2019-02-15T18:08:00.543331
2019-02-14T15:13:49.336957
2019-02-13T15:36:34.830105
I'm signed up to lecture some newbie puzzle-writer nerds about how to work with an editor when writing puzzles.
I know lots of folks have trouble letting someone else see their work before it's polished.
I can give advice that works for me on getting past that… but I've noticed that I'm generally less wired for shame-in-rough-work than most folks. My techniques probably don't work for everyone.
Like, the same attitude that caused me to say "Sure, I will speak in public. Why wouldn't I?" suggests that for this one aspect of working with an editor, I'm ⅔ blind to the problem. Also the same attitude that means I'm probably going to leave that extraneous "Like" at the start of this paragraph when I publish this here blog post, yep.
So… what helps? What do you tell yourself? When it comes to puzzles, I say "Here are three rough ideas. Which one should I turn into a puzzle?" It works for me, but I bet for some folks that's three times as hard as saying "Here is one rough idea."
If you don't want to post your rough, unpolished answer out here on some public web page, you can mail me at lahosken at gmail dot com or contact me however. If you don't want to even email me your unpolished answer… c'mon, I obviously don't know what you should do about that. Help me out, would you?
2019-02-07T18:30:37.565060
2019-02-06T14:28:24.118818
Playin' with puzzletron. I guess when your puzzlehunt has more than 100 puzzles, you want something more sophisticated than a spreadsheet to keep track of 'em.
2019-02-05T17:48:44.452714
2019-01-31T14:03:16.631687
It's an autobiography by Seymour Hersh, who reported on (among other things) the My Lai massacre, Watergate, and Abu Ghraib.
There's an important lesson for soldiers in this book. If an officer orders you to do something illegal, that probably doesn't mean that they're desperate to accomplish some goal vital to our nation. "We will disavow all knowledge" isn't cool. They probably don't need you to take extreme measures to save the day. They're probably just taking sloppy shortcuts, hoping to get promoted before anyone figures out what you did. Oh yeah, and part of their strategy to buy time for that "before anyone figures out" part: they'll throw you under the bus if investigators show up.
The Vietnam war was going poorly for the USA. But the press pool working at the Pentagon didn't know it—they were so glad for "access" to Pentagon reports that they passed those reports along uncritically. Hersh followed up on rumors of things going poorly, followed up on rumors of an atrocity. And thus he turned up some ugly truths. E.g., he found out about the My Lai massacre, which was pretty horrible. And he found out about the officers who put those massacre-ing soldiers into that situation and… and there are reasons you don't put soldiers into that kind of situation and we know this and yet. And yet. Ugh. So there was a cover-up, ostensibly to protect the soldiers, but really to protect those officers. And Hersh navigated this tragic mire.
And there's more in this vein.
Hersh mentions that he didn't want to tell other reporters about his investigation methods because he wanted to keep getting scoops. But with the benefit of hindsight, you want to tell him: There were plenty of scoops for every reporter thinking of investigating wrongdoing by the Vietnam-war-era Pentagon.
This book isn't an uplifting chuckle. But it's interesting if you have a strong stomach… and maybe some lighter reading you can switch to when you need it.
2019-01-30T16:41:59.317761
2019-01-25T21:42:14.046978
2019-01-25T14:18:13.763376
Archives:
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019