A moment of silence

Some of you regular readers may have noticed that Mike S is no longer responding to posts. Unfortunately, he was killed in a traffic accident on Thursday, March 19th. Mike was my best friend for 26 years, fellow technology enthusiast, nerd, gentleman and scholar. He is sorely missed. More details can be had here

In the weeks and months to come, as life begins whatever shape will become the new normal now that he's gone, I'm sure there are little bits of the future that will come along, and I'll think to myself, "Mike would have loved that." or even "Mike and I would definately have to argue about that." I find there's some curious comfort in that fact. It's already happened once so far. One of Mike's enduring passions was the advent of machines that can replicate themselves and make other machines. This machine leans that direction.

The wind be at your back, old friend.

-JRS

Little bits of the future keep arriving

Walter Jon Williams posted recently about his book HardWired, and how the present has caught up with the things he predicted therein. I've had the same experience from time to time with the LookingGlass world. What's worse is that unlike WJW, I still have unpublished (and one more unwritten) work set in that world. Damned inconvenient, that. Anyway. For those who've read Looking Glass and/or Irreconcilable Differences and wondered what I was getting at with the whole Penguini thing, well... pretty much something like this PicoTux except with more network interfaces on it.

-JRS