Year: 2007

Links of Interest (May 3rd 2007 through May 7th 2007)

Lost’s end in sight.
“Lost” has three more seasons (but with only 16 episodes each), ending in 2010. It’s still one of my top five shows, and I’m glad they are planning a definitive ending (not because I want it to go, but because it can’t go on forever).
DryerFox – It’s like Firefox, but inside a dryer!
Just what it sounds like.
IE 8: Opt-in for standards compliance
Apparently there will be a way to tell IE8 “my site is standards compliant”. I imagine that means the default assumption is “my site works in IE”.
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
Peter Cashmore’s take on the news that Microsoft is in talks to buy Yahoo! My immediate reaction is to wonder about Pipes and YUI.
Science Fiction and Politics University Course continues
“Professor Courtney Brown’s course at Emory University is a Political Science course entitled Science Fiction and Politics (Political Science 190).” The lectures are available free for download and as a podcast.
Can e-books hurt your eyes?
As someone whose vision is not at all good, this is near and dear to my eyes. Also this is one of the reasons I avoid DRM crippled e-books and PDF e-books. I want to view e-books on my preferred device, with my own font size choice.

Links of Interest

Reset Reasoning
Eric Myer’s explanation of why you would want to reset styles across browsers.
Reset Reloaded
Eric Myer’s reset CSS stylesheet. It levels the playing fields across (most) browsers. I’ll probably use this when I get back to redesigning my site.
Eric Talbot’s Blog
Eric Talbot (perhaps best know for his work involving turtles and/or skulls) has long been one of my favorite artists. His blog contains scans from his sketchbook.
Interactivities Ink Presents: Code Monkey
“Code Monkey is a cute short game based on the song of the same name by Jonathan Coulton. Be the first Code Monkey to win the heart of the Pretty Receptionist and complete two projects for Boring Manager Rob.”
MessageFaces
One of my favorite Thunderbird extensions. Adds support for X-Face and gravatar.com.
Totally Frakked: Dead Like Me Returns In Movie Form
Looks like “Dead Like Me”, which was a great show, is going to return in a direct to DVD movie.

Links of Interest (April 30th 2007 through May 1st 2007)

First of May – Joe Murphy Mix
A “Band-Aid” style version of Jonathan Coulton’s “First of May” recorded by a number of podcasters in support of The Joe Murphy Memorial Fund. Warning: Explicit Lyrics
Prototype JavaScript framework: Prototype 1.5.1 released
Release announcement for Prototype 1.5.1
Loupe.js
“[A]llows you to add a loupe (magnifier) to images on your webpages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean.” Interesting. I like the Xray example.
How A Small Press Author Stormed Amazon?s Charts (and beat Black Lab)
Video interview with Scott Sigler about Ancestor’s performance on Amazon, and the reaction.
Mr Potato Head: Spider-Spud
When a radioactive spider bit Peter Parker Potato, he became SPIDER SPUD!
Mr Potato Head: Optimash Prime
Potatoes in Disguise!

Holly Lisle’s "Create A Plot Clinic" Available

[Book Cover]

Holly Lisle’s latest writing ebook, Create A Plot Clinic, is now available. I read an earlier draft and I can’t wait to start using it myself. The book is filled with exercises, tools, and examples to help you develop your stories. It’s divided into four main sections, each covering different phases of plotting.

Continue reading “Holly Lisle’s "Create A Plot Clinic" Available”

Links of Interest (April 27th 2007 through April 28th 2007)

The Dragon Page » Contest: Crystal Rain Giveaway
In honor of the May 2007 paperback release of Crystal Rain, author Tobias Buckell has graciously consigned us 3 signed hardcover copies to give away to Dragon Page listeners
Ninjawords – a really fast dictionary
Finally a dictionary where you don’t have to know how to spell the word before looking up how to spell the word. Pulls from Wiktionary and Princeton WordNet. I especially like that you can lookup multiple words at once (use commas to separate). Oh and
MythShow 07
Interview with Mur Lafferty
Transcription of the Panel at Lunacon 2007
A transcription of the ‘Ask The Editors’ panel at the 2007 Lunacon, recorded by John Joseph Adams, and featuring Douglas Cohen, Marvin Kaye, Hildy Silverman, and Wendy S. Delmater. Contains link to mp3.
User-Generated Content Is Top Threat to Media and Entertainment Industry, Accenture Survey Finds
Media and entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats to their business, according to results of a survey released today by Accenture.
First look: Downey forges a bond with ‘Iron Man’ role – USATODAY.com
Look like this could be good (please let it be good).

Links of Interest

The World in the Satin Bag: Stuffs For Us Writers (Part One)
Software and gadgets for writers
Nostalgy Thunderbird Extension
This is probably the most useful, time saving Thundrebird extension I’ve ever used. Try it out.
Jason Penney@ iStalkr: Social Feed Aggregator
My iStalkr page
Now Reading 4.3.6
New version of “Now Reading” wordpress plugin
Twitter Tools README
README for Alex King’s Twitter Tools wordpress plugin.
Seven JavaScript Techniques You Should Be Using Today
Some JavaScript best practices.

Podiobooks and Free e-books Harmful?

Flametoad seems to thinks so (found via TeleRead). He suggests that authors like Cory Doctorow, JC Hutchins and Scott Sigler are devaluing the audiobook and e-book formats, and buying the p-book is “paying for the paper because the content has no value”

I don’t see it. Perhaps these authors value readers. After all, what value does you work have if no one has read it? Cory Doctorow’s books keep showing up in the bookstore. In fact IDW recently bought the rights to do a series of comics based on his works even though the license for those works allows anyone to create such comics non-commercially. Scott Sigler recently managed to sell quite a few copies of his new print book recently. Heck, I bought two (one as a gift).

I have both an audible.com and a podiobooks.com account. Do I value one over the other? Not really. I don’t think most people equate free with no value. Not anymore, if they ever did.

New Feed

I had been trying to find a way to consolidate some of the content I create for a while now. My sidebars are over-filled as it is, so I didn’t want to go sticking twitter and cocomment widgets all over the place. At the same time I’d like people who are interested to know that I’m active (sometimes when I don’t have time to post I still manage to comment elsewhere). I think I’ve found the answer thanks to Yahoo Pipes. I fooled around with it a bit, and created a consolidated feed partly based on Dougal Campbell’s LifeFeed (which seems as good a name as any).

It seems to work pretty well (although twitter seems to be timing out so usually only a single post makes the combined feed). I added it to the Subscribe box and replaced Recent Posts in the sidebar with Recent Activity. If I ever finish the site redesign I’ll probably make a nicely displayed version available on a separate page.