A high street bank has said sorry to a customer after sending him a debit card containing the words “Dick Head”.
…I need another cup of tea.
“Allegra” has been with me since 1999. (Yes, that’s a long, long time in computer years…) Several novels have been written on it: its first real job was to be taken to the source of the Rhine (at Sedrun in Switzerland) for the outlining of the project which eventually became the feature/miniseries “Ring of the Nibelungs.” (Hence the computer’s name, which means “Hello!” in Sursilvan Romansch — the dialect of Switzerland’s fourth language which is spoken around Sedrun.) 
But as newer, hotter hardware came along, Allegra was eventually put aside, relegated to “spare room” use. And now we’re at one of those points where there are just too many computers piling up around the place, and it’s time to let some of them go to people who will get some use out of them. So if you’d like a little machine that isn’t too fast or too smart, but is lovable, reliable, and easy to haul around — and has served a hard-working writer long and faithfully — maybe you’d think about giving Allegra a good home.
It’s an Acer Travelmate 312T, containing a Pentium 233 MHz processor with MMX, 32 meg of RAM, a bright TFT screen, and a massive (wait for it!) 3 GB hard disk. The computer is about A5 size, or about an inch smaller around than a sheet of US letter paper: the exact outside measurements are 24 cm / 9.5 in by 17.5 cm / 7 in by 4 cm / 1.5 in, so that it will fit very comfortably inside a purse, or with plenty of room to spare, in a briefcase. It weighs 1310 grams / 2 lb 14.5 oz. It comes with external CD-ROM, 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a soft Velcro-fastened faux-leather envelope/case. (See this Flickr photoset for multiple images.)
It has Windows 98 installed at the moment. I have heard that these machines run Linux well, but I wouldn’t know enough about the subject to be able to verify the claim. I/O ports include DB-9 and RS232, 15-pin video, RJ-11 jack for a 28K “soft” WinModem, slots for 2 PCMCIA cards, IR port, USB 1.0 (one), and a PS2 jack for mouse or keyboard. The hard drive is removable, though I’ve never removed it.
Physically Allegra is in pretty good shape: a few scratches on the cover, no more. It’s been kindly used. Its one weakness right now is that its battery doesn’t hold a charge for very long. But replacements are still available: or if you want to run the machine at home, plugged in, as a spare-room machine, then you have no problems.
Obviously, for a computer that is now of “a certain age”, I’m not going to overcharge. But if you think you’d like to acquire this good little machine (and along with it, who knows, maybe a little writer-mojo — or -mojesse?), I’ll be putting it up (along with all other pertinent technical details) on eBay sometime this evening. Alternately, if by chance you’re attending Worldcon in Glasgow and you’re at all interested, let me know and I’ll bring the machine along for you to inspect. Otherwise, if you’re interested or have questions, please email me at the “contact” address in the center column.
(Update: The computer’s found its new home. Thanks for your interest, everybody!)
For those of you who use Windows and also have a Gmail account: check this out.
GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n’drop files to.
I’ve been using Gmail this way for a while now, as a backup tool — mailing myself copies of what I’m working on from time to time during the day. Now, using this great little tool, I should be able to automate the process so I don’t even have to think about it any more. Whoopee!
There are some minor limitations: the shell doesn’t like filenames longer than forty characters. But this isn’t a problem for me.
Eric Berne describes the game in Games People Play: the title describes the dynamic well enough. Berne suggests that the game (in its relationship-based form) may be the source of a great deal of the world’s drama…real or fake.
Sometimes you get to see it played in the media mode, rather more obviously than usual. Today would be one of those times.
A journalist did an interview with J. K. Rowling for Time Magazine. The article is perhaps more interesting for the things that aren’t said than the things that are — some of which, are, frankly, pretty dumb…
It’s precisely Rowling’s lack of sentimentality, her earthy, salty realness, her refusal to buy into the basic clichés of fantasy, that make her such a great fantasy writer. The genre tends to be deeply conservative — politically, culturally, psychologically. It looks backward to an idealized, romanticized, pseudofeudal world, where knights and ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves…
Yeah, right. At any rate, Terry Pratchett — mild-mannered reporter for a great occasionally-metropolitan alternate universe, and former journalist in this one — happened upon the Time article, noticed that paragraph, and rolled his eyes. Then he did what people in the UK have done approximately since movable type was invented: he wrote a letter to the Times.
Not surprisingly, since one out of every hundred books published in the UK has Terry’s name on it, they published the letter. And lo, various people started having snits — claiming that Terry was attacking Rowling,or disrespecting her (the letter was published on her birthday! Of course Terry made them do that on purpose…), or was just jealous of her. And many of them got this idea because of the BBC’s move in the “Let’s You And Him…” (or in this case, “Her”) game: just look at that title.
…So it goes. Well…here’s what Terry has to say:
Let’s take it a bit at a time. You know what I wrote, because I think the entire text has been quoted here somewhere. No, in fact not the entire text — the original letter sent to the Sunday Times referred to JKR quite politely as Ms Rowling; a small courtesy, but deleting it makes the relevant sentence twice as harsh, which may be why it was done.
And the BBC website put a nice little spin on thing on things with a headline suggesting I’m directing a tirade at J K Rowling, rather than expressing annoyance at the habits of journalists and specifically one telling phrase clearly used by someone else.
As soon as the Harry Potter boom began, journalists who hadn’t read a children’s book in years went “Wow, a wizards’ school! Wow, broomstick lessons!” and so on, and generally acted as though the common property of the genre was the entire invention of JKR. This continues, sometimes quite ridiculously. And now we have Groomsman’s ‘knights and ladies Morris dancing to Greensleeves’. With such an easy wave we can dismiss, oh, Ursula leGuin, Diana Wynne Jones, Jane Yolen, Peter Dickinson, Alan Garner…fill in the list.
Pointing this out is, apparently, an attack on JKR. I don’t have any problem at all with her rise, only with such third-party silliness such as the above, which insults good authors who wrote great books at a time, not long ago, when advances were always low and hype was unknown.
No, I do not think these words originated with her. It’s self-evident in the article that they are the voice of the interviewer, who is very visible in the piece. The tone and presentation make it obvious. Read the paragraph beginning ‘It is precisely Rowling’s lack of sentimentality…’ He’s giving us his opinion, and the guy just had a nice line he wanted to use. Read the context and say I’m wrong.
And remember: what I was doing was apparently the right of every Englishman, which was to write a letter to The Times — for an audience that can be assumed to have read, with some intelligence, the article in question. Believe me, if the ST guys had read it as an attack on the lady herself, it would have been an article, not a letter.
But out there now, I believe, are various morphs of the BBC piece, with extra venom. You don’t have to think about it, just react. ‘Pratchett Attacks Journalist’ just would not be as much fun. Every story needs a villain, right?
And then there’s my question. Why didn’t the interviewer ask it? Here’s the world’s best-selling fantasy writer who has just said she hadn’t thought she was writing fantasy and also that she doesn’t really like the stuff. She goes on to say that she didn’t finish TLOTR or the Narnia series and has issues with Lewis. No problem there, but all this revelatory stuff just floated past, apparently unexamined. I’d like to know how an author can write in a genre she doesn’t like — really. I’d like to know what she thinks she is writing.
I’m jealous? Well, that saves having to have any discussion at all, right?
It will for some people, that’s for sure. They’ll continue to react to what they’re being told was said, without ever going to see for themselves whether it actually was or not.
Tsk tsk…
If this is true…how interesting.
Michael Brown, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, announced the discovery over the weekend. But according to the South African Sunday Telegraph, here, the briefing was hastily arranged after Brown received word that his secure website containing the discovery had been hacked. The unnamed hacker was threatening to release the information.
Goodness me…
…This would be because, at the last Glasgow Worldcon, we were the ToastMr. & Mrs., and had more than enough to do.
This time we’re chilling out. This time we have no signings, no panels, no structure. This time we get to go see other people’s programming. Astonishing!
If you’re going to be in Glasgow next weekend and you want to see either Peter or me for something — to chat, get a book signed, whatever — here’s how to do it.
(a) Leave a message of intent in the comments to this message.
(b) Email me at diane.duane@gmail.com. (That address will work for both of us.)
(c) According to the unwritten rules of British conventions (“If it’s not on program, it’s in the bar…”), check the bar in the Moat House from time to time. As an alternative, leave a message with the hotel desk in the Moat House: that’s our hotel. If you leave a book or whatever with the desk to be signed, we’ll take care of it and leave it there for you to pick up.
We will be in Glasgow only from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday morning, because we suddenly have a new kitten (Pip is his name: I haven’t blogged about him yet) and we don’t want to leave him in the kennel for too long.
Everybody…have a super time next weekend, if we don’t see you.
The planet, which hasn’t been officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is currently about 97 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 97 Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun.
…(the film features one pyrotechnic blast so massive it could be seen from space, forcing the filmmakers to contact NASA before conducting the stunt).
So maybe the “making of…” feature about this film will be cool to see. (As opposed to the film itself, which doesn’t seem to be getting very good reviews…)
Get this:
“Fred Thompson is advising Supreme Court nominee John Roberts but plans to perform as usual on ‘Law & Order.'”
As a result, TV viewers may witness a surreal blurring of fact and fiction this fall, with newscasts showing Thompson at real-life confirmation hearings, followed in prime time by Thompson’s make-believe D.A. wielding a firm hand over prosecutors and masterminding criminal cases.
Not so much reality TV, as surreality TV…
There has been much ruckus in the Potter “shipping” communities regarding an interview J.K. Rowling did in the wake of the launch of the sixth HP book. J.K. apparently went on the record — not unkindly, as I read it — as stating that a given pairing of characters was canonical and another one wasn’t. Then there befell much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth on one side of the situation, and some unseemly gloating on the other side.
There have been many, many responses to all this — see fandom_wank for details — but one of the funnier ones is here:
“(JKR:) Have you ever wondered what might be accomplished by someone with eighty billion dollars and ready access to Google Maps?”
(snort)
…at YW.Net’s discussion forum, for not being there last night. The house was overwhelmed by one technical problem after another, and I just could not get into the chat area for love or money. Additionally, our long-suffering forum admin, Lee, was in France for the weekend and in no position to help.
I’ll be around at the usual time today, instead (3 PM EDT, 8 PM BST); also, we’ll reschedule an additional chat for next Saturday. Apologies again.
…from a fifteen-year-old in Houston.
Rowling’s ability to spin complex plots and lay careful clues, to keep readers guessing and elicit “Ohh!” sounds at all the right moments, is the envy of many mystery writers. While this talent has not failed her in Half-Blood Prince, it seems to be on the blink. Trails are set, to simply die out. Answers spring from nowhere. There are questions where there should be answers, answers where there should be questions, and awkward edits where there might once have been clues.
There’s more, equally interesting. I wish some people who reviewed my stuff were as clear. (Or — ahem — as familiar with the material. You wouldn’t believe some of the howlers I’ve seen in descriptions of merely factual material: you’d think the reviewer had read the alternate-universe version of a given book.)
…And no, I can’t tell you what I thought of HP6, because I haven’t read it, and won’t be doing so. A brief version of the reasons is in here, for those of you not already familiar with them.
(Thanks for the link, Jerry!)