I’ve been sick this week. Most of that time I was stuck in that annoying state where you’re too tired to actually work on anything productive yet not tired enough to be able to take a nap. To keep myself occupied, I surfed around TvTropes. TvTropes is just interesting enough to not be boring, yet light enough to read while brain-dead, making it ideal for reading while sick. It’s also a great place to stumble across great webcomics, anime, and webfiction. It’s how I discovered Misfile, my favorite webcomic, and Oku-sama wa mahou shoujo, an excellent anime.

On Monday TvTropes helped me again, leading me to the Whateley Academy stories. Imagine Hogwarts, but with superpowers instead of magic. This may sound like Xavier Academy. While there are some superficial similarities, it’s very different. Like Hogwarts, Whateley Academy has their Slytherin-type kids, and the Whateley stories focus on life at a boarding high school — the insecurities, the cliques, the mischief. The emphasis is on the characters and their interactions, not on battles, morality tales, or politics. Stories are generally written in first-person, making it easy to empathize with what the character is going through.

The Whateley Academy stories are set in a shared universe, where each author writes stories for one or two characters. For instance, Maggie Finson writes about Fey, a boy turned Faerie Mage, while Starwolf writes about Tennyo, who ended up with a body and powers similar to Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo. Each author brings something different to the table, preventing the cookie-cutter character syndrome that plagues so many anime series today.

Since all these characters are attending the same school (and, for the most part, are in the same dorm), the same events are sometimes described by multiple characters. For instance, during a fight, a character will narrate who she fought, and the problems she ran into, with occasional glimpses of what she saw her friends doing. In the end she may believe she was a hindrance to her friends. In a different story, one of her friends may describe what he was doing doing the same fight, and come out thinking about how his friend saved the day. Even simple things, like trips to town for shopping, are treated very different by each character, which is not surprising given their varied backgrounds.

In short, the world has been well-thought out, with a lot of attention to detail, and the characters feel authentic. As soon as you start reading them, you feel as if you’ve been transported to Whateley Academy, a place where the impossible is possible. I highly recommend them.

For another description of the Whateley Universe, please see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhateleyUniverse. The Whateley stories themselves, as well as discussion forums and chat rooms, are at http://www.crystalhall.org.

On Sunday Caroline, Mai, and I went to the Northern California RenFaire with some friends and their 3-year-old daughter. It was a beautiful day, with temperatures in the 80s — perfect for walking around the Faire.

This was the first time attending a RenFaire with small children; bringing them along changed the experience somewhat. We spent a lot more time walking around (because both of them were easier to manage when in a moving stroller) and less time watching shows (small children don’t have a lot of patience; who knew?). We did see the joust and several other smaller shows, though, and ran into some people I knew. Caroline and I had a really great time (and I think they did too). We left a bit earlier than I was hoping, but both kids were showing signs of being “done”, so it was time to go.

Of course, I brought my camera and took pictures. Because of the bright sunlight, the light was a bit harsh, but it’s hard to complain about such ideal weather for a RenFaire.

The rest are available at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/6034247_352fV.

Just when I thought the major music labels have begun to understand this new invention called the Internet, I read http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10047311-93.html. While it’s nice that they are finally selling music in most consumer’s preferred format (non-DRM’d MP3), I don’t understand why they are insisting on selling it to you on physical media that you have to buy at a store. Do I have to go to a bookstore to buy an ebook? Perhaps the music companies believe they are in the business of selling a physical product? Or maybe they’re trying to resurrect the concept of the album, making you buy nine tracks you don’t want in order to get the one track you do. According to Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/22/sandisk-major-labels-announce-slotmusic-microsd-cards-preloaded/), they even expect people to carry around metal binders full of microSD cards.

Perhaps retail stores are seeing the trend to legal digital downloads of music, and are beginning to feel like Blockbuster when Netflix took off? In that case, it’s the retail stores that are being shortsighted; there’s no reason for consumers to prefer to purchase digital content at physical stores.

Today Caroline, Mai, and I attended Oliver’s baptism. We have been good friends with his family for many years, and it was an honor to be invited to attend. This was the first baptism I’ve ever attended, which it made it fairly interesting to watch. I was happy that we were able to attend, even though we had to get up at 9am to be able to go.

Afterwards, we all went over to the family’s house for snacks. As usual, I brought my camera and took lots of pictures. At some point someone decided my fancy-looking camera setup (battery grip, flash bracket, etc) meant that I knew what I was doing, and so I ended up taking most of the group family shots as well. Little did they know that most of my photography experience is indoors, and that my outdoor photography still needs a bit of work. In the end, though, I think the pictures didn’t turn out too bad.

View more photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/5963798_ftGQE.

During our summer vacation, we drove around rural Missouri guided by an in-car GPS navigation system. As I listened to the directions from the nav system, I found myself wondering if GPS will obsolete most freeway road signs. Signs indicating the name of an exit or freeway will still be useful, but will we still need navigational signs that indicate how to get a specific town, park, or point of interest? My nav system tells me my exit is 15 miles ahead, so why do I care how many miles it is to Rolla? My nav system tells me where the nearest state park is and which exits have gas or fast food, so why should the highway department put up and maintain signs with that same info? (Obviously, businesses would still want to put up billboards, but that’s different — I’m talking about the official highway signs.)

You may be saying, “but not everyone has a GPS nav system”. That’s true, today.  Ten years ago most cars didn’t have CD players or air bags either; today most have them standard. In ten years will in-car nav systems be near-ubiquitous? Today excellent handheld GPS systems start around $150, and the price will almost certainly drop as they get more common.

A good historical reference may be the payphone. 15 years ago it would have been inconcievable to suggest that payphones would be killed by cellphones. Anyone raising the idea would be ridiculed: “What about people who don’t have cellphones?” “What if you need to make a call when your cellphone isn’t working?” “Payphones will always be cheaper than cellphones!” etc. Now, most people have cellphones, and payphones have died. Not everyone has a cellphone, and cellphones have a number of shortcomings, but in the end they took away enough business from payphones that it wasn’t worth maintaining them.

Likewise, in ten years will enough people be using navigation systems that the money currently used to put up and maintain signs be better spent elsewhere?

Every fall I create a themed calendar with photos taken during the year. This year, I took 12 photos from my week-long San Francisco visit in August, and created a huge (13.5″ x 19″) 2009 wall calendar on lulu.com.

Here are some of the photos in this year’s calendar:

To see all the photos in my calendar, please visit the 2009 San Francisco Calendar Photo Gallery. To order the calendar, please go the 2009 San Francisco Calendar order page on Lulu.com.

In the past, about a week before a dentist appointment my dentist’s office would call me to confirm. Because they would usually call at an inconvenient time, they usually ended up leaving me a voicemail message. When I got around to listening to my voicemail, they would inevitably be closed for the day. Then, for the next few days I would remember to call them too late in the day. Finally, about a day or two before the appointment I would remember to call them early enough. While not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, this twice a year hassle was an annoyance.

When my most recent appointment drew near, I was expecting to go through this hassle again, but I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of a phone call, I got a text message reminding me about the appointment. Even better, I could confirm the appointment by responding. And, just in case I sent the confirmation and forgot about it, about 2 hours before the appointment they sent me another reminder text message.

Not only did this change make the appointment confirmation process go much smoother for me, it’s a labor savings for the dentist’s office. Before, a receptionist would need to spend an hour or two calling people to confirm, and then handing callbacks; now with one click a receptionist can send the reminder messages to everyone, and replies are processed automatically.

There’s no major technological breakthrough here — automated text message send/receive systems have been around for a while, and so have patient appointment databases. Like with many innovations, the solution to the inconvenience of appointment reminders did not require new technology; it just needed someone to connect existing technologies in a new way.

On Saturday, I attended SacAnime, a medium-sized Anime convention in Sacramento. I had a great time (except for driving there and back), and got photos of many great cosplays.

You can see many more great cosplay photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/5850497_ozoHY.