Author Archive

Hugo Winners

The 2009 Hugo Award winners were announced this evening.  For a change, I’ve read most of the winners, and they are all quite deserving.  When the finalists were announced, I commented that Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is the one most likely to still have a steady reading audience a 100 years from now.  It’s that sort of book.  I especially enjoyed Gaiman’s own reading of it in the audiobook version.

Gord Sellar was up for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year, but didn’t win…however, I think he gets another shot at it next year, so I will go back to rooting for him at that time.

First Light in Quite A While

Upon returning from Launchpad I eagerly got my telescope out of its various boxes, started to assemble it, and then was overwhelmed by what a mess it was and how much other stuff I had to do, so I guiltily left it to gather dust in the basement (again).

It’s been really hot for Seattle, so tonight I retreated into the nice cool basement and tried to remember how to get my mirrors aligned with this little laser collimeter thingie; and by the time I had that done, it was twilight and the moon was still in the sky so I thought, what the heck, I’ll haul the thing out and see what the moon looks like, even though the mirror is still speckled with spidershit and the atmosphere is full of heat turbulence.  And in fact the sky appeared to be boiling in front of the moon, but my daughter and her boyfriend still thought it looked sort of cool, and my wife wanted to know what else I could see, so with much complaining about the trees choking the view and the surfeit of spotlights and porchlights and headlights, I eventually lugged the scope out into the middle of the pasture and got out my star maps and got a pretty bad neck-ache trying to match the map to the one or two stars I could sort of see.  But as soon as I peered through the lens, whoa, there were a lot more stars than I’d realized.  And pretty soon it was dark and darker and I gave up trying to find the Owl Nebula because the Dipper was too low and the sky over there was hazy with light; but we managed to split the star in the Dipper’s handle, and we were off.  I think I found Herschel’s Garnet Star but I’m not entirely convinced; I remember it being redder, but then again, I think it’s variable, so tonight might have been an off night…it was sort of greenish yellowy orange, which I guess is sort of like a garnet.

The first old friend I reacquainted myself with was the Hercules Cluster, which impresses everyone, especially when they hear it’s a bunch of baby stars; and from there it was pretty easy to find Lyra, but I had a hell of a time finding the Ring Nebula, especially because the pasture is on a slope and the scope is hard to maneuver when stuff is almost directly overhead.  But here came Jupiter with four of its moons, and the lines quite distinct even through the turbulent sky; and on my next try, I locked in on the Ring, which was my first real thrill when I borrowed a scope years ago and the real reason I bought one of my own.  The kids had trouble seeing it, but there were just too many friggin cars coming along the road right then, and every one was like knives in my eyes.  Eventually they all went in and I just sort of sailed around in the night for a while till I found Andromeda (HA!  Can’t hide from me!), and its little baby sibling (M32?)…and then some fool turned on the lights.

The Milky Way was just starting to come into view, too.

I know the mirror needs cleaning, but the whole time I was telling myself that I wasn’t going to do any serious viewing, I was just going to goof around and start to get comfortable navigating around the constellations again…even the Summer Triangle was giving me trouble.  But it started to click, and I remembered the old thrill of knowing my way around, able to easily hop from one cool sight to another.  I wish the scope moved a little more smoothly.  I’m sure I can do some custom hacks to make it a bit better.  And it’s good to know that when something really neat is happening, the scope is ready to go.  It’s all set up for the Orion Nebula this winter!

…I’ve got to get out into the mountains…

Some Suggestions for My Site

I have been getting a lot of suggestions in the comment section. I thought I would share them.  They seem like really good suggestions.  There are so many helpful people out there, willing to pitch in with suggestions!  Here is just a sample:

  • Reseller hosting suggests, “Great article, I completely agree with what your saying – as I have posted a lot of comments here now, I was wondering if you have egold as i have some spare cash in my egold account I want to donate to the site! “
  • Hosting offers this gem:  “I think you should set up some top contributers list every month the way im going!”

Thanks, commenters!  I’m going to just keep adding your great suggestions to this post as they come in.  It really means a lot to me that so many people care to send ideas.

Death of a Duke

This is sad.  Duke Nukem is Dead.  I learned a lot from Duke 3D.  When I joined Valve to work on Half-Life, there were many discussions of how well Duke had done things.  There’s a seminal moment where Duke is about to be executed, and suddenly you (as Duke) discover that you can break free and bust out of the execution chamber and (you being Duke) go on a rampage.  It’s safe to say this particular scene had a big impact on what I thought was possible in a first-person shooter.  Although the interminable wait for Duke Nukem Forever was, well, interminable, and made a great target over the years, the fact is, many of us were eagerly waiting for it, and couldn’t wait to be blown away.  Knowing people who worked on it over the years, and hearing them hint at how great it could be (if it would only ship), I have no doubt that over the course of its development, Duke was probably several dozen sorts of minor masterpiece at one time or another.  We’ll miss ya, ya big lug.

Things I Saw A Lot Today

This article about the sexiness of books versus Kindles reminds me of something I saw today, an image that has for some reason persisted all day even through a torrent of other chaotic images in what I must count as a busy and crazy day.  I was crammed in along the edges of a very crowded gymnasium for a volleyball tournament, folding chairs and blankets strewn everywhere, people marking off their little areas with collections of waterbottles, duffel bags, and books, to show the spots were occupied.  I’m always looking to see what people around me are reading, but at one point as I threaded my way through the crowd during a lull, I noticed a sequence of books:  First, a person reading a kindle; just beyond that, a very tattered copy of Twilight with the pages rolled back; sitting in a chair, a slightly dogeared copy of Cryptonomicon, and on the floor near that chair, a really old paperback copy of an Ian Fleming/James Bond novel.  It was the Fleming that instantly drew me–I almost picked it up to see which one it was.  It was an interesting cross-sectional screenshot of what random people at a junior girl’s volleyball game in the Puget Sound area are reading.  I notice that nobody ever leaves their Kindle lying around, and it’s impossible to tell what they’re reading.  The Kindle needs to take on the coloration and some graphic elements of the book it is mimicking at that moment.  Protective coloration, or some kind of display.  That would be pretty sexy.

The other thing I saw lots of today were cops, everywhere, all day.  From the troopers pouncing on people abusing the diamond lane at 8:15 on a Saturday morning, to the one who had a teenager out of his car and sitting on the curb in the grocery store parking lot this evening around 11 p.m., I saw stuff like this happening all day.  A guy at a bus stop in Kent, stepping off the curb to signalling a passing patrol car, which immediately rounded the corner and pulled over a white truck that had been at the bus stop seconds before…two cop cars speeding Seattle-wards across the Lake Washington floating bridge with sirens and lights going, these two sightings separated by about 20 minutes and several miles…I don’t usually notice this much cop activity in one day.  John Shirley would have a theory about this.