Oh happy day! SFRevu Column gave us “Very Goods” on all the stories in the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer. Here is the last line of the review:

Shimmer is one of the best small press magazines out there and you should all be subscribing to it!

Oh, baby. Forget steampunk. I am so writing an ancient Greek Gearpunk story or novel. Go check out this article in Gear Factor

An Anglo-Greek team of scientists has revealed what they consider the true workings of the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000 year-old analog computer recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck over a century ago.

The article also reference a 9th century book called, The Book of Ingenious Devices, which I now want a copy of.

For the moment, I’ll settle with picking up a copy of the new Nature, which has a really in depth article on the Antikythera, fortunately online. Aside from talking more about the details of how the thing works, the author asks the question, “How can the capacity to build a machine so magnificent have passed through history with no obvious effects?” No kidding! He speculates that it’s because it was made of bronze and that most of them were melted down to make weapons at some point, but still, you have to wonder what makes technology disappear.

Okay. This was the coolest thing in the world, for me. I went to the bookstore to pick up Christmas gifts for my family to save me the cost and hassle shipping them to Chattanooga. With one exception, I wound up selecting books written by people I know. I like all of these people, and have been very happy for their success, but I turned into the total fan-girl in the books store. Two years ago, I don’t think I knew any novelists.

Sadly, I can’t tell you which books they were because my family reads the blog and I’ve already tipped my hand that most of them/you are getting books this year.

Tangent Online has reviewed the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer and said nice things about all of our stories. We love our authors!

View my progress report for Shades of Milk and Honey. As of this posting I have to write 8,953 words in two days to “win” NaNo. I think I have another 20,000 words after that to finish this draft of the novel.

Acephalous: Measuring The Speed of Meme: An Experiment in which You Will Participate, Or Else…

You too can participate in science from the comfort of your own home. Click on the link above to read the details of the experiment, or take the shortcut and just follow the instructions below.

1. Write a post, in which you explain the experiment and link to the original post (http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html). (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, &c.)
2. Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances. Imply I’m one of them. (Do whatever you have to. If that fails, try whatever it takes.)
3. Ping Technorati.

On Sunday, Mom and I went over to visit Grandma. Besides looking forward to seeing my 101 year old grandmother, I was armed with a mission. At Orycon, someone (I’m sorry I’ve forgotten who) was talking about epidemics and how one couldn’t really interview people who had lived through the great Influenza epidemic. I realized that I could. When I mentioned that, Richard Lovett said that I should also ask Grandma about the Titanic, which would have been the shuttle disaster of her generation.

We wound up not talking about the flu epidemic, or even the Titanic much. Grandma says that they didn’t have television or radio where she was living when the Titanic went down, so she heard about it through word of mouth over the course of a couple of days. That sparked a memory of the phone that her parents had had when she was growing up.

It was an eight-party line, she says, and they weren’t supposed to listen in on their neighbors conversations but sometimes, when their mama left the house, Grandma would get a chair and climb up to get the receiver. She says that she thinks her mama put the phone up so high to keep them from getting to it.

I also learned that her father was an excellent story teller and would tell them ghost stories that, “made it so you were afraid to sleep at night.” The one that she could remember was about a man who was cutting through a graveyard and fell into an open grave. While he was down there, two people fellows came along and were dividing up walnuts, saying, “One for me, one for you, one for me…” The man in the grave thought that it was the boogie man and death talking about dividing up souls and leapt out of the grave and ran straight off. She said that couldn’t remember it the way my great-grandfather told it, only that the way he told it was scary.

I remember hearing this story when I was little, but don’t know where I heard it. Now I want to find a large print version to give Grandma for Christmas.

About this time, I remembered that I had a video camera on my palm pilot and so by the time she and Mom started talking about the Indian mound on my great-grandaddy’s farm, I’m ready. I’ve edited out the bits where we start talking about family.

It was a good visit. Next time, I’ll make sure I have the camera out the whole time.

Pam McNew just gave us a very lovely review on her website, My Love for You Is A Ruby, A Emerald, A Diamond In a Box

Shimmer, Summer 2006. This was my first reading of Shimmer, a small zine of beauty. Shiny front and back cover with beautiful, and I want to say photoworkshopped, art. So beautiful that I felt badly toting it around and about and marring it a bit from my crude habits and behavior. Nine pieces of fictions, very short pieces, smaller than flash in a couple of instances. Speculative or fantastical, of course. I’m thinking the publication tends a bit more towards literal writing than most zines, although there is a garden gnome story (not what you’d think) and an alien story (not what you’d think, but, yes, an Earth with aliens and local politics.) I should also note that there is an interview within the issue: Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta.

She goes on to say other nice things, which you should go read it.

I just saw the news that Lazytown won the BAFTA in the International Children’s category. Woot!

INTERNATIONAL

FAIRLY ODD PARENTS - Butch Hartman, Gary Conrad (Frederator Studios for Nickelodeon/Nickelodeon UK)

HARRY AND HIS BUCKET FULL OF DINOSAURS - Kristine Klohk/Helen Cohen/Graham Ralph (Collingwood O’Hare Entertainment/Silver Fox Films Ltd/CCI Entertainment/Five)

LAZY TOWN - Magnús Scheving, Raymond P Le Gué, Jonathan Judge (Lazy Town Productions for Nick Jr UK/Nick Jr UK)

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS - Paul Tibbitt, Steve Hillenberg (United Plankton Pictures Inc for Nickelodeon/Nickelodeon UK)

I did manage to sleep for most of the first flight, which is good since the second flight contained a child who screamed the entire flight. I believe we had ten minutes of silence. Other than that, I arrived with a minimum of fuss and we are now off for dinner at my cousin Marsha’s house.