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I've always wanted my own island. Wouldn't it be nice to just have a place, surrounded by water, where you could go and hang out and be left alone, at least until someone built a bridge to it? Apparently I missed my chance the other day when someone bought an island online for $26,500. That seems pretty cheap.
Oh. That island is only virtual, in a video game called Project Entropia. So imaginary islands are going for over 20 G's these days. Maybe I should invest in something else, like a virtual bridge.
I'm getting extremely close to finally publishing the book I've been writing for at least five decades. I feel like there are just a couple of things left to do, but at the same time, I'm not quite close enough to smell the paper on the newly printed book.
Here's another sample. Actually, this is from the beginning of the book. I will have a couple more updates in the near future regarding the book, including how you can get a free copy. Hey, I need to figure out some way to get people to read it!
Google, never to turn away from indexing searchable material, is working with leading world libraries to catalog a ridiculous number of books.
Harvard, Stanford and Michigan university libraries, the New York Public Library and the Oxford Bodleian Library are lending their books to be scanned into the Google Print project. Melvil Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, could not be reached for comment.
It's bad enough to receive a boatload of forwards each week, and it's that much worse to receive repeat forwards. But when you receive the exact same forward from two different people within almost a week's time, well, that's called noteworthy. Especially when it's just another urban legend.
From the Archive
As I read on the bus about how China and India were going to take over the world by 2020, I noticed a distinct aroma coming from behind me. I thought it was a burger, or maybe a cheesesteak. At the next stop, the man who was sitting behind me moved up and joined me in the empty seat. He had a brown paper sack with him, and I saw him reach in, grab a handful of fries and stuff them in his mouth.
I just recently found an interesting site that combines library listings from across the world. While it's not a comprehensive list of every single library, WorldCat promotes itself as having "Over 1 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.
That's a lot of books!
For those of you who huge basketball fans, here's a little breather from March Madness. All right, maybe you don't need a break from the action, but seriously, it's Monday. There are no NCAA games today. Even Dick Vitale takes a day off.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all of the people who stopped by the Inner Harbor Barnes & Noble in Baltimore on Sept. 1. The rain started Friday morning and didn't stop until sometime Saturday, producing more than 4 inches in the city. Instead of drowning, however, I sold a couple of books and met people from all over the country, and a few from distant lands.
Ten years ago this month, I originally published "The Developers." It's weird to think it was that long ago, and even weirder to think that I started on the book 13 years ago, in 2002. While so much has changed with the Internet, the key tenets of the book seemingly still hold true:
1. The Internet is a social place.
2. Governments and corporations are always watching.
Then again, I guess these items are relevant in real-life situations as well. It's just much easier to track people (definitely as a group but also as individuals) online.