The internetz giveth, the internetz taketh. Just wanted to mention that while the net saps away a lot of time, as I am wont to spend far too much time browsing to my favorite author blogs, agent blogs, message boards and whatnot; but on the other hand, at some points the people you interact with there do stimulate you to get back to it.
A fairly chance conversation with someone on the sffchronicles Publishing board, followed up by some private messages, while not completely writing-related, has brought back the urge to write. And to write right now, tonight, as soon as possible. Strange how some little things do that to you.

Expect normal blogging service to resume gradually, starting today. Our baby boy has finally come home yesterday evening, after six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. He's still only 36 weeks, so he should not have been born for another three or four, but thankfully he has grown strong enough to come home.

Forty-four days. It was long enough.

Our baby boy is doing fine, breathing on his own since this afternoon. He's still on the NICU of course, and needs round the clock care and monitoring.

Combined with my wife's recovery from the C-section, blogging activity will be intermittent to nonexistant. Writing fiction not planned for the next few weeks.
Total exhaustion of the mind has sapped away the creative drive. Let's hope it comes back soon.

Oh yes. Got a rejection from Futurismic, but couldn't care less in these circumstances!

Yesterday my wife gave birth to our third child, a baby boy called Nand. Those of you who know me a little better know that this is not all good news. She was only 30 weeks pregnant, so he was forced onto this planet a full two months early. Things are looking okay at the moment but we'll be living from moment to moment for the coming eight weeks or so...

Expect very light blogging until then.

Rather on a whim, I responded to a post on Absolute Write from a startup e-zine called RUSE Magazine. They were looking for people who were willing to write articles on an advertising share scheme. For some reason I gave it try; mostly because I liked some of the content on the site, and also because I wanted to practice my writing muscles outside of fiction. And hopefully make a few dollars in doing so, although that rather depends on the success of the magazine and the advertising market.

My first article is now online at RUSE: The Future is Flexible. I take a look at the different news stories that have emerged this week surrounding flexible display technology. Who is actually working on them, how realistic are the plans, and does this tech actually have a chance of reaching "Joe the Plumber" (pardon my French) in the short term?

Let me know if you like it! I hope to continue writing on that site, posting on tech, space, science, maybe even science fiction literature if they'll let me :-)

Snippet below:

This week's news that the Flexible Display Center at Arizone State University (ASU) has a created a flexible display with touch sensitivity brings the flexible display concept to another level. Thanks to US Army funding, they have managed to integrate E Ink technology - the electronic ink that drives the success of e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle, but more on that later - with the flexible screens. This makes the screens extremely energy efficient; and now that they are touch sensitive, devices using a flexible display no longer need bulky cases housing keyboard or control buttons.

While this all sounds promising, one aspect was still prohibitive towards mass production and consumerization: the production itself. The LCD displays that have become commonplace in our houses - used as...

Read the entire article here.