In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight Let those who worship evil's might, Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!Yes, in case you're wondering ... I'm a fan. -the Centaur
Posts published in July 2010
Hm. They don't make it easy to include a link to buy the book, do they? You can find it if you scroll down the page, but in case you miss it ... let's see, Google Chrome has a nice element inspector ... doop de doo ... grabbing the HTML ... OK. Let's try this: you can preorder Little Fish here: That should send you directly to the Finishing Line Press PayPal page where you can preorder Little Fish. Hopefully that will work! So please, check her work out, and support Finishing Line Press! |
At the beginnings of their careers, a lot of authors and other creative types are obsessed with making money off what they produce and are deathly afraid of people stealing it. I've seen people charging their friends for copies of short stories printed in magazines, putting their artwork on the web behind passwords or with huge watermarks, or pricing their software out of reach of the people who want to buy it. But this doesn't help them - in fact, it hurts. And I'm here to tell you to give stuff away for free.If you want to read the whole post, please check it out at her blog, A Novel Friend - it should go up sometime this weekend. -the Centaur
Hi! Just checkd out your site! Keep up teh good information. Very nice work? Do it youself?! Very relevant to me, we also have a community with theme similar on similar information. Is Blogger the WordPress? Ima Spammer http://cheapfreeviagra.malware.org/Especially if there's no relationship between the salsa of text and the post. I mean, come on, if you're going to comment on my WordPress theme don't do it on the Pound Cake Alchemy post. 8 more spammy comments ... marked as spam. -the Centaur
Some issues with lines but ... not the zoo it was last year. Maybe I am better at navigating it; maybe they're working out the kinks. Regardless, a great con this year - the highlights for me were the urban fantasy and ya panels and the bigscreen finale of Doctor Who.
Recommended!
- Novel titles are written in ALL CAPS
You write novels this way to make it clear that it's a BOOK you're talking about, dag nab it. Examples: FROST MOON, ATLAS SHRUGGED, ULYSSES. I picked up this convention from my publisher, Bell Bridge Books. - Search queries are written in [square brackets]
You write search queries this way, rather than with quotes, because quotes can appear in search queries. Examples: [frost moon], ["frost moon"] - note the results are not the same. I picked up this convention from The Search Engine That Starts With a G. - Command line text is indented in a special format where the prompt is bold, the command is bold italic, and the command response is plain text.
centaur@mobile (Sat Jul 24, 00:44:54) [501] ~:Some WordPress or theme weirdness is making this formatting a little harder than it is in Gmail. I think this is fixed to the point that you should be able to see that the "informational" part of the prompt (when the command was executed) appears on its own line, with a colon and line break to separate it from the command proper. The command proper is prefixed by a dollar sign, a UNIX standard that distinguishes it from the response text that follows. This communicates and distinguishes when you did it, what you did, and what you got. This one is mine. I've been developing this convention over the years as a way of communicating results from the command line in email. I have to admit, this is driven in part by a bit of egoism: I want people to know that the results I'm sending them can be done in one line of Bash, Sed and (g)AWK. And the remaining part is, I want people to learn that yes, they too can in a minute do immense amounts of computation with Bash, Sed and AWK. That's all for now. Next time: why the Einstein summation notation is cool. -the Centaur
$ imagelink comicon-2010-01.jpg san diego comicon 2010
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Today is the kickoff for the Got Books Event, which lasts until tomorrow. You can win all kinds of books and book related swag, just by visiting the site and then visiting the other participating blogs. I’m super geeked to have Anthony Francis, the author of Frost Moon, here to join in the celebration. To make things even sweeter, we have 5 (FIVE!!!) copies of Frost Moon to give away to readers. Let’s get things kicked off by asking Anthony a few questions about his book!So please go check the site out, and support the Manga Maniac Cafe and Dakota Frost! -the Centaur
... testing the suitability of this tool for WordPress.
Why did this come up? Well, I'm at San Diego Comic Con, where my AT&T wireless dongle has had an awful time connecting, and on top of that I'm working hard on LIQUID FIRE, which often prompts me to turn off the Internets so that I can focus on getting writing done. SO it's useful to have an offline blogging tool again, and I had good luck with Qumana ... though it was not perfect, it got the job done.
OK, here we go ... reconfiguring blog ... aaand ... post.
404 error: not found.
OK, so obviously, that was was not the right endpoint ... Qumana needs to know where your control panel for your blog is, and if you don't tell it, it can't post for you. Fixing ... OK. Aaaand ... post.
302 error: a redirect.
Rassen frassen ... ID:10T error, stupid Centaur, read the documentation you include in your article and add the xmlrpc.php to the final end of the path to your endpoint. Fixing ... OK. Aaaand ... post.
404 error: not found.
No, still not quite correct ... don't need the /wp-admin/ in there to make it work, which I could easily have seen by inspecting the PHP files on the server, or in the local MAMP copy of my WordPress installation. The actual final path seems to be http://SITE/BLOGPATH/xmlrpc.php, which makes sense, but since I've got a custom site organization I stuffed a /wp-admin/ in there which didn't need to be. Fixing ... OK. Aaaaand ... post.
Geronimo!
-the Centaur
The Centaur's Bio (his Old .plan File) Hi. This is the personal page of the Centaur, otherwise known as Anthony Francis. I'm ostensibly a graduate student in Artificial Intelligence at the College of Computing, but that's just a hobby. For the past eight years, I've been a science fiction writer, a vocation that became professional when I published my first short story, "Sibling Rivalry," in the February 1995 issue of _The Leading Edge_ magazine. The love of my life is a redheaded historian, Shannon Duffy. When I'm not with her I spend time with my best friends in the Edge Group, which consists of Michael Boyd, David Cater, Anthony Francis, Derek Reubish, David Stephens, and Fred Zust in the core Edge franchise as well as William Morse, and Stuart Myerburg in our recently opened Atlanta branch. [Editor's note: Sad to say, Shannon and I are no longer together; we simply had different ideas about where we wanted to take our lives. We're still friends, though, and hope to keep it that way.] I'm sorry, I can't tell you what we at the Edge Group do; we'd have to kill you (we do bad movies, good software, and great times, in no particular order). When I'm not hanging with the Edge Group I'm jamming with my other best friends Steve Arnold, Eric Christian and his fiancee Chalie, Joe Goldenburg, Kenny Moorman and his wife Carla, Ruth Oldaker, Mark Pharo and his wife Yvette, Patsy Voigt, and Fred's girlfriend Marina. The weekend tradition is to jam with William, Stuart, Mallory and sometimes Joe at Anis, Huey's, Oxford at Pharr, Phipps and wherever else we can get into trouble. (Occasionally, you can find me at the Cedar Tree or Yakitori Den-Chan with Mark & Yvette). If not, I'm either hanging with Fred & Marina, Eric & Chalie and Dave & Ruth up in ole Greenvile, South Carolina, watching (or filming) movies at my house, eating dinner with my loving parents Tony and Susan Francis, perforating the odd target with musket fire at Eric's or just noshing on late-night food at Stax' Omega or IHOP. If I'm not doing any of the above, I'm liable to be curled up with Shanny in O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Pub in the French Quarter in New Orleans, listening to Irish ballads and soaking up each other's company over an Irish Coffee (her) and a diet Coke (me). Since people have asked, my favorite authors are H.P. Lovecraft, Larry Niven, C.J. Cherryh and Douglas Hofstadter, in that order. My favorite TV show is Dr.Who, followed neck-and-neck by Babylon 5 and Star Trek (TOS TNG TMS DS9 VOY ANI, in that order) and nipped at the heels by the Tripods and the Six Million Dollar Man. My favorite comic book is Elfquest, followed closely by Albedo Anthropomorphics, Superman, Cerebus, and Usagi Yojimbo. My favorite band is Tangerine Dream, although I do listen to Rush, Yes, Vangelis, and Genesis. My favorite style of music is now called "New Age" (uuugh) but used to be called electronic music, minimalist, or just electronic rock. My second favorite style of music is soundtrack music (music for the visual image). I can stand rock. I hate disco. Rap held my interest for a while, but it officially lost me with "Whoomp(t) there it is." My favorite cuisine is Lebanese, a gift from my parents and my family, the best damn extended family in the whole wide world. I shock my parents and family by also appreciating Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Cajun, Mexican, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish and Indian cuisine; I also have a great appreciation for the foods of the South, a culture which I find to be both vastly underrated and overdiscussed abroad. When I'm not dining out or curled up with a good book or laptop computer at Captain D's at Corporate Square in Atlanta drinking inordinate amounts of iced tea, I'm at home honing my patented personal tabbouleh (Lebanese salad) recipe, slowly learning to cook Chinese, and honing the art of grilling steaks and microwaving potatoes so that they both finish at the same time. My favorite form of literary expression is science fiction; my preferred style is flashbacks within a framing story, usually in third-person limited, although I've begun to experiment with a more liberal third-person style derived from the narrative structure of contemporary motion pictures. My primary means of plotting and expression are visual images. My favorite fictional creature is, of course, the centaur; however, the genetically engineered spaceborne professionals of *my* fiction bear little resemblance to the bearded primitves that stalk the wooded glades of your average fantasy novel (unfair though that may be to my inspirations, which include the very nice halfhorse folk of the Giesenthal valley dreamed up by Donna Barr, the ambiguous Titanides from _Titan, Wizard, Demon_ by John Varley, and Timoth the warrior sage of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comic. Just don't call my Porsche St.George a halfhorse too; she'll be liable to pummel a fictionalized version of you in a story sooner or later if you do). My favorite style of AI is symbolic AI with a situated/behaviorist twist. I play around with memory, agents, case-based reasoning, natural language understanding, and semiotics; I have nothing against genetic algorithms or connectionist systems other than the fact that I don't have time to pursue them as avidly. I also fiddle around with animal cognition, and can talk your ear off about chimpanzee culture and dolphin language if given the chance. My favorite style of science is Kuhnian with a cognitive flair. I have no respect for positivism or any of the horrible things it's done for science. My philosophy is somewhere between Kant, Plato and something no-one has a name for yet. To sum: the universe is real; deal, but don't assume you have the answers and *don't* assume that a single level of description can capture all of reality. My religion is theist; I believe in the tripartite single God at the heart of mainstream Christianity, and accept the messiah aspect as my savior. My theology is liberal Episcopalian with a strong theological background in my Catholic upbringing. My disagreements with the Catholic Church are primarily theological and only partially pragmatic; I gave up on waiting for them to catch up with Jesus, but they're still mostly good people. The religious right, on the other hand, is a bipartite oxymoron: neither religious nor right, and certainly not in keeping with the anti-Phariseean radical I follow. Genteel religious discussions are welcome; rude evangelizers will be biblically and theologically diced *before* I turn you over to Shannon, Joe, William, and Eric. Bring references to authorities, but don't expect me to respect them. Arguments against evolution will either be summarily flushed or buried underneath my copies of Eldredge's _Time Frames_, A.G. Cairns-Smith's _Genetic Takeover_, Dawkin's _The Selfish Gene_, _The Saint Paul Family Catechism_ and my copy of the New American Bible, flipped to the part of the preface discussing evolution. Read the gospel of Thomas; it's an eye opener, and you haven't even seen the Dead Sea Scrolls yet... Politically, I am a Goldwater liberal. I believe in war, gays in the military, religious freedom, no state-mandated prayer in schools, free ownership of automatic weapons, licensing of gun owners, aid to the Contras, prosecution of IranContra, investigation of Whitewater, and support and respect for the president regardless of party. I voted for George *and* Bill once each, don't regret it, and would do the same knowing what I know now. I believe in AIDS spending, military spending, research spending, and the space program; I also believe in welfare reform, cutting waste, a line item veto, and perhaps even some kind of budget amendment if I could be convinced it wouldn't get us into trouble in wartime. I don't believe in "school choice", "political correctness", "multiculturalism", "Rush as Equal Time", "the liberal media", "the conservative media", or "anti-special-rights amendments". I don't think we should take "In God We Trust" off of our coins and I don't think we should picket funerals of people who had AIDS. I don't believe acceptance of homosexuals as equal citizens has anything to do with the disintegration of the American family. I don't believe in hobbling industry with overregulation nor do I believe in letting them cut down trees holding endangered species just because they planned our logging programs poorly. My political heroes are Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher.Interesting. Well, that is what it was. There are definitely opinions I would tweak, things I now think I got wrong, and snapshots of relationships that no longer hold. But the Edge is still here, I'm still here, I'm still writing, I'm still a Christian, and still a scientist. SO, all things considered, I think I'll have to stand by my dot plan file after all. -the Centaur
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
James Joyce
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Arthur C. Clarke
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Margaret Atwood
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
an adolescent goth after a heavy night on the absinthe
I Actually Write Like Analyze your writing!
a lolcat
I Actually Write Like Analyze your writing!
“Magicians have survived by being secretive,” Devenger said, folding his arms sternly. “You, I can find out anything I want on Wikipedia, including pictures of your tattoos good enough to reverse-engineer some of their logic—” “Wait, back up. I have a Wikipedia page?” I said, laughing. “Bullshit.” Devenger’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted. “And I thought you were web savvy. Haven’t you ever Googled yourself?” And with that he turned to the screen, tapped out my name, and ten seconds later had found a Wikipedia page on Dakota Caroline Frost, complete with that same old out-of-date picture everyone scarfed from the Rogue Unicorn web site. “Damn,” I said, leaning over his shoulder. “That’s me all right—” “Down to a list of your tattoos,” Devenger said, scrolling down through the page. “Even ones you no longer have, like your original Dragon tattoo—” “Wait,” I said. “ Scroll back up. There, my daughter’s name. Why is that a link?” “Maybe she has a Wikipedia page too,” he said. Something cold ran up my spine. "Click on it," I said quietly.Why is Dakota so worried? Until 2011, when LIQUID FIRE comes out: wonder. -the Centaur
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2008/03/25/darvaz-the-door-to-hell/ This place in Uzbekistan is called by locals “The Door to Hell”. It is situated near the small town of Darvaz. The story of this place lasts already for 35 years. Once the geologists were drilling for gas. Then suddenly during the drilling they have found an underground cavern, it was so big that all the drilling site with all the equipment and camps got deep deep under the ground. None dared to go down there because the cavern was filled with gas. So they ignited it so that no poisonous gas could come out of the hole, and since then, it’s burning, already for 35 years without any pause. Nobody knows how many tons of excellent gas has been burned for all those years but it just seems to be infinite there.See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derweze#The_.22Door_to_Hell.22. While I did find it researching Skindancer Books 4 through 6, this this specific site will probably not appear until somewhere around book 20 or 21. (Yes, I'm planning at least 21 books, though I have less on paper for things past Book 6 than Lucas had for Star Wars 9 (and yes, I know Lucas now denies there were plans for Star Wars 9, but what does he know, he also thinks Greedo shot first ... or does he? :-) )).