Fantasist's Scroll

Fun, Fiction and Strange Things from the Desk of the Fantasist.

3/16/2007

Cancer Coloring Book?

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

Well, cancer seems to be on my mind this week.

Go figure, right?
Well, it’s been a long week and I’m tired, but I have two fun links for you regarding cancer. The first is a link to the National Children’s Cancer Society educational publication page, which includes a cancer coloring book called “Sammie’s New Mask: A Coloring Book for Friends of Children with Cancer“.
The second link is to The Adventures of Captain Chemo and the Chemo Command. I’ll let you make your own judgements about both of these, but they struck my strange sense of humor. I know they’re trying, but I think they can do better on the “fun” links for cancer.

Hmm, maybe I should put together a cancer coloring book myself as I go through all this. Might fill some time and keep me amused.
Anyway, it’s the best I can do this week. Better links next week, I promise. Until then, enjoy your weekend. Hell, enjoy every day.

2/20/2007

Birth of Grunge

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

Today is the birthday of Kurt Cobain.

The singer-songwriter who essentially founded the “grunge” music movement, was born in Hoquiam, Washington on this day in 1967. He started from humble beginings, working a job as a school janitor, but he started playing in local rock bands. He spent most of this time living at various friends’ houses and on the street, even occasionally sleeping under a bridge. In 1989, he and his bandmates saved up six hundred dollars to record their first album, Bleach, under the name Nirvana. The boys signed to a major label in 1991 for their next album, Nevermind, and Cobain was shocked when it sold more than 10 million copies.

He became internationally famous almost overnight, but Cobain hated being famous. He developed a heroin addiction that got worse and worse, and on April 5th of 1994 he committed suicide at his home in Seattle.

2/16/2007

Even More Homey Links!

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

I’m feeling very domestic this month.

I’m not sure if it was the four more bags of junk I threw out last night, or the six more bags I have to donate to the Salvation Army, or just moving furnature around, but I’m really enjoying home related links this month. Maybe I’m just nesting. In any case, following with the theme from last week, here are some more very strange domestic links that struck my fancy.

To start with, I’ve got two very different fireplaces. The first, called the Drop, wouldn’t work in my house at all. For one thing, it’s very modern, for another, it simply wouldn’t retrofit well with my current chimney. The other, from Hearthfalls, wouldn’t work either, because… Well, just look at them and I think you’ll see why. Frankly, it’s one of those things that looks perfect, for someone else’s house.
And, while we’re talking about water, here’s a funky lamp called, plainly enough, the Wet Lamp. It’s a lamp, in a bowl of water. Yes, electricity inside water in your house. And, it looks cool, too.
Speaking of “looking cool”, let’s contemplate the outdoors for a minute. Or, at least the garage. A European designer of unknown national origin has designed a variably transparent garage. Apparently, it’s done with LCDs, but it lets you show off your new, impossibly expensive sports car when your ridiculously wealthy friends are over, then hide it again from thieves. Sadly, I’m more likely to have a driveway edged with glow in the dark pebbles than I am the garage with disappearing walls.
Now, I am looking at new/different furnature, so I’ve got several links to that sort of thing, too.
I have a lot of friends that often find themselves in trouble with their wives and need a place to crash. Or, are going through some sort of meltdown and need a place to sit and rock while sucking their thumb and going to the “happy, quiet place”. So, this couch that opens into bunk beds struck me as useful.
And, naturally, I want to make a good impression and hide the fact that I’m as obsessed with TV as I am with books, so a reversable media center that’s combined with a bookcase seemed perfect for my living room.
Now, I’m sure none of my friends do this, but I’m told that sometimes people snoop through bathrooms when they’re in another person’s house. What better way to deal with that than a mirror that you can send SMS text messages to! So, now, when you think that nosey relative is about to snoop in your medicine cabinet, you can have the mirror tell them to mind their own business!

Now, finally, to wind things up on a more whimsical note, I have a link to a paper airplane coffee table that I just love! Yes, it’s a little strange, but you have to admit, it does look cool. And, what could go with that better than kid-sized Tetris pillows!? I can totally see those in my living room!

Well, I can tell it’s been a long week, because these Friday Fun Links just got sillier and sillier, even though they’re duplicates of the ones posted on Diary of a Network Geek. Still I hope you enjoy them and have a great Friday!

2/9/2007

Friday Fun Links for the Domestics

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

So, today, my Friday Fun Links have a theme.

I’m not sure if it was the cleaning this week or what, but I’ve been feeling very, well, um, “domestic”. So, my fun links this week pretty much all have to do with things around the house, or housing itself.
Okay, so let’s start from the outside and work our way in. First, I have a link to some interesting plans for an 11 foot by 7 foot flat in London. Apparently inspired by a janitor’s closet with a bathroom that sold for £170,000 in London’s upmarket Chelsea, the plan is really quite ingeneous.
Now, let’s talk furnishings… If you’ve just spent $335,000 on a large broom closet, you probably don’t have much left over for furnature, so it’ll be IKEA for you. No worries, though, thanks to the IKEA Hacker blog. Yes, the stuff on that blog all started life as humble IKEA flatpack that got modified into something wonderful. I especially like the breakfast nook for two.
But, you’ll need light for this tiny hovel, right? Well, thanks to Gizmodo, you can light your flat with the coolest, freakiest science-fiction lamps ever. Also, you can use the coolest, hippest, most radically arty light switches ever to turn the lights on. I thought the pool ball switch was cool for the mini-flat, since it was described as being about the size of a billards table.
But, wait! There’s more! Since this flat would be so totally strapped for space, there’d be no room for a rack of cookbooks in the kitchen, er, make that, by the tiny hotplate and microwave. So, instead, use the coo.boo Digital Cookbook that’s the size and shape of a spatula!
And, finally, in a barely related story, if you can squeeze into the fridge, get out some Ben and Jerry’s Steven Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream. No, I’m not making that up, but, also no, it’s not quite available yet. Yet.

So, there you have it, a geek getting domestic and working on too little sleep. Enjoy your links and your Friday!
And, yes, this did appear on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.

12/15/2006

Wacky Christmas Links

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

I’ve got the spirit.

The spirit of Christmas, that is!
Hey, look for the first time in three years, I actually put up a tree. And I live alone, so there’s no one to see it. Well, no one but the girls at work who saw it on my cellphone and cooed. Okay, so now you know the real reason I put up the tree, but still…

Well, in keeping with the speedily approaching holiday, I’ve got some toy and Christmas related links for you.
First, there’s a virtual Advent Calendar. Each day links to a Christmas memory and a link to something fun. For instance, the second day had a “paint your own Christmas tree” web thing. Kind of cool.
Next, I have a link to a BoingBoing article about an illustrator from Popular Science magazine who makes the most incredible Rube Goldberg Christmas cards you’ve ever seen. Really, you have to look at these and wonder.
Now, when Christmas is over, you have all kinds of boxes laying around, right? Well, don’t throw them out! Instead, use carboard rivets to make them into something cool to play with!
If you’re looking for a great stocking stuffer for geeks, try the Christmas Stocking USB drive. Yeah, it’s kind of specialized, but, hey, it is a USB drive they can enjoy all year long.
But, for my money? The coolest thing I’ve seen all year is the Custom Action Figure. Yes, this is not just a web toy. You can design and actually purchase the GI Joe-sized action figure you design. And, considering the customization factor, the prices are damned reasonable.

So, now you have a way to waste a little time with just 8 shopping days until Christmas. How much work were you planning to do this week anyway?
(And, yes, this was originally posted on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.)

11/10/2006

Self-Publishing Made Easy

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

Oy, what a week!

I’m thousands of pages behind on my NaNoWriMo work and massively over worked, so I’m afraid that today’s Friday Fun Link is not very exciting.  But, it is fun, at least to a geek like me.  This week I bring you a simple article, filled with links, on self-publishing on MSN.com. That is to say, the article is on MSN, and it’s about self-publishing.

Hey, cut me some slack, it’s been a rough week, so click the link and enjoy your Friday.

10/11/2006

Paying Markets

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Rooster which is in the early evening.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

‘Cause it all comes down to the dough, re, mi!

Sometimes, it feels like there just aren’t any paying markets for fantasy and science-fiction short stories. Of course, that’s not true, but, still, outside of one of the Writer’s Digest Novell and Short Story Writer’s Market books, where are you going to find a place to send your work? Try looking at these pages to find someone who would like to buy your work:

The Writer’s Write Paying Market List
The “Goblin” Markets
Story Pilot’s Science-Fiction and Fantasy Market Engine
SFWA Magazine List
Julia West’s Paying F&SF Markets List
So, now that you have places to send the work, the only thing you need to do is write the story!

10/7/2006

Search Terms

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Dragon which is in the early morning.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

So far this year, May has been my biggest web traffic month.

I had an average of over 6500 hits per day in May and these were the search terms that brought people to my site:

# Hits Search String
1 69 5.79% scroll comments
2 59 4.95% fantasy names
3 42 3.52% oceanside
4 36 3.02% scroll
5 16 1.34% funny name generator
6 15 1.26% free timeline generator
7 14 1.17% free graph paper
8 13 1.09% invetions
9 12 1.01% military phrases
10 11 0.92% fantasy map making
11 10 0.84% demon voices
12 8 0.67% alien landscape
13 8 0.67% fantasist
14 7 0.59% chrome girl
15 6 0.50% funny fantasy names
16 6 0.50% how fast can a swallow fly
17 6 0.50% how to write in elvish
18 6 0.50% military robots
19 6 0.50% novel title generator
20 6 0.50% word generators

Now, you might be asking yourself why I’m mentioning this… Well, that’s a good question.  It’s a test, of sorts.  A little experiment to see if it’s the content or the search terms that make the biggest difference.  I’m betting that my hits go up for at least the day or so after I post this and then drop off.

Well, only one way to know for sure!


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