Sad news on the Locus web site:

Locus publisher, editor, and co-founder Charles N. Brown, 72, died peacefully in his sleep July 12, 2009 on his way home from Readercon.

Charles Nikki Brown was born June 24, 1937 in Brooklyn NY, where he grew up. He attended the City College of New York, taking time off from 1956-59 to serve in the US Navy, and finished his degree (BS in physics and engineering) at night on the GI Bill while working as a junior engineer in the '60s. He married twice, to Marsha Elkin (1962-69), who helped him start Locus, and to Dena Benatan (1970-77), who co-edited Locus for many years while he worked full time. He moved to San Francisco in 1972, working as a nuclear engineer until becoming a full-time SF editor in 1975. The Locus offices have been in Brown's home in the Oakland hills since 1973.

[...]

As per his wishes, Locus will continue to publish, with executive editor Liza Groen Trombi taking over as editor-in-chief with the August 2009 issue.

Read more.

News originally found via matociquala on Twitter.

Current Location: Putney, London
Current Mood: pensive

All my posts are made in Dreamwidth and automatically crossposted to LJ. The last one appeared with this -

This entry was originally posted at http://desperance.dreamwidth.org/433096.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

- at the foot. Which I most certainly did not ask for, and do not want. People are very welcome to comment either here or there.

Does anybody happen to know why it should suddenly have done that, who's been fiddling with my settings and how I can unfiddle it if necessary?

ETA: Yup, much as expected, this entry did the same thing, so it does seem to have become the default. Do Not Want... (And am damn sure I didn't do anything to make it so...)

ETA2: Damn thing did it again when I ETA'd. But am vaguely hopeful that I may have found the solution, poking about in the account settings (but am still cross, as if I'm right then they have changed the default without consulting me, grrr snarl...)

How many times, O lord, must I cut my finger on the lid of a gushy-fudz tin?

I try to be good; I wash them, and then I recycle them. But I have already lost count of the times I have been fishing around in the washing-up water and gone ouchie, and seen the water turn shark-attractor pink, and drawn my hand out with a finger leaking.

This morning was a bad one, long and deep. I left quite a lot of blood on the kitchen lino, before I dashed upstairs for a plaster. When I came down again, there was - ahem! - no blood. I am a little anxious about this, for fear they might get a taste for me...

No news is really good news at the moment, it's all about pain and stress and angst and poverty; but I have leftover potatoes and carrots and turnips, which I thought I'd hashy-mash tonight and fry up with a couple of eggs and whatever else I came home with from the market. Only then I forgot when I was in the market, and only remembered halfway through town; and rather than go back I decided to nip into Costly Supermarket and see if they had something nice, a fillet of smoked haddock, say. It'd be expensive, but hey, once in a while nice food is just nice...

So in I went, and inspected the fishes, and blanched at the prices as you do; but then there was the butcher's counter, so I just glanced at that, and...

Well. Sometimes you land lucky. Pigs' cheeks! I've never seen pigs' cheeks, except on a restaurant menu. So I said, I'll have a couple of those, thanks...

Hee. 46p the pair.

And now my house smells utterly lovely, as they braise very slowly in onion and herbs and a splash or two of wine; and I think I'll go back tomorrow and get more if they have any, and try a confit. Whoo, yeah...

Yay! Thunderboomies!

Another milestone has been reached - the dog's first food theft. And unfortunately, as well as half a flapjack, he stole about 80g of a bar of plain chocolate - and chocolate is poisonous to dogs.

It's partly my fault for leaving it out while I nipped out to the post office, but he's not pinched anything much before, and certainly not from a worktop a metre off the ground.

The vet said while the dose of theobromine (I estimate maybe 500mg or 600mg) would kill a small dog, Freki ought to be big enough to stand it, but that we need to watch for symptoms. A bit of reading around suggests a toxic level of 100-150mg/kg, and he's 20kg so I suppose he's had 30mg/kg or thereabouts.

According to the Web, "early symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, excessive thirst, increased urination and restlessness." I'd say "Check" to the latter three, except he's so restless naturally I'm not sure how I'd tell.

"As time goes on, and your dog absorbs more theobromine into his system, symptoms such as lack of co-ordination, muscle twitching, hyperactivity, increased heart rate and raised blood pressure will be evident. These can lead on to seizures, coma, heart arrhythmia, hyperthermia, and ultimately death."

Lovely. Oh, and the "half-life" of the toxin in dogs is 17.5 hours, so it'll be tomorrow morning before he's over it.

Current Mood: worried

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags: oops
Current Music: Arvo Part - Symphony #4 'Los Angeles'

Akiyuki Shinbo and Kamiya Hiroshi have been busy men. Shinbo directs and Hiroshi stars in two series which have just started.


( Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei )

( Bakemonogatari )

Tags: anime, bakemonogatari, zan sayonara zetsubou sensei

In deepest Purbeck -- which means virtually anywhere on the coast -- there is no mobile phone signal. So I was a bit suprised, last Friday, after we'd stopped for our lunchtime sandwiches on the cliffs at St Aldhelm's Head -- ducking into the ruins of a wartime radar establishment to get out of the wind -- to hear my phone beep to tell me that I had a new message. "Welcome to France" was the subject, from FR BOUYGTEL, telling me that it would cost me 43p per minute to make calls and 19p per minute to receive them. It was mildly amusing to learn that my phone (a Nokia model that's so antique it doesn't have a camera or a colour screen) considered that we were closer to Cherbourg than the Purbeck Hills.

The following this morning -

2 ladies noisily discussed 2 fly-posters in our doorway advertising the MONTHLY Psychic Fairs here in town. One for July, and one for August, being as they are a MONTHLY event.....

(you can see where this is heading can't you?)......

That's the same event then is it?

No madame - they are a month apart. They hold them monthly.

So when do they start, then?

It is MONTHLY madame, so there is one each month.

No, but when do they START?



Sigh.

Only 3 months before they lock them all back up for the winter.....

The latest series in Fuji TV's Noitamina slot (I've never seen a Noitamina show I didn't like) is Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, which as the name might suggest is set in Tokyo after an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 on the richter scale has occurred.

We start off with the calm before the storm, with Mirai, a teenage girl at the start of the summer holiday. She spends all her time texting her friends, gets annoyed at being treated like a kid, looking after her little brother, is distant from her parents, doesn't know what she wants in life, hates everything and doesn't know why. So, a teenager then.
Then there are her parents, both of whom work, and their relationship can be summed up in the scene where the father gets home, has a shower and gets a beer, then when the mother comes home from work the first thing he says to her is "What's for dinner?"
Mirai's asked to take her little brother to a big robot exhibition, and it's then, while she's waiting outside for her brother who's gone to the toilet, that the earthquake hits.

Where this series is going to be interesting is what happens next. At one level, they could be reunited with their parents, come together and realise how much they all need each other, and start new lives as a big happy family.
Or on the other extreme, it's quite possible they could go for the Grave of the Fireflies ending. Which in some way would be more interesting.
What I do know is that I'll be watching the rest of this. After all, I've never seen a Noitamina show I didn't like.

Tags: anime, tokyo magnitude 8.0