e-mail’s recipient can respond to the comical extortion attempt.

I laughed when I read it. I mean, it’s obviously a load, so I junked it and went on with my day. I kept thinking about it, though: an intelligent person will see right through this and junk it. I’ve already updated my corpus to catch future attempts to convince me I “will bee lost all data” on my PC. But the spammer isn’t looking to ensnare an intelligent person; the spammer is looking to ensnare exactly the kind of person who reads the e-mail, and sees it as a serious threat.

“This was clearly written by an idiot,” the victim would think. Then, after a moment’s consideration: “But what if he’s serious?! I don’t want to bee lost all data on my PC! I’d better do what he says!” Click. Boom.

There are a lot of us who have been online since the Internet was a series of networked BBSes. Some of us remember closed systems like Compuserve and GEnie. We remember what it was like to wait twenty minutes to download a GIF at 28.8, and how magnificent it was to see a weather satellite image on a university’s T1-connected computer.

We see through these scams because we pre-date the scammers, but there are lots of people — and I’m not just talking about our parents and grandparents — who just don’t know any better. They run unpatched machines, leave their routers set to their default passwords, and are prime phishing targets, simply because this technology is, to them, indistinguishable from magic.

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of everyone’s lives, we’re going to encounter more and more people who don’t understand its inner workings any more than I understand how to take apart my car’s diesel engine for fun and profit. I believe that we have a responsibility to these people, to help educate and enlighten them, so they understand how to protect themselves online.

Think of this another way: if we don’t help people understand how to protect themselves from spammers and phishers, how can we expect them to understand the importance of network neutrality?

it turns out that i get to go to comic-con after all

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been going crazy the last month or so, trying to figure out a way to go to Comic-Con. It was about as easy as getting the Babel Fish, but I refused to give up, and earlier today, I finally put the junk mail on top of the satchel.

I am actually going to Comic-Con this year!

I’ll be there from Thursday, July 24 until Saturday, July 26. I’m on a publishing panel with Pocketbooks on Thursday called “Star Trek without a blueprint.” I’ll be there representing volume three of the Star Trek manga, which I think comes out next week.

This is an exciting time for Star Trek, filled with uncertainty and opportunity. I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lot riding on the new movie, and how it fares will likely affect all of the ancillary Star Trek markets, like conventions, novels, comics, manga, etc.* I don’t know if that’s what “without a blueprint” means, but if it does, it’ll be an interesting conversation. (Of course, it could also mean that CBS is giving much more freedom to people who want to create within the Star Trek universe, rather than forcing them to adhere to a pretty narrow blueprint. That will also be an interesting conversation. My point is that it’s going to be interesting, and certainly worth the price of hotel, airline travel, and all the other expenses associated with coming to the show just to watch a one hour panel before you turn around and go right back home.**)

The rest of the show, I’ll be set up with my friend Rich and his partners in crime***, who are letting me crash their booth. We haven’t finalized my signing schedule, but once we do (and I know the name and number of their booth) I’ll update this post.

This will be the only convention I’m attending this summer other than PAX, so I’m really, really excited and grateful that Marco from TokyoPop, and Rich and his partners from awesomeland were able to help me thwart the cleaning robots.

* I remember hearing, during a negotiation for a convention some years ago, that Enterprise was doing so poorly with the fans that it had really hurt convention turnout. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I heard it so many times from so many different people, it was either a well-worn talking point or legit. If the new movie doesn’t do as well as everyone hopes, we could be hearing about the death of Star Trek again, though I’ve come to believe that Star Trek is a mighty zombie in science fiction that simply can’t be killed. There’s a good reason it’s still relevant and inspiring to legions of fans forty years after it debuted, you know.

** This statement is completely false. Except for the interesting part. It’s absolutely going to be interesting. Also, “interesting.”

***I’m not sure if Rich has minions, but if he does, I’m sure that they will be there, too. Hey, maybe I’ll fill out a minion application!