Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

34 Comments

  1. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Watched Stalker last night, it was good. A very Russian film considering my provincial conceits. The Writer’s soliloquies resonated with me. Hoping to finish Mac Tonnies’s The Cryptoterrestrials by the end of May. Also I’m reading the core book for Microscope RPG. My conversion of the PDF to mobi format leaves little to be desired but at least the text is readable on my screen. Shame my Kindle lacks decent support for PDF, let alone mathml.

      • You’re going the wrong direction. I prefer going to Kinko’s and turning my PDFs into straight-up Ds.

        • I’ve tried that, but they become large and unwieldy, and spiral-binding a 200+ page document makes it quite fragile.

          I actually find reading documents on my iPad quite easier, as easy as reading a book.

    • What software are you using for the conversion? Calibre often does a good job.

      • My experience is that Calibre is excellent for converting between ebook formats, but converting PDFs to ebooks is not trivial (not that any other program is any better in that regard), especially if there are sidebars, tables, and inset illustrations, as there frequently are in RPG books.

        • Exactly this.

          Plus when converting PDFs to mobi format, I find strange breaks after certain dashes, ellipses, and other entities.

        • Converting PDF to any HTML-type format is a crapshoot. As you’ve found, if it encounters some formatting that isn’t very basic bold/italic/underline/font-size, the convertor just guesses about what it’s supposed to do, and generally it guesses wrong.

  2. Walter Jon Williams just got “Metropolitan” released as an ebook (turns out the rights had reverted in early 2010, but Harper sent the notification letter to his agent, who had died, and never actually informed *Williams*.) So I’m reading that.

      • Williams has said that he’d like to do it, but that right now he’s busy with other projects (he’s been getting his entire library of work into ebooks.) He’s shown some interest in using a Kickstarter campaign to fund a third book, which seems like it would be an eminently reasonable way of doing it (better to get the money up front than depend on everyone knowing about it.)

  3. Okay, I can’t stand it any more.

    What is the subject of “The Paper”, anyway?

    • I believe that it was a paper on marketing and the importance of metrics for measuring junk.

      But I did my best to stay away.

      • I am just going to assume you mean “stuff” when you refer to measuring “junk.”

    • A literature review, project plan, marketing plan, and assessment plan for adding text messaging reference to the modes of research (and other) help delivery for a state college.

      Yeah, I know, I can’t believe that takes 107 pages either.

      • (er, a state college library. and most of the pages were double-spaced, so it wasn’t THAT bad. oh wait, yes it was. can you tell I’m tired?)

  4. I have completed my Motion, and spent a little time playing Beyond the Swords, in a game where I totally blew away every other civilization with a little help from the World Builder.
    I’ve also started in on the list of “songs you definitely need to have” for a mp3 CD. The last time I did this, I ended up with a set of four audio CDs that I gave to my Gen Y song-writing partner, including a version of “Thick as a Brick” with a minute-and-a-half chopped out of it. It makes the whole thing much more listenable that way.
    The first blog that I ever had sort of devolved into this thing about how you can remove 12 seconds from any Saga song (just about) and come up with a much better song. I have no idea why I started in on Saga like that. Really, I was more interested in discussing recording techniques.
    But anyway, the list officially started with this, and then went on to this and this. The playlist was up to 17 songs, then I had to shut the computer down to go do something else. I forgot to save the darned thing. Now I’m back to square >0.
    And I’ve got these hop candies (Cascade) that I’ve been meting down in the microwave and adding them to the mead. Pretty good stuff. Highly recommended.
    I am a bit tipsy, to be honest about it. I really shouldn’t be on the internet in this condition. I just got online to look something up, forgot what it was by the time I logged in, and ended up here somehow.
    Please disregard this message.

    • Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that I bottled the rest of my Vienna lager. This isn’t the Vienna lager that you’ve come to know and love, even though you haven’t come to know and love it just yet, because you happen to be in Colorado, which is actually a way cooler place that where I’m at. But I had to make some grain substitutions at the last minute, is that I’m saying. You’re better off waiting until the next batch. That’s the one I’m going to enter into the County Fair. Maybe even the Fair in Springfield.
      And I called the pizza place that delivers to order a meatball sub, only to find out that they don’t make meatball subs at that place. What a crock! So I order two pizzas. Thinking about calling the other place in town that delivers and asking them for a meatball sub. What am I supposed to do? Offer sex for five goddamn meatballs? Come to think of it, I should call the dorm at the college if I wanted to go there.
      Still haven’t remembered what it was that I was going to look up. Hoping I haven’t passed out by the time the delivery guy gets here. It’s a toss-up on that one.
      I think I’m going to have to put “Go sit in bar to watch NHL playoffs” on the “to do” list for later in the week. Man, that mead is kicking my ass.

      • Make yourself up a big batch of meatballs in the crock pot. This recipe is quite similar to mine, except I use just tomato sauce instead of spaghetti sauce and add Tony Chachere’s

        I’ve been considering starting to brew beer again but there are so many great breweries in this area, it’s too convenient to get a great lager here.

        • That advice came a bit late, Blaise, but I’ll file it away for next time. Thanks anyway.
          It does look like the Lazy Monkey has a nice selection; Baltic porter, Marzen, Mai bock. Good stuff there.

  5. The Guardian, which is a series I used to watch back in the days when missing a week meant that episode was gone for good, is now on streaming Netflix, so I’ve been catching up on it.

  6. I just finished A Feast for Crows – which was great – I don’t know why so many people complained about it. But, then, I only waited 6 months after finishing A Storm of Swords and I can read A Dance With Dragons any time I want to.

    Just started The Windup Girl.

    I have fallen oh so far behind in Fringe. I fear I may never catch back up.

  7. Watched the first season of Game of Thrones and are making our way through it again watching with the commentaries on. Lots and lots of gardening and yard work.

  8. Working my way through Yukio Mishima’s “Sea of Fertility” as I picked up first editions of all four books in the last few months.

    • Reading “Earth Abides” by George R. Stewart.

      I’ll start reading “A Game of Thrones” when GRRM finishes writing it. Watching it is…out of the question.

  9. Re-reading the Wheel of Time. I am on book two, The Great Hunt. I have plenty of reading for a while.

    Finally watching Angle with the wife and watch Farscape, again, on my own.

  10. Listening to a song with lyrics about Mark Hamil and Malcolm McDowell and Neil Gaiman…
    50 points and a cookie if you can guess who sings it…

    “Planet earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do” (no, not same song).

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