Yesterday I finished and submitted my Master's thesis for the Strategic Foresight and Innovation programme at OCAD University. This doesn't mean I've graduated:  I have to defend the sucker first.  But I'm in training for that now, learning to duck and weave and generally keep ahead of touchy questions, such as "Mr. Schroeder, WTF?"

It was also, coincidentally, my birthday yesterday.  I seem to be marking major moments like this lately; three years ago, I had heart surgery a day after my birthday. (Many of you will have noticed that my newest novel, Ashes of Candesce, is not appearing until February, 2012--a couple of years after the last book; blame the surgery.  It knocked me back for a good year and totally blew my publishing schedule.  With the thesis out of the way and my health excellent again, I should now be able to catch up.)

Anyway, with all that out of the way, I should be able to turn my attention more intensively to writing--and blogging.  My recent tenure at Charlie Stross's blog indicated that there's a high level of interest out there for some of my ideas, many of which I was only able to scratch the surface of at Charlie's place.  Perhaps now is the time to lay out all my cards.

With that in mind, I've revamped the comments mechanism on this site; anonymous comments are now allowed.  It's a bit of a clunky system, since the comment form doesn't have a field for you to enter a name; you'll have to do that in the body of the comment and that's not ideal. It's still better if you register on the site before commenting, but I may make that harder in an attempt to keep the bots at bay.

I'll see how well the anonymous commenting goes; if I get seriously spammed or the trolls start coming out, I will rescind the system without hesitation. But hopefully it'll work and we can have some good discussions!