Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 38

Progress report: day 28

Today saw me adding 260 words to the short story System Reset as I edited it up according to editorial comments after I dropped the twins off. Sitting proved torturous, so I created a quick and dirty standing desk:

I then turned to working on the copy edits for Hurricane Fever that are due. Talked to my editor about moving the acknowledgements to the back (my preference) and got the clearance for that (my favorite bad review of my first novel was a long rant about how the acks were at the fron...

Polygon article about my favorite video game

Polygon has a very nice long form article up about Kerbal Space Program, my favorite video game, how it came to be, and the fact that it will be collaborating with NASA! Well worth a read.

“Kerbal Space Program is, at its core, a rocketry simulation. When it first became available for download it had a limited scope. There was a large hangar full of parts and little green pilots, a launchpad with a button to push and a patch of sky to fall through when it inevitably all went wrong.

Since the da...

Progress report: day 27

Day 27. Landing on my back after that spill on the ice completely fubared the whole week and weekend. I spent it hopped up on Vicodin and struggling to move around. Come Sunday I eased off that stuff and stuck to the anti-inflammatory.

I had plans to blog about this or that, including a recap of my weekend at Confusion. But now I’m madly trying to catch up on work I’m behind on.

I missed five days of work to this stupid spill. That’s six days this month. Blargh.

My back is still feels lit-on-fir...

Yutu rover down for the count

Bummer:

“As sunset approached, something seems to have gone wrong with the Yutu rover. In order to survive the lunar night, Yutu positions itself with one solar panel angled toward the direction of the rising sun. Then it folds down the mast that carries its color camera and its high-gain antenna into its body. Then the other solar panel is folded over the deck like a lid, insulating the interior and the mast, which are kept warm with a radioisotope heating unit. According to various reports o...

Some gentle narcissism to help the pain go down

I’m resting on painkillers and frustration since slipping and falling on the ice and hurting myself. However the x-rays have come back and I’m told there is no fracturing or damage, other than muscle-related. So it’s painkillers and anti-inflammatories and trying to slowly get better.

Sometimes I joke that getting my pants on is an accomplishment. It’s a common freelancer’s joke for those of us who work from home. But with limited range of motion, today I have to say it was actually quite an a...

This author went to mail out some contracts: you won’t believe what happened next!

Yesterday I got some contracts via email to sign, so I printed them out and bundled up to head up to town and mail them out. It was nine degrees outside. I got about a block away from my house and began to cross the street. Almost to the other side, I hit a patch of ice.

I was walking like a penguin.

Despite my caution (I’ve been terrified of the ice since first arriving in the US), I lost my balance. My feet went straight out from under me, like a fucking cartoon. I came down hard on my right...

Dear Mr. Gee: you don’t punch down

This is pretty fucked up:

“Henry Gee is an editor at Nature magazine. I’ve met him: he’s smart, he’s interesting, he’s extremely opinionated and often obnoxious, so we have at least one of those things in common. He and Dr Isis have a long-running feud — it may have begun with Gee publishing an awful piece of short fiction called Womanspace, or it may have been something to do with an argument at Science Online, but I don’t know and don’t care.

But now it has blown up in ways that are ultimatel...

Progress report: day 21 (and catchup)

This weekend I went to Confusion, a local convention held in Detroit. I’ve been going since 2001. I went into wondering if I’d be able to keep my unchained days of writing going. On Friday I managed to juggle packing and getting in some work. Saturday I spent an hour working on the outline of PS 1.

I figured I’d work Sunday night, but Sunday night was my first stumble. I broke 18 days of chained together writing because when I got home I was so exhausted I ended up not even getting in front o...

Progress report: day 24 (and catchup)

This weekend I went to Confusion, a local convention held in Detroit. I’ve been going since 2001. I went into wondering if I’d be able to keep my unchained days of writing going. On Friday I managed to juggle packing and getting in some work. Saturday I spent an hour working on the outline of PS 1.

I figured I’d work Sunday night, but Sunday night was my first stumble. I broke 18 days of chained together writing because when I got home I was so exhausted I ended up not even getting in front o...

Trinidad oil spills one of the country’s worst

Oh no

“At least 11 oil spills have crippled parts of Trinidad and Tobago, coating miles of beach with crude as the state-owned energy company scrambles to control what’s being called one of the country’s worst environmental disasters.”

(Via Trinidad Oil Spills Leave State-Owned Energy Company Scrambling To Clean Up (PHOTOS).)