robert.admin – Page 189 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 25, 2014

Steampunk (review)

I was surprised that so many people who saw me with Steampunk, a collection of short stories by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, have no idea what it’s about. The genre is that buried beneath the broader field of scifi, I suppose. For those in that number, originally there was ‘Cyberpunk’ (scifi stories set in a gritty neoworld where half the tale takes place online). For movie goers, think The Matrix. Then came the retromovement, to take this gritty new-age world and shift it back a century or more, back to Dickens’ Victorian London, with cog gadgets and steam powered things […]

January 23, 2014

Time in a bottle (DOG EAR)

It’s no secret to writers that time is a precious commodity. Between work, bicycle commuting, and sleeping, a big chunk of the day vanishes. And worse, I’m going to list some stupid things that really pull me away from writing. Model Railroading: How can toy trains get in the way of a writer’s career? Well, I’m VP of a big club. We need to keep the lights on so it means running operations (to make the members happy) and doing shows (to get even more members). Normally Monday and Wednesday nights, I’m over at the club working on our sectional […]

January 22, 2014

OpsLog – LM&O – 01/22/2014

It’s been that sort of day. We had an audit walkthrough today, all across lunch. And the weight measuring group thing didn’t go so good for me. Then that production failure and the process-dripping patch. Just problems problems problems. While driving towards the crete-heap of Oburg with its snarled traffic, I really felt the urge to get off at my exit and just go home, to have dinner and play Spelunky or read or whatever. I wasn’t in the mood for the scheduled ops. But we make our commitments and hold to them, so into the swirling hell of traffic […]

January 19, 2014

Eidolon: The Thousand Year Ghost (Review)

Okay, I’m a sucker for free books and off-the-main-rack books. Like strange movies (“Robert Movies”, as a friend calls them), you’ll get some really unique stuff, not always good but at least different. Eidolon: The Thousand Year Ghost is a young adult novel (such novels have become more numerous as adults grow less likely to read and more like Morlocks). Usually that doesn’t pose too much a problem – everyone (but me) loved Harry Potter. And China Mielville (damn him for his abilities!) can turn out a good kiddy novel when it suits. Anyway, we start this story with a […]

January 16, 2014

Who are our readers? (DOG EAR)

This question actually perplexes me. Who reads our books? Not only our blockbuster, publishing-house-backed books, but our little indie books. Have you ever looked over your fellow citizens, wondering who reads? Those heavyset man-children who wear flipflops and a ballcap into restaurants? The arrested youth who define our movies as simplistic drivel requiring only minimal attention to follow and only a touch more to predict? And desperately unhappy political worrywart? That Walmart black Friday pre-dawn shopper? The self-proclaimed over-stressed working mother? There is a 90% illiteracy rate in the poorer district in town. The bookshelves (limited as they are, pressed […]

January 12, 2014

ShowLog – Deland – 1/11&12/2014

It’s four thirty in the afternoon and Frank and I have just about exchanged our life stories. It’s after two days of early setup, countless miles of model train running, of hundreds of little kids and answering questions and chatting with model enthusiasts. The Deland Train show always takes some effort but brings in some nice scratch, so we’re happy to attend. The thing is (and I’ve mentioned this before), we’ve got space-age modules now. They set up like a dream, and close up as fast as an umbrella. We can go from trains running to ‘away all trailers’ in […]

January 12, 2014

The Shelter (Review)

The Shelter is another one of those marketing uploads onto Amazon (hey, I’m thinking about it too), a short story that leads to a greater story. This one is for free. You’ll pay for the rest. It has some good things going for it. We open in an apartment in a failing urban setting where everything is falling apart. Little Sunni is garbed in her ballerina slippers, practicing her lessons while doper-mom Shannon wonders where the latest man in her life has run off to. With food riots cracking open the city, it’s a bad day to get evicted, but […]

January 11, 2014

ShowLog – Deland – 1/10-11/2015

ome math… When I ran a train through John’s scale speedometer, I tended to hit 33mph or so. Given that one slow train (mine) tends to set the pace for everyone on our Jacksonville mainline, we can assume ALL the trains were hitting that speed. Note that this, as well as all my other estimates, are low-ball. There was an average of 3-5 trains on the layout at any time. We’ll lowball with that and say 3. That means, every hour, our three trains clocking 33mph were running 100 scale miles. Or 550 scale miles each day, for a total […]

January 9, 2014

Life imitating art (DOG EAR)

I‘m a cyclist-commuter. Bicycles catch my eye. But none has better than the one a month or two back, a bright orange bike (and I do mean orange – wheels, chains, everything) ridden by an orange man (and I do mean orange – a full body stocking (how did he SEE in that thing???)). That was notable – I mentioned it to my wife. Strange. Then a few days later, going into a local fast food place, I saw another orange bike chained up outside. Now, the tire was flat and it didn’t look like it had been ridden in […]

January 5, 2014

A feast for Crows (Review)

So this is now, what? 2400 pages in? You know that most people don’t read 2400 pages of novels – total! – over their entire lives. And this is the fourth book of this massive series, The Game of Thrones. So far, Westeros is playing out like a game of Risk. It looks like House Lannister has finally won, but then someone gets three matching cards and suddenly forty armies pop onto the board. Now its the ironmen of the Greyjoys. And then the desertmen of Martell are back in (well, they haven’t moved yet, but they are like a […]