Self Pub 101

   It’s been a long hard slog, to rephrase a Gilderoy Lockhart quote from JK Rowling. I hadn’t realized how much work self publishing a book would be. And, if you believe most of the pundits, I’ve only dome half the work. I, well I should say we, haven’t really done anything to promote the book aside from tell everyone we know. I should mention here that this is not the book that I have been working on for several years, Amara’s Law, it is a short story anthology that I and three other writers from my writer’s group decided to put together. However, it does contain a short story spin-off that is a taste of the world that I have created for Amara’s Law, following one of the characters of the book. It’s a fairly exciting tale of kidnap, escape, chase and, of course, bloody danger. The anthology is titled: Tales from the Locals, it is currently available on Amazon.com as both a trade size paperback for $3.99, and a kindle edition for $0.99.

   I would like to claim that I did all the formatting and editing my self, but I need to give another shout out to my sister in law, she handled the interior format of the paperback version, for which I owe her a large debt of gratitude. The original file looked OK, and I was decently happy with it, however, when she was done with it, it looked like a real book! I was floored, she didn’t make any huge changes, but what she did do nudged the book from being well formated, but amateur, to looking like a real book.

   I will however take credit for the kindle edition. Granted I had a decent starting point, but it did take me several days in Calibre to get the formatting just right so it looked good on a Kindle or Kindle App. Funny thing, editing and e-book is a lot like editing a web page crossed with a Word document, there is a lot of HTML style tags and predefined styles that can be used or changed to suit the circumstance.

The original idea was to do this as an exercise to find out all about self publishing. It was an experience, and now that I’ve done it, I think I would be willing to do it again in the future. We’ll see.

NerdCon: Stories. One week after.

I recently attended NerdCon: Stories. This is the first time this Con was held, and my first time going to one. I must say that I was more than a little apprehensive going to Minneapolis by myself. But, I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself.
  It didn't start off so well. I had to leave the day before the conference started, which was probably normal for everyone going. What wasn't normal, I'm guessing, is that my flight left the airport at 5:30AM EST, so I had to get up really early, like 2AM early. Things went fine, even thought the flight was delayed in Philly so we could change planes in favour of a smaller plane. Apparently flights going from Philly to Minneapolis at 7AM are not popular.
  So it was that I arrived in Minneapolis at about 12PM, hopped the light rail which I didn't have to pay for because a stranger gave me a valid ticket he had just paid for but couldn't use. So, thank you to him. I then hoofed it the last half mile to my hotel, checked in and went to go get some lunch. The rest of the first day, after I had checked in for the Con, was nothing special. So I reached the end of the day with some trepidation that I would be quite solitary for the next two days.
  NerdCon started on Friday promptly at 9AM, but most everyone was there and raring to go by 8:45. The place was packed, with between 1 and 2 thousand attendees, we filled up most of the auditorium. What followed was two days of sheer geeky awesomeness. From the start with Paul Sabourin's epic retelling of the history of the story (laughed my fool head off), I knew we were in for a great time. The panels were fantastic, though at times rambled a bit off topic, much to my enjoyment. It turns out that when you're somewhere with a thousand other people who like the same things you do and are there for the same reason you are, its very easy to make friends. I had lunch on the first day with a couple who came up from the south and on their way were looking at colleges to attend the next year. I talked to I don't even know how many Librarians, but I should have guessed that since the whole point of the Con was stories. I sat next to and talked with people from Winnipeg in Canada, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, There were even people there from Ireland, though I never met them personally. I skipped the events at the end of the first day to grab some dinner where I talked for about 90 minutes with a woman who was up from Ohio to attend a Mental Health and Wellness seminar and two others who worked locally. We all shared flat bread pizzas and fresh made donut holes with hazelnut cream and basil coulis. I know, it wounds weird, but the donut holes were awesome.
  I left to head back to the Auditorium where I had signed up for a 5 minute slot in the open mic. I was going to tell one of the short stories I had written, and I was freaking out. I ran into five others doing the same thing and we chatted, I calmed down, and we all sat together at the open mic. One of the couples daughters, let's call her Z just for the sake of anonymity, sang and played the Ulkelele. She was awesome, unfortunately she went on right before me. Anyway, here is a video of my story, the audio is a little bad and the video was taken in low light, but you'll get the general idea. Enjoy.

I laughed So Hard.....

  In my few decades on this planet I have felt some rather interesting pain. The pain of abrading your face on rough ice in a skiing wipe out (When your face warms up, it's quite interesting), the pain of someone stitching your mostly severed fingertip that's not numbed up, The pain of getting your head stapled with no Novocaine, the pain of crashing onto the still surface of a pool from three meters up.
  All of these have their own pain, each is unique and not something that I would care to repeat. I thought that I had felt most of the types of pain that a non military person could feel. The other day, I was able to expand my pain horizons again.
  I'm sure that most of you have had the unpleasant experience of accidentally snorting water or soda or some fluid through your nose. It's not pleasant and the aftermath is quite messy and embarrassing, just make sure you have a box of tissues. Well, I think I can top that one. You see, the other day I was eating lunch, (WAIT FOR IT) a buffalo chicken salad. I was reading my most recent acquisition from the Library, Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, when the food I was eating started to go down the wrong way. What's a person to do? I started to cough. The problem was, my mouth was still full of food. Now since I'm at my desk, it's covered with computer keyboards, reports for customers, and various and sundry things that I didn't want to spray with food, so I made a choice, a bad one. I decided to cough through my nose.

(Pause for wincing)

  Yes, that's right, I coughed BUFFALO CHICKEN SALAD OUT MY NOSE, complete with blue cheese dressing. The next hour and a half was not the most fun I've ever had. The first twenty minutes I had to fight the urge to snort water through my nose to cool the furious burning in my sinuses. THAT is a pain I'll not soon forget. I can't even describe the feeling, the best I can come up with is imagine someone sticking a blunt soldering iron into your brain, but through your nose. The most embarrassing part of the whole this was that I kept blowing lettuce out my nose for the next hour or so.

Good times.

The backhanded compliment dissected

  I am not an author. This may seem a strange way to start a post, but the truth is, I am not. I hated grammar in school, my handwriting is atrocious and I couldn't tell the different between a gerund and a participle if they smacked me in the face. Not that I wouldn't recognize the difference if some one said 'Here, this is a gerund and this is a participle', but I can't just tell you what one is. I'm sure Grammar Girl will know.
  REGARDLESS, I never went to school for writing, or literature or any of the things one would associate with becoming a writer, the possible exception being I love reading books. I am, and probably will always be in my heart, an engineer. I loathe imprecision and lack of specificity, I would rather design a solar array or a computer than study literature or art. The design of the Scion Xb literally offends my sensibilities. Yet, here I am with a completed book in my hands. A work that I never sought to write or, indeed, thought I was capable of writing. Needless to say, as I'm sure many writers can attest, I think my own book is pretty darn good. I like that characters, I've read it cover to cover between five and ten times for editing, and have yet to tire of the story. I've even started writing a second book in the *gasp* series.
  So what does this have to do with backhand compliments? Plenty, I say. Because the first person who read it is the one who gave me the unwitting backhanded compliment. I had given this person the first three chapters of my fledgling work and steeled my heart as I knew I must. It didn't matter, but it helped. When she put down the pages and looked up at me, I had hopes, but her words were not the glowing praise I yearned for:
  "I've read worse."
  These were the three words she had to say about my masterpiece. I felt a little of my soul die, but then a sparkling idea came to me. I followed her lack luster comment with:
  "So when you say that you've read worse, do you mean in print?"
  Her answer will forever be etched in my heart:
  "Yes. I've read worse books than this."
  I've got my manuscript out in my writing group mow, and I'm hoping for a few more detailed comments than "I've read worse", we'll see. I've also come to a decision, I know I'm not a writer, I'm an engineer. But, perhaps, in addition to being an engineer, I can be something altogether better than a writer or author, a little phrase uttered by a five-year old who doesn't know the words author or writer yet, a phrase which suits my technical heart.

  I can be a Story Maker.

Nerd and Turds

So, you ever have one of those days where you're just plain stupid? Well, I do. In fact a day like that cropped up recently where I was able to do something that I had not thought previously possible. I go a sunburn, inside, in a WINDOWLESS LAB. How had I achieved this remarkable feat of weirdness? Well first you have to understand what I do for a living, the short version is people send me stuff and I shoot it with a laser until it either breaks or burns. Sounds cool right? It can also be wicked dangerous. I have, personally, set fire to bricks and aluminum, vaporized arsenic, and pulverized selenium. If you want to check out the relative dangerousness of those various achievements go right ahead, I'll wait.......

Ah, you're back, great, where were we? Oh yes sunburns inside. Well this particular oddity was achieved when I was using a mercury lamp to illuminate a test sample for purposes that need not be discussed here. A mercury lamp in just like a regular lamp except that it emits light only in the UVB spectrum. Yep, that's right, the same stuff that give you a sun burn. I was being super careful, I was wearing the right protective glasses, keeping my face away from the lamp, the whole bit. I just forgot that a lamp is is like a flashlight, the beam expands the further you get away from it. So, long story short, I ended up with a sunburn, a perfect negative image of a mounted optic on a post burned into my arm.

This job has really weird hazards.

"Next time I'll be serious next time!"

   Well, I guess joining the writers group did not make me post more, maybe I'll set a calendar event or something. The Group is nice however, the mediator (we have one of those) is a research librarian who generates the writing prompts and lends her experience to the commentary on the group pieces.
   Before the last meeting I contacted her (let's call her Miss Librarian), and asked a favor. I wanted to present the book that I had finished to the group and ask for their response. Miss Librarian said she would love to do that, and I received many affirmatives from the group for their willingness to read said story.
   I realized when I read the hook for the story that not only was the hook inaccurate but it was actually bad and sappy. So, I have been working on creating a new hook. I have a few that I've been mulling over and I think I have a couple that may be winners. Here they are:

  Amnesia, slavery, attempted rape, murder, deceit, backstabbing, missing organs, deadly secrets, Monsters, microscopic robots, decapitation, dismemberment, blood and incredible super powers. And that's just in the first two weeks after I woke up in a dark cave wearing nothing but a hospital smock.

   A powerful and well respected company, a prevalent technology, and an unspeakable and deadly secret. These forces revolve around a seemingly ordinary young woman who has no useful memories to speak of, no clues to her identity. Yet she must unravel these mysteries and the only things she has are a strange tattoo, a piece of paper and a hospital smock.

   I'm partial to the first hook, but its first person, not the POV of the book . The second one is OK, but it feels formulaic. Maybe POV won't matter in the hook, we'll see. I also worked on "The Pitch". This is the one sentence that is supposed to summarize the entire novel, entice the imagination and encompass what makes the book stand out. This is nigh on impossible. Imagine condensing "Harry Potter" to one sentence, and making it good enough that everyone wants to read it. Daunting. But here is my go for "The Book":

How do you find your friends when you can't even remember who your enemies are?

   Not bad, it's compact, to the point, pertains to the story and gives just enough hint to make you ask questions. Who are your friends? Why do you have enemies? And why don't you remember who they are? Hmm, on second thought, that's not that bad. I think I'll keep it. 

   I'd really like to post an excerpt from "The Book" here but that would be silly if I ever want to sell it. Maybe if no one touches it, I'll post the first few chapters and list it on Amazon myself, but until then, here is another tid-bit of mine from the writers group:

   

   “YAAAAAA!”

   CRASH! Damn, that hurt! I nurse the top of my head and try to stand as the contents of a curio cabinet rain down around me, small figurines and plates shattering on the floor. I lurch to my feet and stumble over to the computer. Typing in a few quick commands, I shut down the cleaning field. I hit the enter key to issue the last command and the painting I was cleaning, Van Gogh's Starry Night, shudders slightly and topples gently forward off the easel.

   Fear stabs my heart and I dive forward, sustaining another blow to the head and a sprain to my wrist as I crash into the wall. It's all for naught though as I miss the painting by several inches and it crashes to the floor. Heart pounding, I crawl over to the Van Gogh and gently lift it off the floor. Luckily, it's still intact, no damage was done to the canvas. The frame has only a few new blemishes, and since it was “distressed” to look old I figure a few more dings won't be noticed. Sighing with relief, I lay the painting face down on the floor and lean back against the wall, recovering for a few minutes from my ordeal.

   You'd think that after having done this a few dozen times, I would have mastered the re-entry. In my defense I was being chased when I jumped back through the portal, so a certain amount of disarray was to be expected. I've had a few close calls since I discovered what I could do, but none like that. It started some years ago when I invented a new method for cleaning paintings using buckyballs and encapsulated quantum singularities. I found that if I captured the painting digitally on my computer, sprayed the microscopic balls on a painting, and exposed them to a computer modulated EM field, the singularities inside the buckyballs would remove the grunge from the paintings, no mess, no precautions, no damage. I first noticed something was weird when I was cleaning a painting for the Boston MFA and tripped holding a cup of coffee I had just poured for myself. I fell head first and slammed into the floor, coffee flying. I looked up just in time to see the cup disappear into the Monet I was cleaning. Intrigued, I put on a pair of Nitrile gloves and gingerly reached out for the painting. Imagine my shock when I didn't touch the painting! My hand went right through the canvas!

   Ever since then I've been experimenting and taking trips into the larger paintings. This last one, though, was almost enough to make me re-consider my adventures, or at least make me swear off Van Gogh. Sure, those adventures were wonderful fodder for my blossoming writing career. Of course, I had to publish under a pseudonym. It was the only way I could continue cleaning paintings and get fresh material. It meant that I had to stay anonymous, but hey, I was willing to trade off fame for fortune.

   Shaking out of my reverie, I glance down at the painting, glad that I managed to shut off the cleaning field in time. If that thing had followed me back.... The problem with paint jumping was that the worlds the paintings led to were complete un-knowns, brought into being by the artists imagination. At least that's what I thought at first. The truth was these artists were actually quasi-psychics, able to see through time and dimension. At least that's what I've come to understand from my limited research. That stuff about making political, social or economic statements? Total crap. And don't get me started on Escher or Dali! It's amazing those guys never went insane! Well, maybe Dali, just a little.

   At least now I have an inkling why Van Gogh was such a tortured artist. The worlds he saw? Well let's say they make Picasso's look like Sesame Street. The one I just came from, Starry Night, was a hellish world. Humans kept in villages, used for food and bio-electricity, Matrix-esque, by the most intelligently evil creatures ever to grace the dimensional continuum. That big black thing in the foreground? That's actually one of the beasts, a giant mass of tentacles and venom that strangles its paralyzed victims for pleasure. That was what I was fleeing from. I was just glad I escaped with all my appendages in tact. Turing off the portal would have been difficult without two hands.

   RATTLE!! I cease all movement as a wave of cold grips my heart. Please. Please no! I tilt my head slowly down and stare at the upside down painting. It rattles again and shivers on the floor. Dear God. They're figuring out how to open it from the other side! This is so not good.

Don't worry, you're in a safe place.....

   Sounds like the start of some sort of drug, alcohol or anger management group meeting doesn't it? Actually its part of the writers group I just found. I had been thinking that maybe I should try to find a writing convention or symposium or something similar, there's a word for it, but it escapes me at the moment. Don't worry, I'll remember it in time. So I was trolling the Internet to see if anything was happening in my area and LO-AND-BEHOLD! there was a writers group that meets once per month at the library just down the street from me! Awesome! Now I can inflict my pedantic writing on others, not really, but I thought it would be a good place to get some criticism from others besides immediate family and friends, someone who didn't have a vested interest in NOT hurting my feelings.
   Needless to say, I missed the meeting by a few days, but I contacted the group leader and got the stuff for the next session. Then that one was canceled because of poor attendance. The next one I'm going to miss because of vacation. Geez, what does it take to attend a writers group, huh? Well, since there is no one else to listen to what I have to say, I'm going to post it here. Maybe I can convince someone to visit my rather sparsely visited and updated blog and read it over. I thin that once I join this group, my postings will increase. But that's for another time I suppose. An now, without further delay, here is a REALLY short story on the most recent group assignment:
   Topic: The devil needs more people to sell their souls. You have been hired to come up with an ad campaign.

   My fingers ache, and not in a good way. I've been hunched over this computer for far too long. But despite my discomfort, I'm excited, a few more minutes work and I'll have finished the toughest assignment ever to come through the firm of Barton and Farrel. The end is in sight, five more words, three more, two one and PERIOD!

   I lean back interlacing my fingers and stretch my arms over my head, tilting to each side to relieve the strain I feel in my back. My neck cracks as I roll it around in a circle, glorious sharp pain and then relaxation follow the popping. I look down at the glowing screen in front of me, marveling at the complex simplicity of my work. Novelists! HA! Convincing a reader to believe in something using 400 pages is a breeze compared to advertizing! Cramming that much emotion, subtlety, coercion and sex into a sentence? Now that's hard!

Cigarette and alcohol companies have been doing it for ages so there are ways and ways. That's what makes my job so unique, I have to convince people to sell their souls. What university is going to teach that? Still staring at the screen my mind starts to wind down. The lassitude that I have been fighting for the past hour now settles on me like a blanket. I don't fight it, I can relax now. I have just taken the second long blink on the way to oblivion when a knock at my door startles me out of my torpor.

I glance over at the lighted face of my kitchen clock: 1:22 AM. Who would be calling at this hour? I stand up and stretch, loosening my tired back. My muscles protest as I stand, the ache in them screaming at me to go to bed, ignore the door and just fall onto the blissfully soft pillows waiting for me. Trudging over to the door I check the peep hole before grasping the knob and gasp in surprise. There is a woman dressed all in black on the other side! I've never seen her before but there can be no doubt who she works for, the tattered black wings are a dead giveaway. I lean back from the peep hole, contemplating not opening the door. The client can surely wait until morning?

   “Sir,” I hear her voice from the other side of the door, “open the door, or I will.”

   I know I haven't made a sound, but I do as asked.

   “Let me have it.”

   That's it, no introduction, no please or thank you, but this has always been the way with the client, or rather his representatives. Rather than try to be pleasant, argue about the time of night or the complete lack of social niceties, I decide it's easier jut to give her the assignment. I move over to the laptop to print out the slogan and advertizing campaign when she interrupts me.

   “Just give me the computer. We'll pay for a new one.”

   Shrugging I hand over the laptop, and just like that, she's gone. Disappeared in a golden flash. I stare at the place where she was for another second or two, and shuffle over tot he door to close it. Just before the door closes, a hoof sticks in the jamb and the door bounces crazily open again. Oh damn. Its him, the client himself, resplendent in red, a cloak hiding his wings, That's all I can make out, the rest of him is kind of fuzzy, like my brain is refusing to admit it exists. I've been told that would happen as my brain erases elements of this ultimate evil to protect itself. I take tow hurried steps back, trip and fall on by butt. From the floor I hear a voice, both silky and full of horrible tearing gravel. Seductive and repulsive.

   “Where is the assignment?”

   I think I'm in trouble.

Sometimes my brain surprises even me.....

   I was standing in the shower the other day, well not really the other day, more like two years ago when my brain did something that I really did not expect. It came up with an idea for a book. I was following a thought train, as often happens when you have nothing else to do but wash, when I jumped from experimental alternative energy sources to a fabulous idea for a book. I repeated the idea over and over in my head (at least seven times, that's how long it takes me to remember stuff) and then when I finished my shower I wrote the idea down. I took me about 30 minutes of writing to get all the ideas I had down on paper. I did run into one stumbling block, I could not figure out what the motivation of my antagonist was. "Do not bother me with fiddling small details, I'm going to be a Novelist!" I thought in hubris. A day or two later, I was regretting my words. Then a few days later the motivation hit me and there was another flurry of writing. Since then I have written seventeen chapters. I think I'd like to follow the example of David Wellington's serialized publishing model, but I have some reservations on that point.
   Now, I would never dream to consider myself a writer, but isn't there an old saying that everyone has at least one book in them? It might not be a very good book, but I digress. So, after finishing a section (two or so chapters), I asked  DocMaureen to read it to see if it was any good at all, anything worth wasting a significant chunk of my time on, or was I just fooling myself. After the longest few minutes of my life (save for the time DocMaureen had to have an emergency appendectomy) I got my answer. In the spectrum of goodness mine was the equivalent of.... toilet paper. Soft, there when you need it, and useful for wiping your @$$. Not really, she was much more gentle, but that's how it sounded to my sensitive ears. She followed up with "But I've read published books that were worse than this," which made me feel a little better. I've since learned that one must develop callouses on their heart when exposing it to public scrutiny, go figure.
   Since then, more than two years have passed, and I have written many more chapters, in fact, I have just finished the book. The only problem was, that tight ending I had planned? Yeah, that didn't happen. I realized halfway through the climax chapter that there was no way I could end the book as I had originally planned. It simply wouldn't work. Then the unthinkable happened, the story told me what to write, not the other way around. I had always heard of characters in a story taking a life of their own, the writer loosing control of them, etc. I had thought that was nonsense, a form of self aggrandizement to make the pretentious feel better about themselves. I mean, I MADE them, who were they to tell me what to do? Any of you Kurt Vonnegut fans will probably see the connections to Breakfast of Champions in this inference. If I ever offended any fledgling authors out there by stating this point of view, I humbly beg your forgiveness and mark myself an @$$. Get the tar and feathers.
   So, now all I have to do is find some poor schmuck to edit it, polish it, edit it again and we'll be ready to go. Go find someone who wants to publish it, that is. I've heard this can be monumentally hard to do. Especially if it is deemed that the genre you have written in is not "the next big, hot thing". 
   Whether it is paper or electrons, I have news for all you Sci-Fi /Action /cyberpunk /Anime fans out there. Anyone want to read a new book? 

Coming up: Saliva causes cancer, film at 11....

The last time I went all number-crunchy on you, it was in response to the hyper-sensationalized media warnings of nuclear fallout from Fukushima, specifically in reference to dosage and radioactive iodine, NOAA Studies now show that radiation levels are well below the danger levels, even in fish swimming in contaminated water. Go Figure . We're going that route again, though on a slightly different subject, and now:

Everybody FREAK OUT!!! at least that's what the people in California and at NIH want you to do. They have found that a key ingredient in Coke and Pepsi causes CANCER!!  

OK, now that I have your attention, lets dissect this headline a little. I heard this little tidbit while I was dutifully watching C-Span like every responsible citizen should (OK, so I'm a nerd, you did read the title of this blog right?) and there was a meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Women in Politics or something and one of them mentioned that regular people can have power too, just look at what the people were able to do concerning the cancer causing agents in Coke!

Now, this is of no small amount of concern to me since I usually have 1 coke per day, and I savor that moment. If my favorite carbonated beverage is causing cancer, I'm going to be a little put out. So I went and checked it out. I looked at the actual NIH Study and did some number crunching (this is the math part). Given certain facts like:
A. The cancer causing agent is in the caramel coloring (its called 4-Methylimidazole or 4-MEI)
B. There are about 130 micro-grams in each can (roughly the equivalent of a single grain of salt in your salt shaker)
C. The amount of 4-MEI given to test rats is ....large
D. Using their own dose numbers (30, 55 and 115 mg/kg per day), we can calculate that the average human (5' 8", 175 lbs.) would have to consume  levels of 2.4, 4.4, and 12.3g of raw chemical, per day.
E. That amount of raw chemical is enough to color between 18,400 and 95,000 cans of coke PER DAY. 

These numbers are shown not to cause cancer in laboratory test subjects (rats and mice). It not until we reach the extremely high dosage level of 24.6g/day (190,000 cans of coke) does the evidence of cancer shows up. Now, I like Coke, but I think that it is not physically possible for one to consume 190,000 cans of coke in a day, anyone?

the Crazy Carrots

I recently received this letter from my cousin, and since i like my cousins, I thought that I would do my little part to help out. So, without editing, here is the transcription of my cousins letter:

Good morning!


   Lilah's team (Crazed Carrots) has raised 1/3 of the money needed to pay the entrance fee to the Global Destination Imagination Tournament in Knoxville, TN. Our website www.crazedcarrots.bbnow.org has been onfire the last two days with donations coming in from friends, family and blog readers. I am asking for your help in spreading the word about this website so that the momentum can continue and we can raise the entire $5,000 needed. 


Would you resend this email to your friends and family members who know Lilah or would be interested in supporting a group of children who have the opportunity to have a life-changing experience? 
Would you post our website on your Facebook account? 
Would you Tweet it to your followers? 
Would you send it to your co-workers? 
Would you post on a homeschooling yahoo group or coop site? 


    To summarize their project: The group of children (age 8-11) chose Project Outreach, a community service project. They were  to identify a need in their community and create a project to address the need. At the State Tournament, they presented their project in a skit to a panel of judges and answered questions about the work done. The Crazed Carrots identified their community as our Planet, the need was raising money to help threatened animals (specifically sea turtles, sharks and polar bears) and the project was hosting a free screening of the documentary Shark Waters, which brings awareness to the industry of shark finning, which is killing thousands of sharks each and every day. At the screening which was held at Westport's Earthplace, the children sold 60 hand designed and painted canvas bags to bring awareness to ocean pollution, sold handmade clay figurines and paintings. They presented their research in a brochure and on a presentation board. Organic apples and bananas were also sold. Over 100 hours of work was done by this amazing group of children. They raised $530.00 which was donated to Earthplace, The Mystic Aquarium and Sharkwater Productions. Their skit highlighted this is in a clever theatrical production recreating the event while educating the audience on the need to protect these animals. They won first place. 


    In Tennessee they will be competing against 1,000 other teams from around the US and world. The opening ceremony includes a parade of nations, similar to the Olympics. 20,000 people attend this week long event. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet new friends, learn about different cultures, and perform their presentation to a huge audience. Please help me to get this team there. Every dollar donated will go towards the expense of the entrance fee. If someone wishes to make a tax deductable donation, checks can be sent directly to Destination Imagination with the subject Global FInals and team #107-87713. The receipt will come from Destination Imagination directly to the donor. Otherwise, non-tax deductable gifts, or donations can be made through our website: www.crazedcarrot.bbnow.org. 


Thank you! Jess and Lilah

Calluses on your Soul

  For the first time in a long time I am willingly submitting myself to the scrutiny of others and exposing my ego to damage. Today marks the day when I make my official first attempt at writing, and not the usual engineering or technical papers that I tend to be involved in. A BOOK, a novel, a long story, whatever you want to call it, I'm attempting to write one. I have kept it a little secret for the past few months because I wasn't sure if what I had was worth anything or if it would just fizzle out. Apparently it has not fizzled, I have been working in the spare time that I have, an hour or two here and there, and have come up with a plot line, seven to ten primary characters, the sketched outline for the first six or seven chapters and the primary ideas for approximately seventeen chapters. The idea came to me, as ideas do to many people, in the shower. I had been thinking about the show Heroes which was short lived and jumped the shark almost after he first season was over in addition to pondering the feasibility of a type of generator I had heard about a while ago and came up with a cool idea: What if there were bio implantable generators? Weird right? then everything started to fall out, the main character, what would happen to her, how it would happen, all the good stuff that make a story. 
  For the next couple of days every chance I got I kept writing, not on the actual chapters, but background. Character names, story flow, actual ballistics and medical condition research, genetics research, in a short time I had a binder and notebook with hand written notes, typed pages and diagrams. Its been a lot of fun so far.
  Recently I had my wife Dr. Maureen read the prologue. The verdict? Amateurish, she didn't really like the stories of that type, not extremely well written. I was crushed. The person I had counted on to give me words of encouragement had eviscerated me instead. [WHAT THE WHAT? I did no such thing. -Ed.] At first I was a little shocked but then she told me she was comparing me to actual written work, stuff that had been published. She also said that she had read stuff like this on the shelves. Keeping in mind that I'm not an author by nature and I was a bit more encouraged. I set about re-writing the prologue and I feel its better now, in fact ready for (queue drum roll) EDITING
   I knew I'd reach the point where self editing was not enough so I decided that I would need to find a person who did this for a living. I checked on line and there are plenty of places that will do it but they want you to buy some sort of editing/publishing deal usually and they mostly deal with paper publications. So I went looking for alternatives and found some. Which leads me to today. I have just sent the Prologue and three chapters out for editing. I have yet to decide how I want to release it, there are so many options. I guess it depends on whether the thing stinks like last weeks fish or not. I think, however, I will release the Prologue for all to read and comment on when as soon as it's ready. 

Familiarity breeds contempt (Or why I'm Like Julia Child)

Every now and then something happens in your life to make you realize that you are not invincible, that no matter how well you plan or how prepared you are, circumstances can arrive that can toss your well ordered life into complete disarray. Something like this happened to me a little less than three weeks ago. Now you may be wondering why someone would wait three weeks to write about an event of this magnitude, aside from the glaringly obvious reason that I don't post much. Well that was one of the results of life kicking my ass.
The day was going so well, we were at a dual birthday party for my niece and nephew and my sister-in-law was getting lunch ready (Home made chili and pulled pork, mmmm). They were finishing with the garnish for the chili which was to be scallions and shredded cheese. I offered to help with the scallions. Some of you can guess where this is going. To make a long story short, I almost cut off the tip of my finger. Standing at the sink, telling my mother quite calmly that I had cut my finger and would shortly be going to the hospital. I turned to inform my brother, who had come over to see what the problem was, that I would probably be going into shock in about 30 seconds or so. I then proceeded to nearly pass out. When the excitement calmed down a little, I regained enough presence of mind to bandage myself and have someone drive me to the hospital.
Which leads me to possibly the fastest ER visit in the history of Man. I was at the hospital, admitted, treated and released and back at the party in about 2 and a half hours. This becomes more amazing when the drive time from the house to hospital is about 20 minutes.
Now for the amazing part. People take a lot of what medicine can do today for granted, but lets take a minute and appreciate what was done. I had sliced the tip of my finger almost off with a knife sharp enough to cut through fingernails without breaking a sweat. It was literally hanging on by a few millimeters of skin. Here I am three weeks later and my finger tip is attached. My FINGER was reattached with NEEDLE and THREAD. This is really cool. To give you perspective, here are some wonderfully gruesome pictures.Fair warning, these are a little gross.

This is a nice side view where you can see all four stitches that I got. I believe that it is worth mentioning here that these stitches were done by a 4th year med student and apparently she does a wonderful job according to my GP.

As you can see a good portion of the finger nail is now gone, having been removed by the wonderful doctors at the ER after my digital block. The mess where the nail bed should be is actually caused by gause stuck to the finger. I did not know this at the time the photo was taken.

Lastly you can see here that the cut went pretty much all the way through the finger> It was only held on by the small bit of skin at the very tip of the finger. Let it be known, when people say Cutco knives are sharp, they ain't kidding around. Well, that about wraps it up for this episode of gruesome pictures, tune in next week when we'll be showcasing what happens to a toe nail when you drop a 2 pound shower head on it.

Who would have guessed?

Apparently Peter Gabriel is a closet nerd. Two weekends ago The Boss went to a Peter Gabriel concert which was good according to him. But, the best part of the concert was not the music, the best part was a plug that Mr. Gabriel put in for something that is quite near and dear to the heart of The Boss and the soul of our company. These are not his exact words, but Mr. Gabriel said:

"Have you heard about some crazy scientists over in California? Apparently they are very close to making a fusion reaction in a laboratory setting, its something called the NIF project. They use these really big lasers and hit a small pellet of fuel to create Fusion. This is a really great thing, if they can get this to work this has the potential to create un-imaginable amounts of energy and could solve many of the earths energy problems, in addition to destroying many of the earths stores of nuclear material."

While I can not confirm the last portion of the statement, I can say that this is indeed what is happening, being intimately involved with this project my self. The science, physics and physical aspects of this project are really quite interesting. The premise is to use about 200 laser beams all focused on the same target. This target contains Fuseable material (usually an isotope of hydrogen), by increasing the temperature of the sample with those lasers it is possible (in theory) to force the atoms to fuse together. So what you say? Well Fusion has a much higher energy yield than Fission which is what happens in a Nuclear Reactor. Fission works by breaking apart unstable high Atomic weight atoms, Usually U235 or U238. When these atoms split They form two new atoms, BUT the weight of these two atoms when added together does not equal the original weight of the Uranium atom. The excess weight is converted into energy. Each split makes a set amount of energy dictated mostly by the mass difference between the uranium and its fission products, about 202MeV. There is another way to generate energy using the following Nuclear binding energy curve.

Uranium is far out to the right, and when it splits you move up the curve to the left. Fusion is better, it usually starts with hydrogen far to the left, when you fuse it you get a helium atom, some neutrons and energy. When you fuse an atom, you move up the energy curve to the right. At first look, at the released energy, it would seem fission is better (220MeV per reaction vs 4.03MeV per reaction for Hydrogen fusion). But if one takes into account the energy released per unit mass, the fusion reaction is about 5 times more energetic and doesn't have all the nasty nuclear waste products at he Fission does.

So the upshot is Fusion created a lot more energy using the same amount of fuel mass with less nuclear waste products than fission. This is not to say it is without its drawbacks, but if this works we'll have a limitless amount of energy at out disposal.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the chart above.

Hook 'em while they're young

In the fall of 2010 The Wife, Child1, Child2 and I met some friends in Boston for the day. After going to a museum or two, eating lunch and checking out the Curious George store, we headed over to a certain large bookseller. There I found scientific gold, a book about the elements called...... The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.  This is the book that I have been reading to Child1 as a bedtime story for the past 5 nights.


I am willing to bet that you are thinking: "What the hell kind of bedtime story is that?!" My answer would be, the best. Why should bedtime stories always be about a porridge stealing, chair breaking, bed sleeping blonde, or a freakishly huge red-haired hound, or some other moral teaching fiction? Can we not also include the awesomeness that it the real world? Science? Engineering? Chemistry? These things can be fascinating! Let's take a really simple example from the above book: on page 34 we encounter Sodium. Bad stuff. Blows up when you toss it in water. Further on, on page 49 we find Chlorine. Really bad stuff, the gas will sear your lungs. As the author describes it, inhaling chlorine gas is "as if someone was pointing a blowtorch at your sinuses". Nice eh?  Here is where we get to the cool bits, when you mix these two really bad elements, you can EAT THE RESULT. When presented in the proper fashion, this will blow a child's mind right out of their ears (and make you the smartest person in the world to them). I ask you, where is the down side?


All joking aside, it's a wonderful thing to teach kids at a young age to respect others, play nice, ignore skin color and other good social values, as well as reading. But why is it that people balk at trying to teach their children the other stuff like how to plant seeds, what photosynthesis is, how to use a hammer and build a birdhouse, where bacon comes from, and, yes, how televisions work and what the elements are? I really don't think a child's mind will differentiate between learning how to spell a word and learning what the chemical formula for salt is. Science and technology in all its forms should be introduced at an early age, we need more engineers, scientists and researchers . Oh sure, some people will say that they don't want their kid to be a "NERD" or a  "GEEK", but those are just petty labels made by insecure people trying to make themselves feel good. In this situation should you ask yourself would the likes of Bill Gates (Microsoft founder), Steve Jobs (iPod anyone?), Brad Bird (I loved The Incredibles) and Ken Olsen (this one you should look up) would really care what others called them in school.


Don't even get me started on lasers.....

Robots are COOL!

I freely admit that I am a nerd. I like engineering, solving problems, computer games, lasers and ROBOTS. Let me just say that before you judge, seeing six robots try to hang inflatible tubes on pegs was never so much fun. Sounds boring I know, but when you're in a crowd who's loving it, listening to songs from The Scorpions, Van Halen, Lit and AC/DC it's hard not to get excited.

What am I talking about? It's called The FIRST Robotics Competition (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and..... it's awesome. There are over 2100 teams, 52000 participants from nine countries and they all build robots to complete specific challenges. From what I could see it seems like an excellent way of teaching children about Math, Science, Technology, Teamwork, Sportsmanship, Communication and Self Esteem. All worthy goals, yes?

The competition this year consisted of six robots on a playing field for about 4 minutes. The first 15 seconds of which the robots had to guide themselves to accomplish a goal of lifting a yellow innertube onto any one of 9 metal pegs from about 3 to 10 feet in the air. The next 3 minutes or so, the robots were controlled by drivers to accomplish the task of putting red, white and blue inner tubes onto the same pegs, points were awarded for placing the tubes in certain positions, configurations and heights. The final 30 seconds the robots had to get to one of 4 vertical poles, deploy a mini robot which would climb the pole to press a button at the top, points for first second and third place.

It was very much like robot soccer/basketball since robots could block others from getting innertubes and entering the scoring area, but not interfere with them in the scoring area. There were cheer leading teams, professional wrestling style announcers, and light shows. This was a very much family and student oriented event. If you have kids, I would strongly suggest you check it out, I can personally vouch that while involvement may not be appropriate for the under 6 set, it is highly entertaining for all ages (at least down to 22 months of age).

Good news is nice, but bad news sells papers.

  There have been many more announcement about Japanese workers being exposed to radioactive water, radiation inhalations, food bans and radiation levels 1000 times above normal. I ask you to think and take into consideration the information in this post. More often than not, the stories that you are hearing are indeed reporting the facts, but since so little is understood by the reporters and those who hear the reports, these facts sound more scary than they should. Take heart in knowing that the amount of radiation that an average person is exposed to in one year is 50 times less than the maximum allowable dose for radiation workers. This in turn is only ½ of the lowest dose of radiation proven to statistically increase the probability of getting cancer.


   Some of you have probably fixated on the 1000 times above normal bit. This number may sound scary until you take into account that this figure is a time based figure. Let us do an example taking information from the above chart. The maximum dose of radiation one can receive as a member of the public in the US is 1000 MicroSieverts per year(ignore the units for now). Please note the time dependence. So, a radiation level 1000 times above normal means that a person could receive the maximum allowable yearly public doseage in just under 9 hours. This level would also expose a person the minimum dosage proven to statisitcly increase the probability of cancer in 900 hours (just over 1 month).


  One last thing, I found a very useful chart that puts the whole radiation exposure thing into perspective, I have attached a link to the site that has it. This chart is from WBUR in Boston, created by a cartoonist with a physics background.


  I hope this helps with everyone's understanding, and I apologize for those of you who already had this conversation with me. Please, if you have any questions or concerns, or want to discuss it further, email or tweet me @FrozenLaser.

The Sum of All Fears

I know that many of you pay attention to what's going on in the world, who doesn't? In light of recent events, and my perception that many people, through no fault of their own, have very little understanding of radiation and radioactivity in general, I have decided to write these two short articles to try to decrease the level of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt). The subject that I am commenting about is the recent dual tragedy of earthquake/tsunami and the resultant nuclear facility problems that have been plastered all over the news. You have probably heard of the "plutonium leak" near Fukushima and that there have been increased levels of radiation found in the rainwater in Boston, I am going to try to alleviate any fears that you might have about these two events. First the rain water in Boston. The amount of radioactivity that was detected in the rainwater in Boston was 71pico-Curies. For those who don't know what a Curie is, have no fear, a Curie is defined as 37000000000 (37 Billion) radio active decays per second. The unit prefix PICO is defined as the quoted number (in this case 71) multiplied by 0.000000000001. Now for the math bit which makes this relevant, multiplying both numbers together we get a number that in essence means that they were detecting about 2.6 radioactive decays per second. If this sounds like a lot, for comparison, the smoke alarm currently in your house has 30600 decays per second. Additionally the radioactive substance detected in Boston is Iodine131. Iodine131 has a half life of 8 days. This means that half the iodine is gone after 8 days, so in 4 weeks the amount left will be a little over 1/20 of what was originally detected.

Now for Fukushima. There was a reported plutonium leakage found in the soil surrounding the reactor. The amount of plutonium that was found in the soil was very small; in fact it would not normally have caused any concern whatsoever since the amount that was found was in no way more or less than what was scattered around the globe when the US and Russia were testing our nuclear weapons. The only reason that they know that this material came from Fukushima is because of the specific isotope (or atomic variation if you don't know that an isotope is) was specific to the Fukushima reactors. I would like to stress that they did not measure any radioactivity appreciably above the normal levels that are usually found in soil anywhere in the world.

As I am sure that this is not the last of the news that will come from Japan, there will most likely be follow-up posts.