Undoing the Industrial Revolution

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is: "Undoing the Industrial Revolution". This piece is right-on with the way that I feel about the Internet and I would encourage everyone to read it.

Gracie Picture

Gracie seems to be all better. The pins are out of her jaw. She sneezes violently from time to time due to her damaged sinuses. The only external sign of her encounter with a car is the right eye which does not react to light and the fur growing back in on her sides from the pneumo-thorax.

She is more affectionate than before the accident. She seems more interested in humans.
Here is a picture with her and her best buddy, Ollie.

The "red-eye" is a problem with the camera. Software does not have a Cat Red-Eye button and the human one doesn't work.

Next Issue of Astounding Tales

Arthur had lunch with me. Cubano sandwiches at Karumba in White Plains. Good food.

We are on target with the next issue. Arthur has found a bunch of good stories. Again, he has worked with several new authors to wring some good writing out of them. I think everyone will be pleased.

We discussed creating a "Best Of" print anthology and we might like to try it. I will not commit to having to select the 12 or so stories out of the many stories that we've published.

Talking Spec-Fic with Arthur was refreshing. I don't get to discuss many of my hobbies with anyone except the cats and they don't seem to have any real interest in anything I do that doesn't involve kibble. (Gracie insists on sitting on the rim of the bathtub while I take my morning bath - but I think it's the bath water that she likes and not my bubbling personality.)

Site is Up Again

After several weeks of being down, I have finally finished transferring Harpamps.com and NameAGalaxy.com to Hostgator.com web hosting. The Java/Tomcat is only available on the primary domain name (I found out too late). They also screwed up the DNS when the put me on a java server. NameAGalaxy.com now uses hidden frames to cover the fact that the website is really running on harpamps.com. If you click on http://www.nameagalaxy.com/list.jsp what you get is the same site running on harpamps.com.

I am running my three big sites at $20-$30 a day in add revenue. I hope that I can retire after a few years of this. When I hit $1000 per month I'll know that I can take it easy soon. I will go on social security on the first possible day and work on making websites full time. That's still 7 or 8 years off, though. I was screwed on the last Social Security Fix and I expect to be screwed in January when Bush announces his "improvements".

Astounding Tales Issue 3 will be up and running by Dec 1. Arthur Sanchez and I will discuss the half dozen stories that he has accepted and I will be working on art. We meet for lunch tomorrow. I want to install flash on my home PC so that I can learn how to bring the site up to a more modern interface.

No word yet on the two stories that I have out. Quantum Barbarian, if they accept my story, should report around the last week in November because they have a 12/1 issue. Strange Horizons reported their latest rounds over the weekend so I should get my rejection in the next round which is 11/28-29.

I am writing a hitchhiker horror story. So far it involves a realistic and explicit rape. I will have to tone it down (perhaps make it simply murder). Carlos has yet to return the "God in a Bottle" story with his edits.

I won an old amplifier "project" on eBay. It's a 1948 Premier 88N in pieces without the cabinet. It should arrive Friday. I look forward to a weekend of getting high on soldering fumes. I won't go into the technical stuff, except to say the model 88N was unique in design and if I get it working it should scream!

Websites Down again

My harpamps.com and nameagalaxy.com websites are down due to terminal stupidity at unithosting.net. I cancelled my accounts and signed up with HostGator.com. It costs a little more, but I am still hoping to get a reliable Java/JSP hosting service.

The sysops at all of the hosting services know a little linux and have learned how to reboot Apache, but they know nothing about Java and Tomcat. I am less than patient. Last month, the sites were down at IMHosted.com for two weeks. Before that they were down at another site (I can't even remember the name) for two weeks. It has been a week at UnitHosting.net and I can't wait any more.

I bought the HostGator Swamp package - I love the name. $14.95 and I get unlimited domain hosting. So if you need a web site for free, let me know.

It includes Tomcat, PHP, MySQL, Chilisoft ASP and a bunch of other stuff. I would like to transfer my JT30.com stuff, but that web host has been so rock solid steady that I don't dare.

I am sorry to bore you with this techie stuff, but I am, after all, a techie nerd.

Some charts

My brother sent me a chart that was supposed to be Average IQ by state colored in red or blue to show how states who vote for bush have a lower IQ.
The chart was obviously bogus - it was too pat.
But this didn't stop me from wondering how the Bush states stack up iq-wise.
I made some charts based on Rand Corporation charts and my own charts based on Census data and I posted it at one of my websites.


StrangeTales.net

I don't know quite what to do about StrangeTales.net. I thought about puting some of my trunked stories there. Putting random stuff up is all I use it for right now.

Story update: Reject from Whispering Spirits - difficult to say why, but I don't think it fit their style. I've got nowhere else to send a ghost story right away. "Left eye" is out at Quantum Barbarian - this should actually be a good fit. "The Telling" is still out at Strange Horizons. I thought that I had sent it out to Ideomance, but I was 'fused. SH and Ideomancer are hard markets because they publish only stories that fit in with their "feel". My stories are more conventional in subject matter and treatment. I am still looking for the place to send my style stuff.

I wrote a complete story Friday. I was going to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp" to a more modern theme and content, but wound up writing the words "God in a Bottle" and just following them until the story ended. I wrote it very fast because I wanted to find out how it came out (I had no idea where it was going.) After about 2-1/2 hours I had 3500 words exactly so I sent it off to Carlos Colina for a good scrubbing and I'll ship to ASIM or other light SF market when it gets back.