Category: Uncategorized (Page 21 of 35)

I found out this weekend that Walter Mosley’s novel, 47, is a Prometheus Award nominee. I believe the final cut of five books is just around the corner, but this is the first time I’ve heard about the novel. A brief description from Amazon.com (School Library Journal review) goes like this:

The intense, personal slave narrative of 14-year-old Forty-seven becomes allegorical when a mysterious runaway slave shows up at the Corinthian Plantation. Tall John, who believes there are no masters and no slaves, and who carries a yellow carpet bag of magical healing potions and futuristic devices, is both an inspiration and an enigma. He claims he has crossed galaxies and centuries and arrived by Sun Ship on Earth in 1832 to find the one chosen to continue the fight against the evil Calash. The brutal white overseer and the cruel slave owner are disguised Calash who must be defeated. Tall John inserts himself into Forty-seven’s daily life and gradually cedes to him immortality and the power, confidence, and courage to confront the Calash to break the chains of slavery. With confidence, determination, and craft, Tall John becomes Forty-seven’s alter ego, challenging him and inspiring him to see beyond slavery and fight for freedom.

I’m hoping to run a review of the novel in the Summer issue of Prometheus, as the Spring issue pretty much is set at the moment, even with an increase in page count to 20.

I just installed SQLTunes on my Mac, which creates a MySQL table from exported tracks from iTunes, and allows me to run reports or even create web pages with interactive options via PHP, should I so choose. I set it up on my local host (if I had access to a remote MySQL db, I’m sure transferring the data would be an easy task), and it felt a lot easier than when I installed SimpleMachines Forum or Moveable Type to see how they worked. Both those apps took a couple of hours of Unix related experimentation on the Mac, but SQLTunes only ran me 15-30 minutes. My first report showed 5715 tracks from 588 artists, although iTunes often incorrectly interprets tracks on classical music CDs – probably more related to the database that iTunes checks, than iTunes itself. For example, there is no artist called “Act I Connais-tu le pays…” but that’s how the db assigned a track when ripping the CD. I haven’t ripped all my CDs, but this is a great tool for all sorts of reports (count number of songs with same title, for one), and a different perspective on my music library. No idea if the same thing exists in the Windows/Linux world. One strange quirk is that the track_id field, which stamps all the records with a unique ID, started at 39, not one. Another is that the import from the XML file sorted in no logical fashion, except for maybe the “persistent_id” field, which I don’t know how populates.

Via sf writer Charles Stross’ LiveJournal, a list of Tor’s new ebooks that will available starting this month. Includes new titles as well as previously paper-published books.

Via Emerald City, a link to Tor’s release about their
new program of selling e-books, oddly enough from competitors BAEN, who pioneered the unencrypted format. Among the authors featured starting in March are Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Mercedes Lackey, and Sara Douglass.

I’m recharging my batteries when it comes to books and literary matters, and will post more appropriate stuff soon. In the meantime, an amusing review of an album released today, Trespassers William’s Having. The review is more about reaching for flowery prose than the album itself. The band, named after Piglet’s grandfather in A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (the scene explaining this is amusing, as the sign to which Piglet alludes is a broken one, which really should read Trespassers Will be Prosecuted), plays quiet, lush music, complemented by vocalist Anna-Lynne Williams soft voice. Preview before you buy, as what I might like now, you might not like ever.

While I didn’t jump to a Microsoft site as someone stated happened to them (perhaps because I use a Mac?) when drawing this issue to my attention, I did have a bad link to Eric Raymond’s blog on this site. This has been updated to the correct location. People jumping over there will see HRC doing an excellent Hannibal Lecter impersonation, as well as more serious stuff.

Just spotted this brief note from Wendy McElroy talking about a conversation she had with sf writer James Hogan. Turns out he no longer splits his time between the US and Ireland, but due to the Iraq war has left the US permanently for Ireland. More details at Wendy’s site.

Sweet heavens! Completely unrelated to the mission of this blog, but wow, some cool music videos over at Silent Sessions by (among others) two of my favorite current bands, Explosions in the Sky and The Album Leaf. Very different types of music, yet both are mainly instrumental. Sadly, I am so far removed from the music scene that I missed both Austin performances, only 90 minutes away. Might be of interest to a future Musical Maundering from Sunni…

A nice collection, more a comment on the aftermath than the causes themselves. Via Instapundit.

Female Muslim pop singer,Deeyah faces death threats for daring to speak her mind, and also stripping down from burka to bikini in a recent music video, “What Will It Be”. This video also shows several men and women with tape over their mouths, a pointed criticism at some repressive trends in many Islamic countries. Forced to leave Norway, where she was born to immigrant parents and started her musical career, she moved to London. There she now experiences the same death threats that forced her to leave the so-called liberal Norway. This FreeMuse site has some interesting articles on women and music censorship, in particular this one, which also can be downloaded as a PDF. View Deeyah’s video at this page. Not my kind of music, but still a great statement for the right to free speech and free expression.