New Year's Eve Eve...

A busy day around these environs may preclude a blog post tomorrow, [I'm having a 'Lost Souls' New Year's party for those who haven't anything else on their dance card], so I thought I'd take a moment and post links to a few interesting items.


First -- for Spider Robinson and his wife Jeanne...a fundraising opportunity HERE. You can score an e-copy of Lawrence Santoro's LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION, and help defray some of the costs the Robinson's are facing as Jeanne battles cancer. I read about this on Matthew Sanborn Smith's One Thousand blog, and by posting here, I'm participating in the blog rally for the Robinsons. You can do it, too!


Second -- since my link to the graphic of 20 Things That Happen in One Minute has proved so popular, here's another that caught my fancy today. From my beloved boingboing, of course, here is a graph that compares the cost of printer ink to the costs of other precious liquids [including blood, vodka, crude oil and more...]. Let's just say that there is a reason some people call printer ink 'black gold'.

And finally, one of the writers at whose [metaphorical and thus far electronic] knees I have long worshipped -- the amazing Jo Bourne -- muses about The Odds of Getting Published...and what a person can do to improve 'em.

So there you have it -- a whole lotta link love to end 2009. And now...let's watch for that Blue Moon tomorrow night, shall we?

~kc

Catching Up -- Link-fest

Tried to post last night but the gremlins of the ether failed me. I have a big post due up at the SiWC blog site, so you may want to check over there to see if you are, indeed, a winner of ecstatic proportion. Or not.

Starting to work on sorting out the travel for SiWC 2009 presenters, and dealing with the minutiae that crops up when dealing with same. It's an exciting, nerve-wracking time as a conference comes together, and I am trying to enjoy this one as much as possible, as it will be my last [for the forseeable future, anyway] as conference coordinator.

Horrendous experience today (as you may have noticed if you follow me on twitter -- @kcdyer) with the only remaining MS software on my Mac. It's enough to drive a writer to take pictures of self, when she is trying to document the greenery of a lush summer day. This shot was taken as I contemplated tossing the whole machine off the cliff. Luckily, calm returned again after a few bites of blue raspberry fruit crisp. Hard to hate anything when you have fruit crisp at hand...
(Crisp? Crumble? Cobbler? What do YOU call it?)

I will hie over to the other site now to announce contest results, and in the meantime, here are a few links, the posting of which will enable me to close a few tabs around this joint.

• HERE is where you can find The Times' view of the net's 10 top book websites.
• A Most Awesome though-love letter from a librarian to publishers of kids books everywhere is HERE. (Printed on the School Library Journal site in the US, it speaks to a few universal truths applicable in Canada, too.)
• One of my favourite on-line gathering places for nerdy women is The Park Bench, and in this post, they hilariously recount the necessities that should be on every nerd's apocalypse survival-kit list. How could life be worth living without a DVD of Sean of the Dead?
• And to finish your day on a peaceful note, (in the key of bflat, to be exact) I give you this remarkable site -- I found it impossible not to play endlessly with the combinations of sounds. Simple and lovely.

Here's to the soft, sweet sounds of a summer night....

~kc