“As the web is becoming ubiquitous, interactive, and multimodal, technology needs to deal increasingly with human factors, including emotions. The present draft specification of Emotion Markup Language 1.0 aims to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness. The language is conceived as a “plug-in” language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data; (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior; and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior.” Read the full post here.

The W3C consortium, one of the governing bodies for WEb standards today, posted this earlier this week. The significance of this proposal is massive. This may in fact, be bigger than any sort of Apple announcement you or I may have heard about. I mean this. And I say this mostly speaking as a student of human computer interaction. There are ethical and technological implications in this proposal that suddenly draw a wider line across the horizon. I also write this post from a fiction writer’s perspective, because implications of an emotional markup language could truly spark any speculative writer’s inspiration. Just think about it….the machines may be able to assess what we are feeling someday. But let’s address this first from the human computer interaction side for the sake of not getting carried away.

Thinking about emotion in a scientific fashion is nothing new. In the worlds of the humanities, emotions are concepts we have been trying to understand and harness. The Greek philosophers did their part, as did Shakespeare, Freud, Jung and many others. What you may not know, dear Gentle Reader, is that computer scientists are also involved in exploring, capturing, and expressing emotion. One of my own professors at DePaul University, Clark Elliott, happens to be one of the these very scientists. He’s focused his work on the exploration of emotion and computer agents that can interact with human users in an emotional context. Yes, we are talking about concepts of artificial intelligence, but not in the way that you think. These are not Hal 2000 or Priss models. Elliott’s agents work based on algorithms that seek to respond to human interaction by interpreting human emotion as a set of goals, which when met or not met, generate one of several emotions on the human user. So, no, these are not programs of true artificial intelligence.

But let’s not get carried away. This post is not about artificial intelligence. No matter what you may be reading  out there in the vast caverns of the Internet, we do not have artificial intelligence systems that are anywhere close to being what we would call truly intelligent. Heck, we can’t even understand how the brain, body and mind truly work yet. It would be silly to think we can actually model systems after something that’s not truly defined.

Here is what’s significant about emotional markup tags. This first foray into capturing emotion has probably been applied in several doctoral dissertations and in privately funded research. I have not doubt about it. However, instituting a standard for capturing emotion across the *Web* suddenly opens up a vast, and I mean really vast, set of possible data. With so many millions of Internet users, can you imagine the possibilities of using these tags to measure emotion as they interact with each other (and with computer systems)?

Maybe you cannot. But you should. It could be a very interesting future. Maybe by then we will understand the human brain better. Maybe by then we will also have more capable systems and applications. But we can definitely say that emotion is one of the facets of the mind that makes us distinguishably human. We often think of emotion as abstract, and tangible, yet this simple step in Web markup could actually bring us closer to a future where the intangible becomes real. For now we’ll let writers speculate in science fiction, and let the scientists do some work. But this announcement is a big one. We’ll look back on it one day.

But you, yes you, the other Gentle Reader, the one in the corner taking notes quietly on your iPad, you are probably here for some tidbits about the publishing industry, right? It was not so long ago that this blog used to pride itself on chronicling a writer’s foray into the publishing world. Well, that world has changed recently, and I think these posts will reflect those changes. Because after all, it turns out I do have a thing or two to say about publishing. Not only have I spent my professional life working for publishers ranging from Tribune Company to Encyclopedia Britannica, And then this year came the publication of “The 12 Burning Wheels.” Along the process of working with M Brane SF on its publication, I have learned that the landscape of traditional book publishing has given way to new freedoms for writers, and new pitfalls. Let’s summarize some of our latest findings, shall we?

Firstly,you should know Kindle 3 is out now. It’s not only cheaper than an iPad, it continues to specialize itself as one of the best e-readers. If you are a true reader, you would probably choose this over an iPad. It’s quiet, keeps your attention on the text, and it is now more portable and affordable than before. Here’s some reviews.

And as if that weren’t enough, the competition is heating up. E-Readers are literally about to fall from the sky.

But it’s this week’s second news item that is really groundbreaking. Apple has finally enabled its iWork suite to let content creators self publish even better and faster. As Mike Cane predicted some time ago, Pages can now finally export to ePub, though many of its tags and conversions still leave a lot to be desired. No way! Yes, it’s true, I told myself. Why is this move on Apple’s part important? Well, they now enable you to create your own published work, whethere essay, short story, novel or even a book with multimedia, and now that you have exported to ePub, it’s that much easier for that book to live in the iBooks store or to even live in other e-readers (though don’t get all hot and bothered. Many of the readers still retain their proprietary formats). Pablo Defendini provided a nice summary of some of the details, check it out.

You can even see some interesting screen grabs of output to E-Pub over at ThreePress. Whoa.

I myself didn’t think this moment would come so soon. Now many authors, if they so choose to embark on the trip, can get their work out to market with reasonable costs and with a direct line to their audience (using their own web sites and other Web 2.0 communications tools). Don’t get me wrong here, though. The publishing house, the editor, the copy editor, the graphic designer are still needed, more than ever before, but these new developments allow authors a direct path to market and a way to see bigger profits by bypassing agents and publishers. Is this path the correct one for every author? Probably not. Is every author’s work good enough to go to market? We know that is not so. But we also need to see what the market will dictate. If I can buy a book or e-book directly from a writer, and his or her work is good, what’s the problem, then? I’m glad to give them my money. They made the art, I will gladly pay for it.

As go dive into September we’ll address usability issues in the format war of the e-books (a war which Amazon seems to be winning right now with its cheap Kindle and giant Kindle store). It’s sort of sad that we have to talk about formats when it comes to e-books. After all, readers just care about books.  More details to come.

Have a good weekend, ya’ll.

On the writing front, I am currently working through some deep problem solving in my latest project. This one will be a novel-length work, and though I tend not to have any problems producing a word count, this time around I have raised the bar much higher for myself, to the point where I am really hesitating before moving forward. I am looking for leaner, more lyrical prose, and of course, a plot that lives up to expectations. I have spent about a year taking notes, researching, sketching short pieces, but this work needs to start growing. So, for the sake of accountability, I will be posting word counts again on this here blog as we ramp up into the Fall season. In the Fall, school starts up again, and it looks like I will be taking “HCI 460: Usability Evaulation Methods.”

I will also need to totally restructure my writing schedule. The time has come again. I used to commit to Thursdays and Saturdays to get my word counts in, but I am now looking at some early mornings, as well as an evening or two. Stay tuned. In terms of work tools, I am now pretty happy doing my fiction writing on an iPad using the Apple wireless keyboard. I will post soon on my workflow for my fellow writing nerds soon.

I also have a few short stories in the can that I am sending out to markets for submission. Of course, submitting takes time, as does querying for larger projects, and sheesh, I need an assistant all of a sudden.

Incidentally, I am also left wondering lately how best to post links to articles and postings on the current trends in publishing (which lately are tied very closely to issues of user experience and human factors). Would you like a link digest in this blog? Or do you prefer Twitter? I post all of those links on Twitter, but I realize some of you prefer visiting this here blog.

Here’s a few from today:

How to Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material

Arthur Klebanoff: eBook Veteran, First Mover

Does blogging actually help authors sell books?

Why iPad Magazines Won’t Be Big Business for a While

It’s now summer of 2010, and so much has happened. My first book, “The 12 Burning Wheels,” released this year, not just as a book, but also as an e-book in the Kindle store. Whoa. I am also in graduate school, going further into usability and information architecture for the texts of our 21st century. Suddenly, my blog is touching on areas of technology and cognitive science, and while I am not blogging every day, the content is varied, day by day. I notice I blog less about music lately, and some of my food posts now have leaked onto my Twitter account.

My question today is, are you, Gentle Reader, happy with the posts I am serving up lately?

We have posts about my writing projects.

We have posts on e-books, usability and cognitive science, roughly balled up into one main category of usability.

Is this enough? Is it too little? I’d like to know what you think? This blog serves me, but I also want it to serve you. Post your thoughts below and tell me what you’d like to see posted here.

And big hugs to all of you.

I haven’t had much need to reflect on the connections between previous excursions and my writing milestones, but now, as I type this on a plane hovering over Atlanta, I realize that travel renewed my work in major ways before. A trip to Mexico City in 2005 galvanized my first novel manuscript. A visit to Ireland in 2006 (I had previously lived in Dublin in 1997) gave me the burst of inspiration I needed to write my script for “Drag,” a play I wrote and performed with the Neo-Futurists that same year. And now, as I eagerly await the anxieties and the rewards of Mexico City, I realize this trip may be essential to finding my way among the hall of mirrors that is the writing process. My current novel-length project may benefit more from this trip than just solely sitting at my computer. And this trip to “El De Efe” comes right at the heels of my road trip through the American South, covering states like Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

I couldn’t imagine a world where I couldn’t see the rest of the world. A writer friend of mine has seen plenty of the U.S., but hasn’t left the country in two decades. I simply couldn’t imagine that, provided he could afford international travel, which he can. I need to go further and further away. This fall I will be in Berlin, marking my first trip to Germany. Next up I’d like to put the Middle East or India, maybe even Brazil on my list of destinations. Why? Because when I see the differences of other cultures, their customs, foods, their architecture, my mind is able to draw better and faster comparisons to my previous experiences. It is within that space, within that chamber of comparisons, juxtapositions, contrast and difference, where art begins.

Call me selfish for wanting to see the world, I don’t care. The wanderlust I harbor will only serve my writing, the work. And thus an excursion to Mexico City begins.

However, when I walked out of the theater, I realized that the film, which owes a lot to “Blade Runner,” “Existenz,” “Dark City,” and many others, may mislead its audience about what it means to dream, and what it is that our brain does when memories are formed.

So today, I’d like you to check out this thoughtful review of the film at the Stanford Neuroblog so we can discuss the film a little further. It’s lengthy, so, if you use use Instapaper, put that one on it and read at your leisure on your phone, iPad, etc. Please take a look, then meet me back here when you’re done.

Inception: A Neuroscientist’s Review: Part 1.

Our brain’s access to various processes during the stages of sleep is quite a mystery. What purpose does dreaming, and sleeping serve? It would seem our minds and bodies are able to find rest, process memories and possibly even problem solve. “Inception” glosses over some of these elements, but you should keep in mind, Gentle Reader, that the complexity of our own mind (the way in which we quickly process information and work in tandem with the body) is perhaps the biggest mystery and challenge of the universe. No film can possibly capture the true miracle of what happens when we use our brains, in waking life and dreaming life.

Let me just say that I thought Chris Nolan’s film was quite fun, and that while it mostly serves a purpose as a summer blockbuster, it had some worthwhile ideas. Questioning our own reality never ceases to please does it? From Plato through Keanu in his frock in the Matrix, we wonder whether our consciousness and our reality are nothing more than fictions themselves.

However, it also felt at many times “Inception” was a film made up of plot devices that in my friend Halena Kays’ words, “helped Leonardo DiCaprio move to the next scene.” The film was definitely grounded in Freudian framework, and there’s no shame in that, I suppose. The subconscious was a huge driver of the fictions of the plot, to the point where the deeper realms of subconsciousness became an actual place, “limbo.” I thought limbo was a plot copout, and I imagine that those who don’t hold Freud in the highest esteem might have giggled through some of these scenes. Yes, even totems were part of the film, too. There’s also some very hazy logic about how memories function and how we can access them, but let’s remember it’s a film. It’s meant to be enjoyed. It’s not a dissertation, after all.

And yet the film also held me in a sense of wonder. The realms of dreaming — who doesn’t want to inhabit them, and of course, to be in charge? Lucid dreaming is mentioned in the Stanford blog, and yes, there is still a lot we don’t understand about the phenomenon. I’ll remind you right now to check out “The Great and Secret Show,” a great novel about Quiddity, the ocean that humans cross to reach a shared state of dreaming.

And then, too, “Inception” failed at capturing the nonsensical, surreal and often frustrating part of the dreams — the parts where we fly, where toasters speak and dragons dance in a glass of water. Where was that? Why did no one’s face melt into taffy? And where the fuck was Freddy Krueger?

So often as fiction writers, we are trying to capture some of the magic of the dream world and bring it alive on the page. Those of us who lean farther into the pool of the fantastique to scry its surface do not pull away when we see the monsters, the twisted visages, the nightmare landscapes. And what a great source of inspiration dreams are. If our mind is possibly making sense of our experience and even forming memories while we sleep, it would seem the world of dream is a springboard for the artist. And indeed, it is. I often write or re-tell my dreams in an act that aims to keep the memory of the dream alive. I have often written from the dream itself, too, as is the case in “The 12 Burning Wheels” in the story Machina.

And let’s not forget that dreaming, in a way that seems parallel to that of imagining when we read fiction, borrows some of the rules and procedural memory of the working world, and recombines that information in novel ways. And just as we cannot fully understand through science the act of imagining when we read fiction, we still don’t really understand all there is to know about how I may dream of a city made of fire in the summer of 2009. Do you, Gentle Reader, ever marvel at these mysteries? Perhaps dreaming is one of those things that’s inherent in our human nature, our humanness. But what role does it serve? Is a night without dreaming no longer a night? If sleep is so essential, it would seem dreaming is also indispensable for the human body. And is dreaming an act of consciousness itself? Are we truly able to say, “I am” when we dream? And what is the writer’s responsibility when it comes to dreaming? How much, if at all, should we take from dream and write on the page? You tell me, friends. Of course, our dead friend, Jose Luis Borges, might lead you to think that the labyrinth of dreams, the libraries of the experiences of the mind, would and should transmute and form itself onto the written word. How can I ever deny such an obligation?

Please do note that I am not, nor claim to be, a neuroscientist, but I do dabble in the areas of cognitive science as part of my graduate work in human-computer interaction. I spent most of the past year reading research in this area.

What is your relationship to dreaming?

Leave me a note in the comments below.

Today we kick off with an ode to the master, Marcel Proust, who literally unraveled memories and the act of remembering into a fine art. I recommend reading his works later on in life. When I tried in my twenties, its impact was lesser. After all, I had fewer memories to turn over in my mind. I imagine as I get older, my appreciation of his work will change, too.

This leads me to think about the nature of memories themselves. If knowledge and memory are stored in the neuron activity, how much can we ascertain about memories’ actual state over time? My senses let me experience my birthday party at the age of 5, but over time, as I reactivate that memory, is it possible that the way in which I view that memory (the emotions I felt, the quality of light, the sweet taste of the cake, the words people said to me) might change? Maybe I think the party was the most amazing birthday party I have ever had. But would I really think that at the time? And wouldn’t the reactivation of the memory also force me to re-evaluate the memory to suit me? That’s to say, perhaps we adjust our memories over time to deal with memories in some way. The same could be said of relationships. If I was in a relationship for three years and it ended a decade ago, my later reactivation might begin to consider the three year relationship as romantic, sweet, ignoring the negative aspects of day to day life, or perhaps even the very reasons why the breakup happened. It can work the other way, too. A relationship’s memories could possibly be reactivated years after to only focus on the negative and unhealthy elements. Incidentally, I thought, “Hmm…that picture perfect relationship I was in last year? What the hell was I thinking? Wasn’t so great, after all. Sure, I had some good times, but that was some of the worst sex I’ve ever had. Seriously.” And that, my friends, only comes from the act of reactivating memory, turning it over and over like a coin, until you can see the surface, its edges in a clearer light than the day before.

If this aspect of memories, emotions and activation happened to be true…Could we ever trust any single memory? Wouldn’t any memory, as soon as it leaves immediate experience be suspect, something not to be trusted an relied upon? Of course, this also comes up as an issue in legal proceedings and criminal investigations. The way in which a witness might tell, or retell their story about some crime they witnessed, might change over time, as they reactivate the memory, and also due to outside pressures from investigators, the jury, a judge, and their peers.

And in turn, when I write a fictional narrative, and you, the reader, absorb it in the act of reading, you are forming a new memory that has been made up. There is such a wonder in that. Enough wonder to make men dream of ways in which to game this phenomenon.

What do you, my friends, make of this? Are memories to be trusted? And what’s more, are memories from reading to be trusted? Of course, the written word jogs our memory, but wouldn’t we say that the memory we formed in the original, first reading has changed now that we have gone back to re-read?

This summer, as part of an exercise in palate cleansing and inspiration building, I am traveling the U.S. and other parts of the world. Just recently I went on the Great American Road Trip. I will also be traveling to Mexico soon. There’s a couple more trips ahead, too.

You’re windering what has happened to my word count updates, I know. I usually I schedule travel as a reward for completing a writing project, but this time, the travel will inform the writing. Why. Because i have fallen behind on the manuscript. I have many odds and ends, but nothing substantial yet. I have been cooped up way too long. It’s made me fucking cranky. My apologies, Gentle Readers.

My writing needs this travel, my brain needs a change of scenery. The burnout I experienced in Spring nearly consumed me. But no complaints. The writing wheels are starting to turn, finally. My latest project, Rotnacht, has become something else altogether. And I am okay with that.

Also, I have said this before. I don’t write via committee, in workshops or MFAs. The best thing I can do to write more and write better is to travel, and meet more people.

For those of you just joining me now, please check out my book, “The 12 Burning Wheels.” You can buy it in paperback or for the Kindle. I think you will like it.

And check out the odd thunderstorm video I captured traveling back from California last week. I like to think of it as a metaphor for my dreaming, writing brain.

What’s in a musical recording? The experience of the music? Does it matter if it’s on vinyl or MP3? No, it doesn’t. Not when it really comes down to it. The audiophile gentleman in the back of the room — please sit down.

Same with movies. Do you really care if the movie you see lives on DVD or if it streams into your house or your iPad?

So here we have it. The day in which content lives not just in the cloud, but is part of the stream of information that is the Web, is not too far off. I see it already in how I store my own movie files, books and music using services likes DropBox and Good Reader. I simply want to READ, LISTEN AND WATCH. It’s that simple.

You may call me an early adopter, but this is where we are headed.

And the reason I’m so passionate about telling you this today? Because Mike Cane already wrote about it, and he did a damn good job. Check it out.

Wouldn’t it be cool…?

Features added for the sake of being cool features can make a system or an application indeed cool, but often useless. After all, it’s cool that an e-book can have color, but can we determine if it’s useful?

Digg creator Kevin Rose has just posted a really neat video begging the Bezos and the Jobs of the world to incorporate certain features into ebooks. I first saw this posted at The Digital Reader, which I want to credit here.

You can also view the video below.

Kevin Rose’s features are a great talking point. From the outset, many of them are driven from a developer’s perspective, and I’d like to be able to dissect some here.

Today I’d like to discuss the first feature mentioned in Rose’s video. He suggests providing character bios in the book as you read along. This type of functionality has existed previously in the codex paper-based book, except it was most often found only in large novels in the forms of indexes or in other instances in other tomes, as a separate books. With a writer like Charles Dickens we are literally presented with hundreds of books. How to keep track of them all?

I would say that a “bio” feature could be good, but I would like to warn against too many features that keep attention and focus (and I mean the brain’s attention and focus) from the narrative itself. Can we say we are reducing a readers’ cognitive load with bios in an e-book? Can such a feature be built subtly enough that it’s unobtrusive to the reader? Yes. I would say yes. By providing a bio we can help reinforce the reader’s memory and keep the character’s name active in working and long term memory…but is that keeping the reader from using their brain from understanding the larger narrative? Additionally, wouldn’t the old method — in which a reader flips back through the book to earlier passages — keep the reader focused on the artistic experience of the book? After all, we would rather know what Miss Havisham did, rather than have her pop up in a Pokemon-esque baseball card box, no?

What do you think?

I will dissect some more of Kevin’s suggested features later on.

And let me stress, just because I am critiquing Rose’s ideas, doesn’t mean they are not viable. Often cool ideas are actually the seeds of innovation, and around these territories, innovation is key.

Can we easily describe the act of imagining in scientific terms? Is it useful to do so? Over the next few days I’ll be posting links to some interesting works on brains structures and their implications on the act of reading.

Let’s take Anderson, John R. (1996). “A SimpleTheory of Complex Cognition” as a starting point. Anderson describes memory structures in terms of chunking. According to Anderson, cognition is dependent on the “amount of knowledge encoded and the effective deployment of the encoded knowledge.” According to Anderson, there would indeed be limitations to the amount of knowledge we can store in our brains, but more importantly, it’s how we access and deploy this knowledge that really makes the whole magic of it happen. Anderson mentions “activation,” in which knowledge stored in short term memory can be activated in order to be accessed more effectively. When we read a book, exactly what are we activating? Perhaps we are activating our vocabulary, our lexicon of words, to be sure. Perhaps we are also activating knowledge about the world around us. For example, we know that cats and dogs live on land and fish do not. And when we read a story about cats and dogs, we are activating this knowledge (or one of Anderson’s rules?) to understand the narrative. But is it possible reading a novel activates more? What about memories that aren’t there? If we have never heard of Narnia, we can’t really activate memories of it, can we? Our first trip to Narnia in a book allows us to put the information there, in our brain. And yes, as we read along, the activation of Narnia is reinforced, and in each sentence, we add new information about it, we reactivate the information. It’s possible that by the end the name of that fictional place, Narnia, rolls off our tongues because we have activated it all the way through. There is a certain elegance, and a touch of mystery, to this process.

Here, Gentle Reader, is where I turn to you? How does reading work at a cognitive level in our brain?

The snows of 2010 were not too intense, wouldn’t you say? We midwesterners feel this urge to fill conversations with talk of the weather, and this is no different. We had a mild winter. But over the course of the season, the hours of my day became long, very long. And instead of taking one class at a time at DePaul, I took two. One class, a cognitive science class of the 500 level, became a beacon for me. It’s the best class I’ve taken thus far in my master’s program, and I owe Clark Elliott a thank you. The excellent group of fellow students also deserve praise. It was also the toughest class I have encountered. We used our knowledge of research and knowledge of HCI to spark heated discussions. Many other students in the class were not in HCI, by the way. We had artificial intelligence and computer science masters and Ph. D students in the mix as well.

Alongside cognitive science 587, I also wrapped up a year’s worth of work with my independent research team. Our study, aimed at developing better reading interfaces for children using libraries and electronic books, had germinated as an idea in Spring of 2009, and now, one year later, we were almost done. In the course of a year, we learned how to test with human subjects, how to query the DePaul IRB, how to work as a team, and how to develop our ideas into a single body of work.

My book “The 12 Burning Wheels” also released in February.

Those of you who read this pamphlet on a regular basis know that I fuel my writing regimen through exercise. I amped up my training program, eschewing the long distances spent on the trail and instead progressing slowly through increases in weight on the barbell. Like some sort of middle-class Titan.

Sometime in Winter and Spring, I also fell in love.

This combination of good work and stimulation, my friends, also nearly killed me.

I am not exactly sure when I felt the burnout, but when it hit, it hit hard.

Toward the end of Spring, I was losing sleep, and the hours that I had available in dream held no tranquility. It was brittle sleep, bad sleep. Dreamless. I continued my hectic schedule, but my body was not catching up. My drive and motivation, the two things I have held close to my heart always, always to get me out of a bind, also took a beating. I wasn’t eagerly anticipating the work, the reading assignments, the training sessions under the bar or in the pool. I was losing motivation. Yes, by my omission of word counts, you, Dedicated and Gentle Reader, can also surmise that I lost my motivation to write my latest novel project, “Rotnacht.” I had committed a cardinal sin against myself, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I just felt tired, very unfocused, crank and irritable.

Not. Cute.

In the endurance training world, I was experiencing the classic symptoms of overtraining syndrome. I even went as far as injuring myself this way, earning myself an IT band injury that I had left behind ten years ago. I couldn’t find my way out, and because of school, I had no choice but to just keep pushing.

And about a week ago, I came out on the other end. I ended the school year. I felt proud of my work, but felt exhausted. I iced my bum leg and forgave myself for not writing. I took some serious time off, and even now, I am just easing into things. Trying to enjoy myself more. I had almost vanished.

And now a bitch is back. Tick tick tick tick.

So, as I mentioned before, I will be adding new categories to this blog, as a way to expand some of the work I have amassed in the past year in graduate school. Going beyond a mere interest in the reading machine of the present and future, I want to ask some hard questions in this here blog about what it means to read, and more importantly, what it means to read fiction. There’s a bridge that connects the world of the novel to the distant towers of technology of the 21st century, and I want to see where it is that those two places meet. I’ll be adding some new categories: cognitive science and HCI to the blog in order to round out the coverage. I will be on summer hours, meaning I’ll be posting at least once a week, but I expect to make posts meaningful, useful, and service minded, as usual.

I also expect you, Gentle Reader, to come along this trip with me. When I started this blog I had no idea I might ever incorporate my graduate work into it, but here we are now. If you care about the printed book, about stories and novels, if you care about literature, I hope you may entertain my thoughts and questions about what it means to be a reader and a writer in 2010. Big shit’s going to happen, you’ll see.

Coming up: Some true time off. I’ll be back the week of June 22. This summer I’ll be blogging word counts on the novel I have neglected, and I’ll be expanding this here blog to include new posts on usability, digital reading experiences and elements of cognitive science related to books and reading.

Like Omar Little would say, “Indeed.”

DISHES ARE DONE, MAN!

And I apologize for the gap in posts lately. I’m at the end of my quarter at school, and I’ve got two classes wrapping up.

When I finish all this work I will provide you some more words.

In the meantime, I’m posting a scary video. I am not sure what it is exactly that drew my attention to this video, but I find the whole thing surreal, comical, frightening and ominous, at the same time.

I’ll try to post more videos during this finals time, since they are quick and easy. Heh.

And now back to cognitive science and research methods.

What we can’t deny, though, is the significant change that the iPad heralds in usability. The fact that the device is the size of a book, and sits in the hands in similar ways to a closed book, is of note. And yes, incidentally, you can also read a book on the iPad. You can also do thousands of other tasks and run thousands of apps on it.

My work at DePaul is specific to usability in this area, and I want to point you today to a recent post from Jakob Nielsen, one of the big names in the field of usability. He’s posted the first findings on iPad usability using actual testing. Yeah, he used scientific methods instead of raging opinion. Who knew? Nielsen’s post also makes interesting design recommendations, including adjusting text size that is readable to be actually bigger, in order to be tapped by a finger.

Overall, the iPad doesn’t do too well in the testing. The wide range of apps, and in turn, the various gestures that each app can have, create confusion. Additionally, the print metaphor of turning a page, which on the iPad translates to a “swipe” of the page, is discussed. I am not so sure we need to stick to print metaphors. Are we doing this for nostalgic gen-xers and baby boomers? I would be curious to see what younger users think. In my anecdotal experiences, they don’t seem to care if these devices mimic paper experiences.

Read iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing

I’ll add here one more bit of supplemental reading. Check out Clint Ecker’s critique of the “hot zones” of an iPad. This is a huge problem. With a multitouch suface so large, what can one do? When reading a book, Amazon’s simple physical side buttons have a clearer advantage.

Even more supplemental and thoughtful reading: Author Charles Stross posted a great roundup over the current state of e-books, and he goes into good depth about the major publishers and conglomerates’ involvement in their evolution (or stunted evolution, depending on how you see it).

Also, in other e-book related news about mega tech companies the size of Godzilla, Google books looms bigger in the horizon of the e-book. They have clinched support from most of the major publishers in their future launch of Google Books digital bookstore (story at Japan Today). Now that, friends, is super crazy. The current e-book marketplace is a thing of dissarray. You can buy e-books in various places like Amazon, the iBooks store and from smaller publishers (including my own), but good luck if you’re looking for format compatibility in your device. Yeah, not every book format works on the Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader, and other mobile devices. And that sucks. You know how when you buy a physical book, you can buy a copy of the same book at any store and just read it? Yeah, e-books should be like that, too.

And in case you were wondering, Nielsen also has a Kindle 2 usability review. Check it.

The current state of e-books is one of the reasons I want to help innovate in my research at DePaul and of course, in my own practice. E-Books remain an uneven experience right now. They could be great, and they should be great. They should be an improvement over a paper book, but instead, they lag sorely behind. It’s time to change that up.

Jorge Luis Borges, one of my personal heroes, couldn’t have expressed beauty better than in the poem below. I couldn’t find an English translation. When I do, I’ll post it here, as well. For those of you who can read Spanish, take a look.

Sábados

Afuera hay un ocaso, alhaja oscura
engastada en el tiempo,
y una honda ciudad ciega
de hombres que no te vieron.

La tarde calla o canta.

Alguien descrucifica los anhelos
clavados en el piano.

Siempre, la multitud de tu hermosura.
A despecho de tu desamor
tu hermosura
prodiga su milagro por el tiempo.

Esta en ti la ventura
como la primavera en la hoja nueva.

Ya casi no soy nadie,
soy tan solo ese anhelo
que se pierde en la tarde.

En ti esta la delicia
como esta la crueldad en las espadas.

Agravando la reja esta la noche.

En la sala severa
se buscan como ciegos nuestras dos soledades.

Sobrevive a la tarde
la blancura gloriosa de tu carne.

En nuestro amor hay una pena
que se parece al alma.

Tú que ayer solo eras toda hermosura
eres tambien todo amor, ahora.

Autor: Jorge Luis Borges
Fecha de Publicación: 1923
Libro: Fervor de Buenos Aires

Firstly, there are a few new reviews of “The Twelve Burning Wheels.” And the reviews are good. Check em out:

Reviews of “The 12 Burning Wheels”

Innsmouth Free Press

My Whole Expanse Blog

GoodReads

Alex Fleetwood’s Blog

Jordan Humphrey’s Blog

Her Tangh-I-Ness Blog

To Breathe Underwater Blog

Swartzfeger

Interview!

Then, just yesterday, I got interviewed at the online sci-fi mag (and e-book library) Suvudu!

“An Interview with Mexican-American Speculative Fiction Author Cesar Torres” at Suvudu

Author Reading

And finally, to round all this out, I am happy to announce I’ll be doing my first author reading at Tuesday Funk at the Hopleaf on June 1! It’s FREE, so get your ass over to the Hopleaf, come hear me read about belts of fur and blood baths, and  meet some other writers, too.

Tuesday Funk (from Gothic Funk)

So lots is happening. If you have read “12BW,” thank you. And the best thing you can do is tell your friends that you liked it, and that they might want to check it out too. The toughest part of being a first-time author is getting the word out about having written the book. When you talk to your book-loving friends, send them this link so they can buy my very affordable book of short stories. Eight bucks? Cheaper than a movie!

Buy “The 12 Burning Wheels” at Amazon

I stumbled across a video clip that kinda blew my mind. It’s a pretty decent recording of KMFDM playing at the Cabaret Metro (now known as Metro) in 1992, touring their new album “Money.” They are preforming “Vogue,” the best cut on the album.

In that fraction of a moment when that date and location popped up, my memory shot me backward through time. I AM THERE MOSHING AT THAT SHOW, KIDS. I am. Wearing my Doc Martens and losing oxygen by the second under the heat of a couple hundred people.  It is October and it’s my first year of college. I am years away from so many experiences so many failures and so many times of wonder. I am a sapling, shit. And a sap too, probably.

Memory’s a strange thing. And since no one had cell phone cameras back then, I was shocked to find this clip out there in the web ether. I kinda want to write about this bizarre flash of memory that ran through my head; worthy of a short story, I’d say.

I still feel the chills seeing this. I am not visible in the video, but I am there,  screaming my lungs out, loving the ear-splitting screech of those synths.

Nothing’s thicker than water, keeping control
We are bound by desire, can we govern your soul
Can we govern your soul
Can we govern your soul

KMFDM, “Vogue”