Vacation

While on vacation, my wife and I drove through Georgia and I made a geek pilgrimage to the MicroCenter outlet in Duluth, Georgia. As usual, I walked out about an hour later, with a bag of goodies and a much thinner credit card. More on this in a later post. We got a hotel and … More Vacation

Floating Cities

Science fiction authors have been envisioning floating cities for years. One was described in Neil Stephenson’s classic, “Snow Crash” as repurposing a discarded aircraft carrier. The latest South Korean plan to construct a 15 acre prototype to hold twelve thousand people will share many of the same problems of a space colony. For example, how … More Floating Cities

A New Meme!

I created this in about fifteen minutes with the Free and Open Source program Inkscape. The original painting is “The Silence” by Joseph Decreux 1790.

Inspiration

My mother gave me a science fiction paperback when I was about ten years old. I’ve been consuming books at an average of one a week, ever since. Over the years, I’ve been inspired by many people. Here’s just a few of them. I’m sure I’ll remember others after I post this. Futurists Stewart Brand … More Inspiration

New NUC

Recently, my wife encouraged me to go ahead and get myself a belated holiday present. I’ve been jonesing to try one of the new breed of NUC computers for some time now. An NUC, short for “Next Unit of Computing”, is a small box-shaped computer that often won’t measure more than a few inches across … More New NUC

Review: Ebony Gate

Ken Bebelle and Julia May Vee have created a blending of history, legend, and language that I’m sure will be recognized as a major work. While the story itself is a rousing sword-and-sorcery adventure, I was greatly impressed with the flow of languages. As someone who speaks Spanish as well as English, I know it … More Review: Ebony Gate

Happy Holidaze!

Here in the United States, we are celebrating the holiday of Thanksgiving. With that in mind, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on things I’m thankful for this holiday season. I’m relatively healthy and surrounded by a loving family. I just returned from a ten day vacation where I met a cousin that … More Happy Holidaze!

Simple Photo Editing

The Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is an excellent piece of Free and Open Source software, but like most powerful programs, it is complex and can be confusing for the newbie. There are a few features however, that are very useful for the photographer. I’ll describe them here. Export vs Save It is important to … More Simple Photo Editing

Meeting in a Bar: Vanessa Fullright

I read an interesting post by a fellow author the other day. http://www.10minutenovelists.com/a-writer-and-a-narrator-walk-into-a-bar-separating-from-our-main-character/ I started to think of all my characters and knew I had to interview some of them. This post is the result of the first meeting, with the heroine of my adult pirate adventure, Shibari Sails. When I explained this project, Vanessa … More Meeting in a Bar: Vanessa Fullright

How to Synopsis

Like many of us, I hate writing a Synopsis for any of my stories. “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”  –Gene Fowler After a bit of research on more than a dozen websites, I’ve narrowed it down to a … More How to Synopsis