Everyone starts out blogging because it’s fun and they have something they want to say to the world.  But after a bit, it’s easy to become obsessed with the wrong things like checking your Twitter following compulsively or watching your Google Analytics and wondering how you can get people to stick around for five seconds

I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a fan of the seamy side of life. Much of my fiction takes places in bars, brothels, dives and dens of thieves. Gangsters, hookers, pirates, killers and strippers populate the worlds of my imagination. So, in honor of the low brow I am giving you, my faithful readers,

Doctor Tipster is running a story about a Dutch researcher who created a super-flu virus, right out of a horror movie.  They followed up with an article debating not only whether the research should take place, but whether the research should be published.  The reasons not to publish are obvious.  Nobody wants Dr. No copying

IGN is running a story about piracy from the viewpoint of Gabe Newell, founder of Valve software, one of the best video game companies on the planet. He echoes a view I’ve long held about piracy: “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy,” Newell said. “Piracy is almost always a service problem and

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim may be the best game I’ve every played.  It’s not without flaws like texture popping and clipping issues (even on my dual Nvidia 570GTs with 3.2 GHZ quad core and 24 GB of DDR3 OCed RAM), or random floating corpses but God dammit it’s as much fun as banging a hot

Since my favorite cat got cancer not long ago, I’ve naturally found myself thinking about it more and more.  I’ve always followed modern medicine.  As we’ve moved into the information age, we seem to have gotten more sophisticated in how we approach the study of disease.  In the past, we’ve taken what system administrators and

I read a lot of books about writing.  Most of them are not very good.  I’ve already done one post on the writing books I’ve read that actually taught me something.  Today I add two more books to the pantheon: The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller and Seven Basic Plots: Why

If you don’t know about The Paris Review‘s series of interviews with the greatest writers who ever lived, you’re missing out.  I didn’t know about them until a few days ago, I’m ashamed to say.  A friend knew I liked William Gibson, author of my favorite sci-fi series of all time, the sprawl trilogy, so

I admit it, I used to buy bottled water.  I did it because I thought it tasted better, because it was more pure, because it was healthier for me, all the typical reasons people buy water.  But something began to dawn on me slowly.  I’m paying more for water per gallon than I am paying