Hugo voting closing soon

Many visitors to SF and Nonsense, not surprisingly, read SF. Some are also, through a membership at last year's or this year's Worldcon, eligible to vote for this year's Hugo awards. If that's you, please note: voting closes on July 31. That's this coming Friday! (Where does the time go?)

The envelope please ...

As this year's puppygate controversy continues to swirl, it's more important than ever that nonpartisan readers (as I imagine visitors here to this blog to be) participate in the awards process. The more fans who -- turned off by all the squabbling and posturing, politicizing and agend-izing -- sit out this awards cycle, the more at risk this prestigious award becomes. The squabblers and politicizers will vote.

Full disclosure (though not news to regular droppers-by): I have a novelette on this year's final Hugo ballot. If you should find "Championship B'tok" award-worthy, that's keen. If you don't care for it, or think another(s) of the candidates is worthier -- fair enough. I thank all Hugo voters -- however they chose to vote -- who assess the nominated stories on their intrinsic merits.

(And if you're curious about my take on the controversy, see, "Of Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies, and notoriety.")

Cool stuff other than Pluto

Let me say upfront that the recent New Horizons flyby of Pluto was awesome. But NASA's images speak for themselves; you don't need my two-cents worth on the topic.

When it rains, it pours

Instead, today I'll write mostly about some interesting computer (in)security topics. (You also don't need me to tell you how awful the recent OPM hack was, or the ho-hum non-response from the executive branch, so I'll cover less prominent security topics.)

20 Unbelievable (Really!) Facts About Outer Space

I'm too busy to post this week ... but why should you suffer?

More than meets the eye (or the HST)

You won't want to miss "20 Unbelievable Facts About Outer Space."

Happy Pluto Flyby (and Bastille) Day :-)

The curious state of publishing

Some observations about the (generally troublesome) state of publishing ...

Is the shift from print to ebooks hurting publishers? Are brick-and-mortar bookstores dying? Conventional wisdom says yes to both. And (sometimes) conventional wisdom is wrong. See Hugh Howey's "Two Important Publishing Facts Everyone Gets Wrong."

(If you're unfamiliar Hugh Howey, he's one of the most successful self-published authors around. He got his start with self-published Kindle books -- although based on that success, he's conventionally published, too.)