The Dress, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction short story competition. Really good, I'd read it if I were you. Go on. There's nothing anywhere near as good here, and probably never will be. [via bookslut].
Tor are currently giving away free ebooks as part of a promotion for their new website. Just sign up for their newsletter and once a week they'll email you a link to download it in html, pdf, or mobi format. They're on their third book at the moment: " The Outstretched Shadow " by Mercedes Lackey and Someone Else Whose Name Isn't As Distinctive. The previous two were " Old Man's War " by that nice Mr. Scalzi, and " Spin " by Robert Wilson. I have a decent-sized screen on my PDA-phone-thing, and reading "Spin" was quite comfortable. There were advantages over the paper version (reading in the dark; not as heavy; easier to read one-handed while swaying on the commuter meat wagon; I always have my phone with me so I've always got a book too), and disadvantages (could not read at the beach; or anywhere in bright light; not as high contrast as print on paper which did give me a slight headache after an hour or so; my book now depe...
Previously on "Gareth's Geek Hour": our hero had battled with the NetInfo Manager in Mac OS 10.3 and succeeded in getting his ibook to automount a smb share on a networked storage device. Music streamed off the little box over the network, and there was much rejoicing. Disaster struck when subversion refused to work over a samba share. Our intrepid idiot hero decided an upgrade to Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) was in order, believing it to have the solution to all life's problems... Leopard is pretty, has some great new features, and seems a little snappier than Panther on my aging ibook. One problem: it has kicked my little automounted samba shares right in their wrinkled little happy sacks. They just don't work. They seemed to have been migrated from the NetInfo database into the local directory (/var/db/dslocal), because it would still try to automount them. Except it would lock up completely and need to be turned off with the power button whenever I connected to them....
This graphic novel by Nick Abadzis is a semi-fictional account of the early days of the Soviet space programme. It covers the launch of Sputnik and the rushed launch of the first animal in orbit: Laika. It's a lovely story, sad and touching. If I wasn't a big, tough guy I might have had a tear in my eye at certain points. But I'm not soft, so I didn't. Ok? Anybody that tells you any different is a liar.
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