At The Pub
Just a quick update, I've put a revised version of The Pocketwatch up for sale on the Nook store through the PubIt service. Here's the product link:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/e/2940011837265/
Its not overly different from the version on here, it's mainly some corrections made, and a few more things clarified. There's also a couple additions made to bring it in line with the next part of that story, which I'm currently writing. I would certainly appreciate the support, but I will go ahead and leave the original draft 'Do It Live' version on here.
Date posted: 06 October, 2010Tags: novels the_pocketwatch writing
Right Off The Page
So I've spent some more time reading lately, owed in large part to my new B&N nook. I finally finished reading the fourth Otherland book, finished reading Roadside Picnic (which I had started earlier this year), and have read Fahrenheit 451, The Time Machine, and Stephen Baxter's sequel The Time Ships. My nook is loaded with a number of different public domain books from Project Gutenberg. Next I plan on reading War of the Worlds, and then switching gears to read 1984.
I had been watching the ePaper reader field for a long time, actually. Ever since the first Sony Reader came out, I had been watching, waiting for the price to come down which I liked, but when Sony was the only player in the market there simply wasn't any way that was going to happen. When Amazon released the Kindle is when competition truly started, and the prices began to fall, although still too high for my tastes until recently. It was the WiFi only nook that finally was where I wanted it, and that was what I got.
I went with the nook over a Kindle for a couple of reasons. First, being an Android platform the easy customization possibilities were clear, although as of yet I haven't bothered rooting it yet. Second to that, though, is Amazon's policies for the Kindle, both some of the content publisher side (I have this blog available as a Kindle subscription, although I haven't checked in a long time to see if anyone even uses that feature anymore, a couple people did for a while), and the user's side, which culminated in the - most ironic - '1984 Incident'.
Date posted: 15 September, 2010Tags: computer novels
Language Barriers
So, I'm in the process of converting one of my projects from XNA 3.1 to XNA 4.0 for Windows Phone 7. After some difficulty with various things, I get it to a point it's compiling the main code of the game, and get some errors. Apparently, parts of the .NET Framework that I use in Windows and the XBox 360 aren't in the .NET Framework built for Windows Phone 7, and eventually I find out that the core assemblies are built from the Silverlight subset.
So I'm expecting to have to spend some time today doing some research to find out how to work around the missing functions, expecting this to take some time. I expect and plan for this, because apparently I failed to comprehend both C# and English, because I discovered that, right on the page I was reading yesterday with the class description it tells exactly how to use LINQ to get the equivalent functions that are missing.
Date posted: 25 August, 2010Tags: programming
Unstudied
Didn't I say last time I was here in Hawaii that I need to work on studying Japanese more so I could get more than just sentence fragments?
Yeah, about that...
Date posted: 14 August, 2010Tags: japanese travel
Grimoire of ---
He didn't believe her, of course. How could he? She knew that what she was telling him was so outrageous, so fantastic, and nowhere near the realm of believability compared to the plain, empty mountain they were atop now. She knew what she was saying was true, but she had no way to prove it now, no way to show him that she wasn't completely delusional. Sighing, she went to turn away, to wander off in hopelessness, but, as she did, a smirk crept across his wrinkled, bearded face.
She stopped as he began to rummage through a box, pulling from it a leather covered book and a rolled up set of tools. He set the book down, and she watched as he opened the tools to reveal some leather stamps. He quickly pounded out a word and her name in the cover of the book, then began to fill it in with a pen of golden ink. After blowing on it a few times to dry the ink, he handed the book to her.
"A 'grimoire'?" She was puzzled by the words he wrote on th.e cover as she opened the book. Inside it there was nothing, the pages all blank. "But, you don't believe me.."
He held up his hand to stop her from saying anything more. "My believing your story has no bearing on its importance, child," he said with a smile as he rolled up the tools and put them back in the box. "Or its power. Imagination, the power of words and images outside the bounds of what is known. There is magic in words, in pictures, in music, a power of escape that acts directly on the hearts and minds of people."
"I want you to take that," he said, as he pulled out another item from the box and handed it to her. It was a small box, and she opened it, revealing a feather pen and a mechanical pencil. "That is now your grimoire. Write in it your story. But I want you to write it in third person, outside of yourself. Write about the things that did not only happen to yourself. Write it as a story that people would want to read. When you are done, if you still believe the words you write really did happen to you, then perhaps I will believe you more." He began to turn away, but looked back at her again with a smile. "But even if you don't, it won't change the power of the words that you write."
She nodded, beginning to understand the old man's enlightenment, and left his small house to find a place on the mountaintop to be alone and to write.
Date posted: 11 August, 2010Tags: regularspelling writing