I just got off the phone from a friend who needs to design a web page. I suggested that he do it himself. It seems anyone who is out of work fancies themselves a web page designer. I get asked quite often about designing web pages and the best way to go about it. Since I am a programmer and don’t care how a page looks, it is not like I am losing any business by helping these people.

Lately I have been steering people towards the FREE Microsoft Sharepoint Designer software. This is Microsoft’s replacement for Front Page, the software responsible for so many very bad websites. Sharepoint Designer is easy to use and those used to other MS products will be comfortable using its interface. It is also very powerful and will let more sophisticated users add all the tweaks and styles that they want.

Best, it is free, so everyone can have a copy and produce ugly webpages and then call me to write the back end software.

SharePoint Designer Home Page – Microsoft Office Online.

My Dad could be sarcastic, but he almost never used foul language. Other than that, I like this twitter feed. It reminds me of my Dad.

Justin (****mydadsays) on Twitter.

I’ve learned not to make too much out of new year’s resolutions. Last year I wanted to take some courses, but that was a bust. The course I did take was a total waste of time. I would like to take an evening computer course, so I will do some research over the next few weeks.

I have lots of projects that I want to do in the coming year, but I would work on these projects without having to make a resolution. I will be upgrading blogs, starting new websites and writing stories. I have a new Flip Ultra HD video cam and I want to record some tutorials using it.

In 2009, the weather was bad and I did not walk much. The bus commute made my schedule very rigid, so I did not get up early and walk. I want to start that up as soon as the weather starts to get better. In April I want to go to bed earlier and get up early enough to walk around the lake again. I liked that. If I don’t get up early, I will drive over there after work and walk, but either way I want to walk at least three miles a day this spring.

I’ll check on new year’s eve 2010 and see how I’ve done. 1) Walk. 2) Take a course. 3) Record Tutorials. 4) Follow up on new projects (Harp recording project and Robotic Website).

Odds are I will never get to any of these. I’ve had similar resolutions for as long as I have been writing them down.

I recently read a list of best fantasy series and I was surprised that they left out some of the best fantasy ever written.

I an not trying to say the books on the other list are bad, but they did leave out most of my favorites. I can only conclude that the blogger has not read all that much. We only agree on one series.

Here’s my alternate list.

10) The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
Very good series of Fantasy novels featuring rich settings, very real characters and (almost) believable world building.

9) The Fairy Books, by Andrew Lang
Like the Arthur romances, fairy tales are one of the main sources for modern fantasy. Lang has collected a wonderful assortment in his books.

8 ) The Once and Future King, by T. H. White
The Arthurian cycle is the basis for what we call fantasy, and T. H. White’s version is richly done with three dimensional characters and a grand treatment.

7) Biography of Manuel by James Branch Cabell
Lushly written, this series, the descendants of Cabell’s Jurgen fantasy farce, are subtle and sometimes difficult, but well worth reading. The plots, characters and settings are distinctly Fantasy. I am a fan of Cabell’s rich musical style of writing.

6) Witch World Series by Andre Norton
Much of modern fantasy has been influenced by Norton’s seminal Witch World books. The first three or four books are wonderful, but Norton became a brand name late in her life and much of what appeared under her name she did not actually write, so avoid the later books.

5) The Martian Novels, By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Better than Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, the Barsoom stories are pure fantasy, in spite of taking place on another planet.

4) Conan, By Robert E. Howard
Somewhat dated, but some of the best action adventure stories ever written, full of magic, gods, and blood.

3) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Fritz Leiber
These stories have wit and adventure. I read and then reread them.

2) The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
Written for children, but loved by adults. Aside from a little too much Christian based allegory, some of the best fantasy stories ever written. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of my favorite books of all time.

1) The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Best plot, best characters, best writing – best bar none.

From Saturday at the Graham homestead (Mom’s House).

I tested out the Flip video by going back and checking on the bees. It was too cold to open the boxes.

Christmas Day Bees from Keith Graham on Vimeo.

I saw this on the Westchester County eBay site. It is a locked safe. Someone has bid $5. It is probably full of money. I would bid on it if I were you, and then crack the lock.

SAFE – eBay (item 330389365738 end time Dec-30-09 05:47:01 PST)

There are parts of my websites that I haven’t seen for years. I went to send one of SF Christmas Cards and the site did not work. I upgraded to PHP5 and never tested it.

It took a few minutes but I found the problem and had to make changes to 5 programs to get the images to display. I’ve got it working now, but I have to read up on how to embed the image in the email rather than send it as an attachment – maybe next year.

The poker boys wore their Santa Suits to poker last night.

Jim and I had suits. Robert IS Santa with his long white beard, but he just wore was his Santa cap, no red suit. John wore a tickle me Elmo hat with antlers.

When Polly and Stella came home, we all started Ho-Ho-Ho-ing and got the girls laughing so hard that they could hardly stand. Every time they came back into the room we started up again. Too bad I didn’t bring a camera.

I noticed that the website where I sold my second story was gone and the domain name was expiring. I backordered the domain with Pool.com, but they didn’t get it. I am disappointed. I had the idea that I would restart the magazine. Instead I will just archive it somewhere.

If you ever want to create a WordPress blog, make sure that you install the Wordpress Software in a different directory than the blog root. This should be mandatory. It allows you to upgrade your blog by uploading a new directory and then renaming the two directories.

In the past my blog would be down for a half an hour while I uploaded the new software. Now it still takes a half an hour to upload, but the blog is only down for about 15 seconds and I can switch back in 15 seconds if it doesn’t work.

 
Twas the Night Before Sci-Fi
or
A Visit from St. Forrest

‘Twas the night before Sci-Fi when all through the ship
Not a cyborg was stirring not even a chip.

The blasters were hung by the antimatter drive
In hopes that St. Forrey would help us survive.

The clones were nestled all snug in their vats,
While visions of death rays scampered like rats.

And yeoman in her armor and I in full gear,
Had entered hibernate with a twinge of fear.

When out in the vacuum there arose such a clatter,
I booted up quickly and plugged into the chatter.

Away to the viewport I flew like a flash,
Went to full sensors and readied for crash,

The meteoric dust in a nova’s cosmic rays,
Gave the luster of x-rays to the galactic haze,

When what then resolved to my deep sensor chips,
But a miniature sphere and eight tiny space ships,

With a fearsome old captain on a sacred quest,
I knew in a moment ’twas the famous Forrest.

More rapid than photons his courses they came,
and he transmitted, and signaled, and call them by name;

“Now, Wallaby! now, Serenity! now, Dora and Nimbus!
On, Moonbeam! on, Skylark! on, Enterprise and Brutus!

To the top of the C drive, to the tip of the bow,
All warp away! Warp away, warp away Now!

As galactic dust before the solar wind flies
When they meet with a planetoid, leap to the skies;

So up to the control ports, their retros they flew,
With a sphere full of weapons and St. Forrey too.

And then in a nanosecond, I heard from the dock,
Howling and scratching at the main air lock.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
From the turbolift St. Forrey emerged with a bound.

He was wrapped in a force field from his head to his ass,
And his plating was all tarnished with entrails and ash.

A bundle of weapons he had flung over his shoulder,
And he looked like a berserker just starting to smolder.

His eye sockets they glowed with a blood lust of fire!
His fangs were all sharpened, his claws clasped in desire!

His prehensile tail was drawn up like bow,
and the scales on his body were as black as a crow;

The roach of a joint was held tight in his beak,
and the smoke of it encircled his head like freak;

He had a chromed skull and barrel shaped chest,
That wheezed when he breathed like a demon possessed,

He was gnarly and scarred, like an evil dark elf,
And I screamed when I saw him in spite of myself;

A click of his mouse and nod of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the armories; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his blaster aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the turbolift he rose;

He sprang to his sphere, and setting his goal,
And away they all warped through a spacial worm hole,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he tunneled out of sight,
“Happy Sci-Fi to all, and to all a good-night.”

You heard it here first:
www.cthreepo.com/blog

I will pull the trigger on the root site upgrade of WordPress 2.9 in two minutes. If it works you will not notice. If it doesn’t the root site will be down for a few minutes.

I’ll do this blog tomorrow at lunch time.

Keep your fingers crossed.

It Worked!

(I have to watch it closely, though)

Erica and I were looking at houses up in Maine. The prices have dropped a bit, but after reading about this “Lobster Trap” Christmas tree, I am re-thinking things.

Rockland’s 2009 lobster trap Christmas tree « Travels with Hilary.

J Erwine posted the TOC of The Martian Wave. I share it with the usual gang of samsdotters plus a few names I don’t recognize. J sent the issue off to Tyree so I might get to see a copy in a few months. I’m looking forward to it.

Adaptor by Steve de Beer
Bypassed by Shelly Bryant
Prize Crew by Dan Thompson
The Barren Wastes by Justin Bohardt
The Reefs of Jove by Keith P. Graham
another pit for sale by s.c. virtes
Luminescence by Patty Jansen
A Hollander’s Secret Weapon: 1609 by Marge Simon
Into the Silence Flies a Moth by Bret Tallman
Hindsight by Marge Simon
The Pillars of Europa by Rick Novy
The Great Martian Depression by Lawrence R. Dagstine

My brother’s father-in-law is selling this:

Old Violin 1853 German – eBay (item 270503136859 end time Dec-27-09 21:00:44 PST).

There is another pro market out there starting Jan 1. This one is edited by the Slush God J.J. Adams. He is leaving F&SF and helping to start this zine. It pays pro rates of 5 cents a word (About $200 for one of my average stories). It will publish 4 stories a month from slush and probably receive about 10,000 submissions a year so the odds are slightly better than the other pro print zines.

The good news is that it accepts electronic submissions. I will submit my first story on January 1st and we’ll see if all of writers can bring down the site with our traffic.

The website is just godawful. They need a better design, but I suppose they just threw this one up as a holding place while they get to work on the real site.

Lightspeed Magazine.

I wrote a widget for my WordPress blog that displays searches from Google. Someone actually hit my site with the search string “Women With Big Breast Having Sex With Alien Spiders”.

What is worse, when you search for this information on my blog you get a whole bunch of hits.

Women With Big Breast Having Sex With Alien Spiders

I was going through my trunked stories and found one that I liked from several years ago. I gave it a good going over, fixing things that, in the light of the passing years, didn’t seem to work. I also saw many typos that would have otherwise been invisible to me.

I sent the story out to Fusion Fragment. It seems like they might take a fairly hard SF/Cyberpunk story, but I have never sold there before. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I don’t feel much like coding today so I am going to see what I can do with the first page of a story that I was thinking about on the bus. I have been reading R. A. Lafferty’s 900 Grandmothers anthology, so I have concerns that I might be under the grand old man’s evil influence.

This might be what Americans sound like to foreigners.

This is an Italian comedian singing a song in gibberish, but with an American accent. (Warning – very bad harmonica at the end.)

What English Sounds Like to Foreigners is Today’s BIG Thing in Music – NOV 03, 2009.

I decided not to get The Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure, but the idea is funny. I met a lady who had 14 cats when I was buying cat litter. She seemed nice, but had to have been a bubble off plumb.

There was also crazy cat lady soap that has catnip in it so that cats will love you.

Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure – Archie McPhee & Co..

I saw a Sony Bookreader at an electronics store and I think that I may have changed my mind against getting a device for reading books. The thing was about the size of a paperback book and the text was clear and easy to read.

I will be checking the prices in the new year and if there is a price drop, I will pick one up.

I’ve been able to test three brands of bookreaders and they all seem about the same as far as readability goes.

These are:
ECTACTO eReader 5 inch screen $149 with rechargeable battery and $117 with AA cells.
Sony Bookreader 6 inch screen – $279.
Amazon Kindle $259. 6 Inch screen.

The Ectacto is a simple device that has software to show books. I have seen no-name versions for much cheaper if you want to import one from China. The connectivity is through a USB port or an SD card. You load it in the same way you’d load an MP3 player, you just copy to the device.

The Sony is just about the same as the Ectacto, except it costs more and has built in ability to download from Google Books.

The Kindle is a cell phone in a box and downloads using the cell network, but Amazon charges you for what you read. I see that they claim there are free books, but I am not sure how you’d load a book through USB. Kindle is cheaper than the Sony because Amazon will make the difference back quickly as soon as you start loading up on books.

My own preference would be a device with a battery chargeable through the USB port, but one that has WiFi so I can load off my home network.

I see that you can get text version through torrents of almost any book, so I will be seriously watching the prices on these things.

Annual cutting of the tree – This is at Mountain Fresh Farms in Highland, NY. Basically you take the NYS Thruway north and get off at New Paltz, turn right and look for signs. You have to travel through apple country, but there will be a dozen tree farms to choose from. It started snowing as soon as we got there, and it snowed while we cut the tree, but then it turned to sleet as soon as we got in the car.

The trees were not manicured and they all had odd shapes, but that’s what we were looking for. I don’t like it that farm trees are all trimmed to be short and wide equilateral conical domesticated trees. A Christmas tree should have a wild and woolly look to it with pine cones and perhaps an old bird’s nest.

The saw they gave me was just awful and I had a hard time cutting the thing down. It’s sitting in the back of the truck now. When we went back south the snow turned to freezing rain an it is dangerous to walk out there.

Here are the still photos:

I have to take a number of days off each quarter because, as a contractor, I am only budgeted for a certain amount and if I exceed that, they get upset with me and they have to juggle the books. I am currently in the middle of a long weekend. I went on a secret Christmas shopping trip, and I came back to find the internet was gone.

I spent hours yesterday on the phone and with a useless tech who changed the splitters on the house wiring and it did nothing. I went to the main office to compalin and they gave me a new Cable Modem, which helped the problem. I think I am still getting packet dropout on the route between my house and the cable company, but the new modem has a better amplifier in it and things are better.

I found a bug in my new wordpress plugin and I have to fix an issue at one of my websites, but the tools are all on my work machine. I handle email and do a little surfing, but the laptop machine at my chair in the living room is not good for doing actual work.

It seems that a dozen people a year are killed by sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) that is can be triggered by the rhythmic bass beat in loud music.

I’ve decided that when my time comes, this is how I want to go – a good heavy rock/blues band would do it for me.

Loud bass music ‘killed student’ Tom Reid | Metro.co.uk.

Jim and Polly are getting a puppy. It is one of the ones in this video.

Jim and Polly’s pups from Keith Graham on Vimeo.

My friend Skip has once again proved that he can’t be trusted with simple tasks.

For Justine who says there are too few pictures of cats on the blog.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I will take some pictures of our cats when we get the tree this weekend.

I recently read a few books by the Science Fiction writer Cordwainer Smith. Smith has always been one of my favorite short story writers, based on some stories in  F&SF magazine, which I subscribed to in the 1960s.

I read recently that his real name was Paul Linebarger and that he wrote THE textbook of psychological warfare. I had to have the book. Unfortunately the only places it was for sale were for several hundred dollars.

I eventually found an eBay auction for a well used ex-libris edition and was able to get it for a reasonable price.

Here’s a quote from the first page of the first chapter:

Offensively, the psychological warfare operator must fight antagonists who never answer back – the enemy audience. He cannot fight the one enemy who is in plain sight, the hostile psychological warfare operator, because the hostile operator is greedily receptive to attack. Neither success nor defeat are measurable factors. Psychological strategy is planned along the edge of a nightmare.

I expect to enjoy this book.