SF writers seen online

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Official Home Page of Michael Brotherton

Comments

[stephenshevlin.livejournal.com]

Wait, is this an endorsement or a "point and laugh"-ment? Because there are lots of writers on the net.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

More of an "oh, look: an SF writer who thinks about science" moment.

As far as I recall, he only has the one book in print so far, with a second one slated for publication in the reasonably near future.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

That's correct. I think Spider Star is out in February. Mike also ran for the first time this year the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, a NASA-funded workshop for writers to learn more about astronomy science. He also has funding and is working on a free anthology published on the web of hard SF that can be used to teach astronomy.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the design. It's due for a redesign shortly.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Will the "contact me" section work? I'd like to plug the anthology when it comes out, if he can give me a heads up.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

It should work, and if it doesn't, it's news to me. I can give you his email directly if not (and fix it). I'm building the website for the antho, so you'll see mentions of it on my LJ as well.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Does it require javascript? I have that turned off and blocked.

When I point the mouse arrow at the "contact me" bit, I get the capital I shaped vertical line one gets if one points the arrow at simple text on a website.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's a dumb trick that I used a long time ago. The javascript is obscuring the actual address from spammers, but works when javascript isn't turned on. (How in the world do you navigate the web today without javascript?) His email address is mbrother [at] uwyo.edu

When I redesign, I'll remove that script for sure.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

How in the world do you navigate the web today without javascript?

It's never been a major deal, really. Sometimes I have to go turn it on to access parts of websites but in general it's never been an impediment.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

That's good to hear. Where I work, our software requires javascript. I'm always in development meetings and they show something and I go, "What if the user has javascript disabled?" and they just give me blank stares. With AJAX being so huge these days, I thought maybe you'd be finding a lot of sites that wouldn't do anything for you.

[matgb]

I did that a few weeks back in a conference call-I'm promoting an online brochuring service, uses a js call to pull the brochure from the vendor site and display on the reseller site, nice technology.

So I ask if they're suggesting the use of noscript replacements, etc, because I know that some people don't browse with JS or use browsers that don't support it, plus there's always the Google not seeing it problem.

There's a silence, then a guy I didn't know chimes in "we're working on that". Fun fun—fortunately no one from the vendor side understood the question, else they might have dumped the project entirely and I'd have lost the job...

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

You did his site, or do you just house it? I meant to reply to one of his posts, but it goes to a different site I don't recognize....

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I did his site and hosted it. But it hasn't received any updating in several years. The server you're probably seeing when you try to comment is tuginternet.untimelydeath.com or something like that? That's because his blog engine is hosted at the domain, and just writes the static files to his own domain. Commenting in Movable Type is dynamic like that. Anyway, I'll probably be rebuilding him with a completely different software so that won't happen in the future.

It's old work of mine, and I'm kind of embarrassed by it, because I've come a long way in my design skills since then.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Did you do his class site? Very snazzy!

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Yep, thanks! I did the launchpad site as well. My portfolio site is http://www.jeremiahtolbert.com which has links to much more recent stuff.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

It has always been a great regret of mine that you live so far from Denver. I think I would like to hang out with you and talk about speculative fiction over a beverage.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I'm only an hour away, so we should definitely do that some time. I'll be at MileHiCon. How about you?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I'm always at MileHiCon if I can help it. I'm also trying to get into the planning of a party there. We will see if that is in the offing or not.

[matgb]

See, I looked at that site, saw the news and tied the design and style into you without going further. Including the 'that's due for an update then' response. Weird.

[title] tag need to dump the The and be more like 'Mike Brotherton: Official Homepage' as well ;-)

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Good idea. Mike's already suggested something along those lines.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Cool stuff, thanks! I rather liked his novel, Star Dragon. It'll be good to see the next.

I notice he also teaches an interesting class on "Science & SF" very similar to the one we teach at KU, "Science, Technology, & Society: Examining the Future Through a Science-Fiction Lens."

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Yeah, forgot to point that out. Thanks for mentioning it.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I wonder why some blogs and LJs attract hordes of replies while other perfectly worthy blogs, like Brotherton's, appear to get very few.