WordPress Update

I upgraded to version 2.8 of Wordpress on the Bob Shaw blog. Me no likey. A totally whole new interface which is nowhere near as nice and clean as the previous interface.  A lot of the features that were right there in front of you after a couple of clicks seem to be buried in sub menus. Everything is on the left hand side - and if I'm right handed wouldn't it be better to be on the right hand side? Previously it was all on the top, which I found much easier.

I'm now informed that WordPress has support for Gears, which is a net based programming language/API probably based on java script. Programmers apparently have nothing better to do that create new languages every few years.

However, the Google Analytics plugin is now working. Previously it only spat out something about an error on line 148. Now I have the setting screen and can input the Google analytics number. I'll have to see if it works. I pasted the code in from Google to the front page of this website but when I log into Google analytics it says the site is not activated. After pasting the number in the plugin was successfully updated. I'll have to wait and see if it does analyse the site.

Short stats seems to be working better too. No errors there so far. I finally took the time to look at the code in the sidebar.php for the current theme and amended it so only Tags appear. It previously had a search and also a duplication of the posts but that has been amended now.

I think I'll leave the other blog on my domain as it is for the moment.

My Web Sites Back up

I think it was just maintenance by my host. Yesterday I had a lot of trouble accessing my blogs, my websites and even the website of the company who host the sites I have. Everything is now working fine but I’m off to do a full back up of my sites via the control panel.

My Web Site Very Slow

I’ve had a lot of trouble connecting to the blogs today. going to the root page was no problem. whether it was the host, my broadband connection of the software I don’t know.

The FTP plugin within Firefox had difficulty too. It might be the WordPress databases as a test of broadband speed told me it was working at 3.9Mbps.

I tried to post a blog straight from Windows Live Writer to the Bob Shaw blog but it came up an error saying it couldn't connect.

After some more time I know it’s definitely a Wordpress based problem as the front page of my website loads okay and the blog was successfully posted to Blogger.

I try and log in to create a backup and that takes ages too.

The post on the Bob Shaw blog got posted twice so I'll have to remove one when I get onto the site and the blogs. The whole thing is really slow and starting to give me some concern, particularly as it was over a week since I last did a backup of the site. I haven't posted too much but I have posted.

EDIT: The other cause for possible slowness is the host. It may be the server the website is on. I've just tried the site again and a very small jpeg it taking ages to download. I type in their name and it takes a while to load. So I'm betting they're the problem.

How To Write Science Fiction, Allison & Busby, Paperback, ISBN 0-74900-135-6

This is one of the books that sparked my spending frenzy in getting Bob Shaw hardbacks. I hadn't heard of it (although I may have been vaguely aware of its existence but not fully acknowledged it) and I bought it from Amazon I think and eagerly awaited its arrival as it was more or less a ‘new’ book for me.

The book itself is split up into lots of segments. Perhaps Bob Shaw wrote it over a period of time and gathered it together only for publication or maybe it was designed that way. There are a lot of useful hints and tips on the act of writing itself, irrespective of genre.

Shaw says here that he has published 100% of the work he has written. Apparently he had totally forgotten about The Mercenary Mirage - published a couple of times including Overload after it was sent back unsold to him by Forrest J Ackerman: perhaps he totally forgot about other stories too?

It was an enjoyable read and felt like Shaw was talking to me, rather than me ploughing through a book - which can happen with some non fiction books. The tone is light and informal and the fact that it is in short sections helps the reader enormously as there are no big chunks to digest in one reading.

The first chapter deals specifically with Science Fiction, and it is here, right at the start that Shaw has a section headed The Reader Knows Best. The manner of the book is mainly pleasant Shaw doesn’t fluff up reader’s egos and repeatedly points out that publishing is tough. He gives the sage advice to look into what the market is looking for before embarking on writing a story as he details in the section entitled The Importance of Market Research. For a lot of people it’s the other way around: write a story then look to market it.

In the second chapter Shaw talks about ‘priming the subconscious’ and his little army of Brownies who deliver and develop story ideas, although he has no compunction against brownie cruelty at times by taking them by their (metaphorical) throats and demanding good ideas.

Shaw also talks about discussing ideas with other people. He worked at the same company as SF writer James Blish and they often bounced ideas around. Shaw then moves from ideas to plots.

It is when talking about plotting that Shaw brings up Light of Other Days – which is included in the book and is part of the chapter on plotting. Shaw reveals to us that he spent two years on the idea for Light of Other Days before committing it to paper. He then describes how he looked for the plot to best describe the idea. I found this to be the most interesting part of the book. That Shaw would take the time to develop plots for an idea until he was satisfied that he had presented the idea in the best possible form.

Chapter four delves a little deeper into Science Fiction itself, in particular the difference between hard and soft SF and ways on how writers can bluff their way through a story technology wise.

Shaw then takes a look at characterisation, human and alien. In this chapter Shaw informs us that his publisher initially rejected Ground Zero Man on the grounds that it ‘was by no stretch of the imagination …science fiction.’ And then goes on to say the same publisher picked the book up later. There follows a few other sections including one on alien names.

The next chapter discusses building worlds, and Shaw reveals to us some of the things that went behind his book The Ragged Astronauts, the first in a trilogy. This is a series which could be thought of as bordering on Fantasy and having little to do with Science Fiction.

Chapter seven discusses the staples of science fiction, rocket ships, ray guns and robots. Here he investigates the various ways science fiction writers overcome the Einstein barrier which prohibits faster than light speed travel. A short section looks at futuristic weaponry. Then there are a couple of sections on robot and computers.

The last chapters round things up. Bringing everything together, including the topic of selection, and grabbing the reader at the beginning and endings. There is an exceptionally useful section where he points out words in a paragraph and gives reasons why he chose those particular words over others.

The final chapter is called Going To Market. This chapter also contains questions and answers with Pamela Buckmaster from the Carnell Literary Agency.

The book was released in 1993 but contains a lot of important information and tips: mainly because they are all still relevant today.

Terminal Velocity, Gollancz, Hardback, ISBN, 0-575-04917-0

This is the reissued edition of Vertigo, issued in hardback by Gollancz in 1991 - October 1991 according to Phil's excellent bibliography of Bob Shaw. The original short story, Dark Icarus/A little Night Flying is presented as a prologue and then it's as Vertigo. It was priced at £13.99 net. My memory seems to be failing me as I was convinced I bought this when it was first issued. But I didn't. I did however purchase it recently online, at a much more reasonable price of £1.36 plus postage, which I think is great value for a good book in excellent condition.

Vertigo, Gollancz, Hardback, 0-575-02559-X

So I got a second hard back copy of Vertigo, and this one is in much better condition. It doesn't have any pages ripped out of it and has no stamps. So I'll give my thoughts on this novel now. I first read it in paperback way back in the eighties and went through the 99p Ebay one again recently before starting this review.

It was an enjoyable read. The novel is pretty close to mainstream in that it deals with everyday problems in the main, plain old fashioned human conflict. It would qualify very well for Theodore Sturgeon's definition of Science Fiction: a human problem with a human solution but which would not have happened if not for the scientific content. (I'm going from memory here so forgive me if the quote isn't exact.)

The scientific content of Vertigo is the easy availability of sort of jet packs aka CG harnesses which are used for personal travel. We all know what we’re like in cars and the jet pack is another form of this. Shaw develops all sorts of possibilities for the way people would behave with this new form of transport, and all sorts of social repercussions such as the more or less ceasing of airplane flights. Other problems brought about by this invention are the crimes and misdemeanours in three dimensions instead of being limited to flat surfaces on the ground.

The main protagonist for this story is Robert Hasson, a policeman going to Canada to recover from a horrendous accident.

As I've mentioned before this novel grew from the short story A Little Night Flying, also known as Dark Icarus, first published in Science Fiction Monthly in 1974 and also in the short story collection Cosmic Kaleidoscope (1976) and in other places. It was re issued as Terminal Velocity in 1991.

Hasson departs for Canada, physically and mentally shattered, recovering from of a nervous breakdown and taking a medication called Serenix. No drugs company in the world would call their product that so Shaw can get away with it.

To re acquaint myself with the novel - I did read it over a twenty years ago and I'm not getting any younger, smarter or prettier- I started to leaf through it and found myself engrossed again, well into chapter three before I realised I was supposed to be reminding myself of the novel as a refresher, not a full read. I suppose that's a compliment to Shaw's writing and his talent. So I decided to re read the novel in full.

Shaw has a way with developing characters and situations. Vertigo is a relatively slow starter of a novel. There's no major incident to incite events as prescribed by story experts all over the world. The baddies make themselves known relatively soon but plot wise Shaw carefully draws in the reader to Hasson's situation.

Odd that I don't recall the mention of Kafka's Metamorphosis story. I used to be quite into Kafka, although I only have a hard back edition of The Trial and paperback edition of a collection of short stories - including Metamorphosis - and I can't be sure but I think there might be a Penguin edition of Amerika stuck in some corner.

Gradually Hasson begins to feel better, with the help from Oliver Fan, from the local health food store and even tries but fails to fly in a CG harness.

The story gets ratcheted up a few notches in the last few chapters. Shaw adds some humanity to the one of the villains of the piece by making the repercussions of their actions more serious than their intentions. Head bully Pridgeon proclaims he didn't know how dangerous the traps he set in the Chinook Hotel were. Chief villain Morlacher keeps threatening the secondary character Werry and seems implacable, intent on the protection of his property by any means he deems necessary.

A character -  Barry Lutze – introduced early on becomes the final obstacle for Hasson in the last chapters as, to save Werry's son, Hasson puts on a CG harness and heads upward into the night to the Chinook hotel and faces his fears, surviving the situation and comes out the other side alive and a stronger person.

Although it obviously doesn’t seem to follow the rules/requirements of story telling it does, and Shaw proves himself to be a master at doing this subtly. I’ve heard actors look at the beginning of a script and the end of the script to see if there is a proper character arc, character development and character progress. No actor would be disappointed with Vertigo. The unsteady, unconfident, frightened Hasson of the start of the novel grows throughout to be replaced by the confident and growing character at the end of the novel.

Vista Service Pack 2

So I check my bandwidth usage so far and it is below halfway toward the 5GB monthly limit with only about ten days to go for this month. I decide to install the Vista Service Pack 2 now instead of waiting until the end of the month. The download is 343.9 MB according to the update but the download amount is 122MB (for the whole day) according to NetMeter and Windows Update has started and is preparing my computer as I type.

Knowing Windows this means I'll have to save this blog on the hard disk and then restart the computer. This is one of the worst things about Microsoft and their updates, it was a perennial nuisance in Windows 95. Anything you installed wanted to reboot your machine. I would have thought that Microsoft had learned the lesson but apparently not. At least there is now an option to delay the reboot, from time scales of ten minutes to four hours.

Yup, Windows wanted to restart. Then it spent ten minutes telling me not to switch off my computer, five minutes of black screen and then another five minutes of Windows telling me not to switch off my computer. It doesn't seem any faster or better. I think it’s a ruse. You download a small file and it makes small changes. The rest is a simple while or for loop counting down seconds and displaying information. It’s like those 0870 helpline numbers: you know you’re not waiting on an operator becoming available, they’re just keeping you waiting until they’ve ticked up some cash. Boy I’m feeling paranoid tonight.

I’ve still got a lot of books to read through. The novelisation of Star Trek was mince. I'm not inclined to go and watch the film on that showing. Maybe I wont even get it on DVD.

I got the replacement Interzones and that's further fiction to go through. Although being short stories they are a little more appealing than a novel. Poor Iain M Banks and his novel Matter are still at the bottom of the pile. And that after me reading the novel Vertigo by Bob Shaw again. I had only intended to skim through it to refresh my memory when writing about his works on one of my other blogs but I got sucked in and was about sixty pages or so in before I realised. I thought I might as well finish the novel having read that far.

Vista Update Again

I installed a minor update for Windows Defender and then suddenly Vista Service Pack 2 was shown to be a vital update needing attention, and needing between 337.9MB and 343.9 MB.

Last week I used about 50-60 MB downloading updates. I thought this was Service Pack 2 but apparently not. This time it will definitely wait until closer to the end of the month.

(Just checked the update history and a lot of the previous updates seems to have been programs: Works 9  - which I never use – Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 8 – which I use even less than Works 9. But I am surprised that Visa Service Pack 2 has come and gone on the update options; as I have mentioned in previous blogs.)

After I’ve used my bandwidth allowance for what I want to do we’ll see what’s left near the end of the month and then update Vista; probably next weekend. I’ve no doubt that there will be enough of the 5Gb allowance available: I’ve never yet come close to the limit in the time I have used Madasafish as a broadband provider.

Although the usage has crept up a little in the past few months I’m still comfortably within the limit. Only once have I received an email from them telling me I’m close to my monthly allowance – and then it was at the end of the month and I had deliberately used up some bandwidth.

Further Bits and Pieces

Windows Live Writer is the bomb.

So Thunderbird has a reprieve as I found out how to add forwarding servers. It was right before my eyes but I couldn't see it.  It still doesn’t fully work but it may be worth persevering with.

The problem of junk mail to another address may be solved too as I was on one of my domains and found out there was an email forwarder on one of the email accounts I set up. I set up another for another email account I set up and instead of looking for an email client to handle all addresses I'll look into setting up email forwarders to one or two free email addresses I have.

For the first time in a while I logged into the control panels of the domains I have. I did some tidying up. Making a new backup and downloading it. I checked the emails. The default email inbox is full, and I'm leaving it like that. It receives a lot of spam so it's better to let it bounce back with an inbox full error message than for me to log in and empty it of spam only for it to fill up again within a few days.

The backup was 18MB in size, including the databases that WordPress uses for the blogs.  One was 3MB in size and the other 1.5MB. I'll have to keep an eye on them as they are getting big. I don't know what size I expected the databases to be but, as they are mostly text, I was expecting it to be quite a while before I had to worry about the size of them. However, the Bob Shaw blog does include a lot of images.

I also saved some space on the site and cleared about 12Mb of files from the temp directory.

A Load Of Old Bosh, Beccon, Booklet, ISBN 1-870824-34-2

This booklet was printed for Confabulation, the 1995 British Convention. The cover is by Sue Mason, interior illustrations by Jim Barker.

There is a short note from Bob Shaw where he points out that they were written as speeches; to be heard and not read, and therefore may feel different to something written to be read.

The booklet is well printed and bound, very neat. It was all done in Claris Works on a Macintosh IIvi. I have a Mac Classic somewhere in the house but it wont boot due to a memory problem. I've worked on Macs but I'm not as fanatical about them as some people are. Nowadays you can get a Mac to run on a USB stick: that's the problem with computing technology. It's state of the art for five minutes then it's redundant.

The Need For Bad Science Fiction kicks off this collection of speeches and it takes a dig at reviewers as much as writers. It touches on SF conventions, SF films and the night shift of Star Trek.

Common to all the speeches is the diversity of topics within. They were designed to entertain a live audience and so had to be suitable to grab and keep the attention of the audience. I think that makes them a little tricky to review and summarise. There are bits within bits. One off jokes, puns, nods to SF and fandom.

The talks cover the period 1974 to 1988 and are mainly Eastercon speeches. In a few of the speeches there is a reference to the TV Series Space:1999, which in Bob’s head has become Space: £19.99. I’ll refrain from any comments on the budget of said show.

The Bermondsey Triangle Mystery nicely builds up 'elements' of pseudo science to create a very British inspired mystery. Shaw cleverly delves into the past to tell us about the peculiar events that shaped Britain, involving the Civilisation of the Cod People, giant tubers known as Taters, sliced by a wire mesh fence.

Other delights include Time Travellers Among Us with Shaw detailing the time machine, the Chronoclipper Mk. II, for sale at a reasonable price of £2,000 – this speech is from 1975 but even allowing for inflation I’d say that’s cheap for a time machine! Among others there is also Beyond Cosmos, where he tries to get a TV show made with the German/Irish scientific researcher and writer Von Donegan. Up The Conjunction covers the well worn topic of Astrology with the help of a couple of illustrations.

USB Email Clients

I tried a couple of USB email clients. One wouldn't even connect to the server at all.

Thunderbird was given a second chance and fluffed it again. Something that is simple in Outlook and Outlook Express, changing identities, is apparently non existent in Thunderbird.

The help page for that topic wouldn't come up when I went online, kept timing out. It kept the outgoing settings for the Yahoo email address without even offering me the option to put in the correct details.

This is a big no no when I'm trying to log on to one of my domain names which has nothing to do with Yahoo and hence gives an authentication and password not accepted error. I looked around the Options and Settings but I couldn’t see where it would let me change the outgoing mail options. It was either default (Yahoo) or nothing. If only Outlook Express or the Vista equivalent, Mail, was portable.

Vista Update And Others

I took a chance and updated Vista before the end of this month. It appeared at the end of last month on my updates saying between 50 and 300 MB (or thereabouts). Even just a day earlier and I could have added it to my bandwidth allocation for that month and forgotten about it. The update kept changing, one time it was 300MB the next it was 300k (for Windows Defender) then it was back up and then back down. So one time I decided just to see what was available and it turned out to be a reasonable 50 Meg or so. Even now, a little over halfway through the month, I am a lot less than halfway through the bandwidth allowance. So I decide to update Vista. I suppose it may work out better in the long run. Updating Vista more or less when the updates appear should work out with less downloads than one cumulative upgrade every now and then.

Here's something that isn't a surprise to anyone who uses 'budget' airlines. http://www.lovemoney.com/news/travel/ryanair-costs-more-than-british-airways-3559.aspx?source=1000020

Who's surprised Ryanair is more expensive than BA? I personally don't see how Ryanair is still operating. Some of the comments on that website state they ignore EU directives. And I think they have a no refund policy, which, as far as I'm aware, is against UK Consumer law. I know this because I tried to get a refund on a mobile phone just after thirty days and was informed by the shop and local trading standards that refunds are only allowed within a reasonable time, which is considered to be thirty days. After that the seller is obliged only to replace the item.

I've been trying new email clients recently. I've got a lot of email addresses and don't check on some of them nearly enough as I should. I'm looking for something portable and easy. Portable because I use a U3 USB stick nine times out of ten and easy because I'm thick.

But the plan to bring all email addresses under one program seems to be stalling a bit. The only really portable email client is Thunderbird, and I don't like that too much. I may give it another shot but I'll exhaust the others first. A few I've tried turn out not to be portable enough. There are some available out there but they are old programs. I have popcorn on the USB disk but it's a bit tricky to set up accounts. It's very basic and not too user friendly. ON the plus side it isn't even one megabyte in size. I've just tried Sylpheed and it's not portable at all. It is available as a direct download to unzip and no need to install but its settings appear to be on the local hard drive and not the USB drive. I set up a yahoo account, and surprisingly it didn’t take too much searching to get the settings for yahoo, and then logged in and checked mail. It worked fine but when I tried the program on my laptop at home there was no account; hence all the information is on the other computer. I couldn't find any settings anywhere which would tell me where the settings and folders were.

Weekend Shield

I haven’t done much this week. I should really set aside time for doing things, but there seems to be less and less time available.

I managed to make a post on the Bob Shaw blog about the first novel of his I read and was in communication with Interzone about missing issues. I think there’s some sort of delay with them and a couple of issues have gone missing. I’m going to make a point of visiting the Interzone site (www.ttapress.com) more often so I can see when the new issue is released. But whether I can keep this going is another thing.

At Asda this week I picked up the final season of The Shield, season 7. I picked up the first season of The Shield at Asda too, some years ago. It was an impulse purchase mainly because it was a full season of a show going very cheap. Under £15 if I remember rightly. Which was dirt cheap as at that time a lot of TV series were being punted out at forty pounds and upward.

It was a fantastic series from the off, and season seven didn’t disappoint either. I spent a bit of Friday, all day Saturday and well into Sunday morning watching the final season on my computer.  Very few hitches with the drive: the second episode slowed and jerked a couple of times but otherwise the whole series played smoothly.

The quality of the final season was well above what I expected. I think it dipped a little in season four and six and season one and two were the best in my opinion, but season seven has lifted itself right up there in my opinion.

The good news is I can watch it again, this time with the audio commentaries. In season one this was every episode – another reason I bought the first season; the extras – but later seasons were fewer. I’ll also check out the behind the scenes features which are always interesting.

The Ceres Solution, Granada, Paperback, ISBN 0-586-05652-1

The Ceres Solution was the first Bob Shaw novel I read, back when Bob Shaw was relatively new to me. I had bought A Better Mantrap to ‘try out’ the author and enjoyed it so much I went back to the SF bookshop in Edinburgh ( I remember their radio advert on Radio Forth giving their address on West Crosscauseway and finishing with ‘Where on Earth is that?’ Well, I found it funny) and hoovered up a few more books. The Ceres Solution was relatively new at that time.

One of the central characters in the book is Denny Hargate, wheelchair bound and embittered whose life is changed when he meets a beautiful woman in an out of the way place called Cotter’s Edge. The adventure starts when he sees her draw a complex pattern in the air with her hand and this makes her disappear instantly.

Shaw brings up some social attitudes within the novel. For instance, the woman/alien, Gretana ty Iltha. is beautiful by Earth standards but very unattractive within her own society. A bold brushstroke of the old saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Assigned and persuaded to go to Earth, which fills her with dread, Gretana arrives on Earth and Shaw begins to reveal the plot slowly. The Moon plays a large and vital part in the story. Working on earth Gretana meets another agent and forms a friendship, against the rules. He, Kelth, informs Gretana and the reader about the influences of the Moon on people, and further develops the plot as well as laying down clues.

The conflict then escalates as it is revealed a radical group of Mollanians are on Earth and they disagree with the Star Trek like non interference policy of the establishment.

The plot slowly unfolds and we find that the Ceres Solution is a radical move by the ‘terrorists’ to free the Terrans from the influences of the Moon.

The novel slowly builds, with Shaw revealing details and clues throughout, until the climax where the Ceres Solution is delivered and mankind is changed forever.

The Ceres Solution is a good solid novel from Shaw, where he takes small things – such as the moon’s influence over us – and expands it into a wondrous and fantastic tale of human struggle. Human struggle against nature, politics, dogma. Shaw weaves the various elements together with flair. He builds characters we learn to like and empathise with – who’d have though anyone would root for a sarcastic wheelchair bound runt? The book ends of the story, a short intro at the beginning and a short piece at the end, highlight and enforce one of the main themes of the book; lifespan. The worlds presented and the ‘technology’ used for space travel are well reasoned and to an extent plausible.

Shaw developed and enhanced ‘ley lines’ and astrology in an inventive and imaginative way, one of the things I feel was a forte of his. The result an enjoyable and entertaining novel.  Fair seasons.

Windows Live Writer and xPollinate Testing

xPollinate is, hopefully the answer to cross blogging in one click. However the post needs to be published before cross blogging.

No help as it is a list of accounts set up already, I don’t see any way to add MySpace or Facebook within xPollinate. Further research needed.

Windows Live Writer Working OK

And publishing to the three blogs is only a matter of a few clicks. There doesn’t seem to be an option to publish to all blogs with one click but I live in hope. One click is better than half a dozen but it is a nifty and neat program.

Quite odd too that I haven’t heard about it before. I have Office 2007 on my computer and Windows Live was installed a part of it. Windows Live comes with several components but I chose only to install Windows Live Writer.

Blogger is ok but it’s not as clean and simple as Wordpress. I suppose it doesn’t really matter now as the plan is to use Windows Live Writer for all blogging. Write once publish thrice.

Windows Live Writer is pretty nifty. It was a14MB download after install. I signed in using the hotmail account I have but have never used and so people can follow me on Hotmail/MSN too.

I didn’t get it to work with MySpace and didn’t try Facebook.

I’ll have to look closer at images as the only one I use images on is the Bob Shaw blog, and those are scanned in and placed in a directory online then referenced in using WordPress: that is a very good and easy to use feature in WordPress. One I like a lot.

First Post on blogger

I’ve installed Windows Live Writer on my computer and hope to use that to post the same blog post to a few blogs. Here’s hopping the boobs keep pointing downward!