textiplication.com

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=125890

This is really interesting.   Three-year study compares buying patterns of people with DVR’s (TiVo is mentioned in particular) to those of people without. 

People with TiVo’s bought five percent less of new products than people without, and 20% of all brands lost volume in DVR households. 

Food products took a big hit:

Among IRI’s top-selling Pacesetters … All of the impact was on food brands, which allocated more of their budgets to TV and saw new-product trial volume decline 7.5%

This was my favorite observation from the story:

…Research has shown that when ads mesh with a program’s subject matter, e.g., do-it-yourself fare on HGTV, they tend to get fast-forwarded less often.

Go figure - if I’m watching a  home-improvement show, I’m likely to watch an ad for the new Black & Decker whatsit.  If I’m watching The Office, I’m likely to fast-forward over an ad for Hot Pockets.  For the first time, I understand how Google’s foray into TV advertising might be able to succeed, by making it possible to dice ad placement logic more finely than this obvious cut.

It’s obvious from show content alone that advertising goes with home-improvement television like Gorilla Glue goes with, well, anything.  DVR usage patterns suggest that traditional entertainment programming may suffer badly if ad viewing becomes a uniform choice

Match it for Pratchett - and I - would like you to contribute to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust to help match Terry Pratchett’s million-dollar donation. 

Terry Pratchett, a writer of astounding humor and humanity,  is two years into his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. 

My father’s mother was destroyed by Alzheimer’s long before her death. 

Let’s all do what we can.

SK

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/daily-lego-worl.html

Photo by Hirotaka Hatayama.

If only Gaudí had had access to Lego…

Lots more of the collection here.

Made a little progress this past week.

1. The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant
2. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, Frances and Joseph Gies
3. The Secret History of Moscow, Ekaterina Sedia
4. The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
5. Ha’penny, Jo Walton
6. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
7. In the Forest of Forgetting, Theodora Goss
8. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
9. My Mother the Cheerleader, Robert Sharenow (my wife went to school with him, his best friend is married to my wife’s best friend)
10. Johnny and the Dead, Terry Pratchett (probably on my son’s list more than mine)
11. Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen (new edition, substantially updated, and, so far, the only Book Every American Should Read)
12. Ptolemy’s Gate, Jonathan Stroud
13. Bear Daughter, Judith Berman (one of my favorite con panelists)
14. Impostors, George V. Higgins
15. Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link (actually, I’m about halfway through)
16. Skin Hunger, Kathleen Duey
17. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Walter Moers (halfway through, so far, it’s no Rumo)
18. Trial of Flowers, Jay Lake
19. The Guin Saga, Kaoru Kurimoto (I have no recollection of ordering thisTheo brought this back from BEA)
20. The City of Dreaming Books, Walter Moers
21. Lowlife, Luc Sante (halfway through)
22. By the Sword, Richard Cohen
23. The Curve of Binding Energy, John MacPhee
24. Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell
25. Black Sheep, Ben Peek

Low Life is a history of the poor and the criminal classes of New York City up through 1920, focusing mainly on the Victorian era.  Profuse and spectacular in detail, engaging and fascinating in character study, Low Life is also one of the the most beautifully-written books it has ever been my pleasure not only to savor, but to read aloud to anyone I can manage to trap in his cube - hello, Theo!  Take this, for example:

…The district grew up helter-skelter in a malodorous environment of slaughterhouses, soap and glue factories and waterfront effluvia, in patches that bore names like Poverty Lane and Misery Row.

Or this:

The tenement is the basic facade in New York, the face of the slums, a slab of tombstone proportions, four to six stories, pocked by windows.  Above is the towering tin cornice, a confection of scallops and curlicues, with foliaceous brackets, often topped by a semicircular peak, a disk enclosing a rayed sun.

Except I forgot to put it onto the list in the first place.

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson Read more about this book…

I just cannot believe how good Brandon Sanderson is.  His first novel, Elantris, had a very interesting, novel concept, but was laden (and occasionally leaden) with first-novel prose. 

Then I read Mistborn, the first of the Mistborn trilogy, and was gobsmacked.  Not one, but two creative magic systems, three superb and complex primary characters and a host of complex secondaries, an army of creepy evil-doers with an evil overlord who doesn’t make mistakes, all shot through with a strong sense of social conscience.

Not to mention that it propelled the characters through what seemed to be the full arc of an epic trilogy by the end of the first book. 

I honestly had no idea where Well of Ascension was going to go, and it went further than I imagined.  Beautifully written, building on all the strengths of Mistborn, Well of Ascension is a series of stunning surprises.  When I finished it, I could barely move ("It’s … paralyzingly great!").  Brandon did it again - packed a huge book full of unexpected turns, telling a complete, complex story, and leaving me with absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next.  Furthermore, I think that the main character’s transformation from starving waif in the first book to powerful wizard in this one is as moving and dramatic a development as I’ve ever read in epic fantasy — and we’re only two books in.

I hope Brandon already has Book 3 in the can before he starts on the the last Wheel of Time book, as I hear he’s committed to do.

Hmm.

Might as well throw out the start of my list of favorite epic fantasy series:

1. Crown of Stars, Kate Elliott
2. Mistborn*, Brandon Sanderson
3. The Black Company, all ten books, Glen Cook
4. Restoration/Revelation/Transformation, Carol Berg
5. The Name of the Wind*, Patrick Rothfuss
6. Curse of Chalion/Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold (this would be higher if the third book had continued the sequence)
7. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Tad Williams
8. First Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny
9. The Blade Itself*, Joe Abercrombie
10. The Assassin/Tawny Man series, Robin Hobb
11. Lord of the Rings, JRRT.

Yes, I have three brand-new series that aren’t even finished yet in my top ten.  We’re in a great time for epic fantasy at the moment.  And to think that this time last year I probably thought epic fantasy was dead.  I need to write some more about epic fantasy - I’ll try to post some on my very favorites when I get back from vac.

I debated putting Stephen Brust onto the list - Vlad Taltos would be in my top three series, except I don’t think that they’re epic fantasy by my definition.  I’ll have to write more on that, as well.

We’re taking the kids to Disneyworld tomorrow, won’t be back until a week from tomorrow.

The last time I went to Disney, I was younger than my older son.  I understand they’ve added a lot of stuff over the last thirty years or so.

I’m not taking a laptop - I’m anticipating flopping into bed, exhausted, shortly after I shovel the boys into their beds every evening.

Is posting often.  I’ve long known this, but I’ve never been able to get into the blogging habit the way Chris has. 

You know what’s making me think of this now?

Over the weekend I made about half a dozen posts, and saw traffic jump almost immediately.  Usually, blog traffic is much lighter on weekends, but not this one past.  More posts = more unique words = more things for people to come to look at your blog for.

Like Human-Shark Hybrids, for instance.

I’m going to have to write another of those and post it - that novel isn’t going anywhere for a while.  It’s no more than a fifth priority, behind:

1. Finishing Knave for the fourth time
2. Working on Folds - my magic-realism YA novel.  I’ve got about 25K words, an outline I can’t wait to stray from, and a whole lot of energy for it in the back of my head.
3. A new near-future police procedural I thought of while Boskoning - probably a novel, although the idea started out as a short
4. A joint project with Chris
5. Ta da! The Selacchiad! Got about 7-8K words in the can, and I haven’t even gotten to the stuff I wrote on the blog.

Since I’m not going to be working on the shark novel for a while, I can give myself permission to blog it some more.

I wouldn’t want to lose my coveted #1 - and #2 - ranking for the phrase, "human-shark hybrid," after all.

So, here I am with renewed energy for blogging and for writing in general, and I’m going to Disneyworld!

Chris is looking for a new name for his latest novel, The New Sirens.

Here’s what he’s got so far, in the form of Sea-b[a-z]+.  Just to help out, I’m going eliminate the ones that really, really don’t work:

• Sea-balance - Kind of hard to say - you have to put a caesura between the two emphatic syllables
• Sea-bane - Sounds a little bit like an herb.  Might work, though
• Sea-blend -  Sounds like salty coffee.
• Sea-bitter - Mmm, salty bad coffe
• Sea-bleed - Eeeeeeee.  Sounds like a pun on seaweed, which doesn’t need a pun.
• Sea-blood -
• Sea-blessed - It ought to work, but I’m concerned about how close “blessed” sounds to “blast”
• Sea-blind - I’m not sure why I don’t like this; maybe because in parallel with Seaborn, it sounds like it wants to be a past participle and it’s not.
• Sea-bold - It’s the name of a trade show, spelled differently.
• Sea-bond - It’s a grade of debt.
• Sea-border - Where iss zee border? Iss over zere!
• Sea-brave - A great title for a different book, maybe 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea meets Last of the Mohicans.
• Sea-breath - A common morning ailment among merfolk - Eugh, get away, you have sea breath!  Go chew some nori, or something.
• Sea-bright
• Sea-burn - Sounds too much like Seaborn

My thoughts:

Sea-Bound  - combines the senses of “headed for the sea” and “unable to leave the sea,” which I think is kind of cool, given the characters and story.

Sea-Ward - combines the senses of “headed for the sea ” and “protected by the sea,” which I think is kind of cool, given the characters and story

UPDATED: Hey, it’s a contest! Win valuable prizes!

Don’t know how I missed this.

Or this: