WWdN: In Exile

my awesome brother

A couple of years ago, my brother and his wife moved to a ranch in Montana, and while I miss them both every single day, my personal loss is blunted by how happy they are up there. Jeremy and I keep in touch with e-mail and phone calls and stuff, which I thought would make me miss him less, but actually makes me miss him more.

Anyway, this is probably the funniest exchange I’ve ever had with my brother:

Him: I just bought 10 baby chicks today, we’re going to be building a hen house and everything!

Me: That's awesome. I'm totally buying you overalls.

Him: I already have them, and they’re insulated so I can stay warm during winter, all 16 days worth.[1]

Me: Check one:
            [_] I have a cap and pitchfork.
            [_] I am totally fakin'

Him: [X] I live in Montana

Me: [::Spits genmaicha tea all over the desk::]

 

[1] Our mother, in an effort to convince the whole family to move up there, once made the outrageous claim that winter only lasts in Montana for three weeks. We joke about this almost every time we talk.

from the vault: my awesome dog

When you break the world down into dog people and cat people, I guess I'm mostly a dog person, even though I've loved every cat I've ever owned.

Sometimes, though, my dog tests me, like in this entry from the vault...

When I was at CES [a few weeks ago] for InDigital, I got a phone call from Anne.

"I just had to tell you how totally awesome your dog is." She said, in a tone that indicated "my dog" (what Ferris is called whenever she does something particularly irritating) was anything but awesome.

"Oh?" I said, "please tell me what my awesome dog did."

"Well, I took some bacon out of the fridge for the kids, and put it on the counter. Then the timer on the dryer went off, so I walked into the laundry room --"

" -- you mean the garage?"

Ha. I am so funny.

" . . . yes. The garage."

Oops. Pressed my luck a little bit, there. Shutting up, now.

"Anyway, when I got back into the kitchen, the bacon was gone, but your dog was licking her chops, awfully close to an empty bacon package on the floor."

". . . bitch!" I said.

"Uh. Yeah. So you don't worry, I already called the vet, and it's nothing to worry about. " She went on to tell me about her conversation with the vet and why we shouldn't worry. We expressed our undying love for each other, and I hung up the phone.

"Hey Hahn," I said, "want to hear how awesome my dog is?"

Fast forward to yesterday morning. In my kitchen, on the counter, is a jalapeño pepper in a plastic bag from the grocery store. I love jalapeños, and I frequently slice and dice them into all sorts of things. Like ice cream.

Anne woke me up at 7, holding the jalapeño in front of my face.

"Want to know how awesome your dog is?" She said.

"This couldn't wait until I woke up?" I said.

Grrr. Wil grumpy. Wil stay up too late playing poker. Wil sleep now.

"Your awesome dog grabbed this off the counter, and chewed the hell out of it."

"She didn't eat it, though, I see," I said.

"No, and I don't think she'll be jumping up on the counter any time soon."

At that moment, Ferris walked into the room, with the very adorable were you talking about me? look on her face.

"You know what she's saying right now?" I said. "'Mom, dad, I don't want to alarm you . . . but there's something really wrong with the bacon.'"

Ferris had a small tumor cut off her hip about six weeks ago. It wasn't a big deal, but it had the potential to turn into a big deal, so we had it removed. The surgery went perfectly, the surgeon's margins were completely clean, and now she's on some medication for a couple of months to make sure that whatever caused the tumor to appear goes off to the Land of Wind and Ghosts, and stays there.

The thing is, the medication she's on makes her extra antsy, extra thirsty, and extra hungry. For the last six weeks, she's been getting into everything, taking things off the counters in ways that I've always thought required at least one opposable thumb, digging holes everywhere, bringing all kinds of random junk into the house from outside, and generally being a huge pain in the ass.

It's not her fault, and we know she isn't trying to be disobedient, but we've had to dog-proof the house the same way we once child-proofed it, and it's worked out pretty well.

Um, until about an hour ago, when I walked into my living room and saw this:

Yes, that would be the trashcan from my bedroom, caught on my dog's collar. This would also be a copy of the crappy cameraphone picture I snapped and sent to my wife with the caption, "Your awesome dog."

wil wheaton vs. text 2 speech

There's quite a dustup at the moment about an editorial the president of the Author's Guild wrote in the New York Times, railing against Amazon's Kindle 2, which has a text to speech feature that he claims creates unauthorized derivative works and should be stopped at all costs.

I'm not the only author who thinks this is ridiculous: John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, and Neil Gaiman all agree. (Um. Not that I'm comparing myself to them; they're just people I know, who I respect and admire, who also have a stake in this.)

Scalzi says: "I pity the person who thinks a bland computer text reading of Zoe’s Tale is an optimal experience, especially when Tavia Gilbert’s spectaular reading of the book exists out there to get. Yes, one is free and the other isn’t, but you do get what you pay for."

Cory says: "Time and again, the Author's Guild has shown itself to be the epitome of a venal special interest group, the kind of grasping, foolish posturers that make the public cynically assume that the profession it represents is a racket, not a trade. This is, after all, the same gang of weirdos who opposed the used book trade going online."

Neil says: "When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it."

But what if we're all wrong? As an author, performer, and consumer of audiobooks, what does this mean for me?

To find out, I picked a short passage from Sunken Treasure and read it. Then, I took the identical passage, and let my computer read it. I recorded the whole thing and put together something I call "Wil Wheaton versus Text 2 Speech" so you can hear for yourself.

It's about 5MB and just about 10 minutes long.

Download Wil_wheaton_vs_text_2_speech

Edited to add: My friend Jamais wrote an extremely insightful and thoughtful commentary on the whole text 2 speech issue. He's really smart and you should read it, regardless of where you currently fall in the debate.

Here's John Scalzi's rebuttal, which everyone should also read, and Neil Gaiman's final word which is also a must-read. Not that it matters, but I totally agree with both of them.

Also, this post has attracted a lot of traffic, and people are asking me about my own audiobooks. I'll point you to my virtual bookshelf, where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about all my books, including the audio versions.

I love the Onion so much, I want to marry it.

My friend Aaron just sent me this. I believe this represents the shortest amount of time between me getting something hilarious via e-mail and posting it to my blog:

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

end user blog: the slacker media player (or, the good kind of nostalgia in the palm of your hand)

This month's column for the End User Blog is now online for your enjoyment:

Kids, I want you to take off your jetpacks, and step out of your flying cars for a minute. Come sit down over here, and let Old Man Wheaton tell you a tale of a time when television didn’t have a pause button, renting videos meant actually going to a store - during hours that they set - and listening to the radio meant hearing the same 27 songs every two and-a-half hours, with ten to eighteen minutes of commercials every 60 minutes.

Now, I realize that some of you think I’m just making this up to scare you, but it’s true. We didn’t have any control over how we got our entertainment back then. We couldn’t skip songs we didn’t like, and we couldn’t tell the radio how frequently it should play certain songs. It was a different time, when nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them and the King of England would just show up at your house and expect you to make him a cup of tea.

Those of you who have grown up in a world where you have unprecedented control over your media (DRM, which is beyond the scope of this story, notwithstanding) may have a hard time believing that we who came before you would actually wait for a song we hated to go away, or sit through loud and obnoxious commercials and DJs because we knew a song we loved was coming up. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true; that’s just how the world worked back then, and we accepted it without question.

Then it gets weird. Well, not really, but I can't think of a better segue. Anyway, give it a read if you want to know what I think about the Slacker portable media player.

Warning: it's way longer than I thought it would be, probably because I spent so long fighting my brain to actually let me write it, and once I beat my brain into submission, I couldn't turn it off.

my first episode of family guy airs on march 29

I guess the air date for the Star Trek episode of Family Guy was announced today, so the long wait for everyone who has been excited to see this (that includes me) is nearly at an end.

My Google Alerts thing has been sending me e-mails about it all day, including this one from THR.com:

A member of the "Trek" cast let some of this news slip into the blogsphere awhile back, but Fox has now confirmed, announced the cast and set a March 29 airdate.

Nobody is stepping down hard on my foot, so I'm not entirely sure, but I think he's talking about me. If he was, here's the post Captain Lazy McCantgoogle was referring to:

Seth MacFarlane directed my session, and when I met him, I said, "Okay, I'm not even going to try to pretend to keep it cool. I am a huge fan, and this is more exciting for me than I can quantify."

Yeah, I said quantify. I say stupid shit like that when I'm giddy and excited.

"Well, if you're going to do that," he said, "then I'll have to tell you that Next Generation is my favorite of all the Star Treks, and I've seen every episode about a thousand times. The First Duty is just great, man."

I did my best not to faint.

We had a meeting of the mutual admiration society for a few minutes, and then I went into the booth to record my lines.

[...]

When I was finished recording, I asked him if I could talk a little bit about my episode on my blog, without giving away too many details, and he said that would be fine, so . . .

I play myself, in a story that you could call a tribute to Next Generation. Pretty much everyone from the cast is on board for the episode, and holy shit is it funny.

Anyway, the good news, everyone, is that the show airs on March 29 on FOX, and if it's anything like the script I read, it's going to be an instant classic.

As I said after I worked on the show: I can't divulge any specific story details, or give away any jokes, but there's a gag with me that, if it makes it to the final cut of the episode, could quite possibly be the funniest thing I've ever done on television.

in which i send a naughty d20 to the "fuck off" bag

The second episode of the Penny Arcade D&D podcast is online, so if you've been shivering with antici...pation since we rolled for initiative last week, grab yer boots and get ready to dance:

Part 2 continues with a roll for initiative!

Acquisitions Inc. gets the drop on the sheltering guards (with faces painted like skulls), opening up with a brutal tide of iron.

But the armed guards are not without their backup, and soon enough the fight is joined in full. Overwhelming strike, (Jim's) magic missile, scorching burst, and even the legendary d12 are all employed in the battle… to various degrees of effectiveness. How well does the newest member of Acquisitions Inc. perform? Well, everyone has trouble their first time.

But in the end, they learn how fast minions fall… and why you bring Jim Darkmagic to the party!

If you're subscribed to the podcast in iTunes, you won't miss a single episode, but if you don't go to the homepage at WotC, you'll miss the awesome artwork that Mike and Scott have made to go with each episode, and nobody wants that.

just paint what you see

Five (Three sir!) Three quick Sunken Treasure items:

1. I was interviewed for the Lulu blog about the book. Fun fact: It was while I was writing the answers for this interview that I sent Twitter the fateful question about $5 DRM-free PDFs. I finished my answers and sent them back right before I put the PDF version on sale, so the incredible success and overwhelming response to the PDF isn't reflected my answers.

2. Speaking of the PDF: Sometime overnight, the total PDF sales exceeded the total print sales. I've still earned more via print sales, though PDF is rapidly catching up. Here's something cool about the gap between them: whenever it looks like PDF is going to overtake it, a bunch of people (presumably because they read the PDF) buy the print copy, and it leaps ahead. I wish I could do an animated visualization of the sales, like a little horse race, because it sure would look awesome.

I never would have done this if Cory Doctorow hadn't put the idea into my head (and so many other heads) years ago. I see some chatter around the 'tubes giving me credit for blazing a trail, and I'm really not; I'm just walking the path Cory told us was there all along, if we were just willing to take it.

Still, I really hope my story about this little book and how I've released it inspires other indie authors (and big, successful, mainstream authors, too) to do something similar. I don't know what it would be like for other creators, but it's been an unqualified success for me, and I want all of you who have been involved in this to know how grateful I am. Because you've chosen to support my work in the past and especially with this release, I'm going to do a bunch of original stuff this year that's above and beyond what I already do on my blog. A big part of Operation Crazy Idea was to find out if I could make Kevin Kelly's model work, and for the first time since I got the crazy idea, it feels like it's a real, tangible, I-can-almost-see-it-just-over-the-horizon possibility. I am incredibly optimistic about the potential for the other projects I'm working on right now, and if they work out the same way Sunken Treasure has, 2009 is going to be The Year When It All Happened. \m/

3. Finally, Val Trullinger, who created gorgeous flyers and banners for The Happiest Days of Our Lives, created some gorgeous flyers and banners for Sunken Treasure. Feel free to grab them and use them however you'd like, if you're into that sort of thing. Small request: please don't hotlink them; bandwidth is expensive.

Small banner:

Big banner:

Both banners and a PDF flyer:
Download Sunken_Treasure_Promos (1MB Zip file with both banners and PDF flyer)

drop down, reverse direction, increase speed

I told my wife, "You know, I haven't gotten past the first screen of Space Invaders in at least 20 years. I think I need to practice more." I thought for a second. "Train for it, I guess, is what I'm saying."

She looked at me. "Train for what?"

"Oh, um." I said, "you know, just to get better."

"Because?"

"Because I haven't gotten past the first screen in 20 years."

I have this Space Invaders T-shirt that I wear from time to time.

I don't wear it as often as I'd like, because it's filled with errors, like the score is all wrong for the number of invaders that have been shot, the shots in progress are all wrong, and ... well, look, it's just nerd shit, I guess. It's still a cool shirt, and normal people can't see anything obviously wrong with it.

I had it on yesterday, when Anne and I went to the grocery store to pick stuff up for dinner, and the girl at the register commented on how much she loved to play the game when she was a kid.

Anne, Nolan, and Ryan have all told me that I should just keep my geek to myself in certain situations, but sometimes (read: all the time) I can't help myself. This was one of those times.

"Oh, yeah, I love this game," I said. "And I saw this T-shirt at Threadless.com earlier today that - " this is when she totally glazed over and got really interested in scanning our items.

"She's tuned you out! Shut up!" My brain screamed at me. Anne, polite to a fault, gently squeezed my arm.

I ignored them both. "It was so cool. It was one of these little guys," I pointed to one of the invaders on my shirt, "standing in front of several rows of these other little guys," I pointed to other invaders on my shirt as Anne tightened her grip, "and it was like he was a general, showing them the battle plan, which was a little dotted line going in this kind of 'move to the side and then drop down' direction!"

She and Anne shared a look. I couldn't tell who was more sympathetic to the other, but the message passed was clear: I am so sorry.

She totaled up our order, Anne paid her, and we walked out of the store. As the door closed behind us, I think I heard a loudspeaker say, "Clean up on register 5 ... someone got Geek all over the place."

For the record, here's the shirt I was describing, which you can purchase from Threadless:

I know, right? Awesome.

the LA daily: why i love the los angeles kings

Sunday morning, Nolan and I watched the Penguins play the Capitals in the NHL's game of the week on NBC. It was considerably more exciting than the previous week's contest between alleged rivals the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers, where someone forgot to tell the Rangers to show up and care about the game.

Watching the game together was the highlight of my weekend, and it inspired this week's LA Daily, He shoots, he scores: why I love the Los Angeles Kings:

I introduced my son Nolan to hockey during the playoffs two seasons ago, when he was 15. The Versus network had just picked up NHL games in HD, and we watched almost every game together (SECOND PRO TIP: If you're going to introduce anyone to a new sport, do it during that sport's playoffs. If it's the NHL, you get the bonus of showing them nearly all of the teams.) Last month, thanks to a post-holiday ticket sale, I took him to three games, where we watched the Kings play some of the most listless, uninspired, terrible hockey I've seen in over 20 years, but it didn't matter, because we went together. Saturday night, Nolan decided to list the various ways I've influenced his life, and one of the things at the top of the list was introducing him to hockey, which he loves. I choked back tears when he said that, because watching games together not only keeps the bond to my youth alive, but it strengthens the bond between us.

This column isn't really about hockey, but since I'm talking about it already, here's something I've been thinking about for much of this season and all of last season: The NHL has made a big deal about cutting down on fighting, and it seems like the league is working very hard to eliminate it from the game. I think this is incredibly stupid, and makes as much sense as taking the infield fly rule out of baseball; it doesn't happen that often, and casual fans may not understand what's going on, but it's a fundamental part of the game.

Whenever I suffer through yet another a Kings game where they're just getting their asses handed to them while they continue to dump and chase, over pass, and take stupid offensive zone penalties, I long for Marty McSorley, Ken Baumgartner, or Tiger Williams to come off the bench, play some old time hockey, and get the team (and fans) fired up. If the NHL wants get serious about protecting players, they should start seriously cracking down on cheap hits from behind, and stick fouls.

This was on my mind through most of Sunday's game, because the Capitals just kept taking cheap shots at Crosby, and none of this teammates or the officials did anything about it. I know Crosby has a reputation for being a whiner (though he's repeatedly compared to Gretzky, he reminds me more of Lindros) and it's pretty clear the kid doesn't have a lot of friends in the dressing room, but he's the frakking team captain, and nobody stepped up to protect him? If the NHL isn't going to call cheap shots and cross checks, and the team isn't going to send a goon out there to put on the foil, can anyone blame the Capitals for chipping away at him the whole game? I'm not taking anything away from the Caps; they played a better all around game (and Ovechkin is an unreal beast out there, who is only going to get better) but when a player like Crosby isn't allowed to shoot, it hurts his team and it rips off the fans.

Okay, so now that this has turned into a post all about hockey, a couple random thoughts about the Kings:

They've got a slim shot at the playoffs, yes, but the worst thing this team could do is make a shortsighted trade that's supposed to get them there, because we all know this team, this year, isn't going past the first round (and may even get swept.) But if the Kings' management stays patient, and they don't get fucked by free agency (the absolute scourage of sports fans everywhere) all the years of suffering are about to pay off.

I wish this team would just shoot the damn puck more, and stop it with the dump-and-chase. There are some teams who can get away with the dump-and-chase, and this team isn't one of them.

I wish they'd finish their checks in the corners, and not give up the blue line so easily.

I also wish they'd gather up all the new alternate jerseys and set them all on fire, and not just because the Kings can't seem to win while they're wearing them. Memo to sports franchises in Los Angeles: Be glad that you're not the goddamn Raiders; wear your colorful uniforms with pride.

As long as I'm complaining about uniforms: I really wish the home teams would stop wearing their away jerseys.

As long as I'm complaining about things changing: I really wish they'd change the conference and division names back.

Did I mention how much I hate the dump-and-chase?

Also: get off my lawn.

Finally: Go Kings!