Burning Zeppelin Experience
This blog provides creative prompts for creative writing that have been quite interesting. We kind of got derailed in our efforts along these lines due to the A-to-Z Challenge, but as that craziness has passed, we're planning on returning to this site for a few more good prompts, like This One, and the micro-story that resulted HERE.
A Combination resource-dump, workshop, and virtual commonplace book all rolled into one.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Resource Links: F
Last Updated: February 9, 2014
Fantastic Fiction
Bibliographies for 30,000 authors. A great place to go looking for someone new to read.
FeedBooks
EBooks, Public Domain and otherwise. Features a lot of options ranging across the mainstream into many different genres.
Festival Finder
A handy online finder/guide to festivals all over the world.
Fictional Satellite Map Tutorial
from RubySaturna.net. this is an Excellent tutorial!
FindLaw
An online resource that will help you to locate legal libraries, and related legal-resources, should you require or desire such things.
Firearms Tutorial
So many authors and GMs include firearms in their fiction and adventures that it just might come in handy to have a reference like this on hand. This online tutorial is pretty thorough and well worth checking out if you're going to be playing with guns in a story or a game...or even in real life.
First Kingdom: Remembering a True Classic
A review and remembrance of Jack Katz First Kingdom and as many links as we could find that pertained to both.
Flashback Universe
A very handy site that is devoted to the Golden Age of comics. This place is well-stocked with resources, links and information to help you dig through the accumulated layers of legalities and lies surrounding and burying so many Public Domain characters from this age of wonders.
Forensic Science Resources Online
A nice selection of forensics-related links across the web, for when you want to look up some details for your next CSI-inspired scenario or whatever. This wonderful resource was compiled by: Cynthia Holt, a Science & Engineering Librarian at The Gelman Library, which is an integral part of The George Washington University campus in Washington DC.
Forgotten Books
An independent publisher that produces tons of free PDF-editions of all sorts of Historical Texts that are of interest to writers and GMs/DMs. They have thousands to choose from, so you're sure to find something amusing or interesting, if you look around their site.
Free Tarot Cards Online
A webpage that lists a number of Tarot decks that you can download and print out for free.
Freelance Writing Organizations International
A guide to freelance writing groups from across the world.
French Emblems at Glasgow University
An incredible treasure-trove of Emblems from all known 16th Century French Emblem-manuscripts. Incredible stuff. Absolutely worth making a visit--but plan to take some time as there is a LOT here and you'll be inundated with ideas, images and inspiration in no time.
From Old Books
A wonderful resource for finding decorative elements, borders, and more all derived from Old Books, most of which are in the Public Domain. A tremendously useful place, if only for reference images or doing some research into obscure typography, etc.
Xerophytes
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| This photo has been made available via Wikimedia Commons |
It is in Chinnar Forest that you can find a Xerophytic plant that doesn't play by the same rules as most of its brethren. Mixed-in with the thorny scrub forest are specimens of Acacia arabica, the gum arabic tree of India. Acacia is also known as Wattle, Yellow Fever Acacia, Umbrella Acacia, Thorntrees, and Whistling Thorns.
Acacia grows along rivers and flourishes within the Sahel and Maghreb deserts, along the Nile, through the Middle East to India, Burma and Australia. Unlike cacti or sage or aloe, Acacia trees thrive in places where they tend to get periodically flooded, not just baked, they prefer both riverine and riparian terrain and generally tend to get spread farther and farther from their original native range by livestock more than anything. Cattle and chicken devour the leaves and seed-pods. In fact the acacia pods are a fairly important staple feed-source for farmers raising poultry and cattle, wherever the tree can be found.
People eat the seed-pods, and some other parts of the Acacia as well. In Mexico you can get Guajes--acacia seed-pods--that are used in a number of dishes. You can find the pods on the menu in various Asian dishes, and if you look closely you'll find acacia listed as an ingredient in various sodas as well.
The very first (mostly) vegetarian spider (bagheera kiplingi) was discovered dining on the fleshy-tips of an Acacia. Weird, huh?
The bark contains astringents and tannins that are useful in ayurveda and herbal medicine. Dioscorides found the Acacia a medically useful plant and recorded it in his Pharmacopeia/ Materia Medica books that have remained in use for over a thousand years -- indeed Dioscorides' works survived the Medieval period and continued to be referred to well into the 16th century. You can download a copy of Dioscorides, or a number of other, related Renaissance Medical Texts over at The Renaissance Man. You can also find a bunch of historic surgery texts and stuff on falconry there, so it's definitely worth a visit.
Xerophytes are interesting plants. They're not just crappy thorn-bushes or prickly cacti. They have a ton of uses and in the case of Acacia, they've been part of the human diet and pharmacopeia for thousands of years. Gum Arabic, perhaps the number one product derived from Acacia, has been traded and transported across the world for centuries. It's one of those natural resources that people never give a thought to, even though it is ubiquitous and in all sorts of things. Like in your favorite softdrink or sport beverage. Or anything else that requires a cheap emulsifier.
Just think what a bunch of unscrupulous terrorists or politicians might be able to accomplish if they really did monopolize the world supply of Gum Arabic...and then tried to with-hold it from the Coca Cola folks. We'd see some real-life Cola Wars then, wouldn't we? Who knew Billy Joel was a prophet?
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