Vote on your favorite beginnings to novels

Opening Hooks is a site/database of opening sentences to novels. You can contribute your favorite book beginnings to it and rate (from 1 to 5) the
books already in the database. There are about 20 book beginnings up so far.

Link:
http://www.grodworks.com/cgi-bin/sentences.cgi?start=0&orderby=average&order=DESC

Origami convention

Fold Till You Drop Entertainment

There's an origami convention convention underway in Japan this weekend, with some truly impressive pieces on display. There's an AP story, but words don't do it justice. See the personal site of one of the
professional paper-folders, or photos taken at a previous convention, or just discover the essence of origami.


Convention:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040820/481/xjk10208201902&e=3&ncid=1778
(photo of an awesome dragon leading the article)


Joseph Wu's personal origami page: http://www.origami.as/home.html


Photos from previous convention:
http://www.origami.gr.jp/Etc/conv99Mizuno/origami_index-e.htm
Japan Origami Academic Society: http://www.origami.gr.jp/index.html


Essence of origami:
http://www.origami.gr.jp/People/CAGE_/Philosophy/03-e.html

Science Lesson

Science: Composite Of Earth At Night


'crmartin' writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible
composite image of Earth from space at night. Actually a composite from
many pictures from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP),
it's like a skeletal view of the Earth in tiny lights. If you really like
it, there are hi-res images up to a 40 megabyte TIFF."


Picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040822.html


DMSP: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?5826


Catalog of hi-res images:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02991

Science: Transparent Aluminum Is Here

'Alien54' writes "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a picture of samples) Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (see also: A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761). Scotty would be pleased."

Article: http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/8/9

2004 Nature 430 761: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v430/n7001/abs/nature02729_fs.html

Movie theater repurposed as Xbox arcade

A cinema operator in a small town in Utah has started running Friday night gaming tournaments in which Xboxes are connected to the big screens and
sound-systems.


Theater managers took four video projectors, set one up in each of four theaters with a Microsoft XBox video game system connected to it, and then
let the fun begin for more than 60 people.


"Tonight blew our minds," theater co-owner Calvin Timothy said afterward. "We're definitely going to keep doing this."


The game Friday night: "Halo" -- a first-person shoot-em-up game in which four people can play on a team against four others. The evening was set up in a tournament format where 16 teams battled each other until the wee hours of Saturday morning to find out who the kings of gaming are in the valley.


Link (via Waxy): http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5721197/

Planet of the Apes as a Twilight Zone episode

Twilight Zone Apes Episode : The original Planet of the Apes movie, reedited and reimagined as a thirty-minute episode of the original Twilight Zone. Black and white, commercial breaks, Rod Serling narration
and everything.


Link: http://theforbidden-zone.com/media/tzone.shtml

Star Wars Trilogy

After denying the possibility of three new Star Wars movies taking place after the original triology story line, it appears that the possibility has actually opened up.


http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=115020814&p=yy5xzy5zx


http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/23/1831236&tid=101&tid=1

Hmmm It was a dark and stormy night........

Here's a site for an annual contest devoted to bad opening sentences, named after the guy first credited with "It was a dark and stormy night..." Anyone can enter and there's an SF category.


http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2004.htm

Gen Con IV

Wow.. I am home now. It was an awesome time! Our Dead Dog volunteer party rocked. It was held at the Ram Restaurant. They renamed some of their regular menu items for Dungeons and Dragons things and made them into various fun shapes and sized. I will post the menu later with descriptions of the food. I did take some pictures. Not as many as I would have like though. It seems that when I needed the camera, I did not have it and when I did not need it, you guessed it, I had it.

All in all it was a great con!

I have some favorite highlights that I will post later.