I've done most of my video production on Linux for a while. Lately, I've had issues with Audacity crashing or refusing playback during editing projects. So, with my latest project, I switched to using my Mac but using the same FLOSS software for the production.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

For unrelated reasons, I connected my MBA to my keyboard, mouse, and monitor at my normal desk. Having a 27 inch screen to do video editing is going to be a huge benefit.

Sometimes I write on my Mac. Sometimes I write on my main computer (Linux). Since setting up the typewriter (which is where I'm typing this from), I do the greatest amount of word count from a several-years-old, underpowered since the day before it came off the production line, Dell laptop.

I've got no GUI running on it. Despite the fact that the “refurbisher” sent me a unit with a practically dead battery, the laptop can get from 100% charge to low 70s in 5 hours of typing.

There are a lot of solutions out there for low-distraction writing. Most of them are more expensive than a $100 (or, occasionally cheaper) educational laptop running Linux.

That's not a solution for everyone. Especially not Alpine Linux. I can't get a USB drive to map on this thing. The only way I'm getting my writing off of it and onto the rest of my network is my existing NAS and a Unison profile.

It doesn't have constant nagging from Microsoft or Apple. There are no applications begging for or demanding my attention.

With the caveat that it requires a significant amount of technical knowledge to make it work in the first place, this is the cheapest and most effective way for me to do distraction-free writing.

Using this method, I was able to write just shy of 60K in the month of February. Most of that on this computer. In the shortest month of the year, without trying to, I completed a novel's worth of writing by February 22.

That's the power of cutting out distractions.

The options we as writers have for off the shelf devices to accomplish similar goals are expensive, inflexible products. I think we deserve options that aren't expensive or inflexible and don't require my level of Linux expertise to set up and maintain.

#Technology #PersonalEssay

Recently, I've been struggling to figure out what I'm working on in terms of writing. February was a kick ass month where I released video projects and did nearly 60K words.

I ended up going through my entire list of open projects and discovered I had about 15 fiction projects on my plate. I also found I had writing folders I didn't recognize by code name. That and some other things made me realize I might have too much going on.

When I was making appointments with clients regularly as part of my IT job, I came to a truth that has helped me ever since. If you give someone the open ended question “when would you like to meet,” you're probably not going to get an answer any time. You've got SLAs, and they've got a hypothetical infinity to choose from.

If you instead suggest two specific times, they may accept one of them or they may propose their own. The effective range of possibility is still the same but now it doesn't look nearly as intimidating.

I've used random number generators for myself since I was a child. Assign each possibility its own number and run the RNG. Even if it picks one I decide I definitely don't want to do, running the RNG helped make that possibility real enough to turn it down.

On the other hand, it also helps to clear out the clutter.

So I made a list of all my active projects and moved the others to a folder I use for projects that are on hold.

The number is still fifteen (or fourteen depending on how you count) but now I can see it a little better.

And maybe I can make myself an RNG project picker in Python that will read project names from my fancy new table.

At the moment, the big thing is to get enough of my mental desk clean so that I can think and do a bit of writing.

#PersonalEssay

I haven't seen the new Star Trek show, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It's not that I wouldn't. I don't have Paramount+ because I don't have money coming in. Even if I did, I don't pay money to people eager to kiss the ass of fascists. I do pal around a lot in Star Trek communities.

One of the things I saw coming out of certain ends of 'the fandom' is this “It's impossible to have Jem'Hadar women. How do they have Jem'Hadar women?!” thing. Academy has had like six episodes or something so it's likely this question has already been answered.

It didn't really need to be, though.

Reading the text

As a long time Star Trek fan who has watched DS9 numerous times (and recently finished up another DS9 watch through), I saw Lura Thok (played by Gina Yashere) in some promotional graphics and thought “Oh, cool! Jem'Hadar!” I'm annoyed to say looking up her character's name gave me a slight spoiler but I'm not going to replicate that issue for you here.

In DS9, we're given hints over the course of several seasons that ultimately amount to this: the Founders didn't create the Vorta or the Jem'Hadar from scratch. They took some species that existed already and modified them to suit their purposes. The Jem'Hadar were created to be their soldiers and the Vorta were created to be administrators. According to Vorta legend, the Vorta had been tiny little critters we would likely assume were not fully sentient when they were what old SciFi might call “uplifted” by the Founders. Given how much the Founders lie, I'm not sure I would take that particularly seriously.

We don't have any information about where the Jem'Hadar originally came from but we have solid reasons to believe they weren't created from scratch. One example is in Hippocratic Oath where we discover that one Jem'Hadar was able to break his hold over the genetic addiction to ketracel-white. If the Founders had created the Jem'Hadar completely from scratch and completely controlled their breeding, it's unlikely that Goran'Agar would have been able to manage that. Other episodes reveal that the Jem'Hadar's genetic conditioning isn't as strong as the Founders believe (or purport to believe) it is.

The obvious answer

All of this speaks to the likelihood that the Jem'Hadar are another species that has been modified. It hints that Jem'Hadar women may actually still have been somewhat involved in the process of making new Jem'Hadar for the Gamma Quadrant at least. Even if the average Jem'Hadar warrior is completely unaware of that possibility.

That's stuff we can imagine while ignoring the end of DS9 but taking everything else in DS9 into account (without touching Picard or other properties).

Once we do take the end of DS9 into account, we have Odo leading the Founders and we have at least two species who have existed mainly to serve the Dominion which no longer exists. We see time and time again that Odo feels that wholesale slaughter is deeply evil. We also know how much he feels the Jem'Hadar should be able to choose their own destinies on an individual level.

Given that information, it's very likely that Odo would lead the Founders to restore the Jem'Hadar's independence and solve some of the dissatisfaction the Weyoun clones discussed about the Founders' tinkering with the Vorta genetic makeup.

Now, that last paragraph is a simple guess about what might have happened on the basis of my knowledge of the previous paragraphs and my knowledge of Odo as a character. There are certainly other ways that the creators of Starfleet Academy could have solved any issues — if I was to agree there were an issue to address.

One of several long roads

It's a SciFi show. There's any number of ways they could have solved it.

Goran'Agar could have stolen an orb and a shuttle and ridden it into the Celestial Temple and begged the Prophets to restore his people to what they were before the Founders messed with them. There could have been a big debate because What Was Before Can Never Be Again. Prophet Benjamin says that's true but every sentient being deserves a chance at a new start. Then the prophets coming up with some brand new way of being Jem'Hadar inspired and directed by the things that Goran'Agar has managed to make of himself since last we saw him.

Julian Bashir, international spy, could have taken over Section 31 through subterfuge. He could then repurposed their knowledge and capacities to create a retrovirus that would spread through the Jem'Hadar like a plague. The plague could remove their genetic propensity toward believing the Founders are gods and given them the ability for their bodies to synthesize what they need from food and restoring their ability to mate regularly.

The imagination is the limit.

The adventure's only getting started

With all that, we've still got people complaining because a Jem'Hadar woman showed up in a trailer and some promotional material for a show that hadn't yet come out. Complaints that, to my eye, seem to not reasonably engage with the information from shows we've theoretically already seen.

Now, I've got my own theories about why someone might want to do that. I wouldn't call those fan theories since I'm not a fan of what I think is going on. I won't impugn them by suggesting that they aren't actually fans of Star Trek. I will suggest that looking at the shows while paying a little more attention to the themes and subtext might be in order.

Now, how's the show? I still don't know. I hope it's the best Star Trek ever, though. It probably won't be but that won't necessarily be because it sucks. There's only one spot for “best.”

I hope I get to see it one day. I think the first time I heard people talking about wanting a Starfleet Academy show was sometime in the 90s. That wasn't an idea that really appealed to me at the time but there's no reason it can't be great. That's what I hope for it. That it's great. (I do also still hope that it's the best ever but, again, that's unlikely because of the way best works.)

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#StarTrek #Essay #SciFi

The Lonely Worlds

On the 27th of January, I began a project currently called The Lonely Worlds. I don't want to say too much about it yet. It's intended to be a serial. It's a setting I've been noodling with for fifteen years or so and I recently worked out enough characters to have a good chance at it. I currently have four chapters written on it with a good start on a fifth.

The typewriter

Last time, I discussed the low-powered computer I put Alpine Linux on for writing purposes. Due in part to the workflow enabled by the typewriter, I managed to write about 47K in January without really trying.

I still don't recommend doing Alpine Linux yourself but if you want to use some of the tools I mentioned in that post, I've adjusted my micro settings files since last time.

settings.json:

{
	"softwrap": true,
	"wordwrap": true,
	"autosave": 60,
	"cursorline": true
}

bindings.json:

{
    "Alt-/": "lua:comment.comment",
    "CtrlUnderscore": "lua:comment.comment",
    "F5": "lua:wc.wordCount",
    "Insert": "lua:wc.wordCount"
}

Next week's goals

I have a few high priority tasks I have to take care of this next week that don't involve writing directly. So, my writing / creativity goal is ... to do some of that. 😹

#ProgressUpdate

The typewriter

I've been working on setting up a low powered computer with Alpine Linux. You know how people are always saying Linux is so easy now that anyone can do it? Don't do that with Alpine Linux. It was originally intended for running on high security, niche devices. It's probably most commonly used in Docker images. Most people who interact with it probably don't put it on an actual computer.

Why did I want to? I've been using Linux since 2000. Possibly a little earlier. The first time I used it, I did it on an aging computer that I couldn't afford to upgrade. That describes most of the computers I've used it on, actually. The challenge in most of those cases was stripping something pretty full spec down to the point where it ran pretty tolerably.

In this case, I wanted to do it on purpose. On finding out about Alpine, I realized I had the perfect opportunity. The regular install's ISO takes up less than 400 MiB of space. Everything you want, you're adding to that count. Putting Xfce on it along with some other packages I needed have taken me to about 2 GiB. I'd like to set it up so it doesn't load Xfce by default but, right now, I'm most focused on making it a writing computer.

And technically it is. I'm typing this on it right now. The network connection is off. I'm typing this using the micro text editor from a virtual terminal.

When I get it back to a network, I'll run a Unison profile I created. It will copy this and any other local changes up to the network.

Some of my scripts aren't working ... yet but the Typewriter lives.

Update since I wrote the previous section

Turning off Xfce on boot turned out to be much easier than my experience with LXQt. I disabled automatic startup for the display manager using the rc-update del command used in Alpine for removing services from run groups.

When I do want to load the GUI, I type startx and it comes up.

For micro to be a good prose writing tool, I had to put this in .config/micro/settings.json:

{
	"softwrap": true,
	"wordwrap": true
}

To make Unison work the way I wanted, I created the profile using the GUI on my main Linux computer and adjusted it until it worked the way I wanted. I did a replace all on paths that were specific to my main Linux computer.

I've also adapted some of my writing related scripts for use on Alpine.

Outcomes

Due in part to Typewriter, I wrote almost 13K words in the last week. Typewriter has only been really operational for three writing days and, in those writing days, I wrote 10.5K words. That's an average of 3.3K words per day.

For me, those are pretty good numbers. If those are sustainable, I could write about 23K in a week.

Next week's goals

This is going to be a little sparse for a while.

1. Figure out my next project
2. Get some words written
3. Record at least one video

The current projects are resuming The Novel, starting work on Fallen Heaven, or writing book 3 of Vay Ideal.

I'm leaning toward working on a novel because I think a published Novel will probably drive some purchases of the Vay Ideal books. Adding additional Vay Ideal books while I'm not really having sales on Vay Ideal yet is probably not a useful thing at the moment.

With my improved word count from Typewriter, I did a bit of work on both Book 3 and The Novel.

#ProgressUpdate #VayIdeal

As a consequence of my uncharacteristic mood, please enjoy this holiday stroll through old favorites and new ones too.

Those jingle bells

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

I've never been so much of a Grinch but I'm not really into Christmas. I've only got so much patience for holiday music. Music gets stuck in my head easily and getting Little Drummer Boy stuck in my head even once is intolerable. It might be surprising to hear that I'm kind of grooving to the Worst Christmas playlist by the Effin Birds creator. Some of the songs in it are old favorites. Some are cynical cash grabs. Some are well-intentioned but flawed attempts. I'm not going to say which I think Christopher Lee's heavy metal Christmas album. After a few hearty laughs, I still enjoyed his rendition of Silent Night.

Some of the best holiday music written in the past century has close ties to Holiday Specials. Somehow, Christmas doesn't seem like Christmas without Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas or the music from How The Grinch Stole Christmas! While Boris Karloff's You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch is a crowd-pleaser, I think Welcome Christmas is the real musical star of the original Grinch special.

Tis the season

I don't usually say so unprompted but my favorite Christmas movie is Gremlins. It really is a Christmas movie. It's not quite cynical but it's also not really the kind of thing a major Christmas enjoyer would recognize as a Christmas movie.

It's A Wonderful Life is my runner up. A movie that's not really so much about Christmas as it is about working class communities supporting each other in the face of the real villain of the Holidays: obscenely wealthy guys.

Over the past few years, I've watched some new Christmas movies and some that aren't quite new but are new to me.

A Christmas Story and Silent Night, Deadly Night are two of the latter. I've heard a lot about A Christmas Story over the years. The reality wasn't anything like what I'd imagined. I try to go into movies knowing as little as possible. Basically everything I had heard was about the protagonist being told he would shoot his eye out if he got a BB gun for Christmas. That was a part of the story but it was really more a series of vignettes based on stories written by Jean Shepherd about his own life. It's not a bad movie but, kind of like my experience with The Goonies, I had to have been there (at the time the movie was in its heyday or at a similar time in my own life). I really wasn't so it's not for me.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a horror movie. More particularly, it's a slasher horror movie. It's thematically a Christmas movie in that it takes place around Christmas and the slasher is dressed up in a Santa Costume. There were a curious number of lies told about the movie when it first came out. Santa is, for sure, not murdering people in that movie. Some very respected reviewers gave it nonsensically bad reviews. Is it high art? No. It doesn't need to be, though.

Three movies that are actually pretty new and Christmas related are: Anne and the Apocalypse, 8-Bit Christmas, and Happiest Season.

Anne and the Apocalypse is a zombie Christmas musical. The songs were great. The stories were great. The way they were combined ... someone needed to have seen a few more musicals before taking a pass at this. The leads give really understated performances in the songs themselves which is ... distracting if you've seen more than one musical. Still, it's a great zombie movie, a pretty good musical, and it's got some Christmas in it too. If that sounds fun to you, give it a shot.

8-Bit Christmas is a 80s nostalgia piece that's kind of cashing in on the 80s nostalgia we see in places like Stranger Things. It also tells a very Goonies like story of a group of kids in the 80s getting up to an adventure around Christmas. While it is banking on a certain type of nostalgia, it never gets distracted from the point: telling a good story. How cheesy and underwhelming the NES would be today is absolutely an element of the enjoyment of the movie. It's a great way of reminding us adults that the stuff we were obsessed with was pretty cringey too when were that age. It won't join my yearly roundup but I think it's worth a watch.

Happiest Season is something I've been after for a long time: A cheesy budget holiday movie for queer folks instead of specifically for people who are telling themselves they are impossibly straight. Clea DuVall directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play partners who are this close to getting married but one of them is in the closet. Daniel Levy plays a familiar role for him but his character has a much healthier perspective than in Schitt's Creek. The story beats are familiar but it's a fresh take and not just because many of the characters are queer. Saying more would be a spoiler. This was exactly what I wanted it to be and some times that's the exact right thing.

Wrapping this up

I've got guesses about what has me in a holiday mood. That's more a topic for me and my diary, though. At least for once, I can be a little less of a bah humbug about the whole thing. If you've stuck it out this far, thanks for joining me. Merry Christmas, you old savings and loan!

Oh, and hey, I did end up putting up that tree.

Speaking of the season, I have a guest blog about another point of winter nostalgia which will go live on Long and Short Reviews on Boxing Day.

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#Christmas #Nostalgia #movie #music

1. Finish audio production and get most of the visual elements done for the super-secret project
2. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit

Unfortunately, I didn't complete either. The super-secret project is still manageable but I may have to scale down some elements. There's two things impacting the audio production. The first part is that I can't produce the audio on my main computer because Audacity is having constant issues. The second part is personal stuff I couldn't have anticipated. Nothing truly bad, just a hectic week at the Barret household.

I've managed to squeeze a little writing time in this week and that makes me feel like a writer again. 😹

Next week's goals

Big thing is the super-secret project.

#ProgressUpdate

(...) Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app—a feature that “lets you ask questions about the book you’re reading and receive spoiler-free answers,” according to an Amazon announcement. (...) Perhaps most alarmingly, the Amazon spokesperson said, “To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out.” — Molly Templeton, Reactor Mag

This development comes at kind of a funny moment for me. When I published New Names, Old Crimes, I modified my copyright page to include a statement that A.I. training of my story required prior written permission from me. I don't have a whole lot of hope that the same thieves who trained the current batch of LLMs on the entirety of the internet and every book they could pirate will respect that statement.

I am making it clear that whatever means you got my book by, I did not in fact license it to you for the purpose of training LLMs on. Someone could argue that it's fair use but they're not right about that. If that case goes all the way to the Supreme Court and they agree that it's fair use, then they will be wrong about it too.

The purpose

Image by Victoria from Pixabay

The purpose of copyright is to give the original creator exclusive control of their work for a set period of time so they can make profit off of it, thereby incentivizing the creation of creative work. Fair use is used for things like transformative works, journalistic purposes (such as reviews), and education. It also recognizes that the purchaser of a licensed work has a reasonable expectation that they will be able to use that work in ways that the creator may not have intended. But, in that specific example, it shouldn't be something that will remove the original creator's market.

I could buy a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and change every reference to Ford Prefect to Ford Escort. Then I could sell the book to others with nothing else done to it. I've created a transformative work (not enough to meet the current bar!) but I'm potentially removing the original creator's market to sell that book. If I did that, I haven't engaged in fair use. Not in any meaningful way and certainly not in a way that would be protected by law.

Image by omarsaldib from Pixabay

An exception to copyright law that allows corporate thieves to use “fair use” as an excuse to take copyright works in the hopes of replacing creators removes the point of copyright law. If the law only exists to protect corporations and the wealthy, then what reason do the rest of us have to respect it?

That line is tenuous enough as it is right now.

SCOTUS has allowed companies to be people but prosecutors are too busy harassing poor people to prosecute companies as if they were people. “The game” is so rigged right now that even the most dedicated believer in “The American Dream” must seriously question whether they have been sold a bill of goods.

That's tangential to the Amazon thing, though. Through the process of publishing directly through Amazon, I have likely signed off on some Ron Swanson style “I can do what I want” statement from Amazon.

What to do

I'm seeing a lot of independent authors try to decide what to do with this. The way Amazon has phrased it, doesn't make it clear that they are training LLM on our books yet. Given what we've seen in other areas, it's unlikely that Amazon will hold off on doing training with our stuff.

Other authors have the same read on it. If they're not yet, they likely will.

Image by Sebastian Nikiel from Pixabay

There's not much we can do to stop them apart from taking our work off Amazon. Even that doesn't guarantee that they will avoid using material they had once published to train their LLMs. Independent authors' options are limited. We don't have a publisher to help us fight the good fight. We can band together and agree to move our stuff elsewhere. Unless we can get readers to move, all we're doing is cutting off our revenue.

For those who have a deep mailing list built up, they can probably persuade a lot of their audience to move somewhere else.

Writers like me are on the losing end. I don't have enough of an audience to ditch Amazon. I don't have a publisher to help me fight Amazon. I can take a principled stand ... and make even less money than I am right now.

What you can do

If you're a reader, get yourself an ebook account somewhere else. Kobo lets you download ePubs if they're DRM free. Everything on Smashwords is downloadable. Each Kindle account has a special email address you can use to automatically forward ePubs to so you can read it without changing devices. If you read on your phone, Kobo's got you covered already.

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Once you've got those accounts, start doing your buying there. Kobo has a subscription service like Kindle Unlimited. Unlike Kindle Unlimited, authors who opt into it aren't required to keep their books off other platforms. That does mean there are a lot of things that are Kindle exclusive. And that's a shame that probably shouldn't be allowed under anti-trust regulations. However, there's so much out there on Kobo's subscription plan that it'll keep you busy for a long while.

You can also buy directly from authors. I'm not in a position to set my own stores up yet but plenty of authors do. When you buy direct, you're generally giving the author a bigger cut than they would be getting from any of the publishers.

You can also tell Amazon that you object to what they're doing to authors. I'm not sure that anything less than moving your purchases somewhere else will make a difference there. The ocean is made up of drops. The more people who do their part, the more effect we'll have together.

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#Amazon #Kindle #LLM

1. Press publish on Book 2 of Vay Ideal before the Smashwords 'deadline' Done — New Names, Old Crimes
2. Write some words on Book 3 Done — Some of them are included in the preview at the end of New Names, Old Crimes
3. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit
4. Work on super-secret project Done — I didn't specify what. I'll get into it a bit.

Unfortunately, when publishing New Names, Old Crimes, I accidentally used the wrong cover. That required me to go back and fix the book in three separate places but supposedly I had to wait until it was out on a given platform before editing. I think that was probably actually true for Amazon. I'm not sure whether it was true for Kobo. It appears not to have been true for D2D because the book still isn't in all its systems and I managed to get it updated anyway.

That kind of put a whammy on my week.

I legitimately don't know when I would have found the time to work on the audiobooks with the other things I worked on. I do need to try to get those in before the beginning of the year.

Other things I worked on

I created a Youtube channel and added my video version of the story Wrapped as a short. It turns out to be 30 seconds long as a short. I learned a lot. Mostly that I cannot use my phone's camera for video without it looking like trash. But also that hardcoding subtitles in is a waste since Youtube has its own system for doing that with shorts.

My roommate and I have shared custody of a good video camera and I've got that charging for the next adventure.

The super-secret project

For a few years, I've wanted to do a puppet video for Christmas. Last year, I started making the puppets. This year, I'm not too keen on actually finishing and recording the puppets when I have some other options available to me. I've done the audio recordings. The audio needs to be effectively produced in order for me to do the other bits.

Next week's goals

1. Finish audio production and get most of the visual elements done for the super-secret project
2. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit

Yep, it looks short but all the work going into the super-secret project to have it ready before Christmas is kinda going to be a lot.

#ProgressUpdate #VayIdeal

After the adventure of Death In Transit, the crew of the Scampering Pete are still being hounded by space pirates and desperadoes who expect they will roll over easily like Captain Sanders did. They resolve to find a new ship on Chewa Fal. Before they can even begin shopping, they discover they won't be able to leave Chewa Fal until a mystery is solved.

Thirteen people have gone missing in a little more than a month. Missing without a trace. Who is taking them and what do they want? The mystery becomes even more serious when one of the crew goes missing.

Find out what happens in New Names, Old Crimes. The ebook is now available across stores including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Thalia, Smashwords, Vivlio, and Fable!

#VayIdeal #SciFi #Fiction