As a child, I remember the yearly ritual of my stepmother re-writing, longhand, several of the pages in the family address book. She’d get a blank page from the back and copy any page that was less than flawless, keeping all names in alphabetical order (leaving one opening per two-page spread for new additions or corrections). She’d start at the beginning of November so that everything would be ready for Christmas cards, plus a few Hanukkah cards, to be sent.

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Recently, on a facebook post where I was whinging about my allergy to coconut and specifically not asking for advice (which, FB being FB, I managed to get a lot of anyway), I got a comment that contained the following text.

… “allergy” is a highly specific type of immune reaction that releases histamine. Most people who claim to be “allergic” to everything under the sun have either aversions, sensitivities or at worst intolerances. Nothing wrong with that (sensitivities can cause discomfort and irritation), but only a true allergy can send you to the ER or worse.

I’m bringing this up because I used to be That Guy™ and I’m trying to be better about these things. I have learned more since those days.

Note, that while I understand more about the immune system than here, I’m deliberately simplifying for a non-immunology audience, and will, no doubt, lead so some level of inaccuracy. As the joke goes, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …”.

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My family were always hugely into visiting mountains: hiking, skiing, and so on. We spent a good chunk of our weekends in the mountains. Catch is, at age 11, I had sudden onset altitude sickness. I would sometimes throw up. I always felt nauseated when we got above about 4,000 feet. I gasped for air before other people did.

In physical education class in ninth grade, we had to do a six-minute run walk on a particularly smoggy day. I came in second to last, only ahead of the kid with crutches. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air.

Over the years, it slowly worsened. My college required a speech class in order to graduate. I enrolled in it 7 times before I was finally able to finish. While I did have a normal human amount of fear of public speaking, most of my issue wasn’t that at all.

It was simply having to stand for five minutes.

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A few weeks ago, Rick asked something of Google Bard:

Hey, Bard, what can you tell me about Deirdre Saoirse Moen?

Of all the software companies in the world, it’s possible that Google knows more about me than almost any other company in the world, save Apple. So you’d expect, given that, that the results would be reasonably accurate, right?

Wrong.

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When I migrated my site, one of the things I very carefully generated—and forgot to put in the right place—were the redirects. Before, I’d used the WordPress common default of year-month-day-title, which, for a blog that’s been as inactive as this one has been, is frankly hilarious.

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Website migration. Some years ago, WordPress started changing its format to their GUI editor, which I hated. And then I discovered that WordPress claimed to store Markdown (plain text) files, but actually they were absolutely not even remotely plain Markdown.

Because of these issues, I didn’t want to add to an already large blog problem by making it bigger. So I stopped blogging altogether.

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Coronavirus playlist of songs from my Apple Music library that are among my favorites, in no particular order except for the first song. I love the social distancing and, of course, the two goofballs (Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson) in the video.

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In 2014, I signed up as an artist with Zazzle. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never really put in a lot of elbow grease onto that site as I vastly prefer Redbubble and Society6.

One of Zazzle’s terms is that they won’t pay royalties if the amount’s under $50. New rule: if a company accepts orders for smaller than they will pay in royalties, they are looking to make bank off the artists, not their customers.

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I know a lot of you know I love my volcanoes, though I don’t love the human trauma they cause. Lately, I’ve been watching the developments in Fissure 8, which first took over half of Leilani Estates and then pressed onward to the sea, taking out several hundred more homes in the process.

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Ellora’s Cave has rebranded as EC for Books, so I’ll be using that in my headers from now on. I will keep the header graphic as it was, though. I’m torn about the rebranding for two reasons: often, a rebranding for a troubled company signals a new direction that only hastens its demise, especially in the tech world. On the flipside, the Ellora Caves are a sacred site in India, and it would be nice to let them have their google-fu back.

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Recently, the US government sued North Carolina over HB2, the restroom bill. I found that the section that describes transgender people remarkably enlightened, and included things that I hadn’t known until entirely too recently. Thus, I’ve included paragraphs 30-42 from the court filing here. (Link to original document.)

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I have two panels at BayCon this year, which will be held from May 27-30 at the San Mateo Marriott San Francisco Airport (this is a change of hotel from the previous years).

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](/images/2016/04/tyler-glenn-neon-trees-kobbydagan.jpg)Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees performs on stage at the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival Village on September 20 in Las Vegas. Photo © 2014 by kobbydagan and used under license.

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I’ve heard a few things lately about book covers and stock photos that have been bothering me. First, let’s go into a primer of how stock photos work with regard to book covers.

How Stock Photography Works from the Photographer’s Perspective

When a photographer takes photo sessions of a model (or a landscape), they add keywords to each photo they wish to sell. A given photographer may have relationships with as many as 15 or 20 different stock photo agencies, but not all photos may be uploaded to all agencies. Each agency has different audiences and different plans.

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Up and Coming, the 2016 anthology of science fiction and fantasy writers eligible for this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, is now available. This award is the only award given at the Hugo Award ceremonies that is voted on by the Hugo Award voters but is not itself a Hugo Award.

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