Stupid Cycle Lanes

Just been sent this great site (www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.uk/facility-of-the-month) with a plethora of examples of silly cycle lanes. The one above is in York (pic creditted to one Ian Bromsgrove). You can click on the left arrow at the top of the page on the site to go back through the months...

One for gas guzzlers to enjoy at the thought of all those wretched cyclists having a hard time, while the cyclists can simply either laugh or despair at the stupidity of councils everywhere.

No local examples (although there is a classic from Blackpool): I'm sure they would be appreciated. Obviously, since Lancaster is one of Britain's "Cycling Towns" (and getting shedloads of money to be so) local cyclists don't want similar stupidity to happen here. Given that the council's usual concept of road planning for non car users seems to consist largely of building pelican crossings at locations only where (and after) people have been killed crossing the road, you can see they have every right to be worried...

I'm sure there must be an equivalent site for stupid road layouts, but I haven't found it yet. Of course, the funny side of this evaporates when you realise just how much all these civic works cost...

Infoquake

My friend Lou Anders, who works over at science fiction & fantasy publisher Pyr (www.pyrsf.com), just sent me some info on a book that just came out which is very different from the usual SF novel, one he hopes will have an appeal beyond the typical reader into a broader readership of thrillers, mysteries, and even nonfiction fans, readers of Wired and Slashdot, etc.

Lou's usually a modest guy (I think it must be something to do with his Deep South upbringing!), so when he e-mails me about a book like this, I sit up and take notice.

I checked out the book's web site, quickly found I could identify with some of the author's real world experiences in working in the Internet industry in the late 1990s, and placed an order at Amazon.co.uk .

Lou describes David Louis Edelman's Infoquake as "the world's first science fiction business novel, set in a dot-com like industry of the future. It's a world of high tech product launches, corporate rivalry, industrial espionage, government interferance, etc...

"We're describing it as 'Dune meets the Wall Street Journal,'" he told me, and it's had some great reviews from the likes of Publishers Weekly ("a slick high-finance melodrama and dizzying technical speculation lift Edelman's SF debut.... Natch's being a borderline sociopath makes him extremely creative in business tactics". )

Edelman has a background in Web programming and marketing and has built an amazing website in support of his book, (www.infoquake.net). The site features audio downloads/podcasts of the first seven chapters of his book, online excerpts, original artwork, and a wealth of additional background material on the world of Infoquake, much of it unique to the site.

"We're marketing this book to the usual science fiction magazines and websites," says Lou, "but I feel this one really has appeal beyond that audience. It should appeal to business people, fans of technotrillers, technophiles, people who read Wired magazine or slashdot. A whole host of people, in other words, beyond the usual suspects!

"I think this book deserves to find its audience and that that audience exists beyond the normal pool of readers we usually market to."

Pushing one of his books like this is not something Lou makes a habit of, so when he plugs a new title like this, he really wants it to attract some attention (not that he doesn't want people to buy other books he edits, but I can count on one had the number of times he's really pushed one of his projects like this to his friends in an e-mail).

Check out www.infoquake.net and see what you think.

Mike Conroy on the BBC

20/7/06: Well, sort of... longtime Comics International contributor Mike Conroy has just done his first job for the BBC, providing research for Waiting for Superman.

Broadcast on Radio One on Monday night, it includes input from Dan Jurgens, Denny O'Neil and Grant Morrison as well as Superman Returns director Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh.

You can hear it by logging on to www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/documentaries and clicking the Waiting for Superman link.

Special Delivery Frog

Our champion hunter cat delivered this frog this morning: I'm sure she's trying to persuade us not to keep messing up our house (we're having our roof done) -- and thinks gifts like this will persuade us...

Still, at least this delivery was alive and more than happy to be rescued (so happy it jumped all over the hallway before I could recapture it after taking this picture). The dead baby birds I can do without.