Last year William Gibson went on a book tour for his latest novel, The Peripheral. I don't have much to say about when he came to the Bay Area because I was (predictably) sick and not running on all 64 bits. Here are the pictures..

Let's try this again, without the "Oops, I just lost everything you wrote."

Another Samhain has come and gone, which means that we have yet another chance to make things turn out for the best. Lyssa is still recovering from surgery a couple of weeks ago. Her cast was swapped out for a one-piece fitted fibreglass cast which means that her achilles tendon is healing up nicely. Neither of us had realized just how much energy repairing soft tissue damage takes out of you; Lyssa's able to move around in short bursts only so she's been spending most of her …

Yep, once again it's October 31st, and Halloween, Samhain, whatever you choose to call it is here for a few scant hours.

No costume parties for me this year, I'm afraid - nowhere to go and no time to do anything. I can't honestly say that this sits well with me, but I guess that's a sign of getting older: You do what you need to do however you can. Oh, well. just like undergrad.

With that cheerful sentiment, I think I'll leave you with links to some of my favourite reading and listening these days. First on the list is …

The theme of our annual Samhain party was simple: Comic books: DC vs. Marvel. DC comics, sparing no expense, sent some of its heavy hitters from their Vertigo imprint to represent, vis a vis Papa Midnight from Hellblazer and King Mob from the Invisibles. Marvel called in the services of Rorschach from Watchmen.

Pictures from our Samhain party in 2005.

Jeffrey Skilling, former president of Enron, was sentenced to 24 years in Club Fed for his role in the Enron scandal.

Famous sci-fi authors tell stories in six words or less.

The Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey has voted to recognise same-sex marriages. This is entirely too awesome: Robotic Dalek pumpkins, complete with propulsion motors and a remote control so you can chase the trick-or-treaters down the sidewalk.

They have no problems with forgetting about a certain movie, but when the fans start producing the swag that the production company didn't want, they sic the lawyers on …