An old friend and a great talent has left us: Jim Kyle K5JKX, author of a fair number of books that go back a long way. I'm not certain how I know, but I'm pretty sure ( Read more... )

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• I regret to report that Robert Bruce Thompson has left us, at age 64, of heart problems. He's best-known for his books PC Hardware in a Nutshell and Building the Perfect PC, but he's also written several books on astronomy ( Read more... )

It's hard not to have an opinion about Wayne Green. Depending on whom you listen to, he was a visionary, a crank, delusional, eccentric, generous, lecherous, honest, optimistic, boundlessly energetic, or all of the above and maybe a few more. Someone wrote a bogglingly angry book once (I had it but have misplaced it) that spent its entire length ( Read more... )

I'm numb. This past Tuesday we lost Pat Thurman, K7KR. He had been struggling with multiple medical issues for a couple of months, and at some point they simply overwhelmed him. Flesh is fragile, even when the spirit is strong.

Like many people, Pat knew of me from my books and my magazine work, and when I announced in my DDJ column that Carol and ( Read more... )

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• My old friend and fellow early GTer Rod Smith has posted a great many excellent pictures he took at Chicon 7, including a book signing that I attended.
• My mother's cat Fuzzbucket died yesterday, at 16 years and change. He outlived my poor mother by twelve years, and while skittish as a kitten eventually warmed to me. I've never had a cat (for ( Read more... )

65,000 words. This is still hard. But I am damned well going to make it work.

One reason I will make it work is a man who left this world today for other worlds, not that he was any stranger to other worlds. Harry Harrison is one of those guys who isn't appreciated as much as he deserves, for reasons that escape me. Most people know of him for ( Read more... )

• Happy Thanksgiving Day to all who celebrate it--and to those who don't, well, this guy is still thankful that the world is big enough for both of us. In terms of Thanksgiving Day meditations, I'll simply offer the one I wrote in 2008. I may not ever do better than that.
• From the Words-I-Didn't-Know-Until-Yesterday File: seedbox, a remote and ( Read more... )

• Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and generally acknowledged as the inventor of the ebook, has left us. He was only 64.
• That supernova that popped up in M101 about ten days ago keeps getting brighter, and the 8" scope is out in the garage, collimated and ready to roll. I have never seen a supernova (mostly because I've never hunted for ( Read more... )