robert.admin – Page 175 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 17, 2014

Giving worse that I got (DOG EAR)

kay, I’ve cautioned about saying things on Facebook and pondered about writing train reports differently depending on how well I knew the person. Now comes a cautionary tale about writing reviews. A while back, I reviewed Jenessa Gayheart’s book Eidolon: The Thousand Year Ghost. I had some good criticisms to make, specifically involving the technicalities of lighter-than-airship travel. But I was a little… um… snarky in my review. I remember thinking that while I wrote it, and thought, yeah, but it adds zest. I’ve also mentioned that I have to monitor my comment stream for spam (that’s why you don’t […]

August 14, 2014

Vacation (Dog Ear)

s a kid, I remember our vacations (such as they were for a poor-as-church-mice Navy family), stopping at my Grandparent’s place at Buckeye Lake, Ohio. It was a nice lake-front cottage, the type with creaky floors, old wagon wheels suspended and fitted out with light bulbs, and just-decommissioned outhouses serving as toolsheds. Croquet was a very adventurous game, a random contest amid the gnarly oak roots. Most mornings I’d come out and see my father sitting all alone on the deck, bamboo pole optimistically deployed, a silhouette against the silent lake. He never caught dinner, just mid-sized catfish he’d throw […]

August 10, 2014

A Dance of Dragons (Review)

f you think dragons are big, you haven’t seen anything yet. This monster is 959 pages, and it’s the fifth of the Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series. So If you haven’t started this, you’ve got some reading ahead. And yes, overall, I’d say the journey has been worth it. So for those who arn’t involved, The Game of Thrones is a massive story about hundreds of people in a fantasy world seemingly cursed to be stuck in its medieval period for, like, forever. Think of that – no scientific advances, no gunpowder or cars or […]

August 3, 2014

Trees of Change (Review)

rees of Change is the second of a three book YA series authored by Janessa Gayheart, the first of which (The Thousand Year Ghost) I gave a reserved review. The author contacted me and asked me consider the series as a whole. So, as a writer, another rung of that long ladder has been reached: I got a free review copy. Anyway, even though you could just follow the link above to remember the deal, young Hickory lives in a world a thousand years in the future, altered by some titanic change that swept everything away. Portland is buried under […]

August 3, 2014

ShowLog – Orlando Fairgrounds – 8/3/2014

‘ll admit that a two day weekend show is tough. We need to run for six hours a day and then pack and go. And that’s six hours of running with kids, of asking people not to touch (or, ferchristsakes, lean on) the layout. But today, while long, was easy. Had a sizable crew show up on time. Steve brought donuts*. Everyone there grabbed a rag and some alcohol and cleaned their way around the layout. Fifteen minutes until open, trains started coming out from Bowden Yard and the NS North Jax. When people came in, we were running. And […]

July 31, 2014

Power to the People (DOG EAR)

t’s a long weekend at the beach. I’m working on my blogs (just finished Lola!) and the wife is reading her kindle. Then she frowns. “I’m running out of power.” A deeper frown. “I didn’t bring my charger.” Welcome to another chapter of my continuing drama – What’s wrong with eReaders. Yeah, it’s marvelous technology. You can highlight things that catch your fancy. You can flip back and forth. You can even search through text (the great “So who the hell is this?” function). And for me, looting Project Gutenberg has been a dream. But there are problems. My reader […]

July 30, 2014

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/30/2014

ve run operations on this railroad for something like thirteen years, which comes out to about 130 sessions. Yeah, I know how things work. And that’s why, when I backed my favorite GP-7s onto the front of the Silver Bullet One, out of Bound Brook and running three hours late, I knew things were running hard outside. See, I was in staging, a hidden yard in the back of the railroad which is pretty much “backstage” to our little drama. A double-ended yard, it simulates both ends of the division. A train leaves one end, drives all the way across […]

July 27, 2014

What happened to Orlando (Review)

ne of the good things about having a local independent book market (called, surprisingly Bookmarket (get the pun?)) is that you will see all sorts of offerings that you won’t see at your local Barnes and Noble (and that you’d never find on your non-local Amazon)). Case in point: What Happened to Orlando. This is a collection of short stories by local young (teen) authors describing the end of Orlando. What a gas this is – not since Alas Babylon have I grooved in the destructions of local landmarks. As HG Wells said of War of the Worlds, in research, […]

July 20, 2014

Another Brick in the Moon (Review)

n this story, Adam Roberts does what I enjoy (when it’s done well) – he takes an older established story and polishes, reworks and updates it until it shines. And in this case, he focuses on The Brick Moon, reviewed HERE. So here, our narrator Charles Bann, so very alive in our own gritty modern-day world, is hardly cut from heroic cloth. Mentioned in passing (and by his own account) as something less than a ladies man, a blind date who dumps him tosses him a bone in the form of a contact who knows something about “The Transcript”. And […]

July 17, 2014

Beach Books (DOG EAR)

t’s the weekend of July 4th and we’re out at the beach. The wife and I are rounding off her three-mile daily walk (and, frankly, sweating our glands out through our pores). And while I’m trying to distract myself from the salty sting in my eyes, I’m noticing all the beach books cracked open. That’s cool. Everyone likes a beach book. It’s one of the icons of Me-ism, just sitting in a chair on the sands, enjoying a low-IQ kettle-boiler. In fact, many reviewers (myself included, I believe) have reviewed a fun books as a great “beach book”. Yeah, all […]