November is here, and you can be sure that your very own Rika is spending many hours typing out her… interesting plot that includes segway chase scenes, herds of elephants, and a box. A square box.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? NaNoWriMo, of course! Read about it here.

Rika has put together a little toolbox for everyone trying to win National Novel Writing Month, aptly named, “The Nearby Future’s NaNoWriMo Toolbox”

Note: I still have to create pages and find the links for all of the stuff with a strikethrough.

• The desktop calendar. What better motivates you than a witty calendar reminding you that 50,000 words won’t write itself? [Click here for a ton]

• Random Generators Source. Don’t name your supporting characters Bill and Sally. Go to the random name generator and computer will name them for you! Click here for a full list of Rika’s favorite generators! (Plot, characters, conflicts, loglines… there is a generator for everything.)

• Creative search engines. Google is for the non-artistic types. Google Loco is such a great search engine, you don’t even have to know what your searching for! The Mood Swings search engine is great for everyone… convicts with severe emotional problems, people who feel like trespassing on government property, or writers.

• Dictionaries. We all know that writers love words, which means they love dictionaries. Rika has about 10 dictionaries, and is constantly looking through the library’s encyclopedias and other reference books. (Even the online ones!) I don’t give a flying fig newton for those, but I guess writers do. Here are a couple of Rika’s favorite online ones.

• The radio. Not just any radio, but www.pandora.com radio. It’s a free, customizable, no-annoying-DJ ranting about his wedding last weekend and it’s in high quality. And it’s Calister F. Wells approved. (Rika likes it because it’s a good source of ‘inspiration’.)

• Other websites. Rika has this strange love of Yahoo! Answers saying that “It’s the only website where I can put people and their problems into my novel without them knowing!” I think that being a writer is being a borderline stalker.

So there you have it, all of you people who are going to be writing for a whole month (or at least saying you are), now you’re one step closer to ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo.

-Calister F. Wells

I’m a supporter of the McCain/Palin ticket because of one issue: life. I’m pro-life because I agree with the saying “It’s a child, not a choice.” I don’t give a flying fig newton about their other issues because at this point it’s becoming harder and harder for the government to fix the mess our world is in. I don’t believe any ideas will be able to change our current problem.

Even though I care about only one issue, I decided to do research on some of the other issues John McCain is supporting… in the form of a video!

The day we swap our tree-eating newspapers and magazines for a sleek, colorful e-reader will be a fine day indeed, and not only for environmentalists!

The bad news? It will be awhile yet. Although new e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader are fancy, they are still bulky pieces of metal that can’t fully step in and dominate the Sunday morning paper.

The three top problems of these gadgets are:

1. Most e-newspapers aren’t in full color
2. Takes too long to load
3. Not interactive enough

Liquavista is working to create LCD displays in full color using a process called electrowetting, and other companies are trying to get their products up to the standards already set.
I’ll keep you posted on this latest development!

-Rika

We all know this time was going to come: when even something you witness with your own eyes could be altered and changed until it was no longer the truth.

Photo editors and video editing programs are making lying in plain sight a whole lot easier- and with the growing power placed in the hands of the editors, a question of ethics is brought up. Is it right to twist what is real to turn it into something appealing to the eye or comedic.

When this argument comes up, airbrushing is brought to the table, too. Airbrushing photos in magazines to add superficial beauty to celebrities is argued to be a demeaning force in teen girl’s lives. Is it fair to give them something unrealistic that they set their standards to? With an already harsh, judging High School atmosphere and crazy hormones, adding seemingly flawless celebrities is not helping their self esteem.

Although editing videos frame by frame to alter images is expensive, it is done. Once again, questions are drawn as videos are edited in such ways that are taking things out of context.

What do you think about these questionable techniques? Should we let the media continue to lie in plain sight without consequence, or should we put in place some law that has to let the reader or viewer know if the images are altered?

~Rika