The tributes are rapidly coming in today on the spreading news of Ray Bradbury’s passing.

Neil Gaiman’s blog post and Guardian write up are particularly great; along with Time’s articles here and here; and this video tribute from NASA on his visit to the Mars Rovers in 2009 is quite special.

But probably the best one is this excerpt from a symposium in 1971 where, with the likes of Carl Sagan and Arthur C Clarke, he reads his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been”.

Recently, I’ve linked several articles with topics on both the decline and growth of science fiction writing, but admittedly at the same time, it’s been many years since I’ve read any science-fiction and even more since I last read any Bradbury. Even though he came to dislike the internet, I’d like to think that with so much love and tributes from around the world being shared today, it will help point generations of readers, both new and old to pick up a copy of something like the Martian Chronicles and be inspired again. I know I will.

• Game to look forward to: South Park RPG Is Hilariously Inappropriate Fun
• Want to go to place: An abandoned French subway station was turned into the set of Prometheus
• World of Quantum Mechanics May Govern Life
• Ex-Spy Telescope’s New Identity as a Space Investigator
• How the internet killed porn
• Fabulous, Feminist Porn
• The Huffington Post secretly hosts entire vertical dedicated to Sideboob

Posts have been sporadic lately, due in part to an increasingly busy workload and over-accumulation of side projects; but it’s also made me aware of the fact that from time to time, I should really start using this ‘blog’ as an actual ‘blog’ again, rather than posting all the crazy/fun stuff I’m collecting around the internet in the name of ahem, ‘research’ (might as well make it a tumblr site if that were the case).

But even ignoring pre-Cretaceous incarnations of this blog, I’ve been posting on and off for over six years and have no intentions to stop just yet. Hell, there’s even a new design/code for this site in the pipeline (finally!) that’ll roll out soon once I find some more time to work out the kinks in it.

So, consider this the first of…  let’s say, the occasional (and ideally brief), ‘editorial’ and/or personal update of both an entertaining and tasteful manner.

Yes, that instead just made me think of highly distasteful self-nudes.

No, it’s much too early (and blindingly sober) in the morning for any of that yet.