Monday, December 31, 2007

I Have Just Got to See This!

First off, you have to realize one of my favorite films is David Lynch's The Straight Story, which is about an elderly man, Alvin Straight, played by Richard Farnsworth (the brother in Anne of Green Gables on TV). Straight, who lived in northwestern Iowa, decided he wanted to see his brother, who lived across the Mississippi River in an out-of-the-way house in Wisconsin. He couldn't drive a car any more, so he fixed up a riding lawnmower with a trailer and headed out.

Secondly, you have to understand I love maps and seeing new places in this country (I'd like to see places in other countries, but I've only made it to the Maritimes and a couple of places in Ontario, both in Canada, of course). My 9,000-mile trip in September 1998 covered a big loop in the eastern 2/3s of the country, mostly off the interstates unless there were few other choices.

10 mph is a bit different from The Straight Story. It's about a guy who decides to ride a Segway from Seattle to Boston. It's a crazy idea, of course. Totally impractical. And yet, what a neat way to see the country. It took 100 days. I would love to do something like that.

Both movies are available on Amazon. If you're interested in buying either one, do me a small favor. Instead of going directly to Amazon's website, use the search box at the top right of this page. Enter Amazon that way, and I'll get a small commission, which won't cost you anything extra. Here's the ASIN numbers for the movies, which Amazon uses to identify their stuff, and you can cut and paste them into the search box:

10 mph: B000OVLMLG
The Straight Story: B00004Z4SD

Hugo Awards - Movies & TV Shows

I've put together and published a lens on Squidoo for Hugo Awards given to movies and TV shows from 1958 to 2007. There are no descriptions, just links to Amazon, and only the winners are listed. It took about a week to get the novel lenses done. By leaving off descriptions (available on Amazon anyway) and nominees, this lens took only a few hours.

Some of the links, especially for TV shows, had to be for collections of a whole season. In the case of the two Indiana Jones movies that won, I linked to a collection of the four movies since Amazon wasn't offering the individual movies from its own stock. Even 1958's winner The Incredible Shrinking Man, was available, although that one is only available in a version with coding incompatible with most DVD players sold in the US and Canada.

I'm considering whether to do Hugo lenses for other award categories. I'll have to look into publications including novellas, novelettes, and short stories and possibly build lenses around the publications.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

A Little More Complete

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

While the Hugo Award lenses listings were completed yesterday, I realized this morning there was one more step that had been suggested by a reader of Moby's Soundings back on 12/23 after my first post about the Hugo lens idea (thanks, Cheryl!) So I went into one of the lenses and added three links - one for the official site for the Hugo Awards; one for a page for the Hugos which also has links to other pages with detailed information about categories, each year, and about the authors; and one for Locus Magazine itself because it's an important source of information for authors and serious fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I saved the elements of those three links so I could plug them into the other five lenses.

Here's a link to the lens for the 1970s Hugo Awards. The module for links is near the bottom after the voting module (and while you're there, why not vote for Hugo winners you've read). Why the 1970s? Just so I'm not always linking to the same module, like the 2000s. There's links to the other five Hugo lenses within that lens.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Hugo Awards Lenses Completed

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

After two more days, I've got all the Squidoo lenses for the Hugo Awards completed. I completed both the 1960s and the 1950s today, after not getting very far yesterday. Guess I just needed a break, since I've done a fair amount on them since I started last Saturday.

I was determined today to get at least the 1960s, with its ten blurbs and addition of links for the nominees done. Once I'd done that, though, I only had five more blurbs for the '50s and four links for the 1959 nominees. No nominees have been listed prior to that year, simplifying completion of the final lens in the series. Once I got all the links done, I completed the voting modules, which Squidoo calls "plexos" (don't ask me where that came from). Then once they were published, I voted on the books I'd read.

I found a Squidoo group for "hard SF" and submitted my lenses to it. I think there were only 16-18 lenses before my additions, so I have no idea if that will help boost my ratings, but it seems a good idea to submit lenses to groups for at least some exposure.

I've found that on Squidoo, a lot of people put stuff up fast with minimal original input. Squidoo starts a page with several basic modules, and with some, it's possible to let sites like Amazon or YouTube determine the content, which sometimes results in odd and/or irrelevant choices. In my lenses, I've tried to add something of my own. Granted, on the Hugo lists, the choice of books was predetermined by the awards and nominations, but I did add blurbs for the winners, and made links to Amazon that show the book covers.

I hope people will visit the lenses. Here's a link for the lens for 2000-2007. You'll see links to the others on the right side as you scroll down.

It appears I got lucky with having the first three lenses I put up getting Stumbled. Since then, the other three have gotten a few visits, about what I would normally expect. But the three Stumbled lenses cracked the 10,000 mark, which none of my other lenses prior to that had done. One of the Hugo lenses is in the 2,000s.

I've started trying out designs for the website pages. I'm getting the impression that traffic to Have Pun Will Travel is nearly nonexistent, but that could change. I'm left wondering if the time I spent getting The Punnery online will end up benefiting anyone other than myself and the few other folks who I'm still in touch with from those days. It's been interesting putting it all together, but sometimes I wonder if it would have been just as good a use of my time if I'd spent it doing a model of the Taj Mahal in Legos. And I'm not even a Legos person.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Card Recovered

On Christmas Eve, as planned, I went to the LL Bean website to send an email gift certificate. I had my wallet handy so I could pull out a credit card to pay. Only when I went to pull out the card I'd decided to use, it wasn't there.

OK, I thought, I had to pull it out when I made my online payment, and it's probably been sitting here right in front of me but covered by something. So I shuffled through the stuff on the desk in front of the monitor. No luck. I tried a few places in the bedroom and had no luck there either.

Then I recalled that after I'd called in the payment because I couldn't access the website, I'd used it a few days later, Dec. 15, when I went to the Eddie Bauer store at Columbia Gorge Outlets in Troutdale. I'd gotten a second fleece pullover because it was on sale a bit cheaper than the cost of one I'd gotten earlier and really liked. I thought there was a slight chance I'd taken the card and receipt from the clerk and dropped the card into the bag when I put the receipt in. The bag was being used as a wastebasket liner, and there wasn't much stuff in it. The card wasn't in it either, though.

By then I'd concluded I hadn't gotten the card back after the purchase. OK, the clerk made a small error. It's my card, and I should have made sure I got it back, but I didn't.

Of course, now it was Christmas Eve and everything was closed, so I had to wait. I checked online from another computer - don't know why I can't access my account on this one - and saw that the Eddie Bauer purchase was the last activity, which meant the card had not been stolen, at least not by someone who used it.

Today I went back to the store and asked about it. The clerk I asked checked a couple of places, and then asked someone else who might've been a supervisor. She asked what the card looked like and asked to see my ID. She checked a few spots and then went back to the office. When she came back, she had the card. Just to be sure, she checked my ID with the card right there, which was fine with me, then handed me the card. They'd been keeping it in their safe.

It's nice to know things like this can happen and other people do the right thing. It was a little scary because a lot of times a card might sit in my wallet for weeks, sometimes even months, without me using it. It would've been a real hassle if it had been stolen and used, and would've been a pain getting it replaced even if it hadn't.

My thanks to the folks at Eddie Bauer!

I would've bought another fleece pullover, but they didn't have any.

Portlandia

Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey installed above the entrance to the Portland Building on SW 5th Avenue. It is several stories up, and as you can see, it's on a street with trees, so it isn't in the most visible of locations. But the sculptor said he designed it for that place and he does not want it moved. He also retains rights to use of the image, so there are no Portlandia key chains or T shirts. So there's something I won't use if I ever get a CafePress account set up.

If standing, the statue would be 50 feet tall, but despite the trident, she doesn't look as if she's about to attack. As it is, its height is 36 feet. The photo was taken in early November 2007.

1970s Hugos Done

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

The 1970s Hugo Awards lens is done. Well, not quite, but certainly all the descriptions of the winners and the links to Amazon for the nominees are complete. Yesterday I added what Squidoo calls "Amazon Plexos" to the 2000s and 1990s lenses. They're something that allow visitors to the page to vote on selected items. I chose the yearly winners and advised people to vote for novels they've read. People can link to the book's Amazon page via the plexo, so I added a note asking people to please use the links I created within each year's listing.

Since it's still early enough, I'll probably add plexos for the 1980s and 1970s. In creating the first two, I found that for some very strange reason, the system reversed the order of the first two books, so in the 2000s lens, 2006 appears before 2007. I believe the order changes according to votes received, so it may not matter, but I was a bit obsessive with the 1990s lens and found a way to make them appear in proper order. Frankly, I'm not sure how much good the plexos are. In lenses I've visited that use them, it seems almost nobody has voted, and some of the lenses have higher rankings than I've ever achieved with mine.

Hugos 1980s Completed

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

Between yesterday and this morning, I've completed the lens for the 1980s Hugo Awards. I got the descriptions for the winners completed yesterday, and finished by adding the links to Amazon today.

As expected, the further back I go, the less certain it is that a book will be available directly from Amazon. So far, going back to 1980, every winner or nominee book has had a listing, but some must be bought through third party sellers. I still link to them, even though I don't get any commission when someone orders from a third party through Amazon. Prices from third party sellers can be as little as a penny, but shipping is usually $3.99. Not hard to figure out where they're making their money. I certainly have no quarrel with third party sellers and have ordered stuff from them in the past and gotten good service. It's just that in my Hugo listings, I've been looking for a link to an edition Amazon sells directly and use that. I'll list the mass market paperback edition if it's available from Amazon, even though there may be higher-priced editions from them. Besides, once a person gets to the Amazon page, s/he will see the availability of other editions in most cases.

I found a rather embarrassing typo in my introduction to the Hugos - something that showed up on all six pages because the intro is the same. I messed up the abbreviation for the World Science Fiction Society as "SWFS." So they all got changed to "WSFS." Fortunately the mistake was only up for three days or less.

I'm hoping to get the descriptions and Amazon links for the rest of the Hugo lenses up in the next 2-3 days. Writing the blurbs, especially for books I haven't read, isn't the easiest thing for me. I recall back in school I often struggled with book reports. These blurbs are shorter, but I am trying to make them useful. Fortunately Amazon usually has several reviews on the pages for each book, although occasionally I've had to resort to reading what others on Amazon have posted and/or check Wikipedia. They take a while, especially when I try to do a decade's worth in one day. Part of the time gets consumed by getting interested in what's written about the books aside from trying to pull together information for a short blurb.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Mill Ends Park


Mill Ends Park, the world's smallest city park, is inside the concrete, in the median strip of Naito Parkway at SW Taylor Street, along the Willamette River. The Oregon Journal building was between the park's location and the river until 1969. Portland is also the home of Forest Park, which at 4,600 acres is the largest park within a city in the United States. The photo above was taken in November 2007. The photos below are from 2000.


The plaque on the west side of Naito Parkway is bigger than the park itself. The text of the plaque:

"From his office on the second floor of the old Oregon Journal building, journalist Dick Gagen (1911-1969) periodically gazed down on the busy Front Avenue thoroughfare. It was his keen imagination that turned a utility pole hole, in the avenue's median strip at Taylor Street, into "Mill Ends Park." The Guiness Book of World Records lists it as the world's smallest park. It is twenty-four inches in diameter, and contains 452.16 square inches of land. In his "Mill Ends" column in the Oregon Journal, Fagan described a variety of events occurring in the park, which were presided over by Patrick O'Toole, head Leprechaun residing in the park. Weddings and other celebrations have taken place at Mill Ends, and on St. Patrick's Day, 1976, the site was dedicated as on official Park of the City of Portland."



More Hugo Lenses Up, Nebulas to Come

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

The lenses for Hugo Awards - Novels for the 1970s, 1960s, and 1950s have now been published on Squidoo. So all the lenses have been published and they all have at least links for the winning novels for each year, and a listing of the nominees. What remains is to add descriptions for the winners from the 1980s on back, and create links for the nominees.

So then I got the bright idea to create lenses for the Nebula Awards. I created them and got the listings of the books put in, but an introduction for the Awards still needs to be done. There was no photo of a Nebula Award available on Wikipedia, unfortunately. The description I read of it sounds nice - a glitter galaxy suspended in a cube of lucite. So far the only reasonable photo of the award is one spotted on Robert J. Sawyer's website.

Unlike with the Hugo lenses, I don't think I'll be in quite the rush to put up the Nebula lenses. For one thing, because there were many years when the Hugo winner didn't win the Nebula, I'll have to write up new stuff. Sixteen books won both awards, so at least that's sixteen reviews I won't have to write for the Nebulas. That leaves 27 to write. It'll take a while. But I've got the URLs reserved.

I was looking at Sawyer's website, which has a page for Carolyn Clink, his wife. Carolyn took the photo of the Nebula. Toward the bottom of that page, her brother David gets a photo and a paragraph, which mentions he's had five poetry chapbooks published. One of them is called a come-on from the horse on seventh avenue. I do declare I got a laugh out of that. If you're in the dark about that, think Simon & Garfunkel, and if you're still in the dark about it, give it another thought tomorrow, on Boxing Day.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Hugo Awards - Novels - 1980s on Squidoo Published

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

The lens for the Hugo Awards - Novels - 1980s on Squidoo isn't totally done, but I did get the books typed in and linked the winners to Amazon, so that was enough to publish. I put a note on the page saying the short reviews of the winners and links for the nominees would be added soon.

I just checked and there's already 48 visits for the 1980s lens, which only got published an hour ago, and 109 for the 1990s lens. For some reason the count seems to go up soon after publication, and then it doesn't get updated until the next day. The 2000s lens has been showing 56 visits all day. All three lenses have been added to StumbleUpon.

By the way, StumbleUpon is a pretty neat thing to have, especially if you're using Firefox because a StumbleUpon toolbar can be added to that browser. Oh, and when I went to create the link, I saw there's one for IE. With the toolbar on the browser, just open up any page and hit the Stumble! button. It'll take you to a site you indicated might be in a category you're interested in when you signed up. It gets addictive, and is certainly more informative than playing the 11,348th game of FreeCell or getting blown up for the 5,392nd time in Minesweeper.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Hugo Awards - Novels - 1990s on Squidoo Published

I've gotten the eleven brief reviews of the Hugo winners written. It's eleven because there was a tie in 1993. With that done, plus addition of Amazon links for the winners, I published the lens on Squidoo. That should get it indexed by tomorrow unless the holiday slows things down. I also Stumbled it.

It's called Hugo Awards - Novels - 1990s and can be accessed through the link. Once it's indexed it can be found by searching on Squidoo.

Although it's published, I still need to go back and add the 39 nominees' Amazon links.

Siberian Tigers



My friend Fortuna over on Delphi posted a link in her forum to a New York Times story about the killing of a rare Siberian tiger in China.

There are a couple of them at the Oregon Zoo. I got some pictures of them last month.

Stumbled Upon

I just published my newest lens Hugo Awards - Novels - 2000s yesterday afternoon, and it didn't show up on Squidoo's listings until the wee hours of the morning. So when I checked my listing of lenses, I was just looking to see what position the lens was in if it had even gone live yet. I was pleased to see it popped in live in the 49,000s. Then I noticed something else: the lens had already had more than 50 visitors.

50 visitors? Some of my lenses haven't had that in a month! At first I though somehow my own visits had been recorded, but when I looked at the stats a little closer, I saw that 45 of those visits came from StumbleUpon. I had remembered to Stumble the lens, but I've done that with others. I guess I just hit a really good topic for a lens. I was also pleased to see hits from Delphi, and one from here.

So now I'm working my way through the 1990s. I've got all the 11 winners linked and all the nominees typed in, plus three winners have blurbs. I'll keep at it and hope to have the '90s done by the end of the day.

Portland Saturday Market


Masks on display at Portland Saturday Market.

Portland Saturday Market (which is open on Sundays as well) is located around the Skidmore Fountain area in the Old Town section of Portland. The prime space for craft vendors is under the Burnside Street Bridge. The craft area, for handmade items only, extends from under the bridge along the back side of the Skidmore Building and into the plaza area near the fountain. There's an area outside the Skidmore Building by the fountain for street performers, and a main stage for two featured acts on Saturday and Sunday. Food vendors are located around the main stage and a large open-sided tent protects tables and chairs from rain or sun.

Across the street from the fountain is a parking lot used for other vendors to sell stuff other than handmade crafts and another stage, with more food vendors near the stage. The street, First Avenue, isn't used by cars in the area near the market. The MAX light rail line runs down it, dividing the two vendor areas, and there's a stop under the bridge.

Saturday Market runs every weekend from the first weekend in March up through Christmas. During the last week before Christmas is the time for the Festival of the Last Minute, when vendors are at the market every day.

The area is usually full of people on weekends unless it's really raining more than usual or if it's a hot day in summer. It's not a place to expect bargains, but since the market may be a major source of income for some of the vendors, that's OK.

Tomorrow, Monday, is the last day Saturday Market will be open until the first weekend in March. I usually look forward to the first day it's open again. It's still cool and rainy then, but Saturday Market provides a little brightness.

Here's a link to the home page of Portland Saturday Market.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Hugo Awards Lenses


For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

I got up fairly early this morning with an idea to check Squidoo to see if anyone had made lenses on science fiction's Hugo Award. They're presented annually at Worldcon and along with the Nebula Awards are the top awards in science fiction and fantasy.

Nothing came up in a search, so I decided to check Wikipedia for their listings of the awards, and settled on doing lenses for novels. The Wikipedia entry lists the winners and nominees back to the first awards in 1953, although no nominees are listed until 1959. There were no awards in 1954, and none for best novel in 1957. From 1959 on, there are five books for each year, occasionally six when there were ties. That's a little over 250 books.

Dividing things up by decade seemed like a good idea, otherwise it would make for an awfully long lens. By decade it's six lenses. I started the first lens as "Hugo Awards - Novels - 2000s" and used the URL http://www.squidoo.com/hugoawards-novels-2000s and then chose three keywords.

There was a lot of formatting involved with the text of that first lens. At first I typed in the whole list in the first introduction module. Then I used a text module for each year. Once I got the formatting they way I wanted it, I saved a copy to plug into each year's text module. I didn't do that at first, but after realizing just how much work it was going to be to format each year separately, I made the copy. It was a lot easier to plug in formatted copy and type over the author's name and book title.

Probably the most time-consuming part was writing up blurbs for each winner, which I did by looking at the reviews in Amazon, usually at least three for each book, and coming up with my own words.

The next step was to get Amazon links for all the winners plugged in. Once I did that, I went to the introduction module and deleted the book listings, since they were now in text modules by year. Then I wrote up a few paragraphs about the Hugo Award. I was lucky in finding a copyright-free photo at Wikipedia of the 2005 award to use for each lens in the intro. With the intro written, I saved that to use on each lens, with a spot to list any Hugo winners or nominated books that also won the Nebula Award.

With the 2000s lens in shape enough for publishing, I published it so it will get listed on Squidoo sooner. Then I set about creating lenses for the other decades. For each of the others, I set up the lens, then put in the introduction and photo, created text modules for each year with titles, and plugged in the formatted copy to change later. With that done five more times, I was ready to go back to the first lens.

There were 41 nominees from 2000 to 2007 (there was one tie), and after each short list of the four nominees, I plugged in the four Amazon links. These links are tagged with my associate's ID, so for each one, it meant going to Amazon, searching for the book, usually the mass market paperback if one is listed, copying the ISBN number, plugging that into the utility that makes the code for the link, then copying and pasting the code onto the lens module. 41 of those operations later, I checked everything out, fixed a few errors, and published again.

I think it's taken me about 10 hours to get it all done. The rest of the lenses won't take 10 hours each because I've got a system worked out and it'll just be a matter of plugging in, typing over, and finding the Amazon links. As I go back in time, availability of books will probably become an issue. That may mean fewer links, but I'll still have to search each title.

Before I do the 1990s Hugos, I'm going to take the stuff from the completed lens and turn it into a web page on Have Pun Will Travel.

But not tonight.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Lotus Cafe Mural


I'll be sharing some photos I've taken since I got my Canon Powershot S3 IS last July. This one's a mural on the back of the Hotel Lotus in downtown Portland. It faces a parking lot, so it's pretty visible. I think it's about ten years old.

I've been pretty pleased with the camera. It replaced an aging Kodak DC265 that was nine years old and tended to make large red areas come out in bright magenta. Ever see a P51 Mustang with a pink nose? I last used the Kodak at Faerieworlds in mid-July and took a lot of pictures, and after color-correcting all of them, I realized I could get better results with a more up-to-date camera. The two official photographers at Faerieworlds, Pixie of Pixie Vision Productions, and Kyer Wiltshire (photo below from Faerieworlds using old camera) both use Canons, so I was drawn to the brand, plus I liked what I read about the model I chose from looking over reviews on the Internet.


I don't know how often I'll be adding photos. This time of year in Portland isn't the greatest for pictures, but I did get a fair amount shot at a couple of Renaissance Faires, the Portland Pirate Festival, the Oregon Zoo and Mt. St. Helens, plus other shots around the city. So for a while at least I should be able to share several per week.

I added Powell's links to my Spider Robinson pages on Have Pun Will Travel. It's a bit of a pain to do it because Website Tonight doesn't cooperate with me putting the graphic on a page in Dreamweaver and then importing the page. I have to add the graphic in the WT application online and link them there. Also, I have to play with the HTML code in order to get the Powell's pages to open in a new window. I thought using Website Tonight would make things a bit simpler, and maybe it does, but it also makes things a lot more limited. Web pages are 800 pixels wide, period. That's not bad for simple stuff like The Punnery section of the site, which is just about 100% text, but for anything with much in the way of graphics, it's clunky. But I wanted to get something going quickly instead of digging into the ins and outs of web design and all that. I was afraid if I put it off while I learned more, I might not get started. So in that sense, WT is working out. I do have some pages that I uploaded directly to the website, such as my stories and the Anguish Languish "Night Before Christmas" pages. But now, for some reason, I can't seem to connect to upload any more stuff. I'll have to check it out. I did get my router back in service, so that may be part of the problem, or maybe I used a different FTP client when I uploaded, although I don't think so.

Oh well, it's been a strange day. I got through mid-afternoon before I realized it wasn't Saturday. That would explain why when I went to Saturday Market, which has been open all week for Christmas shopping, the place wasn't jammed with people.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

My New Place to Blog

I've been blogging for a while on Delphi Forums - at first sporadically, lately more often as I got lenses set up on Squidoo and a started my website, Have Pun Will Travel. Over on Delphi, my blog is called Moby's Soundings. I chose MobyD's Soundings for this blog to differentiate from the Delphi blog and to avoid confusion with Moby the musician.

I'm starting this blog because I'm trying to make a little money with my Squidoo lenses and website by being an Amazon Associate and Powell's Partner (Powell's being the largest independent bookstore in the US, and my favorite place in Portland). The Delphi blog is probably only read by people signed up with Delphi. This blog should give me more exposure.

I hope you'll visit Have Pun Will Travel and see what's there. While there are pages for authors I like and I hope to add more, there's other reasons to visit. If you're a fan of puns, you might be interested in The Punnery on HPWT. It's a collection of posts from the original Punnery on the old GEnie service. I started with just my posts, but am adding posts by others as they give permission. My re-creation of The Punnery covers 23 pages.

Elsewhere on HPWT I've posted some stories I've written, plus a page of photos of a tornado I saw in Kansas back in 2000 when I traveled from Massachusetts to live in Oregon. My Squidoo lens links to some of the photos I've posted from Faerieworlds 2006 and 2007 and the Portland Pirate Festival 2007. I would've put up more on Flickr, but they only allow three photo sets unless you pay $25 a year. I'll be exploring other options for posting more photos. And if you're reading this during the holiday season, I've got links on both HPWT and Squidoo to Hay Visage form Sane Ticklish, a "translation" of Clement C. Moore's classic poem that starts "T'was the night before Christmas...." The original poem is there too.

One thing I put up on HPWT is a must-see for punsters. It's a page of links to over 30 videos on YouTube from the O. Henry Pun-Off in Austin, Texas. There are a few videos of people vying for Punster of the Year with prepared material, but most are from the Pun-Off competition and feature spontaneous punning. There's also one video from 2006.

There's also a page on HPWT of links to other pun sites and other YouTube pun videos.

While the website and lenses are my main focus these days, I'll probably comment on other things here. On Delphi, I have a forum about science fiction author Spider Robinson called Robinson's Place, and I visit a few other forums on Delphi. I've cataloged my books on LibraryThing.