Groovy

The Je Joue programmable massager.

“The great thing about foreplay is that unlike doing it yourself, you don’t quite know what’s coming next,” he says. “There’s a sense of ‘otherness,’ which is very exciting. It’s unpredictable. I wondered why you can’t have a product that does that. It’s not trying to replace a person, but it’s easy enough to have a programmable product that has enough ability and variability to be able to surprise you.”

The passage above, incidentally, is how I found the Wired article, via a perfectly innocent Google search. I swear!

If you like what it’s doing and you want more, you can adjust the intensity or speed with a press of a button. To make sure it keeps doing what it’s doing, press and hold the “don’t stop” button.

I’m sorry, but that’s awesome. All technology should have a “don’t stop” button.

I don’t know if I like it, but I like it.

Started another Storyball project this month.
Got the first story done. (Sort of; it’s really just the beginning of one. I might go back and add some more when I’ve more time — it should be a bit longer.)
Holly Black wrote in a recent essay/blog post about tapping into something inside yourself — “find your inner rage or your inner perv.”
Think I did both.

Serenity wallpapers

Older ones – but I like the character descriptions better (they read like Heroquest attributes, actually).

  • Jayne: Mercenary. Tough. Easy to bribe. Fond of grenades.
  • Kaylee: Mechanic. Sweet. Sexy. Hot on machines.
  • Wash: Pilot. Funny. Level headed. Soars like a bird.

Newer ones – better images, but the character aspects listed aren’t nearly as interesting or succinct.

… and it is hard.

Holly Black:

… we […] often look for what is wrong with a piece of fiction. Now, that’s certainly useful. It’s important to know when something’s confusing or dull or structurally unsound. But what I find that I need more and more–and need to learn how to do–is a critique that pushes fiction to that next level, that wow level. Like Cecil’s admonishment to “look for your inner rage and inner perv,” critiquing a competent story is all about seeing its cracktastic potential and about having standards that are higher than good. And it’s about finding the great parts of a story and pushing the rest of the it toward those parts. It is a whole mental shift for me in terms of thinking about fiction and it is hard.

Watch this girl. Better yet, read her. Get Tithe. Start there.

Get your geek on…

The Sci-Fi Channel (U.S.) will be showing a Firefly Marathon on March 10th ~ the episodes will start with the pilot “Serenity” and continue in original (intended) order through to “Out of Gas”.