Shaun Huston’s Neighborhood

Halloween this year was a little stressful.  Reese came down with a fever in the morning, and after a 911 call (turning blue and non-responsive) and a trip to the ER, it was determined that she had the swine flu.  She was so miserable.  So, needless to say, her Halloween was spent laying on top of either Brian or I and not wearing her cute bumble bee outfit.  Owen did get to dress up though.  He went to a party with our neighbors dressed as Iron Man and then he came home and changed into his Wolverine costume for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.  Here are some pix:

It was definitely not the Halloween we were looking forward to - but Owen still got to get out and enjoy the fun, and thankfully Reese is young enough that she really wasn't aware of what she was missing.  Next year will be better for sure! 

This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of Nov.  I dove in immediately after the World Fantasy Convention.  The great people I met at the convention must have inspired me because I've been on fire since then.  I'm writing at a record-breaking speed for me.  Yesterday was my most productive day at 3,700 words.  That's a long way from the 1,000 word glass ceiling I used to live under.

I'm off to LA tomorrow for a filmmaking seminar so I needed to meet my 25,000 word goal for Sunday by today.  Good thing I'm deadline driven.  I'm now at 25,349 words.  Yay!

Now if I can just keep myself from being distracted by my lust for a new netbook, I'll have a very rough draft of a novel to work with by mid-Dec.  I'm keeping my fingers crosssed.

Susan Ee
www.Tooth-Fairy-Movie.com
www.feraldream.com

OpenJDK is the place to collaborate on an open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition, and related projects.

There are two OpenJDK streams:

• JDK6
  
• JDK7
  

CentOS and OEL include a java-1.6.0-openjdk rpm in their yum repos and you can find java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin rpms for Fedora 9,10 & 11 at:

• http://www.icewalkers.com/rpm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin/fedora-core-9/
• http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin

You can test your OpenJDK Java SE plugin is working by running the java jre jvm demo examples that can be found at:

• http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.5.0/demos/plugin/applets.html
  

Oracle Sun Java have announced betas of Java SE 7 and Java EE 6 !

• Java SE 7
• Java EE 6

Java SE7 will have :

• comprehensive support for file I/O
• Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) to support stream connections over InfiniBand fabric
  

Oracle Enterprise Linux (and Oracle VM) is freely RE-distributable !
http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Unbreakable+Linux

Yes, it's free download but also free to re-distribute including copyrights and trademarks, see the EULA for more details.

And theres now a public yum server for OEL that offers a free and convenient way to install packages from the Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM installation media via a yum client.

With WordPress VideoPress you can just upload a video, we’ll “crunch” it into several different formats just right for sharing on the web, DVD quality, HD quality, and even formats optimized for iTunes and Miro. Preview your uploaded video, then embed the video and publish your post.

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/05/13/introducing-videopress-for-wordpress-com/
• http://videopress.com/
• http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/videopress/
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video/
• http://code.trac.wordpress.org/
  

I went to the World Fantasy Convention this week at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.  It was my first World Fantasy Convention and I have to say that it ranked as my favorite of the four SF/Fan conventions I've attended (2 WorldCons and Wiscon).  Just about everyone there was a writer, editor or publisher.  The crowd ranged from famous to aspiring.  Everyone was friendly, the feel was low-key, and the parties were great.  The best party I went to was a book launch party for Soulless.  The author, Gail Carriger, threw the party on Halloween, and it was beautifully catered by people dressed in full Victorian costumes.  The food there was impressive!  Her marketing efforts are working because a lot of people at the party said they have to buy the book, and I'm blogging about it right now.  So there you go, when your book or film launches, throw a memorable party.

Oh, and the convention gift bag can't be beat--a huge tote full of newly-published books and magazines.  :-)

Susan Ee
www.Tooth-Fairy-Movie.com
www.feraldream.com

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Costumes are big in our house - definitely necessary for running errands out and about...

 

Here's a picture of the kids before we left, so you can get a feel for their costumes:

 

And then here is Reesey later in the day.  She definitely adheres to the idea of "Less is more"...the "Less" being that she has no pants...the "More" being that she has on two different kinds of shoes and carries two purses and a sword...

 

We went to Seattle to visit our friends the Hipshers, and also to celebrate Brian's 37th birthday.  We took the kids to the Seattle Aquarium...here are some pix:

 

It was a fun trip - nice to the see our friends and spend some time together!