Things have warmed up. Monday was warmer, but still rather grey. Tuesday and Wednesday started somewhat misty, but turned sunny. Since Thursday the sun's been shining pretty much from dawn til dusk. Mind, I know that in part because I've been awake around sunrise on more than one occasion. However, being awake from before dawn to after dusk doesn't improve one's sense of restedness...

Along the way a few things got done. The lawn got mown on Wednesday (and it needed it despite having been mown not that long ago). On Thursday evening there was an astronomical society meeting (and we weren't locked out, which made a change from last month). On Friday there was gaming. We played Jamaica, and I think Phil won. On Saturday I spent a fair part of the morning in the garden, until it got too hot. I then had a shower, sat down, and concluded I was out of energy for further excursions. I spent the afternoon and evening mostly trying to get the old laptop and a new version of its operating system to play nicely. It seems that something significant has changed, either in the program I use when tracking balloons, or in Xorg, or in the linux kernel (or possibly some combination of those) which leaves the balloon tracking program just not quite able to keep up. A little frustrating, as there were a couple of interesting flights on Saturday, but also fairly educational.

This morning I was again awake at sunrise. I did manage to get a bit more sleep between about 6:30am and 9am when a neighbour rang my doorbell. Probably just as well, mind, as I was able to have breakfast, enjoy the morning radio Net, and get some shopping done before the day got too hot. At around 3:45pm I headed for Heathrow to meet my mother off her flight from Nairobi. The M25 wasn't too bad either way, and we were home just before 7pm. I expect the next few weeks will not follow my normal pattern...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MassadAyoob/~3/J-flxTlB104/

http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/?p=1781

Going shooting over the Memorial Day Weekend?  Seems appropriate…to many of us, gunfire is “the sound of freedom.”

I was emailed the following by an old friend, retired from a distinguished career in the military in which he saw combat from Vietnam to Panama. (It’s appreciated, Jack.)  Remember, there’s no better way to “memorialize the day” than to thank a vet for his service.

http://www.beforeyougo.us/play_byg

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Squashed squirrel, flattened bullfrog, splattered snapping turtle.  Of the three, I only regret the turtle.  Snappers are cute.*

Floral report:  phlox, oxeye daisies, lupines, and iris blooming.  Locust trees are starting in on their prey-stunning perfume.  Day lilies and buttercups in gay profusion.  And again, as every year, I misdoubt the wisdom of the horse-farm pasture full of those buttercups.

Warmed up into the 60s F, wind light and variable, so I slathered on the sunscreen and biked upriver and down the other side.  Got passed by another bicyclist that vanished over the horizon in a distressingly short period of time, but he is probably forty years younger than me . . .

26.77 miles, 2:10:17

*For warped-writer-of-dark-fantasy values of "cute."  And from a respectful distance.

According to the internet, it rises at 0455.  I can't think of any reason why I had to witness it, on a Sunday morning.

Air temperature 54 F, dew point 43, wind north about 5 mph, scattered high thin clouds.  A bike ride may occur.

Writing may also occur.  Have slogged along to the end of Chapter XXIX, in which the legend of the Lorelei pops up.  Al doesn't like Rhine Maidens. 

170 mph biker loses license for at least 90 days | Albany Times-Union -- [A Saratoga County man who hit 170 mph while driving on the state Thruway will have no driver's license for at least 90 days after pleading guilty Wednesday, but warned he'd do it again, according to a prosecutor.]

Shit, he's lucky it was just a misdemeanor--I count one or two felonies for that behavior in VA!

31,300 arms licenses have been issued to women in the Punjab state of India and 31,026 of them have actually purchased arms. It's reported that India has the 2nd largest number of civilian owned firearms next to the USA. The UK paper the Guardian has video & a article on this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/21/indian-women-take-up-firearms

Current Mood: relieved

Pre-orders for Sharp End of the Stick close in just five days. That is also when we’re expecting a truck to show up with four pallets of books. The arrival of those books will usher in the next stage of book shipping work. Howard and Travis will spend a day signing covers while the kids and I stamp the sketch editions. Howard will begin sketching and I will begin shipping. This time we’re changing our shipping process. Instead of having a single big shipping day, we’re going to have many smaller shipping days. It will spread out the work and thus lower the pressure, rather like spreading out weight over a larger surface prevents breakage. It is possible that we’ll hate this new shipping method, but we’re committed to trying it this time. I’ve got two teenagers to help me in addition to my regular shipping second in command. I think that the end result will be all the books shipped by June 12th. Which is pretty important because on June 14th Howard and I depart for DeepSouthCon in Huntsville Alabama. If you’re in that area, hope you stop by.

For this Memorial day weekend, I plan to catch up on sleep and watch entirely too much Sherlock.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Tags: book production, conventions, shipping, work

First red rugosa rose bloom full open in the sideyard.  Smells sweet.

Fog and drifting bits of ocean in the air this morning, air temperature 62 F and dew point 61, wind east at 5 mph.  Pair of mockingbirds across from the drug store, perched on a wire and giving that displeased "chup" call but not attacking anything.  Maybe they don't like damp feathers?

Still fishing for "reader reviews" of POWERS on Amazon and Barnes & Noble online, folks.  Suppose they gave a book and nobody came?  Word of mouth (or screen) sells books, saves authors from panhandling on street corners.

Mangoflush is still alive?

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags: day-to-day stuff, review

Yes, I've jumped on the latest knitting bandwagon and am knitting a Wingspan:



I swear, knitting this thing can be addictive. I've already made modifications to the pattern, and this is my very first attempt at the pattern. It's a little hard to see in the above photo, but there's a small pale gold bead at the outer corners of the triangles. Just wait'll you see what I've got in mind for the final section.

The good news is, my SIL's birthday is next month, so it won't be long at all before I send it off to her and hear what she thinks.

Tags: family, hobbies, knitting

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/friday_squid_bl_327.html

Seems that squid ink hasn't changed much in 160 million years. From this, researchers argue that the security mechanism of spraying ink into the water and escaping is also that old.

Simon and his colleagues used a combination of direct, high-resolution chemical techniques to determine that the melanin had been preserved. The researchers also compared the chemical composition of the ancient squid ink remains to that of modern squid ink from Sepia officinalis, a squid common to the Mediterranean, North and Baltic seas.

"It's close enough that I would argue that the pigmentation in this class of animals has not evolved in 160 million years," Simon said. "The whole machinery apparently has been locked in time and passed down through succeeding generations of squid. It's a very optimized system for this animal and has been optimized for a long time."

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Apparently my life is sufficently boring that I can’t think of anything to blog about. I have to draw winners for the BYD contest, but since I already blew my first deadline on that and there’s a long weekend coming up in America, I think I’ll wait until next week.

In the meantime, random things:

I believe this is very much the sort of thing the phrase “Oh, snap!” was invented for: Back to back questions presented to Robert Downey Jr and Scarlett Johansson.

*laughs* My wallet died, so I found an old one I knew I had lying around. It has Sarah/shadowhwk‘s work phone # ca 2001, a 1999 bank receipt, a photo of me & Ted from 1997, a 1994 pic of my sister, & the crowning glory, the thing that made me actually laugh out loud because it was so unexpected, an early 90s photo of the unrequited high school Love Of My Life. *laughs & laughs*

Speaking of pictures, this is probably the most awesome one I’ve seen this week. MIB-Avengers mashup FTW!

I believe I have got all the ducks in a row for launching ORIGINS next Friday. Having re-read the stories, I feel that the ORSSP patrons got their money’s worth, and that so too will the people buying it as an e-book. *waits impatiently for Friday next*

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Tags: e-books, friends, link salad, movies, old races, short stories

(Almost "Friday floral flourish" for the alliteration, but I spared you.)

First blue flag irises seen, blooming in a roadside ditch.  Lilacs and honeysuckle heavy enough to scent the road.  Also first day lilies and spirea bushes blooming.

No roadkill.  Guess all those vultures have been busy.

Still dank, but temperatures in the upper 50s F and not actually raining, so I got out on the bike.  More wind than I wanted.

15.31 miles, 1:12:20

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http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/25/worst_andor_craziest_misconceptions.php

You run into a lot of scientific and medical misconceptions (particularly when you have a blog with a working e-mail address plastered on the front page of it!) There are plenty of harmless ones that are easy to correct, and at the other end of the scale there are major weltanschauung problems (like the "drug companies don't want to find a cure for cancer because it would put them out of business" line). Those involve what Kingsley Amis called "permanent tendencies of the heart and mind", and I'm not sure if they can be fixed at all.

I got to thinking about this subject again after seeing this item, which is pointing out to physicians that a meaningful number of their patients may well opt out of surgery for cancer because they believe that cancer spreads when exposed to air. This turns out to be a common enough belief that it's addressed on many medical sites. It's not one that I'd heard before, and I thought I'd heard quite a few of these.

So, in the spirit of discussions like this one, I'll toss out these questions: what's the farthest-from-reality misconception about medical/pharma topics you've encountered? And what widespread one do you think does the most harm? (Warning about that link: it goes to a hugely long thread, which will soak up your time as you continue running into yet-more-ridiculous beliefs that people have expressed).

My own candidates: the weirdest one I've encountered might be the person who still believed in spontaneous generation (that old bread just sort of "turned into" living mold, etc.). And the most harmful one, from a drug research perspective, might well be the constellation of "the government does all drug research" beliefs, or the one mentioned above, the "drug companies don't want to cure X" one, which shades into the "drug companies have a cure for X but they don't want to release it" belief.

The Glorious 25th of May.

'The scent rolled over him.
He looked up.
Overhead, a lilac tree was in bloom.
He stared.
Damn! Damn! DAMN! Every year he forgot. Well no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn't want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today of all days...

He reached up, and his hand trembled as he grasped a bloom and gently broke the stem. He sniffed at it. He stood for a moment, staring at nothing.'

-- From Nightwatch, by Terry Pratchett

If you know the story, you know why. If not, don't mind us who do.

Happy Geek Pride Day to all my friends out there, whatever you like to geek about.