¿quién coño es cyberseraphic?

Welcome to the new design! If you’re reading this through a syndicated feed such RSS, Facebook or whatever, then head on over to cyberseraphic.com and let me know what you think!

I’ve been maintaining cyberseraphic for nearly 6 years now – an eternity in Internet years, which are kind of like dog years but at a much higher ratio; long enough that some of my pages attract a slow but steady stream of traffic through search results.

As you do, I once put cyberseraphic into a Google search, and was interested to see a result where somebody on a Spanish blog was asking “¿quién coño es cyberseraphic?” which translates as “who the hell is cyberseraphic?” From what I can gather, the free hosting service I used to use had a DNS problem, and one of the blog’s followers noticed that my site was showing up instead of his. The blogger made some pithy remark about how unfortunate it was that he had to play the part of a Christian fundamentalist for the 2 days that it takes for a DNS change to propagate! This just goes to show that the old “Crosses at Golgotha” image was doing me no favours, and that cyberseraphic was sorely in need of a redesign, one which better reflects who I am.

The first thing I wanted to do was to create a logo, so I sat down and wrote out a bunch of things that I thought describe me (sorry they’re upside down and partially chopped off in the scan), and a few other thoughts on the “concept” of cyberseraphic, then started brainstorming various designs:

 

You can see that I was leaning pretty strongly towards the “mouse with halo tail” concept. I was also adamant about having wings in there – I really like wings – so the next set of sketches set out to refine that idea:

 

The one in the top-right corner was pretty much the end result. The concept was that the wings would double as motion trails, giving the logo some movement. I then asked a good (and talented) friend of mine to help with the final execution, and gave him the unenviable task of trying to make it not look like a penis. He was also the smart cookie who let me know that the mouse tail doesn’t actually come out of the back of the mouse, but the front :-) He was also kind enough to suggest some typography for the name as well. Maybe it’s the symmetry of the design, but this vertical lock-up works better than the horizontal one:

So that’s the logo. I’ll do a post about the other stuff tomorrow.

I heart blogging

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about my “brand” lately. Besides the fact that cyberseraphic is well overdue for a redesign (it’s in the works; I’ve even commissioned artwork!) I’ve had to do a bit of soul searching to understand what this blog is actually for.

I explained in a previous post that one of the frustrations is knowing exactly what the scope of this blog should be. Am I “lifestreaming”? Am I sharing some quirky aspect of myself, or am I trying to find fame and fortune through building up a large group of followers? In the end, I think it’s probably none of the above. I’m just writing because my brain is overflowing with all kinds of information, and blogging is the best medium to receive it. So much so that I’m now actively maintaining 3 blogs: this, THRIFTerrific and the recently launched GeekReads. I’m cranking out at least a-post-a-week and still have enough topics in the backlog to last me a good part of the rest of the year.

Granted, we’ll see what happens after I’ve worked through that backlog (although of course new ideas constantly come up, just not at the same rate as when the concept was new and minty fresh). But I’m still pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to write when the themes are narrow and focused.

On a separate but related note, I’m very excited about some of the revelations that I’ve received in regards to the Social Media space, and I have a few exciting projects lined up which I hope to have the pleasure of announcing here one day, although much depends on the other project collaborators.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There’s a scene in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that I feel suitably captures the state of the Transformers franchise after the release of this film: where a badly injured Jetfire sacrifices himself so that a recently resurrected, but weakened Optimus Prime can pillage his body parts to thwart the Fallen.

Since the 80’s, several attempts have been made to restore the Transformers concept back to its former glory, with new additions to the franchise such as Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Armada, Energon and most recently, Transformers: Animated. But sadly, none of them were able to capture the imagination of the newer generations of kids who hadn’t grown up knowing the awesomeness of Optimus Prime. Then came the 2007 movie by Michael Bay, a fairly successful resurrection of the franchise. It wasn’t as strong as it could have been, but it was adequate to rally the fans and get them behind the potential of a live action version.

The second movie though, is a big, loud, lumbering beast, cobbled together by using scraps of mythology from the various franchises and attaching them to the freshly resurrected corpse, in the hope of thwarting the great apathy towards transforming robots. Therein lies a great irony: in their attempt to bring back Transformers, the writers have turned the franchise into something that isn’t about transforming robots any more, and there’s no transforming back. The most disappointing part about that is that the writers are Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who came up with the first movie, and were also responsible for the wildly successful Star Trek reboot. How did two such seemingly talented writers get it so very, very wrong?

Still, the Transformers universe is rich with potential, and as a fan I can only hope that the inevitable sequel won’t try to tempt fate by trying to be another successful failure.

Non-rhyming verse

What is it about rhyme and rhythm which makes it stick in our minds so much more than poetry that doesn’t? Maybe the human mind is nothing if not a glorified pattern matching machine…

Here’s an as-yet-untitled poem from my archives, that doesn’t rhyme:

What is this thing in my mind
That permeates all my thoughts?

What is this thing in my heart
That makes it hurt when you’re not around?

What is this thing in my eye
That sparkles when I’m looking at you?

What is this thing in my soul
That rips open my emotions and betrays them to you?

What is this thing, and where did it come from?

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

As somebody that saw the movie before reading the book, it came as a bit of a shock to find that the two have very little in common with each other – the movie seems to be mostly new material. But in a strange way, it is very much in keeping with the spirit of Asimov’s work, which is a collection of short stories exploring the philosophical implications of The 3 Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The book is a series of short stories, loosely connected by a plot (if you could call it that) involving the character of Dr. Susan Calvin, who does not appear as a character in the short stories until about a third of the way in.

Dr. Calvin’s passion is robots, and she cares about them much more than she cares for humans. I wonder if Asimov’s personality was similar to Dr. Calvin’s, because he describes robots with greater attention and more passion than he does his human characters. This could have been a failing, but the strength of the book lies in the sheer inventiveness of the philosophy and the scenarios which Asimov creates to present them, without which he could very easily be just another sci-fi hack who uses lots of techno-babble to confound the reader.

So, back to the movie, it’s a telling sign of the strength of the idea that Asimov came up with, and the brilliance in the way that he communicated it, that the writers for the movie were able to come up with something original and yet so faithful to source material.

One other thing that the book shows is that it’s possible to write a larger work by writing several smaller and loosely related works, then tying them together with a narrative later on.

Verdict: not one of my favourites, but compelling argument that the strength of idea can help an author rise above mediocrity.

—-

Buy I, Robot, by Isaac Asmov

P.S. You may be wondering why I’m suddenly doing book reviews.

I’m sure that an important part of the writing process is reading, and seeing how other authors write, so my reviews will always have a slightly “authorly” bent to them, with an aim of looking at the writing styles and the motivations of the author. With any luck this will help me, and hopefully you as well, to discover what it takes to be a successful writer.