Charlie Stross: February 2012 Archives

A month ago, while I was camping out in a hotel in Colorado Springs, a copy of USA TODAY slid under our hotel door in the night. A question — does anyone actually read that thing? I look at the front page and all I can see is "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." in turgid American journalese. The so-called "stories" on the front page are not news; they're perfectly shaped pieces of text that outwardly conform to the aesthetic of modern American journalism while actually containing nothing of any significance.

Let me anatomize:

Just upgrading the blogging software to address a security issue. Commenting may be difficult for a while. Nothing to see here, move along please: everything should be back to normal tomorrow.

Subject says it all. Actually, I had about three blog entries planned; a Gadget Patrol item on the subject of the Kindle Fire, a bookish chewing-over of David Graeber's Debt: the first five thousand years, and a random semiotic grenade ... but it turns out that the Kindle Fire is a paperback-sized tablet that does what it says on the tin (essentially more of the same), I haven't finished the Graeber book yet, and I am come home from Satellite III to find the page proofs to the next Laundry novel awaiting my urgent attention. And I am completely exhausted. Haven't had time to write any fiction for a month, either.

So I am about to duck out for a while and (a) sleep then (b) work. And in the meantime, I leave you with this question: what is money?

Apologies for the long silence: let's just say that the cumulative effect of jet lag isn't just down to the number of time zones you traverse, but how long it takes. I live near a regional airport, and what was originally going to be a 90 minute transfer at the long-haul hub before my final sector turned into an 8 hour wait. As a result I got home with 36 hours of sleep deprivation and a nasty little cough — only five time zones on this trip, but it feels like I just flew in from Australia.

I acquired three notable things in the USA: an Amazon Kindle Fire, a small remotely piloted camera drone, and a sense of total mystification at current Republican politics ...

Will be resumed eventually.

I'm flying home today, but won't arrive until Tuesday evening. Then, this weekend, I'm guest of honour at Satellite III in Glasgow. That gives me approximately 48 hours at home to get over the jet lag and run the washing machine until its bearings glow red-hot. Hopefully I'll have something to say in the meantime.

Idea ganked from elsewhere on the internet (yes, I am on a vacation from being on vacation, why do you ask?) ...

Political positions drift over time, quite dramatically, as the Overton window slides back and forth.

Brief reminder: I'm going to be doing a reading and signing this Saturday at 7pm at Pandemonium Books and Games in Cambridge (Mass, not UK) — that's at 4 Pleasant Street Cambridge, MA 02139.

I'm then planning on having at least one beer in the Cambridge Brewing Company on Kendall Square, from 9pm onwards — that's at 1 Kendall Sq, Building 100, Cambridge, MA 02139. This is, in my case, to celebrate having killed the monster handed in the copy edits on "The Rapture of the Nerds".

Books! Beer! What else is best in life, Conan?

Just chirping up to say: I'm now in Boston.

I'll be doing an event for the MIT SF Society this Friday; and next Saturday the 11th, I'll be doing a reading and signing at Pandemonium Books and Games in Cambridge; full details here.

I'm also going to announce a pub meet early next week (once I've settled on a venue and, this time, warned them to expect us).

We now return you to your regular scheduled tumbleweed while I wrestle with the copy-edited manuscript of "The Rapture of the Nerds" (which landed in my inbox — with Cory's updates — yesterday evening).