• Amazon is selling hand-made (in Latvia) steampunk thumb drives incorporating copper pipe caps and a Soviet-made pentode vacuum tube. LEDs light up the glass from the bottom of the tube when there's power available at the USB connector. (Thanks to Bill Meyer for the pointer.)
• Tonight would be a good night to see Mercury. It's never easy ( Read more... )

• Let me recommend a thoughtful blog on the issues of writing and publishing, which is remarkable for having one of the most civil and intelligent comment sections I've ever run across. (In recent years I'm reading blog comments less and less, because they're mostly content-free tribal hatred.)
• Maybe the Ralpha Dogs had a hand in this: Making tunable ( Read more... )

• A guy is working on 3D printing with molten steel, via TIG welding.
• I'm really good with words. Maybe that's why a college friend said 40-odd years ago: "The trouble with you, Jeff, is that you're too damned happy!" Everything is connected, I guess, and now there's science indicating that human language is biased toward happiness.
• More research on ( Read more... )

• Wow. Dig with a backhoe, and then spray a target with a machine gun. Only $384. Writers should get out and do all kinds of things that aren't part of everyday life for writers. I'm not a big fan of Las Vegas, but I could see myself doing this.
• Ok, this is clever. Forgive me if I don't believe it will work.
• Here's a service that the world needs, but I ( Read more... )

• Yes, I am now writing a Raspberry Pi programming book. Details to come.
• While I do, I'll be scoping out my next novel. Hard SF, oboy yes. One possibility is something I call Fire Drill, about what happens when you're mining the moon for nickel-iron and you hit gold. The other, hmmm, let me give you a hint: "Well, hello, Mr. Sangruse! How nice of you ( Read more... )

• Carol and I are now home from Chicago, still bumping into walls but doing better. If you haven't heard from me in a couple of weeks that's why.
• Chicago burned on October 8, 1871. The cow did it, right? Well, there were a lot of other serious fires around the American midwest that same night. Tucking my ears into my tinfoil hat here: What if a ( Read more... )

• The 64GB Microsoft Surface Pro tablet has only 23GB of open storage. Yukkh.
• Given that I do most of my reading curled up in a monster cushy chair, I've begun to wonder if a tablet with a 12" display (or perhaps even larger) with a charger dock on the adjacent end table would be useful. Such things exist, but not in great numbers and not cheap. ( Read more... )

• Cisco has sold their Linksys home-router business to Belkin. I've used Linksys gear for ten years now, know it well, and like it as much as I like any given brand. Getting it out of Cisco's hands, where it had languished, is a good thing.
• From a long-time Contra commenter I know only as bcl, here's a very detailed technical review of USB chargers, ( Read more... )

Bill Cherepy (and a couple of others since) sent me an interesting link to a piece on Boing Boing arguing (I think) that steampunk makes our gadgets more human. It's a headscratcher, since I don't think the article text supports the author's contention. However, it's an idea worth some thought. I actually agree, if for different reasons:

• Steampunk ( Read more... )

• From the Some-Things-Just-Sound-Right Department: "Glitzenstein" is German for "rhinestone." It suggests an ironic horror novel in which a mad plastic surgeon stitches together an unreasonable facimile of Liberace from pieces of washed-up Vegas lounge singers.
• From the Words-I-Never-Heard-Before-But-Won-A-Word-Of-The-Year-Contest Department: " ( Read more... )