My time on the internet is limited these days due to a variety of reasons, time being the most critical. I keep getting asked to engage in conversation on various forums, mailing lists and the like, but if I did then I'd have no time to write, let alone time to spend with the family and just relax. It's always amazed me how people can be on-line for the better part of their lives. I used to do it, when I lived alone and wrote for a living, meaning that I was on the computer for the bulk of my life, chat rooms, ICQ, forums, mailing lists - the lot. Now? I don't miss it and I can't be bothered.

Having said all of that, there are two forums that I visit daily and actively take a role in. The first is Norm Breyfogle's forum. I host the forum on my own server and decided to do so after the original host decided to call it a day. I like Norm, I like the conversations we have, so I made Norm an offer and he accepted. Thus I get to participate in a forum that has decent con…

There's some interesting doings going on over on the other side of the planet.

When I first saw both of the images presented on the left on Michael Netzer's site I was fascinated. I've never been a fan of censorship in any way, shape or form, and for a while I thought that Mike had been told that his initial image - the one on the far left - was far too offensive for many, and probably borderline slander, which is why he changed it and added the extra bits. Then I realised who this was - Mike Netzer - and I knew that he'd not bowed under pressure, but was making a more powerful statement with the 'Censored' markings. Which one works best? I'll leave that for others to decide. Both are great in their own way, certainly the censored image makes the alleged crime much worse than it probably was.

Which brings us to the following. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't aware of the Charles Brownstein/Taki Soma situation when it happened - I wasn't th…

Long, long drive today - from Horsham back to Adelaide, around 500kms all up. Horsham is noted for, well, not many things really. It's a good halfway spot, I broke down there once back in the early '90s on my way to Melbourne and Mark Twain said it best when he stated that; "Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor". Still it has a decent set of motels and we always stay in one with Foxtel. We left at the ungodly hour of 8am and were back here at home by 1pm. Decent run and we missed the bad weather. However I did return to find over 650 emails waiting for me to read. I gave up eventually and just mass deleted them, figuring that people would re-email me soon enough. Hence if you're reading this and I didn't reply to an email then send it back down and I'll get to it eventually.

One of the emails that I did get that I was waiting for was from Bob McLeod. I've always been a huge fan of Bob's from his early days at Marvel and right throug…