Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Susannah Shepherd,
Create a work-only work space, even if it’s just a corner you can throw a rug over at the end of the day.
And, if you can, set it up properly. Get that really comfy chair, get a desk with plenty of space, if you have a laptop get a proper (i.e. not the cheapest) mouse and keyboard. You're going to be spending a very significant portion of your day there; investments in set-up can make huge differences to your willingness to spend time there later on. It'll probably be nicer than most workplaces, but you need the extra motivation.
I always have problems with taking the annual leave I am entitled to, as there is no sharp division between work and leisure components as there is for most folk
It was a public holiday in Massachusetts last week. I forgot about it until it was midday and no-one else had come into the lab, because I've got so used to the idea that holiays are sort of optional, unless it's Christmas or something.
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Did he get it done, though?
Yep, and got an A for it. He also changed things up by writing a thirty-five page review article when he got bored of the thesis. (So, okay, there's our family work-from-home secret: have a really freakish work ethic. And a cat.)
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to BenWilson,
I'd like to stress the "go out sometimes" point. Even if you consider yourself to be not naturally sociable, you'll be amazed by how nutty you can get after being alone for too long. Other humans form anchor points of reality around you, and regular contact with them is good.
Between August and December of last year my allegedly better half spent his time in what you'd think would be the perfect conditions for ensuring productive work at home: a room with him, a computer, and a desk, in a semi-rural area of a foreign country, with no car, and a two-hundred page technical thesis to write. Oh, and a cat.
Honestly, I'm still a little surprised he's still here. And, you know, sane.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
So's The Tudors when you get down to brass tacks. :) I'm wondering if the real problem (if it is a problem) with Game of Thrones is that HBO has made a ten hour movie, not heavily-serialised episodic television. Will be interested to see how many people will make that kind of investment.
It's been critically very well-reviewed for the most part, including a lot of people unfamiliar with the books. Of course, most of them had the first six episodes, so whether that translates into audience attention past the premiere remains to be seen - I will be very, very interested to see the numbers come Tuesday for episode 2.
The "rutting" thing...eh, not my cup of tea either. It put me off the Tudors and Rome both, because I'm just not a fan of sex on screen - but I care enough about the story for GoT to just avert my eyes and keep going. Given HBO's reputation in the US, I think it's not unlikely that most people tuning in will be expecting that level of sex/nudity, and it won't be a particular barrier. The time investment required to remember who all the cast are and their various interconnections is the real kicker with this one.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Steve Parks,
As far as I know, it was always intended to be set in the future, after a nuclear war, and featuring technology that wouldn’t have been available at the time the book was written.
That's kind of the fascinating thing about SF, though; it can feature medieval-level technology and still be firmly SF-nal. I'd argue it's the *future* bit that makes 1984 SF. Everything else is just sort of window-dressing.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Steve Parks,
From the BBC news article responding to Hunt’s claims. I guess she’ll never live it down…
Constantly denying that she writes science fiction? She doesn't deserve to live it down. (But, because of that, also doesn't count as an example of the BBC featuring actual SF authors.)
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to B Jones,
In the US and UK it sounds like a few have taken to intimidating students and academics.
A lot of them are pretty explicit about their desire to make students believe their lives and families will be in danger if they go into any sort of animal research. It's sickening, frankly.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Think you’ve hit on a fair point: In the book (IIRC) she’s the POV narrator for everything that happens in the East, so can have a twenty page treatise on the customs of the Dothraki and her state of mind. Not so sure how you could ever translate that into television though..
Most of Dany's early stuff is trains of thought, covering some fairly serious lengths of time - not very TV friendly at all. There's going to be a similar challenge with characters like Jaime and Cersei, whose upgrade to POV characters allows them to be somewhat more sympathetic in later books - but on TV, that won't wash; they're going to have to have glimmers of not-total-dickishness from the beginning for it to work, since we don't get the benefit of suddenly being privy to their inner thoughts.
The good news, though, is that they now have a second season to work on this stuff. W00t.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I'm sorry to tell you this, but Westeros and Environs is full of "rape-y type people" - and I think it's to Martin's credit that he neither romantic or evasive about how ugly a working patriarchy can be for the women who are traded like sides of beef. No matter how you cut it, Viserys pretty much sells his 14 year-old sister for an army. And (**SPOILERS SWEETIE!**) well down the line when Sansia Stark is forced to marry Tyrion Lannister (which neither of them want) what's his great kindness? He doesn't "force consummation" (i.e. rape her) on the wedding night, and is mocked for his troubles.
Okay, dude: that last post came as my opinion after having read the books multiple times. Westeros is no feminist paradise, I get that. I'm totally cool with that, in fact. What I don't get is why they apparently chose to reduce the complex Dothraki culture - in this first episode - down to "brown people who have public sex and public death-fights, and also are totally OK with raping their crying brides on their wedding night". Dany had way more agency and consent in the book than she did on the screen. Possibly that's down to the lack of seeing it through her PoV, possibly it's because they're trying to give her a clearer character arc from victim to khaleesi; I'm not sure. But it didn't work for me, or for any of the others who I watched it with.
I'd really love to believe they're going to bring the viewer into Dothraki culture the way Dany is brought in the book. But given American TV's record with depictions of non-white cultures, I'm dubious.
(And, really, I think the most ironic and or/sad thing about Tyrion's attempt to do the right thing and not rape his terrified thirteen-year-old bride is that even Sansa doesn't give him much real credit for it, while having romantic fantasies about coming *thisclose* to very possibly being raped at knifepoint. The guy just can't catch a break with women, can he?)
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85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction. The Fundy Post's Paul Litterick is not impressed.
The bit where he called Lord of the Rings a "steaming pile of cliches" was....ironic, right? Right?
And I can confirm, for the record, that Game of Thrones is awesome. Not without a few minor flaws - the first episode reduction of the Dothraki from "complex culture" to "Semi-Naked Savage Brown Rape-y Type People" was, erm, problematic, but I'm crossing my fingers they'll move on from there. Although it does give Danaerys' entire arc a bit of a "The Natives Need A White Person To Save Them" slant that...I hadn't actually considered until now. Oh dear.
...and now I've put people off, but, no, seriously: good acting, good sets, good everything. I can't really tell you how it'd play without having read the books, because everyone I watched it with had, but even those who didn't remember most of the details (or character names) were hooked. If we're lucky, this might actually lead to TV reconsidering fantasy as a viable genre beyond Xena- or Hercules-style shows. (Well. They won't, probably, for reasons demonstrated in that NYT review. But I can dream.)