Getting a photo

Here is my daughter's photo mash-up she published on her site. I love it.

Gray day

Gray but warm today. Supposed to rain by week's end.
Finished audio book today in the car. Seriously thinking of joining audible.com.
More thoughts about my story about mind and body. Continuing to work on the theme and plot. Need to review my books about plotting.
Enjoyed Software Development's suggestions on not being outsourced; writing well was one of them.

After Christmas blues

Came back from NJ yesterday in swirling snow, making the traffic look almost festive.
Long push thru Christmas done. Mom doing better, the holiday nice.
Cousin Al's dad very interested in our conversations, in spite of not knowing our language!
Had long discussion with Al over his story idea, The Hand, which has promise. We also talked some about my latest story and its themes and plots. His input is valuable to me, as he offers lots of well defined but not as analytical ideas.

Had lots of fun at the Lightning Christmas party, visiting with the whole gang except Fred.
Discovered the anonymous lawyer blog and jeremyblachman blog; very interesting.

Gary Wills book on Lincoln's Gettyburg address looks like the best of the crop this Christmas. Enjoyed the starting pages in spite of it being midnight on Christmas!

Offline for awhile; the long tail

Been offline for awhile. Visited my Mom who has been in the hospital, but is now out just in time for the holidays. Hopefully 2005 will be healthier for her.

Managed to remove the bootcon hijack manually. Actually more of a VX2 infection.

Intrigued by the long tail blog at www.thelongtail.com. The editor of Wired mag is logging thoughts and comments about the long tail of obscure products that are being recognized by sale of very popular ones. An example is Da Vinci code causing sales of Holy Blood, Holy Grail to rise.

Still reading through the Tufte book. Some great ideas in it about expressing concepts.

Working on my new story, albeit very slowly.

Enjoying the Best erotica 2003 on audible every evening. Some are not so good, but some are fantastic, all the better for being audible.

If I don't get to post by the 25th, Have a Merry Christmas!

got hijacked

Reading Katicus's blog again, and when I did a refresh, got a new variant of bootcon. At least I think so; could have been from dictionary.com too. I might never know. This one played pacman until I was infected. Will have to watch the boards to see who figures it out first, unless I can.
Morphing my story about the brain tumor victim. Now she's a Yale stripper. I'm going to add some interesting scenes after listening to the best of erotica 2003 from audible. Next step: plotting. Will try to use a diary or blog format, similar to that of Flowers for Algernon.
NY tomorrow to see all the ERwin folks - Theo from Holland, Neil, and Greg from Inmon.

Tom Wolfe

Caught Tom Wolfe on cspan2 last weekend. This may be Brian Lamb's last hurrah for booknotes.
Mr. Wolfe had lots to say. I posted an email q to him, but it was covered by another post. It was about guidance for life, or the lack thereof, at places of higher education. He didn't really answer the question, but many have said that his latest book is saying that there is none.
He said there was an intersection between social and psychological traits in characters.
His advice for first novelists: get a job, get out of the house! Steinbeck bought an old truck and traveled during the depression. You might get one novel done ok, but the next ones are usually too inward looking.
Here's the site: www.booktv.org

Next post

Still testing the mechanics.

For those of you interested in my course, here's a link: www.writersonlineworkshops.com
Their main site is www.writersdigest.com

Day 1

Just finished Writer's Digest Short Story online class. Found it great. It inspired me to put something up.
My early inspiration came from Jerry Pournelle, one of my favorite writers, who started The original blog. Here's a link: www.jerrypournelle.com.

More to come.