A review in Danish

/Looking Glass/ got a nice review today. That always makes my day. To actually read this review, though, I had to work a bit, since as you can see, it's not in English. My first thought, from the spelling, was German, but this didn't translate more than every fifth or sixth word. Then I caught the occasional slashed o character and realized I was looking at a Scandinavian language. Translating from Norwegian gave me bits and pieces, but a lot of the vocabulary wasn't being translated. When I studied Norwegian in college, one of the things I was told is that Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are close relatives, and that Danes can read Norwegian, but it sounds different and Swedes can understand it, but it's written differently. Given that nearly twenty year old tidbit, I tried Danish, and got a pretty darn good translation. Why does Google Translate do so well with Scandinavian languages? Well, Modern English inherited its sentence structure from Scandinavian languages, so presumably all the translation software has to do is translate the words themselves, for which it does not have to understand the meaning. Surprisingly effective.

Getting back to the review, I sometimes wonder how a given reader stumbles across my work, but seldom moreso than today. Whoever you are, mange tak. :)

Click here for the translated version.

-JRS

Followup to "It'd Be Faster by Carrier Pigeon

Turns out there's an RFC spec, RFC 1149 for A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, and a second, RFC 2549 which adds Quality of Service info.

According to the Wikipedia article on the matter, both specs were April fools jokes, 9 years apart, and IPoAC was actually implemented on one occasion by the Bergin Linux user group in late April of 2001 for a brief test of 9 packets. The resulting ping data is included in the wikipedia article.

So the joke, it would seem, is on me. :)

-JRS

My Schedule for Mile Hi Con 41

My Schedule for Mile Hi Con 41

So the schedule seems to be nailed down, and I have to say I'm in some awesome panels. Only two, but two I can really sink my teeth into. I'm also thrilled to be in the Mile Hi Con Meet Munch and Mingle/Autograph Alley. I will be keeping company with a /lot/ of really talented people at that. I also have a reading, at which I'll be reading from /Irreconcilable Differences/ and, time permitting, possibly a teaser from /Einstein's Blues/, which I'm working on now. Even my wife hasn't seen anything from Einstein's Blues yet. :)

So, the schedule as of now is:

Friday, Oct. 24, 3:00pm Grand Mesa B-C Stage: Sci-Fi High Finance.
Friday, Oct. 24, 8:00pm - 9:00pm Atrium: MileHiCon Meet, Munch, and Mingle/Autograph Alley

Saturday: nothing scheduled.

Sunday, October 25, Noon Mesa Verde C: Reading with CT Adams
Sunday, October 25, 1:00PM Wind River B: Being Human

Looking forward to being at the con. MHC is always a fun time.

-JRS

Mile Hi Con

Mile Hi Con 41 is coming - October 23d to the 25th. My wife and I will be there. I am on the schedule for several interesting panels, as well as a reading and time in autograph alley. But please don't be shy. If you run into me in the hallway and have something by me you want signed, please by all means let me know. This kind of thing makes my day.

Mile Hi Con is a great con. The lines are short, the content is good, the people are friendly, the art show first class, and then there's the critter crunch - a robot combat thing that predates all the robot wars games on tv in the 90s. Good fun, and at only 42 bucks a head at the door for the whole weekend,

Click here for their website.

-JRS