In case you didn’t catch it on BoingBoing earlier, someone has started a Flickr group specifically for showing off your ‘to be read’ stack of books:

Books I want to read

Originally uploaded by The Shmoopies.

I think I’ll be obliged to share, as soon as I can get all the relevant books into one place. I imagine Niall (and many others) will struggle to find a camera with a lens that can encompass the their whole stack, though … this reminds me of the brief flurry of fun we had with the sorted spine titles game.

Managed to actually get up early enough to force coffee down my neck and head to the BSFA novel award taster reading panel … Continue reading “Eastercon Saturday: BSFA Novel Award taster reading and more”

When people arguing the other side retreat into irony, desperate and irrelevant worst-case scenarios or a combination of the two, you’ve got to be on the right track. Here’s Scott Edelman in his column at SciFi Weekly, talking about the print/digital reading debate:

But—how can you predict the future of publishing and have nothing to say about the aftereffects of a possible nuclear war?

{snip}

Whether you think such an event might occur this decade, this century or this millennium, you should ask the next question, which is—how will we be able to read electronic stories once there’s no electricity? We won’t be able to read e-books on our computers by candlelight. A disaster of that magnitude might take us back to the basics of paper and ink. In fact, we may arrive at a time when it will be as if anything that had existed only in electronic form—such as this editorial—never existed at all.

OK, I’m pretty positive he’s doing a slightly ironic overstatement thing here. But even that is a bit lame, really – is that all a columninst and editor-in-chief of a major online magazine can come up with as the end for a piece of the rise of digital media? Bit of a red herring argument, really – it’s almost as if he wants to completely avoid having a serious opinion on the issue, which is a weird stance for an editorial column to take. 

Digging in the Mexico archives this week; major shortage of time has prevented interesting photographic excursions. So instead you can enjoy these shots of a major street in San Luis Potosi, about half an hour after dawn:

Ah, Mexico. I’d go back if I could. Hell, if I could have found a way to work legally over there, I’d probably never have come back at all. Lucky for you lot that a gringo can’t work over there on a tourist visa, eh? Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging: San Luis Potosi at dawn”

Thanks to a merciful let-up in the weather last Sunday, I actually took the camera outdoors. Which means you get a refreshing break from pictures of my computers:

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging: the lion and the unicorn”

Precious, precious computer innards – I love them so:

Okay, so that’s a bit of a cop-out for a Friday photo, but as previously explained I’ve not had much of a chance to get out of the house on photographic missions. Even if I hadn’t had the computer crisis, the weather has been far from conducive to leaving the centrally-heated comfort of The Hall of Mirrors. So, PC innards is what you get. I rather like the way they look, as it happens, and I’m considering keeping the sides off of the case on a permanent basis – not just for aesthetics, you understand; it also improves the airflow. Ahem. Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging: Electronic intestines”

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I love a bit of time off work. Hell, I’d like a whole lot more of it. But free time brings its own dilemmas, as illustrated below:

(This cartoon ©Shannon Wheeler; click through on image for original location.) Continue reading “Productivity versus procrastination”

I’m digging in the crates for this Friday’s photos:

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging! Mexico dreaming”

The days get shorter and the air gets colder as another year nears its end…

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging! Autumn in Velcro City”

I’ve been stewing on the “whither now, science fiction?” debate for a little while now, trying to get my thoughts in order, and over the weekend I hit upon something that crystallised a bunch of ideas which I was planning to knock out in a post today. Continue reading “Retrospective – science fiction in my life”