Cloverfield

Posted on By Wil

I saw Cloverfield yesterday afternoon, early enough so I could avoid a theater filled with douchebags. I understand that this was a good thing, because people I know who saw it at night with the aforementioned douchebags were so annoyed by them, and so pulled out of the movie by them, it seriously fucked with their ability to enjoy the film.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. I gave it 3 out of 5, but only because the first-person shaky camera stuff made me violently seasick, causing me to look away from the screen more frequently than I did with Blair Witch (a movie, by the way, that I enjoyed as much as "meh" can be enjoyed, and which doesn’t deserve to be compared to Cloverfield, IMHO.) On story and effectiveness, I give it a 4.6 out of 5but the camera stuff really messed with me, and I suspect it will mess with other viewers, as well.

Assume there will be spoilers in comments, because I’m starting the comments off with my extended commentary on the film, which you should not read if you haven’t seen it yet.

The Bad Astronomer (who I owned in a Techonobabbloff yesterday) has some nitpicks and a review that I agreed with pretty much all the way, too.

announcement 5 of 4 (math is hard!)

Posted on By Wil

According to Eventful, 84 people have joined a demand for me to come to San Diego. I usually come down for Comic-con, but with the eleventy billion people down there every year, it’s not exactly the most intimate environment for a reading and signing. So I’ve been looking for a more reasonable venue, where I won’t have to compete for attention with half-naked cosplaying MILFs.

So I talked to the Awesome Patrol at my favorite indie bookstore in San Diego, and I’m coming to Mysterious Galaxy Books on May 3 for a reading, signing, and geekfest.

I had a whole bunch of fun the last time I came to Mysterious Galaxy with Just a Geek. There was a great crowd, and it’s a fantastic store. I’m really looking forward to doing this, and I think it’s appropriate that Mysterious Galaxy will be the first official in-store signing on Wil Wheaton’s Happiest Tour of My Life, which I’ve just decided to launch and may cancel due to lack of interest at future date.

Mysterious Galaxy has a page with details and book ordering information, and I’ve also created an event page at Eventful that doesn’t have ordering information, but does have a spiffy picture of me, Wil Wheaton.

Library of Congress puts thousands of photos on Flickr

Posted on By Wil

File this under Coolest Damn Thing I’ve Seen All Day: The Library of Congress put over 3100 pictures on Flickr:

Library of Congress staff often make digital versions of our popular
image collections available online as quickly as possible by relying
primarily on the identifying information that came with the original
photos. That text can be incomplete and is even inaccurate at times. We
welcome your contribution of names, descriptions, locations, tags, and
also your general reactions.

It’s divided into two different sets:

1930s-40s in Color:

These vivid color photos from the Great
Depression and World War II capture an
era generally seen only in
black-and-white. Photographers working
for the United States Farm Security
Administration (FSA) and later the
Office of War Information (OWI) created
the images between 1939 and 1944.

News events in the 1910s:

Welcome to the daily news scene from
almost a hundred years ago, as
photographed by the Bain News Service in
about 1910-1912. We invite your tags and
comments! Also, lots more identification
information. (Most of these old photos
came to the Library of Congress with
very little description.)

This selected set of 1,500 photographs
is from a large collection of almost
40,000 glass negatives. The entire
collection spans 1900-1920 and richly
documents sports events, theater,
celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters,
and political activities, with a special
emphasis on life in New York City.

I’ve only looked at a few dozen of these pictures, but they’re just astonishingly beautiful. Many of them have a haunting quality, as well, and would make great Ficlet inspiration.

I Propelled this link the instant I saw it, if any propeller heads wish to vote for it.

where is my motivation?

Posted on By Wil

2008 is the year of serious fiction writing for Wil, so it is also
going to be the year of reading like crazy to stay inspired and in the
proper headspace for writing. I’m quite excited for this, actually,
because it means I’ll be working through the stack of books (you’ll
find one in every house, you’ll see) almost as fast as I can add to it.

However, having finished my manga script and Penny Arcade foreword, I find myself massively unmotivated to do much of anything beyond Propelling links every day, burning through the Netflix queue, and catching up on whatever my DVR’s recorded for me in the last few months. And Xbox. And Nintendo DS.

This lack of motivation and focus is disturbing to me, and it’s dangerous, too. I’ve resolved to find my way out of Lazy Bum Town and back onto the Highway of Productivity before the end of the week.

Could it be that my brain wants to take a bit of a vacation? That I subconsciously need to just veg out and do nothing so it can recharge? Am I just undisciplined? Whatever the answer is, I need my brains back soon, because Andrew and I put together a 2008 release schedule for Monolith Press and — wait. That’s not right. I told Andrew about all the things I wanted to do this year and when I wanted to have them done, and he put together a schedule that is tough, but reasonable . . . if I can just get my damn brain into gear and find my motivation. Thank jeebus for Andrew, because he’s a hell of a lot more than just a good friend and a Red Pen of Doom.

I think the best way to get motivated is to give myself deadlines. And by "give myself" I mean "respect the deadlines Andrew set up for me." I think that I need inspiration too, though, and I’m going to get that by reading books I love, listening to audio books I love, and analyzing movies that I love. I got the idea to do what became Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot because I was inspired by This American Life and David Sedaris. I’m working on some original science fiction because I’ve been inspired by Scalzi, Joe Haldeman, and Phillip K. Dick.

But that inspiration, and the desire to do something with it, is having a tough time achieving escape velocity from video games and movies, so maybe the whole thing comes down to discipline, which I understand is one of the toughest things for freelance writers who work out of their house to maintain.