If you live in a large swath of northern Cali you can electronically check out books from the NCDL, most of which are Protected PDF, and read them on devices such as an iPad. It’s simple, just follow these 7 easy steps 0. Completely disregard anything the site says about software. In particular, don’t bother [...]
I won an iPad in a contest earlier this year, and its recent addition to my desk has caused all kinds of havoc. Still, a good problem to have. Still, there’s a critical point where number of screens per square meter of desk exceeds some threshold and becomes unmanageable. Food on my desk at this [...]
For better or worse, I’m a messy-desk type of person. Periodically, the mess escalates into a sort of info-singularity and I have a purge/cleaning session, but for the most part clutter stays proportional to productivity. So here’s what’s on my desk right now, that is, aside from the stuff that’s supposed to be there: Food: [...]
I attended all three days of Potlatch 20 last weekend, and I had a blast. The high point is a chance to hang out with a large room full of very smart people. The readings were great, including Nebula nominees Vylar Kaftan and Rachel Swirsky, and I got to put faces to many names that [...]
I had a sleep-deprivation induced moment of clarity this weekend, and the idea wouldn’t go away, so here it is: The Big Bang Theory, speaking of the TV series, not the cosmological model, is an elaborate creation myth. Let me explain. One would be forgiven for thinking the theme of the show was geeks vs. [...]
Why 14 months? Because numbers are arbitrary, and there’s a better beginning, middle, and end this way. The primary drawback of my choice of writing as an avocation is that on top of a sedentary, computer-centric work day of 8-10 hours, I throw on a few more hours of the same. There’s a serious risk [...]
Quite a wrought sentence from this article. We very rarely bloviate, although there are often exceptions to that rule. Speaking on behalf of tech journalists, the author clames they “very rarely” bloviate, as long as one overlooks “often exceptions”. Using weasel words is bad enough, but here they’re canceling each other out. In bloviating about bloviation, the [...]
The great Carl Sagan famously popularized the saying: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I’ve always disliked that saying. It was intended as a shout-out to objectivity, rationalism, and healthy skepticism, but it has the opposite effect for me. Any writer will tell you that overuse of adjectives will actually weaken the point the writer is trying [...]
Well, I crossed the 50 kiloword mark, and in NaNoWriMo terms, that means success. How this was the same as previous NaNos: I’m thrilled with my results. This is like interval training for writers, and I cranked out lots of words. Many of them crap, but some good stuff buried within. Every time I do [...]
The short piece I wrote at VP is now making the rounds. I ended up making quite a few changes based on some excellent feedback: new title, new POV, new focus, and entirely new first act. I’ve never been good at revision, so I take this as a sign that I might have actually learned [...]