Here's a really cool history of the Amen Breakbeat by Nate Harrison. Just sharin' some knowledge.

Mahayana Sutra motherload. For those who are into that sort of thing.

I heard on the radio about a day long meditation retreat thing that's going to be happening out near Devil's Den next weekend and again in November. Thinking I might go to the one in November. Feeling the need lately to get more serious about my practice.

Oh yeah, reading the Algebraist right now, by Iain Banks. It's kind of a slow start, but hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to really hunker down with it. I cherish Iain Banks' sci fi stuff, and even though this isn't set in the Culture universe, I'm down with it. He is one of my main inspirations as far as writing sci fi is concerned. I'm writing again, so that's good. The hard part is that I have this mega arc for this far future universe in my head, but I'm not quite sure how bits of it relates to other bits. Toying with the idea of writing some dry 'academic' histories as sort of background material to reference. Sort of how Herbert was always 'quoting' from some text in his Dune universe in his novels at the beginning of every chapter. It's a neat device for expanding the scope of the story.

My friend Bo was kind enough to give me a kind of broken Yamaha DD-9, to sacrifice on the altar of the circuit-bending gods. Hopefully it will die well, and with much glitchy noise.

So, I finally saw Serenity tonight.

Hrm.

I liked it, immensely, and while I see the necessity for the sake of the story of certain things to happen, I'm still kind of pissed. And emotionally drained.

But I won't dwell on that. What I will harp on is Whedon's SHITTY job at world creation. I won't even go into it except to say that he really should have thought things through a little bit more, or just talked to a physics grad student, or something. Or talked to an actual science fiction writer.

But, despite this, it's still a great story.