Tag Archives: San Francisco

Litquake Now Accepting Applications for Author Presentations

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This one is for the San Francisco Bay Area Authors (or those who can travel to San Francisco in October 2013). From their web site:

This festival was birthed by authors and we love them. However, there are more authors who want to appear at Litquake than we have slots for them; hence, the application process. How are authors selected? It’s a complicated task, carried out by a committee. Our criteria:

  • Is the author local or in some way connected to the Bay Area? Or able to travel to San Francisco during the festival in October?
  • Does he or she have a book or other significant publications in the last two years ?
  • Can he or she give a great live interpretation of the work to a Litquake audience?

We also invite authors when their books fit into genre-specific Litquake events.

Good Luck!
Team pixelhose

 

Four Interesting Places to Visit in Oakland, California

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By Pat Harris

Oakland typically gets lost in the shadow of its flirtatious, painted cousin, with tourists opting to spend most, if not all of their time in San Francisco. Occasionally a few retired civil engineers might dotingly cross the Bay Bridge, or a couple of pensioner-turned-amateur-astronomers might find their way to Chabot. To most tourists however, Oakland is, if anything, a dangerous place to avoid.

As counter-balance to that view, here I share four of my favorite spots in Oakland.

1. Oakland China Town and Oakland City Center
Oakland China Town is within the walking distance of the Oakland City Center (BART: Oakland City Center), and together they are one of most unique blending of old and new you’ll ever encounter. If you go, check out the nearby areas, particularly near the Federal Building, for quaint shopping and lovely statues. In addition, there is a wonderful Farmers Market near the Oakland China Town (Thursday – Sunday) that is definitely worth checking out. Just follow the trail of people carrying orange plastic bags!

pixelhose.com Four Interesting Places to Visit in Oakland, CA

Oakland City Center – View of the Tribune Building

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SOPA Protest Report

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SOPA Protest, San Francisco (pixelhose.com)

SOPA Protest, San Francisco (pixelhose.com)

In addition to going dark, pixelhose staff participated in the San Francisco SOPA protest. Yes! We did show up in person – an odd feeling, like, oh, reading a paper book nowadays!

We are happy, no, make that ELATED to report that the “after-action” data are extremely positive. Here are some highlights, gleaned from various news sources:

  • Three US senators, including senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) withdrew his
    support for SOPA/PIPA. Given the senator’s stature within the GOP, this is a
    major blow to these incredibly, uh…, dumb is the only word that comes to
    mind, bills.
  • The conservative Heritage Foundation announced its opposition to the
    bills.
  • Google said 4.5 MILLION people signed the anti-SOPA petition today
  • Last week only three senators opposed PIPA. As of this writing, 35
    senators are publicly opposing the bill(s). The “magic number” – the number of
    opposing votes needed to kill the bill in the US Senate – is 41.

These are all of course great first-time-out results for a community that had never come together for a political cause. But the SOPA problem is far from solved.

Next week, US Senate will try a floor vote on PIPA. We’ll of course will have multiple posts before then, hoping to give everyone more good reason to keep signing those online petitions and calling their US senators, PARTICULARLY senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) who is one of the bill’s co-sponsors and, so far, has refused to acknowledge the error of his ways.

In the meantime, we want to THANK everyone who supported the protest day, particularly those of you who also took time to send us emails expressing your support.

Let’s do this!

Bob Dourandish
Publisher