So I did my back in. I managed to get a new TV corner unit on special offer, and had help getting it into the car, but had to get it out on my own. I was well impressed with my own display of Herculean strength, until I got up the following day with a stiff back – a…
Charles Stross, one of the UK’s most successful sci-fi writers, and a compulsive and prolific blogger, has written a series of posts about writing for a living, but there’s one post I think everyone should see, about the lifestyle of a writer. There are a lot of blunt truths here – though there are some key differences in the…
I would be wary of claiming that I could define what makes great art, or what qualities bestow the term ‘classic’ on something – particularly when that term can turn most kids off it quicker than pressing the power button. But for me, a great story is one that ticks all my various and demanding boxes and leaves me…
Web problems, Derren Brown, that volcano and Philip Pullman.
I’m borrowing the theme/title from Trinity Week for this piece, partly because of the great event I got to do with Philip Reeve and Conor Kostick last Tuesday, and partly ‘cos it fits nicely with the other stuff I want to talk about . . . An article I read recently on Publishers Weekly about new apps for the…
Trim Hot Air Balloon Festival and some military applications.
In ‘Small-Minded Giants’, I described a city built in the form of a machine that could generate electricity using the movement and activity of the people living within in it. Since then I learned about a train station in Tokyo where they had a very simple version of this idea built into the floor at the ticket barriers, the…
‘The Vile Desire to Scream’, my first free ebook novella.
So I finally got to see the Fun Lovin’ Criminals perform live. Though the fact that I saw them in Navan made it a bit surreal – especially during ‘The King of New York’, when Huey Morgan had the Naaaaavan crowwad chanting ‘Free John Gotti’ over and over again. Did they know Gotti was a gangster and a murderer…