[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.

I don't keep anything on paper (except within an actual novel in progress, at which point I need a file to keep track of plot threads, characters, and so on).

Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts.

Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.

I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)

I was heavily into AD&D in my teens (late 1970s-early 1980s) but fell off the RPG habit in the mid-80s and have never gone back to it; my lifestyle today isn't very compatible with having a regular gaming group (too much travel).