Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

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hano is a Hero of the Revolution who identified the netbook problem and suggested a fix which has, indeed, worked, so I do not have that frustration to deal with.

Having a good time, a bit laidback, a little tired - two of my panels down (the anti-hero discussion, perhaps a bit all over the place but quite lively, the changing reading tastes over time, rather good I thought, lots of thoughts to think about).

Having the usual rather frustrating thing of not wanting to book up every available free slot before I even get here, but then not being able to schedule get-togethers. However, I have some meetups fixed, and yesterday managed to have an enjoyable lunch with lcohen and dinner with oracne - for the record, yak sizzling platter at a Taste of Tibet, having had goat curry at the other Tibetan place on Thursday eve - along with various rencontres around the Concourse more generally, in the Dealers' Room, the bar, at the parties, etc -

Even if at the latter I, and many of my approx contemps were expressing a certain exhaustion by the late-ish hour.

Sleeping reasonably well if with a certain amount of waking earlier than I would prefer, though this morning I did get back to sleep, but not for as long as I might have liked, as I had to get up with a 10 am panel in mind.

Among other good stuff, I record here the whirlpool.

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Simon's Cat in 'Tongue Tied':


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Orlando Figes translation scrapped in Russia amid claims of inaccuracies.

Varvara Gornostaeva, head of the Corpus publishing house, told the Guardian problems came to light after her firm sent the Russian translation of Figes' book for a pre-publication check to Memorial, the human rights organisation that conducted the interviews with families of gulag victims.

"When they started to do a fact-check, there were a huge number of inaccuracies and factual errors," said Gornostaeva. "These were factual errors, and if we didn't fix them, it could bring about serious displeasure … some of the people themselves are still alive."

She said that to "fix the text" would have taken up to a year, and would have resulted in a different book.

Figes has conceded that he made a number of errors, but said he had offered to amend anything deemed necessary for publication to take place in Russia.

He denied that many of the alleged factual inaccuracies and misrepresentations were mistakes. Some, he said, were the result of loose translation into Russian; others were a matter of opinion, which "should be subject to normal scholarly discussion on the basis of a published text (rather than pre-publication censorship)".

We also note the 'someone else dunnit' excuse, for which Prof F has a certain amount of form: 'the error, which he regretted, was the result of an annotated file that was substituted for the master copy by an assistant'.

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Yesterday was actually a v nice restful day with walks, a wonderful chair massage, a session in the fitness centre and a wallow in the whirlpool, pleasing encounters as people started to turn up, a good reception/reading at A Room of One's Own.

But my netbook is just getting weirder and weirder and more recalcitrant - it was hanging badly yesterday evening which was why no post on the day then, this morning although it tells me it's connected and the strength of signal is excellent, can I get on to the internet? can I hell. Firefox isn't even opening up, and though I can get IE Explorer to open, it just sits there claiming it's connecting while nothing happens.

I thought this might all be to do with the annoying thing AdAware has done which is instead of just download latest update of free version, has downloaded trial version of AdAwarePro, which I think is a bit of a memory hog. I closed it down via Task Manager but this doesn't seem to have resolved the problem.

AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH.

I got the netbook in 2009, so it's not that old....

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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/05/quick-useful-sandman-slipcase-post.html

A hasty post...

There's a slipcased set of Sandman on the way. It's going to be published in November. I'm so happy. This is something that I have been asking DC to make for a very long time, and I am genuinely thrilled it's going to exist. It will look almost like this. (If you look carefully you'll notice that the final book in the box shown here is not The Wake. That's because that edition of SANDMAN: The Wake has not been published yet.)

(Here's the Amazon listing for it -- they've dropped it from $200 to $125. And I'm sure there are other such deals elsewhere on the web.)

DC are also going to be selling the Slipcase with some copies of The Wake. So if you have the rest of the  books already, you can simply put them into the slipcase.

According to Bleeding Cool, retailers have until this weekend to get their orders in for November to guarantee that they'll get them. So if you want one, either if you want a copy of The Wake with a Slipcase, or the set of all the books, you should talk to your Local Comic Shop now. (How do you find your local comic shop? You could always use http://www.comicshoplocator.com/)

(The current edition of paperbacks contains the same colouring as the Absolute editions, although, obviously not all the extra material in each of the Absolutes. If you already bought the Absolute Sandmans 1-4, feel proud of yourself. You are not required to buy the books again. You are never required to buy again what you already have.)

http://xkcd.com/1060/

This is just an image dump of marvel approved stills and screenshots of my work on the film. I'll do a proper post soon - this is a fraction of the work - But I had the distinct pleasure of working with Cantina Creative, leading the design of the glass screens for the Helicarier in the Avengers. I also led the design and animation of the all new and upgraded Mark VII Hud.

cups brewed at DW