Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, movies | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Highlander, jim downey, video, Wikipedia
Man, that is so weird.
I just spent a chunk of time reviewing a bunch of short video clips we’ve been making over the last couple of months, in preparation for putting together some promotional videos for a series of bookbinding & conservation workshops I’m going to offer.
Intentionally, all the clips are close-ups of my hands doing different conservation techniques on actual projects. They’re not intended to be instructional, just illustrative of the things I will be teaching.
But it was so very weird to see my hands working like that, and from a different, disembodied perspective. Always, when I am doing conservation work, I am not at all focused on what my hands look like — I’m entirely focused on doing the specific task correctly.
And … well, this is going to sound a little self-promoting, and I apologize for that … it was just cool to see how magical the work is. My hands are moving with certainty and deliberation, the kind of self-confidence which comes from decades of experience. And the repairs just … happen. Right there before your eyes. It’s just plain cool. I never see things from that perspective.
Once I have the ability to transfer the video from the camera to the computer, I’ll put up a full clip for people to see. But I just wanted to share the odd experience while it was fresh.
Jim Downey
*With apologies to Mr. MacLeod.
Filed under: Book Conservation, Humor, movies | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Fifty shades, humor, jim downey, movies
Sorry — saw this in the press this morning just after hearing an ad for the movie, and couldn’t resist.
But I assure you that full consent was negotiated in advance.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Privacy, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, Her Final Year, humor, introvert, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, literature, Monty Python, movies, privacy, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, This I Believe, violence, writing
Today’s the official Third Anniversary for the publication of Communion of Dreams, and in celebration, you can download the Kindle edition today for free! Who doesn’t like free? I mean, yeah, sure, if someone walks up to you and offers you a free punch in the nose, you might not like it, but other than that …
Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. I was honestly surprised when I looked and saw that the last blog entry was ten days ago. I haven’t been ill, or traveling, or anything. But after I recorded the essay for “This I Believe” I was feeling very … quiet. As I explained to a friend:
It may be hard to understand, and I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but it (recording the essay) was actually a very hard thing for me to do. It wasn’t just any essay or promotional piece I’d written, not like doing interviews or anything. The essay was powerful because of the emotions behind it — I’m certain that’s why it has resonated for people. But that same source of power cuts very deep for me. Particularly after the stuff last month, it took a hell of a lot for me to come to terms with it all again, and to do so in such a public fashion.
You probably wouldn’t think so from reading this blog (or the book which came out of it), but I am actually a very private and introverted person by nature. My writing has always been a way for me to push myself out of my comfort zone, to force myself to be somewhat more public, more sharing. And it’s worked. Mostly. But there are still times when I just need to withdraw, to recover my energy and self-confidence. This last week+ has been one of those times.
Thanks for understanding. Now, go download that book if you haven’t already.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ad Astra, Amazon, Ansari X Prize, Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, Brave New World, Comics, Connections, Faith healing, Feedback, General Musings, Health, Humor, ISS, Kindle, Man Conquers Space, Marketing, movies, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, tech, Travel, Violence, Wales | Tags: Amazon, Annie Wilcox, art, Atlas Obscura, blogging, Brian Merchant, Charles Fishman, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, health, humor, jim downey, JPL, Kindle, literature, Medium, Motherboard, movies, NASA, Patrick Modiano, Pentre Ifan, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Susan M. Toy, technology, The Atlantic, The Independent, Tomas Jivanda, travel, Wales, Waylon Strickland, writing, xkcd
A mix of little things, playing catch-up for the last couple of weeks …
Why catch-up? Well, this might explain why I took a break for a while there.
And we’re off …
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First thing, thanks to all who downloaded Communion of Dreams over the weekend, or helped to spread the word about it. There were a total of 693 downloads worldwide — and that includes various European portals, as well as Canada, India, and Japan! Pretty cool.
For those who have gotten the book, once you have a chance to read it please take a few moments to review it on Amazon or elsewhere – it really does help, and as I am finishing up writing St Cybi’s Well the feedback is most welcome.
* * *
A long, but quite good, read about the value of the ISS: 5,200 Days in Space
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And a fun bit of perspective from xkcd about getting there:
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Some great images from one of the sites I’ve mentioned here before: Pentre Ifan
Petre Ifan is a haunting burial stack that stands in a verdant Welsh field as one of the most complete and dramatic stone dolmens still found anywhere on the planet.
* * *
Wow.
Go see the full size image and explanation of the science. Worth it.
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An excellent read by an old and dear friend: There’s an App for That: Cancer in the Modern Age
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And another excellent read, all in all. But this paragraph is so painfully true:
“Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge, but to keep going. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.”
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Any others to add? The 10 Sci-Fi Films That Defined 2014
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Of course, reading is always better for you: Brain function ‘boosted for days after reading a novel’
See? I’m actually making you SMARTER! Keep that in mind when you write a review, will ya?
* * *
And that’s enough for now. I need to get back to my “strange and solitary activity”.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Arthur C. Clarke, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, H. G. Wells, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, movies, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aberystwyth University, Aeon magazine, Amazon, Arthur C. Clarke, blogging, Communion of Dreams, feedback, futurism, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Iwan Rhys Morus, jim downey, Kindle, literature, movies, optimism, paleo-future, predictions, reviews, Robert A. Heinlein, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Victorian, Wales, writing
A very insightful essay into the role which speculative fiction played in the Victorian era, and how it is still echoed in our fiction today: Future perfect Social progress, high-speed transport and electricity everywhere – how the Victorians invented the future
Here’s an excerpt, but the whole thing is very much worth reading:
It’s easy to pick and choose when reading this sort of future history from the privileged vantage point of now – to celebrate the predictive hits and snigger at the misses (Wells thought air travel would never catch on, for example); but what’s still striking throughout these books is Wells’s insistence that particular technologies (such as the railways) generated particular sorts of society, and that when those technologies were replaced (as railways would be by what he called the ‘motor truck’ and the ‘motor carriage’), society would need replacing also.
It makes sense to read much contemporary futurism in this way too: as a new efflorescence of this Victorian tradition. Until a few years ago, I would have said that this way of using technology to imagine the future was irrecoverably dead, since it depended on our inheritance of a Victorian optimism, expressed as faith in progress and improvement as realisable individual and collective goals. That optimism was still there in the science fiction of Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, but it fizzled out in the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, we’ve been watching the future in the deadly Terminator franchise, rather than in hopeful film such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The coupling of technological progress and social evolution that the Victorians inaugurated and took for granted no longer seemed appealing.
I think this is very much why many people find that Communion of Dreams seems to fit in so well with the style of SF from the 1950s and 60s — in spite of being set in a post-apocalyptic world, there is an … optimism … and a sense of wonder which runs through it (which was very deliberate on my part). As noted in a recent Amazon review*:
James Downey has created a novel that compares favorably with the old masters of science fiction.
Our universe would be a better place were it more like the one he has imagined and written about so eloquently.
Anyway, go read the Aeon essay by (who happens to be a professor at Aberystwyth University in Wales — no, I did not make this up).
Jim Downey
*Oh, there’s another new review up I haven’t mentioned.
Filed under: Blade Runner, Humor, movies, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Space, Travel, YouTube | Tags: Blade Runner, blogging, humor, jim downey, Michael Shanks, movies, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, space, Time Trap, time travel, video, www youtube
… that Ridley Scott was going to spend on making a bad sequel to Blade Runner and give it to the director of this brilliant and funny little short, and see what he comes up with. I mean, no matter what, even if he just wastes it all on bad booze and worse food, and doesn’t make another movie for the rest of his life, we’d *still* come out ahead.
Seriously. Have a good laugh:
Jim Downey
