Nature / Writing

Tuesday May 8, 2012 Several years ago I started reading Every Day Fiction , a website which posts a new piece of flash fiction, well, every day.  EDF defines flash fiction as stories which are 1000 words or less, so reading it is a fun way to constantly sample a variety of voices and ideas with a low time commitment.  As a result, over the years I've collected links to what I think are some great examples of flash fiction. EDF has released several "best of" print anthologies of their own. Now obviously what makes for good flash fiction is a matter of taste, and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with my picks (be warned, I have a particular affection for anything silly, or involving animals).  But fantastic finds are always made more fantastic by the sharing, so I'm going to start emptying my "Favourite Fiction" bookmarks folder out on this blog, a few links at a time. My Favourite Flash Fiction, Vol. 1 Frankenstein's Monsters by...

Monday May 7, 2012 Mini who? I ordered business cards once before. It was just before a trip to Calgary, when I was going to see All the Light-Hearted Souls produced. Business cards seemed like a thing to have for my first ever "business trip", so I had a box of two-colour, text-only cards made up (Steve and I also handmade some illustrated minibooks out of a narrative poem, but that's another story). I think I gave out maybe four cards, and have given out another dozen or so since.  But now the URL is out of date, and the cards have been relegated to the scrap paper section of my storage closet (where they've proved surprisingly useful). It was time for something new.  New, up-to-date, and actually likeable. Enter Moo Cards. The spread. I first came across Moo.com years ago, and have kept them in mind ever since. For now, I opted for Minicards, which are half the size of a regular business card.  One of the great things about Moo Cards i...

Saturday May 5, 2012 So one of the things which slightly hampered my Script Frenzy progress during April was this: And this: And especially this: Those are screen captures* from when I was watching the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Red-tailed Hawks nest webcam .  There's a also a live feed from a Great Blue Heron nest webcam , but I haven't managed to get any real good screen captures from that yet. Here instead is a short video video Cornell posted of one of the herons hatching: I managed to stumble onto the times when the three hawk eggs were hatching (which were each a day apart!) and I found it very hard not to constantly check in for any progress. If you're at all interested in birds or nature in general, I highly recommend checking in with these nests over the next few weeks as the young birds grow (just be prepared for a little bit of gore - circle of life, and all). You can learn a lot just by watching, and also by reading and as...