How to deal with that penpal you can’t get rid of, as reported by NewScientist.

“A very unusual ink-jet printer cartridge, containing explosive ink, has been patented by Qinetiq, the commercial spin-off of the British Ministry of Defence.”

LINK

How your spimes will be made, as reported by NewScientist.

“A MANUFACTURING process that can print you a pair of bespoke shoes could put an end to ill-fitting footwear and help usher in an era of mass customisation.”

LINK

Impact armor for skiers, as reported by NewScientist.

“A futuristic flexible material that instantly hardens into armour upon impact will protect US and Canadian skiers from injury on the slalom runs at this year’s Winter Olympics.”

LINK

New ways to get off the planet, as reported by NewScientist. 

“A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line.”

LINK

Native American drug trafficers, as reported by the NY Times. 

“He had eluded the authorities for years. Witnesses against him had mysteriously disappeared. Shots were fired from his highly secured compound here last year when the state police tried to close in.”

LINK

New ways to get sick, coming soon!  As reported by NewScientist. 

“Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year, they said.”

LINK

LOS ANGELES, May 4 - I like bricks.

They are good for many things. 

Building wall, naturally.  Patios.  BBQs.  Streets.  You can use them to prop a door open, hold up shelves or the corner of a couch.  They can weight down a stack of papers that might otherwise blow away.  Placed behind the wheels of a car on an incline, they will keep it from rolling backward should the emergency break fail.  You can even, in need, hurl them through windows to express displeasure.  Or, in a similar extremity, they are well suited to crushing the occasional skull.

They are, as I’ve mentioned in the past, extremely well designed.  A technology that has endured because it is so fucking useful.

I like them.

Sadly, I find there are many things that I cannot substitute for bricks.

Several laptops I have owned cannot be used to build walls.  They may or may not hold papers down, but will most definately not prop up the end of a couch.  They have mixed results where glass shattering is concerned, and I wouldn’t trust a one of them to properly stave in someone’s noggin.

Yet, when faced in my life with bits of so called technology that fail to work in the manner they have supposedly been designed to work, I have frequently been heard to complain that the item in question is, “A fucking brick.”

This, then, is my appology to the bricks.

I didn’t mean it.  These scraps of silcon and cheap plastic are not up to your high standards.  Please forgive me for denegrating you through association with this crap.

And an appology to crap as well.  Crap is a good fertilizer.  Whereas, a cellphone, digital camera, computer, mp3 player, or DVD recorder that does not do what it is meant to do will never fertilize anything.  Sub-crap.  Less than crap.

It’s dangerous to express these thoughts in this manner, on a blog, typing on my current laptop.  I can feel its resentment.  Its urge to crash the hard drive and see who’s more of a brick now. 

It’s no big deal, really, just that I still use notebooks and pens and pencils for my most basic grunt work.  I like clunky things.  Large tools.  Mechanical watches.  Pre-1980 cars.  Bricks.

But I use technology.  And enjoy it.  When it works.  A good transistor radio is a thing of beauty.  I got a tiny digital video camera I love.  This laptop makes me a little itchy to get a new one (steady there, old girl, you’re still my number one), but it gets the job done.  I like my new printer.  My phone makes calls. 

And I use a lot of technology when I write.  And, more and more, technology is a key component when it’s time to flog my books.

I’ll have more to write about the technology/writing thing later.

For now, the batch of entries below are all for audio and video, interviews and other stuff, mostly having to do with my books.  Content that exists because of very new technologies.

and not a brick in the bunch.

-c

Someone went and made a microshort film out of my microshort story “Twitch and Spray”.  I like it.

LINK

One of the more surreal things I’ve done the last few years was to be interviewed for the Swedish TV arts show, Kobra.

LINK

My publisher, Ballantine, arranged to have an Expanded Books promotional video made for THE SHOTGUN RULE.

LINK

I am interviewed by the notorious Bat Segundo.

LINK

A lengthy podcast interview with the guys at Comic Geek Speak.

LINK

OK, first off, image quality.  This is a home scan of the original artwork that was sent to me, compressed so it will load here.  So it’s a little small and fuzzy.  Which should not interfere with your ability to see that it rocks.  Best Joe Pitt cover since the first.  The designers nailed this one on the first go, and I am fucking delighted.   Frankly, I’d just as soon get rid of the fang, but it’s not going anywhere at this point.  But that miasma hanging over Manhattan, and the graveyard in the foreground?  Just great stuff.  And, when one knows what’s happening behind the cover, one also knows that this captures the mood of the book, as well.  Winner.

LOS ANGELES, April 29 - Something else.

About the new format of this site.

All these research files and links, I keep mentioning that these relate to projects I’ve written, am writing, or hope to write.  Well, if you’re the type that likes to open the backs of gadgets and poke around and see how they work, or the kind of person whe enjoys shaking Christmas presents and guessing what’s inside, you can take a good hard look at how I’ve catagorized these posts and pick up some clues.

Start digging through items tagged for the COMIC BOOKS category, and you might get a whiff of my next Marvel project.  Looking in MURDER AND MAYHEM, you might find entries that reveal where I got some ideas that went into THE SHOTGUN RULE.  Follow the JOE PITT links and there are indications of where I’m going next in that series.

All this may lead to a little spoiler or two.  So dig at your own risk.

-charlie

How the Great Shark Rebellion will begin, as reported by physorg.com.

(seriously, has no one but me ever seen “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes”?) 

“In the United States a team funded by the military has created a neural probe that can manipulate a shark’s brain signals or decode them. More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to use remote-controlled sharks as spies.”

LINK