Comments Restored
The comments on my blog have been re-activated. Huzzah! Well, maybe. We’ll see how it goes. If you want to avoid comment moderation, try signing up with TypeKey. That’ll make sure your comment gets posted right away.
Category: GENERAL
Acquiring Concert Tix
Dear Vast Network of Contacts:
Do any of you have connections at Irving Plaza in New York, or at Ticketmaster, or are otherwise able to procure highly-sought-after concert tickets? My Mom is an insane (insane!) Chris Daughtry fan, and she desperately wants to go see him in concert. Tix to the Irving Plaza show go on sale on Wednesday at noon, and Mother is concerned about not being able to get tix in the mad rush (someone at Irving Plaza wished her a skeptical “Good Luck” when she called to find out more information about the show). So I just want to make sure she gets the tix, because she’ll be terribly disappointed if she doesn’t get to see him. Anyone got any connections, or failing that, advice? I’ve never actually tried to get concert tix to an event that was likely to sell out before.
Incidentally, the Ticketmaster website was driving me fucking insane the other day, because it has this rule about too many page views per IP address or something, and it was only letting me view like three or four pages. Turns out this is not as stupid as it seemed; the reason it was shutting me out is because of the Google Accelerator program, which is supposed to speed up your web browsing. Because of the way it works (something about pre-fetching pages, I think?), it causes the server of the sites you visit to be hit more often, or something like that. So if you use Google Accelerator, be aware that that might happen on some websites. When it does, you can turn it off, or you can go into the preferences, where you can add certain websites to the “do not accelerate” list. Wikipedia is another one that needs to be added (well, if you want to be able to edit pages, anyway–if you just want to view, it’s fine, I think).
Locus Award Poll
Speaking of Locus… their annual Locus Award poll is now online. Ballots must be completed by April 15 (just like your taxes!).
Moo.com
Last week, when I was picking up that free fax machine from Ellen Datlow, Maura McHugh showed Ellen and I these fancy business cards she picked up at Moo.com. They’re like half or quarter-size business cards, but the cool thing about them is that Moo.com interfaces with your Flickr account, and allows you to put any of your Flickr photos on the back of your business card. It costs $20 for a box of 100, and you can either get 100 of the same photo, or you can mix and match, using a variety of photos. It’s pretty nifty. I ordered some; I’ll scan some when they arrive to show them off.
eBook Reader Software
For you eBook readers out there: What software do you use? I use a Pocket PC, so programs compatible with that would be most useful to me, obviously.
My current program of choice is Mobipocket Reader, though there are some annoying things about it that are making me want to consider other options. For my purposes, it’s essential that I be able to create my own eBooks to use with my Reader (i.e., be able to convert Word files into Reader files). I’d also love to find something that would just read Word, RTF, or TXT files without having to convert them, but will still let me bookmark and/or save my position within the text.
So, any recommendations?
Space & Time Lives!
You may recall the SCI FI Wire piece I wrote about the Space & Time’s decision to call it quits with issue #100. Well, it seems the death knell was sounded too soon — the magazine’s been purchased and will continue under new ownership. Go behind the cut for the press release.
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IGMS Reviews
Speaking of my IGMS reviews, IGMS just unveiled a new book column the other day. So I guess now’s a good time to announce that I’m discontinuing my “Strong Medicine” review column. I’ll still be doing the “Camera Obscura” reviews, but no more book reviews for me at the moment (except perhaps for an occasional one-off somewhere). It was my own decision to step down; I just couldn’t devote that much time to reviewing anymore and decided to focus my time on more lucrative and time-efficient freelancing opportunities.
The Dresden Files
So, what did everyone think of The Dresden Files? A lot of people who hadn’t seen it yet seemed to have taken umbrage with my rather negative review of it. What do you all think now that you’ve seen it?
KGB Jan. 2007 & the rest of the week
Here are my few pics from this month’s KGB reading, which happened on Wednesday. It was fun, as always.
On Thursday, I also trekked into the city for a Learning Annex class I was taking with my friend Carol, which was also fun, but then end of my evening most decidedly was not. I arrived back in Jersey City, having taken the bus from the Port Authority, only to find my car missing. It seems I parked in front of someone’s driveway, and it was towed. $250 to get it back. Damn it. Worst thing was, this happened after midnight, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The office was right there, and I have a key, but I figured Gordon and wife and child were probably sleeping, so I didn’t want to call or freak them out by walking into their house in the middle of the night. So I called my mom and had her pick me up.
How did you park in front of someone’s driveway and not notice, you might ask. Well, the thing is, in that neighborhood (by the F&SF office), the driveways are practically invisible. There’s no “ramp”; to enter the driveways you have to drive over a regular curb. The curb itself is not painted. Some of the driveways have “No Parking” painted on the road in front of the driveway; this one did not. There are no street signs marking off any of the driveways either. This particular driveway does have a garage there (it’s like the first floor of the house), but it’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.
While in the city, I also picked up the fax machine Ellen Datlow was giving away, and spent some time chatting with her and her visitor, Maura McHugh, one of Ellen’s former Clarion students. I haven’t tried the fax part yet, but it does work great as a copy machine. So at least the evening wasn’t a total loss.
Subterranean Press Sale
Subterranean Press is having a sale to benefit a good cause:
The special we’re running is very simple. To make it an appealing offer to you, every in-print title is 25% off if bought January 21 or 22.
For our part, we’ll be donating 25% of the retail price of each sale book bought on Sunday or Monday (Jan 21-22) to [a sick boy’s] family
to help with their expenses while he’s in treatment, and will guarantee a donation of at least $2000.So please, consider picking up some great reading at less than cover price, while helping out a family whose needs are great.
A couple of final notes: Please mention 25% off when ordering. Your shopping cart total and automatic email confirmation won’t reflect the sale price. We’ll take care of that when processing your order. If you use PayPal, please don’t go through our online store. Instead, email us and we’ll send you a PayPal invoice for your order.