Hey Rex Fans, have you always wanted to read Rex Havoc adventures
conveniently collected for you in book form? Are you TIRED of visiting
The Geekorium for your Space Flight 704 needs? Do you think,‘I wish
there was a version I could read on my Kindle every day’?
No?
Just me then?
Well despite your interest or lack thereof, Rex Havoc is now an eBook!
For the next 90 days, Space Flight 704: Time
Diversion is available on Amazon for one
dollar! If you own a Kindle, you could be reading it right now -
isn’t that exciting?
Space Flight 704: Time Diversion collects
the stories in the recent Time
Diversion arc, before Rex
became an enigma, when Jones was still an ally, and before The Professor
was cruelly bombarded from space by a death ray. Included is a table of
contents that makes it easier to follow the story in chronological
order. Of course the story is free here on The Geekorium, but buying it
from Amazon will give you a warm glow, and something to read on the bus.
If you’re still not convinced read these 5 Star
Reviews.
A ripping space yarn of the Old School variety, this action-packed short story harks back to the golden days of Flash Gordon serials with tongue firmly in cheek. Both wonderfully amusing and butt-clenchingly thrilling, not a sentence is wasted that doesn’t thrust the story forward like a rocket ship.
After 90 days I’ll be offering the eBook in other formats too, but how
many formats I offer will depend on how much interest I get with the
version on Amazon. So if you’d like to see an iBook version, or one for
Android, or just a DRM-free version you can buy directly from The
Geekorium, tell your friends and followers about Rex Havoc’s eBook
adventure!
Now go out! Be fruitful and multiply! Wrong command set! Go and tell
people! Buy it! Stop using exclamation marks!
“I just can’t understand it,” said Tom McWilliams, as he sipped his overly frothy cappucino. He would have to speak to Nermal, his house servant about how much froth he liked. It needed to be balanced. Somewhere between those awful foofy drinks they served at trendy coffee bars and a flat white. This was not it.
“Can’t understand what?” asked Lindsay Lenninghan. She was wearing a pale green t-shirt, one of Tom’s, that she’d helped herself to after their tempestuous night together. In bed, having sex. Tom couldn’t tell if she’d put on any pants.
“Why would Myamoto be gunning for me? First he tries to buy me out, and now I’m pretty sure his hired goons are trying to kill me!”
Tom was looking less calm than normal, even in his favourite purple turtleneck and midnight-black slacks that rode up a little at the crotch the way he liked it. It reminded him he was alive.
“What could he possibly want?”
“Let’s think about this logically,” said Lindsay in that voice of hers that made Tom want to do sorts of illogical things to her. Before he could make a move she continued, “Why would the world’s largest teddy bear manufacturer want to buy out a biologist? What have you been working on?”
Tom thought for a moment. While Lindsay was talking he had changed into a cappuccino coloured business shirt, chocolate tie and tailored brown suit. His black Church’s shoes didn’t match though, which bothered him, but his Tiger of Sweden brown suede fall brogues were at the dry-cleaners and it couldn’t be helped.
“My lab does tissue regeneration. We’re making some great progress. We may even cure cancer soon!”
At this, Lindsay looked up in surprise. She had showered and changed while Tom was thinking and had on a white blouse and orange sweater that brought out the brilliant colour of her eyes and sable slacks.
Lindsay looked pained at the revelation, and Tom realised he’d hit a nerve. Of course, you dolt, both her parents died of cancer and you go and act like curing it is no big thing. Trying to hurry past it, Tom kept talking.
“But I’m not doing anything like that. I’m working on scalp regeneration for burn victims.”
Lindsay didn’t know what to say. She knew Tom was haunted by his past, but only now was realising how much. Last night between bouts of lovemaking she had shared with Tom the loss of her parents. It was a big step, as she’d never told anyone else that she was a cancer orphan. In return Tom had told her about the horrific accident that had befallen both his parents.
One morning while preparing to go out his parents had started another one of their heated arguments. His father had waved his hands a little too vigorously and the Chancellor cigarette he’d been holding had flicked out of his grasp and into the stream of his wife’s hairspray, squirting a jet of flaming fire at her beautiful golden-red hair. Within seconds her hair was ablaze and his father, a proud Scot, dove to help her - the argument forgotten. In the confusion the fire caught hold of his dad’s heavily waxed hair and within moments both had sustained third-degree burns to their scalps. A long period of painful rehabilitation brought his parents closer than ever before, but Tom never lived down the school-yard shame of being dropped at school by two bright red bald prune-heads. Lindsay wondered if this was his motivation for his dedication to his work.
“What were you working on just before the buyout attempt?” she asked as she bit daintily at the marmalade on toast Tom had made her while she’d been thinking.
“Good question,” Tom muttered as he pulled out his papers and started scouring back through the carefully dated sheets.
“It was about three weeks ago…” he began, then started, “Oh!”
Looking up at Lindsay’s curious face he remembered again why he had fallen for this blonde goddess. There was something special about her.
“What is it Tom?” she asked. Lindsay watched his face soften at her as he had looked up and wondered what it meant. She could only hope it meant that he loved her back. This man had broken into her cold and carefully locked citadel and stolen her heart out from under her nose. When she had lost her parents she had vowed never to love anyone again, but all that had changed when she had met this wonderful man, last night.
“About a week before the attempt, I had finally stabilised the molecular structure of a compound to create skin tissue with full hair growth in a Petri dish.”
“Why that’s wonderful!” said Lindsay, dabbing at her lips with one of Tom’s delicate monogrammed Bella Lino table napkins.
“Not really,” replied Tom, “The skin was from rat DNA…” at this Lindsay’s face took on a puzzled expression and her cheek crinkled cutely.
“Sorry, DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid - a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). It’s like the LEGO instruction book for life!”
Understanding, Lindsay brightened and prompted for Tom to continue, “So the stuff in the Pedro dish is like rat LEGO?”
“Yes,” confirmed Tom, “but now I need to do the same with human DNA to make human skin replacements. So far, I’ve been completely unsuccessful.”
“So maybe Myamoto knows you’re close and wants to buy you before you crack it so he can share in the profits?” theorised Lindsay.
“That could take years, and then the FDA, EPA and YMCA will all need to study my findings before we can start human trials and we’ll be tied up in red tape for years. No, Myamoto is not that patient. Besides, his company makes toys for God’s sake!”
Suddenly it hit him. The whole sordid plan.
“I’ve got it”
Catching on, Lindsay gasped.
“He wants to use real rat fur on his teddy bears!”
Tom shook his head. It just didn’t seem like Myamoto’s style to be so obvious. On a hunch, Tom pulled up his favourite means of finding out information and looked up the name of the largest and most successful pest extermination business in the country: Rats ‘R’ Doomed. A few short minutes later he had confirmed his hunch.\ Lindsay tucked hungrily into her Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and a fried egg on top and Spam while she waited.
“I have it,” Tom exclaimed at last.
Lindsay stood up and peered over Tom’s shoulder.
“Rats ‘R’ Doomed is a subsidiary of and international textiles factory which is in turn a subsidiary of…”
Lindsay gasped as she read over Tom’s shoulder.
“Myamoto Industries!” they exclaimed together.
“So Myamoto doesn’t want to kill you to get your rat-fur formula…” started Lindsay.
“He wants to squash it so it doesn’t compete with his own company’s rat-fur harvesting business. It must be a multi-billion dollar industry, and we’re about to pull the rug out from under it!”
“But that means he’s using real rat hair in his toys!” reasoned Lindsay as she reclined on the couch in her Gestuz plait detail knit dress and Oxford black slacks, Amontillado in hand.
“This is bigger than we can handle,” agreed Tom.
.
This work is a parody, and any similarity to Ben Bova’s work is intentional but exaggerated. I mean no disrespect to Mr Bova though - I’ve enjoyed his work for about 15 years. My only complaint is that it’s gotten less science-fictional and more industrial espionage-y since his Orion days, and he puts so many products in it starts to feel like a Will Smith1 movie. This post is meant in jest. It’s only because I’ve read and enjoyed so many of his books that I can pick out and skew some of his more outrageous patterns. Please don’t hurt me.
I was eleven when I was implanted. I was fortunate to go to a family who treated me well. Others got sent to families with mean-spirited children or fathers who… My friend Tracy, she was lifeless within a week of starting.
.
Anyway, I started out at a nice place with a family who took the rules seriously. And it wasn’t entirely without its joys - I tasted ice-cream for the first time there. And I read Narnia there. Really, it’s where I started enjoying the small things when I could.
So that was half the Sum, and I left there at sixteen and went to live with a bachelor. He was also very good to me - I’ve been lucky I guess. Kind of makes me feel stupid wanting it removed now, when there’s so many others who it means so much worse to. But I just don’t want it defining me any more you know?
So anyway, he was nice, and he travelled a lot. He just needed a housekeeper. And I kept his house spotless. He never had a complaint. And, I danced for him. For him and his friends. Nothing gross. One of his friends suggested it once, and that killed the party. Everyone else followed the rules. They’re at least good that way - in crowds. Everyone knows they get broken in private, but at least a group is more likely to not. I suppose that’s not strictly true all the time though is it? Maybe a group is just more likely to have one person who doesn’t want to break the rules. Simon didn’t want the rules broken in his house and I never saw that other guy again.
But dancing is my specialty. I’m awkward and self conscious when I try to dance for myself, but when I’m Commanded I’m told I dance beautifully. So that was my next five years. Simon seemed bored by the end and I never danced for him alone any more. I guess five years is a long time to live with someone you don’t know very well. And that was about the time that people started talking about changing the laws, so maybe he was scared of that or something - but for about a year before I finished he never got me to do anything other than cook and clean which I could do without being Told. And when the Sum was paid and I left I didn’t know what to do with myself…
But I knew how to keep house so I did that for a year or so. And then the law was changed so no one could be implanted again - not that it made a huge difference to me practically. No one had Commanded me for two years. It was good for people like Tracy though. And no one has tried to command me since. I know no one ever will again too, and my husband has never once brought it up in 20 years.
I mean, technically and legally I know I’m free. Before it became illegal, I’d cleared the Sum so even under the old law I… But you know - it’s just in the back of my mind. HA! Literally! But no. Seriously, it’s always niggling there and I have never ever felt fully myself with it there.
And then I heard about you and that you’re looking for volunteers to remove them now, and I know it’s really dangerous - my husband is so scared… I… I shouldn’t be doing this to… But I can’t stand this thing! Most of the time I forget about it, but something happens and I remember Simon, or those kids who used to play with me, or my husband brushes my neck… I go back. And I’m not fully myself and more.
So I know it’s experimental and dangerous and that they were never made to be removed… But I shouldn’t have to live like this forever. I need it taken out so I can be free.
I’ve been working on a new design for The Geekorium. I’m constantly
revising and trying to get it looking right, and I’ve previously made
myownthemes, but I’ve never been
particularly happy with them. The problem with creating a design for
yourself is it’s far easier to distil the essence of someone else into a
few key elements based on what you perceive as their strong and sellable
points, but far more difficult to do it to yourself. So the themes I’ve
created have not really been “me”.
Well I’m trying again.
I’m happy about where this one is going. I’m still in the design stage,
so it’s probably going to change a lot, but I’m proud of the work so far
and I thought I’d share the direction I’m going with it and ask for some
feedback. Normally my feedback process on my personal site design is to
ask my wife, but I want to widen my base and get an idea from some of
the people who read it. I realise I’m not giving you much to go on, but
I’d love some off-the-top-of-your-head thoughts.
Announcing the Wave This Widget for Wordpress. Install this widget, add it to your sidebar and let your visitors share your posts easily on Google Wave!
The Google Wave “Wave This” function takes the title of a post and a short description and starts a new wave for you to add users to. It uses the “Wave This“ API.
This sidebar widget adds a button to individual post pages that sends the post title and exerpt to Wave. If you haven’t set an exerpt the widget uses the default one generated by Wordpress for each post. The default button is 300px wide to allow for larger sidebars. Please resize the button using the widget options.
2010-06-16: Added the official button options from Google.
Latest Version
Version 0.3
Known Issues
Settings are not persistent across updates. I’ll try to build this in soon.
Does not use the official “Wave This” buttons from the API page. The official buttons can be linked though using the custom image feature. Fixed: see update 16-06-10
Does not support Wave for domains other than the Google Wave Preview.
Support
If you need help with the Wave This Widget, leave a message here, or on the Wordpress Support Forum. At the risk of fragmenting the support, you can also get in touch with me on Google Wave1, or leave a message on the official plugin wave
So anyway, I made cupcakes today. To be fair I live with two girls, so I did it for them1. Monnie is running a Cup Cake Camp soon, and being the chef of the family felt like I would probably end up being the one to make cupcakes for it, so I thought I had better practice.
And I gotta say, if you make your cupcakes right, they are awesome. None of this lemon icing crap, or straight vanillaboringpants flavour. I made mine with 70% cocoa chocolate cherry ripes, 70% cocoa chocolate ganash icing, and glace cherries on top…
Cherry-ripe Cupcakes
So I don’t care if it’s not totally manly. They were totally tasty, and I’m totally in Mil’s good books for making them.
And if you’re nice to me I’ll make them again (or something similar) for Cup Cake Camp Adelaide!
When we bought our Wii, I promised Mil that we could listen to TripleJ using it, as we haven’t had a radio in our lounge room for years, and she was missing it. So I set up Orb to play my iTunes library and TripleJ and Radio National1 . But my computer had to be on for it to stream properly, and Orb was pretty useless for streaming video (the other reason I installed it), so eventually I gave up on it, and Mil went back to a music-free existence :cry:
But determined not to be beaten, I found a nifty little MP3-playing SWF (flash program) that I could install on a webserver somewhere and point to the TripleJ MP3 stream. The player I used is created by neolao, and is very easy to use. I used their “generator“ page to build the embed code I needed, and downloaded the player. I created a simple webpage that includes the embeded code (feel free to steal the “source”), and uploaded and pointed to the player hosted on my site. It points to the TripleJ stream, but could easily be adapted to play any other mp3 file or stream. The page is at http://nunnone.com/radio/ and I’ve added it to my Wii’s favourites menu so Mil can find it quickly when she wants some radio. It’s a very basic page, and the same site has many different versions of the player to do more - in fact if Radio National did an MP3 stream as well, I would create multi player so Mil could choose between the two stations.
I can even embed the stream right here, so enjoy!
Edit: removed - see update.
2009-09-06: Using the Homebrew channel to add radio
The biggest problem with the the Wii browser is that it can’t drop the stream, so the buffer fills up eventually and crashes. I tried a few MP3 flash players including one that suggested it could overcome this by playing two streams in sequence for five minutes each and dropping them one at a time to clear the buffer, but I couldn’t get any of them working reliably so I gave up for a while.
Then Lifehacker posted <a href=“http://lifehacker.com/5342733/hack-your-wii-for-homebrew-without-twilight-princess?skyline=true&s=x”>this article about how to add the Homebrew channel to your Wii with just an SD card, and I gave it a shot. Then I downloaded the Homebrew Browser and copied it into an “Apps” folder I created on the same SD card. With that installed I downloaded the MPlayer Christmas Edition from the browser, and finally edited the menu.conf file in the Apps\mplayer_ce folder to add Internode’s stream to the Radio menu with the following line:
I’m pretty impressed with myself for this. This is my website rendered
by IE6 and Firefox 3.0 overlayed over each other (onion skinned) using
https://browserlab.adobe.com/
The differences are minimal. Can I collect my props now?
A week ago, Tech Wired offered a $50 iTunes card to the best logo design for their upcoming new website. Since then, they upgraded the offer to a $100 card, and the entries flowed thick and fast. Within minutes of reading about it, I had sketched an idea and began plotting out a logo on Fireworks. It’s the fastest I’ve been able to get from initial idea to sketch to mockup in my career and I was mighty proud of it for only a few hours work. The initial version looked like this:
Tech Wired Logo Submission
It’s like Frankenstein built a logo
A couple of people liked the idea, but thought the typography was lacking. So the next day I had a go at sprucing it up, and re-doing the typography.
Tech Wired Logo Submission (take 2)
Getting there. Better colours and font choice.
I’m much happier with this, but I thought it was still missing something. So yesterday I made up the following. I really like it. Mil thinks its a little less clear, but I think you can see a bit of the Aussie outback in it now which is a nice touch (if I do say so myself). In case you’ve missed it, the logo is a stylised Australia, made of concentric rings (the de-facto symbol of podcasts) with a wire-in-circle in the centre to emphasis the “tech” or perhaps the “wired” in the name. I chose orange as it’s the colour of RSS feeds, but it doesn’t need to be orange - it could be any colour.
This helped me settle on a final form for the typography, and I decided to put together a logo pack to showcase the versatility of the logo in different forms. They don’t quite meet the requirements of the competition though, so I’m posting them here rather than cluttering up the forum the competition is running on.
First up, a horizontal version that separates the typography from the logo. The original brief asked that the logo contain the title “Tech Wired Australia” but I feel that a true logo needs to stand alone. I created this version to give a sense of how the logo could stand by itself to some degree within the design.
Tech Wired Logo additional concepts
My favourite design. Doesn’t meet the brief. Discarded
Next up, a mono-colour version as an example of how you could use the logo in a less colourful design (perhaps as a promotional badge, or on a sub-page you wish to stand out from the main site in some way).
tech wired logo additional concepts reversed out
Ooh, shiny and dark
The next two styles are just variations I tried, that although not as visually appealing as the few designs above, show the versatility of the design and some of the possibilities.
tech wired logo additional concepts 2
Meh.
Tech Wired Logo Submission revision4
No orange sea. No work as well.
Finally, just for fun, and as a bit of cheeky poke to help tip things in my favour, I’ve included an iPhone bookmark icon, and a couple of favicons.
Apple touch icon
tech wired logo additional concepts
tech wired logo additional concepts
Can you blame me for trying?
Hopefully this has been a little insight into my creative process. Check out the thread, and let me know how my attempt compares to some of the others. All constructive criticism welcome!
Please note: the designs showcased here are not under my usual Creative Commons Licence. I reserve all right to them up to the point that they (might) become property of the Tech Wired team. You may not use them to create derivative works, or use them in your own products.
2008-11-05 Minutes after I posted this, and put up my final submission they announced the winner! And it wasn’t me… But that’s OK, because they offered me a conciliatory $20 iTunes card because they liked my logo and want to use it on their website. You see the key here is, I misunderstood the brief - they wanted a “podcast logo”, and it didn’t click for me that this meant some thing like album art to display in iTunes. Clearly the person who won understood this immediately. I came at the whole thing thinking they were going to re-design their website. I’m kinda glad I misunderstood though, as if I’d realised what they wanted, I possibly wouldn’t have have bothered, and then I wouldn’t have learned what I learned from this competition. Including this tidbit: if the brief is unclear, get it clarified before you produce something the client doesn’t really want!
Most of the Justice League have one weakness that stops them dead in
their tracks. I thought Batman was immune. Turns out he does have one
weakness though - and it took an evil duplicate to find it… Batman
can’t handle a nipple cripple.
Cover of Justice League of America #13 - Riddle of the Robot Justice
League!
Batman’s nipples are so sensitive it takes just one tweak and he
collapses in a ball. Superman has his Kryptonite, Green Lantern the
colour yellow. Batman has glass nipples. Perhaps that’s why Batman and
Robin
accentuated them so much - it was extra protection.
I’ve altered the image a little. These old Justice League comics have
such cluttered drawing. And the writing was awful compared to what I’m
used to today. Still - they do have some fun moments.
Unless you need to connect with one. Then it will be on time.
Waiting for the Bus to da BEACH (by Joe_Focus)
Your bus will sometimes just not show up. The next bus will be late
(see rule 1).
Hill Street Bus Stop (by mmandamon)
How late the bus will be is directly proportional to how desperate
you are to be on time.
Where’s the bus! (by nycangel78)
The size of the bus is inversely proportional to the number of
people who catch the bus. As the seating capacity reaches zero,
passenger numbers approach infinity.
Adelaide revisited (by lovebuzz)
You will never find a combination of bus schedules that will get you
to work on time.
