It's been several years since I last attended a convention, but nothing has really been stopping me apart from work. Now that problem has gone away (no job, short life expectancy, still have some savings to use before I die) so I treated myself to another convention. I wasn't expecting much - I'd never heard of the GoH for instance - and tried ( Read more... )

OK, it's not actually called that - due to potential legal problems - it's titled "Using the ISFDB (Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase)". It is a beginner's guide to allow people to get the most out of the online database without logging in. Now it's out in the wild and you can download version 0.04 from Smashwords - Read more... )

After one of the worst Christmas and New Year periods of my life, I'm feeling wonderful. Note - FEELING wonderful: medically I'm still a wreck. Basically I've had almost all my medication changed after my New Year hospital stay and mentally feel a lot better. Even things like arriving home today to find the electricity cut off for want of 9 pence ( Read more... )

The ISFDB Author directory now doesn't restrict entries to authors whose surname starts with two letters between A and Z - an apostrophe as the second letter is now allowed. I know this still isn't perfect (sorry Peadar!) but it's rescued over 400 authors. Hopefully the software improvements will start flowing a bit more easily now.

I'm driving to Newcastle (English one) on Saturday to let a friend visit her cousin who's in hospital and has just come out of a 5-week coma. As I've never met him before it seems inappropriate for me to visit him as well, so I'm thinking of spending the afternoon indulging in second-hand bookshop visiting. Does anyone have any recommendations? The ( Read more... )

Well, it turned out that I only needed to fill in a few dozen more magazines to bring Urania up to date. (The main series - there are several spin-offs that I could go on to, if I want to continue with Italian.) But some of the more recent titles took me into Italian translations of Chinese and Japanese originals, so I've branched out a little bit ( Read more... )

I haven't updated this in ages, have I? That's mostly because I've been working on Italian magazines - Urania in particular. (Another editor is entering Galassia.) I'm going to take a break after entering the fiction contents for over a thousand issues. I know there's still rework to do - we haven't identified Capitalisation rules for Italian works ( Read more... )

Chris Jensen is hot on my heels in the "Top Contributors" list:
1 Mhhutchins 173357
2 BLongley 124049
3 Chris J 124047
As he's in New Zealand and I'm in England, we seem to leapfrog each other each day. It's a nice incentive to add new stuff rather than wait for it to be submitted.

Next time please remind me that, when I attempt to kick-start a new language on ISFDB, a short series is better than one with several hundred titles. I've learned a lot of Portuguese. And have some ideas on how it could have been a lot easier. Why did I do hundreds of "Add New Novel/Collection/Anthology" followed by hundreds of "Make This Title a ( Read more... )

...or Brazilian, maybe. I've been working on the "Livros do Brasil" "Argonauta" series. It makes a nice change, but apparently I'm annoying fellow moderators that want sources. Or that I should do them in smaller runs - apparently 500 titles at once is a bit much.

Does anyone know a bilingual Portuguese/English Bibliographer that would help us?