Kicking off a new regular round-up of all the things I liked this week but haven’t blogged about yet. Enjoy!
General geekery
Charlie Brown meets Doctor Who
The title says it all.
The 22 Most Badass Beards In Cinema
Because looking at pictures of men with big bushy beards is as good a work-avoidance technique as any other. Next week I might try and grow mutton-chops.
Writing
25 things you should know about writing a novel
I’ve discovered Chuck Wendig’s blog this week and became an instant fan. It’s rammed with great writery advice and quite a lot of swear words (and not necessarily in that order). This entry is a corker. I won’t explain what it’s about – the clue is in the title – but it’s full of good advice a bit like this:
Let’s get this out of the way right now: if you start a f*****g novel, then plan to f*****g
finish that f*****g novel. Your hard drive is not a novel burial ground. It’s like building your own Frankenstein monster — robbing a grave, stealing a brain, chopping up the body — and then giving up before you let lightning tickle that sonofabitch to life. The true author finishes what he begins. That’s what separates you from the dead-beats, from the talkers, from the dilettantes.
Need ideas for your novel or screenplay? Try consequences mapping
A nice, simple twist on mind-mapping. Actually helped me out with a sticking point on a plot I was working out this week.
Science and nature
Don’t have sex with a time-travelling sea monkey
Not only does this feature one of the best titles I’ve ever seen (I want it on a t-shirt), this article from Wired is also absolutely fascinating. People have said time-travelling is dangerous for years. Now we know why…
The Top Ten Deadliest Animals of Our Evolutionary Past
Who doesn’t love a good predator? I must admit I clicked on the link thinking this’ll be full of strange, exotic killers, but it’s an interesting reminder that out in the wild there are plenty of creatures who could cause us serious damage. As writer Rob Dunn says:
Even where we have beaten back our ancestral predators, we bear their mark. Our brains are wired for fight and flight because of predators. We are anxious. We readily fear what used to threaten us, such as snakes. We are who we were, but more so than that, we are what we wanted to escape. Our first words may have been uttered to warn our family of cats, snakes or eagles. Even our screams, those wordless sounds we make when we are afraid, are an echo of the ghosts of our pasts. Whether we notice or not, our bodies remember those days in which the wolf in Grandma’s bed may really have been a wolf; they remember the species we ran from, screaming as we tried to flee.
General weirdness
Man Ships Himself Across the Country in a Box While Gaming Online
He wouldn’t have tried this if he was relying on the Royal Mail!
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