J. Timothy King’s Blog

Maybe This Explains My Family Connections

Ran across this cute little item, thanks to Technorati. A fictional, Hogwarts roleplaying character named Lucy King:

FATHER: Rupert Timothy King (Gryff)- Rupert is a Healer at St. Mungo’s, and is very well regarded for his work in reversing accidental charms…

(Read more…)

How Google Can Prove Anything With Statistics

First of all, I don’t know that Google is really trying to pull one over on its users. This could just be the work of some clueless PR guy.

On the Official Google Blog today, Brad Taylor, a “Spam Czar” at Google, talked about how Gmail filters more spam now than ever. He links to a Spam explained page at Gmail, and includes the graph shown there. As you can see, the graph has two lines on it. The top, orange, ascending line represents the growing amount of spam in circulation. The bottom, blue, descending line represents the declining amount of spam in Gmail users’ inboxes. The caption reinforces this perception, saying, “As the amount of spam has increased, Gmail users have received less of it in their inboxes, reporting a rate less than 1%.”

The thing is, if you look closely, you’ll see that this is not what the numbers say! (Read more…)

Aborted Works in Progress (and a Friday Snippet)

One of the things that has struck me recently is the sheer number of aborted works-in-progress from my past. It feels really strange, now that I’m completing a whole story every 5 weeks, and that’s a lazy pace. Some of these works-in-progress I aborted because I lost interest. Others were just beyond my skills at the time. Many of them grew in scope until they were projects too large for me to fit into my schedule. Of course, having recently reprioritized slightly, it’s much easier to find time to write. So maybe I’ll be able to complete some of these, because there are a few I’d really like to complete. (Read more…)

Friday Snippet: Pine

For this week’s Friday Snippet, I’d like to share a short-short story I wrote a couple years ago, entitled “Pine.” It was a writing exercise for the now-defunct Alchera Project, inspired by a photo of a certain house. The take-away: Never underestimate where a story might come from. They’re everywhere.

Enjoy!
-TimK

P.S. If you came here through a “Friday Snippets” meme link, expecting another chapter of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, I am still posting these at the Abe’s Turn site. Click here to read the latest episode..

Pine

Each morning Jace walked by her house on his way to school. Each afternoon he passed it on his way home. Sometimes, he would also pass at other times. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of the bright-faced girl with wavy blonde locks. She sat under the two conifers that towered overhead. But as far as he knew, she never noticed him.

(Read more…)

Changes: Fading Out of the Software Business

I’ve been an idiot.

I’ve moved this blog to a new domain, blog.JTimothyKing.com. (That’s not how I’ve been an idiot.) And I’m changing the focus, because the focus of my life has been changing. The fact that it has been changing for the past 2 years but I haven’t acted on it– That’s how I’ve been an idiot.

Actually, I did act on it… kinda. But I didn’t really have a vision for where I wanted to go. Or more accurately, I didn’t truly believe my vision was possible. And so I let my efforts get confused. On the one hand, I was doing what I believed I should be doing to get ahead. On the other hand, I was doing what I really enjoyed. And while I truly believed the two could be integrated, I never acted to integrate them. Because I didn’t truly believe what I wanted was possible… I’m babbling. Let me clarify. (Read more…)

I’m so Pissed at RCN

There’s an object lesson in this. Bear with me, and I’ll explain.

First of all, I’ve been looking forward to this for a week, ever since I noticed that it was going to be on TV. As you may recall, I’m a huge fan of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work. Well, Amy got started in her career by working on Roseanne, back in the day. And Oxygen is running a whole block of episodes today, including a number that Amy had written. So I’ve been planning for a over a week to sit down and turn on Oxygen and catch up on email and such. But… (Read more…)

Life’s Too Short for the Wrong Job

Alex Kjerulf posted a bunch of photos of a bunch of ads for a German job-ad site. The concept is: What if every vending machine had a wage slave inside doing all the actual work? The tag line is “Life’s too short for the wrong job.” Click here to see the ads.

-TimK