Oh, you may have thought your clever pumpkin carving was all dabomb on your street, but can the trick or treaters play tetras on your jack-o-latern? Yeah. Didn't think so. Seriously, some people have just way too much time on their hands. (Grokked from Tor.com)
Think we made it passed Halloween without the dead rising? Think again. A tree overturned in Sandy's winds brings up a skeleton, and the flood waters raise caskets. As to the skeleton in the tree, "Headstones from the burial ground on the New Haven Green were moved to the Grove Street cemetery, but the bodies were never relocated." Yeah, it's the East Coast's version of Poltergeist, where the dead rise up during the torrential rains near the end of the movie. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
Miranda Suri on running out of excuses. I still have a full supply, thanks. (Yes, it's part of the little death I die everyday that I'm not writing fiction).
John Hartness on how to write good dialog. Reading (successful) plays is an excellent idea, and part of why ol' Billy Shake-a-spear is still selling so well. John has more contemporary examples. But I agree, the best way to learn something is to study the masters (for certain values of "master"). Read them, rekey their words, perform them as one-person plays on street corners, whatever you need to do to get the patter and rhythm.
Elizabeth Shack with her experience of some online writing courses. Hey, she liked them. Also, I really can't endorse the RWA enough for all they do to support new authors.
Kristan Hoffman with her three keys to storytelling; object, conflict, and ticking clock.
Jim Zub talks about writing comics. There's a lot in their for the writer of any fiction. (Grokked from Writing Excuses)
Old video games never die, they just get rewritten into new platforms. That's Descent being thrown into the Unreal Tournament engine. (Pointed to by John)
Predicting the Presidency and the rise of computers. That's an interesting NPR story about how the networks began to rely on computer models to predict the winners of elections. But, as they learned, garbage in, garbage out. You still have to know what data you should feed into the computer and how you should crunch the numbers.
And on the flip side of that story about computers helping us, Orange and Redding Connecticut are reporting 103% and 110% power outages from the United Illuminating Company. Hey guys, there's a difference between business hyperbole and actual statistics. Might want to see to that. (Grokked from Random Michelle K)
Think unmanned vehicles are just for flying drones and Google cars? How about unmanned small craft that can launch missiles to defend other surface ships from the threat of other small crafts? Yes, this is an actual threat (one that springs from both the USS Cole, the war-gaming of the Iraq invasion, and looking at how Iran might attack our ships in the Gulf if it comes to a military option. And it's a big threat. You really don't need a large craft to launch a missile.
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