The TiECON/Chitika Blogpreneur Contest 2008

Blogging has evolved into a small but powerful force in cyberspace. Harnessing this force is more difficult than one would expect, and this is due to the great variety of Blogs. It is not like an entrepreneur can devise a plan to utilize blogging in a business plan and expect it to succeed. Motivating bloggers is like herding cats.

Blogs are not usually started with a conscious goal. Bloggers are not coldly rational businessmen. Blogs are not read to simply acquire information. Blogs, in short, are not work related.

Blogs are driven by passion.

I’ve seen the blogs with the scan of a Google check proving some blogger made thousands of dollars. Bloggers, though, seldom make much money and blogs started with the express intent to generate income are generally failures.

The blogs that are read are the blogs that inspire passion. The blogs that inspire passion are written with passion. Blogging is not a mechanical process where a blogger can follow a dozen simple steps and create a blog that people will read. Good blogs are written by people who deeply care about their subject matter and who can translate their care into exciting blog entries.

For a blog to be successful, it must have a new entry every day or so. Readers do not return to a static page more than a few times, but a reader will bookmark a blog that has a unique and interesting entry posted on a regular basis. For a blogger to come up with an interesting entry every day or so, the blogger must feel passion for his entries. It is too much trouble to find a boring entry for a boring blog on a regular basis.

If a blogger feels strongly about something, no matter how silly, stupid or odd, there is a certainty that there are several thousand people who also feel strongly about the same stupid, silly or odd stuff. It is just a matter of time before all these people find each other. The internet is so large and Googling is so powerful that it would be impossible to keep them apart.

There is no secret formula. There is no methodology that makes blogs good. There is just passion and a willingness to communicate that passion.

If you have any ideas or clues as to what makes a good blog. You can enter the Chitika Blogpreneur Contest by creating a blog entry and putting the badge below on your blog.

The Chitika Blog » The TiECON/Chitika Blogpreneur Contest 2008

Baskin-Robbins 31 Cent Scoop Night

I don't know, but I thought that Erica might be interested in going out tonight:

Baskin-Robbins 31 Cent Scoop Night

The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches

I received a spat of new cliches for the list. Since I am only giving the list a temporary home, I was reluctant to alter it.

I gave in and created a form where users could add to the list. The list is now open for spam and abuse, so I will have to monitor it for a while. I used my little antispam CAPTCHA image to test for humans, but even real humans put stupid stuff on the page. I will have to check for a variety of bad things that are not sciencefictional. This may be a bad idea.

Friday at Work

It's about 4pm, I have nothing I want to work on, and I have to kill some time before I can sneak out.

I just finished Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage. I must confess that I've read a Zane Grey book or two before and was not impressed. I am a big fan of Louis L'Amour, and I felt that Louis did a better job with the western genre.

But, Riders is not much like any western that I've ever read. It is about a group of men and women struggling against the corruption and greed of the Mormon Church in 1871. Mormons are not treated well in this book. This was before Mormonism gave up polygamy and part of the plot is about a pious Mormon woman who does not want to marry a Mormon Bishop who has other wives, not because of the wives, but because she doesn't love him.

The plains of northern Utah are covered with purple sage and part of the charm of the book is the wonderful descriptions of the purple sage and the romantic landscape. The descriptions take your breath away at times.

The characters are very compelling. There is a young rider who accidentally shoots a girl who is riding with some rustlers and nurses her back to life. There is the mysterious gunfighter named Lassiter. There is the beautiful and rich Mormon woman struggling with her faith.

This is all wonderfully told and woven together with a plot that could have been a Greek tragedy or a play by Shakespeare. It is absolutely riveting. Grey takes a while to bring the plot up to speed, but the second half of the book, with its awesome imagery and breathtaking pace is as good as I've ever read.

TV and Movie westerns have probably prejudiced us against the western genre. When I had written a western story, I couldn't find even one online ezine publishing western stories, yet there are hundreds of spec-fic ezines. This is a great loss because I think that the Western is a very basic and essential genre and worth reading and writing.

I suggest your put your preconceived notions away for a few days and give Riders of the Purple Sage a chance. If you're like me you'll find yourself Googling the the internet for the sequel. There must be a sequel - I want to find out what happened to these people!

GoogleSyndication.com blocked

My workplace uses WebSense.com to "protect" its employees from bad sites. It blocks YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and other websites. It seems to block sites with the word Download or Hack in the HTML title. Naturally, I take offense to this, because I would love to spend my day watching YouTube or browsing Flickr.

I just noticed that there were no ads appearing on my websites the last time I checked them and traced it to WebSense blocking googlesyndication.com. Googlesyndication is the web site that delivers AdSense ads. I think that the county may be in trouble with this decision. They are in actuality allowing its employees to surf websites without allowing them to see the ads. In effect they are cheating the websites out of a portion of the revenue that the surfing would normally incur.

The county is probably trying to cut down on the bandwidth of its network pipes. If they can cut ads and some other traffic, their internet gateway expense may be lower in the long run. This is good for the county and good for the tax payers.

It is bad for anyone who is running a free service subsidized by Adsense ads. The county is stealing from these sites.

Many people run FireFox just so they can run AdBlock with it and avoid seeing the dancing baloney that slows down so many websites. I even recommend it. This is different than an entire county, that is supposed to serve all of the people in the county, denying web site owners the ability to make a few cents.

I wonder how much more money my websites would make if corporate, educational and governemental networks did not block advertising.

SpecFicL Mailing List - Speculations Replacement?

Back before the web, when all I had was email, I joined Blues-L. This is a mailing list. I signed up and I received messages from Blues lovers all over the world. If I answered a message, rather than going to the message author, the response was sent to the list server and got sent to everyone on the list.

The advantages of a list server is that there is no central web page. You get individual messages or a daily digest of all messages for the day right in your email in basket. No one actually knows your personal email address, so you are relatively anonymous.

Email lists are usually lively and more immediate than web pages. They encourage discussion in the way a BBS cannot do. Spammers have not yet infiltrated list servers because you have to sign up and wait for approval and have a valid email address.

I started the SpecFicL list. It seems odd to me that no one has done this, but after a little Googling, I could not find an active list for science fiction. There is a mostly dead list for Science Fiction movies, but nothing currently active.

I decided to do this because Speculations.com closed. Speculations was the liveliest discussion forum that I have ever been on, but the spammers killed it. I also suspect that they may have been sued by the Publish America, because there was so much discussion about them.

If you are interested in SF and writing SF, please try out the list. We'll see if anything comes of it. It is easy to unsubscribe if you don't like it. A word of warning, that if this becomes popular, there will be a good deal of traffic. A friend once described a List as trying to drink from a fire hose. This probably won't take off, but then again it just might.

Join the SpecFicL List

Justine's MacBook Air

Justine sent pictures. Her iPhone camera is pretty poor, but you get the idea. The other computer is her older one, which I am lobbying to get. It might require me to drive to the city with my brother and rough her up, though.

Cult Book List

The London Telegraph listed the top 50 cult books, and I am blogging it because I have determined from the list that I must belong to a cult.

Of the 50, I have read more than a few of these. Often, I find these are lists of books made popular in the last 10 years and I am not a reader of popular books. I have read more than half. I have not read many recent books, so the newer ones on the list are a mystery to me.

Here are the ones that are on the list that I like.

- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - Probably the best Vonnegut - It leaves you in a cold sweat
- The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell - I think the it is the most intensely beautiful book(s) that ever written. I re-read it recently and have been inspired by ideas in the book.
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - I haven't read this in 35 years, but it did change my views on war and society.
- The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger - I felt that I was Holden Caulfield when I read this as a teenager.
- The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley - This book explains how to think about our senses. It was a hippie book.
- Dune by Frank Herbert - Maybe the best all around SF book. I have read it at least 10 times by my count.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - As a programmer I am intrigued by the number 42.
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe - Turned me on to Kerouac and the Beats.
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter - brain candy.
- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - Good, very intense book, but I was not as impressed as some. I must read it again.
- Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly - repackaging of Jung, but a good way to look at our cultural DNA.
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac - What an asshole, but I read and re-read it.
- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran - I haven't thought about this for years. It is romantic fluff, but it sticks with you.
- The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald - I love the existential beauty of this.
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - Another book read as a teenager that seems to echo on and on.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus - I read this when I was a depressed 14 year old and it struck home.
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - hard work, and unpleasant conclusions, but full of brilliant moments.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig - Pirsig's philosophical journey is wonderful, even if the arrival point is dissapointing.

It is near unbelievable that I have read more than half on the list and that I agree with these 18 at least as being very important books.

These books should be on the list.

- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein - This is still a cult book and a good read.
- Rats Lice and History by Hans Zinsser - My Dad gave me this. It is the history of Plagues done very very well. I keep finding people who include this on their top 10 list.
- One Two Three Infinity by George Gamow - Seriously turned me on to Science and Math. This book has influenced more modern scientists than you can believe.
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - It was a cult book until they made those awful movies.
- Neuromancer by William Gibson - The only book where I started over again on page one when I finished the last page. In 1990s I had decided that SF was dead. When I read this book I started plotting out stories that I eventually wrote down. Gibson made me want to write again. It is a very hard book to read and I don't casually recommend it, but it is well worth the effort.

I am at work and have to look busy. Someday I'll make a longer list of influential books.

Bloggers, you might want to check out the list on the telegraph and see if you agree with any of them.

50 best cult books - Telegraph

Being an only child, Nyack is not use to sharing

Being an only child, Nyack is not use to sharing
Originally uploaded by kjdrill

I received a google alert about a Flikr photo set about a family of Lions at the San Diego Zoo and one feisty kitten in particular named Nyack.

Southern Fried Weirdness

I was born in North Carolina and spent summers in Garden City, South Carolina when I was a kid. I stayed up the street from Mickey Spillane's house. (Years later I met Spillane's niece who claimed to remember me.) Although I've lived most of my life within an easy bus ride from New York City and talk like a noo yawker, I have these well hidden southern roots.

A while back I sent a story to Southern Fried Weirdness. It was a very weird flash story with a southern theme. They never published it and I chalked it up to my bad luck with editors. Too many times they either lose my story, or if they buy it, forget that they have it.

Well T.J. over at SFW lost the story. I made the mistake of asking him what's up this week (about nine months after the sale). He found the story and upped my pay rate. He told me the story would appear in his new eZine and also appear in the print anthology coming out by the end of the year.

I have this feeling that if I just concentrate I can figure out this writing and publishing stuff, but mostly it just confuses me.

Southern Fried Weirdness | Southern Speculations

Justine's new MacBook Air

Justine just sent me an email message from her brand new MacBook Air. She does this to annoy me.

It works.

Pictures to follow.

50 Things You Should Not Blog About on Squidoo

If you remember, I blogged this list a while ago and it picked up some del.icio.us bookmarks, but it hasn't gone anywhere in a while. I revised the list and put it on Squidoo.com and they picked it up as a feature page. Please click on the link below so I can get a few impressions on the page and bump up the rank.

If you have a del.icio.us account, click on the bookmark on the right when you get to the page. Squidoo has actually paid me a small amount for the 13 Ghost Movies Page that I put there and it is still ranked pretty high.

50 Things You Should Not Blog About on Squidoo

I have found the worst web site on the internet

I once thought about making a blog carnival about really really bad websites. While checking my log files for who was clicking on Freenameastar.com, I came to this one. Dogster.com is like a social networking site for dogs.

I have given up on the blog carnival idea, even though it probably would have made money. After all, now I have seen the ultimate bad website. My eyes are still burning.

Dog profile for ZEKE THE GROOM TO BE

Priest attached to party balloons vanishes in Brazil

I am not sure why I blogged this. It is so bizarre that I just can't ignore it. The image demands to be written up as a flash fiction story about alien abduction or Fortean disappearance. If AstoundingTales.com was still running, I'd make this the monthly flash challenge.

A Roman Catholic priest who floated off under hundreds of helium party balloons was missing today off the southern coast of Brazil.

Priest attached to party balloons vanishes in Brazil - Los Angeles Times

Thwarting Institutional Security

There is a bit of tension here between myself and the group in charge of computer configuration. This "Desk Top" group has installed virus control, spyware control and automatic snapshot software on every machine. It all tends to go off at the same time and I have seen users who cannot get any work done for hours at a time while an intensive spyware sweep is running or virus check is on.

They have made it so that users cannot install any software at all. In order to get my users to run my software I have to call these guys and have them do it. I don't have many more rights than the average user, although I can access most of my registry and install software.

Needless to say, one of the first things when I did when I started this job was disable the snapshot software and the spy sweep. I left Norton Antivirus installed. After all, I occasionally install a risky downloaded utility with my fingers crossed and it helps if Norton is there to catch the bad ones. I use Firefox for browsing, with adblock, so I have a generally safer and quicker browsing experience than anyone else here.

The Desk Top group reinstalled the software over night and the next morning I figured out how to keep them out of my machine. They gave up, but grumbled about it in meetings. I let them grumble, after all, I was winning on points. When my machine finally died, I decided that it was better to lose this battle and fight other, more important wars. So, I now have Norton AV, Webroot Spy Sweeper and Altiris all bogging down my machine. The machine is much faster than the one I had 5 years ago with 2 gigs of ram and I don't really notice.

One thing that really annoys me is the WebRoot Spy is deleting my cookies every morning. I have to re-login to all of my online accounts. The registry is rigged so I can't alter any of the settings controlling this. I have four or five accounts that I check, and its a pain to go back and lookup the passwords for all of them. It would be nice if gmail, especially, just stayed logged in like it is supposed to do.

This morning I altered the attributes of the Firefox profile directory to "hidden". I then rebooted and Webroot Spy Sweeper did not find any cookies to delete.

I have won!!!!

Sale, Atomjack

I sold Girl with the Error Message Eyes to Atomjack. When I was publishing my SF story of the day blog, Atomjack was one of the places that I was able to find a bunch of decent stories. I came across them again recently. They are a techy kind of real Science Fiction venue so I broke my own rule about no submissions and sent them the story.

The acceptance email says "next issue". Atomjack comes out irregularly (every two or three months) so the story might appear as early as May.

Girl with the Error Message Eyes is a dark antiwar story and so grim that I thought that no one would want it. I guess every once and a while I can slip a story in while the secret league of SF editors' infernal spy ray is looking somewhere else.

What's wrong with exclamation Points!!!!!!!!!!!

At a writer's forum where I lurk, a writer complained that he had a reject and the editor mentioned the use of multiple exclamation points!!!!!!! The writer seemed to think that the story warranted them!!!!

The writer wrote:

In my world, there are times when you say, 'Put down the gun.' or 'Look over there. It's a vampire.' And there are times when you say, 'Put down the gun!' or 'Look over there! It's a Vampire!' and sometimes you have to say, 'IT'S A VAMPIRE!!!!!'
See, in my world, sometimes you have to raise your voice.

In my world a vampire would prompted me to throw the story out the window, but I hate vampires and zombies and such. Cinematic clichés have no place in real fiction.

I confess that I've used and exclamation point in dialog. I generally don't yell, so my characters don't yell.

From a Seinfeld Episode where exclamation points were a major topic:

*Pendant publishing. Elaine is at Lippman's office.*

Elaine: You wanted to see me, Mr. Lippman?

Lippman: I was just going over the Jake Jarmel book and I understand you worked with him very closely.

Elaine: Yes, krhm, yes I did.

Lippman: And, anyway I was just reading your final edit, um, there seems to be an inordinate number of exclamation points.

Elaine: Well, I felt that the writing lacked certain emotion and intensity.

Lippman: Oh, "It was damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to put on my sweatshirt!"

Elaine: Right, well...

Lippman: You put exclamation point after sweatshirt?

Elaine: That's that's correct, I-I felt that the character doesn't like to be ch-ch-chilly...

Lippman: I see, "I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark bar didn't come out!" Exclamation point?

Elaine: Well, yeah, you know how frustrating that can be when you keep putting quarters and quarters in to machine and then *prrt* nothing comes out...

Lippman: Get rid of the exclamation points...

Elaine: Ok, ok ok ...

Lippman: I hate exclamation points...

Elaine: ...ok I'll just....

The military's plan to regrow body parts

I am not convinced that the military is the best place for this kind of research. I am, however, glad that someone is doing it. The danger is that politicians will start putting all kinds of restrictions on it. Large drug companies don't seem to be as committed to stem cell research, first because it is a political hot potato and second, the legal issues of patenting a stem cell might prevent them from making a large profit.

Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will go by the happy acronym AFIRM. According to DOD's news service, AFIRM will 'harness stem cell research and technology … to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.' The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project's first five years. NIH and three universities will be on the team.

The spec-fic implications are, of course, well known. Genetically altered or "mutant" armies have long been a staple of military SF. My own short story, The Cold Men, is waiting for its second draft. I have put off finishing it, because I am not sure who would buy a space yarn about genetically altered military unit in an interstellar war, as it has been done well by others. If a story is too much like a "standard" sf story it does not stand out. If a story is not in a classic sciencefictional meme, it is not understood.

The military's plan to regrow body parts. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Point to Point Wiring and the F-117A

There is a technology jump from that occurred some time in the last quarter of the twentieth century. There was a time when components were hand wired and soldered. One end going from a device like a vacuum tube and another end going to a device such as a volume control. This is called point to point wiring. If you look at the underside of any electronic device from the 1950s you can see that parts each directly connected to where they belong.

The contrasting technology is Printed Circuit Board or PCB technology. PCB technology has replaced point to point.

Point to point technology went out of fashion because it takes longer and requires a better trained assembler. It is easier to make a mistake in point to point wiring and since humans assemble them, the consistency of the soldering can vary. These mistakes are also easy to detect and repair.

Point to point wiring, is however, lighter, more efficient electronically, less prone to noise and interference and extremely rugged. Guitar players will pay extra for an guitar amp that has point to point wiring.

PCB construction has the advantage that it can be automated and assembled by robots. It can modularized for quick swap out repairs. It is usually cheaper.

PCB construction is heavier. A PCB is rarely repaired, making it necessary to replace 100 components when just one component on the board actually fails. PCBs are useful when the component count goes up so that soldering directly is difficult.

There is design philosophy difference between the two methods.

A point to point system is carefully designed to be quick and easy to build and fix. It will last forever and any components that do fail can be replaced in a moment by anyone with a screw driver and a soldering gun.

A PCB is not meant for a human to understand. it is not reparable and it should be thrown away when it stops working.

This, by the way, is the way I see my job. I am a point to point programmer in a PCB world. My programs are lighter, more reliable and easier to fix. Programs created with huge hierarchical Java frameworks are heavy, difficult to repair and less reliable.

What started this rambling is that I just read that the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter is being retired after 27 years. I am not a military buff. The reason I am interested in the F-117A and the SR-71 Black Bird, is that I worked at Lockheed for 14 years, and one of the things about Lockheed that I took pride in was these great planes. They were hand crafted, often using all point to point wiring. Nothing was mass produced. Everything was made by craftsmen. Although I never worked on any aircraft, I was happy to work for a company that could produce that kind of art.

I have a feeling that modern jets all use PCBs made in bulk by 11 year old girls at a factory in Singapore. I think that the whole jet is designed on CAD equipment and then the plans are sent off the third world nations for parts to be made of sloppily assembled substandard materials.

Work sent to third world nations to be made of sloppily assembled substandard materials? - it sounds like where my last two jobs went.

Heinlein, Project Moonbase and Others

Subterranean Press is releasing a new Heinlein book of unpublished material, including the screenplay for Project Moonbase. It has screenplay adaptations of some of Heinlein's best stories.

The book will include some cool full color images by Bob Eggleton.

The page says "sold out", so I wonder how I can get a copy of this.

Heinlein, Project Moonbase and Others

Donald Wandrei Centennial

I found this very good post about Donald Wandrei. He was one of the Lovecraftians and a regular contributor to Weird Tales. I love the picture of Wandrei and Lovecraft. Lovecraft always has that Deer-in-the-headlights look.

The website is the Robert E. Howard website, which has lots of good info on the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Donald Wandrei Centennial

Resolution and dimensional compression

Tufte is the visual data presentation guru. If that means nothing to you, check out some of his books like Beautiful Evidence.

Tufte's latest post is about the resolution (dots per inch) and the bandwidth of the human eye. He quotes a researcher who claims that the eye sends data to the brain at approximately Ethernet speeds - 10 million bits per second. I think they may be mistaken on this or misunderstood. The Optic nerve has nowhere near that bandwidth. The chemical based nerves have a bit rate of something under 100 bits per second and there aren't enough neural paths to handle the high speeds. The eye itself does considerable preprocessing before the data leaves the eye, and the effective rate might be high, but physical rate is much lower.

There is much interesting discussion and a link to James Cameron about film frame rate and resolution. Modern television screens keep going up in resolution. Big screen TVs currently have a resolution similar to a super VGA screen from the late 1980s. Resolution will only go up in the future, making the current crop of $3000 plasma screens obsolete by Christmas. (Of course you can be like my Dad who wouldn't buy a Color TV for 20 years after they came out because he was waiting for them to perfect the technology). It will be like the situation with early adopters of Color TV in the 1960s. There was precious little other than "The Wonderful World of Disney" in color for the first few years. There will be precious little High Res TV for a while. 720 pixels wide is hardly high resolution. 1024 pixels is small now by computer screen standards, but there is not much out there even at 720.

Now, Cinematography is being driven by screen resolution. There is mention that older special effects in movies were all done at the lowest DPI and frame rates, and are particularly choppy and obvious when translated to the higher resolution screens.

What interests Tufte is that the human brain can learn faster and experience more from the high res data. Frame rates and resolution have an impact on how we process information. This is surprising but not unbelievable. It looks like high quality data feeds are processed better by the eye and the brain and make a greater impact on out understanding, retention and appreciation.

Here's a nice quote:

Memory problems can be partly handled by high-resolution displays, so that key comparisons are made adjacent in space within the common eyespan. Spatial adjacency greatly reduces the memory problems associated with making comparisons of small amounts of information stacked in time.

As web page designers, this impacts us. We need to make out images and text as crisp an clear as the screen resolution can handle. We must cluster related information. This means larger images and using em or % (percent) as units of font-size and not point or pixel measurements. Pictures work better with more detail in them or with multiple pictures side by side for contrast and comparison. All of this is subtle stuff and if done right brings web design out of simple craft to a more artistic endeavor.

As an aside, I was thinking that this translates into fiction writing as the need to keep associated facts in close proximity in the flow of the narrative. An important fact in support of another important fact must be presented on the same page or even the same paragraph or there is a likelihood that the reader will not make the necessary associations. The association can be delayed, but only by banging the reader over the head in an unsubtle way. By keeping related facts close together you can generate a eureka feeling in the reader and engage them in the flow. A high information bandwidth from the narrative creates a greater feeling of engagement in the reader. The more you show the reader, the better he sees your imagery. This stuff about painting a subtle picture with sparse words, may only work if the writer is really, really good.

66th World Science Fiction Convention

I want to go to a Worldcon some day. First held in 1939, Worldcon is a movable feast of the BIG Science Fiction conventions. Each year it is held in a new city. This summer it is being held in Denver and the Ghost of Honor is Robert A. Heinlein.

My single experience with a convention was at a local fantasy convention. It seemed to me it was mostly about weirdly dressed unattractive people, heavily into Zena Warrior Princess. I wandered around and found the ambiance antagonistic. A fifty something incognito hippy with a bad attitude was obviously not part of anyone's peer group. I never did find where the talks and discussion groups were being held and I left after less than an hour - more like fled.

I think that a Science Fiction convention would be a better experience, especially Worldcon, where there is less of an emphasis on carrying a sword and more of a tendency to carry phasers set on kill.

I calculated the cost to go to Denver for a couple of days and it comes to about $900. If I needed actual contact with humans or near humans, I felt I would not be spurned if I crashed the SamsDot table. I think there would be some interesting discussions there. I wanted to meet the Tales of the Talisman people and other editors where I've sold a story. I want to stand in the back of the room and heckle any editors speaking there that may have sent me a rejection note. I would have brought my harps to the Filk song sessions and bought enough books to last me a few weeks.

$900 is just too much for a couple of nights in Denver, even if there's a chance at interesting human contact.

Worldcon is being held in Montreal next year. I'll just have to wait until then and hope that the balance of trade swings back a little. There's a train that leaves from New York for about $250. It might be cool to get drunk with E. Jim and Bob Sawyer. (I just checked and Edmonton is quite a ways from Montreal and the train fare for E Jim is about $800. Maybe he can hitchhike. The longest I've ever hitched was 200 miles, and would be 5 times that.)

Internet Ice Cream

eCreamery is not your standard internet store. I have yet to try it, but it seems like a cool idea.

Design your own ice cream!

The hitch is that overnight shipping is $29.95. You have to ship it fast because they pack it with dry ice and it only stays cold a few days.

Another gotcha is that you have to buy a half gallon. To make it nearly cost effective you have to order a full gallon, but then you have to eat that gallon!

I typically buy a pint of ice cream every week or so in the summer when a cold dish of ice cream is just the right thing.

I blog this because more than once I've gone through and designed the perfect ice cream, but bailed out when I saw the price. One of these days I will go all the way and get a gallon of Erica's Surprise in the mail a day or two later.

Kolchak - The Night Stalker

TV has been worse than ever so Erica and I have been watching a few DVDs. Over the Weekend we watched Kolchak - The Night Stalker and Kolchak - The Night Strangler. These two made-for-tv movies are from 1972 and 1973 respectively and have a nostalgic lack of slickness and a tendency towards psychedelic color schemes. They were shot on a shoestring and there is a total lack of special effects. About as fancy as they get is fog from dry ice on the ground, and some second rate makeup.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed these two DVDs. They are available from Amazon for about $11 for the pair, and are probably cheaper on eBay.

The screenplays for both of these were written by Richard Matheson, master of Horror and Science Fiction, and the original author of such movie classics as "I Am Legend", "The Incredible Shrinking Man", "Comedy of Terrors", and "The Legend of Hell House".

Richard Matheson is from Allendale, NJ, which is not far from my house and one of our favorite Garage Sale destinations. He's in his 70s now, and if he still lives in his home town, I hope he holds a garage sale this summer. I'd like his autograph.

Suffering from really bad TV and there's nothing in the house to read? Pop in "The Night Stalker" and enjoy some really good light hearted horror.

This Day in Personal History

April 11, 1976. Erica and I were traveling west on Rte. 304 towards New City on a trip to buy Geraniums. As we passed Goebel Road (I think - the name doesn't seem right), someone ran the red light and we hit him. I watched in slow motion as Erica left the passenger seat and put her head through the windshield. Luckily, she has a hard head, but she twisted her leg pretty badly and had to be in a full leg cast for a few months. My head bounced on the ceiling a few times, but the knock on the head probably did me good.

I have not driven in a car without wearing a seat belt since that day. Our 1969 green Chevy, named Nell Nova, was mostly totaled, but the insurance company paid to fix her up. Nell didn't do well on speeds over 50mph ever again.

This was the end of the store we had on Burd Street in Nyack. I was still on unemployment and was working odd jobs, but Erica could not get to the store. Erica missed the 1976 bicentennial celebrations and she was stuck in a hot apartment all Spring and most of the summer.


View Larger Map

I thought that I would experiment with embedding the map in the blog. It is not as easy it it appears. Google is easily confused and I wound up having a map of Dearborn Michigan - I have no idea why. I eventually copied the link to the map, closed the browser, and then pasted the url. Then the embedding html worked correctly.

NorthEast Astronomy Forum (NEAF)

They are having the NorthEast Astronomy Forum at RCC in a couple of weeks. April 26-27, 2008. It is interesting that the Forum costs $20 to get in, but my RCC Employee card is still good, so I get in for free. I think that I might like to wander in on one of the days to see what's up.

One of the interesting workshops is Astrophotography with Your DSLR. I would very much like to take pictures of the night sky and I have no idea how to do it. I would like to use a long exposure for the meteor showers and lunar eclipses. The last time that I tried either of these I got nothing but black. This talk is mostly about hooking your camera up to a telescope, but it still might answer some questions.

There is a NEAF SOLAR STAR PARTY that has something to do with observing sunspots that is free. I have to find out more about this. If they have beer, I might be very interested in looking at sunspots.

NorthEast Astronomy Forum (NEAF)

Video Madness!

Today I took the little RCA EZ201 to Larry's so he could make a video of how to add a new master cylinder to a 1963 Chevy. Cousin Zak just bought a mint 1963 Nova out in California (no snow means no rust). The original brakes are hard to work and it helps if you can install power assist brake cylinder, and Larry has done it twice.

While I was there I took some other videos. (As of the time that I am writing this the videos have not yet been converted. If you see that they are not converted yet, try again in an hour.

Here is the Brake video - it's funny to watch and at the end we all get a little stupid.

How Larry installed a brake boost to his 63 Chevy from jt30guy on Vimeo.

Next I made a video to the cats asleep on a chair this is 12 year old Zak and one year old Toby. Toby is the big fat one.

Cats - Zak and Toby from jt30guy on Vimeo.

Next is a Star Trek Figural mug that Larry bought for Justine. I think that I might keep it for myself and just tell Larry that I sent it to her.

Justine's Deanna Troi Mug from jt30guy on Vimeo.



Next is Larry's garage sale find of a very nice Guild guitar with some badly repared damage. Mom is showing off that her back feels better.

Larry's Garage Sale Find and Mom from jt30guy on Vimeo.

Next is a Large Pot for Ami - Homer Laughlin. Mom's garage sale find.

Large Pot for Ami - Homer Laughlin from jt30guy on Vimeo.

Next is a video I found on the video camera from October 2007. I thought, at the time, that they didn't come out well so I forgot about them. I looked again and decided that they were still a lot of fun. This is Little Charlie and the Night Cats at the Turning Point Cafe last year. Rick Estrin, the harmonica player, is having fun with the audience.

Little Charlie and the Nightcats Oct 2007 from jt30guy on Vimeo.

I use Vimeo.com to upload videos. They generally do a better job than YouTube and they allow you to upload bigger videos. If you want a large audience, use YouTube. If you just want to share videos, use Vimeo.

Global Warming is a Side Issue

I made a post about how global warming is not the issue. Air pollution is the issue. Jim made his anti Global Warming pitch and I don't want to argue with him.

I waiting to hear anyone's argument that Air Pollution is better than Clean Air.

Air pollution - Sulfates, particulates, Nitrates, Carbon Monoxide and many other pollutants (I won't even even talk about CO2 here) are real. Look at any city and you'll see the orange haze of Sulphates and Nitrates mixed with soot and other emissions. You can't argue that this is natural and not man made.

The only thing that you can do is clean up the smokestacks and cars. Most of that noxious smog is from cars. Reduce emissions and it goes away. Increase the efficiency of our energy use and it goes away. Use electric cars and it goes away. Stop burning coal and it goes away. Close or upgrade the polluting power plants and it goes away.

So, I don't care if you think Global warming is a real issue or not. You can't say that the increase in childhood asthma is natural. You can't say that non-smoking related lung diseases isn't on the rise due to man made pollution.

As long as we are at it, let's clean up the water and the food supply.

Let's not argue about Global Warming. The solution to air pollution is to cut emissions. Cutting emissions will make the global warming advocates happy, but that's not the main reason for doing it.

Alfred Bester - Cross Stitch

Erica spends some of her time cross stitching. I came across this project based on one of my favorite writers - Alfred Bester. This text is from The Demolished Man, an all time classic.

There are lots of quotable Science Fiction writers and I think Erica should make a sampler for the house with a good SF sentiment on it.

Alfred Bester - Cross Stitch

The Perfect Gold

J Erwine bought my first story for Martian Wave back in 2003, but before it appeared, I sold the story The Perfect Gold to Atsoise and that story appeared in February of 2004.

I use Google Alerts to notify me of things that I can blog about, and it told me that this story was available again. Either Google forgot about it or someone at the site has been reorganizing.

Anyway, the first story that I saw published on the nets is available again for you to read, if you like.

The illustration is something I mashed up from an old woodcut. I would have written the story differently now that I have a little more experience. There were several versions of this story written in the two or three years before this one. Changing the central character to a woman made the story work better than the earlier versions.

Read The Perfect Gold

Muddy Waters' Birthday

Muddy was born on April 4, 1915.

Everyone please take the time to listen to a Muddy song today. It is a good day to contemplate your Mojo.

Gracie is not amused

The wild turkeys are back and they have occupied the picnic table in the back 40. This is one of Gracie's favorite hangouts.

Erica emailed me the picture. You can see the effects of the wind storms that we've been having. There are lots of white pine branches all over the yard.

Climate Debate Daily

Climate Debate Daily shows climate news in two side by side columns. One is in support of global warming and one is in dissent.

The funny part is that there seems to be no real debate. The Global Warming Calls to action side is full of scientific reports confirming global warming, but the Dissenting Voices side is only shrill political invective slamming anyone who is worried about climate change.

From the news articles collected here it seems fairly obvious that the Global Warming dissenters are a fringe group with a political agenda. Of course, they will say that this this is because the media is biased against them. (They say this continually).

My own opinion is that it seems obvious that humans are polluting the earth. Whether global warming is a threat or not, we should follow the same course of action. We should reduce polluting atmospheric emissions (including CO2). We should treat all waste water before it reaches the rivers. We should reduce our dependency on oil (for any number of reasons, including environmental, political and economic). We should reduce solid waste and learn to recycle it instead of using land fills and off shore dumping. We should stop using pesticides on our crops and stop using antibiotics and hormones on our meat, dairy and poultry.

My opinion is that the environmental debate has focused on global warming as a stalking horse. There seems to be an arbitrary line in the sand and the anti-environmentalists can throw that sand in their opponents eyes and delay any action. I feel that the bigger picture is being ignored because of this debate. I am at heart a conservationist and I think that nature can be managed, but first we have to stop destroying our environment, so, for the time being I am an environmentalist. I don't thing that global warming should be the center of the debate. Global Warming aside, there are real dangers from air pollution, water pollution and food pollution, and they will kill us before the oceans flood us out of our homes.