I work in a bookstore. Here's a book gripe:

To any fantasy authors out there, if you think you are going to write a novel about an imaginary place and NOT include a frickin' map, and expect me to read it, you are sadly mistaken.

I'm sure all of my friends know that I have a serious love of maps. I think maps are cool. And when you are dealing with a fantastic story, set in a place that does not exist in reality, a map of the setting is an important visual tool for the reader to help them imagine the setting.

Also, creating maps for fantasy settings can be quite fun. I just don't understand why any fantasy author wouldn't include one.

Eigenradio. This is truly odd. And kind of an acquired taste. It's like the sound of earthquakes. Or space aliens. Or schizophrenic androids. In space.

What seems to be going on is that multiple audio feeds from multiple radio stations are being compared and certain frequencies are being extracted out. It's quite odd, and I think, strangely evocative.

"Eigenradio makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live. What you hear on Eigenradio is the best of the New Music, distilled and de-correlated. One song on Eigenradio is worth at least twenty songs on old radio."

I wrote a poem. It Always Was After Is.

The Fridge is so cool. Play with it. Via monkeyfilter and metafilter.