Messages

http://mihd.net/

Right, those of you interested should sign up to wordpress.com, then PM me with the email you used to sign up.  However, we may want to sort out who wants to take a more active role and those who feel like kicking back and being an occasional contributor, because I don't know if I can change your status once you're added.

I just snagged http://theageofaftermath.wordpress.com

Of course, all we really need is a snappy and memorizable url.  Once we have that, we can call it Aftermath.

Sorry, I only slept 3 hours last night.

aftereffect, alternation, causatum, chain, close, closing, conclusion, consecution, consequence, continuation, development, effect, end, ending, epilogue, eventuality, finish, finishing, issue, order, outcome, part two*, payoff, progression, result, row, sequence, sequent, series, spin-off*, termination, train, upshot

Which are all crap.

agitation, anarchism, anarchy, brawl, bustle, chaos, clamor, commotion, complication, convolution, discombobulation*, discord, disorganization, distemper, disturbance, dither, entanglement, fight, flap, fracas, fuss, hubbub, hullabaloo*, imbroglio, insurrection, lawlessness, mayhem, misrule, mob rule*, quarrel, rebellion, revolution, riot, rioting, ruckus, rumpus, static, strike, terrorism, tizzy*, trouble, tumult, turbulence, turmoil, unrest, unruliness, uproar

Some of these have potential, however.  Something-insurrection may work well.

Aftermath is taken, for the domain. I'm hesitant about using the German form, simply for the look of it.

I'll check availability.

FOUND IT!

http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=E1749043-E7F2-99DF-309373C72149C273

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, selected and randomly separated 120 students into groups of four. Each subject was arbitrarily assigned a certain amount of money; players knew how much money the others in their group had, but not to whom each amount belonged. Each player had the option of using some of his or her money to purchase the right to have the researchers subtract or award cash to another participant.

Subjects played the "game'' with different people in each of five trials Each time, "players'' adopted an egalitarian attitude when distributing the wealth in what study co-author and University of California, San Diego, political scientist James Fowler calls the "Robin Hood effect."

"People want to give rewards to the lowest [paid] member of the group and take away from the highest [paid] member of the group," he says. "I think that we were surprised by the magnitude of the punishment." Nearly 70 percent of the players reduced someone else's income at least once, and three quarters of them gave up a little to help someone in a weaker position. The behavior was consistent across all five trials, meaning people did not decide later to just look out for themselves.

Writing exercises are a great way to both increase your skill as a writer and to generate new ideas for future work. They can also give you a new perspective on your current project. One of the great benefits of private writing exercises is that you can free yourself of fear and perfectionism. To grow as a writer, it is important to sometimes write without the expectation of publication. Don,Äôt be afraid to be imperfect. That is what practice is for. What you write for any of these exercises may not be your best work, but it is practice for when you will need to write your best work.

    * Pick ten people you know and write a one-sentence description for each of them.
    * Record five minutes of a talk radio show. Write down the dialogue and add narrative descriptions of the speakers and actions as if you were writing a scene.
    * Write a 500-word biography of your life.
    * Write your obituary. List all of your life,Äôs accomplishments. You can write it as if you died today or fifty or more years in the future.
    * Write a 300-word description of your bedroom.
    * Write a fictional interview with yourself, an acquaintance, a famous figure or a fictional character. Do it in the style of an appropriate (or inappropriate) magazine or publication such as Time, People, Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen or Maxim.
    * Pick up a newspaper or supermarket tabloid. Scan the articles until you find one that interests you and use it as the basis for a scene or story.
    * Keep a diary of a fictional character.
    * Take a passage from a book, a favorite or a least favorite, and rewrite the passage in a different style such as noir, gothic romance, pulp fiction or horror story.
    * Pick an author, one you like though not necessarily your favorite, and make a list of what you like about the way they write. Do this from memory first, without rereading their work. After you,Äôve made your list, reread some of their work and see if you missed anything or if your answers change. Analyze what elements of their writing style you can add to your own, and what elements you should not or cannot add. Remember that your writing style is your own, and that you should only try to think of ways to add to your own style. Never try to mimic someone else for more than an exercise or two.
    * Take a piece of your writing that you have written in first person and rewrite it in third person, or vice-versa. You can also try this exercise changing tense, narrators, or other stylistic elements. Don,Äôt do this with an entire book. Stick to shorter works. Once you commit to a style for a book, never look back or you will spend all of your time rewriting instead of writing.
    * Try to identify your earliest childhood memory. Write down everything you can remember about it. Rewrite it as a scene. You may choose to do this from your current perspective or from the perspective you had at that age.
    * Remember an old argument you had with another person. Write about the argument from the point of view of the other person. Remember that the idea is to see the argument from their perspective, no your own. This is an exercise in voice, not in proving yourself right or wrong.
    * Write a 200-word description of a place. You can use any and all sensory descriptions but sight: you can describe what it feels like, sounds like, smells like and even tastes like. Try to write the description in such a way that people will not miss the visual details.
    * Sit in a restaurant or a crowded area and write down the snippets of conversation you hear. Listen to the people around you ,Äî how they talk and what words they use. Once you have done this, you can practice finishing their conversations. Write your version of what comes next in the conversation. Match their style.

http://www.jjuriaan.com/Fifteen_Craft_Exercises_for_Writers.htm


I'm going to do this later, actually.  Its good practice, I think, and no matter how good you are, practice never hurts.

Oh, I see.  How odd.  Still, it does translate, in an odd way...I could probably find my German-English dictionary and see if there is anything better, but I doubt there is, somehow...

According to RAW, the primary meaning is that of Aftermath.  Unless I'm understanding you wrong here.  What did you think it meant?

I had a quick look at Google docs.  Seems interesting, but since we want an email for the site anyway, it might be overly complex.  I'll see what everyone else says though.

Oh, and once we settle on a name, I can try and grab an email version of it via gmail.  I think a group account will be fine, so long as nothing but spam is deleted.  That gives us the chance to leave notes for each other etc as well as deal with any mail or offers of help (or hate) as a group too.

I was thinking, using the Discordian calendar (ZOMG23PINEEEEEELGLUNDETC...) would allow for us to do 5 issues a year, if we followed the RAW style model of Verwirrung, Zweitracht, Unordnung, Beamtenherrschaft and Grummet.  Of course, relating each to the topic would also be nice, though not necessarily feasible....

Anyway, its an idea and its out there.

There is no First Foundation.

Srsly.

God, I read those books nearly a decade ago.  I feel old now...

Just thinking....I've been over looking at how Dionysus Unemployed are working on getting their message around online and I think we can probably appropriate their model for our own.

http://www.dionysusunemployed.net/content/index.php if you want a look.

Creating a multi-user typepad style blog is not hard (Typepad looks far more polished and professional than most other free blogs out there), in fact I'm sure if we ask Syn we may even be able to host it at blackironprison.com (if we move the Wiki off into a subdirectory), but lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

In addition to a blog style site with multiple contributors with various ideas, once every 3 months or so a Magazine would not be hard to throw together.  PDFing documents is easy and we have a couple of talented artists, plus I have found an excellent and reliable free hosting system, should we not make them downloadable directly from POEE or wherever.

However, we're going to have to come up with some decent ideas.

1. A site name or blog title.  We could use BIP but as you know, I feel its too limiting and if we stuck only within that theme, then there would be little content.  Something that encompasses the whole ethos of what we are attempting here.

2. People who want to get involved.  Signing up at blogger is easy enough, but I suggest having an editor or two to maintain overall production control.

3. Decide on things as a group of people.  This may be tricky.

4. Promote the place via method such as Technorati, commenting elsewhere, so on and so forth.

5. Anything else?