Month: December 2009

Best Of Lists

Generally speaking I hate this time of year on the Internet–I am so tired of year-end wrapups, best of lists, etc. It’s even worst this year, since it’s also the end of a decade. Enough with the lists. Having said that, I did see one list that actually got my attention: Paul Witcover‘s list of his ten favourite F/SF novels… Read more →

A Note On Scanning

I should mention, as a very long aside, that I almost couldn’t scan those picture for that last post. When I left my old job I had to return all the corporate hardware–which meant all the machines that were even vaguely current in my house. Part of what I’ve been doing over the last few days is dragging some ancient… Read more →

Bachelors, Playboy, Cartoons

Since the girls are gone for a couple of days, I am in Unemployed-Until-January Bachelor mode today. This means that I slept in, and that upon waking I was allowed to relish the rare opportunity to lie about in bed and read something without needing to rush off to something or other. Since it is a mini-bachelor holiday, the idea… Read more →

Aside

Is there really still no tool for editing “story” as opposed to text? Reading (awesome) SF author Karl Schroeder‘s tweets today lamenting the lack of such a thing (in the wake of losing a document) makes me wonder why it is we don’t have it… The tweets in question: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

No Fear Of The Dreaded Two-Day-er

It’s weird–or maybe not so weird, really–but reading certain news items my reactions are almost entirely filtered through my years of training as a science fiction reader. Sometimes I read the story and suddenly see all kinds of comparisons between some real world event and things I’ve read–either direct connections, or analogies. Sometimes I read something and can’t help but… Read more →

Religion, Geography, Scenery

I’ve spent some time thinking about religion today–primarily as part of working on my argument that Christmas as practiced in North America is essentially a secular holiday…with more pagan trappings than Christian ones among the commonly observed rituals, etc., and thus something I can celebrate non-hypocritcally. So I was already primed to appreciate the new map at Lapham’s Quaterly (for… Read more →

Aside

I shall very shortly have to get Ontario plates to replace the NS ones. I’m thinking it’s time for personalized plates. I have a couple of ideas for things that might be unused, but I should have some backups just in case. Suggestions?

Anything interesting happen today?

Well, how about this: I quit my job. Actually, that’s not strictly speaking true–last Thursday I gave my two weeks notice, and while I am technically employed (and getting paid) through the end of that period, today I was “released”. In corporate-speak this means: don’t come in any more–now that you’re not on the team, we don’t want you to… Read more →

Aside

Worth 1000 words

When The Black Wind Blows

I’ve been very busy the last few days, with a combination of post-moving stuff (hey, look, we’re close to family now, and it’s the holidays), and with some important changes at work (on which I shall write a very journal-y entry shortly). Which explains why I haven’t already written about an utterly unacceptable, and miserably predictable, incident. Quite a bit’s… Read more →

Even Deeper Field

You may recall that I was pretty seriously geeked a while back by the implications of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Well, they’ve taken a new image, using infrared light this time, which lets them see even deeper. There is information, images, videos, and more about the newly release survey at the Hubble site. Read more →

Aside

I don’t know, the story doesn’t make me think aliens or secret rockets… it makes me think UZUMAKI!

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.