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As an occasional speculative fiction writer, I am sometimes asked where I get my ideas from. “Everywhere” never seems to satisfy as an answer, and “I don’t know” is generally poorly received. So, I’ve spent some time thinking about it. My general strategy is to look at people, places, or situations that would normally be absurd, and then to figure out how the world would have to fundamentally change in order to make them normal.

The fine folks at Ecosystem put out a call for people to hack their large notebooks in service of creating an iPad cover. I volunteered, and a large, flexi-cover, lagoon notebook showed up at my door a few weeks ago. I finally got a chance to play with the notebook today, and I think the hack turned out well. Below is the ecosystem notebook with the iPad. The notebook is almost exactly the same shape and size and the iPad - it is about a quarter inch taller and about an eighth of an inch narrower.

Rating: 4.5 May 29, 2010 J. Herbin Orange Indien reminds me of the wildflowers that grew in the front lawn of my childhood home and of the tiger lilies that lined the streets of my neighborhood. It is a sumptuous, moderately saturated ink that exhibits a high degree of shading in both fine and wide nibs. Like other J. Herbin inks, Orange Indien flows well. It is not as wet as Vert Empire or Blue Myostosis – behaving more like Café des Isles or Poussiere de Lune.

The dreaded walrus-bee. A sketch based on my poem, Beware!

I spent this weekend serving the role of best man at my brother’s wedding. He’s my only sibling, and with any luck, this will be his one and only marriage. His wife is a great woman, and I’m incredibly happy for them both. I’d like to share the toast that I gave at the reception with everyone here. Congratulations, Chris and Tracey! I was honored when my brother asked me to be his best man.

When I am no longer an age gone by Nor the hint of a memory past What part of my name will forever remain What letter will fade away last?

A haiku for you - First, five syllables, and then Seven plus five more.

After having read Mira Grant’s fabulous work of zombie fiction, FEED, in which a terrible virus extracts an even more terrible toll on the world at large, I found myself on a virology kick and decided to read the new book, Superbug, by Maryn McKenna. The story of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (known by its acronym, MRSA) might not, at first blush, seem that exciting when compared to Grant’s captivating horror fiction.

In a recent post, Inkophile discusses what’s in her current rotation of fountain pens. Having just received an order of ink from JetPens, now is a good time to clean things out in my collection. Despite how often I write ink reviews, I’m actually fairly conservative with how many pens I have inked at once. I find that I don’t effectively use more than three pens at a time - a low number, I think compared to many fountain pen enthusiasts.

Rating: 5.0 May 16, 2010 I bet that if the devil ever asked you to sign a contract in blood, you could fool him by pulling out a fountain pen filled with J. Herbin 1670 anniversary ink. The color is called Rouge Hematite, after the mineral hematite, which derives its own name from the Greek word for blood. Justly so – there’s really no mistaking it – this is the color of ink you’d expect to be filling Dracula’s ink well.