Wednesday morning papers didn’t come

After all that talk yesterday about train schedules and sleeping in late, I guess it serves me right that I didn’t wake up until a little after 8 AM this morning. I had a panicked moment as I realized how late it was, then I resigned myself to getting the 8:30 train.

It wasn’t the last time that time would go a little wonky for me today. I completely lost the hour between 1 and 2 PM, for instance; one minute I’m eating my lunch (vegetarian chili over rice where they forgot the rice) and reading through revisions on a manuscript, and the next chance I have to look at the clock it’s well over an hour later. Even though I’m sure it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Say what you will about a lot of work, it does make the day go by faster.

It also means there isn’t much of anything else to write about. I chipped away a little more at this short story I’ve been working on, and right now I’m going to try to watch a little more Doctor Who (“The Ambassadors of Death”) before bed. World on a string, have I!

Wednesday various

  • I wish my company had letterhead this cool. [via]
  • An in-depth interview with Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos about their recent deal with Warner Bros. I think this goes a long way to explaining the deal and why it’s ultimately a boon to Netflix subscribers. (As such, the interview is maybe only of interest to subscribers.) There’s been a lot of anger over the planned 28-day window between when DVDs go on sale and when they’ll be available for rent at Netflix. But I really don’t have a problem with it — not if it means more, and better streaming content and a greater likelihood that when a new release is available, there will actually be enough stock for me to get a copy.
  • An interest Catch-22 of science fiction translations revealed:

    Because it takes so long for English-language science fiction to get translated, people in non-English speaking countries are often reading books that are several years behind the current fashion in English speaking countries. They then write books in response to what they have read, but when those books are offered for translation into English the big publishers reject them as “old fashioned”. [via]

  • For most authors, breaking 1,000 words wouldn’t seem like much. For Bruce Holland Rogers (who contributed to Kaleidotrope #3, by the way), it’s practically a novel!
  • And finally, some truly beautiful papercraft [via]