@jefframes OK, there's an inconclusve discussion about this subject in this Reddit thread 🙂
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/97zqyq/til_kirby_creator_hal_laboratory_got_its_name/

@jefframes Huh, I knew that HAL in "2001" was basically one-letter ahead of IBM, but had not even heard of HAL Laboratories till today 🙂

Do you happen to know if they used the name before "2001" was written (or the movie released) or after? I guess I can look it up (and probably will) but just thought you might know ...

🎉 August Queer Romance Club book pick - Dionysus in Wisconsin by EH Lupton 🎉

By a Mastodon author, @pretensesoup, it’s been shortlisted for the 2024 Lamba Literary Award in Gay Romance and the 2024 Midwest Book Award for fantasy.

Available on #Hoopla, #KoboPlus, all ebookstores and perhaps your library, or EH has kindly offered copies if access is difficult for you (DM her if so).

QRC is open to all, read at your own pace over the month and post about it under #QueerRomanceClub and @queerromanceclub — CW for spoilers if going into details but general observations can be open.

No rules: let’s hear reactions, theories, reviews, favourite quotes etc.

Please also feel free to tag EH in to your QRC post this month, and she’s open to Author Q&A so throw your questions her way.

#books #GayRomance @gayromance @bookstodon #BookClub #AuthorsOfMastodon #IndieAuthor

@BobWilliams Hopefully, it will get approved soon — sending good vibes your way 🙂My general experience has been that Google Review is generally faster than Apple Review, though there've been outliers on both sides ...

My wife told me to take the spider out instead of killing him.

Went out. Had a few drinks. Nice guy. He's a web designer.

Specialises in debugging.

Full disclosure: my daughter is moving to NYC next month , and looking for work as a UX designer or project manager

She’s amazing.

If you have a gig, short term or long term - give her a shot.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/margot-arden-johnson/

I #AmReading Herald Petrel by @strangeseawolf, and I’m more or less halfway through. It’s a fun, fast-paced sci-fi story, an easy read even though it deals with some difficult subjects like loss of a loved one, PTSD and death. Check out Strange Seawolf if you don’t know them — they’ve been sharing some fun things about the book ☺️

@Mistresswitchwrites Good on you for trying 🙂As far as I'm concerned, you're already ahead of the game whether you get accepted or not.

@SusanneDoering Thank you 🙂My wife will be very pleased when I tell her. I don't think she totally believes me when I tell her that it's a great cover.

@crcollins That sounds like the start to a mystery novel plot, but then again, I mistrust my relaties probably way more than you do 😀

@mythopoetica

@mythopoetica @crcollins All I can add to the conversation is that Amazon hasn't sent me any money at all 🙂

But that's OK. I supposedly have a sale this month. So maybe next month?

I know it's disheartening sometimes. Plus, I wrote my first novel 20 years ago and it sold like 3 copies at that time and then I gave up. But now I feel as if success will come eventually if you keep at it? Or so I hope ...

@BobWilliams Yep, things have changed a lot 🙂 But at least you don't have to pay $99 every year as a tax. I find the Play Store interface much harder to grok though. Hafl the time, I'm not sure which section I need to be in to fix an issue ...

Publication day again!

A bittersweet moment for me, as this is not only the final volume in my second trilogy but also the last story set in a world, and featuring characters, I've been working with for almost 12 years.

Part of me is glad it's done, and looking forward to new projects. And part is sad to say goodbye to a cast of characters I've come to know so well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DB8GL9Y3

#writersOfMastodon #bookstodon #SffWriter #writersLife #fantasy #sff #writingCommunity

hi Mastodon! #introduction

Giving a try to Mastodon. Seems like it might be a promising space for #landscapephotography

My name is Anton, and I'm a #photographer. I'm based on the Gold Coast in #Australia. Most of the time I shoot #seascape with occassional #forest, #mountains. I also enjoy #minimalism and #BlackAndWhite.

If you like what you see, feel free to follow me.

@stroughtonsmith The number of people who want to tell you off on the Internet, even if they don't understand the subject, is rather amazing 🙂

When I first got into machine learning a few years ago, I created an image classifer for Terry Pratchettt cover art — to classify which artist had created a particular piece of art.

I was very proud of it and immediately went to a sub-reddit devoted to Discworld because I'd lurked there for a long time and I thought they were pretty cool people and wanted to share something Discworld related.

You should have seen the reactions — at least the initial ones 🙂Somebody (who obviously didn't understand what an image classifier was) told me that I should leave art to the artists and move on.

I was totally surprised by the tone and by the fact that they were supposed to have been a PTerry fan. PTerry loved tech and would probably have embraced machine learning is what I think.

But anyway, cooler heads prevailed after I stood my ground but it was weird. And that was in the early days. Nowadays, I just don't talk about machine learning or deep learning just because most people who want to tell you off don't even understand what they are talking about 😛

@elysegrasso Glad you and the electronics survived the tea spill 🙂

@BobWilliams Thanks 🙂

@BobWilliams Will do 🙂 Current plan is to release on the 15th of August, no idea if I'll hit the target or not. But I guess we'll see?

If you're interested, you can see more details about the book here:
https://books.farook.org

It's the first one — "Sir Lanka Files" 🙂

@BobWilliams I'm glad you got the app submitted. It's always a relief once it's out of your hands, or at least, for me it is 🙂

My current project (well, realy side-project) is a novel. The writing is done. So it's just editing and while I've set a target for release, I'm hopeful that I'll achieve the publication date. So not a lot of pressure 🙂

@kkolakowski You do get all that from "No Man's Sky" 🙂 If you want to play with others, I guess it's there, but it's never been that intrusive/obtrusive for me.

My wife and I play together but we don't really want to play with other players and we nver do. We explore, build bases, follow missions etc. all on our own. Have not met anybody else in the game (that we know of) who's another player. We do see player ships in space sometimes, but that's about it ...