07:43 – It’s amazing what a difference a tiny little thing like a comma can make. I saw the following on Wikipedia last night:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
I think what they meant to say was:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
I was reminded of Oscar Wilde: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” Non-writers think he was kidding; writers know he wasn’t.
With the taxes finished, I’m back to working heads-down on the forensics book. Yesterday, though, I spent some time putting together a basic web site for the science kits. As of now, all I have is landing pages for the chemistry kit and the biology kit. I need more than that, ideally before the biology book hits the bookstores.
13:02 – Here’s irony. Barbara and I have been watching Heartland on Netflix streaming. They have the first two series: 13 episodes in series 1 and 18 in series 2. Series 3 and series 4 are out on DVD, and series 5 is currently running. (Netflix Canada streaming has series 1 through 4, but I won’t complain too much since it’s a CBC program and Canadians generally get screwed on Netflix streaming anyway.)
So, a few minutes ago, I decided screw it. I’d just upgrade our Netflix account from streaming-only to streaming + one DVD at a time. The change took effect immediately, and I headed over to my disc queue to add Heartland series 3 and 4. The only problem was, Netflix doesn’t have series 3 and 4 on DVD. They don’t even have series 2. Incredibly, they don’t even have all of series 1. They have, on DVD, just the first half of series 1. Geez.
Of course, I could just torrent down series 3 and 4 and even series 5 through the latest episode that’s run. But that’s a pain in the petunia, so (much though I hate the idea) I may actually buy the DVDs for series 3 and 4, or at least series 3. I see that Amazon sells those two seasons for $27 and $40 each.