Dealing with Spam

Spam email is annoying, and for the most part I do my best to ignore it, just delete it out of hand without getting upset. It's very easy to get worked up, to want some kind of cyber-revenge on the perpetrators, those evil spamsters who make it their business to clog up everyone's inbox with utter crap. But requesting to be removed from the mailing list does no good. Most replies will bounce back, because the return address is bogus. The spamsters just want you to click their links and ...   more

No Time for Writing

I couldn't help nodding with agreement at Derek Molata's post on 21st February, entitled Time Woe Bitchslap. The gist is that he gets just one hour a day to write, and sometimes when that hour comes around he's burned out and uninterested in writing. Me too. I actually get more than an hour a day, but it's hard to quantify. Back in November 2005 I decided to give up writing until the New Year; let's ...   more

The Giver by Lois Lowry

I just finished reading The Giver by Lois Lowry, an award winning novel for children about a community in the future where everything is perfect and orderly. There are Rules, lots of them, but these Rules are followed to the letter by all the citizens, young and old. It's a community of innocence and obedience; there are no memories of the past, and nobody knows (or needs to know) what's outside the community, in the place known only as Elsewhere. Everything is organized and str...   more

Homemade Blog

I've always been interested in the style of blogs. Generally speaking they're created by talented designers and clever programmers, and all the user has to do is install a pre-built template and start throwing words in. This means the Internet is filling up with nice-looking websites, and all those horrible, garish, hard-to-read websites with bits flashing everywhere and terrible midi music blaring out unexpectedly are starting to fade away. At least that's how it seems to me. I think i...   more

AlphaSmart Neo

A writing friend, Jeremy Yoder, wrote and said he'd been banging out tons of words recently. He said: "Wanna know part of my secret? I've purchased a Neo from www.alphasmart.com. It's a dream for writing first drafts whenever and wherever I am. I take it everywhere. Over the July 4th weekend, I wouldn't have been able to write a single word, but with this I pounded out 4000 words. I also use it over my work's noon hour, creating...   more