Fancy some scumble?
One of the things making it to my inbox this morning is an interview with Terry Pratchett, where he talks about his childhood, winning the OBE, and inventing the integrated circuit.
My parents got me a telescope. I think it was special kind of telescope—produced by the Kind of Telescope Your Parents Get You Without Reading the Book About Telescopes Telescope Company. So everything you could see had a halo round it. You could just about see the moons of Jupiter, and that's that. But you got to stay outside. I got to be really expert on the moon. And then a few years ago I bought myself a Meade LX2000, and then we had an observatory built—a purpose-built one. Because our house is a thousand years old there's all kinds of planning things involved in that. In fact, we nearly had a thatched observatory at one point!
Curiously enough, the science fiction came from astronomy. I wasn't really an astronomer, because astronomers have to take it seriously and do mathematics. I just thought it was really cool 'cause you could stay up all night.
I'm reminded that I still haven't picked up Thud. I used to be quite the collector of the British editions, as the American copies don't have the Josh Kirby art. Kirby has passed on, of course, but I am a big fan of his interpretation of the Discworld. His Death looks like Death, to me. The American covers are mostly pretty lame, unfortunately.
Hey, it's been a fairly interesting week. Firefox and Thunderbird have new versions today, too. Plus a new Web site!
What's new so far:
- Sweet disk icon on OS X
- Movable tabs (with icons, too)
- Better security
- Self-patching capability
- Seats!
