So I’m watching the fake Late Late Show (forever fake, now that Craig has left) & suddenly Replacement Guest Host is doing make-your-own-comet with a Guest Astronomer.Ā I’m wondering if I could charge them with stealing my work, but, well Derrick Pitts probably doesn’t need to be getting ideas from the Invisible Blog of Doom.Ā On checking back to my own posting from late 2012, I find the following:
1) Mine has decent classroom-management tips and includes explanations of why each substance is being added in, and theirs does not.Ā Plus, they use Coca-Cola, which isn’t a such good idea for a school science demo. (Wayne Brady does demonstrate exactly what students will do with a can of soda.)
2) Mine is totally missing its visuals.Ā I took photos the last couple of times I did this demo.Ā Where are they? Aaaaagh!
Four days later, I’ve found the missing files, carefully stored on a clearly-labeled DVD backup disk in a plastic box in my office.Ā Under another box.Ā With a scattering of old DVD’s, mending, receipts, and old concert tickets on top of that. Plus dust.
And, ta-da! My comet project update is complete.Ā I’ve even learned how to embed a link to the Late Late Show’s YouTube channel on the appropriate blog post.Ā Time-travel to here and have your own cometary fun.Ā Remember to keep things safe but still keep the fun in science.
The Pixel Gravity crew are interested in astronomical phenomena outside the computer as well as creating simulations to run.Ā Check out some of our videos on YouTube:
For my New Year’s Day new learning, I worked out how to create a thread (properly) in Twitter, in order to post my very first awards eligibility thread.
I know, I know, none of these are going to win any awards, though one has already been nominated (by the editor of the anthology) for a majorly major award. Nominations count; just being nominated is a huge, huge thrill.
But not everyone likes to hang out on social media. Facebook is broken. Twitter has deep wells of toxicity, Instagram is all about being pretty (and owned by Facebook), and Tik-Tok is … out of my league.
So in this blog post, I’ll try to recreate the Twitter post. I have two 2021 stories that are Hugos-eligible (the science-fiction ones). What awards do you know about that you’re eligible to nominate for? You might be surprised!
Let’s jump ahead now, and make this Not About Me. It’s readers who nominate for Hugos, and readers don’t care if the author is famous, made a bucket of money, or only managed to sell one story. Sure, the list of finalists is short, but consider–what did you read last year? What moved you? If you’re a 2021 or 2022 WorldCon member, you can nominate the things you liked. You can nominate up to five things in EVERY category. They don’t have to be the movies, stories, novels, or magazines that your friends liked, that your social-media leaders went on and on about. You can voice your own preferences.
So, pitch made. GO forth, write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, nominate all your favorites for awards, and then enjoy all the new (and not-so-new) stories out there in 2022.
Here, then, is my Twitter thread. Do ya love or hate my cartoony profile pic? I’ll only put it in for the opening tweet; otherwise, it gets annoying in blog format.
The official awards-eligibility thread. In 2021, I had three short stories published:
1. a #scifi story about stolen land
2. a light #scifi #romance featuring a favorite 20th-century artist
3. an upbeat piece of literary fiction grown from #autism, #depression, and #optimism.
2/7 āHeartās Delight,ā anthologized in Fault Zone: Reverse, edited by @LaurelAnneHill and published by Sand Hill Review Press. An intelligent ecosystem repels those whose ancestors took the land unjustly, returning custody to its true caretakers. #SFF
3/7 For the record, I live on Tamien Nation Territory, bordering Popeloutchum (Amah Mutsun) land, connected to the territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. These people are all, right now, working to protect this land, e.g.: http://amahmutsun.org/history
4/7 āParrish Blue,ā published by Water Dragon Publishing (Dragon Gems short fiction). In an elite restaurant on a climate-ravaged Earth, under the glow of a recreated artwork, a young woman rediscovers a dream of life immersed in wonderāand finds one who shares that dream. #SFF
5/7 Iām dropping in an image of the piece of art these two fall in love under (Romance, by Maxfield Parrish). Just because.
(Note: on Twitter, alt-text includes artist attribution: this is a photograph of a public-domain artwork. The photograph came from Plum Leaves at Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eoskins/5841870848).
6/7 āReunion,ā anthologized in Fault Zone: Reverse, edited by @LaurelAnneHill and published by Sand Hill Review Press. Two young people, separated in childhood by separate traumatic events, renew a friendship forged through shared suffering.
7/7 If this story resonates for you, consider further research at https://autisticadvocacy.orgor connect with mental-health resources in your community. Also, remember to reconnect with friends in 2022.
It’s surprising hard to recreate a Twitter posting in a blog! Go follow me on Twitter, OK?
Sometimes, you need a compass. Sometimes, you need a more specialized instruction set.
This section of Cometary Tales follows the path of adventure, in search of the secrets and mysteries out there in the natural world.
I’ll begin by co-opting the blog page for an in-depth retelling of how I took two cameras down the Colorado River on an inflatable raft and managed not to drop either of them in the river.
Not to say my loyal retainers didn’t suffer. The TS-4 served its duty of riding lens-first into rapids, secure only in the assurance that between a wrist strap, a neck lanyard, and a sweet orange floaty it was not likely to end up in Lake Mead. The non-rugged ZS-7 struggled mightily with the ubiquitous sand, but soldiered on, recovering temporarily from a sand-jam to deliver a final sequence of aerial shots when the TS-4 exhausted its last milliamp-hour on the way out of the canyon.
