Author Topic: PC142: Abandonware  (Read 21489 times)

Listener

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Reply #25 on: February 09, 2011, 02:14:51 AM
Not much to add, except that did anyone else think Chris Reynaga's dad voice was heavily influenced by Nathan Fillion? Because I totally heard it.

Also, I'm curious: in the bio, were the use of nongendered pronouns at the request of the author or simply the reader's choice?

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hautdesert

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Reply #26 on: February 09, 2011, 01:02:59 PM
Se didn't request it, but I knew from an old conversation that An preferred the use of gender neutral pronouns when referring to hir.  I did double-check before I went ahead and used them, partly because a lot of folks have very good reasons not to be public about their gender identity, and partly because there are several sets of pronouns and I wasn't sure which ones se preferred.

So, my choice, but I did consult with hir.



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Reply #27 on: February 09, 2011, 04:51:28 PM
...because a lot of folks have very good reasons not to be public about their gender identity...
This is true. Whenever I meet new people in a chat online I always ask which pronouns they'd prefer. Note, I do not ask their gender, but which pronouns we should use when discussing them.
Also, thank you. I re-listened to the intro and just caught the gender-nuetral pronouns now, in the quiet of my home. The first time I heard it, on the bus, I thought it was just background noise preventing me from hearing properly. But now I know how those pronouns are pronounced (I've only ever seen them in print, and whatever you call the letter on your monitor).
Oh, and you could use the male pronouns for me.

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Reply #28 on: February 09, 2011, 09:38:24 PM
I would like to chime in on the 76 MB of plain text code debate.

Personally, I'm not a computer kind of guy. To me, Clarke's third law is almost a constant phenomenon even in my daily life. That being said, when I read hard science fiction, the presentation of details can either bore me to tears or cause my sense of understanding to deepen my enjoyment of the piece.

In this story, the explanation of how much plain text 76 MB is what launched a sudden sense of wonder with the program. The structure of the story made it obvious that something important was on the disk but that one detail sold it for me that this was something of Magic and I never paused to think about how long it would take her to write all of it. Maybe that's just my luddite brain showing itself.



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Reply #29 on: February 10, 2011, 01:39:06 AM
In this story, the explanation of how much plain text 76 MB is what launched a sudden sense of wonder with the program. The structure of the story made it obvious that something important was on the disk but that one detail sold it for me that this was something of Magic and I never paused to think about how long it would take her to write all of it. Maybe that's just my luddite brain showing itself.

Well now speaking as a technical guy, that means it was a good explanation. If it gives you a sense of how much could be going on there, it's handily done the job.


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Reply #30 on: February 10, 2011, 09:17:44 PM
I liked this story but it felt wrong for Podcastle. Felt more like an Escapepod story to me. This felt more like technological precognition (due to the huge size of the source file and my knowledge as a programmer that it takes a ton of code to break even a megabyte of source code when programming) than fantastical precognition.

Also I would have liked a better resolution. Why did the sister ignore the warnings? Did she even get a warning? Maybe she got so bored knowing what was going to happen that she stopped running the program and hence didn't get a warning.



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Reply #31 on: February 10, 2011, 09:23:37 PM
Also I would have liked a better resolution. Why did the sister ignore the warnings?

I read it as, "She wants more than anything to find an example of true randomness because she feels weighed down by the way everything is predictable.  She tries to escape the grip of her wyrd, and the only way to do that is through her death, in grand Norse tradition."

She goes to the accident because it is random and senseless, in other words.  The terrible discovery her brother makes is that she wanted it to end that way, that she was in pain and suicidal.



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Reply #32 on: February 11, 2011, 02:26:55 PM
Also I would have liked a better resolution. Why did the sister ignore the warnings?

I read it as, "She wants more than anything to find an example of true randomness because she feels weighed down by the way everything is predictable.  She tries to escape the grip of her wyrd, and the only way to do that is through her death, in grand Norse tradition."

She goes to the accident because it is random and senseless, in other words.  The terrible discovery her brother makes is that she wanted it to end that way, that she was in pain and suicidal.

I think that's a bit of an overstatement of what's in the story. First, as I still maintain, we have no evidence that the sister used SHELDON to predict her death. All we know is what it would have told her, had she done so. And we also know what it has to tell her now that she is dead. Which is revealing enough.

Second, even if she had read it, the warnings were quite vague - "a truly random occurance" does not necessarily mean "something fatal". It means "something special". She would have known that randomness brings risk, but by its very nature, the promise of randomness does not guaruntee any outcome, including death.

Third, the fact that when asked for good news for a person who is already dead, SHELDON replies with "good news, it's over", doesn't mean that that person is suicidal (though I accept that the narrator did interpret it that way). I am in no way suicidal, and there is a lot I really love about my life. But there is also a lot in my life I would be very happy to leave behind. SHELDON was programmed to give good news, and presumably "it's over" is the best news it could come up with. That doesn't mean it's what the sister would have chosen or wanted.



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Reply #33 on: February 11, 2011, 03:57:21 PM
Well, I went with what the protagonist seemed to assume.  It certainly didn't feel like we were supposed to take that scene as only applying to him - remember that rigmarole about "the thing I didn't want to know"?



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Reply #34 on: February 12, 2011, 09:07:00 AM
Wow - liked this one SO MUCH.  I got the impression that his sister used SHELDON a lot, and the narrator mentioned that she would just 'drop by' and made references to 'running interference' with their father, like she knew how to handle just about any situation - well, if one had a program that could tell the future, that would be much easier to do.  It sounded a little more than sibling closeness to me, especially given the age difference between the two of them.

The only thing I stumbled on in the story at all was "Burn this disk"  It took me a good break after the first listening to figure out that it meant 'destroy' and not 'copy onto a CD' - once my mega-slow brain clicked in, I had to listen again with a fresh ear.  I'm sure this wording was done on purpose for that very reason.

Overwritten?  Really?  It's hard to write about the experience of the death of someone close - it's such an internal process, and it's hard to do the 'show vs tell' in this sort of story.  Overall I thought a balance between the two was struck pretty well.

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Reply #35 on: February 12, 2011, 06:49:19 PM
Well, I went with what the protagonist seemed to assume.  It certainly didn't feel like we were supposed to take that scene as only applying to him - remember that rigmarole about "the thing I didn't want to know"?

But the story was brilliant in establishing how the protagonist is an unreliable narrator - his perceptions, throughout, are very much skewed by his grief. I don't think that we are safe in assuming what the narrator does about the emotional state of anyone, especially not his sister.



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Reply #36 on: February 25, 2011, 08:01:15 PM
I will chime in adding my praise to the pile, and add one more thing: 

I loved the display of emotional stress that the MC goes through trying to decide how to interpret the "It's okay, it's over." messages.  It is a simple message, but could mean so many things depending on how you looked at it.

The cow says "Mooooooooo"


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Reply #37 on: March 03, 2011, 11:13:08 PM
I really loved this episode. I rarely read stories about sibling grief, and it was both painful and a sort of relief to hear this one. Though I didn't get most of the programming jokes, I did get everything about the emotions that the main character struggled with, especially regarding his dad. I wrote a little more about it on my site if anyone is interested.



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Reply #38 on: March 07, 2011, 05:29:59 PM
First of all, let me say that I did not listen to the podcast. I just so happened to read the story on Fantasy Magazine today (if you think my backlog for Podcastle is bad :D), and when I was coming here to make a comment on The Coalwoman, I was startled to see this in the forum. I didn't know that Podcastle did it here. Coincidence?

::tries real hard not to think about it::

That said, I loved the story, even though I didn't get most of the programming references. I found the SELDON program a little spooky, but more sad than anything. Thinking about the messages, there were times it felt a little hopeful. In a weird way, I wondered if Andy had herself programmed it to in a way comfort the MC.

I better stick this in my listening queue now so I can listen to it...in a couple of months.

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Reply #39 on: March 07, 2011, 08:40:16 PM
In a weird way, I wondered if Andy had herself programmed it to in a way comfort the MC.

Oo, yes! And planted a $20 while she was at it!

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Reply #40 on: March 10, 2011, 09:07:00 PM
How did I miss this one until now?

Truly a great story and a perfectly creepy concept.

As a side note by way of nostalgia - my first computer was an Adam (which used actual audio cassettes and shared my name) and another later computer of mine had a Zip drive competitor - SuperDisk. Anyone remember those?

-Adam



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Reply #41 on: March 14, 2011, 02:50:30 PM
Hey, what do you know...this came up in my playlist sooner than I thought! It was good to hear it. I caught several things that I missed in my initial reading...including LEMMINGS! Holy cow, I used to play that SO MANY TIMES!!!!

Huh. I'm more of a gaming geek than I thought.

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Reply #42 on: March 14, 2011, 04:49:40 PM
Hey, what do you know...this came up in my playlist sooner than I thought! It was good to hear it. I caught several things that I missed in my initial reading...including LEMMINGS! Holy cow, I used to play that SO MANY TIMES!!!!

Huh. I'm more of a gaming geek than I thought.

Great game, that was!  It probably will reflect badly on me if I admit that the best part was setting a whole clan to nuke themselves and then seeing the patterns they blast into the ground.



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Reply #43 on: March 14, 2011, 06:08:55 PM
Hey, what do you know...this came up in my playlist sooner than I thought! It was good to hear it. I caught several things that I missed in my initial reading...including LEMMINGS! Holy cow, I used to play that SO MANY TIMES!!!!

Huh. I'm more of a gaming geek than I thought.

Great game, that was!  It probably will reflect badly on me if I admit that the best part was setting a whole clan to nuke themselves and then seeing the patterns they blast into the ground.
Kinda funny but, today I was super-bored in class. Digging around my hard drive I found the old Lemmings Holiday Pack from 1994.
I spent a happy 2 hours with that :D

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Reply #44 on: March 15, 2011, 01:37:00 PM
Kinda funny but, today I was super-bored in class. Digging around my hard drive I found the old Lemmings Holiday Pack from 1994.
I spent a happy 2 hours with that :D

If anyone's got a Lemmings craving but doesn't have the game, Abandonia.com has 5 Lemmings games, including the Holiday pack:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/search_abandonia/lemmings



stePH

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Reply #45 on: March 17, 2011, 02:24:05 PM
Feedback segment of the "State Change" episode, waxing nostalgic about old tech, reminded me of the FSR's "Back in the Day":

Quote
Coaxke:
Back in the day, System 7.5,
Had HyperCard stacks on my SyQuest drive,
Once I got a modem I was never fuckin' bored,
Always dialin' up a BBS to play me some LORD,
I stole my school's dial-up to get the internet,
Had a copy of Ircle and no regrets,
Chillin' in #macfilez, leechin' on bots,
It took nine years to get a download spot,
Hours and hours, makin' Marathon maps,
Always on the run 'cuz I set it to caps,
Eventually I got a brand new Power Mac,
So fuckin' fast, I almost had a heart attack,
Ran a Hotline server on my school's T1,
"Win Ben Stein's Warez" was the name of that one,
Quake 3 Test in the computer lab,
Never went to class 'cuz that shit was a drag.

All:
Back in the day, Shufflepuck Cafe,
Banner ads, gettin' paid, ICQ, gettin' laid,
Back in the day, we knew Sulu was gay,
Munchin' numbers, runnin' lodes, monochrome displays.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0HKHbJceAw
« Last Edit: March 17, 2011, 03:27:00 PM by stePH »

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Reply #46 on: March 17, 2011, 02:27:38 PM
Oh yeah, ICQ.  The "Uh oh!" notification still rings in my ears from time to time.  I know someone who has the "Uh oh!" sound as their text message notification, but they never used ICQ so it's rather lost on them.  My ear's still perk up whenever I hear it though.



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Reply #47 on: March 17, 2011, 02:54:31 PM
Oh yeah, ICQ.  The "Uh oh!" notification still rings in my ears from time to time.  I know someone who has the "Uh oh!" sound as their text message notification, but they never used ICQ so it's rather lost on them.  My ear's still perk up whenever I hear it though.


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stePH

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Reply #48 on: March 17, 2011, 03:34:12 PM
Oh yeah, ICQ.  The "Uh oh!" notification still rings in my ears from time to time.  I know someone who has the "Uh oh!" sound as their text message notification, but they never used ICQ so it's rather lost on them.  My ear's still perk up whenever I hear it though.


I don't get the "munchin' numbers" reference, and never played Shufflepuck Cafe (or Wacky Wheels, another old game referenced in the song) but I remember Lode Runner well (spent some mad hours making my own maps in that one).

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Reply #49 on: March 17, 2011, 04:18:32 PM
Oh yeah, ICQ.  The "Uh oh!" notification still rings in my ears from time to time.  I know someone who has the "Uh oh!" sound as their text message notification, but they never used ICQ so it's rather lost on them.  My ear's still perk up whenever I hear it though.


I don't get the "munchin' numbers" reference, and never played Shufflepuck Cafe (or Wacky Wheels, another old game referenced in the song) but I remember Lode Runner well (spent some mad hours making my own maps in that one).

Ha, I didn't even notice the "munchin' numbers" reference on my read, but I'm certain that's referring to the edutainment game "Number Munchers".  It was very popular when I was in grade school, they had some available computers for games in study hall and that was one of the games.  You're a little green dude who has to walk around a grid and eat all the number that match the level's goal (all the factors of a particular number, or multiples of a particular number, etc...).  All this while avoiding the Troggles who would try to eat you.  Some time in the 90s they even had Super Munchers based on the same concept but you'd get the opporutunity to turn into Super Muncher, who wears a cape and can Troggle-bash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Munchers