Religious fanatics making the world less friendly one encounter at a time

Okay, so this is about a rather silly encounter I had yesterday. In the grand scheme of things it didn’t even rate as ‘minor’, but it still bothered me: I was walking my dog when a woman approached me to ask for directions. I pointed her in the direction, but rather than leaving me alone, she told me she was an evangelist and started following me around. I tried to tell her that I really wasn’t interested, but no matter what I said I couldn’t shake her. From the outside I have to admit that the whole encounter was probably funny as hell, as I was basically going around in circles, but the last thing I wanted to do was to bring her home with me (a puppy would probably have had better luck). Anyway, in the end I told her that I respected her beliefs, but that I asked her to respect mine, and walked away (taking a rather long detour I could ill afford, as by then I really, really had to pee).

As I said, it was a trivial incident, but the thing is that the next time someone asks for directions I will probably be more inclined to keep going than to lend a hand. That was that woman’s ‘good deed’ for the day, her way of making the world a better place.

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Easier isn’t always better

Yesterday I was doing a bit of housecleaning in my bookmarks, and in addition to a million dead links I found a few old favorites that predate the advent of social media. Most of these have long since been abandoned (and in their pages too broken links are legion), but one thing that struck me was the care that went into putting them together, the depth of knowledge they contained… and the fact that they are ad free. Granted, many of these were/are maintained by universities, but the thing is that back when maintaining a site meant learning html, and an update was a major undertaking. It was something to be proud of, and it showed. That gave rise to sites such as:

Bibliotheca Augustana (world literature in the original language)

Visualizing Chaucer (one of a number of Robbins Library Digital Projects)

The Camden House (Sherlock Holmes)

The thing is that visiting those sites reminded me of what the web was like in the early days, and while there is no denying that social media has some advantages, the fact that pretty much anyone can post anything without giving it much thought hasn’t come cheaply. In fact my little trip down memory lane was a rather painful reminder of the web we lost as a result… and of the fact that easier isn’t always better.

When a book has a mind of its own

I am currently dealing with a rather weird situation, and I still don’t know where this is going. What happened was that as I sat down to plan a sequel that sequel turned around and basically hijacked the first part, so at least for the time being it looks like the sequel will morph into a book that will incorporate as alternative version of the first part… of course, that can change. Oh well, it’s not like I expected my books to play by the rules anyway.

Horsesh*t (history/humor)

The Shadow Walker (science fiction)

Homo Ex Machina (science fiction)

The Eyes of the Dead

Laira (science fiction)

The case against having my own domain

As you may have noticed, I decided to stick with a cheap-sounding, free, URL for this site, rather than paying for a domain of my own. I do realize that that does not come across as all that professional, but in the end I figured that the pros outweighed the cons, why? Well, there are a couple of reasons.

First of all there is the fact that I am leaning towards having a couple of separate blogs for different purposes, and integrating them as best I can via their menus.  This one will focus on my books and maybe on some of my experiences as a writer struggling to get the word out about the fact that, even though my refusal to sign up for a facebook  account would seem to suggest otherwise, I do exist.

That means that there will be no posts about politics, pets or pet peeves here (and also that posts may be few and far between).

The second reason has to do with the fact that, if for whatever reason I fail to renew my domain, all links to my site/blog would  immediately become dead ends. By choosing the free option I’m hoping to add a measure of stability to the whole thing. I don’t know if this bet will pay off, and as usual I reserve the right to change my mind, but at least for the time being that’s where I stand.