Now this is really cool!
Once again, science-fiction becomes reality with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2005/07/30/etg… GPS-enabled, real "Hitchhiker's Guide"</a>. A prototype traveler's guide that is more than just GPS-synced maps, this little baby gives you historical information and other tidbits that might interest a tourist based on where it reads you via participating networks. The author tested this on the 850-acre parkland surrounding Ashton Court, which is somewhere in the UK, from what I gather. I'm not familiar with it myself, but it must be a popular tourist destination. In any case, this little bad boy, called an "Explorer", sees where you are on the GPS grid and serves you multimedia content based on that location. As well as showing you those cool maps that we've all come to depend on so much. (You know, I think Gibson wrote about something like this, but more personable, in some of his work, too.)

Anyway, the future is now. At least in prototype-land. Hey, it's the best I can do for a Friday Fun Link on the same day I'm getting divorced. Get over it!

Well, not quite yet.
But, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050706/ap_on_sc/neanderthal_genome">this article on YahooNews</a>, they are sequencing the Neanderthal genome. At least, they're starting to try and do it. No one, including the scientists involved are sure that they'll be 100% successful, but, sometimes, it's the attempt that counts. And, there will be volumes of useful information that will be a by-product of this effort, not the least of which will be a greater understanding of the human genome.
Hmm, Plieocene Park? Well, maybe we're a ways off from that, but it's still pretty cool.

Oh, this takes that talking fish to a "whole new level"!
Yes, sir, it's "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.boysstuff.co.uk/product.asp?id=12415#">Buck, the animatronic deer</a>" over at BoyStuff.co.uk. Honestly, I would have expected this to be for sale in Arkansas somewhere and to be endorsed by our 42nd President, but, no, apparently talking hunting trophies are big in the UK. Well, whatever, it is funny. And, it comes with a microphone, so you can make him talk from the other room, too! Or, invite your animatronic deer-head to indulge in a little karaoke!

Oh, the insanity!

Has been found!
Yep, using a relatively new technique measuring the way light from a star "wobbles" as it's bent around a planet, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/14/planet.suns.reut/index.html">a new extra-solar planet has been found in a previously unconcieved of situation</a>. Until the astronomers at the California Institute of Technology found what the call the "Tattooine planet", scientists didn't think that binary or trinary star systems could support a planet of any reasonable size. They felt that such systems, which outnumber single-star systems like our own by 20 percent, were just too unstable to maintain a planet. But, now they know better. This discovery, of course, opens a whole new realm of possibilites for space discovery and colonization. Not to mention gives a whole lot of validation to the space opera writers who've imagined multiple suns setting in alien skies since the early days of science-fiction.

Today!
If you don't know who <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jkrowling.com/en/">J. K. Rowling</a> is, well, you certainly haven't been paying attention. She is, in short, the creator of Harry Potter and crew. As a divorced, single mother struggling to scrape by on public assistance, aka "the Dole", in the UK, she wrote <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone</a> which she sold astonishingly quickly for a first time author. The book went on to become a wonderfully popular hit with adults and kids alike. At the same time she wrote the first book, she plotted out the rest of the series and started drafts of those books as well. Each year after that first release a new book in the series has come out, for a total of six, so far, with the seventh on it's way.
I know many people who dislike the books for their simplicity or how they handle magic or any of a number of reasons, but, as far as I'm concerned, anything that can get so many kids reading books again, instead of suckling at the glass teat, is okay with me.
And, yes, I just recently finished <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</a>, but you can find<a target="_blank" href="http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/?m=20050730"&gt; a review at my other site</a>, and I eagerly await the seventh, and last, installation of this series.
I was resistant at first, but once I started reading these books, I was hooked. I hope Ms. Rowling will keep writing after the series is done. She's a good one, even if she does write kids books!
Happy Birthday, Ms. Rowling!

Ever wonder what happened to Charlie?
You know, after the whole Chocolate Factory incident? Well, wonder no more! Behold, through the wonders of web-based Wonkavision, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.likelystories.com/choc/choc01.htm">Chocalypse Now</a>! A web-comic based on a mashup of the aftermath of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Apocalypse Now. Surreal and chocolatey at the same time. What more can you ask for on a Friday?

Go ahead, no one's looking, click the link!

"We can rebuild him."
Researchers have hit the Next Big Thing in prosthetics: a bionic arm that feels. According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0506230208jun23,1,79… article on the Chicago Tribune website</a>, biomedical researchers have come up with an artificial arm that has sensors built in which allow its user to feel. The "fellings" are actually relayed to a tiny computer, which in turn relays the signals to "plungers" in the prosthetic's harness. These "plungers" stimulate nerves which are interpreted by the brain as being attached to the hand. It allowed an experimental patient to "feel" someone touching the back of his "hand". The sensors and relays are sensitive and accurate enough to let the patient identify individual fingers and tell researchers which one was being stimulated.
An amazing development that, to me, reads like science-fiction. No wonder William Gibson has all but given up writing science-fiction and slid into general fiction with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Pattern Recognition</a>. Everyday life has become science-fiction!

This is cute!
While looking for water gardening resources, or an old t-shirt that I can only half remember, or something, I found a fifth grade class' creative writing assignment called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/students/projects/1995-96/Island_Project/"… Island Project</a>. The project was for the kids to imagine themselves stranded on an island and to describe the island on which they found themselves. Many of them also drew maps of their island. The project is from 1995-96, but, somehow, is still up on the web. It's fun, actually.
And, not a bad way to get some creative juices flowing for a story setting, either. I have often gotten ideas for things to write by drawing maps first. So do Orson Scott Card and Holly Lisle, both successful writers, so it's not just a fluke or a gimmick. It's also a bit of fun.
So, if you're stuck for something to write about, why not draw a map? Or, heck, if you're not too full of yourself, why not just do the same exercise that the fifth-graders did? You might just be surprised at the results!

Today is Ernest "Papa" Hemingway's birthday.
He was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899. Hemingway snuck off to fight in World War I when he was just 17. He had bad eyesight, so he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy. Just about a month after he got to Italy, he was hit by shrapnel from an exploding shell. He spent weeks in the hospital and then came back home to his parents in Oak Park.
After his parents got tired of him hanging around, he started writing stories for Chicago newspapers and magazines, and then got a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star and went off to Paris with his wife Hadley. He became friends with a lot of writers who were in Paris at the time, including Fitzgerald and Joyce and Pound and Gertrude Stein. And he wrote every day, sometimes in his apartment, sometimes in cafés, but he wrote every day.

His first collection of short stories, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">In Our Time</a>, came out in 1925 and the following year, his first big success, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Sun Also Rises</a>. Three years later, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Farewell To Arms</a> came out. By the 1930s, he was one of the best-known writers alive. He developed cancer and, in true "Hemingway hero" fashion, killed himself with a shotgun in 1961. But, by then, he was one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Here's a little inspiration from <a target="_blank" href="http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/">The Writer's Almanac</a>.
Of course, most of us have heard about the release of the newest Harry Potter book, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</a>, and the fact that J. K. Rowling made a huge amount of money the first day the book started selling. But, today that, in 1954, the first part of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">The Lord of the Rings Trilogy</a> came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fantasistnet%26link_code…; title="View product details at Amazon">The Hobbit</a>, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn't expect it to sell well. But, the Hobbit sold well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien's publisher asked for a sequel.
Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. And, since he was a professor at Oxford, he had to write in his spare time, usually at night. His book became increasingly more complicated and, with the outbreak of World War II, he began to write in parallels to current events of the day. Middle-Earth's enemies were in the East, just like England's enemies during the War. Eventually, he complicated charts to keep track of everything and his son, Christopher, drew a very detailed map of Middle-Earth.
Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished his manuscript. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.
And, according to legend, it all started with stories to flesh out a people and history for some of the languages that Tolkien was developing. Rowling may be the latest "hot ticket", but Tolkien's been around for a long enough to withstand the test of time. She may or may not, only time will tell, but, either way, I thought the parallel success stories were interesting. I hope it provides inspiration to young writers out there debating about making the attempt. Not everyone succeeds the way these two authors did, but, if you work hard enough and dedicate yourself enough to your craft, you might just be next.