Author Topic: EP337: Counting Cracks  (Read 14782 times)

Listener

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Reply #25 on: April 02, 2012, 07:35:17 PM
My only real nitpick was this: cell phones do not have dial tones!!!

This drives my wife up the effing wall.

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Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #26 on: April 03, 2012, 07:31:27 AM
My only real nitpick was this: cell phones do not have dial tones!!!

This drives my wife up the effing wall.
Me too. I miss having something to listen to while dragging my finger around that clickety little dial.

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Unblinking

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Reply #27 on: April 03, 2012, 01:07:22 PM
My only real nitpick was this: cell phones do not have dial tones!!!

This drives my wife up the effing wall.
Me too. I miss having something to listen to while dragging my finger around that clickety little dial.

rotary cell phone?  sweet!



Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #28 on: April 03, 2012, 03:58:17 PM
My only real nitpick was this: cell phones do not have dial tones!!!

This drives my wife up the effing wall.
Me too. I miss having something to listen to while dragging my finger around that clickety little dial.

rotary cell phone?  sweet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXmC3K_B4o
Too bad that young little whippersnapper in the video doesn't get the point.

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InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #29 on: April 03, 2012, 08:12:17 PM
This was NOT the story to listen to the same week I had to frantically dial 9-1-1 for someone having a seizure!! AHHH!!

This was very reminciant of an indie horror movie made in Atlanta about a madness inducing tone. Can't quite cough up the name but it was very freaky. This was a bit more optimistic. No, really.



Sgarre1

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Reply #30 on: April 03, 2012, 09:53:56 PM
THE SIGNAL?



InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #31 on: April 05, 2012, 05:48:39 PM
THE SIGNAL?

Yes, that's it exactly. Thank you.



CryptoMe

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Reply #32 on: April 05, 2012, 06:57:40 PM
I enjoyed this story; it was Fun!

I understand the negative points several forumites have brought up, but those just didn't bug me (pun intended ;)). It was an enjoyable story, and didn't end just at the main character opens the freezer door (which, in my mind, is what a bunch of recent EP stories have been doing). 



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Reply #33 on: April 06, 2012, 08:36:21 PM
The plot doesn't hold up well to close scrutiny, but it was a fantastic character sketch. In addition, even with the plot holes, it was way better than that stupid alien bug movie starring Doogie Howser. I would take this any day of the week and twice on Sunday over that bit of "entertainment".

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Cutter McKay

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Reply #34 on: April 06, 2012, 09:56:57 PM
Hi everyone,
<---Newby here.

Another thing, the changing of time frames.
This is a complaint that gets heard a lot, that it is often hard to tell in audio when a new sequence begins that takes the reader/listener back in time to a previous point, and then back to the "present". It gets confusing and results in some serious mental-gear clashing.
Perhaps our fine editors - who do an extraordinary job - can introduce some kind of audible cue that signifies that large white space or three spaced asterisks you get in text. You know, that thing telling you that this is a new scene.
Perhaps 5 solid seconds of silence? A tone? A whoosh? An entry from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Personally, I didn't find the changes in time difficult to follow, mostly because there was a change in tense each time. Current events were in present tense, past events were in past tense. So it was only a matter of seconds into a new segment before a dialogue tag "says/said" clued me in. Not to mention that the time change occurred at every break, I think. HOWEVER, I do find stories like this increasingly recurrent in modern fiction and also increasingly annoying. I agree with Unblinking that it tends to leach the tension out of the story.

Overall I enjoyed this story. Being neuro-typical, I found it very interesting to catch a glimpse of what life might be like for people with OCD or other atypical mentalities. It was a nice change from the standard protagonist.

My only real nitpick was this: cell phones do not have dial tones!!!

Which reminds me of an anecdote someone was telling me the other day when someone showed some current high-schoolers a picture of a floppy disk and asked them what it was.  Someone immediately piped up and said "Yeah, that's the Save button."


Another fun anecdote along along those lines: My preteen niece was hounding her father, my brother, for a cell phone. After repeated denials, she finally asked my brother, "Oh yeah? Well how old were you when you got YOUR first cell phone?" To which my brother smirked and replied, "Thirty-two." Not surprisingly, she didn't believe him. It took a phone call to Grandma to convince her.

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El Barto

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Reply #35 on: April 09, 2012, 03:44:59 AM
I didn't enjoy listening to this one very much, but I sure enjoyed thinking about it afterwards.

It was apparent quite quickly to me that the narrator was going to triumph, and I didn't feel any real sense of drama in the buildup to the showdown.  I also wasn't expecting (or liking) the cause of the hum to be . . .  aliens camped out in a supermarket.  I was expecting a natural phenomenon, or a science experiment gone wrong.  Or even some kind of industrial accident – perhaps someone trying to jury-rig a power plant in a way that generated a maddening hum.   I got plenty hung up on why would aliens who have mastered intersteller travel would behave so strangely and ineffectively.  The showdown was far too “Independence Day” for my taste in its unlikelihood as well.

All that said, I do like how this story reinforces what is, to me, one of the key pieces of proof of the method and power of evolution.  Namely, the fact that evolution consists of two parts – random variation and culling of those without certain traits.  The simple fact that humanity is so diverse right now is a kind of proof (to me) that evolution has already happened.  We are different in ways that could make a difference between life and death in many different situations.  We are probably a single global disaster away from demonstrating (to those who find the concept of evolution scary to their belief system) that the evolving of the human race has already happened.  If a new black death plague kills 95% of all humans, except those who randomly produce a single enzyme, or if a nuclear winter raises radiation to a level that kills 98% of all humans, except those with a unique metabolism, it is likely that nearly all humans afterwards will share whatever trait saved them.  We do not need to wait for the global disaster to actually understand this point.

What I liked about this story is that it may be improbable that having OCD will be the difference between surviving an apocalypse, it is not impossible.  And we have no way of knowing right now which random trait may be what saves a subset of our children's children from some catastrophe they never see coming.



Unblinking

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Reply #36 on: April 09, 2012, 02:17:02 PM
What I liked about this story is that it may be improbable that having OCD will be the difference between surviving an apocalypse, it is not impossible.  And we have no way of knowing right now which random trait may be what saves a subset of our children's children from some catastrophe they never see coming.

Interesting!  I've heard many times that genetic diversity is a major key to species survival, but usually it's used in respect to disease immunity, not of thinking patterns.  Cool!



El Barto

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Reply #37 on: April 09, 2012, 10:40:08 PM

Interesting!  I've heard many times that genetic diversity is a major key to species survival, but usually it's used in respect to disease immunity, not of thinking patterns.  Cool!

The list of physical and behavioral variations that could make a difference in a life or death situation is nearly endless.  This concept could be nicely explored in the context of a large series of interstellar generation ships heading in different directions.  100 ships head out and a bunch of them suffer different types of disasters that wipe out everyone on board who doesn't share a certain characteristic.  Maybe on one ship the oxygen runs low and only people with supercharged hemoglobin survive.  Maybe on another there's an intense cosmic wind that overwhelms the shields and only those people who have a certain skin type survive.  Oh the speculation could go on and on....



robertcday

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Reply #38 on: April 13, 2012, 11:18:51 AM
I love the idea of an apocalypse that shunts peoples that are, societally speaking, at the back of the queue straight to the front. What a lovely karmic picture that paints.
Robert.

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LaShawn

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Reply #39 on: May 17, 2012, 07:12:42 PM
Any story that can successfully use the word "snausages" is a winner in my book.

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Reply #40 on: May 24, 2012, 09:57:34 PM
I liked this one quite a lot, the gang of unlikely heroes were done with humor and respect, it didn't hold back on the action and it dared to include the tougher parts necessary to raise the stakes. At some points it went a bit close to cliche county, but overall it felt fresh and fun.



jwbjerk

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Reply #41 on: June 16, 2012, 04:15:17 PM
A well done example of dropping the read in the middle of: "What in the world is going on?!?  This is crazy!" and gradually unfolding the situation until almost everything makes sense.

Another thing, the changing of time frames.
This is a complaint that gets heard a lot, that it is often hard to tell in audio when a new sequence begins that takes the reader/listener back in time to a previous point, and then back to the "present". It gets confusing and results in some serious mental-gear clashing.
Perhaps our fine editors - who do an extraordinary job - can introduce some kind of audible cue that signifies that large white space or three spaced asterisks you get in text....
Ditto.  That little touch could greatly increase comprehensibility.  We can't see the line breaks, so put in something audible.