Always amuses me that I live about 4 miles from Dallas
The original Dallas
It's 1 street in the middle of Moray in north Scotland but it's very pretty!
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.5515394,-3.4663876,1100m/data=!3m1!1e3 if you'd like to see it

And btw, if you are setting your story in Europe, make certain you read upon the date-formats.  And yes there are differenes between the way you would write dates  in headers and freeform text. And for some stupid reason the best-before date on food is written in the form DD-MM-YY or sometimes even just DD-MM. Did I mention that there is nothing indicating this order on food-products themselves which is really really stupid. E.g. 10/05/11 could theoretically mean that it was 11th of May 2010, or 10th of May 2011 or 5ft of October 2011 or other strange combinations...

As a side note: The US system of writing things are probably the WORST way of doing it when it comes to sorting data on a computer. For written dates you want it in the YYYY-MM-DD form for sorting.

/Ulfgeir

reminds me of
from
http://www.xkcd.com/1179/

We use the 24 hour clock format quite a lot, but then I work with that sort of crowd a lot so that might explain a few things...
13:15 I'd say as thirteen fifteen, 17:57 would be seventeen fifty-seven and 00:30 would, for me, be midnight thirty or zero zero thirty.

I'm going to throw in a few combinations I think would be awesome but I don't know anyone (else) that could do them:

The suits/houses of cards (or possibly tarot?) as characters, macaroni cheese as a plot point, dark brooding technology, and a heist.

Midsummer Night's Dream from Puck's PoV

Kilts, corsets and quantum physics.

Evening all,
Wondering if anyone else here is aware of the free online copy of American Gods that is available this month?
It's over at the Harper Collins website at http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060558123&WT.mc_id=author_AmerGods_FullAccess_022208 for this month only (I think it's just this month anyway).

Couple of things, for one, I'd recommend it! If you haven't tried any Gaiman it's a good way to try him for free; and also, what are people's views on free books. Aside from the not having to pay for things, do people think this could be good or bad for authors and readers. Gaiman says that he believes books have always been given freely and most people will buy other books or another copy of the one they've read for themselves, that's how I got into JB myself.
I can see how it can be a good way for writers to break through into the popular conciousness but does anyone think that for established authors to do this risks a reduction in the potential of people seeing writing as a valid life choice. The prospect of advert carrying free book sites with google-ads between every chapter might be good for the world of un-published authors but what of bookshops?
Admittedly most of these points are covered on Mr Gaiman's Blog, but what people's thoughts here?

I'll stick a link and the same question over on McAnally's as well but I'd like as many people's views as possible (and to get more people aware of it).
Comments please