I thought it was worse

Your Mind is 55% Cluttered

Your mind is starting to get cluttered, and as a result, it's a little harder for you to keep focused. Try to let go of your pettiest worries and concerns. The worrying is worse than the actual problems!

How Cluttered is Your Mind?

All shall pass

Fascinating story in the Washington Post today about a world-class musician who played outside L'Enfant Plaza - and almost no one stopped to listen.

Pearls Before Breakfast

(Found via Colleen Doran's blog)

Now reading (April '07)

Since I don't use this for much else now that the cat is okay (reminds me, must post more photos of Her Nibs), I thought I'd update with my reading list for the last month or so:

• The Space Opera Renaissance - by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (who also edited the wonderful The Ascent of Wonder, another fantastic anthology). Space Opera, when done well, is probably my favorite genre in science fiction, moreso even than hard sf. This one includes several of my favorite authors, as well, including Dan Simmons, Peter Hamilton and Iain M. Banks. I found a number of authors I haven't tried yet, as well.
  
• "Honorverse" - been reading my way through David Weber's Honor Harrington books after reading one of his short stories in the above collection. So far I'm through Field of Dishonor while I wait for the library to get me the next book in the series. I think The Honor of the Queen is my favorite so far, though.
• The Complete Hammer's Slammers, volume 1 - not as good as I'd hoped. I had to slog through a few of the stories here, although a few were decent. Library doesn't have volume two, and I didn't like it enough to buy.
• Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest - I liked the HBO series a lot, so I figured I'd read the source material and see how much of it they got right. Turns out the things I thought were probably exaggerations may have been toned down for the TV series. Wow.
• Accelerando - I've only read a few books that really deal with the concept of the technological singularity head-on (Yay, Vernor Vinge!) and this one has done a pretty good job with it so far. I'm starting the seventh of nine short stories that make up the narrative, and so far I like it a lot better than Singularity Sky, which is the only other thing I've read by Stross.
• Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons. Re-read both while I was waiting on other books from the library.
  

Yeah, that was in the last month. I'll try to keep this updated as I read, but no guarantees...

My favorite April Fool's post from this year

Comes courtesy of Ironic Sans: the discovery of a new species of falcon (trust me, it's short and worth reading).