Blackmoor Vituperative

Assuming the worst of other people is one of the most direct routes to being miserable and alone that I know of. Assuming the worst of people is a choice. I prefer to assume the best and doubt the worst, and I make an effort to do that (with varying degrees of success).

Why do we so naturally assume the worst about others and doubt the best? Why are so many of us so eager to find fault in others? Why do we so often want to tell the grimmest story possible about what others do or have done in our lives?

Is it because it makes us feel better about ourselves? Is it because it somehow makes us better than others? Is it because it makes us feel justified in our own faults, weaknesses, and moments of stupidity? Could it even be that it’s fun or entertaining to do so?

All I know is that I enjoy life so much more when I assume the best and doubt the worst of others. My friendships grow stronger and my life is more fulfilling. I feel stronger as a person, and I feel less like I am in competition with others.

In truth, when I constantly doubt the best and assume the worst about others, I ultimately hurt myself more than anyone. I burden myself with a spirit of pessimism and negativity. I weigh myself down with pride and egotism. I also end up having to justify my harsh judgments of others by finding more of their faults anywhere I can. After all, one bad deed is never enough to enforce resentment or disdain for very long.

— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing

In episode two of this charming series, Fry visits the South. He has such an obvious affection for what makes us distinctive, including our friendliness and our love of our history (celebrating the good and transcending the bad).

I can’t help but wish that more Americans had as few prejudices about the South as Stephen Fry does.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

This is a note to my nieces and nephews who are, or will soon be, going to high school. I hope it’s helpful.

The second-best thing about high school is that it’s exciting, because everything that happens is the Most Important Thing Ever. Every minor error is the worst mistake in the history of the world. Every small success is the most epic victory ever. Every thoughtless word is the cruelest and most unforgivable crime since time began. You get the idea. Compared to high school, being an adult is pretty dull, if you’re doing it right.

The best thing about high school is that it ends. Eventually you will get a real job, and someone who actually cares about you, and you’ll figure out what love actually means. You’ll realize how completely out of whack your priorities were just a few years ago. And then, a few years later, you’ll realize it again. Hopefully, by the time you are in your late 20s, you’ll actually have some clue about what’s important and what’s not, and you’ll look back at yourself at 16-20 and you’ll chuckle at yourself because you were such a complete idiot.

The worst thing about high school is that some people don’t get the memo when it’s over. You’ll meet people who keep treating every day like it’s an episode of Gossip Girl, well into their thirties or even forties. At first, that might seem entertaining: they are the life of the party, and nothing that happens to them is ever trivial. Every moment of every day is filled with Drama with a capital D. Unfortunately, no one maintains that level of teen-age narcissism without severe deficits in their character. They might be unable to hold a job. They might be unable to maintain a healthy relationship. They might have substance abuse problems. Whatever it is, they won’t take responsibility for any of it: pathological narcissism like this comes with a persecution complex. Everything bad that happens to them, in addition to being the worst thing to ever happen to anyone, is someone else’s fault. Conspiracies abound. Other people nurse hidden grudges. Betrayal is around every corner. If you don’t agree to be part of their narrative, to play a supporting character in their High School Melodrama, you’re part of the conspiracy against them.

Spot these people early, and avoid them. Their entertainment value is not worth their cost to your sanity. And please, please, don’t turn into someone like this. But how do you avoid it?

When something terrible happens to you — your mother gets cancer, a traffic accident makes you late, your girlfriend or boyfriend’s car gets vandalized — stop and think for a moment about how it affects people other than you. Remove yourself from the equation, and see what the picture would look like if you weren’t at the center of it. Alternately, imagine what it might be like if this had happened to someone you don’t even know. If you’d heard about this on the news, would you still consider it a tragedy? If not, then maybe it’s not such a tragedy for you, either. If so, for whom is it tragic? Try to put things in perspective. It’s not always about you.

If this is all obvious to you, then that’s great: I sincerely hope it is. I hope that you are a more mature teenager than I was. But just in case it’s not obvious, I hope this has been helpful.

I received a Harmony Ultimate from Logitech because I own several Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote remotes and have recommended them highly. I was looking forward to the Harmony Ultimate, since I had given an unfavorable review to the Harmony Touch, and I was hoping that the Harmony Ultimate would correct the design deficiencies of the Harmony Touch. It does correct some problems, but it also introduces new ones. Here are some good things and bad things:

Good things:

1. The removal of the number buttons to make the Harmony Ultimate a more convenient size was a good move. The on-screen numbers are easy to find, when they are needed.
2. Overall, the size of the Harmony Ultimate is convenient and comfortable.
3. Most of my settings were successfully imported from one of my Harmony One settings, so that saved me some time during set-up.
4. Having a dedicated button for the DVR and for the four colored buttons is a great addition.
5. The remote comes with a “hub” and a pair of “IR blasters”, which one could place in a cabinet to control concealed electronics. That’s nice, I suppose.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few things that make the Harmony Ultimate a bad fit for my living room experience.

1. The location of the play-stop-forward-reverse buttons to above the screen makes using the Harmony Ultimate more awkward than using the Harmony One, even though the Harmony One is significantly larger. Using the play-stop-forward-reverse buttons on the Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote can be done one-handed. On the Harmony Ultimate it requires awkwardly shifting the position of the hand, or using two hands. This is a significant step backward in usability. However, what’s worse is….
2. Putting the touch-sensitive screen between the play-stop-forward-reverse buttons and the up-down-left-right buttons is a terrible design. I was constantly hitting the screen when trying to use the play-stop-forward-reverse buttons, causing all sorts of mayhem. This rendered the remote useless.
3. The addition of “favorite channels” is a needless complication. Every DVR has favorite channel lists built in.
4. The Harmony Ultimate itself does not control a Roku box. The remote *only* sends commands to the Roku box through the “IR blaster” widgets. For me, this would require putting the Harmony Ultimate “hub” in my already crowded entertainment cabinet and re-arranging it so that the Roku box can face one of the “IR blasters”. Why not just have the remote itself send the commands? That’s what the Harmony One does,and it works perfectly. Even the Harmony Touch was able to get this right. This is a bad design.
5. The Harmony Ultimate does not have physical buttons for “skip forward” and “skip backward”. To activate those frequently-used commands, you have to hold down the “fast forward” and “rewind” buttons. This is a bad design.
6. There is no obvious way to access the commands for Devices, in order to send a command directly to one of your components. On the Harmony One, the “Devices” button is always easily accessible at the bottom of the screen. On the Harmony Ultimate, the Devices button is hidden in an on-screen sub-menu.
7. After the activities are set up, they are listed on the screen, much like they are on the Harmony One (a great improvement over the Harmony Touch). However, the on-screen button for the bottom-most activity is located *behind* the on-screen “Menu” button for the remote itself (this menu is where the “Devices” menu is hidden). This makes accessing that fourth activity … difficult.

Conclusion: in a world where the Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote had never been invented, the Harmony Ultimate would be a nice addition to any living room. However, the Harmony One does exist, and has existed for years. That being the case, there is really no excuse for the flaws in the design of the Harmony Touch.

Suggestions for the Harmony Two, or the Harmony Ultimate Plus, or whatever the next version will be called:

1. Put all of the physical buttons, including the play-stop-forward-reverse buttons, below the screen, where the user can reach them with one hand.
2. Have physical buttons for “skip forward” and “skip backward”, located beneath the “fast forward” and “rewind” buttons, as the Harmony One currently does.
3. Do not put any physical buttons above the touch-sensitive screen.
4. Eliminate the “Favorites” screen and replace it with a list of the user’s “Devices”.

I have been watching Sling & Arrows, a Canadian show about the theatre. It’s like Glee, but with better writing and no musical numbers (which also makes it better than Glee). It reminds me a great deal of Smash, although it has no musical numbers (which, again, makes it better than Smash). Here’s the thing: that camaraderie the cast feels on the completion of a successful show… I have felt that. Not often. Not after the conclusion of a successful convention (I was on the staff of a local SF&F convention for most of its history). The last time I felt that esprit de corps was probably back in the late1980s, after a successful performance of Rocky Horror (in which I was a cast member for a few years). I imagine (rather, I assume) that it’s the same feeling that members of a sports team feel at the end of a good game. It’s a good feeling. Even then memory of it is a good feeling.

Here is my MystiCon 2013 schedule, in case you are interested in that sort of thing.

Fri 8:00 PM
Ballroom D
Gaming for Beginners

Fri 9:00 PM
Ballroom E
Game Development

Sat 10:00 AM
Ballroom C
A Conversation with Steve Long (I’m interviewing him)

Sat 1:00 PM
Ballroom D
Blog Much?

Sat 10:00 PM
Boardroom 1
Ouch! You Bit Me! A Zombie Survival Guide

Sun 10:00 AM
Ballroom C
The Artistry of Gaming

Sun 12:00 PM
Ballroom E
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Entry ‐ Business Etiquette

Sun 1:00 PM
Boardroom 1
If They Came in Saucers, Why Are We Smarter?

I have decided to start a new holiday: Epicurus’ Birthday. Henceforth, Epicurus’ Birthday will be celebrated on the third Monday of February in honor of the philosopher Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

(From Epicurus, Wikipedia)

I am imposing a unilateral un-grimmening! No more grim tidings for at least one week. Time for Christmas cheer and good will.

As a start, here are my favorite Christmas specials and movies, in no particular order. Some are great. Some are just terrible. Some make me laugh. Some make me cry. I love them all.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the real one, not the Jim Carrey abomination)
Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
(Mexican) Santa Claus
Gremlins
Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Elf
Bad Santa
Scrooged
Star Wars Holiday Special
Hogfather
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Merry Christmas!

I just had a panic moment when I thought that a Google document I’d spent the better part of a week writing had vanished. This is what I plan to do from now on, once a week, until I forget about it and stop doing it.

1. In Google Docs, go down to the far left bottom menu item, and select “More V” and then “All Items”.
2. Click the select box at the top of the screen next to “TITLE” to select all items.
3. Click the “More V” button at the top middle of the screen, next to the eyeball (“Preview”) icon, and select “Download”.
4. Select “Change all formats to… OpenOffice”, and click the “Download” button.
5. Wait a couple of minutes and then download the file somewhere.

I just spent too much time pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get Google Docs to paste spaces and keep them spaces, rather than turning the spaces into tabs. I couldn’t find a way to prevent it, so here is what I did.

1. Paste my text into a text editor, such as Notepad++.
2. In the text editor, find & replace every instance of a space ” ” with a character that does not already exist in the text, nor in the document you intend to paste that text into. In my case, I used a tilde “~”.
3. Copy this modified text, and paste it into Google Docs.
4. In Google Docs, find & replace every instance of the placeholder character with a space ” “.

Is it ridiculous that you need to do this to keep Google Docs from corrupting what you are pasting? Yes. Yes, it is.