compuserve

AOL is acquiring Compuserve's subscribers, as many of you probably already know. Now I'm wondering whether or not to drop my Compuserve account...I have both AOL and CIS accts for work-related stuff but tend to use CIS as little as possible because of the painfully slow response time. I am currently seeking a good personalized news service on the net; I'm willing to pay a service fee as long as it's not exorbitant - any suggestions welcome. So far the best I've found is Excite's "News Tracker" service, which is free. FILMFEST: Went to see "The Kitchen Party" last night, which was premiered at the Uptown as part of the Toronto Film Festival. Entertaining flick; you should all go see it if you get a chance. It was also fun seeing this film two rows behind the cast with the director sitting a row behind us (he gave a brief speech before the film started and there was a Q&A with cast afterwards). Tomorrow I'm seeing "Esmerelda Comes By Night" with my friend Craig.
Sorry for not updating the UT cartoon and adding some new links...I've been really swamped with work lately because of being away (and OFFLINE) on weekends. As much as I love working on the UT site, work-related webstuff (i.e. income!) has to come first. Things should calm down in a few weeks, I hope. NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: In an effort to help organize my incoming mail better, I've created a new email address to separate filk-related mail from work mail. If you're writing to me about UT or filkstuff, please use wow@inkspot.com instead of ohi@inkspot.com (the latter is my general IN box and is generally hundreds of messages deep at any particular time). Thanks.

hugo

I'm one of those people who needs eight hours of sleep a night or I'm a zombie the next day. A crabby and lobotomized zombie, that is. I've never been able to successfully pull off the infamous "all-nighters" in university even in the most urgent situations; I'd inevitably end up asleep across my keyboard, drooling on the spacebar. All this talk about sleep is because I wish I needed less of it. Can you imagine how much more we could accomplish if we could get along with only four hours a sleep a night instead of eight? 1460 extra hours a year! I'm curious about you lot out there...can you get along with less than eight hours a night? Are any of you the mutant types (and I envy you with a passion) who can get along fairly easily with less?
Enough sleep blathering. These days I just have too much to do (the main problem is that I *want* to do all of it!) and simply not enough time. It's amazing, really, how time speeds up as one gets older. When we're children, time seems to drag by one second at a time, a summer can seem like an eternity. Now, it seems only a few days long.

Many thanks to Scott Snyder for volunteering to help maintain some of the Urban Tapestry links pages. He's a sweetie and a gentleman. Check out his web page! Buy his new album, Bardic Lug, which premieres at OVFF!

On to something totally Different - here's a list of the Hugos, for those interested. Thanks to Paula Guran for posting this list in her writers' newsletter.

1997 HUGO WINNERS Announced at the 55th WorldCon in San Antonio

Best Novel: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Best Novella: Blood of The Dragon by George R. R. Martin
Best Novelette: Bicycle Repairman by Bruce Sterling
Best Short Story: The Soul Selects Her Own Society by Connie Willis
Best Non-Fiction Book: Time & Chance by L. Sprague de Camp
Best Dramatic Presentation: Babylon 5 "Severed Dreams"
Best Pro Editor: Gardner Dozois  (Asimov's)
Best Professional Artist: Bob Eggleton
Best Semi-prozine: Locus
Best Fanzine: Mimosa
Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist: William Rotsler
John W. Campbell Award (best new writer) Michael A. Burstein

Also presented at the Hugo Ceremony: The Seiyun Award (Japanese Hugo)
Best Foreign Short Story: "Heads"  by Greg Bear
Best Foreign Novel:  END OF AN ERA by Robert J. Sawyer

junk e-mail

Today's pet peeve is JUNK EMAIL. I hate it. However, I don't consider all unsolicited mass mailings equally vile. If it seems to be targeted at my specific interests (e.g. writing, editing), then I don't mind as much. The worst type of junk email is the kind with a completely contentless subject header, like "hi!", the type that masquerades as personal email. I'm forced to open the email to see what the message is actually about (another of my pet peeves is blank subject headers, but I'll leave that for another day).
My current most disliked junk email is the one with the subject header "Is Your Website A Secret?"...please tell me I'm not the only one who gets this. I get a zillion copies of this (well maybe not a zillion) because of all the email aliases I have published on my Inkspot website (editor@inkspot.com, webmaster@inkspot.com, and so on). HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK (this shows you what an exciting life I lead): finding out that Shopper's Drug Mart is carrying those packages of mini chocolate bars again...probably because Hallowe'en is next month. SOMETHING TO TRY IF YOU'RE BORED ONLINE: Try different domain names and see where you go e.g. "http://www.blabla.com" where blabla is a word of your choice. If you find anything interesting or surprising, please let me know and I might post it in my blatherings. UPDATE: The apartment across the hall is still empty. SCHEDULESTUFF: I'm going to NYC with my friend Cathy this weekend, so no blatherings during that time though I might succumb to temptation and post to the blatherchat from one of the cyber-cafes near Times Square.
TODAY'S SITE: IEMMC - Formed in
May of 1997 as a trade association dedicated to promoting the
responsible and ethical use of direct email as a marketing tool on the
Internet. You can register your email address to get it removed from a number of bulk emailer lists. I registered mine last night; I'll let you know know if it seems to have any effect. UPDATE: Steve Brinich reports that the IEMMC site is a hoax, and actually confirms email addresses to be added to junk email lists. (!!) Forget the previous site of the day announcement. New site of the day: Spam Fighting Links. One of the best articles is by Gary McGath and is called Self Protection on the Net.

new york

Got back from New York last night - had a WONDERFUL time. Cathy and I stayed at the Carlton on 29th St. near Madison...nice hotel, though parts of it are being renovated. Checked out bookstores (loved The Strand the best), street festivals (my favourite was Village Heritage Day on Greenwich Ave...lots of folk music and crafts), shopping (Macy's, Bloomingdale's, FAO Schwartz), food (warm pretzels with mustard! yum!!), shows (Annie at the Martin Beck Theatre), flea markets, touristy stuff (Empire State building). More stuff later...came back to a huge pile of work and email.
I am sadly behind in email; please be patient. Scott Snyder is now maintaining the UT Links section. THANK YOU, SCOTT!!!!
Inklings is over 20,000 subscribers, woohoo!
Site of the Day: Newsbot.

new york visit

Went to New York on the weekend for a friend's wedding. Loved the New York Public Library! My window herb garden survived, but looks a bit needy. Please help me test out Inkspot's new chat room tonight (kindly hosted by The Writer's BBS)! Do drop by between 9:30-10:30 pm and say hi. Here are some instructions on how to get there. Site of the Day: Welcome To Total New York.