Instant Messenger

Okay, so if you view my blog on the main page and not through an aggregator, you’ve probably noticed that I removed that stupid AIM remote. I didn’t remove it because IMs were bothering me; I only removed it because it was annoying me and I felt like it was cluttering up my banner space. So do still feel free to IM me if you want. I’ve moved the link over to the sidebar below my ID info, next to my email address. And if that’s too complex for you, the AIM username is johnjosephadams.

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Book Meme

1) The number of books I’ve owned?

Egad. Who could possibly know such a thing? I’d love to know how many I have now, but I’m not anal enough to do an inventory. Plus, that wouldn’t account for the books I bought then traded in at used bookstores. I certainly have enough that I shouldn’t be buying more, especially considering I get quite a few freebies from F&SF, but…

2) The last book I bought?

Natural History by Justina Robson and Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, with the latter being a blog-related purchase (go blogiral marketing!). I was nearly put off purchasing it when Scalzi mentioned that he decided to write a military SF novel solely because that’s what was selling, but in the end I decided that I still wanted to read it for myself, and figured that he should at least get points for being honest about the genesis of the novel. The Robson was just something that had been on my wish list for a while, and I needed to add about ten bucks to my Amazon order to get free shipping.

3) The last book I read?

The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay. Good stuff! Go order a copy immediately!

4) Five books that mean a lot to me: (in no particular order)

1. The F&SF anthologies — One Lamp, In Lands That Never Were, and Fourth Planet From the Sun, because they are the first books I worked on, and one of them is one-third dedicated to me.

2. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, because it’s my favorite novel, and was the first SF novel I read to blow my mind.

3. The Road to Science Fiction, Vol. 3: From Heinlein to Here edited by James Gunn, because it was the anthology that made me learn to love short fiction.

4. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, because it convinced me to give science fiction a try. (I’d read fantasy as a youngster, but no SF.)

5. The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay, because he’s my dawg, and it’s his first novel, and I got to work on it a bit officially (on the sections we published at F&SF) and unofficially (as Charlie noted in the acknolwedgements, “[I] read new additions critically at the very end.”).

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May 2005 Acquisitions

New stories this month: a suburban fantasy from Delia Sherman, a chilling apocalyptic horror tale from Claudia O’Keefe, a temporal art tale from Allen Steele, new hard SF from Daryl Gregory, a cyberpunkish sf tale from Tony Sarowitz, arrrrrr lit’ry pirate fantasy from Gene Wolfe, and a brilliant new TV show fantasy from Kelly Link (in her F&SF debut). Quite a batch this month! You’ll likely be seeing the Wolfe (Oct/Nov) and Link (Sept.) very soon, though the future is still uncertain.

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How to Determine Your PC’s Specfications and Other Mysteries — Solved

Have you ever tried to figure out what kind of RAM you need to buy for your PC, or anything else about the specifications of your machine? I can never seem to figure out how to do it, and always turn to computer geek friends for assistance. One of my geeks referred me to this cool program called Belarc Advisor.

From the Belarc website:

The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.

Detailed is right. It tells you all the basics, such as how much RAM you have installed (and what type and how many slots your case has available for expansion), your processor speed, etc., along with all the really geeky stuff that you and I don’t understand (but your geek will). What’s really handy is that you can just save the data as an HTML file and email it to your geek so he can advise you. Neat! Plus, it’s freeware, so the price is right.

So I think the program’s pretty useful, but you’d think there would be a standard system utility on your computer that would tell you this stuff.

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iPod Amnesia

This is how See Jane Run by Joy Fielding begins:

One afternoon in late spring, Jane Whittaker went to the store for some milk and some eggs and forgot who she was.

Today (an afternoon in mid-spring), I went to the store for some milk and some eggs (and other stuff) and my iPod forgot who it was.

Or, more precisely, it seemed to forget all that stuff that was supposed to be stored in its memory, namely, my songs. In the middle of a song, out of the blue, it just locked up. I reset it, but after it cycled, it didn’t return to the main menu. Instead, a little file icon appeared along with some icons indicating some confusion on iPod’s part (which I can certainly understand; I was confused too). Thankfully, when iPod and I returned home, syncing him with iTunes restored iPod’s memory, though it remains to be seen whether iPod actually *lost* all his memory, or if he just couldn’t figure out how to access it.

I guess I should be grateful that it only happened while I was at the store, and not while I was in the first hour of a long road trip.

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What is Your World View?

You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements.

Existentialist
81%

Materialist
81%

Modernist
63%

Postmodernist
38%

Cultural Creative
31%

Fundamentalist
31%

Romanticist
25%

Idealist
19%

What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com

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Musicality Meme

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.
Tim Pratt (via his blog)

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.
2034 songs, 10.2 days, 12.33 gigabytes. That includes some audiobooks, and doesn’t include some audiobooks that I don’t have stored in iTunes because there’s no room for them on my iPod.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.
Mezmerize by System of a Down [listen]

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.
“Sweet Relief” by The Haunted, from rEVOLVEr [listen to other songs]

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs). (I’ll go with “recently”)

1. Monster by STEMM, from their demo [download it]

2. Sworn by Trivium, from their demo [listen to other songs]

3. Black Hearts Now Reign by Unearth, from The Oncoming Storm [listen with the flash player]

4. Therein by Dark Tranquillity, from Projector [download it]

5. Bleeding Mascara by Atreyu, from The Curse [listen to other songs]

6. The five victims to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’

You. The first five of you who read this. Do it!

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AIM Remote

If you’re reading this, you probably noticed that I added one of those AIM Remotes to the banner at the top of the blog. See, when I added it, I thought that the Remote would tell you when I was online and open to chatting. Well, I guess it does do that, but it always says I’m online. Even when I’m not. So what’s the point?

Just wanted to point out that it’s there, and that I’m not actually online all the time as it says I am. But if you add me to an AIM buddy list and I pop online, you should feel free to IM me if you like.

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