Author: Teel

And now, a post for while I wait for that 11Mb file to upload. See, I’m actually writing all three (or more, if this takes long enough or I think of something else to say) of these posts in a text editor so I can do other things with my internet access (ie: uploading those darned MP3s) and write at length if I want without worrying about losing too much (I save frequently… which reminds me…).

Anyway, I was in Phoenix Monday night/Tuesday all day, and watched Kill Bill Volume 1 (which I most thoroughly enjoyed, btw) AND rented (courtecy of my loving sister, Angela, thanks again!) The Matrix Reloaded and watched all (yes, literally ALL) the special features… and, while we let the movie iteself run from beginning to end, I don’t think any one of us (myself, my father (who started it in the first place) or my brother (who came home from school about 40 minutes before the ‘end’)) actually “watched” the whole thing. Although my dad was watching some of it in slow motion, and zoomed in… even scenes that were already in slow motion and/or close-ups. Hey, whatever gives him the enjoys, as his father would say. Overall, the “special features” weren’t particularly special… especially for a big Matrix fan… except for the documentary about the making of the freeway scene, which gave me more information than I had … but still disappointed by not giving the depth I wanted. And now I’m back in Pine.

I DID get that book, by the way. It had been waiting for me since Saturday, but since the office is only open M-F, they couldn’t have given it to me then, since it needed to be hand-delivered, I guess. There was a problem/non-problem with it, though. See, when I went to Amazon.com to look up Oscar Wilde, to see about ordering The Picture of Dorian Gray and/or De Profundis, I found that for about the same as JUST getting those two works, I could have my choice of two editions that claimed to have the ‘complete works’ of Oscar Wilde. One was The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (available for $10.45, used and in good condition) and the other was The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde (available for $6.99, used and in good condition). I read through the descriptions of both books and it looked like they were both long enough and sized to be ‘complete works’, and figured saving $3 and getting the original illustrations along with the complete works was a turn of luck, so that’s what I ordered. That’s what the emails I received said was being sent to me “The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde”.

What arrived today was “The Complete Illustrated Stories, Plays and Poems of Oscar Wilde.” It has all his stories, plays, poems, and the one novel he wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray. It does not contain any of his essays or letters (De Profundis is a letter, nearly 200 pages long, which he wrote while in prison). It is not the ‘complete works of Oscar Wilde’. BUT, I went back and looked at the Amazon.com page for the product I ordered (following the link from the confirmation email, to be sure I was looking at the right item), and while the title I’d thought I was purchasing was there, the ISBN matched the one on my book and the official ‘description’ was verbatim from the back of the book I received, though the cover image they display is different. I looked at their return policy for Amazon Marketplace sales and … well, it says that if I was shipped something that was different from what I ordered, they’re supposed to exchange it (I pay shipping both ways, of course) or offer me a refund (which is much more complicated than a regular Amazon.com refund, and may take over a week to even be acknowledged before they try to process it), depending on what was wrong… but … it has the ISBN of the book I ordered, so is it the right book or the wrong one?

I submitted a ‘change of title’ to the book, with the title carefully copied from the book in my hands, so that future visitors will know what they’re ordering. I also sent a long email to the general Amazon.com customer service people explaining the whole thing, and that I really, really want to have the real, and actually ‘complete’ works of Oscar Wilde, and asking what I need to do to get it, asking whether I was even allowed to send back this book I’ve received to try to exchange it or WHAT. SO, we’ll see how THAT goes. Hopefully it will all be worked out peachy-keen and I’ll eventually get my hands on what I thought I was ordering… or some content-equivalent.

I’m getting tired, but this upload is taking forever. Silly dial-up. I think I’ll go take a nap, setting an alarm for half an hour from now, and see if it’s done then. I’ll let you know. …***/// \\\***… Yep, there is goes. Now, to post these three posts. And then go back to bed, where my mind was just beginning to calm down. Quiet down. Down, down, down…

One of the complex reasons I’ve recorded that first ‘audioblog’ is that I am lazy. I didn’t feel like typing out a post. Well, obviously, that didn’t work out. I’m already working on typing out my second post!

Another was that I have been thinking more and more about the recording of the audio version of Lost and Not Found. I found myself recently listening to the audio recording I did of myself reading The Princess Bride (Available only as a gift, not for sale. Ask me about what size donations you can make to Modern Evil to receive this FREE GIFT!), noticing the little things about it I don’t like, that I don’t want to be features of the audio recording of Lost and Not Found. And the opposites. I spent more time happy with my recording than unhappy.

But I feel like I need to practice recording. Practice reading, even. Would you like to hear some samples from my novel? Well, as soon as more people have read it, I’ll ask them what parts they think will make good ‘excerpts’ to share with people who have never read it. Angela, go ahead and tell me now. Play with file sizes and formats and audio levels and environmental sounds … figure out what is going to work best for the ‘product’.

Now, with The Princess Bride… I was intentionally reading it a little fast… At this point I don’t remember what my intention was, but I remember doing so. And that book is about as long as mine. I just looked at the page count, and considering possible differences in fonts and page size, it appears to be within just a couple of percent of the length of my novel. The full audio recording of me reading The Princess Bride is about 7.7 hours. If I read my slightly longer novel 15%-25% slower (for clarity), it will likely be about 9 or 10 hours long, finished.

For the quality of the recording I used for The Princess Bride, it took me on average not less than four times longer to record any segment of the book than the final recorded audio. I do not expect to be surprised if that number is doubled for Lost and Not Found. Then cutting it into ‘tracks’ and spacing it across CDs (for a potential CD release) and adjusting file sizes and formats (for the definite MP3 release and other potential distribution methods) and getting the web space set up for it and it all uploaded…. I know how long it’s going to take me (in raw man-hours, though not actual days/weeks) to get this thing together and I’m certainly going to charge you an appropriate price (secretly based on the actual costs of audio books in stores and for download online… not on personal greed, mind you)… and I let that price determine the quality level I’m going to try to hold myself to. Does that all make sense?

Anyway, yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. And about doing audioblog entries. And actually, I’ve been thinking about Speech-To-Text software, too. I keep wanting to get some, and see if my thoughts are anywhere near coherent enought that I could possibly speak something worth reading. I know my hands are well-trained at converting my thoughts into coherent words on a screen or a page, but my voice has never really been used to convert my thoughts into words on a page or a screen, but in someone’s ears. Will it translate?

And if I speak, does anyone listen?

And now, for the Fuck Yourself To Hell audioblog.

I waited until after I was pretty sure the whole idea of an ‘audioblog’ had come and gone, passed almost entirely out of the consciousness of the blogging community, and THEN I decided to start thinking about doing it.

But none of that RealCrap or WindowsMediaCrapper. Not even the “open source” Ogg Vorbis, which is only playable on a fraction of players. No, I’ve decided to go with the format I know can be played on any platform and nearly any player, the format that has no way of being “digital rights managed”, which certain organizations (RIAA) blame for lagging CD sales (despite vastly fewer CDs being made available one year after another), the MP3! Most modern browsers will play the common MP3 without even bothering to launch an external player, and the rest of you can right-click the link and save the MP3 and … open it in your player of choice.

Tomorrow, when/if iTunes for Windows becomes available, and AAC audio becomes easy-to-use cross-platform, I’ll probably switch over to AAC. So there.

Oh, and for those of you at work and/or without sound capabilities on your computers…. you didn’t want to listen to it, anyway. I mostly just ramble about love and emotion and … Laura… I don’t remember, even though I’ve heard it over four times through now… yeah… don’t remember…

I’ve saved the file at a low-low-low-bitrate, because upon my testing, you can hear me just fine.

The length is 00:11:45, which means it’s eleven minutes and forty-five seconds. The file is only 2.6Mb (encoded@32k), which means that if you were using my ISP it would take you approximately three and a half days to upload or download the file, or if you were using broadband, your computer has probably already downloaded it before you even finished reading this. Because of the low quality it has been encoded at, there is some occassional distortion of my voice. If you are an audio-quality-snob, I’ve also created a version (encoded@128k) that is 11Mb. Again, those of you on broadband will probably find yourselves listening to both versions to try to tell the difference. Wheee! I just spent fourteen weeks uploading it! Anyway, here are the links:

The 2.6Mb file (actually took me 00:15:15 to upload)
The 11Mb file (don’t even ask… over an hour on dial-up)

And yes, there is music playing in the background. I had a heck of a time getting my audio recording software to NOT cancel that out, so it would be audible in the background. It was not as loud as I’d have liked in some places, and too loud in others. It may or may not be present in future recordings.

Sometimes I wish people wore signs… or … registered all their thoughts in a central database that I could easily access, preferably tied into some sort of Heads-Up Display which used facial recognition and high-speed data access to feed me vital information about everyone I met, and that emails and IMs were hooked into the same system, so I could know important things about people right from the get-go.

Like, I just got an email from a 13 year old in Tucson who likes my paintings and may be interested in buying. Which is great. If he has the money. My prices are very low right now, actually, so it isn’t inconceivable. I responded professionally and completely, and if he’s interested, I’ll know soon enough, but wouldn’t it be nice if I could tell right off the bat whether he was genuinely serious about buying, and financially capable of same? Whether he buys or not, it’s nice to know that he likes the work, but should I be responding as to a groupie or fan, or professionally, as to an art collector? I chose the latter.

Or with Laura. We’ve been corresponding for about a couple of months and … I want to go into the details at some point, but I am not sure it is relevant here, but … what is relevant here is that until I pressed the issue (because I sensed something was amiss, and drove conversations in that direction… after which it took her over two weeks to respond) I had no idea that … not only is she not looking for or interested in a serious romantic relationship of any kind, but she has never been in a relationship that required fidelity of any kind, and even if she were interested in having a relationship with someone, she wouldn’t want it to be a monogamous one. Which seems odd to me, considering that in the second or third conversation we had we spoke at length about monogamy and fidelity and how I am not interested in relationships that are not monogamous… months ago… But wouldn’t it have been nice if upon first hearing from her I could know that she has no interest in relationships and has never bothered with fidelity? I very likely would have avoided investing any of myself in her, had I known that. It’s not like it was easy or casual… she lives 3500 miles away… I wasn’t running into her at the local coffee shop or library… I was going out of my way to get ahold of her, spending hours and days writing letters to her… if she just wanted a casual friendship, well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t typically work that hard to create a casual friendship with someone I may never meet. (Or have erotic fantasies about them, which is something we BOTH did re: each other, but which … no… no, I don’t tend to have erotic fantasies about my casual friends, and if I find myself having them anyway, I look into advancing the relationship past ‘friend’, eh?)

Or … imagine going out to a club and knowing at a glance who wanted what, not just out of the evening, but in relationships and in life in general. You see a beautiful young woman and think about asking her to dance, but see that she is married with kids and just out for a night of fun. If you’re looking for the same thing, great, she can see that and you two can have fun dancing. If you’re looking for something more, you don’t even waste the time talking to her. And no, a person can’t be broken down into likes and dis-likes and give you a fair picture, but if you have “conflicting worldviews” (say, a gaia-loving wiccan and a captain of industry protestant), you would know right away not to bother trying to get together for something that became ‘serious’ enough to bring these things up. Sure, some people are just looking for a string of steamy nights of passion with no intellectual or emotional connection, but … well, that would all be obvious, too.

Hobbies, obsessions, passions, occupations and recreations. Religious beliefs, dreams, aspirations, biases and prejudices, expectations, and what other relationships they are currently or very recently involved in. All out in the open from the moment you meet someone.

Wouldn’t that be nice? If people were just open about who they are and what they want?

I am trying to be. It’s hard sometimes, but I do my best. It’s hard to let people know who I am and what I want over the loud music in the club. It’s hard to get through to people that the words I’m speaking are the truth, the whole truth, not something I like to say to make you like me exactly, but what I actually mean. It’s hard to get people to reciprocate. When I started with Laura I thought I was making my intentions clear by beginning the conversation “How would you like to be courted?” and then proceeding to explain that I wanted to get to know her and to try to form a relationship with her, that I wanted to know how she preferred to go from strangers to intimates. But I guess that didn’t get it across. Or when, on that 2nd or 3rd conversation when we discussed at length monogamy and fidelity and why we both agreed that we didn’t like infidelity, and I know I said outright I was not interested in being in a polyamorous or “open” relationship. I guess I wasn’t clear enough.

Or when I told her I was falling in love with her. Or when I revealed that I was, in fact, in love with her.

And when, earlier than those, I saw her use the words “yours” and “mine” as in “I’m yours and you’re mine,” and my multi-page response must not have been clear enough that my understanding of those words implies posession of a sort, which implies (to me only, I suppose) the idea that if I am hers I am no one else’s… if she is mine, she is no one else’s… and if not, then why use those words? And use them again and again and again and again? It only encouraged me, and I told her as much, in writing, quoting her, telling her she was only reinforcing and building up our relationship, encouraging me to love her and love her more, seeming to be …

nevermind. I have got off track, here.

What was the track? AH, yesh. I wish I’d known sooner. I wish she’d taken any of a hundred opportunities to tell me she was taking the introversion road of self-examination-before-attempting-external-relationships. I wish… I wish Sara had known all this, and not recommended to me explicitly that I pursue Laura. Sara, your matchmaking skills are wanting. In the future, try not to set up people who have no interest in a relationship with people you know are very serious about having a meaningful relationship. Yeah.

And that’s what I have to say about that. I’m going to bed.

So, a couple of months ago I filled out the online form requesting information about how I could license the technology and start my own factory manufacturing cars for MDI, here in Arizona. Based on the information available online, I estimated that the startup costs of such an undertaking would likely be in the $8 million to $12 million range… which, although it is not money I currently have in my coffers, is not a particularly large sum of money. (See: George W. Bush wants to spend over $150 billion in the next two years on another country, in addition to whatever it costs to run this one.) For that up-front capital, a factory, showroom, and offices (for management) would be built, and the factory operated for at least two years. The factory would be able to produce “2000 cars per annum on an 8 hour shift, with the possibility of doubling or tripling shifts,” or up to about six thousand vehicles a year. Each vehicle is expected to cost around $8k-$10k, and there will be no competition within the licensed ‘zone’ (which, in America, appears to be a single State, thus: I would be the only supplier of MDI vehicles in Arizona), so it is very likely to be a ‘sell out’ situation, where every vehicle we could manufacture would be pre-ordered. Because of the way they have set everything up, the initial investment would be earned back in only a couple of years, and you can figure out returns from there.

Oh, and did I mention that MDI’s cars run on air? That is, their ‘fuel’ is compressed air? Yeah. The car runs on super-compressed air, which when combined with ambient air creates power and drives the vehicle. After spending the last seven years on research, MDI is rolling out their technology to the world in a very real way. You’ll want to check out the MDI website for all the details, but on a single tank of compressed air, the car can go about 200km – 300km with a top speed of 110km/h, and while it can be re-filled with super-compressed air in under 3 minutes, it can fill its own tank via its built-in compressor (when plugged into a standard electrical outlet) in about four hours. It is primarily intended for urban driving, at which it excells. Did I mention that the air coming into the car, and into any compressor are filtered, meaning that the ‘exhaust’ from the car is cleaner than the surrounding air? (Yes, I know that that just moves the pollution from the air into filters, which must be cleaned or replaced, but at least you’re not breathing it… and imagine going to get emmissions testing done!)

So, yeah. Whether I build them or not, I want to see these cars on the road. Heck, I’ll buy one, if I can get on the list. But as I said, I applied for information on licensing, and after a couple of months, they got back to me (they’ve been focused on European licensing first – I understand) asking me to fill out and sign some paperwork … basically a NDA. No problem. I faxed it to them in Barcelona, and then mailed the originals… two or three weeks ago. Now, I know my mail typically takes up to three weeks to arrive in Madrid, so it’s no wonder if they haven’t received it yet in Barcelona, but that’s another piece of mail I’m waiting for … either physical mail or email … with more information about licensing the MDI vehicles for production in the US.

Of course, once I get this information, I won’t be able to share any of it with you. Everything I’ve said here has been public on their website. Anything I get from them from now on, I’m not allowed to talk about or share at all. So… I won’t keep you updated on this, except maybe to say “The MDI information showed up!” … someday.

And regardless, I look forward to seeing MDI vehicles on the roads. I hope you do, too.