Boring statistics: WCG

I’ve added The Clean Energy Project, Phase 2 (CEP2) to my active World Community Grid list and have donated 180 days of CPU time to it so far, marking the milestone with the Ruby badge. Not too bad a performance, considering that CEP2 is currently Linux-only. The Windows version of the CEP2 software should be available soon, doubling my processing speed — at least until more DDDT2 workunits are released…

The Help Fight Childhood Cancer (HFCC) project has been reactivated with three new targets as of this morning, and if the processing rate is the same as before it’ll probably keep going for an additional year — leaving me plenty of time to reach my 5-year target.

Teresa Jusino’s Doctor Who commentaries

Writer Teresa Jusino has been posting a series of very interesting Doctor Who commentaries over at Tor.com. There is currently no post/series index over there, so I’ve created one:

The Beast Lord’s Ebook

Sweeeet!

Ilona Andrews‘ Kate Daniels series is written from, well, the POV of Kate Daniels. Kate has frequent (snarky, violent) encounters with Curran, the Beast Lord or leader of the Atlanta shapeshifters. So what does he really think of her?

Gordon Andrews occasionally writes scenes from Curran’s POV containing gems like this:

What could possibly cause a cat, a wolf, a hyena, and a middle-aged medmage honey badger to risk my wrath? I couldn’t figure out the what or the why, but I had a damn good idea of the who. Kate Daniels, professional fuck-up.

Kate short-circuits my brain. In my head we always have these clear coherent exchanges, but once we meet, what comes out it is, “Kate, do what I say or I’ll kill you.” Her default reply is, “Fuck you!” and we go downhill from there.

and occasionally posts them on the blog.

And Ilona has just announced that the first volume of the collected posts: http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2010/07/12/on-beast-lords-web-presence-of is now available as free downloads on Smashwords.

Multiple formats are available: HTML (for online reading), Javascript (for online reading), Mobipocket/Kindle, epub, Sony LRF, Palm, and plaintext.

Like I said: Sweeeet!

Oh, and thanks, Ilona and Gordon.

Featherdale Wildlife Park, Oct 2009 (Part Three)

Brahminy Kite (Haliastur indus)

The original post got too long, so Featherdale Wildlife Park’s birds of prey, tawny frogmouths and kookaburras get their own page. The water birds (and others) are in Part Two.

That’s a rather interesting expression on the face of the Brahminy Kite (Haliastur indus) above.

Featherdale Wildlife Park, Oct 2009 (Part Two)

Australian Darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)

Feeding time at Featherdale Wildlife Park’s water bird enclosure was quite a spectacle.

Featherdale Wildlife Park, Oct 2009 (Part One)

Swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor)

Featherdale Wildlife Park is located in a residential area in Western Sydney and not very large, but it is well-stocked with happy and healthy-looking animals.