SSS Stories is in print!

Last week I gave a list of all the stories that were going to be a part of the new StarShipSofa Stories: Volume 1 and Wednesday it was released upon the world! This is an accumulation of authors and stories you will not want to miss if you like to read SF. You don’t have to buy the book (although every time you purchase one $5 goes straight to SSS to keep her flying through space) there’s a free ebook you can download, or you can read it for free at issuu.com (which has a very cool flip-page interface). The book itself is very retro with old ads, illustrations that look like they were drawn yesteryear, and stories that will tickle your sci-fi longings.

Cory Doctorow did a great write-up at BoingBoing. He is a contributor to the sofa.

StarShipSofa Stories

I received an email a few days ago from one of my favorite podcast DJs, Tony Smith, exhorting me to share this info on the blog. The StarShipSofa is a wonderful, weekly podcast full to the brim with SciFi fact articles, movie reviews, comic reviews, poetry, short stories, fiction from famous authors, and much more. I’ve been listening since about the 20th show or so and I’ve enjoyed each so much, I’m glad to see that the podcast is reaching its 100th episode.

The wonderful StarShipSofa podcast will soon celebrate their 100th show on the 16th of September. To celebrate, they are releasing a Print-on-Demand anthology called StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1. There will also be a free PDF of the book available to download and a new website. All monies made from the books and donations from the PDF will go into keeping StarShipSofa in the skies.
Here’s the table of contents:

StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1
“Into The Blank Where Life Is Hurled” by Ken Scholes
“London Bone” by Michael Moorcock
“The Second Coming Of Jasmine Fitzgerald” by Peter Watts
“Lest Young and The Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues” by Gord Sellar
“Vampire Kiss” by Gene Wolfe
“Vinegar Peace (or The Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage)” by Michael Bishop
“Godzilla’s 12 Step Program” by Joe R Lansdale
“Jesus Christ, Reanimator” by Ken MacLeod
“The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter” by Alastair Reynolds
“Mars: A Travelers Guide” by Ruth Nestvold
“The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford
“The Ant King: A California Fairytale” by Benjamin Rosebaum
“In The Olden Days” by Spider Robinson
“Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear

Labor-less Day!

Happy Labor Day to all! I’ve got the day off, I hope you all do too. Of course, I did work this weekend but it was pretty slow, as far as weekends go.

I’ve been thinking of starting up the XCAPER blog again, but re-inventing it and trying some new things. I would start over, of course, and everything there would be archived on another site somewhere, but I think I could make it better with a little elbow grease. If you haven’t read the XCAPER blog yet, you can check it out over at xcaper.wordpress.com. Let me know what you think.

I’ve found a few “bugs” with Snow Leopard since I’ve been using it, mainly just some slow downs and things not working as they should. Every once in a while my wireless disconnects, I still have a great signal but everything disconnects from the internet and I have to turn Airport off and back on for it to come back up. I’ve tried a few suggestions that I’ve seen around the web but nothing has helped for long. Also Safari seems to beachball a lot more with 10.6, It happens every time I open a new tab (usually the new tab window is all screwy too) and video will pause if I try to open a new tab or open another app (resulting in the sound continuing but the video staying paused), I’ve see this in flash video and a video in VLC. Hopefully the 10.6.1 update that the devs are testing will address all of these issues.

Skirting around the firewall

Currently I am sitting in the Hall where my 4PM class will take place and until now I have not been able to log onto GTalk accounts on Adium. Yahoo!IM would work as would AIM but GTalk, for some reason, just would never connect. I figured it was something to do with a port that was being blocked and since I was just sitting here I thought I would finally look into it. First, I tried changing it to 5225 (originally it was port 5222) but that did nothing, so a little more digging via Google and I found it! I changed the port to 80 and it worked! Now, I don’t know how secure that is or if I can receive files or anything but I’m only going to be here for an hour so there’s not much that I can do to get myself in trouble. GTalk in GMail goes over 80 and I was using that.

I’m glad for the long weekend ahead, although I will be working Saturday and Sunday, I’ll still get Monday and Tuesday off, really looking forward to that. But I think my weekend will be filled with what I plan on wearing to the Avitable Halloween party. The theme is “INVASION” and I’m excited at the prospect of going as an alien, I’m just not sure what to go as. I thought about trying to find an “Instant Martian” costume but I don’t know where I would be able to get one.

Snow Leopard *RAWR!*

After a weekend of rain and losing my internet connection due to a pulled cable I’m back in action and ready to roll! Okay, more of the first and less of the rolling, might get me sick at this point.

I went ahead with the Snow Leopard upgrade last night, after doing a full backup with the most awesome SuperDuper! If you ever need to do a backup just grab this little app (it’s free!) and be amazed at how easy it all is. The backup took almost 3 hours to complete and the upgrade took around 1hour and 5 minutes (add an extra 15 minutes for me to get mail and all my other apps up and running again) and I must say I do enjoy the snowy cat. The update to Expose is very nice and the ability to preview anything directly in Finder is a wlcome addition to the Quick View ability we already had. I only had about an hour to play with it before I needed to go to bed last night so after I use it some more I’ll come to my final conclusion on whether or not it was worth it to upgrade. I mean, come on, it’s only a $30 upgrade anyway.