Re: writers

From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Mon Jul 31 2000 - 06:37:15 MDT


Ziana Astralos wrote:

> --- "Ross A. Finlayson" <raf@tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
> > ...
> > Piers Anthony (a pseudonym?) is among the most
> > prolific authors alive, and ever.
> > ...
>
> Yep. His real name is Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob.
> For a list of everything he's written (and published),
> see http://www.piers-anthony.com/complist.html
>

Yes. Also, see http://www.pulpless.com/volksamp/autobio.html. I've read
some forty or fifty of them. When I was young, he was my favorite
author.

>
> > ...
> > Personally, my attention span at this stage would
> > not provide the output of a good novel, although I
> > think myself to be a decent writer, and to be
> > surrounded by many of them.
> > ...
>
> I have the same problem... several times I've started
> some story or another, and may have all sorts of cool
> ideas, but I just can't manage to get more than a
> small bit done before I lose focus and stop (this is
> excluding school assignments, of course, which I
> fortunately have managed to finish ;) ). What little I
> have written has gotten plenty of compliments from the
> people who have seen it, but I just don't have the
> focus to be able to actually write more than a bit of
> a long story (the only non-assigned things I've ever
> finished have been short poems and very short
> stories). I don't know why; I probably could if I
> really tried, because I don't have this much trouble
> focusing on other things, but it's a different kind of
> focusing... I dunno. Whatever. :)
>
> > Last time I posted about fiction was a couple years
> > ago, it is in the archives somewhere.
>
> I'd like to read it if you could find it... I've been
> having a lot of trouble with the archives (especially
> that blasted search engine) for several months now.
>
> Onward,
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The question of archives is one.

As these zero and one bits representing information are so easily
maintained, and storage for it being ubiquitous, there are archives of
very many transactions that have ever taken place electronically.

One place to look, broadly, is http://www.archive.org, the goal of which
at one time was to store every single thing ever on the Internet.

More specifically, these mailing lists are distributed to each of the
readers, and each has their own personal archive, those which have been
received and not deleted. The lists' administrators mostly have
complete archives of their contents. In terms of newsgroups, another
largescale communication forum, there are archives of probably all
USENET posts, ever, although I could not say.

About the specific post, it was on the extropians list. I look some,
and it appears my first post was on about March 20, 1999 (I was thinking
it was longer ago). I believe it was within a month or two of that, and
was basically of a discussion of science fiction, which was my preferred
genre to read. Now then, how to get that from the archive is another
matter. There is an extropians list archive search engine, as there are
for many other lists, and basically any e-mail files in raw form may be
searched using UNIX's "grep" or any other decent file text extraction
tool. So, I don't recall if at the last time I went to the extropians
search engine whether it was functioning or not, I believe not. That is
a question to address to the list administrators.

Thusly: what is the regular capacity for any to access any posts ever
made to the extropians list, and by what means is it accomplished?

I could never write fiction again.

Ross

--
Ross Andrew Finlayson
Finlayson Consulting
Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/


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