I don’t talk much about my job on here, since A) most people wouldn’t get it, and B) I don’t want to get fired. However, Forrester Research just released their big report on the sector I work in, “The Forrester Wave: User Account Provisioning, Q1 2006″, and it’s pretty snazzy for us. Here’s a snippet of the press release about… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Catching up with the House Of Illness
OK, here’s the short version: I stayed out the week in Boston, despite wishing I could have gone to North Bay. It was the Australians and Israelis (not to mention Californians, and a couple of ex-Southern Midwesterners) that had come to Boston to meet with me that decided things. Read more →
I guess I won’t oversleep…
I have just come back into the hotel, at 7AM, after spending around 45 minutes shivering in the early morning chill. I am told that this fire alarm was prompted by an actual fire in the hotel, but there are no signs of it in the wing I am in. A fire alarm is a very confusing thing as 6:15. Read more →
R.I.P. Gerry Winch
I spent a long time trying to think what story I would tell to celebrate Gerry Winch. After spending half my time growing up at his house I’ve got a lot of stories. I thought about telling the story of the time Gerry taught me to always read the labels on my food, by offering me a “pickle” from a… Read more →
What a shitty day…
So, I’m in Boston now. Well, Westborough technically. I knew I was going to have to be here Mon-Th this week, and I decided to drive down this time. My theory was that while I want to minimize time away from Sarah (which would suggest that I should fly) that I would instead elect to drive home on Friday, taking… Read more →
Carsten Knox: Informing The Nation
I have previously mentioned my freelance journalist pal Carsten Knox (who, in addition to being a journalist is also a charter member of the HGPA). Well, today Carsten spent some time on the CBC Radio program Freestyle educating the nation (or at least the CBC‘s national audience) about a couple of “indie” films that have just come to DVD. That’s… Read more →
The slow inexorable conquest…
I’ve doing a little playing around with the information available at The Surname Profiler Project. The project describes itself as: A recent research project based at University College London (UCL) has investigated the distribution of surnames in Great Britain, both current and historic, in order to understand patterns of regional economic development, population movement and cultural identity. This website allows… Read more →
SF Authors Say Smart Things: Stross on S.O.U.
I think I’m at the point now where my digust and hatred of Bush make it literally impossible for me to be objective and rational about anything. Fortunately, there are many sensible people in the world who can apparently sit on the rage and still produce cogent analyses. For example, Charlie Stross posts about the science stuff in the State… Read more →
She’s From Away
When we moved to Halifax we found out that we were “Upper Canadians”, or more generally “come from aways”. Apparently we will never shed this distinction and become Maritimers, but Sarah has a chance. We’re not the only people to have this kind of experience, of course, and now there’s even a weekly comic strip that’s nominally about it (although… Read more →
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Trailerspeak
OK, this is more than a little awesome: “Voice Over” is the latest project of artist Brian Joseph Davis, who also did the Ten Banned Albums, Burned, Then Played project. in Voice Over, Davis created a text based on lines from 500 different film trailers, then gave the cut-and-pasted text to professional voiceover artist Scott Taylor to read. Of course… Read more →
Snowed In
So, we had a little mini-blizzard last night, and now we’re quite snowed in. It was only around a foot of snow, but the 120 kph+ winds (according to Environment Canada–I’m not going out there) are keeping things whited out, and are apparently giving the plows some trouble. At least this time we are snowed in with both power and… Read more →
Another Award Post…
So, I see that the shortlist is out now for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award: Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go Ken MacLeod – Learning the World Alastair Reynolds – Pushing Ice Geoff Ryman – Air Charles Stross – Accelerando Liz Williams – Banner of Souls This one is almost as hard to call as the BSFA list.… Read more →
Counting Heads
Yesterday my copy of David Marusek’s Counting Heads arrived. I kind of took a flyer on this–I had heard a few good things around the net, but I didn’t have a positive recommendation from any of my usual sources. Today, I found the Rick Kleffel–who is definitely one of my trusted sources for recommendations–had a decent length review of the… Read more →
People Who Are Awesome: Tom Waits
I’ve mentioned Tom on here before, in praise, in amused wonder, and so on. Tom is top on my list of “people I’d love to just spend a night hanging out with”. Of course the first reason to love Tom is the music. If you know, I don’t need to say more. If you don’t, allow me to point you… Read more →
