4 month ago
philgyford : Warren Ellis » Want/Get/Do - Nice and simple advice about getting a basic thread for a story from a rough idea.
deusx : Warren Ellis » Want/Get/Do - "Identify a character in your idea. 1) What does that character WANT? 2) What does that character need to do to GET what they want? 3) What are they prepared to DO to get what they want?"
# copy9 month ago
Jeremy Zawodny : Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient - Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient: well, duh
deusx : Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient - "The word processor is a stupid and grossly inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others. Preparing printable text using a word processor effectively forces you to conflate two tasks that are conceptually distinct and that, to en
# copy10 month ago
Andy Baio : Christian Swinehart's epic Choose Your Own Adventure visualizations - everything here is amazing, from the animations to the playable visualization of Meretzky's Zork: The Cavern of Doom
deusx : cyoa - "many choices At its atomic level, a cyoa book is a collection of numbered pages of a few different types. Most pages tell a portion of the story, then finish by telling you to jump to another page. A smaller number of pages tell a conclusion to the
# copy13 month ago
Greg Storey : You should be reading Anil Dash. - Agreed. He's one sharp tack.
deusx : BrianOberkirch.com – Anil Dash Wears the Yellow Jersey - "You should be reading Anil Dash. First, the man still blogs. He has for ten years, and some of his best stuff is happening right now, when you and I have kind of punted on the actual work of reading, synthesizing and writing something durable. Tw
# copy15 month ago
Jeremy Zawodny : Read-optimize your source code - Read-optimize your source code: I agree 5000%
deusx : Read-optimize Your Source Code - Brendel Consulting - "In fact, I claim that if you don't take those rules to heart in your own source code then you are either unprofessional, lazy, not a team-player, or all of the above. If you as a software developer take pride in your professionalism and quality
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16 month ago
nelson : Star Wars first draft - May the force of others be with you all
Andy Baio : Highlights from the truly horrible Star Wars first draft script - constraints led Lucas to make one great film; without them, he turned out films like this draft [via]
# copy20 month ago
cobra libre : Barack Obama's Prose Style - Fish on the inaugural speech. #
deusx : Barack Obama’s Prose Style - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com - "Barack Obama’s inaugural address is proving to be more powerful in the reading than it was in the hearing. "
# copy20 month ago
deusx : welcome to the ficlets memorial « the ficlets memorial - "ficlets is no more. AOL decided to kill the product, but thankfully, since all the content on the site was licensed under Creative Commons, I decided that there's no reason to let the content die. So, consider this the ficlets memorial. I will
Simon Willison : ficlets memorial - ficlets memorial. Here’s a great argument for Creative Commons—AOL shut down Ficlets without providing an archive or export tool, but the license meant Ficlets co-creator Kevin Lawver could scrape and preserve all of the content anyway.
# copy20 month ago
Linkorama : Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction - We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and commu
deusx : Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction - "I think I've managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I've been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that's rare. Most of the time, I'm on top of my workload and my m
wearehugh : Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction
jcgregorio : Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction - "As a co-parenting new father..." Great article, just sad that we have to have a new word to inject into the language to describe what should really be the default.
# copy20 month ago
joshua : Television Tropes & Idioms - wjw
Rod Begbie : Television Tropes & Idioms - "This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction." Tell your Checkov's Gun from your Deus Ex Machina. [via] #
philgyford : Television Tropes & Idioms - Home Page - Big wiki cataloging "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations". Big, big time sink.
deusx : Home Page - Television Tropes & Idioms - "This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. We dip into the cauldron of story, whistle up a hearty spoonful and splosh it in front of you to devour to your heart's content. "
# copy21 month ago
deusx : Schneier on Security: The Future of Ephemeral Conversation - "In the end, this is cultural. The Internet is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. We're now witnessing one aspect of that generation gap: the younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as writt
philgyford : Schneier on Security: The Future of Ephemeral Conversation - "The younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as written correspondence. ... until we have a Presidential election where both candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were t
# copy26 month ago
jonhicks : Telescopic Text - simple but hypnotic!
Cameron Moll : Telescopic Text - I made tea.
Andy Baio : Telescopic Text - like Blueful, another playful experiment with storytelling on the web [via]
deusx : Telescopic Text © Joe Davis 2008 - "I made tea."
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27 month ago
gleuschk : Exits: Stewart Butterfield's bizarre resignation letter to Yahoo - I have such a crush on Stewart
Andy Baio : Stewart Butterfield's resignation letter - best resignation ever
Rod Begbie : Stewart Butterfield's bizarre resignation letter - That's the way to do it. "Nary a sheet of tin has rolled of our own production lines in over 30 years!" [via] #
# copy
27 month ago
deusx : What is it like to write a technical book? at Xaprb - "I would say that avoiding the temptation to write, and outlining in fanatical detail, is a very high-value activity for writing a book that’s hierarchically organized like this. "
Jeremy Zawodny : What is it like to write a technical book? - What is it like to write a technical book?: 'You can cut your work down by about 75% if you keep working on more and more detailed outlines, long past the point you think you ought to start “writing.”' True. Lots of good stuff in that
Simon Willison : What is it like to write a technical book? - What is it like to write a technical book?. Plenty of food for thought from the lead author of the new edition of High Performance MySQL. It’s amazing how Word is still an integral part of most technical book projects despite its obvious inadequacies
philgyford : What is it like to write a technical book? at Xaprb - Great write-up of what it was really like to write a big complicated book, managed by rather disorganised people. (via Simon Willison)
# copy
27 month ago
deusx : Rands In Repose: Sweet Decay - "Scars are stories. What I want out of my notebook is that it looks better after three months of beatings. A great notebook decays gracefully"
43folders : Rands In Repose: Sweet Decay - via http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/june#tue-03-sweet_decay
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27 month ago
deusx : He-Man.org - Masters of the Universe Series Bible - "The bible was given to the freelance and staff writers for the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series at Filmation Animation Studios in 1983. It is the most fascinating, eye-opening literature you can read about He-Man."
mmb : He-Man.org - Masters of the Universe Series Bible - He-Man.org - Masters of the Universe Series Bible via deusx’s favorites on del.icio.us [via]
# copy
28 month ago
jonhicks : Bean: An OS X Word Processor
joshua : Bean: An OS X Word Processor
# copy
29 month ago
gleuschk : pictures for sad children: DFW stranded on a desert island - i ain't got time to read that
cobra libre : David Foster Wallace stranded on a desert island [via] #
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29 month ago
joshua : PottyMouth - convert untrusted text to xhtml
deusx : PottyMouth - "PottyMouth transforms completely unstructured and untrusted text to valid, nice-looking, completely safe XHTML."
# copy
29 month ago
Jeremy Zawodny : Anatomy of a ‘Blogging will kill you’ story: Why I didn’t make the cut - Anatomy of a ‘Blogging will kill you’ story: Why I didn’t make the cut: "If you’re stressed out over 5,000 RSS feeds chances are good you’d be stressed by any profession you chose."
deusx : Anatomy of a ‘Blogging will kill you’ story: Why I didn’t make the cut | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com - "If you’re stressed out over 5,000 RSS feeds chances are good you’d be stressed by any profession you chose."
# copy30 month ago
Greg Storey : He wrote it himself. Think of that. He wrote it. Himself. - And he used big words too!
deusx : Daily Kos: State of the Nation - "It is possible that we will have a President who not only will speak in full, complete sentences, but who will do so in a manner that is eloquent, and who will also be articulate and eloquent in delivering words he is intelligent enough to know, und
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31 month ago
joshua : The Bottom is Not Enough - on peer production
Linkorama : Bottom up demands time - The bottom-up hive mind will always take us much further than even seems possible. It keeps surprising us in this regard. Given enough time, dumb things can be smarter than we think. At that same time, the bottom-up hive mind will never take us to our end
deusx : Kevin Kelly -- The Technium - "I think the top-down function of editors -- to select, prune, guide, solicit, shape, and guide the results from the crowd -- is essential to excellence."
# copy
32 month ago
philgyford : The Believer - Interview with David Simon - Creator-Writer-Producer of 'The Wire' interviewed by Nick Hornby. (via Kottke)
adamrg : Nick Hornby's Interview with David Simon
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34 month ago
Andy Baio : Announcement: I'm leaving Upcoming to work on Waxy.org full-time! - a friend said I should cross-post this to Waxy Links since they didn't see the main blog post
Jeremy Zawodny : Outgoing - Outgoing: Andy is leaving Yahoo... best of luck!
nelson : Waxy is leaving Yahoo - Good luck, Andy!
deusx : Waxy.org: Daily Log: Outgoing - "Next year, I'm focusing exclusively on Waxy.org and related coding projects. What does that mean? Yes, more links, but also the same flavor of original research and investigative journalism I've done in the past, though on a daily basis instead of t
Greg Storey : Waxy is the new Kottke. - I think you have to travel to Vietnam now, or something.
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36 month ago
Ethan Marcotte : $5 Chocolate Bar - “Give me a brass gorilla and I feel all right.” ∞
deusx : $5 Chocolate Bar (Ftrain.com) - "Weeping is like a five-dollar chocolate bar. Someone else could enjoy it but I feel guilty opening the wrapper. I have a girlfriend and Halo."
# copy
