Category: General

Back(b)log: Happy Birthday to Me

My friend Brom called me up saying he wanted to get together with our buddy Dursin and go out to dinner sometime. We made plans to meet up the day before my birthday. I showed up just before they did, and I did a double take to see Frank and Dream getting out of the car with them. I admit it, I was surprised. They had planned a birthday get together for me, and I hadn’t expected it at all.

We had a fun dinner, and afterwards, Brom mentioned that Junction 18 was playing a show at Drifters. Junction 18 is the younger band that used to practice across the street from Brom’s band when we were in high school. I’d never heard of the place, but it was right around the corner from my house, so we headed on over. It was interesting to be one day away from 29 in a room full of high school kids. There’s some strange sort of angst nostalgia feeling I can’t quite describe. Drifters was a nice clean place, the sort of place I would have liked at that age. Anyway, the guys from Junction 18 rocked, and they even dedicated a song (Battle Ax) to me for my birthday.

I’m not sure what the next year of my life will bring, but my friends made sure it started out with a bang. Thanks guys!

Back(b)log

Well, I find I have a slightly less busy afternoon that I had thought, so I’m going to try to catch up on some of things I’ve been meaning to post, but haven’t managed to.

Off to See the Wizard

I’m off to Wizard World Boston to help out the guys from Turbo Comics. Be sure to stop by and pick up a copy of the The Secret Monkey #1! I’m pretty sure this will be the last printing of this issue, so get ’em while you can. I’ll be there today, and tomorrow afternoon.

I’m also pretty psyched that the gang from Mirage Studios is going to be there. I’ll try to avoid being a sad little fan boy, but it’ll be hard.

WordPress: Hiding the comment link without disabling pings

I saw this question over on Holly Lisle’s weblog, and thought I’d try to help. After a number of posts eaten by the comment gnomes, I think I’ve found the answer.

Since this might be useful to someone else, I’ve decided to post it here.

Continue reading “WordPress: Hiding the comment link without disabling pings”

What’s up with all these posts?

So most of you who know me, know we’re waiting for something big. It still hasn’t happened. I don’t want to start any more work on my novel until after it happens. In the mean time I’ve had a bit of free time, so I’ve been trying to keep on top of things around here while I can. One I do get back to writing I’m hoping to revise at least one of my short stories before diving into Novel work again. We’ll see.

Read to me

I found this article from the New York Times (hint: bugmenot.com) over at Neil Gaiman’s blog. It was a pretty good read, consisting of the differing opinions on audiobooks vs. reading.

I found some of the quotes irksome enough to comment on.

Continue reading “Read to me”

HBO cancels Carnivale. Just another network.

Carnivale - The Complete First Season

I just saw that HBO has canceled Carnivale. Why? Carnivale was an amazing show, and while the second season did tie up many of the loose ends from the first season, it also added boatloads of new ones.

Why do I bother to watch TV? I should just wait for shows to finish, and buy the DVDs. I don’t mean seasons, I mean shows. That way I’d know in advance that a show that planned to tell it’s story over six seasons was canceled after two. Then I could decide if that made it worth my time.

I’ve been a big fan of many of HBO’s television series, but Carnivale was hands down the best of them all in my opinion. It had to have been the best sci-fi show since the X-Files. It had just the right mix of mysterious atmosphere and interesting characters to make every episode seem far to short. It was well written, well acted, and I looked forward to it. All of these are signs of early cancellation, except it was on HBO, so I was safe, right? Apparently not.

If you haven’t seen the show by now, I still recommend it. The first two seasons were great, and they do tell a (mostly) complete story. I envy those of you who watch it for the first time on DVD and are able to just watch the next episode with no waiting.

Quiet around here…

You may have noticed that I got really quiet after posting almost every day. Well, I was participating in the “March Madness” writing marathon over at Forward Motion. If you’ve been keeping an eye on my progress bar at the top of the site, you may have noticed it moving quite a bit. My goal was to write 1000 words a day for 7 days, and I pulled it off! That means I pretty much doubled my daily output, and didn’t miss a single day for seven days. That’s including working about 50 hours this week, and spending 2+ hours a day cleaning the house. Phew! I hope to keep it up, but I’m giving myself a lower goal for this weekend as it’s a bit crazy.

I hope to have more detailed reviews, but in case I don’t get to it I finished a few books since my last post. First, I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . Wow. It was an amazing book filled with surprises of various kinds.

More recently I finished listening to Ender’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition by Orson Scott Card. I’ve always wanted to read this, and my friend Matt had recommended it. When I realized that Audible had the majority of the series available unabridged I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed it. I’ve read some of Card’s books on writing, but this is the first novel of his that I’ve read. It’s the story of a young boy being schooled in the art of warfare to fight a war against an alien race he has only seen on propaganda films. Ender’s story is filled with interesting and fully realized characters. I thought I saw the ending coming, and while the events I suspected did happen, it was not the ending at all. Great stuff!

Half way through Ender’s Game I knew I’d want more, so I already had Speaker for the Dead on my iPod and started it after taking some time to digest the ending of Game.

More soon, unless I’m busy, then more later.