Attention Rose-Hulman Students/Alumni: Samuel F. Hulbert Bobblehead!

I'm cleaning out my house, and I came across a rare Samuel F. Hulbert bobblehead. This item was a limited release of 2520. I have #1404. It is still in the box, but the box is somewhat worn.

If you would like to have #1404, let me know. Make me an offer.

If you would like to see pictures, let me know.

If I don't get any bites before the end of the year, it will no longer be available for purchase.

Please e-mail me or leave a comment here (if you don't have my e-mail address), and if you know somebody who might want it, LET THEM KNOW! I'll ship it anywhere domestically.

All right?

The Zombie (Literature) Outbreak

Twilight of the Living Dead by ~aethercowboy on deviantART

So, I got an e-mail today from Amazon, partly because I bought into the whole Pride and Prejudice and Zombies hype. They said that I might like the book, and I am NOT making this up, The Undead World of Oz, which further recommends Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim.

Now, where did this recent outbreak of remixed zombie literature start? Most would argue P&P&Z, but I think that the roots are much deeper. It's been show that a rise in zombie films is directly proportional to social unrest, but what of a rise in zombie literature? Is it simply the fact that it's essentially costless to rehash a public domain work. Will we get The King James Guide to Zombie Slaying? Maybe Gray's Zombie Anatomy? Alice in Zombieland? I could go on.

I won't.

I blame The Zombie Survival Guide, which has practical advice for wilderness survival, but is disguised as a deadpan comedy book. It gave rise to World War Z, which I suppose opened the floodgates for the shambling undead, arm in arm with your favorite Victorian literary characters.

Fortunately, the co-author of P&P&Z has moved away from zombies, and is venturing into the world of sea monsters¹, and then a biography of Lincoln as a vampire hunter.

But, what will come next, now that zed is THE undead? Will we have a rise of zombie romances? I mean, we have books like Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, but how soon until we have teen romance, like Twilight of the Living Dead?

EDITED

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1. Seth Grahme-Smith did not, in fact, pen the changes to S&S&S. It was Ben H. Winters. The publisher is the same, however.

NOTICE

Notice: If you are following this feed on LiveJournal, you are not seeing my book reviews. Follow the FeedBurner feed in an alternate reader for those.

The Beastly Melange!

The other day, I had a severe hard drive malfunction. My computer would start up, flash a BSOD, and then auto-reboot. I tried to diagnose the problem (software or hardware) through my PDA, but my best guess was that I needed a new hard drive.

So I got a Seagate 1TB SATA.

My old hard drive was an IBM Deskstar 120GB PATA. It was seven+ years old. Once I get my Ubuntu live CD, I'll see if I can better diagnose the problem. Though, suggestions are very, very welcome.

A funny thing, though, is that with the purchase of a new hard drive, my computer's original parts are now as follows:

• One optical mouse (originally from RHIT laptop, which is older than the MONOLITH that is my desktop)
• One case fan (it hasn't annoyed me enough to replace with a more quiet version)
• The case (If you've seen it, you know why. I can use it as an apartment if I ever lose my home.)

Everything else is relatively new, at least, new since I move to Texas.

But, again, any pointers on what went wrong with the HD, or suggestions on how to fix it (at least enough to get some files moved over) would be greatly appreciated.

New Toy!

My wonderful wife got me a nice, yet belated birthday gift, and I'm writing this post on it :)

Book Reviews

I decided to try to enter the business of book reviews, or at least flesh it out already.

Here's the deal: if you are an author who wants someone to read your book and then review it, and make said review available for the public to read, particularly on Amazon.com and LibraryThing, and quite possibly my blog, I'm your guy.

If you're interested in honest reviews (and I will tear you a new one if your book sucks), please contact me by e-mailing me. Currently, I will only do print books.

Well, I'll do eBooks, but under very, very limited circumstances. If you can convince me that I owe you a favor, I will read and review your eBook. If you print out your eBook and mail it to me, I will read and review your eBook. If you, or someone else, procures me a portable eBook reading device, I will read your eBook.

Also, please, please, please don't send me multiple copies of your book. Since I have no friends, there is nobody for me to share the book with.

I like books that are of a speculative nature that don't involve teenage vampire romances.

If you'd like to read a sampling of my reviews, check out the following link:

http://www.librarything.com/rss/reviews/aethercowboy

jacob.silvia@gmail.com

On Save States

Knowing absolutely nothing about how video game save states work, I came up with a rudimentary theory.

Basically, with respect to save states, there are a variety of data points, such as level, score, inventory, etc. When it comes to accomplishments, though, these cannot as easily be represented as a score (or can it!?).

So that got me thinking: there are effectively three levels of accomplishments in games: linear, tiered, and free.

Representing linear accomplishments is easy. You assign a number to each accomplishment such that each successive accomplishment follows its predecessor numerically. Hence, if you record "3" as the accomplishment value, it assumes that 2 and 1 have thus been completed. Boring.

Tiered are a little like linear, except that there are more. Now, I'm not suggesting my methodology as being the best (it's more for a conveyance of ideas than anything else), but you would have a set of accomplishment series, A, B, C, etc., and then each series would have a set of linear accomplishments. Thus, B-4 assumes B-3, but does not assume A-anything. So forth.

Free, though, are a bit trickier. They are totally unrelated. 2 does not presuppose 1, and so forth. Well, in my methodology, there is no one, or it doesn't mean anything. For free, you keep an accomplishment number, and for no accomplishments, you have a value of 1. Each accomplishment has some prime number associated with it, and with each accomplishment, the accomplishment number becomes itself multiplied by the new accomplishment. Thus, to figure out the accomplishments, one merely needs to do a prime factorization. Or in instances that ask "Is accomplishment x fulfilled?" it's simply a modulus operation.

I'd be interested in other save state insight, if anybody would care to provide their own. Also, please feel free to give critique to my ideas.