Not a country music fan, but I found this to be hilarious. It seems United Airlines damaged a musicians very expensive guitar and then refused to give him any compensation. This is his response.

Why, yes, I am still alive. Also a gigantic slacker, as evidenced by my lack of updates.

My old domain host was taken over by a new host, which changed the ftp protocol, username, and password for my domain. Now I can get it to work with FireFTP, but not with Dreamweaver. In theory alcohol might be to blame, but as I got it to work with FireFTP, and tried several combos with Dreamweaver, I think it's something else.

So I'm ignoring it for now, as I can get FireFTP to do my updates, it just takes an extra step. Instead, I'm watching old episodes of Buffy (Season 2). I wish we'd learned more about Principal Snyder's background. He knew about the Hellmouth, but we never found out how, or why the city council figured he was qualified to deal with it. (Spoiler, he wasn't.)

I feel like I should have something more interesting to say, but it isn't happening tonight. Oh, you should all run out and buy the DVD version of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog just for the singing commentary. It's awesome.

This isn't the first time I've had major issues with Amazon, but this is particularly vicious. Under the pretext of protecting their customers from "adult" offerings, Amazon has removed sales rankings (and thus removed from the best-seller lists, or even a search where results are ranked by best selling) from GLBT books. This includes books that, despite Amazon's claim,  have no sex scenes or are even listed as YA.

I find the entire situation to be reprehensible at best. For more information, please visit these links:

http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html

http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html

I'm guest blogging today over at You Gotta Read, about the subject of "opposites attract" in fiction.

I've just come across this fascinating article about the internet revolution. Although the article focuses on journalism, specifically how the internet has affected newspapers, what he's saying has many wider implications.

Hilarious and awesome rap video about HOX genes. I'll admit, I have a special fondness for them, as I had to give a presentation on HOX genes for my Evo Devo class a few years back. I found the most beautiful and simply elegant experiment I've ever come across, and made it the centerpiece of my report. I'll try to dig up the citation tomorrow for all you science peeps. In the meantime, enjoy.

I'm reposting this, because I think it gotten eaten the first time. If I double-post, my apologies! Anyway, I was just letting everyone know that author Ann Lory has interviewed me on her blog. There's also a contest; anyone who comments will be entered to win an ebook version of any of my backlist.

Chapter 16 of Fire in the Void is now available. After the doom and gloom of the last few chapters, this one has a few laughs, or at least chuckles. You can find it here.

Went to see Coraline over the weekend with David. If you haven't seen it yet--highly recommended. Being me, I wanted to know more about Whyborn, but I think that's more a compliment than a complaint. The creature design was amazing as well. We saw it in regular-old movie version, not 3-D, which was fine with me, as I think 3-D could have ended up a distraction from the content.

Possibly the most moving thing I've ever read about the White Rose Society.

I keep forgetting to post when I update Fire in the Void, because I am a slacker of gargantuan proportions. But I remembered this time, so if you're reading (hey, it's free), then chapter 15 is now available.

The Mac turns 25 today. Some of you may know I'm a die-hard fan; although I've used other computers at work, every one of my personal computers have been Apples, ever since that first IIC in 1987. Today, I have a MacBook for my portable needs, and an 8-core MacPro to be my workhorse, especially as a render engine.

That Apple IIC still works, btw. :-)

I reached the final scene of VERVAIN (working title) today, which started life as my 2008 Nano book. I'm delighted, to say the least. It always feels wonderful to finish a story, especially when your first impression is that it holds together relatively well. Of course it still needs extensive editing, and I need to tweak and add a few bits, but all in all I mainly feel good about my little story.

I feel much less complacent about coming up with an actual title for it, though. Ah, my old nemesis, we meet again...

One of the funniest things I've seen in a while:


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

I just found out about Pandora from Mookie's post at Dominic Deegan - he thought he was the last person the internet who hadn't heard of it, but no, apparently that was me. Or maybe not--if you don't know what I'm talking about, Pandora is possibly the best internet radio service I've yet stumbled upon. You enter an artist you like, and they construct a playlist for you based on similar music. I figured it would be something lame like iTune's Genius, but holy crap, it's awesome! I've only been listening for a couple of hours and have already found several bands I'd never heard of before but who I'll probably be buying in the future.

I've uploaded chapter 13 of my free sf serial, Fire in the Void. If you've been following along, you know the crew is in a tight spot, and they may not all survive. If you haven't been reading along, it's got lemurs and space pirates! And, ya know, it's free.

I've posted the first year's worth of chapters from my sf serial, Fire in the Void in a single convenient PDF. If you haven't been following it, Fire in the Void
is a free serialized sf novel, with a new chapter posted on the first
of each month. Although it is the sequel to my previous serial, Exile's Burn (which can be downloaded here), it is written so that the new reader can hopefully pick it up and follow along without too many difficulties.

The
Zatvian Cooperative is in a state of collapse, and warfare, rebellion,
and lawlessness are everywhere. Follow the crew of the pirate ship Exile
as they search through the ruins, encountering petty tyrants,
smugglers, and medical experiments gone wrong. Led by their amnesiac
telepathic captain, Rat, they are searching for the daughter of one of
their own, kidnapped as a child by the Zatvians and remade as a killing
machine.

But the only thing more dangerous than searching for her...might be finding her.