Rending the Veil, Samhain Issue is up

I’m happy to note the bumper Halloween issue of the ever-pleasing Rending The Veil is up. As well as a repost of the last Guttershaman piece, I’ve got a book review in there – a rather scathing one.

Enjoy…

…resumed

After that lengthy bout of Pig Lung, I’m back to writing stuff that’s longer then 140 characters. Feels good.

A few things to catch up on…

One of my perennial points of incomprehension is why people with ‘deeply-held’ religious beliefs find it so very difficult to step away from them, to consider that other possibilities are worth considering. A recent study may explain this – evidence is appearing that the brain processes fact and belief in the same place. Of course there are other studies which seems to show the complete opposite…

Perhaps the most fun I had while in downtime (that didn’t involve watching all of Lost – which I thoroughly enjoyed) was Twittering my little heart out on the inaugural International Blasphemy Day. Those who’ve been reading me for a while know that I consider taking the piss out of belief not only to be funny but also a necessary tool, even a human right. I think I managed to take the piss out of every major creed and belief system in there at one point or another… my favourite post being:

My god fucked your god. Your god loved it, the little slut.

Amusingly, the only direct responses I got complaining about my doubting their deeply-held beliefs came from atheists…

Also, downtime allowed me to get to grips with what was perhaps an inevitable tech upgrade… an iPhone. This solved 99% of my portable comms needs for the foreseeable future – excellent Twitter and RSS apps especially. Now if they’d come up with GPG encryption for mail, I’d be sorted.

Next up – a Guttershaman piece for the Halloween season, various rants and raves…  and maybe, just maybe, a little fun.

Normal services…

Two brief points:

There won’t be much new coming up here until I have recovered from an inconvenient bout of Swine Flu.

But, as I continue to Twitter feverishly, it is good timing that the News Felch aggregation of my daily Twitter output has been restored. See link on sidebar for this.

Catch you on the flipside.

Playing catchup

Been a while since I actually posted anything original or updated on what I’m up to. Life getting in the way of blogging…

The latest Guttershaman has – finally! – reached the ’sit down and write me’ stage, after much research. (Writing about the mysteries of the occult – pretty much second nature to me. Writing about money… now that’s weird!) So that’s next.

Geek news: after some fiddling (and deciding that a decent Evernote client was non-negotiable) I installed Mac OS X onto my Dell netbook – a process that, despite much fiddling and swearing, was ultimately successful and very satisfying. Seriously considering a iPhone.

Looks like the Loudtweet system has died, sadly… so News Felch is suspended for now. Twittering still occurs.

Right – Pink Floyd cued up, mug of Lapsang Souchon on the brew… time to get on with Guttershamaning.

Too good not to post… Glass on Unicycles

via Bruce Sterling, who so often gets the good stuff, this splendid piece of street theatre/music.

A segment from the amazing street performance “Glissendo” at a French art festival: “Lightning” by Philip Glass. Concept and technical design by Ulik (the mechanical clown).

Unicycles, or Segways (or Daleks) under the robes? Doesn’t matter. This made me chortle like a happy baby.

Latest Rending the Veil is up

…and has the most recent Guttershaman reprinted there.

Small hiatus in new stuff for the moment, but there will be more soon.

Better and worse

OK…
After a brief tussle, now got the Dell running the latest Ubuntu version (9.04 ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ – sadly the next version is not called Kinky Koala… but Karmic Koala isn’t bad either) and the Netbook Remix interface. Since Dell’s tech support for their Ubuntu is charitably describable as ‘limited’ there was nothing to lose, except possibly some SAN points. Found a blog app that doesn’t suck (KBlogger) and pretty much got this little guy ready to roll.
It has its limitations of course – the keypad tininess takes a little getting used to, and some of the keys are in non-standard positions – but since my typing is of the two-finger hunt-and-peck school, this actually doesn’t make too much difference.
I still scorn and despise the individual who decided where CAPSLOCK lives, however.
In other news, I appear to be coughing and sneezing on an professional basis. This is displeasing, but is at least non-pork related.
For the moment, I seem to be more active on Twitter than anything else – posting a few links on the remarkable political upheaval in Guatemala and the usual Forteana. Daily digest, as always, at News Felch.
Sent from Dell Mini 9, which still lacks a good nickname…

Upgrades, again

Another new piece of kit – finally fell prey to the netbook paradigm & got a Dell Mini 9, running their remix of Ubuntu 8.04. After some minor teething troubles – a keyboard glitch which of course took over an hour on hold to tech support, only to be fixed in 2 minutes – it’s pretty good.

It’s a tiny thing – half the size and a third the weight of my venerable iBook G4 – and thus perfect for general carry (without the considerable limitations of the Nokia N810 pocket unit).

There’s a few things lacking in the Ubuntu ‘ware department, top of the list being a WordPress blogging client! But for now blogging from the website seems tolerably fast and pretty much everything else works fine. (And if I feel adventurous, it’s the best netbook for a OS X install.)

So, once I get over the non-pork-related virus the whole clan is down with, I can take my act on the road!

Want a new free Bruce Sterling short story? ‘course you do!

Via Boing Boing, who said this:

In White Fungus, an “architecture fiction” published in the first issue of Beyond magazine, Bruce Sterlng marries the sardonic and the hopeful in a gripping, hilarious story about how every aspect of civic life from schools to tomato-farming will be reformed after ecotastrophe and econopocalypse destroy our present way of life.

Sample:

Logically, industrial farmers should move into places like White Fungus and industrially farm the lawns. Derelict buildings should be gutted and trans formed into hydroponic racks. White Fungus was, in fact, an old agricultural region: it was ancient farmland with tarmac on top of it. So: rip up the parking lots. Plant them. Naturally, no one in White Fungus wanted this logical solution. Farming was harsh, dull, boring, patient work, and no one was going to pay the locals to farm. So, by the standards of the past, our survival was impossible. The solution was making the defeat of our hunger look like fun. People gardened in five-minute intervals, by meshing webcams with handsets. A tomato vine ready to pick sent someone an SMS. Game-playing gardeners cashed in their points at local market stalls and restaurants. This scheme was an ‘architecture of participation’. Since the local restaurants were devoid of health and employee regulations, they were easy to start and maintain.Every thing was visible on the Net. We used ingenious rating systems.

Enjoy a small glimpse at a very possible near-future, but one where survival, and even creativity, thrive.

Rending the Veil – Beltane edition

The latest issue of the online magical ‘zine Rending the Veil goes live today. Many excellent features and a wide range of viewpoints, as ever. Contributions from Yours Truly include another Guttershaman reprint and my review of Pete Carroll’s Apophenion.