I’m taking the unusual step of tarting up a booklog entry with a cover image, just for the “Advance Reading Copy– Not For Sale” box on the cover. A few weeks back, when Kate and I were in New York, we dropped by the Tor offices to meet Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and I […]
Month: May 2007
Waiting for Steak to Fall
One of these days, this will be the universe where steak falls on the floor.
Query: After-Market iPod Connection?
So, back in November, I bought a new car, which came with a six-month free trial of Sirius Satellite Radio. That’s about to run out, and while it does have its good points, I’m not really interested in paying money to listen to the radio. What I would prefer is to be able to play […]
Farewell to the Hellmouth
So, over the course of Saturday and Sunday, I watched the first eight episodes of Season Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, through a combination of general boredom and wanting to give the show a fair shot. So, does this mean I’m now hooked? Well, when Kate got home, I was just starting episode 12 […]
Songs of the Moment
Top choices from the recent acquisitions playlist: “Sly,” Cat Empire. I bought this because of the 75 or Less review, which asks the important questions: When did G Love become the bandleader for the Blues Brothers? And when did they add reggae and Latin influences? And why are my feet doing this stupid dance under […]
Bicycling Report (Lame Edition)
Saturday was a miserable cold and rainy day, and today wasn’t a whole lot better. I took advantage of a brief spot of sun in the afternoon to get a short ride in, but it was awfully windy with dark clouds on the horizon, so I just rode around on local streets, so as not […]
Hot Fuzz
For the last several years, Schenectady has been trying to get a movie theater in the downtown area, as part of an ongoing urban renewal project. This week, it finally opened, and one of the first movies on the bill is Hot Fuzz, from the people who did Shaun of the Dead, which I wanted […]
In Defense of Fiction Reading
Eductaion reform is a contentious topic, and everybody has their own ideas about the best ways to improve the teaching of basic skills. Some people favor a “whole language” approach, others think we should go back to teaching phonics and memorizing grammar rules. I’ve heard people speak of “diagramming sentences” as absolutely the worst idea […]
Welcome to the Hellmouth
Jennifer Ouellette is coming to campus this week to give a talk about her book The Physics of the Buffyverse. Having never been a Buffy fan, and not seen more than snippets of a few episodes here and there, I figured I should at least watch a few representative episodes before the talk, just to […]
Myths of Science Writing
I’m mired in lab grading at the moment, which is sufficiently irritating that I usually have to decamp to someplace with no Internet access, or else I spend the day blogrolling instead. Or, really, just hitting “Refresh” over and over on Bloglines, hoping that somebody in my RSS subscriptions has posted something new. A big […]