Fred's Reading Report (January 200

So, 31 days have January, so at this point (day isn't over):

Four books.

Thirty short works.

Currently being read...relatively actively...

Poul Anderson: The Earth Book of Stormgate. Trader to the Stars. The Trouble Twisters. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:41 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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More fun things to do with Legos! (Posted at Star Ranger, sent to me by a friend.)

And better yet...Brickstar Pegasus!

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...and don't think. My, I think any SF fan could come up with a much better list of twenty things you might not know about SF than this piece of dreck from Discover magazine.

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...should not be put into a can.

Addendum: A friend sent me three links to something else that should not be in a can. The brain reels...and does the jig.

Honestly, I can't even take beer in a can any more. Let alone coffee! Soda, still tolerated...for now!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...15 picoseconds of fame! I share the stage with the likes of John Wright and (gasp!) James Gunn. more...

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Here's an interesting blog on productivity and life simplification: Zen Habits. Favorite recent article: Seven Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done.

The author also has a new writing blog, Write to Done. He's recently gotten a book contract, so maybe he knows a thing or two about the craft and trade.

Check him out.

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Mechanical animals and more!

I wonder if future models will allow us to look for giant squid...

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The Lego "brick" is 50 years old today!

Addendum: A look at Lego by Gizmodo. Best Lego sets in history! 50th Anniversary set! Top Lego videogames!

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The list can now be viewed here.

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What's the air velocity of a Balrog? (Via BoingBoing.) Comments at both sites are almost as good as the posting. Geeks. They're grrrreeaaattt!

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Yes, you can build anything with Legos! Even a Bible!

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I apologize for the rather scattered information herein. I may be going "off the grid" soon.

Spoke to my sister. Mom and Dad went to the GP regarding one of his conditions. The doctor suggested hospice. It seems that Dad has statistically reached the point where people in his condition (Parkinson's) die, and there are signs that he is declining.

He did not hear this (she was with the doctor, he was in the waiting room), but yesterday he was sitting there with his head in his hands saying over and over again "I'm dying, I'm dying". This freaked her out. She called the hospice people today. For now, it is for in-home help.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:22 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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CNN talks about nine bookstores that are worth visiting for books and as a tourist destination. A friend adds a tenth. I've been to the Strand and City Lights and have shopped (online) at Powells and Tattered Cover.

The wallet cringes...

Addendum: How about the best bookstores world-wide? (Odd...no overlap!)

Addendum: Another suggestion...the Book Mill of Monatague, Massachusetts.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm researching buying a computer for my parents. This would partially be to replace their aging computer that is developing more problems than it is worth to fix. And partly to try and give my father something to do if I can find enough "disabled person friendly" features.

One thing I don't want to do is to buy them a computer equipped with Vista. I'd rather stick with Windows XP, which is what I use at home and work, so at least I'm reasonably familar with any 'quirks" that arise. Microsoft, on the other hand, seems determined to force me to buy the 21st century equivalent of Windows ME.

Time to sign a petition to save XP?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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General Grievous's ship Invisible Hand...in Legos!

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Here's a site run by a collector of genre toys. I missed most of these (I came from an earlier generation of genre toys!); some are neat, some very strange, some very...ummm...campy!

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This posting can now be viewed here.

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I've been doing some Lewis Carroll reading and related reading. Not only have I picked up the annotated Alice and Looking Glass again, but have found an annotated version of The Hunting of the Snark, several collections of Carroll's puzzles and a book on Carroll by Martin Gardner.

That last made me haul down a CD-ROM I bought a few years ago: Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games—The Entire Collection of His Scientific American Columns.

What a buy this was! On one compact bit of storage you have not one, not two, but fifteen collections previously available in separately published books.

If you like puzzles...this has got to be the bargain of the century!

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I don't know how my mother does it.

I've been at my parent's house this weekend. I've been "dad sitting" several times, most of yesterday, a couple of hours today, so that my mother can get out. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:31 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I had to make a journey out to the parental domain and back this weekend. Instead of listening to an audiobook or a podcast on the iPod, I tried setting it to shuffle, seeing what it would come up with.

As you'll see, it seemed to like classical (or Spanish classical) guitar pieces quite a bit. And Tomita. It played two Talking Heads pieces back-to-back and did segue from Peter Gabriel singing in Genesis to Peter Gabriel soloing at one point. Otherwise, a fairly mixed bag. Despite having about six days worth of music on the iPod, it played "Web" from Brian Eno's Nerve Net twice.

I figured, as I was driving with others in the car, that the shuffle method was the most "democratic" approach. (Of course, my musical tastes intervened in picking out the tracks on the iPod to begin with, but I had loaded a fair amount of stuff that I thought others would like.)

I did skip past a Radio Lab podcast and a chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin. I skipped past the podcast as I was driving a rather busy section of Route 80 and could not concentrate on something like that at the time. I skipped past The Children of Hurin as it doesn't make sense to listen to a audiobook on shuffle! The only piece that was too "low" to be workable in the car was a section from Ralph Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony (No. 1). more...

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