Posts for 2015

Are you tired of the same old dystopias? Why not write about tyrannies that deny different rights? Try Randomized Dystopia! I see a lot of repetitive dystopian fiction about denying people (often teenagers) the right …

I have the best spouse. I spent basically the entire afternoon and evening waylaid by an inexplicable short-term illness (I would blame food poisoning except I can't work out the causality). Leonard's super solicitousness extended …

I have been to WisCon three times (2009, 2010, 2011) and I am going again this year, yay! If you enjoy my writing, you might like WisCon, and -- especially if you've never tried it …

As you may have seen if you follow the Ada Initiative's blog, I've left the TAI's advisory board (which I joined in 2011). I've also left its board of directors, which I joined a little …

I'm most of the way through Beloved by Toni Morrison -- my thanks to Debbie Notkin for causing me to take a deep breath and open it again. Reading it now, I'm grateful for all …

  Right now, y'all can apply to the Free and Open Source Software Outreachy internships, formerly OPW -- the deadline is March 24th. Copy the flyer below to spread the word! And March 24th is …

I have read many, many books since I last rounded them up. I may start using LibraryThing or similar to track and recommend things since I demonstrably don't blog about the books often enough to …

A few deleted sentences from a piece I'm drafting: One way to understand suspense is that it's the state of having multiple conflicting valid causal models, or not having enough information to even form a …

I have been rereading Dave Barry's Dave Barry In Cyberspace (published in 1996), which has held up about as well as Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line (1999). On the software you'll …

Over the last several years I've started getting into hobbies, skills, or activities that I had assumed I would not like or wouldn't get, or that I had dismissed due to initial impressions, such as …