Tags: thor

Brian Aldiss: ‘These days I don’t read any science fiction. I only read Tolstoy’ | Books | The Guardian

A profile of Brian Aldiss in The Guardian.

I still can’t quite believe I managed to get him for last year’s Brighton SF.

Thoreau 2.0 - XOXO Conference Talk

Maciej’s talk from this year’s XOXO—excellent stuff!

Internet Archive Search: collection:”thesoundofyoungamerica”

Thanks to Jason Scott, every episode of The Sound Of Young America ever recorded is now stored on the Internet Archive. Get huffduffing!

Designing the Wider Web

The dominance of the desktop browser is over – the web has become wider. After so long painting in a tiny corner of the canvas, it’s time to broaden our approach.

It’s understandable that the community is somewhat nervous about the changes ahead. So far, we’ve mostly responded by scratching around for device-specific tips, but this isn’t sustainable or scalable. We should transcend “platformism” and instead learn to design for diverse contexts, displays, connectivity, and inputs by breaking devices down into first principles. Instead of the defective dichotomy of the “desktop” and “mobile” web, designers should aim to create great user experiences using the truly fluid nature of the web.

NYRblog - Atwood in the Twittersphere - The New York Review of Books

Margaret Atwood is all kinds of wonderful.

Techno-utopian fail - The National Newspaper

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you have created.

Hamish Hamilton: Five Dials

A beautiful PDF literary magazine, designed to be printed out and read away from the computer. I'd still love to see an HTML version.

Okay, so the name of the site sounds a bit like the literature equivalent of Girls Gone Wild but why haven’t I come across this site before?

It’s a veritable huffduffing bonanza, with talks from Neal Stephenson, David Sedaris, Simon Winchester, Isabel Allende, Terry Pratchet, John Hodgman, Neil Gaiman, Barack Obama and …um… Les Claypool.

All of them are licensed under Creative Commons attribution, non- commercial, no derivatives.

We Tell Stories

Aleks pointed me to this sort-of ARG involving authors in London. Could be good fun.

Fiction Liberation Front--The Goods

Science-fiction author Lews Shiner is releasing many of his short stories online for free (HTML or PDF).

Comment is free: Gotta have faith?

"The repetition this week of the weary old canard that atheism is 'a faith proposition' shows that our archbishops need a lesson in semantics."

Coming Soon: Mobile Web Design, The Book (authored by Cameron Moll)

Cameron is writing a book. You know it's going to be good.

After getting off the plane from Texas, I made my way through Gatwick airport towards the train station to catch a train down to Brighton. I saw Malcolm Gladwell walking by.

Maybe it was the spirit of South by Southwest still coursing through my veins or maybe it was just tiredness from the long flight, but I decided “what the heck?” and I went up and introduced myself to him, told him I liked The Tipping Point and bid him a good day.

It was one of those snap decisions.