I follow the online journals of a lot of authors. One of them is Poppy Z. Brite, onetime wunderkind of the flash horror set, but lately the author of some really excellent New Orleans food porn novels. I really didn’t have much use for her early horror works, but both Liquor and Prime were excellent, both at portraying “the life”… Read more →
Year: 2006
Don’t bring your anti-science baloney around here…
…or we’ll shoot your ass off! OK, maybe that’s not quite what they’re saying, but the news is out that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, repository of all kinds of cool science, is protected by a bank of guns that can shoot 66 rounds a second over a radius of a mile! The guns, which the lab unveiled to much… Read more →
Hey, get a cool book for free
OK, short notice, I know, but I should point you guys at this: Martha Wells: One more reminder about the Free Book contest I’m giving away ten signed paperback copies of The Wizard Hunters, and the deadline for entry is February 15 (Wednesday). Right now there are 51 entries, so the chances aren’t bad. If you know of anybody who… Read more →
She’s totally going to stab you in your sleep!
If you ever go to a house and see those pictures on the wall: do not stay the night. Read more →
Congratulations Iron Doug!
I have just found out that my friend Iron Doug Hern was promoted to a Vice President position at Sybase last month. Through my various spies and sources I was able to read the information from the internal release about it. Here’s a little bit: Doug joined Sybase in April 1994 and previously held the position of Sr. Director of… Read more →
Tinfoil Hat Time
I see that a lot of people are getting a bit scared when looking at this. Me, I see nothing scary there (and I’m tinfoil-hat guy) except that clipboard item, and I don’t use IE, so that doesn’t apply to me. Of course, if you didn’t already know that all this information was available to servers you contact, you might… Read more →
Karma, Earl-stylee
Remember last week when Myers, over at Pharyngula, posted about the news that a Bush admin flunky was telling NASA not to refer to the Big Bang, unless they stickered it with “only a theory, ID possible”? His post included this bit: Deutsch is 24 years old, having just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism a few years ago.… Read more →
Is there **ANYBODY** surprised by this?
Seriously. Anybody? Lewis “Scooter” Libby testified that leak was authorized – Wikinews According to federal prosecutors, Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, told a grand jury that his superiors authorized him to disclose to reporters information from the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate. Portions of the report included still-classified information on Iraqi weapons… Read more →
Yay us! (plus some extra ‘Yay me!’)
I don’t talk much about my job on here, since A) most people wouldn’t get it, and B) I don’t want to get fired. However, Forrester Research just released their big report on the sector I work in, “The Forrester Wave: User Account Provisioning, Q1 2006″, and it’s pretty snazzy for us. Here’s a snippet of the press release about… Read more →
Catching up with the House Of Illness
OK, here’s the short version: I stayed out the week in Boston, despite wishing I could have gone to North Bay. It was the Australians and Israelis (not to mention Californians, and a couple of ex-Southern Midwesterners) that had come to Boston to meet with me that decided things. Read more →
I guess I won’t oversleep…
I have just come back into the hotel, at 7AM, after spending around 45 minutes shivering in the early morning chill. I am told that this fire alarm was prompted by an actual fire in the hotel, but there are no signs of it in the wing I am in. A fire alarm is a very confusing thing as 6:15. Read more →
R.I.P. Gerry Winch
I spent a long time trying to think what story I would tell to celebrate Gerry Winch. After spending half my time growing up at his house I’ve got a lot of stories. I thought about telling the story of the time Gerry taught me to always read the labels on my food, by offering me a “pickle” from a… Read more →
What a shitty day…
So, I’m in Boston now. Well, Westborough technically. I knew I was going to have to be here Mon-Th this week, and I decided to drive down this time. My theory was that while I want to minimize time away from Sarah (which would suggest that I should fly) that I would instead elect to drive home on Friday, taking… Read more →
Carsten Knox: Informing The Nation
I have previously mentioned my freelance journalist pal Carsten Knox (who, in addition to being a journalist is also a charter member of the HGPA). Well, today Carsten spent some time on the CBC Radio program Freestyle educating the nation (or at least the CBC‘s national audience) about a couple of “indie” films that have just come to DVD. That’s… Read more →
The slow inexorable conquest…
I’ve doing a little playing around with the information available at The Surname Profiler Project. The project describes itself as: A recent research project based at University College London (UCL) has investigated the distribution of surnames in Great Britain, both current and historic, in order to understand patterns of regional economic development, population movement and cultural identity. This website allows… Read more →
