Nigel Gordon

If he does crawl back, what will he be bringing back with him. Probably some unpleasant STD!

Chris, I have just finished writing an article for a local website. In it I have three links to pieces of music. The way I have solved the problem has been to obtain copies of the music which were either copyright free or for which I could obtain a copyright release. Then I copied the files into the same directory as the text for the article placing local links in the article. I know this approach is not always possible but it is probably the best way to avoid broken or highjacked links.

A word of warning. Be very careful about embedding links in stories to outside resources. You have to think about what will happen if the link is no longer valid. I was reading a story on another site and clicked on a link to a piece of music. The story was about six years old and the link came up with a 404 error. That is not too bad. A few months ago I was reading a technical article on a closed site and clicked on a link in the article. The article was from 2006. The link rather than going to the quoted article, went to a download, which turned out to be malware. Fortunately Avast caught it and blocked the download. Some investigation found that the original site ceased to exist in 2010 but its domain had been taken on by people who had reinstated the links and connected them to malware. So if you are embedding links in your story, think about what happens if the link is broken.

Great story - I loved it. Maybe Cole we could see them ten years on when Nick gives that performance? I for one would like to see how it all works out.

I am not so sure. There is now a growing market of people who want hard copies off their favourite ebooks. Spent a few hours last night reformatting an ebook into a pdf file, then used Bookbinder 3 to generate the signatures, which I printed off. This morning I sowed the signatures together, this evening I will make the case binding for it. My friend is calling round on Sunday to pick it up. He is going to have a nicely bound hard copy of an ebook. I know a number of bookbinders who have done similar jobs. There is also quite a market starting to build up in putting decent bindings on Print On Demand books coming out of Amazon and the likes. I have done two in the past month.

A question one of my beta readers asked was could a book have been hand bound in the time allowed for in the story, just over a couple of hours. The answer to this is that for a cloth bound book with a simple gold blocked lettering on the spine, then yes. I am part of a bookbinding group in Leicester and new comers to the group usually leave the first session with a bound book. Each session is three hours.

Glad to oblige, have a look at:

I keep going back and reading it again and again, it is so good. Though it is costing me a fortune in tissues.

Unfortunately I have read it before I go in for my operation, due in 12 days. I will no doubt be thinking about it, but also about a programme that was aired last week on the same subject. We are loosing the fight and it is only a matter of time before we find out how badly we have lost. A great story well told. Personally I would like to see it posted tot he main site, where - who knows - somebody might see it who can do something about it.

One of the best.

A boy found trying to sleep in a doorway. An old man pursuing a age old craft. A chat about being who you are. So why are things not quite as they seem? A 'Workbench Chat' is coming soon.

A boy found trying to sleep in a doorway. An old man pursuing a age old craft. A chat about being who you are. So why are things not quite as they seem? A 'Workbench Chat' is coming soon.

It appears that intelligence analysts in at least three countries have been instructed to remove 'origin and strength' information from reports before they are passed to US intelligence services. Yes, the CIA and NSA will still be getting the same intelligence but they will not now know how much weight to put on it. It is one thing to read "our agent in Damascus has ... ", quite another to read "a report has ..." Unfortunately for the next few years the latter is probably all US Intelligence is going to get, which is going to make the US a lot less safe.

Well, the writing is certainly one of your best. Can't judge the story till we get to the end but I suspect it will be.

Just a small but very important point. No computer was hacked in this cyber attack. They were INFECTED. There is a major difference between being hacked and being infected.

It appears that the Donald is somewhat concerned that there might be some tapes of his conversations around. News reports state: In a tweet on Friday, he <Trump> said Mr Comey had "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations". Why should he be concerned about any tapes of their conversations? What did he say that could be have been recorded?

I think the Donald is getting the post of US President and Absolute Monarch mixed up. He should remember that Absolute Monarch's walk in fear of the men with long knives.

The methodology was certainly shabby, which is why I recommend against publication. Got the strong feeling they had come up with a hypothesis and were writing a paper to fit it. Heard today that of the five asked to review it four opposed publication and the other had reservations about publication.

Sorry, but the definition of what they termed a 'Military School' was not given in the submitted paper, nor was their definition of the other types of educational establishments. That was one of the reasons why I advised against publication. All I can say is that the subjects would have been in the age group 13 to 18 in the period 2000 to 2005 and would have attended a establishment which the authors of the paper deemed a 'Military School' for two years or more during the period under review.

Just done a peer review of a paper which had been submitted to a peer reviewed journal. Unfortunately I had to recommend against publication as I felt some of the methodology used was flawed and the sample sizes were too small. Part of the study, admittedly a rather small part, was a followup on students who had graduated from Military Schools in the USA between 2000 and 2005. They followed up on a group of just over two hundred. Of that group some twenty percent said they were in a homosexual relationship. Just over thirty percent identified as Gay or Bisexual but were not in an ongoing homosexual relationship. One of the reasons I advised against publication was that I disagreed with the way they had gone about selecting the sample they used for the study. To an extent it was self-selecting for members of the LGBT community. However, even given that I suspect that there is something going on in Military Schools which is biasing the student population towards a gay lifestyle.

With all the depressing news that seems to be floating around at the moment here is a good news story. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance have married at the Bovey Castle Hotel in the Dartmoor National Park, Devon, about 30 miles from Tom's home city of Plymouth. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-39836555

Well the Donald's trick probably backfired. I doubt if anyone outside Argentina had heard about this award before, now the story seems to be everywhere, so the whole world knows that Carter was supposed to be honoured.

I was delighted to see this story in Dude's Picks for this month. I will not say it is my favourite Chris James story, I will not say it is the best Chris James story. It is though a story that I keep coming back too time and time again. It is not a story I go specifically looking for when I want to read some Chris James (which is usually about once a month). Then I will go to something like "Nathaniel Smiley", "What a Peach" or "Exit Stage Left". It is, however, a story I keep coming across and every time I do I re-read it. This is probably my tenth or eleventh time reading it. Every time I read it I find it has just got better and better. It is probably about time I printed a copy of this off, bound it, probably in a nice tan leather, and put it on the shelf above my bed. Nice and easy to find when I am in a mood for a good read of a good story well told.

A friend suggested I look at the first in this series Imago by N R Walker, so when it popped up as a 99p offer on BookPub I jumped at it. Glad I did. It was a delightful read and a true Gay Romance story. It is not a wank feest piece of writing with a weak plot over the top as so much of so called gay romantic fiction is these days. Yes, there is sex in it, but the sex makes sense, it is there because it fits the story, not to give you a thrill. The story is that of a nerd type genius, who is a butterfly expert, and his meeting and subsequent relationship with a wildlife and parks manager. It's well told and interesting. The story is continued in Imagines and Red Dirt Heart Imago. Both of which are equally well written. They are all available from Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback forms. My only criticism of them is that they are all fairly short and personally I would have thought they would have made one good book if they had been combined.

Well that should boost egg sales in September. Yes I know the visit is in October but we need time for the eggs to become rotten!