Category Archives: Friends

Buy ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom’ Early

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Cory Doctorow’s short stories and novels grab you very early on, and you just kinda don’t want to put them down until they’re finished. He gives you just enough of a glimpse of his worlds to sear images of them into your brain forever — leaving you ready and waiting for the next voyage to begin.
Here’s an excerpt if you want to check it out first before purchasing the novel at 30% off:
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
So what do you say? You can save 30%, you won’t be disappointed, and you can help Cory get a bigger contract for his next novel!

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For Sal0n By Ownz0red

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Salon has published a brand-spanking new novella by Cory Doctorow that gives a new meaning to the term “Human Computer Interface”:
0wnz0red.

The API was great, there were function calls for just about everything. He delved into the cognitive stuff right off, since it was the area that was rawest, that Liam had devoted the least effort to. At-will serotonin production. Mnemonic perfection. Endorphin production, adrenalin. Zen master on a disk. Who needs meditation and biofeedback when you can do it all in code?
Out of habit, he was documenting as he went along, writing proper tutorials for the API, putting together a table of the different kinds of interaction he got with different mods. Good, clear docs, ready for printing, able to be slotted in as online help in the developer toolkit. Inspired by Joey, he began work on a routine that would replace all the maintenance chores that the platform did in sleep-mode, along with a subroutine that suppressed melatonin and all the other circadian chemicals that induced sleep.

Preserving Those Special Moments

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Like this one:
lukempiggy.jpg
is what the Internet is all about.
A friend of mine was recently hassled off of EBay for selling his Star Wars Holiday Special VCDs and video tapes. I think I’ll buy a bunch for this year’s no-brainer holiday gift. (You know — those last-minute gifts that anyone will love for the people you always forget.)
The Luke Skywalker/Miss Piggy photo above is actually from a Star Wars Muppet Special that comes free with all PayPal orders for the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Rockin’ Chair Planet

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So I know what you’re thinking: “Well Lisa, are you going to spend all of your blogging time on shameless self promotion, complaining about the Shrub and whining about the rapid demise of our constitutional freedoms?” (Blah, blah, blah blah-blah blah.)

Well I suppose I could lighten up long enough to watch a nice Shockwave Animation from my friend John Gentry that really helps put it all into perspective:
Rockin’ Chair Planet.

Writers With Drinks Rocks

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I met a bunch of cool comics, poets and writers last weekend at Charles Ander’s Writers With Drinks spoken word variety show at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord.

Heather Gold gave an awesome and spontaneous stand-up performance with lots of uncomfortable political material I don’t even feel comfortable repeating in print 🙂

Analee Newitz had some insightful thoughts on the rather fundamental differences between stem cell cloning and human cloning.

I also bought books by performers Daphne Gottlieb (Why Things Burn) and Lynn Breedlove (Godspeed).

More on them later…

Anyway, if you’re in San Francisco, my advice to you is to check out the next Writers With Drinks on July 13th at the Cafe Du Nord…