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Sometimes the writing isn’t the most time-consuming part of “writing.” There’s quite a bit of housekeeping involved. The one question that’s came up repeatedly, is where to submit fiction? Being a gal with a speculative/futurist outlook, I tend towards science fiction. So a good place to start is the list of SFWA Qualifying Markets. This is an important list to be on. The magazines1 must meet the current SFWA “minimum wage” to qualify.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. My week starts on Monday. The numbers are current through Sunday night. I also only average over six days. This allows me one day of no writing that doesn’t impact the weekly totals. This week the number look about average, but I feel I didn’t do much.

This project was a few weeks in the making. When I started there was a problem with some of the software not behaving. I leave the hardware driver voodoo to those that understand it. After an update this morning I was able to get all the parts working. So what exactly is a WiFi VPN access point? It’s the combination of several pieces of hardware and software that when running on my Pogo provides me with:

Google Code is to join the long list of Google projects that have been consigned to the dustbin of history. The open source project hosting service will no longer be accepting new project submissions as of today, will no longer be accepting updates to existing projects from August 24, and will be closed entirely on January 25, 2016. § Killed by spam. But not just closing, everything will be deleted.

Stanford University researchers were stunned when they awoke Tuesday to find that 11,000 people had signed up for a cardiovascular study using Apple Inc.’s ResearchKit, less than 24 hours after the iPhone tool was introduced. “To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country,” said Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health. “That’s the power of the phone.

One thing that’s taken a few days to sink is how Apple managed to improve the keyboard on the new MacBook model. During the announcement Tim Cook mentioned that the key tops were 17% larger than the current MacBook keyboards. I noted it in my live blog on Monday, but didn’t think too much about it. This evening I thought about going to an Apple Store to see it in person, but decided to do a virtual comparison first.

The security researchers also claimed they had created a modified version of Apple’s proprietary software development tool, Xcode, which could sneak surveillance backdoors into any apps or programs created using the tool. Xcode, which is distributed by Apple to hundreds of thousands of developers, is used to create apps that are sold through Apple’s App Store. § The article goes onto say, “It remains unclear how intelligence agencies would get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode.

Of of the things announced today, Apple’s ResearchKit strikes me as the one thing that will have a long-lasting impact on the world. I think Apple might realize it too. Making ResearchKit open source was a main point in the presentation. Until now, taking part in a medical study has usually required traveling to a hospital or facility to complete tasks and fill out questionnaires. With ResearchKit, you can use your iPhone to perform activities and generate data wherever you are, providing a source of information that is more objective than ever possible before.

I watched the Apple event this morning so you wounldn’t have to. Tim Cook covered a lot ground in the 90 minuite event. The last half-hour was devoted the Apple Watch. Apple TV HBO GO coming to Apple on April 12th, for $14.99/mo. Apple TV price cut to $69. Miscellanious Apple Pay coming to Coke vending machines. CarPlay has every major car maker committed to using it. 40 new car models with CarPlay coming in 2015/2016.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. My week starts on Monday. The numbers are current through Sunday night. I also only average over six days. This allows me one day of no writing that doesn’t impact the weekly totals. I was shooting for more, but a bug in the Pogo software left me spending my time troubleshooting instead of writing.