My CD-burner drive is about to be replaced by a DVD-burner. There’s a lot of crap on my hard disk, and I’d like to clear it off, but the machine is not cooperating, and I can’t quite tell whether it’s a hardware problem—just a faulty drive finally having given out—or a bigger problem with the whole system. However, since I did get the thing to burn a few CDs via USB on an old external burner, I am guessing it’s the drive that’s messed up, and gambling that a DVD-burner will work without my having to reinstall Windows prior to …

As promised, a few more books I’ve torn through during my holidays: Book #22: War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches edited by Kevin J. Anderson. I admit it. After seeing the horrendous Spielberg film, I wanted to reread the original novel, but of course, my HG Wells omnibus was in my apartment in Korea. However, I was pleased to dig out this anthology, to which I hadn’t given a single thought in years, and dug into it. After the first story, it was a done deal: I knew I was bringing the anthology back to Korea with me. Now, not …

It’s holiday-time, which also means it’s heavy-reading time for me. I’ve been devouring books, which is a good thing because I have a lot of them and I’d feel a bit funny not reading them. In fact, looking through my boxes of books at my parents’ home, I felt a bit sad seeing so many books I’d owned for years and never actually read. Well, having hauled back at least 40 kilograms of books, probably 45 kilos, I have no excuse to say, “But there’s nothing I want to read right now…” I have almost all the books in my …

Well, back at my parents’ place, I’ve been reading a lot. I mean, this is my holiday, and what do you know, I’ve got about 13 boxes of books that I haven’t seen in a few years all gathered in the garage. There are also five boxes missing, including a box of my old compositions— almost all of the music I ever wrote has been officially lost and seems gone for good, though I am happy to say most of my extant juvenilia made it here safe and sound—the stories I wrote in elementary school made it, but not my …