There was a time in my life where if I “disappeared” off the Internet for two weeks, from my birthday through St. Patrick’s Day, it would have meant that I was on some sort of mad road trip across North America, having adventures and probably breaking a law or two. Not so this year. While I did ring in my… Read more →
Year: 2007
Food Porn From Melbourne
I’m going to interrupt the sight-seeing with some food porn from down under. I went out Wednesday with Rick, my new boss, for dinner at Pearl, a restaurant more-or-less across the street from the office. And wow, was that some good eating. Easily in the top five meals I’ve had. Here’s quotes from a review: “Awarded three hats in the… Read more →
Maroondah Reservoir
After seeing the animals yesterday, I spent some time at the Maroondah Reservoir park. It’s a lovely area, and you can climb up to the top of the dam to look out over the Maroondah Reservoir, which provides a lot of the water for Melbourne. It’s very apparent looking at the state of the reservoid, from atop the dam, that… Read more →
Stop The Koala Menace
Look at that thing. Feel the terror! Read more →
Melbourne
I made it. Total travel time from my door to the hotel door, approximately 60 hours. All of which I was awake for. So after this heroic journey, I rolled into the hotel, caught a shower and a change of clothes, and then went and worked a full day at the office. I am a steely-eyed missle man. (Apparently the… Read more →
Travel Notes
1) The sandwich shop in Heathrow, T3, Arrivals, is sorely mistaken about what constitutes a club sandwich. 2) Watching out the window as the plane come in to land in Hong Kong, on a clear sunny day is now my lifetime personal best “looking out an airplane window” experience. I’ve flown into every major airport in North America, and a… Read more →
And there was much rejoicing
Let’s have a big “Yeah baby!” for the Supreme Court, which today unanimously put the smack-down on a particularly egregious example of post-9/11 use of ridiculous police state legislation: the “security certificates”. Top court rules against security certificates The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the security certificate system used by the federal government to detain and deport foreign-born… Read more →
Horse Girls
So you’re a horse girl, he says, smiles as though we are somehow afflicted, somehow convergent with dark rutted fantasy. Yes, we are the ones who dream in pale sparrow grass, who tick our tongues at the sunfisher, climb on, barely breathing, knowing fear could fill a field, snap a spine like tinder. We ride bareback to watch the boys… Read more →
Not an auspicious beginning.
The bad: The plane meant to take me from Halifax to London apparently had some serious mechanical problems with the brakes, and they’re bringing a new plane in. The worse: This means the flight will be delayed at least three hours (I.e. they are now saying 2AM instead of 11PM.) The even worse: This means I will miss my connection… Read more →
Good books, free (Part 1)
To go along with the expensive limited editions and whatnot that I have been (and will be) talking about, I thought I should take a moment to point out some good books that you can get FOR FREE. For the science fictionally inclined among you, the first free book is Peter Watt‘s Blindsight: Available Free Here! Now, I have a… Read more →
It has kind of wedge shapes inside.
Do you know what this is the symbol for? Of course you do. It’s the symbol for radiation. Everyone in the West knows what that is, as part of the same popular culture osmosis (and occasionally target childhood education) that tells us that the skull and crossbones means poison, and the skeletal hand means acid, etc. Hell, there’s a Negativland… Read more →
The american electorate fears me!
Or, at least, fears people like me. (That image links to the source data, as well as a ton of other polling informationThe host site doesn’t let me link directly to this specific poll, so if you’re not reading this post on the day it was posted, you will need to scroll down to the section headed “USA Today/Gallup Poll.… Read more →
I am not ready for this.
Apparently it is 40+ degrees in Melbourne today. I am Canadian: I can’t deal with that. Forty below I know how to deal with. Man. Read more →
On Adaptations
Extracted from a lovely rantBy the way, I feel like that rant has nothing to do with me: I only read things I think I’ll enjoy, or am enjoying. I get almost no output from the Big Two, and what I do get tends to be from their boutique labels–and if I stop enjoying it, I stop buying it. at… Read more →
Small press books, bought and craved (Part 1)
Somedays it feels like a full-time job to keep up with all the interesting new releases from the various small presses, and by the various authors I feel the need to collect. Some other days, though, it’s just like Christmas. Today is one of those days. It started with a new email from Subterranean Press, announcing Ted Chiang‘s forthcoming book… Read more →
