—Torill’s a doctor!!!!! (jill/txt) Congratulations, Torill… I’ve enjoyed following Torill’s account of the endgame in her quest for the Ph.D., and it seems only fitting that an online community helps her celebrate it. My own doctoral defense was a rather lonely affair. The only date available was 3-5pm on the Friday after American Thanksgiving. My wife…
Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it’s time for me to stop blogging. — William Gibson —William Gibson is an Ex Blogger (William Gibson) I can’t say that I followed his blog much, but I enjoyed coming across other bloggers’ links to his online work. He invented the term…
Science Fiction seems always to be looking back at something — often at childhood. Standing baffled and dazzled in the imperial spaceport of Trantor, we recall the trip from the shtetl to the City and on the the New World. Dreaming of Electric Sheep, we’re alone in the long city night, our parents gone, and…
Whether used as a marvelous eating utensil, a cult worship figure, or even decoration, the Spork has brought joy to countless lives. This page has been created in an effort to pay them the justice they deserve in Cyberspace. —Justin W. Merry —Sporks are Godlike The subpage, “Anatomy of a Spork” is amusing, but would…
A mechanism description is a short report designed to convey to the reader a technical understanding of the function, appearance, and operation of a particular object. In one or two sentences, give the reader a quick overview of these three elements, before you lauch into the details. —Dennis G. Jerz —Mechanism Description: Analyzing the Function,…
Protect your Email address from Spam (unsolicited Email advertisements). The Enkoder Form will encrypt your Email address and convert the result to a self evaluating JavaScript, hiding it from Email-harvesting robots which crawl the web looking for exposed addresses. Your address will be displayed correctly by web-browsers, but will be virtually indecipherable to Email harvesting…
I said I didn’t feel like blogging today, but this picture pretty much captures my mood: —Yahoo’s Idea of ‘Entertainment’ (Yahoo! News) This photo rather indelicately appears in Yahoo’s “Entertainment” section, as part of a profile of Edward Teller (inventor of the hydrogen bomb). As a kid growing up in the 80s, when Russia was still…
Skyscrapers in general, and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in particular, symbolize, for many writers, either prideful arrogance, or a new technological beauty. This site attempts to survey what has already been written on this topic. —World Trade Center: Literary and Cultural Reflections I first put this page up on the afternoon…
Jill/txt describes Beadgee At first you see a collection of gizmos, each connected to a rhyme. Choose a gizmo and explode it into its separate pieces and a dot will start to dance along the words of the rhyme attached to it, just as a nun runs her fingers slowly along the beads on her…
Big Idea Productions, makers of the best-selling VeggieTales video series, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday, as part of a deal to sell the financially troubled company. | Big Idea has agreed to sell its assets?including copyrights to Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber and other VeggieTales characters?to Classic Media LLC, which owns…
The very idea of giving up perfect control over how and whether content is re-used is treason among insiders. But as the BBC understands, it does not live in Disney World. And in the course of its internal review an obvious question has become increasingly pressing: if the BBC could make its archive available cheaply,…
Fantasy stories of elves, dragons, and other denizens of faerie who intersect with the gritty streets of today’s cities. —Elfpunk/Urban Fantasy [List of Books] (Readers Advice) Elfpunk, modeled on “cyberpunk.” Amazing… I asked my journalism students to submit a report on a modern-day crime committed by a well-known fictional character, and the example I gave was…
Ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair has agreed to write a memoir about his life… Los Angeles-based New Millennium Press has agreed to publish the book, to be called “Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life and the New York Times,” sources said. | A contract in the six-figure range could be signed as early…
“Bloom County,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, appeared in nearly 1,300 newspapers via WPWG before ending in 1989. Its successor strip, the Sunday-only “Outland,” ran in about 225 papers before ending in 1995….Shearer said Breathed has made great artistic use of the half page. “It’s absolutely breathtaking,” he said. Newspaper editors are being…
Two Japanese girls shrieked and flapped, driving him away and giggling when he’d gone, swinging hands at each other in foreign conversation, and the woman beside them smiled as she listened, comprehending or not. The orange-haired goth wearing a black dress with a neckline that plunged farther than she may have realized jumped in her…
Misconceptions about usability’s expense, the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design…. Market research methods such as focus groups and customer satisfaction surveys are great at researching your positioning or which messages…
Who Cares About Andy Roddick — So today I read a quick story about Andy Roddick. He just won the U.S. Open. I did a search for him on Google to learn more, and I found his official web site. Fine. No problem. Then I clicked on a link to read about his U.S. Open…
I’ve been fretting and procrastinating over another definition I’m writing for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, you see, this one’s on cyberpunk (the genre) and I’ve never published a thing on cyberpunk. — Jill Walker —Definition: Cyberpunk (jill/txt) Jill is taking comments on the draft of her definition of cyberpunk. Neal Stephenson says that cyberpunk…
Controversial film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, who made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, has died aged 101. | Riefenstahl became a favourite of German dictator Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, making films for his fascist regime. | Her most famous work was Triumph of the Will, a propaganda film showing a Nazi rally in…
Three short steps into the New Millennium, written SF is paradoxically in sharp decline. …. And the reason is depressingly clear: Those few readers who haven’t defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises. | Incredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting. They no…