Couple of reviews of Tides From The New Worlds

June 30th 2010 at 3:57 am

Ken Liu weighs in on the collection here. Alex Kane also weighs in on it here. Both say lots of very nice things. Yay. Nice to see the commentary coming in about the eBook version.
Ken noticed some tyographical issues. Since this is a handrolled document by me, if any one else notes glaring errors, don’t [...]

The Alchemist and The Executioness launches July 6th!

June 28th 2010 at 12:35 pm

The Alchemist and The Executioness will be two novellas, one written by me, another by Paolo Bacigalupi, put together back to back (like the old Ace doubles) to create a larger project that is about as long as a short novel.
Both novellas share the same background. We created a world, characters, places, and each novella [...]

Bluffton Classic Car Festival: A Photo Essay

June 26th 2010 at 3:02 pm

I saw the signs around for ‘Ameriparade’ or something like this all this week, but I’d forgotten to buy the local newspaper, and wasn’t sure what it was. Emily and my mom are off to Cincinnati on a road trip for the day, and I decided to get out of the house and write at [...]

Juggling

June 25th 2010 at 3:10 pm

If things are quiet here, its due to a novella I’m trying to finish (last of my secret projects). It may be quiet yet another week, as I’m working on it, Arctic Rising, and some other freelance stuff on the side.
Should be a bit more chatty again come next week. But right now, I’m head [...]

iBooks 1.1 Centering Glitch

June 22nd 2010 at 3:14 pm

If you’ve downloaded iBooks 1.1 to your iPad or iPhone, you’re no doubt excited by the new features. Including “Full Justification.”
However, as Walt Shiel notes, this causes formatting errors in the eBook files. The CSS formatting that the book looks to as its guide is overridden by Apple, causing eBooks to have trouble with centering.
I’ve [...]

iOS4

June 21st 2010 at 3:38 pm

Spending a chunk of today upgrading the os for my iphone, setting it up so it can tether (yes, finally, my one complaint with the iphone fixed), and installing iBooks so that the books I read on my iphone remember the last page I was on on my iPad as well.
For me the iBooks update [...]

Electric planes

June 18th 2010 at 2:41 pm

I’m intrigued by the experimentation going on with electric planes, as this Economist article details. It’s still hobbyist for now, but once you figure out how to get 4-5 person electric planes, that ought to be interesting.

The idea of flying electric has lots going for it. An electric motor can deliver a huge [...]

Carbonation has arrived at the Buckell household

June 17th 2010 at 6:49 pm

For my birthday in January my parents gave me a gift card so I could go ahead and get a soda carbonation kit I’ve been wanting for a couple years.
My mother, sister, and I, hate drinking plain water. Many years ago, realizing the horrible impact of drinking soda had on my diet, I switched to [...]

Denmark and power

June 16th 2010 at 3:55 pm

Freakonomics deconstructs Denmark energy independence in a recent blog post by pointing out that its due to the fact they use offshore oil that they happen to be sitting next to (North Sea).
On one hand, there is often gleeful posturing when pro-oilburners anti-environmentalists point out that its not true green energy Denmark has achieved. And [...]

The State of Reading on The iPad

June 10th 2010 at 2:25 pm

I just watched the Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC. I usually check in at an Apple-obsessed site when WWDC hits, just so I can find out what launched and the details, but I usually don’t bother to spend the time watching the video unless I’m being paid to (article writing, tech stuff). Last night I [...]