Keycon 2010 is over.  Three days of interesting fandom, meeting old friends, making new ones, and being Patient ’0′.

Canvention (the Prix Aurora Awards) was part of Keycon this year, which usually means a fabulous writers track.  Things went a little wrong, and many of the visiting writers ended up with no panels.  I can’t complain though, because I wouldn’t be able to do the programming, so kudos to all those that try — they are better than I.

Robert J. Sawyer won the Best Novel Aurora for Wake, beating out the 4 other nominees.  I’d read 3 of the 5 nominees this year, so I felt good with voting this year.  Sorry Rob, if you read this, I voted for Hayden Trenholm.  At the rate Hayden is going, I’m sure his third (and final?) book in the series (Stealing Home) will be nominated next year.

The awards banquet was well done.  Thankfully they ran out of desert before they got to Sherry, Adria, (and here) and I.  We all had a fruit plate instead, and were the envy of all.

Sheila Gilbert , editor at DAW was there.  A pitch session was scheduled, which was great.  It wasn’t incredibly well done, those of us waiting to do pitches could hear the people making pitches.  Not great.  We tried to keep our conversations a bit loud, to create a bit of privacy for those pitching.  My pitch went okay.  Sheila asked for the full, but I have a feeling she asked for a full from anyone that pitched something that was completed.

Conventions usually drain me, and I end up sick for couple of days after the con.  This time, I went in with a sinus cold.  I was patient ’0′.  If you got sick at Keycon, it’s my fault.

Along with the regular panels, I managed breakfast with Hayden and his lovely wife Liz, a ‘before banquet’ drink with Rob Sawyer, Virginia O’Dine of Bundoran Press, Edward Willet, Hayden Trenholm and Liz, Sherry, Adria, a couple more I can’t recall right now.

Overall, a great weekend.  I had fun.

From the blog of Charlie Stross comes this little gem:

This happens every year: Beloit College issues this heads-up to their staff, to try and remind them of the mind set of the incoming college year. Here’s what the fresh graduates of 2013 know about the world …

image: http://media.photobucket.com/image/old%20man%20face/DESERTSUN2008/FACES/israel-125year-old-man-laughing.jpg

Misc

- This is an old story now, but it still makes me laugh.  Hypocrisy tends to do that.

- Well, it had to happen.  A solar powered motorcycle.

- I happened to stumble upon an absolutely beautiful picture to the Space Shuttle ‘Enterprise’.

Writing

- It goes almost without saying that the earliest forms of storytelling involved a storyteller. Without the devices of a stage, props, actors, or effects, all you’re left with is a storyteller to explain things in words, either orally or in a written record. Homer’s Iliad is an oral epic that describes the Trojan War, not as a history or a collection of facts from reliable sources, but from the point of view of an omniscient narrator who’s able to tell us about the thoughts and motivations of the characters, and the dealings of the gods.  Narrative in games.

- Keycon, Winnipeg’s fan driven Science Fiction and Fantasy convention was held during the May long weekend.  The convention doesn’t usually have what I would call a ‘strong writers track’, but they’re getting better every year.  One attendee this year, and a past guest I believe, was Robert J. Sawyer.  He sat on some panels, did a reading from his latest book Wake, and basically just mingled with the Con people.  I’ve had an opportunity to meet him 3 or 4 times now, and he has proven to be an extremely approachable and friendly guy.  Thanks for coming to Winnipeg Rob.

- A police officer that writes talks about the hows and whys of a police officers body language.  Good stuff.

- I was led to a web site the other that has detailed documentation on Psychology, all aimed at writers.

Posts have slowed down a little, but I have a Weekly Links ready to go.

Before I get there though, my friend Heston just sent me this little link:

Fall in love again with the no-holds-barred, edge-of-your-seat science fiction, featuring inexhaustible flow of ideas, rich language, and skillfully-plotted adventure. Even though the following two novels were published back in the 1980s, there are highly recommended for those who can not stand run-of-the-mill bland SF fare and wants to feel excitement about reading SF again.

Go see Two of the most entertaining SF novels of the 1980′s, posted at www.scifi.darkroastedblend.com.

Writing

- Hal Duncan gets into the Prologue vs No Prologue fray.

- Charlie Stross blogged on tor.com: One of the questions that every SF author gets asked sooner or later is “where do you get your ideas?” For better or worse, I seem to get a double dose of it; ideas are my particular speciality, or so it said in the last fortune cookie I opened. So I thought I’d give the game away by explaining just where they come from.

- I had a chance to talk to Eric Flint at the Canvention Aurora awards in 2008.  He’s undergoing bypass surgery, and I wish him the best of luck.

Miscellaneous

- There’s a photograph of a rock on Mars that some people are saying is an alien skull.  I guess people will believe what they want.

- Apparently, tennis really is a sport for sissies

I’m a bit late on these today.  I’m in one of those periods when I have so much to do, I don’t know what to do first, and invariably, something isn’t done at all.

Writing

- Marie Brennan talks about how she writes female characters.

- John Scalzi was a on a panel recently, discussing how to maintain an online presence.

- For all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the publishing industry—from the poor economy to the painful layoffs and restructurings in the wake of the digital transformation—to understand what’s really hurting us, all you have to do is visit your neighborhood bookstore.

- Author Nancy Kress talks about the whole ‘SF is dead‘ thing.

- Pete Tzinksi guest blogged over at The Commune about Deadlines for Writers, and Language.

Misc

- Probably nothing inspires quite like the view from the top a cliff because the often long and steep hike is forgotten as soon as we glimpse the world from atop where we rest, birdlike, drinking in the scenery and ready to spread our wings. Join us on a tour of some of the most incredible cliffs around the world.

Edit: Never, ever post when you’re so sick you can’t even think straight.  Even I can’t make sense of the gibberish below.  I’ll leave it as is as a stark reminder of how close true madness lies.

What a life.  Last week, I didn’t make a weekly links post since worked 24 hours out of the 48.  This weekend, I decided to visit my brother in Calgary.  I took a day off of work, leaving on Thursday and I’ll be back back home on Sunday.  Thursday was okay, but by the time Friday rolled around, I was as sick as a dog.  Here it is, Sunday, and I’ve spent most of the day in bed.  I’m not even going to describe these links today… I’ll get back to them when I feel better.

http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/2009/03/welcome-guest-blogger-jack-kilborn.html

ttp://blog.oup.com/2009/03/science-fiction/#more-3858

http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubuntu-runs-ubuntu-inside-windows

If anyone’s missing last Sundays ‘Weekly Links’, sorry.  The company I work for changed buildings, which means we had two days to move the IT department and get it up and running by Monday.  There was two of us, and we worked 24 hours of the 48 in the weekend.

Now I’m waiting for my body to get back to normal.

The good news is that all the employees moved their computers today, plugged in, and were running with no issues.  A good weekend.

Another slow week for links.  Either the world is getting more boring, or I’m getting less interested!

Misc

- the 10 coolest ‘multi functional furniture‘ designs.

Science

- Usually, we think of spacetime as being four-dimensional, with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. However, this Euclidean perspective is just one of many possible multi-dimensional varieties of spacetime. For instance, string theory predicts the existence of extra dimensions – six, seven, even 20 or more. As physicists often explain, it’s impossible to visualize these extra dimensions; they exist primarily to satisfy mathematical equations.

The Prisoner

- Nestled away on the coastline of Wales is Portmeirion, the town where they shot The Prisoner in the 1960s. It looks much the same as it did back then with its quaint architecture and beautiful scenery. And for the umpteenth time, Portmeirion plays host to PortmeiriCon this weekend — a convention devoted to the classic series. Hosted by The Prisoner Appreciation Society, also known as the website Six of One, the event offers both indoor and outdoor activities

I’ve a whole grab-bag if stuff for you today.  Enjoy.

Misc

- Kurt Vonnegut Motivational Posters

Science

- Fermilab has made some amazing discoveries lately.  This is just one of them.

Humour

- The Onion just seems to be getting better and better.  This one is great.

Writing

- Guy Gavriel Kay talks about the exposure writers get when they Blog, and the effect it can have.

Programming

- This ones old, 2001 I think.  It’s a rebuttal against the ‘Learn xxx in 21 days’ books.

Misc

- I saw this picture and just bust a gut laughing.  Maybe I was in a weird mood.

- There was a huge racket this week about people finding the Lost City of Atlantis using Google Earth.  Google denied the fact, and even came up with an alternate explanantion.

- And the United States people wonder why they are in financial trouble.

- And now for a YouTube video link.  This is a parody on ‘No matter how much things change, they always stay the same.’

- I sent this link on a business card to a Designer friend of mine, Robert L. Peters from Circle [edit: at the time of this post, both sites seem to be down for some reason].  I thought this was a cool idea, and Rob pointed out that the environmental impact of the business card was quite high.  What do you think?

-  I found this video of a pretty cool climb, but I had some issues with it.  First is the camera motion.  Sure, technically I’d say they did pretty well: smooth motion, clean arc.  But it didn’t take me long to get nauseous.  The next thing I had a problem was the climber went off route on a red point.  She went so off route on the second clip in the video that she had to clip below her feet.  I’d really like to know what the person who set the bolts thought the route should have been.

Natalija Gros from Jure Breceljnik on Vimeo.

Writing

- I wasn’t quite sure where to put this, but since I didn’t have any links for writing this week, I figured this was a good spot as any for the Grammer Nazis.

I’m still playing with the formatting of the weekly links.  I’d like to have each link paragraph as a point, but it looks like my CSS layout doesn’t like that.

Movies

- DanMeth.com blogged about movie trilogies, and placed each movie on a meter.  I think I agree with most of his ratings.

Writing

- Many people are aware that Harry Potter, The Anarchist Cookbook and Stephen King books have been banned from schools around the country, but as many civilizations have figured out, censorship is a slippery slope. It is pretty strange to consider Shakespeare has not only been banned from public schools over sexual themes, but that censored editions have been out since the 1700s.

Misc

- After reading Darwin’s work on emotions, the Dalai Lama told Ekman he “would consider himself a Darwinian.“

- Sticking with the Buddhist theme, a temple has been built by monks in northeast Thailand who used over a million recycled beer bottles to make the walls and roofs.

Computers

- DevTopic.com has collected 101 computer programming quotes.  My favourite is 90:

“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”
(Martin Golding)

Science

- Quantum experiments with human eyes as detectors appear possible, based on a realistic model of the eye as a photon detector

- Apparently, there is liquid water on Mars.  Images from the robotic craft show what appear to be liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander’s leg over the course of a Martian month.

Another short one this week.  I guess sometimes you find lots of stuff that’s interesting, and sometimes you don’t.

Writing

SciFi watch has a blog entry on the nine Science Fiction Writers blogs you should watch.

Misc

Not many of us actually get to see what is at the end of the rainbow, so this guy took a picture for us.

This weeks links list is a bit small, but very, very good.

Writing

Brandon Sanderson is releasing his newest book under a Creative Commons License.  You can find it here.  He’s also placing all versions of the book on his website.  You’ll get see how the book changed from the first draft to the final version.

Speaking of free books online, this site has pointers to lots of Fantasy and Science books.

Each year hundreds of words are dropped from the English language. Old words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives but now lie abandoned and forgotten.

To go with the rest of the links this week, we have Jeffrey Carver asking if free downloads sells books, which is what it’s all about.

Writing

OK, if a writer is literate enough to write and publish a book, couldn’t he or she manage some basic research into natural history and astronomy? There is enough ignorance in the world without broadcasting more through sheer laziness. A passage in a fantasy novel I read recently described the crescent moon setting at sunrise. Now, class, why is this impossible?

Some of SF Signal’s readers are aspiring writers, so we thought we take this week to ask some published writers in the genre to dispense with some useful writerly advice. Here’s what we asked them:

Neil  Gaiman did a video for Coraline.  It’s filmed in his house, and it’s pretty cool.

Computers

I remember when I first booted up Ubuntu on my computer three years ago that I wasn’t very impressed with the dull black usplash screen. It gave me a feeling that I was back to the Windows 95 era.