Dear Internet,
When TheHusband and I were bouncing around dinner ideas yesterday, he suggested making Thai food which I immediately grabbed on to as I love peanut curry with chicken like no one’s business. TheHusband, however, seemed convinced that the only way we could make it was with crunchy peanut butter and we only had creamy. So obviously we had to go out to our favorite local Thai place to have dinner.
Like I’m going to turn that down?
One of the best things about our location is we’re about a mile from the downtown core where Bangkok Taste is located, so it’s easily within walking distance from the house. As I knew today I was not going to get my walk in, I felt more motivated to do a second walk last night to alleviate the guilt of not walking today AND plus there is food at the end of the rainbow. DOUBLE WIN.
(Well, triple win. I have leftovers!)
Distance: 2.34 miles (round trip)
Walk time: 46:40 minutes
Pace: 19:56/mile
Even with TheHusband’s sauntering ways, I made it under a 20 minute mile.
Even though I fixed the problem I was having with Walkmeter, I decided to use the Fitbit walk tracker on the way home to see how that compared — and wow is it easy and awesome. No overly complicated controls, is easy to navigate and understand, and WORKS. I’m sold.
xoxo,
Lisa
Month: July 2014
Bagged & Boarded: In Real Life
In Real Life
by Cory Doctorow (story) and Jen Wang (illustration)
[Amazon | Worldcat | GoodReads | Comixology]
Length: 196 pages
Release date: October 14, 2014
Rating: 2/5 stars
A digital ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
tl;dr: Teenage Anda is a girl gamer who gets caught up in Coarsegold, her favorite MMO, where she feels invincible, powerful, and wanted — until she meets Raymond, a poor Chinese teen who also loves Corasegold, and discovers things are not all that they seem. Raymond, it turns out, works illegally within the game to make money on the outside to survive. Lines between right and wrong get blurred pretty quick while Anda balances what she thinks can be done and what the reality actually is. The graphic novel is supposed to address class, ethnicity, and gender struggles within a 196 page format and do it well.
It fails. Horribly, horribly fails.
(By the by, as a book with massive subtext about the wrongs of Chinese factory workers, isn’t it just HILARIOUS the graphic novel itself is being printed in China?)
Review: Our story begins on the morning of Anda’s birthday, where our attention is drawn to that Anda’s family have recently moved to a new city and Anda is the new kid in school. She’s looking for a place to fit in, hence why later she gets so into online gaming. One would think as this is addressed in the beginning, the theme of “belonging” would be central to the story, but surprise! It’s not.
(Interestingly, since this was the setup, imagine the surprise to find Anda hanging out with the geek kids playing D&D during lunch times and after school. Either she’s a loner or she’s not. You need to make up your mind.)
Later that same day in one of Anda’s classes, a random speaker shows up whose sole purpose is to recruit people for MMOs. Now I have questions: Why is Liza the Organiza invited to speak to a high school class? What’s her purpose here? Since when do MMO organizers go to classrooms to recruit players? Especially ones under age who do no thave access to credit card accounts to pay for such things. The only connections why this wouldn’t be weird is a few panels back shows Anda programming in Python — so I guess this is one of her computer classes having a random speaker show up for class? I guess?
The Liza the Organiza starts her organizing — she wants to know how many of the girls in the class game and then how many of them game as girls? Which of course, none of the aforementioned girls who raised their hands in admittance of gaming, raise their hands to admit they game as girls. We already know the long, long history of what happens to girls who game as themselves in the gaming world. So Liza the Organiza puts to them a special deal: Come to this MMO she is a part of, game as a girl avatar, and after a three month trial, you can be part of her EREET SPECIAL GIRL FORCES. FUCK YEAH, BOOBS!
Just so we’re clear: You’re going to entice teenage girls who do not feel safe in general in this online space, but they should put themselves in danger ANYWAY so they can join your guild, without addressing any kind of safe space for them? Are you joking?
And this ends the entirety of the discussion of women in gaming and gender disparity in the gaming world in In Real Life.
(And I’m only up to page 26. Between the front matter, Mr. Doctorow’s 6 pageish ramble on the economics of gaming (which he also was thoughtful to discuss what MMO and other acronyms meant), the graphic novel didn’t start until page 16.)
Anda gets into the game, gets bedazzled by the popularity she receives within the MMO world and then meets Raymond. The storyline limps along, dragging the reader to point out white people should stop being saviors to all the other non-white folk because you know, we keep fucking their world up.
The ending, with all the faux tension being built, was kind of anticlimactic. Like, yay? And oh yeah, Liza reappears again for some strange reason to grant her approval on how things turned out. Liza, you were a pointless character. You should have been axed.
In addition to the massive problems with the storyline, apparently First Second couldn’t hire a continuity editor? After Anda has been grounded from using “recreational Internet,” there is a panel with her watching TV with her laptop on her lap when she gets a IM from one of her MMO buddies for a video chat. Next panel shows Anda in the laundry room video chatting and then she’s like, I TOTES HAVE TO GET BACK ON COARSEGOLD.
Does our heroine just log into the game in the privacy of the laundry room? OF COURSE NOT. SHE GOES TO AN INTERNET CAFE. I mean, honestly? How the fuck do you think video chats work? Through ESP? Seriously! This is a big graff — how could this have been missed through the editing process?
I also have additional problems with the book – like for example, Sarge, Anda’s mentor, walks her through the type of players she’s supposed to kill — who are all Asian. “If they don’t speak English, kill them!” Sarge orders. And the avatars of the Asians they are sent out to kill are all drawn like stereotypes of Asian farm workers. It’s — a bit bizarre considering one of the purported arcs of this book is about whites colonizing anyone not assumed white within the game, so I suppose you could argue this is why all Asians were drawn to be near identical to the other to prove some kind of racist point? (In fact, to kind of build on this, Anda often gets “confused” on who her buddy Raymond is as she searches for him in the game because — the avatars all look alike, If that is not some white people racist bullshit, I don’t know what is.).
And if the borderline racist attitude isn’t enough, the language did not give the impression of a teenagers figuring shit out and the language didn’t sound like something teenagers say. How can a book that is supposed to capture essence of teens yet sound like it written by a 40 year old man who is far on the wrong side of teenage years? Because it was, that’s why!
The only reason why I gave this dreck two stars was Jen Wang’s art is glorious. If anything, at least the book is pretty to look at.
Lastly, let’s take a real look at the economics of this book — based on the glowing reviews on GoodReads AND based on Doctorow’s reputation as a RIGHTING THE WRONGS HELLRAISER, even with all of obvious problems with this book, it’s going to be a big seller. In the end, is anyone really getting the message Doctorow is badly articulating and selling or do we just care we’re supporting someone who makes the noises to CHANGE THE WORLD while writing things that don’t really support that ideology?
daily walk: pineapple on plinths
Dear Internet,
Consider the pineapple.
In Michigan, where pineapple is definitely not a native fruit, you may think seeing pineapples on plinths at the end of driveways and walkways would seem weird and out of place. So why on earth would those in ye olden days use pineapples decoratively? Why the pineapple and not say a banana, or an apple, or grapes?
Glad you asked!
While the past is a bit murky and conflicting of when pineapples were introduced into the western world, what is clear is that the social history of the pineapple exploded during the Georgian era, as due to their rarity, pineapples were considered luxurious and heavily desired goods. Having access to a pineapple, either by renting it or owning it, cemented the pineapple’s owner of their high status in society. The same pineapple would often appear at numerous dinners, to be admired and never eaten, until the fruit itself went to rot and then the process would start all over again.
England is not the warmest of countries so special techniques were formulated to successfully grow pineapples in English soil in special greenhouses called pinerys. This of course raised their value even more as only the wealthiest could afford the time and the money to build and maintain what the pinery required.
So how does this connect with pineapple on plinths at the end of a walkway in good old Grand Rapids?
Distance: 1.12 miles
Walk time: 23:20 minutes
Pace: 20:71/mile
Well, it could be a couple of things.
The first is as most of the houses in my neighborhood date back to the mid 1800s, it’s not a leap to imagine a local captain of industry and his family made various Grand Tours to the continent. The wife (or hell, even the husband) saw pineapples used decoratively as they travelled – pineapple as a motif was seen in paintings, china, wallpaper, building design and more. What up and coming Grand Rapids socialite wouldn’t want to be considered the height of European fashion by having her own pineapple plinths?
The second, and probably the most probable, is several social historians suggest that Carib peoples, native to Guadalupe, would put pineapples at the entrance of their village to let visitors know they were welcome at anytime. When Columbus and his dudes took the fruit back to the continent, this same practice started appearing at the entrance European homes. It was also apparently a huge todo here in the colonies to have replica of pineapples built at the entrance of your home to indicate to all that entered would be given the utmost in friendliness and hospitality.
We’ll never really know the story of the pineapple on plinths for this particular sliver of land in my neighborhood. As the historic register requires all modifications and rebuilds to be period specific to the origin of the house, when a home has been destroyed and cannot be rebuilt for whatever reason, the land becomes small parks.
And this particular place, all that is left of that once stately home, and the history that once surrounded it, is a pair of pineapples on plinths.
xoxo,
Lisa
daily walk: pleasant park
Dear Internet,
I am a dilly-dallier.
When my alarm goes off in the morning, there is usually a minimum of two snoozes (18 minutes), then I check the weather to suss out the days outfit. At that point, I should get out of bed, do the walk, and then start the rest of my day. But then I need to figure out my route because I change it up everyday. Then I need to do a hundred different things and instead of getting in a walk at 730AM, it is now 9AM.
Distance: 1.54 miles
Walk time: 31:19 minutes
Pace: 20:25/mile
Pleasant Park is located down the block from Throbbing Manor. It is a city initiative to turn an old parking lot into a 2 acre green space. The project has been plagued with financial problems from the start, since this started before we moved here in January 2011.
Last year we took to the polls to approve a $500 per property owner tax in the adjacent neighborhood, levied over 10 years, to pick up the financial slack. Because of all the setbacks, the park that was to open last year is finally opening this month. We hope. But right now, it doesn’t look like much.
Because of the problems I had yesterday with everything crashing and my phone had been sluggish as hell as of late, I did a restore last night which seemed to have cleared whatever problem was ailing it. I also figured out the sequence of which apps to run when so everything works harmoniously.
Until I got home and saw the Walkmeter recorded my time, but definitely did not record pace or milage. There was a lot of, “Are you fucking kidding me?” as I stood in frame of the front door.
At least I know how to use a calculator.
When I had my arthritis surgery a few years ago, they cut the fascia of my right tendon in my calf (warning: not for the squeamish) to lengthen it because I was having problems with cramps and locking up when I was doing couch to 5K plans. So now my right calf is like, “I CAN WALK FOREVER,” while my left calf is, “BITCH, PLEASE.”
Thus, when I sorted out two walks this morning figuring I would choose the one at the split on how I was feeling with my left calf. I thought the shorter walk was barely a mile, while the extra few blocks would push me more towards the 1.25 mile. Nope, I was wrong — the first walk was 1.25 while the additional blocks pushed me closer to 1.5 miles. About half way in, the tightness of my left calk was getting pretty unbearable, there was a few times I almost cut the walk short, but after a few more blocks, the pain started to lessen so when I came to the split, I opted for the long way. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw how far I had walked today – – profanity in front of my house of a piece of shit app notwithstanding.
Hey! Looks like the latest Fitbit app update now does the same thing. Sorry, Walkmeter. I am going to have to quit you.
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2010
Writer How To: my writer website part ii
Dear Internet,
On Sunday I talked about what authors should (and shouldn’t) have on their websites, yesterday I broke down the branding, design, and infrastructure of my own author website, and today I am going to discuss main navigation and why I set it up this way, child pages, what’s left to do on my author site, and base plugins you should use for your own WordPress site.
Here is the landing page of my author site again:
Let’s take a look at the main navigation, home, bio, fiction, other writing, blog, and contact. Each of these links are to the minimum pages an author should have as I mentioned on Sunday.
Home will bring you back to the main page.
ProTip: If you include an image header on your page, make it a clickable link back to your main page. This way if people get lost in your site, they have an easy way to get back to the beginning.
Bio will contain the short and extended about me along with a headshot of some kind.
Fiction will contain all the fiction work (short stories, novels, novellas, etc) with links to purchase or to read.
Other writing will link to mainly non-fiction and academic works.
Blog will take you directly to EPbaB.
Contact will take you to a contact form.
ProTip: I’ve heard both sides of the story on whether or not to keep a contact form. One argument is that it creates a barrier with your readers, can get confusing, and you’re not entirely sure if the form was sent or not. My personal experience, having managed websites other than my own with contact forms, is you’re more apt to get people writing in using the form rather than if you provide a simple email link. I will more than likely include an email link on the form itself to give people the option.
ProTip 2: Interestingly, the sites I looked at for Sunday’s piece had a lot of the writer’s putting their reps as the contacts but no way to directly contact the writers themselves. “For foreign rights, email joeschmoe@you.com. For media inquiries email yourmom@thejeez.com.” I thought that was interesting.
Let’s take a look at one of the child pages.
I’ve clicked on other writing. We know the link we’ve clicked on takes us to the right page by a few clues. The first clue is the word other writing in the navigation bar is now white instead of grey. Second clue is the breadcrumb shows us where we are, and thirdly, we have a header that tells us on what page we’re on.
As far as design goes, all the child pages will look identical to this one. We have our main navigation at the top so we can bounce around. Our header image from the landing page has been resized to fit comfortably and allow content without (much) scrolling. The right hand sidebar has the same content as the landing page sidebar. The main content box is easy to read and links are easy to find. Header text is obvious and tells us what the page will contain. Lastly, we have a sharing bar that allows us to share the content across various social networks.
ProTip: I debated on having a share option on these pages since they will remain mostly static, but thought it might be useful if I write a trillion short stories and someone wants a printable version or share it with their BFFs across the social sphere. This is another plugin within Jetpack that allows you to cherry pick social networks you can share across. Plus I get annoyed when I find a page that does not have sharing enabled, so better turned on then turned off.
Now that we’ve got the main infrastructure in place and a design we like, let’s sum it up:
- We have (potentially) cohesive design that works with my other sites
- Each site is clearly identifiable of what it is and links to its brethren
- The design and structure are responsive and mobilized
- The layout and navigation clear and easy to use
- Pages are well marked
- Typography is pleasing easy on the eyes, link colors are bold
Over the course of a week I’ve put about five to six hours of work in with a couple more hours left to go. Since most of the work was design and infrastructure, the least bit is content which should take less time but in my case, I’m importing all the writing works over from EPbaB to the author site for consistency, so that’s taking a bit longer.
What’s left for me to do:
- Fill out content of child pages
- Flesh out widgets in right hand sidebar
- Check for grammar and spelling errors as well as verb consistency
- Tweak accessibility
- Export over to live site
Now that we’ve got the site in place, content sorted, let’s talk about the base plugins we can use to make the site even better.
- Jetpack for WordPress has over 30 plugins in one beautiful package. I use the following: contact form, custom CSS, enhanced distribution, extra sidebar widgets, JSON API, mobile theme, monitor, notifications, omnisearch, publicize, sharing, shortcode embeds, site verification, spelling and grammar, subscriptions, wp.me shortlinks, widget visibility, and wordpress.com stats. A lot of these plugins have variations available individually on WordPress’s site, but I like knowing that Jetpack is constantly updated, added to, and guaranteed to work with the latest versions of WordPress itself.
- All In One SEO Pack Search Engine Optimization is how web crawlers find you, index you, and then report back when people are searching for you. While the metrics and math can get complex, you can significantly increase your traffic by following a few simple SEO rules. This plugin does the work for you. Here is why you should use it: a few months ago I was wondering what other writer’s sites looked like, so I did some basic keyword searching and found — nothing. Well, almost nothing. Today while thinking about the same search, I wondered if there would be a difference if I swapped out the term “writer” for “author” and the answer turned out be a surprising fuck yes. I also duplicated near same results in Bing.
This tells me a lot. One, it tells me how Google (and Bing) are indexing content. Two, it tells me even if a writer type person doesn’t use the word “author” anywhere on their website, or metadata, to be indexed, Google and Bing still sort them out as “authors” and list them under that search term but not under “writer.” The search engine derivatives of “writer” seemingly refer to magazines, goods, and services. So if you prefer the term writer to author, this could hurt you in terms of SEO. Now most people interchange author/writer, but there is apparently a difference with the gist referring to a writer as someone who technically writes whatever (just as a baker bakes) while an author is someone who comes up with the ideas and plans to execute the writing. Someone can apparently be both. Another argument is a writer is someone who is unpaid while an author is a paid professional.
Whatever you believe or agree with, the bottom line is if you want to make sure you’re getting properly indexed, you need to use SEO to make sure all of your bases are covered so use author/writer in your SEO markup even if you use only one term in your content. - Breadcrumb NavXT The easiest and most complete way to set up breadcrumbs on your site.
- Broken Link Checker Nothing more annoying than going to a site, clicking on a link and discovering it was dead. This plugin actively scans your links (internal and external) and reports back which links are broken and with what kind of errors. Super handy to use and makes your site look a million times more profesh since you can clean up errors and change links from across the site in a single page .
- Google XML Sitemaps One way to make your site easily indexed by any search engine, on top of SEO, is by having a XML sitemap on the ready. This plugin generates a new XML sitemap based upon your specifications, which can get pretty in-depth. It automatically notifies Google and Bing of any updates.
- Analytics How are people finding you? How many page views are you getting a day? How many visitors have you had? Jetpack comes bundled with its own analytics, but you may want to use another one or two more as not all analytics software are created equal. I use Google Analytics (which is part of Google Webmaster Tools) and StatCounter.
This has been a quick and dirty walk through on getting a simple author website up and running that is not only informative but eye catching as well. There is a lot more (isn’t there always?), but this should give you a good understanding of why things are done a certain way and access to tools that can accomplish your goals.
Cheers!
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2010