Fantasist's Scroll

According to Writer’s Almanac we have three birthdays to celebrate today.

First, there’s novelist Herbert George (H.G.) Wells, who was born in Bromley, England in1866. According to the note I got from Writer’s Almanac, Wells had a job writing biology textbooks until he developed a respiratory illness in his late 20s. Since he thought he didn’t have long to live, he left his wife and ran away with another woman, after which he began writing furiously. In roughly three years, he published all the novels for which we know him: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds.

It’s also the birthday of the novelist Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine in 1947. His father was a merchant seaman who left the family when Stephen was just two. He has no memories of his father, but one day he found a whole box full of his father’s science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, and that box of his father’s books inspired him to start writing horror stories.
He was working as a teacher when he wrote his first novel about a weird high school girl with psychic powers named Carrie White. He gave up on the book at one point and threw it in the trash. His wife rescued it. Carrie was published in 1973. The hard cover didn’t sell well, but then his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000.

Lastly, but, perhaps, most importantly, today is the birthday of the man who first put high quality literature into paperbacks, Sir Allen Lane, born in Bristol, England in 1902. He was the founder of Penguin Books.

Finally, a personal note. I am not evacuating during Hurricane Rita. I have nowhere to go, really, so I’ll stay and brave it. I’ll blog, as long as I have power and an Internet connection, at Diary of a Network Geek, my other blog. Take care!

TSR, er, sorry Wizards of the Coast has a new “educational” campaign.
Now, they’ve recruited librarians to the cause. No, really, they have a new program called “Afternoon Adventures with Dungeons and Dragons“. It’s a program designed to give librarians free materials to learn and teach kids D&D after school and then to use that as a jumping off point to more literary adventures.
Actually, it’s not a bad deal. As far as I’m concerned, anything that gets more kids interested in reading or even just going to the library after school is not half bad. I know my own reading and love of the written word was very much fueled by the same things that drove my attraction to D&D. Even today, though I haven’t played in years, I have the new, “Third Edition” rules on my shelf. Of course, I have other, much more obscure games, too, but D&D was pretty much the start of it all for me. (DragonQuest almost was, but that’s another story…)

Anyway, it was a great story to read and brought back all kinds of fond memories. So, in a sad, middle-aged, nostalgic sort of way, it’s the perfect fun link for a Friday.
(And, yes, this is also appearing on my other blog.)

Why do people search for some of this stuff?
Okay, I get why people would be looking for “lucy liu porn” or “mariska hargitay porn”, but what makes them think they’re going to find it here? Last month, my number one hit search term was “lucy liu porn”. Doesn’t anyone search for “fantasy cartography” and find my site anymore? Or “conlang generator”? Always back to the porn. Sadly, it does increase hits and my Googlerank. Ah, well, there’s no accounting for it, I guess. As P.T. Barnum once said, “No one ever got rich overestimating the American people.”

My favorite fantasy author is experimenting.
Specifically, Lawrence Watt-Evans is serializing an Ethshar novel called The Spriggan Mirror. Apparently, the fans are clamoring for more Ethshar, but not loudly enough to be heard in the halls of the ivory towers of publishing. So, dedicated author that he is, Lawrence has begun serializing the novel on his website. Every week that he has recieved $100, or more, in donations, he will post a chapter, until the entire book is “exposed”. Of course, if he hasn’t recieved the required donations, he doesn’t post anything that week. So, all you rich kids who like Lawrence Watt-Evans, go spend your allowance on this project, so I can read this fine novel for free.

Oh, you know I’m going to contribute, but it’s Friday, so I thought I’d have a little fun. Now, go read as much of The Spriggan Mirror as you can before the boss catches you!

I know why I have such trouble starting stories.
The answer came to me while reading someone else’s blog: Chad Fowler. He was talking about the book he’s working on and his observations of other people who want to write books. His observation, which I thought was dead on accurate, was that most people wanted to have written a book, not to go through the process of writing a book. I think many people dream of being a writer, but few dream of the work involved in writing. There are times that I can sympathize with that.
But, my problem tends to be indecision. I have a hard time picking which story is worth writing. Or, which story is most worth writing. So, I fret over which one to start until it just doesn’t interest me any more, or until I come up with enough pre-writing requirements, so that I never actually get to the writing part. Hmm, that therapy stuff must be making me more insightfull or something. Damn. One less excuse.

A new way to fund NASA?
Well, I’d sure buy some! Hey, why not? The side benefits of the space program have always been a reason to continue that kind of work, so why shouldn’t they make some money off it?
Okay, so they don’t have Martian Sea Monkeys, yet, but, according to this article on Slashdot, they might. At least, they’re convinced enough of the possibility of microbial life that could survive freezing for thousands of years that NASA is talking about sending probes to retrieve the little buggers from the Martian “ice ocean” that’s been recently discovered. Personally, I think it would be cool to have Martian life in your very own home, like those “living dinosaurs”, the Triops.
Well, I guess, we’ll have to wait for a Mars mission to know if they exist, but the thought sure is fun!

The title says it all!
Okay, so what I finally decided on was simply reducing the datasets for the troublesome WordGenerator apps. It doesn’t seem to have reduced their functionality at all and, so far, has not resulted in the same server-crashing error. Of course, some of the problem may stem from the immense popularity of the applications. You conlang nuts really hammer those apps!
I suppose I should really figure out how to do it all in a more “modern” language, like PHP, but PERL is still my first web programmging love. And, I can use the same scripts locally on my machine without the restrictions. But, no, I won’t make them available to the general public because I don’t really want to support PERL on your local machine.

One final word on this. Remember, these are free resources, so sometimes they go off-line without much warning. If my ISP has issues, I kill the app first and and questions later. My webhost, Amzia.net, is really patient with me, because he’s a cousin of a friend of mine, but I’d rather not push it. And, if your really, really like the apps, buy something from the Ye Olde Shoppe or at least click on an ad. Anything to show your support. Thanks!

Right out of science-fiction.
I can’t even begin to recall all the different science-fiction books and movies that used fingerprints as identification for everything, including monetary transactions. Well, now it’s reality. According to this news story from Cnet.com, Thriftway has setup something called “Pay By Touch” which lets you pay with your fingerprint. Of course, there is a setup procedure and this is only good in Thriftway stores, right now, but it’s still there. How long before it spreads? Can Walmart be far behind? I would bet they will be because the article claims that Pay By Touch now “makes up 30 percent of Thriftway’s electronic payments”. Cool.