Well, I hope you’ve all had a nice long holiday weekend – even if the weather was as rotten as it was here in Velcro City. I hardly noticed, though – I’ve been busy.

One of the many things I’ve been doing over the weekend is playing around behind the scenes at T3A Space, the new-look blog-style website for TTA Press (publisher of short genre fiction magazines Interzone, Crimewave and Black Static). T3A is where updates and story acceptances for the TTA stable are posted, and over the coming months it’s going to grow into a content-rich site with lots of good stuff to read.

Andy (TTA’s head honcho) already had things looking sexy with an eye-catching theme (luckily – as, having seen VCTB, no one in their right mind would set me loose on the aesthetics of a website), but yours truly has been hacking about with the ergonomics and functionality. Upgrades include a working spam-free comments system, and lots of other behind-the-curtain search-engine friendly stuff. There’s still work to be done, but things are looking good so far.

I’ve also set the RSS feed for the site to run through Feedburner, which is a very easy operation but well worth the time invested. But if you click through, you’ll see the subscription counter sat at a lowly first-day count of zilch, zero, nada.

So, here’s the challenge – I’d like you all to subscribe to the T3A RSS feed, which I’ve made extra easy by linking to it there. You don’t even have to click more than once! Let’s see if we can’t get that counter to show something a little more impressive than zero by tomorrow, eh?

Via the indispensible LifeHacker comes a post from a guy who has managed to completely master his sleep patterns and free up more productive time in his day to day life:

“From 4-6 AM, I simply get a ton of things done. In fact, I’d argue that I get more done from 4-6 AM than I do from 8-Noon. No matter what I decide to do, it’s uninterrupted simply because no one else is awake and functioning. It’s purely a time for knocking out tasks (work or home related), reading, project work, planning, etc. It’s great.

My life was not always this way, I used to be the guy that stayed up late and woke up with barely enough time to shower before work. So, how did I change that? It’s actually pretty simple, I installed a regimen that I have now followed for years. On average, I believe that I have given myself an extra 5 hours per week or (do the math) an extra 10.8 days per year to get stuff done.”

Discipline appears to be the key. (Damn it, why is it always discipline, my Achilles heel?) I may experiment with this system myself – the idea of a short kip around lunchtime certainly has appeal, as does the notion of being able to bound out of bed in the mornings with the will (and ability) to get some work done …

I’m not expecting instant results, however. I’ve also got a whole lot of deadlines coming to a peak over the next few weeks (some of which involve actually getting paid for my work), I’m learning the Reviews Ed. ropes for Interzone, and I have to start reading up for the SF Foundation Masterclass next month … which is a roundabout way of saying that blogging may be a little skinny here at VCTB for a little while. Then again, I’ve said that before, and not really cut back much at all, so who knows! But I thought it only polite to mention it.

Hope you’re all getting done the things that you need doing!

If this post is supposed to be doing what I think it’s supposed to be doing, then it should be ranked as one of the finest and most subtle blog posts of the year. Even if it’s not doing what I think it’s doing, it’s still a clever piece of work and well worth the fifteen or so minutes it’ll take to read it. So, go do so.

I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds – way more than most people seem to consider a plateful*. Some of them have three or four (or more) posts a day, but some of them update only very sporadically – which means when they do, it’s a rare treat.

A good example is Kevin Kelly’s ‘Street Use’. Named after that William Gibson quote I’m so fond of, it collects examples of people solving real-world problems using objects in ways that they were never originally intended for.

Today, we discover how to transport twenty live chickens on the back of a bicycle:

That’s ingenuity, Chinese style.

[* That's not a boast, just a statement of fact. Or possibly a cry for help, looked at another way.]

It’s random blog pimping time again! This time, I’m going to suggest you go take a look at a post on Subtopia, which bills itself as ‘A Field Guide to Military Urbanism’. Don’t be put off – it’s not full of pictures of people who take Neighbourhood Watch too seriously. Instead, it’s about the incursion of military thinking and architecture into urban spaces.

The post you should go and see is all about bunker touring in Berlin, complete with photos from exploratory trips into the old Nazi bunkers under the German capital:

[Image copied from Subtopia post, in turn borrowed from Berlin Underworlds Assn. Please contact if you require take-down.]

“I wonder, how much volumetric space is taken up in underground bunkers, how much air capacity exists trapped in these concrete structures? I’ve asked this before, but could we estimate exactly how much real estate, or in this case, air space, is devoted around the world to the underground?”

There’s plenty more like that, too, plus lots of other fascinating material, all wrapped up speculative musings and philosophy that has a similar flavour to BLDGBLOG.

And talking of BLDGBLOG, I may as well give it another plug, because there’s a new post about the solar observatories of ancient cultures – a subject I’m a real sucker for, much like BLDGBLOG’s author:

“Meanwhile, I’m a genuine sucker for solar-alignment theories involving landscapes and architecture; in fact, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. Yet I’m even more of a sucker for unintentional examples of such things – like houses with pitched gable roofs that accidentally line-up with the sun every summer solstice…”

Good stuff. Take a break from the writer blogs for five minutes; you’ll not regret it.

I’m sure that we all read a few blogs that our own readers might be surprised we like. I certainly do – usually because they catch my eye while being linked to elsewhere, and I decide to stick with them to see how often they can flick my switches. That’s the beauty of RSS, isn’t it – costs you nothing to suck it and see, and it’s simplicity itself to cancel your subscription.

One such blog I love dearly is BLDGBLOG, whose tag-line is “Architectural Conjecture : Urban Speculation : Landscape Futures”. Yup – it’s basically an architecture blog, but the guy who writes it has an sf fan’s love of sensawunda. Go read this post about supersonic bullets of gas the size of a solar system, and then try to tell me I’m wrong.

For those who didn’t see this when BoingBoing mentioned it, Frolix-8 is a blog by a chap under the pseudonym Palmer Eldritch, in which he lists news stories of the day and links them to classic PKD fiction. As far as market-niche blogging goes, that’s just priceless – and he’s never going to run short of material in this increasingly surreal world.

Before you groan too vigorously, yes, this is another ‘me’ post, but I got tagged by the inestimable Sterling Camden, and he’s been a loyal VCTB reader for too long for me to let him down. Truth be told, I’m about a day late on this anyway – been slack on checking my Technorati egoboo. For shame! Continue reading “When memes attack! Five reasons why I blog”

… which I am widely informed is that rarest of things, an optional piece of Microsoft software that actually works really well. The deal maker for me will be whether or not the plugin I have installed will pass the keywords through correctly. Fingers crossed!

[Edit: well, what do you know - it actually works as advertised. Chalk one up for Microsoft!] Continue reading “This is a test of Windows Live Writer …”

Word filters through slowly to us marginal British blogging types, but I am reliably informed (via the excellent Cosmic Variance) that this is National De-lurking Week over the other side of the pond, and I thought I’d get in on the action.

What’s a lurker, you ask? Well, statistically there’s a 90% chance that you, the person reading this, are one. Lurkers are those who read a blog but never click through and comment. I get maybe a hundred subscribers a day here, and perhaps ten people who actually pipe up with something to say every once in a while.

So, (Inter)national De-lurking Week is designed for you – click on through and say hello. You don’t have to say anything clever or funny – maybe just say where you’re from, or big-up your own blog (if you have one). Get to know one another. Hey, you never know who you might meet! How cool would it be if VCTB brought together a couple destined for a great future together – I’d have an excuse to buy a new hat!*

While we’re doing the dialogue thing, I’d just like to apologise again for the slackness this week. But a new influx of hardware (which is finally all set up and running smoothly) should ensure that no more nasty computer disasters knock me off the straight and steady path of delivering what ever it is that keeps you coming back here. Thanks for your time. Now, take the right hand off the mouse and type something! You can spare thirty seconds, surely? Your boss’s meeting isn’t due to end for another half hour at least …

[* Making an obscure cultural reference to the UK iteration of 'Blind Date' - that's just how cool I am, yo.]