Wil McCarthy's Blog, page 6

BSG ending

I understand many people are unhappy with the ending of Battlestar

Galactica. I just want to go on record that it was fine with me. Ron

Moore had given himself a tough set of constraints, wanting to be (a)

faithful to the source material, (b) not smarmy or cheesy, and (c) fully

consistent with known archaeology and paleontology.



This is a problem, because the source material says humans evolved on

Kobol and migrated to Earth. Evidence in the ground says we evolved

right

WTF?

John Kennedy, a longtime member of the Denver writing scene, died this

week, and there was barely a blip in the sff.net obituary topic. At

first I thought this was because sff.net had driven away all the Denver

writers (which it mostly has), or because John was not a well known writer.



But a couple of other people have died since then -- complete strangers

who've never published a story, been to a science fiction convention,

hung out on GEnie, or otherwise been a part of the

Geekmophone

We're standardizing our IT setup at RavenBrick, which means no more

Google Calendar, Thunderbird, or Nokia 9500. I'm now an

Outlook-and-Blackberry corporate clone! On the one hand, the

interoperability will be nice. With a standard setup it's easier to

share and schedule things, fix IT problems, learn tips and tricks, etc.

On the other hand, I really did love my old setup, and the transition

has been rocky and labor-intensive and irritating.



Anyway, the Blackberry --

Geekmobile

Well, I finally bought a Prius. Love it!



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

Silence

Sorry to be so quiet around here. I've been traveling more than usual,

and keeping very busy while at home. This may continue for another

month or two, but will hopefully level off after that.



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

Hardware

So, if a fellow wanted to buy a tabletop CNC milling machine, what would be

his best bet? The stuff in the Rio Grande catalog is a little pricey, though

I did lust after the 3D scanner as well.

Genji

Wil, your mention of it has made me hark back to my crowning linguistic achievement,

30 years ago, when I managed to read "Genji Monogatari" in the original (anyway,

what was presented as the original by the Japanese publisher of the copy I had).

Of course, I was only able to do that because Lady Murasaki was only semi-literate

in her own language and fleshed out the limited kanji set she knew with hirakana.

I remember how desperately I sweated over articles in "Mainichi Shimbun" in

Vulcan, Alberta

Screw the Las Vegas Hilton; here's a whole Canadian town dedicated to

Star Trek.



http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-154795



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon