Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Book Reviews: From political histories to bad comics, to bad comics of political histories. And the occasional rant about fiction and writing.

It’s a wonderfully Eerie life

Jerry Stratton, July 13, 2012

We live in an amazing world. When the Internet first arrived to our workplace, I would take notes during the con and then stay up late rewriting them into con reports. Sometimes I would try bringing a laptop, but they were heavy, I had to carefully track battery time1, and I still had to post them after getting home. Today we have ubiquitous Internet and a portable computer device—the iPad—that not only lets me write on the fly, but post on the fly and include photos.

In my unpublished Flamewar I wrote about an extension of the Internet, the pneunet, that allows physically shipping to anywhere in the continental United States in a few minutes to three or four hours. Amazon is, judging from some things I read this morning, working to make next-day delivery standard and same-day delivery the one upgrade. That will revolutionize shopping.2

It’s a wonderful life, so please don’t sic Uncle Creepy or cousin Eerie on me for suggesting that an iPad with Skype3 might make a wonderful conference tool.

In response to Welcome to Comic-Con 2012!: Everything changes, and Comic-Con is no exception. It’s Wednesday night and I’m down in Mission Valley at the Town & Country picking up my badge for 2012, rather than in The Field eating an Irish breakfast. But this year I don’t have a preview night badge and last year they stopped serving the breakfast during the con.

  1. Which meant keeping it asleep most of the time and then, when I realized someone had said something worth remembering, waiting for the laptop to wake up and for Word to become usable, by which time I had often forgotten what I was trying to remember.

  2. It also probably means Amazon has realized that a mandatory all-state sales tax will severely hamper any competitors from starting up nationally.

  3. Or some even more useful tool, just keep it simple!

  1. <- Suicide Sandman!
  2. Expanding Comic-Con ->