Lakeshore

Abandoned frozen ships — Photos of a marine graveyard in Russia. Wow.

The true history of reactor vessels — Interesting piece about a key production bottleneck in the construction of new nuclear power plants. With bonus samurai references!

Cheese: the video — tbclone47 taped me talking about cheese at the Rainforest Writers Village.

Today's APOD is deeply awesome — "Moon over Byzantium". Everybody sing: "Istanbul, not Constantinople..."

Short people are most prone to jealousy — Randy Newman's gone into psychological research?

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3/15/08
Time in saddle: 20 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 277.4
Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]

A new caption contest has spontaneously emerged here — Usual rules apply, go join in. I'll give away another Audible.com gift card, and another Escapement [ Amazon ] ARC. Tell all your friends.

A reader recommends my story "The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and into the Black" — Also a number of other nice links there.

"I think I would remember having amnesia." — Get Fuzzy is funny.

A directory of obsolete skills

The Guru Handbook on teaching with lies — We had a brief discussion here this weekend about the relationship between fiction and lying. That's something I think I'll be exploring more soon.

florismk recommends Windows Live Writer — For you Windroids, anyway. Us Macheads need not apply.

Also, there will be cheese blogging later, and maybe more rainforest photos. For now, Green.

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3/8/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (lasirenadolce and I had a brisk two mile walk on level ground)
Last night's weigh-out: 281.1
This morning's weigh-in: 276.8
Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Somewhat to my surprise, I am posting from Lake Quinalt. The Rainforest Writers Village is in full swing. There will be cheese today. (Oh, yes.) Lots of old friends here, and a scattering of the new.

Thought of yesterday: "The Speed of Time" would be a good title for a short story. Or possibly a novel.

Misheard last night: brendacooper discussing the sub-genre of Christian noir. Actually, she wasn't, but I kind of wish she had been.

Also, shsilver reviews Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ] at SF Site.

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3/7/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (lasirendolce and I did a brisk 1.5 mile walk through the rainforest, with about 300 feet of elevation change)
Last night's weigh-out: 281.1
This morning's weigh-in: 275.0
Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]

The rewriting post and poll

Movie mashups — Speed Eraserhead, anyone?

I may be a distant cousin of Barack Obama — Some of my ancestors are Kansas Dunhams from the same small town as his mother, who is a Dunham. Also, the town where Rocket Science [ Powell's | Amazon ] is set. (Thanks to Aunt Mary for spotting this.)

Blessed are the cheesemakers — ellameena becomes my new hero.

Ask Oxford — My dad sends along this link to the Oxford Dictionaries site, with a number of help resources.

StarshipSofa: SF Audio Podcast — These folks brought themselves to my attention. Worth checking out...looks like they've got a lot going on for your earbuds.

Eccentric genius: Antiques from a Parallel Universe — (Thanks to Z.)

Science — Shorpy with a WWII photograph that looks like a Thomas Dolby album cover.

Cheeseburger in a can — If this is available in the US, I'll order one and try it. (Thanks to AH. I think.)

The Fail Blog — Hahahah. (Thanks to AH.)

Reviews of the Bic Crystal Ballpoint Pen — Teh funny. (Thanks to tempested_bird.)

Vodaphone looking into femtocells — I had to click through to figure out what a femtocell was. Interesting squib about distribution cellular networks even further.

The most expensive PCs — (Thanks to lt260.)

Brattleboro, VT engages in sedition — (Thanks to lt260.)

Why Obama Matters — lordofallfools sends along this fascinating Andrew Sullivan article in The Atlantic about Obama as a unifier. The theme is that he can bridge the cultural divide of the last 40 years, with its roots in the Baby Boom's divide over Vietnam. (The fact that Sully has to balance the violent rantings of O'Reilly on the right with the carefully measured reasoning of Olbermann on the left (for example) in order to help make his case tells me a lot about the nature of the divide.)

Food Fight — A filmic critique of the history of modern warfare, culminating in the global war on terror, in food. Weirdly compelling.

( A little bit of food pr0n for you bread lovers. )

The Flickr set

Note to self: no more beer, cheese and bacon soup.

Seriously.

Ever.

That is all. You may shop as usual. No need to return to your homes.

It doesn't take a lot to get me onto cheese. After the Australian party in New York last week, a number of us went to a lovely Italian dinner under the intrepid leadership of ellen_datlow. I sat between Margo Lanagan and her highly entertaining husband, and in the course of the meal we discussed cheese — specifically sottocenere al tartuffo, which is pretty much my favorite cheese. (I believe it came up in connection with a comment on how different people taste truffles differently.) I told Margo I'd try to drum her up some truffle cheese in Saratoga Springs.

Fast forward to Thursday of that week, and me in the Putnam Street Market (which is not on Putnam Street, but I digress). I went to the cheese counter and began speaking cheese, whereupon someone appeared who spoke cheese back to me. It was sadly agreed that there was no sottocenere to be had in Saratoga Springs, but they did have this lovely Oregon chevre with a truffle infusion, truffle tremor, and would I like to have some? $150 later, I was all set.

The next problem was venue. This cheese party was not on programming, and had never been on programming. I was fine with it being open, but didn't want it to be so open it became a buffet line. We switched venues about four times before the magnificent dave_gallaher (to whom congratulations are in order, btw) got us the use of the swag room for an hour or so. Sharon Sbarsky was very kind and patient about that, as well.

With logistical leadership from lasirenadolce and a strong assist from klingonguy, ( set up ensued. )

The cheeses are, in order, Colton-Basset Stilton, Truffle Tremor, Drunken Goat, Urgela and Pierre Robert. Only the truffle tremor and the urgela were new to me. The truffle tremor has no goatiness at all, and a very nice mellow flavor with a bit of contradictory kick to it. The urgela was a strong, borderline stinky yet firm cheese — I'm used to the stinky cheeses being softer. Strongly recommend the truffle, recommend the urgela if you want to experiment just a little without going crazy.

We also had a drop-in cheese from icedrake and katfeete, who are professional cheesemakers from Meadow Creek Dairy called Whitetop. I have lost my notes on the name, but I believe it's Whitetop. Semisoft, a young cheese they're still working on, very buttery and pleasant. They want to bring it to a lighter texture, more like a triple cream, before they start marketing it. Test cheese or no, it went over very well with the cheese partiers.

To round things out, Team Oz was able to provide some very nice wine, courtesy of I'm not sure exactly whom except that Garth Nix and Trevor Stafford were involved.

( Then people showed up. )

Including ( the guest of honor. )

The moral of the story? Cheese can happen any time, any where. And I always do like a well rinded convention experience.

All photos courtesy of lasirenadolce. As usual, more at the Flickr set.

Well, that was a whirl. We started out with a quickie breakfast and supply run, then hit the Con for a slambang day of Con-worthy fun.

I had a very productive meeting with casacorona, along with a number of useful (from a business perspective) hallway chats, klingonguy gave me partial direction on "America, Such as She Is", Bruce Taylor gave me a copy of his book to which I had written the introduction, hung out at the Wheatland Press table, laid on an impromptu cheese party for Margo Lanagan with only four changes of venue in 24 hours before it actually went off last night (cheryl_morgan had the right of it), saw more LJ'ers than I can shake two sticks at, including (once again) the lovely and talented saycestsay (whom I neglected to mention previously), did a reading of "The Man With One Bright Eye" and "Hard Times in the State of Nature", gave away some books, made a light dinner with blakehutchins and various others, hit the mass autographing where I hung out with gary_wassner (a WFC tradition for he and I), hit BarCon, then hit the parties, then went home and collapsed.

( Photographic evidence of BarCon )

Inconceivable as it may seem, Chris Roberson, halduncan and jetse were all in the bar at the same time.

Off to a breakfast meeting. More photos later, plus special bonus cheese blog update.

Somehow even though yesterday was about 1/2 a day worth of Con, it wore me out hard. We started out easy and slow, me and lasirenadolce and kenscholes looking for a decent cheese shop. (We found one.) We got to the Con well before it opened, deployed the boxes we'd schlepped for maryrobinette, and took a position in the lobby for many hours. Paths were crossed with many friends old and new, from davidlevine to klages. Oh, and there was some bar time. And I helped Garth Nix and Jonathan Strahan shop for the Aussie party.

kenscholes, lasirenadolce and I had dinner last night with arcaedia and mcurry, a/k/a our agent dinner. It was at a wine bar named The Wine Bar. We had a cheese sampler of eight different Vermont cheeses, two sheep, two goat and four cow cheese. One blue among them, and otherwise mostly semisoft yellows. All very nice and mostly mellow, though the rosemary infusion in one of them surprised me. Very smooth chevres, too. Lots of wine was drunk, and business both personal and professional discussed.

We got back to the convention at the tail end of the ice cream social. lasirenadolce headed back to our hotel rather than brave the Aussie party. I made that scene and the Zombie party, then my head started feeling like a bell clapper. lasirenadolce came back and picked up me and davidlevine for an early retirement from the field — his room is just down the hall from ours, as it turns out.

Reading today, guerilla cheese party today, mass autographing tonight. I say both tally and ho!

The Australian party was marvelous last night. I saw lots of old friends there, a good warm-up for WFC. A bumptious crowd hied off for Italian afterwards, causing me to completely fail to call rosefox as promised.

kenscholes arrives shortly here at the mobile instantiation of Rancho Lake. He and I and lasirenadolce are off to breakfast, then Tor. This afternoon we're heading up to Saratoga Springs in the rental war wagon with dueling GPS guidance.

For some reason last night I promised to lay on a cheese spread this weekend, so I have to figure out of that's possible in upstate New York. (Margo Lanagan drove me to it.) Somehow I expect this is do-able.

See some, all or none of you at WFC.

Brewster Rockit on (copy) editing

What to do if you're attacked by monkeys

GodTube.com

Cheese Enforcement Agency — (Thanks to AH.)

A Culinary Guide to the Texas State Fair — "A fair is a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord!" (Thanks to garyomaha.)

Nanowire Makes Own Electricity — Some very cool implications. (Thanks to rosefox.)

For those of you who were off LJ over the weekend, here's a few items of potential interest from this blog:

Fiction: "Daddy's Caliban"

lasirenadolce had a birthday

So did my sister, lillypond — Cheese blogging ensued.

I (mini)ranted about politics

jimvanpelt's seven sentence story contest

Another contest, this one entitled "amuse me" — Prize (after voting poll) is a very rare copy of my limited edition dark erotica chapbook Loving Julius. Voting poll to go up in a couple of more days, so there's still time to get your entries in.

kenscholes and the_child celebrate his shiny new fantasy series sale to Tor

And of course, Link Salad here, here and here.

We had another cheesefest today for lillypond's birthday party.