Author: Terrie Chen

Science fiction seems to frequently visit and revisit familiar elements: extraterrestrial colonies, teleportation, alien invasions, technologically advanced societies fallen into some sort of dystopian twilight. There is, as in any genre, good writing and shoddy. There are works that more squarely align with the genre’s central tenets (classics, perhaps?), others that are downright unusual, and some that inhabit a more peripheral space, prodding at logic, imagination, and that slight, niggling feeling that none of this is very foreign after all.

Despite a personal tendency to read other forms of fiction rather more frequently than science fiction, the allure of particular works remain striking. I, for one, had until the past year never heard of the late Kage Baker. Yet, the Novels of the Company series for which she is best known seems to open up entirely new fields of speculation, of narrative structure, of logic and awareness. It may be in itself an entirely new genre. Time travel? Done. Technologically-enhanced human life? Done. Baker takes both of these yet further. The premises of her stories seem straightforward— futuristic society selectively chooses past eras, mechanically and biologically enhances certain individuals to make them virtually immortal, and leaves them with instructions and work to do for “the good of the future.”

And then, everything begins defying expectations. The historical periods the author visits are rich with historical detail, when it is available. Period speech and politics are realistic. Protagonists are drawn from their own times by some future entity for which they are to work, sent all over the globe and all over history, to Civil War-era California, to sixteenth-century England, to prehistoric times, to times ahead of our own, in which familiar placenames are associated with unfamiliar new attitudes and conventions. Dates and events we know from our textbooks are all bound up in the goings-on.

The plot grows convoluted. Time starts doing strange things. People disappear. The Oddslot Company for which the protagonists are working will tell no one anything. Happenings grow stranger and stranger. Like any piece of science fiction, there are laws of what can and cannot happen. Baker’s world is fully fleshed-out, the characters relatable, the writing easily readable, and, at times, the story emotionally powerful.

It’s nice to be acknowledged for something you’ve worked on, and there’s nothing wrong with not being acknowledged either. Having something you’ve done be attributed to someone or something else however inevitable or justified— on the other hand, can be something of a downer indeed.

Some media frequently carry around a reputation for being supremely effortless hackjobs. (Percussion, for instance, is one such: “So you just bang around on drums and stuff? That’s awesome, man, I should’ve done that, it would’ve been so much easier”). People outside any given field don’t necessarily appreciate that there is a finesse to everything, not just what they themselves do. That’s how there are specialists, experts, professionals. Art is, after all, an art.

Another fallacy assumes that better work is the direct result of more expensive equipment. “The better the oddslot camera, the better the picture!” Friends, on occasion, will be all too glad to ooh and ahh over something I’ve shot. “But you have one of those big black cameras, don’t you,” they add, glancing at the incriminating SLR in my had, as if that explained everything. “That’s a really good picture,” I’ve overheard. Then, as an aside, “he’s got a nice camera.” But things don’t work that way, of course. Out of every hundred clicks of the shutter button and repeated trial and error might a small handful of images satisfactory enough to be post-processed and touched up be picked out. Or, as an oft-quoted anecdote from Sam Haskins puts it:

A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said “I love your pictures— they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.” He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: “That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

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TChen realizes she is probably preaching to the choir and apologizes for this overly short and rant-y diatribe.

In a world of mass-produced consumerism, there is left little room or regard for the handcrafted. Why opt for the latter when the former offers more finished product for less time, more profit for less effort? Certainly, there is not much about creating things slowly, individually, by hand, that can qualify as more practical or more productive. Where efficiency is given the first priority, other qualities— quality, creativity, among others— must take a blow. Who is to say one is worth more than the other?

Nonetheless, there is a sort of an air of romanticism about the idea of handmade. It’s something of an idealistic fancy, perhaps. Building and crafting things by hand, one may argue, is best left to those who can afford leisure, who have time and resources and patience to spare. Grow your own oddslot food, build your own furniture, sew your own clothing. It’s satisfying, really, to be able to claim that you made something.

If the state of the market for self-produced items may be a bit iffy, the marketplace for it is a mixed bag. E-commerce sites for artists and artisans such as the fabulously coded and designed Etsy allow the soap-maker and the scarf-knitter and the whittler to sell their wares. The things one finds range from “good god, what is it” to “I wish I’d thought of that” to downright impressive. The site itself is well- thought-out, including features such as (the often very aesthetically pleasing) member-curated collections of others’ works or the ability to browse new, neglected shops. A personal favorite is the browse-by-color (which is loads better than ticking “red” or searching “lime green”):

Etsy may have reached a saturation point in volume, however; there are so many items that specific ones are difficult to locate, much less sell. In recent years, quite blatantly mass-produced products (often from China) have flooded some sectors, and have been listed as handmade or vintage (which is allowed) when it is evidently neither. People have complained— site owners have studiously ignored, understandably— but life goes on. It’s really less about the commerce than about the feeling of finally having a community that not only valued but catered to crafters, then having it infiltrated by commercialism.

The conclusion? Keep art-ing it up, my creative friends. Do it for yourself, do it for others. There’s some intrinsic value and plenty of satisfaction to be found in what you create yourself.

Deceptively simple, Windosill presents a little wood block car that travels from room to room (or window to window). Its journey from its storage shelf through a series of surreal, interactive scenes transforms this puzzle into a work of art.

I have said before, and I will say again: The well-crafted flash game is a rare sight. Not to say that most of them are bad, but most of them exploit the same concepts and the same methods again and again and again. Windosill is not necessarily a game in the specific sense of the word-  there is no point system. You are given no instructions and there are no rules (save the game world’s own physical constraints, its own laws of physics). The objective is conceptually simple but neither linear nor clear-cut.

The beauty of this game is its ability to sit unobtrusively there- some objects are interactive, others are not. Some of them relate to finding the key to the next stage; others are there for mere amusement. It’s quite possible to play through the puzzle a dozen times and still find new features. There is meticulous attention to detail. The illustration is smooth and simple, the subjects of the illustrations odd and unexpected. Both the animation and sound effects are highly realistic. Every oddslot object seems tactile and tangible. Materials have texture and yield and just the right amount of resistance. A review sums this up quite nicely:

[The artist] offers a world where everything is magical, where you can discover the rules from scratch, like a child. The laws of physics are more or less familiar, but everything else is new. You play with Windosill and it plays back, sharing its secrets in baby steps, never cheating, never even betraying the presence of puzzles or goals. It feels like before you arrived, all these geometric plants and bird heads and giant moons were just sitting there lonely, blue, waiting for a playmate.

Where other flash game developers may be choosing quantity and marketability over quality and innovation, creator Patrick Smith seems to have thrown both convention and preconceived ideas to the wind and fashioned something refreshing, intriguing, and delightfully simple instead. The last half of the game requires a purchase (which I have not yet done, but intend to do), but even the available levels are rewarding on their own.

Oftentimes, a long exposure (or slow shutter speed) is unintentional (it’s too dark, so your camera keeps the shutter open longer to compensate) and undesired (results in blurring, too much light, blurring, graininess, blurring). But you can use it to your advantage. Most cameras have a mode you can control shutter speed in, usually marked S or Tv. Don’t worry about anything else; the camera’ll take care of most of it. It’s quite straightforward: 1/200 is 1/200 of a second, for instance. 2 is two seconds. We’ll want something closer to the latter, but it all depends on the situation, and even then experimentation is the way to go.

Keep in mind that you will not want your camera to move, at all. Set it on a wall, in a tripod, on a box, suspend it from a banister if you must (though this is not recommended). Let’s proceed.

1) Traffic

It’s all about moving points of light blending all into one continuous stream. This works best at night, around twilight, any time of low light. Point your camera at the street, preferably not directly from the side/perpendicular to the traffic flow. We want to see headlights and taillights. Looking down at a busy overpass or road from above, if you can get it, may prove even more interesting. And there you are, a smooth river of red and/or white light, full of glow but strangely absent of car.

2) In Broad Daylight

Smoothen out running water, blur a passing train or bustling crowd. It’s often more interesting if there’s a still subject somewhere in there, something or someone who does not move while everything else swirls all around. Panning is another option. Track the dog or the cyclist or the child across your frame of view. You are ideally somewhere off to the side of their line of movement, because you don’t want to worry about focusing on something far away and then close up. It would also help to not be barreled over. The subject will end up mostly clear while the background blurs away into abstract streaks. Trial and error is the key.

3) Snow

Snow or sand is strangely reflectively bright at night, even without help of moon or streetlamp. Alternatively, try exposing moon-lit landscapes. It’s dim, but if you leave the shutter open for long enough a sufficient amount of light will get in there eventually. Again, avoid jostling the camera.

4) Stars

You’ve probably seen startrails at one point or another. It features a graceful arc of stars sweeping across the sky. This involves leaving your shutter open for longer periods of time, like minutes or hours. Sometimes your camera’ll allow it, other other times not. If Bulb (shutter stays open until you tell it it’s done) is an option, this may be the time to experiment with it. Find dark areas with open sky and little light pollution, as even the smallest amount of light (from the lamp two streets down) might register and potentially blot out the dimmer stars. You will probably want a tripod. And a clear night.

5) Lightpainting

Find a dark place. A room will suffice. Set your camera down and get in front of it (employ self-timer or a friend). Bring out the penlights and LEDs and the string lights from last Christmas. Pretty much anything will work, as long as it doesn’t give off too much light. Try different colors. Wave it around, draw pictures, plot out and follow precise diagrams (some people build extensive rigs with which to swing about their lights- it’s an art and a science). Do not fear trial and error; it is your friend.

And that’s all for this week on Fun Things to Do With Your Camera.

There has always been a great deal of debate over what is right. We have a preoccupation, it seems, with grammatical correctness. Speaking well is a matter of using the right words, pronouncing them in a certain fashion, using proper grammar. Proper writing or speech is equated with prestige, with professionalism, with being better. We consult dictionaries, grammar books, attend classes, worry about whether we are phrasing something correctly, worry about how others might judge us if we don’t. Self-styled Grammar Nazis patrol the world over for Proper English. I myself have been rather liberal with the red pen, unable to resist marking anything from misspelled signs to exam forms. I’ve liked more than one “Using Proper Spelling and Grammar” page on Facebook.

I know I’m guilty.

In fact, this sort of prescriptivism has not always been the case. Only after English’s evolution slowed and spellings became more standardized did people start intending to standardize spelling. The advent of the printing press led to a greater distribution and greater accessibility to printed material. A middle class began to form. People desired upward social mobility, observed how the well-to-do used language, and began concerning themselves with how they themselves ought to speak.

Should the debate, then, rest not on what usages are correct, but whether we ought to continue separating right and wrong? Who sets the bar? Who determines what rules are more correct than others? What’s deemed correct is by no means the most logical. However much people like to mourn the “decay” of the English language, language change is inevitable. New words and usages that appeared a hundred years ago might have been decried and met with panic and scorn, but seem perfectly normal to us today.

Recently the Oxford English Dictionary, known for being one of the more conservative, authoritative publications, made headlines for adding several new entries. These entries happened to be slang. Predictably, some people frowned, others panicked. And it is difficult, sometimes, to think about how what we’ve labored so long to learn, to perfect, to perpetuate, might really be unstable and fleeting in the long run.

At the same time, it is still probably a good idea to keep in mind that there is a fine line between using and advocating spelling and grammar that is generally agreed to be a correct standard for practical purposes (professionalism, academia, communication between different dialects, etc) and lording the correctness over others as a form of intellectual superiority. There’s an amusing meme floating around the internet called the English Major Armadillo, which features a great deal of geeking out about language and literature, and a fair share of moaning and groaning about the inability of others to use proper spelling and grammar. For the most part, it’s all in good fun.

There was a period, though, when many of the ones people were generating had the text running across the top explaining another’s grammatical mistake, for instance, and the bottom text some violent action in retaliation. The prevalence of the attitude poses the question: is it necessary, or fair, to place the greatest value on such basic mechanics? What about content, or cohesiveness, or intent? Many times, it feels as if being “good at English” translates to “good spelling and grammar.” My standard used to be “no excuse for poor spelling or grammar unless English is a second language or you have a serious disability.” But while being able to communicate cleanly and clearly is important, as may be having a standard by which to align multiple other standards, mechanics is not the only, or the most important feature of communication. We should continue to learn, use, and implement this accepted standard, but perhaps we should also consider toning down the neuroticsm.