Year: 2013

Married!

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I think that most people who follow me will already know this from Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, but just in case there’s someone out there still paying attention to this site but not any of my social media outlets…

…just over one week ago, on June 19th, eleven years after our first date, Prairie and I got married in a small civil ceremony at the Kittitas County Courthouse here in Ellensburg.

We’d started talking about this a few months ago, when we started talking about what to do for my 40th birthday. “We could get married…?” And we were off.

We very intentionally kept it quiet. We didn’t want a big to-do made of the event for a few reasons, chief among those being that we’d already been dating for eleven years, living together for eight, and even bought a house together two years ago. Our relationship isn’t new, and this seemed to us to be a combination of something very trivial (a few words from a judge, a few signatures on a piece of paper, and we’re done) and something weirdly big (c’mon…it’s getting married!). Most importantly, we wanted to do this for us and how we were most comfortable, and part of that meant keeping it as low-key and low-stress as possible. We each told our immediate family the month before so that they wouldn’t be caught completely off guard when the news eventually came out, and other than the friends we asked to be our legal witnesses, that was it.

We’d actually originally considered not making any announcement at all, but we eventually decided to have a little fun with it. So, once the ceremony was done and we’d had a short “thank you” gathering at our house with our witnesses, we made the “announcement” by switching our Facebook statuses from “in a relationship” to “married” and waited to see what would happen next.

Of course, what happened was a lot of surprised and happy well-wishes, and we had a lot of fun watching the “likes” and comments come in over the course of the evening.

Thanks to all of you who know already for your kind comments, to our families for understanding (or at least accepting) how we decided to do this, to Cody (and Jackee) and Courtney (and Andy) for being our witnesses, and to Judge Fran Chmelewski for making it official.

Thanks also to Jackee for taking photos, since I couldn’t very well do both at the same time. Here they are:

We got married!

And that’s it!

Now PGP-enabled

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With all the recent concerns about security and privacy in the world of PRISM, I finally decided to carry through on something I’d considered from time to time in the past, and have set myself up to be able to handle PGP encryption for my mail. I’m using GPGTools for the OS X Mail client and Mailvelope for Chrome when I need web access to my Gmail account.

To be honest, I don’t know how often I’ll actually use PGP for anything other than signing my messages — I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever been truly concerned about what someone might find if they snooped through my email (they’d probably be pretty bored) — but as long as the option is there, might as well make sure I’m set up to use it in case I ever feel the need.

My PGP public key follows:

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Thor’s Day Night Dance

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This past weekend, I was the DJ for the Thursday Night Dance (which we named the Thor’s Day Night Dance) at a local convention.

We call it Thursday night, but we used to know it as Thor’s Day…and you can kick off your weekend of saving the world with a celebration worthy of Asgard itself! Join DJ Wüdi for an evening of tunes new and old for gods and mortals alike. Come dressed as your godlike representation or as your mortal alter-ego. Requests are not just welcome, but encouraged!

Here’s my full DJ set from the night, recorded live as the night went on! The full track is huge (4 hours, 23 minutes, 296.6 MB), so I’ve also split the night into four sections of roughly an hour each for easier downloading. In all the tracklists, tracks marked with “•” were requests.

Enjoy!

The full mix:

(See below for track listing.)

Download Thor’s Day Night (full) (4h 23m 21s, 296.6MB .mp3)

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Difficult Listening Hour 08 (130 BPM)

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Mix number two for this weekend!. Every song in this mix is somewhere between 125 and 135 BPM. And as always, this was mixed “live” and has no post-processing or editing work, so while it may not be perfect, it’s all me!

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Difficult Listening Hour 07 (120BPM)

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This weekend’s new practice mix. Every song in this mix is somewhere between 115 and 125 BPM. And as always, this was mixed “live” and has no post-processing or editing work, so while it may not be perfect, it’s all me!

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2012 Philip K. Dick Award Thoughts

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One of the highlights of Norwescon is the award dinner for the annual Philip K. Dick Award for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. For the second year running, I’ve purchased and read each of the nominated books. What follows are the brief reviews I posted to Goodreads as I finished each book.

  • Helix WarsHelix Wars by Eric Brown
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    First off, to borrow an old cliché, don’t judge this book by its cover. The cover, of a suited warrior firing a laser rifle against a backdrop of explosions, gives the impression that this is a military sci-fi novel (a genre which I’m not terribly interested in). Instead, this book, the second in a series, has much more in common with Larry Niven’s Ringworld, as it deals with the interplay between races on a giant helical constructed world, wrapped around a star like a slinky, with thousands of cylindrical worlds strung along like beads on a necklace.

    However much the construct may invite comparisons to Niven’s Ringworld, though, Brown’s worldbuilding isn’t quite so engrossing. The structure of the Helix allows for lots of variety in environments and races, but leaves a lot of the technical underpinnings (for instance, how do the individual worlds have gravity?) to be either entirely unexplained or brushed off as “technology so advanced we can’t understand it”. The concept sounds very hard-SF, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

    That said, the book isn’t at all bad, though it’s not likely to end up as my pick for this year’s P.K. Dick award (for which it is one of seven nominees). I just hoped for a little more Niven-like exploration of the hard-SF concept that instead acts as little more than an interesting background for the story itself.

  • Fountain of Age: StoriesFountain of Age: Stories by Nancy Kress
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Impressive selection of stories; unlike many anthologies (both single- and multi-author), not a single story I’d consider a dud. Many deal with the not-too-far-future complications of genetic modification, and the whole book has a somewhat melancholy, moody feel to it that I liked a lot.

  • Lost EverythingLost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    I almost gave this one two stars, but that wouldn’t have been fair to the book. It’s good, well written, and the style is…well, I want to say pretty, but “evocative” is probably a better word. The book was just too sad, too much of a hard slog through a broken country with broken people. Though described as post-apocalyptic, that’s not quite right, as the apocalypse is still in progress during the events of the book. There are moments of hope, but they’re always overwhelmed by despair. I know it’s good…I just didn’t enjoy reading it.

  • The Not YetThe Not Yet by Moira Crone
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    I had trouble getting into this one — it was interesting, and has some interesting ideas on mortality and the effects of enhanced longevity, but for some reason, it didn’t really pull me in until the last chapter when everything wraps up.

  • HarmonyHarmony by Keith Brooke
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    Three and a half stars would be more accurate. There’s a lot of fascinating worldbuilding here, presented very much in the “sink or swim” style where you’re simply dropped into the world and must figure it out as you go. Neat stuff, but the pacing felt a little off…there’s a lot of time spent setting the board, only to have the endgame sprung upon you faster than you expect. I’m not sure if I’d have preferred less setup (at the possible expense of less comprehension of the world) or more climax/denouement (which might remove some of the power of the “aha!” moment at the end), but it felt somewhat off-balance.

  • Blueprints of the AfterlifeBlueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    At times both fascinating and frustrating. While there was a lot to like in this, taken as a whole, it just didn’t quite mesh. Neat and very believable ideas (like the Bionet) mixed with wild absurdism (the Malaspina glacier gone rogue) mixed with I’m not sure what (a Mario-Brothers-meets-zombies video game sequence that I’m still not sure how to interpret). Interesting and, on the while, enjoyable, but perhaps a bit too absurdist.

  • LoveStar: A NovelLoveStar: A Novel by Andri Snær Magnason
    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    This one, I really, really enjoyed. Frighteningly believable (if improbable) biotech-meets-marketing serves as a base for paired stories of lovers torn apart and a brilliant CEO on a reluctant quest for God. Frequently funny and sweet, this was easily my favorite of this year’s crop of Philip K. Dick Award nominees.

Me at Norwescon 36

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In just a few weeks, I will once again be indulging in four days of glorious geekery at Norwescon 36. I’m wearing more hats than ever before this year, so here’s a rough rundown of what I’ll be doing and where you’ll be able to find me…

DJ

I continue to coax my onetime alter-ego DJ Wüdi out of retirement, and as such, will be DJing the opening night dance on Thursday night! Here’s the program blurb:

Thor’s Day Night Dance!

We call it Thursday night, but we used to know it as Thor’s Day…and you can kick off your weekend of saving the world with a celebration worthy of Asgard itself! Join DJ Wüdi for an evening of tunes new and old for gods and mortals alike. Come dressed as your godlike representation or as your mortal alter-ego. Requests are not just welcome, but encouraged!

If you’re going to be at the con and already know that there are certain songs you really want to hear, good news! You can already turn in your song requests for me or any of Norwescon’s other DJs at the Norwescon website!

Lead Photographer

This will be my fourth consecutive year as lead photographer for Norwescon. Look for me running all over the convention space, taking shots of anything and everything that’s going on!

(Sadly, this will also be my last year as lead photographer, as I’ve found that living in Ellensburg makes it somewhat difficult to coordinate photography for a con in the Seattle area. I do hope to remain on the photography team in future years, however, so neither I nor my camera will be disappearing from Norwescon anytime soon!)

Panelist

I’m participating in one panel this year, as I am part of Norwescon’s new SAFE committee, tasked with investigating a possible official written harassment policy for convention membership. We’re hosting a panel on Saturday to address any concerns that the membership at large might have as we work on this. Here’s the program blurb for this panel:

Panel Name: Should Norwescon Adopt a Harassment Policy?
Time: Sat 1200
Room: Salon
Panelists: Kevin Black (M), Pat Booze, Alan Bond, Sika Holman, Michael Hanscom, Kate Mulligan Wolfe
Description: Some conventions are adopting policies against harassment, something Norwescon has not had in its 36 years of existence. Do we need this in our community? Please come give input to members of the committee charged with making recommendations to the executive team by the end of 2013.

Social Media Coordinator

For most of the year, anytime you see something pop up on Norwescon’s Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ pages, chances are extremely good that I was the brain behind the keyboard. While chances are looking quite good that I’ll have some assistance during the con itself this year, I’m the person overseeing all that, so if there’s something that our social media accounts aren’t doing to your satisfaction (or, of course, if we’re doing particularly well), feel free to let me know!

Webmaster

I’m also the person in charge of the official Norwescon website. There’s still a lot of information yet to go up over the next few weeks as we get closer to the con, and then by the end of April, I’ll be rolling us over to a new, fresh design for Norwescon 37! Just as with the Social Media side of things, if there’s anything that the website isn’t doing that it could do better (or if there are things going particularly well), I’d love to hear about it!