David D. Levine, Wild Cards author

I've been waiting to announce this until I had some more specific news to report (and it is coming, and it is good, but there are still x's to be crossed and j's to be dotted), but as grrm has just let the cat partway out of the bag, I figure I ought to blog about it now.

I'm now a member of the Wild Cards consortium. The other members of the Wild Cards Class of 2009 are cmpriest, mamohanraj, davidadurham, and paulcornell2.

For those who don't know, Wild Cards is a shared universe (where multiple writers all create stories in the same setting, with their characters interacting with other writers' characters) that has been running since 1985. It's basically a superhero comic in prose form, a world in which superpowered "aces" and deformed "jokers" live, love, and struggle.

I was a huge fan of the series in college and for me to join in this bunch is the fulfillment of a dream I didn't think would ever have a chance of coming true.

Obscure Mac question

Modern Macs can read Windows-format CD-ROMs, but years ago this wasn't the case. Back then, some CD-ROMs were "dual-format" with Mac and PC "sides" (metaphorically speaking... when you inserted the disk in a computer, you would see only the files appropriate to that computer). I have an old CD-ROM which is "dual-platform" and I want to access the Windows files on it. Inserting the disk shows only the Mac "side" of the CD. Is there any way to force the Mac to ignore the Mac "side" of the CD and read the Windows "side"? This is on an Intel-based Mac running Leopard.

ETA: The following solution from Jonathan Edwards did the trick:

$ mkdir /iso
$ mount_cd9660 /dev/disk1s1 /iso

Note that /dev/disk1s1 will exist only if the CD is inserted. Also, if you have more than one hard disk, the CD-ROM drive may be /dev/disk2s1 (or /dev/disk3s1, etc.). Insert the CD and use the "mount" command to determine its device path.

Thanks, Jonathan!