by Ethan Johnson
September 14, 2006

Some things were never meant to be articles:

PBW's E-Book Challenge: It's on. In short, the goal is to write an e-book of any sort (short story, novella, novel, technical process document) and publish it online on October 31, 2006. I just so happen to be stewing on some big story ideas, and as of today I'm thinking I might do a "treatment" or "sketch" to test-drive some major characters before going "all in" with them. Or I could zig when I said I was gonna zag, and write something completely different. Either way, I'm going for it, and the results of my labors will be available here at ethmar.com on 10/31.

What a Web We Weave: Which ties in with a book on plot development that I have been reading and falling asleep with. Not that the book is boring; instead I am falling into such deep thought about how to apply the lessons that I head off into la-la land. I popped in my well-worn VHS tape of the original Star Wars to observe how the plot unfolds. Nice to be reminded that Lucas always had continuity issues in his saga, it's not a "new trilogy" thing. He basically snookered himself with the original movie in such a way as to negate huge stretches of Episode 3. Like all of it, really.

There is a danger in analyzing non-printed forms of media with the intent of learning plot development. Movies and TV shows are vastly different from short stories and long-form novels. Lord of the Rings was a great example of this disparity when a stretch of 50+ pages was reduced to "Frodo and the gang race across a lake" in mere seconds. Long stretches of purple prose and suchlike (in any given story) serve as something to display the opening credits over. Again, pictures are worth 1000 words, so thinking "movie" when writing a book, short of writing a screenplay, is a bad idea, I think.

My intent is not to write a technically brilliant work, but I want to be cognizant on how the story unfolds and ensure that there really is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And that the rainbow is worth following.

Football: Wisconsin is 2-0 and unranked. Miami and Penn State are 1-1 and are ranked. Discuss. Aaron Brooks jerseys are selling for half price at the official New Orleans Saints shop. Not sure when the Oakland Raiders shop will be following suit. Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister were exciting on opening day against Cleveland. I had no idea that they had an equal amount of "touches". For some reason, it felt like Bush had more. Bush is kinda trying to be the next Barry Sanders, which worries me. The Bengals rock-a my world against KC. The Bears shut out the Packers, and if I'm Green Bay, I'm probably wondering who we've got as a backup, and when we can put that guy in. The "old" Brett Favre would have scored something in the final 2 minutes. This Brett Favre didn't. I'll be interested to see how both teams fare over the remainder of the season before meeting up again in the final regular season game.

Wine: Since we're hosting Thanksgiving this year, I am starting to save up a "slush pile" of wine recommendations, especially keeping an eye out for "great with turkey." Fortunately, my job has been made significantly easier by Natalie MacLean. About twice a month, she publishes a list of the latest wines she has tasted, and guess what: At least one explicitly pairs with turkey. I have my list broken down by color, and when I'm ever doing hardcore wine shopping, I can play the matching game. I'm really hoping that some of these wines are as excellent as she says they are.

Netflix: We haven't had time to plow through all that Netflix has to offer, but I did have my first defective disc the other day. I mean, it completely froze my DVD player and I had to unplug it so I could eject the disc. I put a post-it note on there that said "defective disc", but with people sending silly messages on their return DVDs I have no idea if they actually pulled it out of circulation or thought I was trying to be funny. I'm not sure how to formally tell Netflix the DVD was defective, as we would like to actually see it sometime.

Digital Photos: One of these days, I am going to put up a gallery of some of the photos I took in Illinois and Wisconsin. But in the meantime, here is a nifty trick I learned, at least about my camera (Fuji FinePix S5100): If you have to zoom to the maximum to get a shot, switch to the eyepiece viewfinder, as opposed to the LCD screen on the back. The image is shakier for some reason if you zoom way in and try to see what you're doing on the back of the camera. This is especially helpful if you're not using a tripod. I still got some blurry shots, but fewer of them. Still trying to get the hang of "macro mode" and manual focus. There are times I'd rather use my 35mm Pentax auto-nothing camera I bought in 1986 (holy CRAP - 20 years??!!). But I'm getting better with the digital camera.

Site Maintenance: The CSS-driven design seems to be working, so I'm going to finalize the front page (and get rid of the "site redesign testing" note on the title bar) sometime in the next few days. I appreciate your patience. <EM>