Hugh McGuire, of LibriVox and iambik audiobooks, speaking at TEDx Montreal. His topic is “The Blurring Lines Between Books and the Internet.”
Posted by Jesse Willis
Category: News
Thank You: AdSense $$ for May and June 2012
For our labours, in the months of May and June of this year, we have received a moderately sized contribution:
$131.95 in Google AdSense revenue.
I’d have you know that hosting for the site is actually pretty cheap. But we have plenty of other minor expenses. Like equipment, I like to buy computers – without them I wouldn’t be able to see the website, or write the posts, or do the podcast.
And of course we need $$ for the peripherals like hard drives and scanners.
But more importantly this money is used to make thank you payments to programmers for software like Levelator, and torrent sites like RadioArchive.cc, and for paying for podcast audiobooks.
If we were a business we’d lose money every month. Thankfully we’re not a business. We’re a website and so breaking even is the whole idea.
Thanks for helping to break us even. And please continue to break us. We’re not broken nearly enough. We’d like to be ten times broker.
Your eyes and mouse clicks and finger taps are all much appreciated.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar by Neil Gaiman (live reading)
Here’s a live reading (audio only), by Neil Gaiman himself, of Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar. The story is a kind of mash up of a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore piece, that and the Cthulhu mythos, and also English pub culture.
Charles de Lint, in his review for The Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction (May 2005) described it thusly:
“Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar is very funny — laugh out loud funny, in places — but it’s to Gaiman’s credit that it’s not a complete farce. Somehow he manages to instill a touch of creepy dread to leaven all the humor.”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Posted by Jesse Willis
MuseCon 2012: Guest Of Honor: Gregg Taylor of Decoder Ring Theatre
Gregg Taylor of Decoder Ring Theatre is going to be the GUEST OF HONOR at MuseCon 2012!
This Chicago area convention begins August 3, 2012.
Here’s the convention’s description:
Most kids create an imaginary world where they have friends nobody else can see and which allows them to be firefighters or astronauts or whatever strikes their fancy. We were all kids like that and, as we grew, we found the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, media, music, art and other interests that allowed us to escape from the
mundane world.Within the fannish community, we’ve found folks who have similar interests. This society of accepting, like-minded people allows us to create and educate. Whether it’s science, writing, art, music or even new ideas of what family and religion mean, fandom is a pretty creative bunch. MuseCon is a place to explore that creativity and learn from each other. You don’t have to be an expert–all you need is a willingness to try.
Come and play with us!
Here’s the two page spread in the MuseCon program book about our hero:
And here’s the complete |PDF|.
[Thanks Xap!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
TEDxUCDavis – Michael Saler – History and Imaginary Worlds
Professor Michael Saler, of UC Davis, suggested I check out his talk about “History and Imaginary Worlds” which he gave at a TEDx at UC Davis.
Saler’s talk reminded me of something Dave Barry said.
He said he wanted to get an Amtrak jersey made, like one of those football or hockey style oversized jerseys. He wanted to get an Amtrak logo emblazoned on the front of it, and have two little ones put onto the shoulders. He wanted to have “GUNN” stitched on to the back of it (David Gunn was the president of Amtrak at the time). He wanted to walk around in public wearing it, and quote statistics about how many miles of track Amtrak had laid down, and to tell everyone how many passengers it delivered in it’s 2003 “season.”
I guess he thought that a lot folks might think it strange if a grown man walked around wearing a costume of one of his heroes. He didn’t want any of those normal sports fans to think he was strange.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Man walks on fucking Moon: July 21, 1969
Used in awe and respect, there are few times in the history of human civilization when such words would have been more appropriate.
[via BoingBoing and ultimately The Onion]
Posted by Jesse Willis