Archive for September, 2008


Calling all Ne’er-Do-Wells

The Evil League of Evil is recruiting!

The rum­blings you’ve been hear­ing in the crim­inal under­ground indeed are true: At long last, we are seek­ing new applic­ants to the League.

For what pur­pose, I hear you cry?

The best applic­ants, as determ­ined by the League or its des­ig­nated agents, will be included on a spe­cial DVD com­mem­or­at­ing our .

Yes, it’s a com­pet­i­tion to be included in the bonus fea­tures of the Dr Horrible DVD. Awesome, and a great excuse to fin­ish my own freeze ray.

The Time for Words…

It’s almost October, which means that the spectre of NaNoWriMo looms large across the next two months. Barely a moment will pass over the next four weeks where I’m not plan­ning my novel, or worse — wor­ry­ing that I haven’t yet planned my novel.

I was going to write a work of near-future sci­ence fic­tion, but a recent post by Charlie Stross claims that’s almost impossible given cur­rent world events. I cer­tainly agree with his sen­ti­ment, but many of his argu­ments (espe­cially about plot obsol­ence in the time it takes to pub­lish) are far less rel­ev­ant to what will more than likely be a van­ity work. An unpub­lished van­ity work, at that.

At least the new house meets my every fantasy of a writer’s home. Large garden, plenty of space, excel­lent pubs and cof­fee shops nearby. Not for­get­ting R and J — two won­der­ful writers (and friends!) are my house­mates and fel­low suf­fer­ers of November’s death of fifty-thousand cuts.

Even L is join­ing in this year, so hope­fully the house will be a suit­able retreat with writ­ing a con­stant activity.

What’s the Weather Like on Mars?

 

Martian Blizzard - by Uqbar

Martian Blizzard — by Uqbar

According to NASA, the Phoenix Lander has detec­ted snow fall­ing from clouds 4km above its land­ing site. Whilst the snow is vapour­ising before it hits the ground, this is a remark­able obser­va­tion of Mars’ ves­ti­gial atmo­spheric pro­cesses in motion.

Django Decorator for View Rate Limits

This is a handy little snip­pet that allows you to set rate lim­its for views in Django.

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