Moving

You can now find Dazed Rambling over on Posterous.

I thank all of you for putting up with me for the last couple years and hope that all of you will follow me over and continue to put up with for a few more. I am sorry for any inconvenience this might cause (updating RSS/Links). All content and comments have been transfered over, but this blog will remain here and inactive.

Ads

If you do not run an adblocker, you may have noticed ads at the bottom of my posts. Unfortunately, I only just found out about them this evening because they do not show while I am logged into WordPress and, even if I were, my adblocker would hide them. There is nothing I can do about them beyond paying a yearly $30 fee to have them removed and I would not have that sort of money to throw away even if I was working.

I have been happy with WordPress from the beginning, long before I started this blog, and I have recommended it time and time again to those looking to get into blogging and those looking to make the switch from a different free host. WordPress has some quirks, mostly based around strengthening security, and it makes it hard to do some things that I would like, but I have been able to create a blog that I felt looked good (at times, yes) and at least somewhat uncluttered and semi-professional. These ads do a lot to take that away–they are big, take up a good bit of space at the bottom of the page, and about as far from discreet as one can get.

Those who follow me on Twitter and were alive when I found out about this knows that I am not in the slightest happy about this. This is probably not something worth getting annoyed about, after all, a lot of people have adblockers these days. But, that’s the thing. I found out about the ads because people were clicking on them. I am not comfortable with having random ads pop up on my blog, I am less comfortable with the fact that I did not know they were there in the first place because they were hidden from me. All the quirks kind of add up and become frustrating. This just adds a cherry to the top.

I don’t have the money to pay for their removal and, if I had the money, I wouldn’t pay for it. Not sure what to do… kind of afraid of switching over to a host like Blogger and losing the few followers I have (or just being a massive pain in the ass for those with RSS feeds).

If you are seeing ads, I am sorry. This blog has enough useless content without adding ads to the equation.

For those who can’t see it:

The Lord of the Rings – Report One

Each of these reports will reflect on the content from a section of around one hundred pages, to the nearest chapter.

Deciding to read The Lord of the Rings came with a bit of trepidation. It is a book that I should have read years ago, more towards the beginning of my journey through this wondrous genre of ours, but put off until I had grown tired of its sort. Keen in my mind is the amount of praise it has received in the past fifty some years since it was initially published, the number of writers it has inspired, and the number of hearts it resides in. If you think the hype surrounding the latest release from Big Publisher X is bad…

The Lord of the Rings encompasses many of the things I dislike about the genre, which played a large role in my avoiding it all these years, and it may as well be the patron saint of the subgenre I have largely abandoned out of tiredness and boredom. Thus, I find myself in an interesting position. I could go into the book with a negative disposition, expecting and embracing the worst if only to attempt to fortify my my decision to avoid it all those years ago. On the other hand, I could go into it with an open mind, perhaps in an attempt to rekindle the fires that brought me into the genre in the first place or perhaps just to understand why it is so praised, beloved, and imitated. In the end, it is probably somewhere in between.

News – American Gods Coming to HBO?

The report can be found on Deadline:

As HBO prepares to unveil its epic-sized series adaptation of George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones this Sunday, the payweb has begun talks to acquire the Neil Gaiman novel American Gods to be developed into another fantasy series. The project was brought to HBO by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and it was brought to them by Robert Richardson. The plan is for Richardson and Gaiman to write the pilot together.

Great news for Gaiman fans, but it is still a bit early on for anything concrete and that makes me a bit wary about getting to excited. I have been excited by the prospect of other adaptations hitting HBO, Charlie Huston’s The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Sings of Death in particular, and watched with sadness as they have been shot down, so I know better than to get my hopes up. But, considering the popularity of the author and Playtone’s involvement, I think American Gods stands a better chance than most at finding itself airing on HBO.

Can’t wait to get some more information on this.

News – Warren Ellis Joins Mulholland Books

What I am doing now is trying to express myself in a way that does not include an excessive amount of exclamation points and ellipsis. Warren Ellis has an essay of sorts up over on Mulholland Books and if it was just that, I would be happy, but tucked down at the bottom of the post is something that made my jaw drop and nearly caused me to jump for joy. Warren Ellis has joined Mulholland Books for two novels, the first of which, Gun Machine, is due out in Fall 2012. I look forward to clearing space next to Crooked Little Vein and Shivering Sands.

Edit: The news has also hit Reuters.
Edit2: The first interview with Ellis in the wake of the announcement.

***

And since I am talking about Warren Ellis, I should maybe bring up the oft-listed and never released Listener, since it tends to crop up in my comments section every once in a while. Listener was supposed to be the second novel out from William Morrow, the first being Crooked Little Vein, but fate or just severely bad luck intervened and basically put a bullet in its brain. Ellis says it best, “Dead. I lost almost 30,000 words in the computer/backup death. Officially cancelled a couple of years ago, and it won’t be back.” The book is still listed on Locus and Amazon, stubbornly persisting year after year, but it is not coming out. So, sorry if you had your hopes up (I did for the longest time, too). As for the story behind what happened, you can read about it here.

Now, I believe Ellis was supposed to be writing a second novel for William Morrow, one to replace Listener, and I think I remember him mentioning something about working on something already (could have become Gun Machine, for all I know), but I have no idea where that stands or if it is even on the table anymore given the current news. Whether there are three novels coming our way over the next however many years or just the two, I don’t care. I am just happy to have more novel work from Warren.