Light or No Blogging

December 20th 2004 at 9:05 am

My laptop hard drive died last night. I had enough warning to get a latest snapshot of all the important stuff, so no drama, but I am frustrated. The drive died in August, now again in December? Both were Toshiba drives, so when I go in to get this replaced (under warranty), I want an […]

The Baltimore SF Society

December 17th 2004 at 11:21 am

The Baltimore SF Society wins its battle to become a non-profit to not have to pay property taxes. Congrats guys!

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society got the validation it was seeking from the state’s highest court. Not only that, the society also got a break on its property taxes.
Ruling Wednesday that the science fiction society’s Highlandtown […]

Ursula LeGuin Comments Further on Earthsea…

December 16th 2004 at 3:35 pm

LeGuin artfully explains why the recent movie of her books miss the whole point:

Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries — and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard — they had lost Boyen.
That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr […]

Frontline on Nuclear Power

December 15th 2004 at 9:14 am

Frontline recently had a special on nuclear power that I missed, sadly enough, but has a great deal of web related info up here. They talk about general fear that is put out about nuclear power, how France delivers 80% of their electricity through nuclear power, but they never talk about pebble bed nuclear reactors […]

Cuban Biotech Revolution

December 13th 2004 at 3:42 pm

Wired has a fascinating on Cuba’s Biotech Revolution. The small island has leveraged this avenue of research in a big way.

In the wake of the Soviet collapse, Cuba got so good at making knockoff drugs that a thriving industry took hold. Today the country is the largest medicine exporter in Latin America and has more […]

Mailbox Goodness

December 13th 2004 at 8:10 am

Mike Resnick once told me that after ten years of publishing or so one could expect a writing-related item in your mailbox several times a week. I don’t have ten years in, but I did have a great week last week anyway with the second half of my novel advance coming in the mail earlier […]

Get Me a Toolbelt…

December 12th 2004 at 6:52 pm

…I’m proving my handyman-ness.

The lock on our door handle broke, so we picked up a new one at a hardware store. I didn’t know how expensive those things were! I then installed a new door handle, one without a lock, and then put in a deadbolt lock over it (deadbolts are better). For that I […]

Candy Daughter

December 11th 2004 at 9:40 am

Nalo Hopkinson has written a Christmas story and posted it to her site online. She writes:

A few days ago, I wrote a Christmas story. I had originally intended to use it as a Christmas card, but to be honest, I’ve never yet managed to send out group Christmas cards to anyone. And since it is […]

Friday

December 10th 2004 at 3:29 pm

Last day of teaching class today. I’ll miss it next semester, but I’m looking forward to getting their last assignments graded, giving the final, grading the final, and having more headspace to focus on other things.

It was very cool getting this experience, I really enjoyed teaching a class. I have no idea if the students […]

A Random Picture

December 9th 2004 at 1:12 pm

A random picture taken from a bridge over a river on my way to work…