Does anybody know why my blog is behaving so oddly? I have the thing working properly on all current browsers on my PC, and on all Mozilla related browsers on the Mac, but when IE5 on a Mac looks at this page... the content table goes to something like eight times the width of the page. What's going on?
Suggestions on how I can fix this (and, incidentally, spruce up this page) would be gratefully accepted.
Tell me something: a solar cell in space -- about the size of the one powering the international space station, say -- collects how much energy?
Would that power be greater than the power spent to get that solar cell into orbit and keep it there? Could that power be converted into something useful (say hydrogen) or otherwise beamed back to Earth as a power generator?
Probably not. Don't mind me; I'm just dreaming again...
The pollution must have been pretty bad, today. I was stuffy nosed and sneezy all through work, and I wasn't the only one.
I'm scheduled to workshop part of The Young City at Kathy Stinson's class next week; I finally decided upon what passage to read before the group. I hastily typed out the first three chapters of the story and handed them out to people so they have some idea of the context.
I've handwritten most of the first five chapters of The Young City and in typing up the first three chapters, I only made a few cuts. Even so, the total word count, according to Microsoft Word, is 11,379. Compare that to 9831 words for the first three chapters of Rosemary and Time and 9702 words for the first three chapters of Fathom Five. And chapters four and five of The Young City are long ones. The Young City is taking a long time to set up, and that could be a problem. We'll see.
For my reading, I'll be picking the scene where Peter and Rosemary are dumped into Toronto in 1884 and chased through the streets before getting a chance to really assess what happens to them. It's a key scene, full of detail, action, but also a lot of dialogue. If there are any pacing problems, they're here. We'll see what the audience thinks.
I think :Buffy: and :Angel: were about on par yesterday. I hate Caleb. I know I'm meant to, but I hate him to the point that I want to turn off the TV. While that's effective, and good acting on the part of Nathan Fillion, that's probably a little dangerous. So, I just keep telling myself, two more weeks till the character's dead. Two more weeks till the character is dead.
The mutiny scene at the end of Buffy made the episode, in my opinion. Aside from the fact that I agree with the rest of the group's actions (Buffy was losing it), all of the character dynamics there were very strong. The proto-slayer's carping I could have done without, but Willow and Giles and Xander agreeing with the protp-slayers, each for their own valid reasons, was well done. Anya's speech was the highlight of this scene, with Faith's own fearful reaction to suddenly being made the leader being a close second. Dawn's decision to stand up to her sister for the good of the group just capped things off. All of the interplay there: Dawn-Buffy, Faith-Wood, and especially Faith-Buffy at the very end, was fascinating to watch, and it enhanced the feel throughout the episode of Sunnydale falling apart. I will say this: though the First has done nothing, the producers continue to cast the villain as a convincing and apocalyptic threat. Let's hope they're able to carry through.
:Angel:, on the other hand, just kept on building from the exceptionally strong episode of the week before, with Jasmine getting stronger and progressively more frightening. But more than that, there was a nice symmetry to this episode. Remember, at the teaser, Angel stays behind to face almost certain death and orders the others to leave him ("Someone who knows the truth has to live"). This is entirely flipped around at the end while the others are holding the door against the National Guard and Wesley orders Angel through the portal into Jasmine's old world (right down to the same line of dialogue). Okay, maybe it's a little obvious, but it's a nice touch that really sets off the episode.
:Angel:'s fourth season is over in two weeks (I hope it gets renewed). Buffy's final episode debuts in three weeks. It's going to be an interesting May.
April 30th was Erin's 31st birthday. She received a light dinner and a massage from me, and then spent a lot of time getting Gawaine and the Green Knight ready for submission to Groundwood Books. She managed to work through a particularly tricky part, and that perhaps was her best present of the day. Why don't you check out her work and offer up a comment or two? I think the project is going to be really special.