Tag: computers

SW-VIII: DELIVERANCE coming out in January

SW-VIII (thumb)So when I left for family vacation in Iowa last week, I thought I’d put the cover files for Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) in my dropbox folder.  It turns out, I didn’t–it’s still on my desktop back in Provo.  Since I don’t get back until late on New Year’s Eve, that means that it won’t be coming out until January.

Sorry about that, guys!  I hope you don’t mind the wait.  Everything else is coming along fine–if all goes well, I should be able to hit “publish” on January 1st, with the print version coming out later in the month.  The print versions are already up for most of the other books in the series, though Amazon hasn’t linked to all of them yet.  When they’re all up, I’ll post the links here on this blog.

Christmas has been really great this year.  I’m here in Iowa with my whole family–mother, father, sisters, brothers-in-law, niece, and nephews.  The kids got a bunch of new toys and have been playing with them all week, while the rest of us have been reading, chatting, cooking, and playing lots and lots of Settlers of Catan.  That’s more or less the family game now.  I’ve won two rounds so far: one with the 5-6 player expansion, another with 4 players on the old board (which is hard!).

I didn’t have much on my Christmas list this year, but I did get something I’ve needed for a long time–a new laptop computer.  I’ve been using an Asus eee PC since 2008, and it’s held out extremely well, but 1 GB of RAM just isn’t enough to cut it anymore.  Plus, the battery and adapter are both generic replacements, and if I try to charge the battery while the computer is on, it switches from wall-power to the battery and back again every second or so, which is annoying.

My new machine will be an Asus X200CA, with 4 GB RAM, a touchscreen, and an 11.6″ screen.  I wanted to keep it small, so I’d be able to use it as a travel machine.  It comes with Windows 8, but I ordered a 128 GB solid state hard drive to replace the one that it comes with, so I’ll be installing Ubuntu on it instead (probably 13.10).  I’m a little bit nervous how that will work with the new UEFI, but from what I can tell it seems that Ubuntu should work fine with it.  I’ll just go in and turn off secure boot before I replace the hard drive, so I can install the new OS from USB.

My roommate just got a solid state drive for his operating system, and now his desktop boots up in about six seconds.  Hopefully, it will be the same once I get this machine up and running.  128 GB isn’t a whole lot of space, but it should be plenty for all my writing needs.  I want to get out of Utah and do some traveling in 2014, so that’s going to be important.

That’s just about it from here.  There’s something cooking downstairs and it smells delicious, so I’d better get going.  See you guys later!

Busy, busy, busy

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet–I’ve just been crazy crazy busy this past week.

On Sunday, after one BSOD too many, I finally switched from Windows to Ubuntu.  I’ve wanted to give Linux a try ever since high school, but I’m not a computer programmer or anything so a lot of it is way over my head.  So far, though, it hasn’t been too bad.  The most complicated thing I had to do was change the firmware on my mp3 player (an iRiver T10 … yeah, laugh, whatever).

This is just an initial impression, but it seems that the difference between Linux, Windows, and Apple is a lot like the difference between cooking your own food, popping a frozen meal into the microwave, and paying someone to cook for you.  With Linux, you have to at least dabble in the actual code in order to get anything to work, but it works WAAAAY better than anything else (just like real food is healthier than fake food).  With Windows, yeah, you can kind of hack stuff, but you’re still at the mercy of Microsoft.  And with Apple, you’re basically paying through the nose for someone to hold your hand every time you use your device.

So anyways, that’s been quite an adjustment, with a steep learning curve that I’m still trying to climb.  Hopefully, I’ll get it all figured out before I publish my next book, because otherwise there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Actually, scratch that–the wailing and gnashing of teeth will happen anyway (heck, it’s happening now!), but if I don’t have it figured out, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth AND a delay getting the next book out.  But that’s not going to happen.

The other thing that’s kept me busy (and really, the main thing sucking up all my time) has been a construction job that the temp agency suckered me into taking.  They said it was supposed to end on Monday … but no, it lasted all week.  I did learn a lot of interesting things, though.  For example, I learned how to take out and re-install a toilet.  I also learned that painters are among the most disgusting creatures on Earth, so if I ever want to paint the interior of my house, I’d be better off buying the supplies and doing it myself.

There were a couple of other things that kept me busy, but I’m not sure how much I can talk about them yet.  The most exciting thing has to do with the next issue of Mormon Artist magazine, which should be coming out in about a month.  Also, I’ve been working with some other sci-fi indie writers to put together a group promo–more on that later.

So that’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging.  I’ve also made some progress in Sons of the Starfarers, though not as much as I’d like.  Ideally, I’d like to finish the rough draft in about two weeks, which is pushing it but definitely possible.  I figure that writing is more important than blogging, so if you don’t see another post here for a while, that’s what I’m up to.

So much for that.  I’ll leave you with this:

Okay, chances are you’ve probably seen it already. Maybe it made you sad, maybe it made you cry, or maybe it made you laugh in a guilty, self-conscious sort of way. However, I am not ashamed to say that I found this clip absolutely hilarious. Sure, maybe it left that poor little girl a bit traumatized, but I’d rather her learn about death from an eagle and a rabbit than from someone in her family passing away.

Rabbits are pests. Eagles are beautiful, majestic creatures who have every right to live as rabbits do. What the eagle did was not malicious, or hateful, or evil–it was natural. Eagles have to eat too, and by golly they sure work for their food a lot more than rabbits do. So here’s to the eagles, the hawks, and all the other majestic birds of prey for being awesome.

I could make a joke here about the rabbit being a PC and the eagle being a Linux user, but it’s getting late and I’d better go write. Later!

A word about ebook formatting

So it turns out that ebook formatting is a lot harder than I’d thought. I was hoping to finish chapter 13 in ITND tonight, but I’ve spent the whole #$@! time just trying to get “From the Ice Incarnate” up on Amazon.

Fortunately, I think I have a much better idea of what I’m doing now.

For “Memoirs of a Snowflake” and “Decision LZ1527,” I just uploaded the .doc file and had Amazon reformat it automatically.  The stories were short and simple enough that it worked rather well.

Then I decided I wanted to put the cover in the body of the ebook, and foolishly thought I’d just put it on the first page of the .doc file I was uploading.  Long story short, I discovered that that’s not a good idea–the ereader doesn’t read it as a cover, and it looks like crap.

Also, I discovered that the ideal size for an ebook cover is 600×900 pixels (for a standard 2:3 aspect ratio).  From now on, all the covers I upload will be 600×900.

So then, when I uploaded “From the Ice Incarnate,” I kept noticing these weird indenting problems in the preview.  No matter what I did to change the .doc file, it wouldn’t go away.  Out of frustration, I downloaded the html file that Amazon had formatted it into and noticed these weird <div> tags popping up on short, one line paragraphs where they should have been <p> tags.  Don’t ask me how they got there, but they were a pain to fix.

So then, I tried uploading the modified html file, and found to my great joy that the problem had been fixed.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any way to put in the cover–and the cover for “From the Ice Incarnate” is REALLY awesome.

Frustrated but undaunted, I turned to Mobipocket Creator, an open source ebook creating program.  I’d tried playing with it before, but found it complicated and confusing.  Well, now that I knew what I wanted it to do, it wasn’t hard at all to figure out how to make it work.

First, I created a new project in its own designated folder.  Then, I added the corrected html file to the “publication files” page.  Where it asked for a cover image, I uploaded the 600×900 jpeg (I do all my editting in The Gimp, in a much larger .xcf file).  Then, I filled in the metadata, such as book description, suggested cover price, etc.

When I was finished, I hit “build,” and voila!  A slick looking .prc ebook file that looked EXACTLY how I wanted it to.

I uploaded it to Amazon, and it looked great in the preview.  I’m not sure what it’ll look like in the finished product  yet, since it takes 24 hours to upload, but I fixed “Decision LZ1527” as well.  Once I knew what I was doing, it took maybe five minutes to create the ebook on Mobipocket Creator.

So here’s what I’m going to do from now on.  I’m going to bypass the whole .doc thing altogether (since I use Open Office, not MS Word) and go straight from .odt to .html using a WYSIWYG html editor.  For the cover, I’ll use The Gimp, with the project files as .xcf and the finished images as 600×900 .jpegs.  I’ll combine it all in Mobipocket Creator, and upload the .prc ebook file to Amazon / Pubit / Smashwords / wherever.

Sound daunting? (Charlie, I’m talking to you, hehe)  It’s actually a TON of fun, once you get the hang of it.  And let me tell you, when I saw the finished product, it was awesome.  Totally worth it.

Trouble is, I haven’t had any time to work on my novel, which is frustrating, because I’m working an 8 to 5 job now.  It’s temporary, which is nice for a full time artist/creator like me, but man, I’m going to miss all the free time I used to have.  I want to finish ITND before the end of the month, but I’ve still got a long ways to go.

In the meantime, let me give you a sneak peek on my next ebook.  It’s a short story based on an excerpt from Genesis Earth, which won first place in the 2009 Mayhew short story contest at BYU.  Of the stuff I’ve posted up to Amazon so far, I think this one is far and away the best.

Here’s the cover:

Pretty cool, eh?  I ripped the font from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.  The image is from NASA, taken by the Hubble space telescope.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on with my ebook venture.  I’m kind of glad I haven’t done much to publicize the other stories, because they need a lot of work.  If you bought one already, don’t worry; the stories haven’t changed at all, just the formatting.  I’m not sure if you can re-download those once you’ve bought them, but if you want one of the new ones, let me know and I’ll figure it out.

And if I’m missing something in terms of html or ebook formatting, please let me know.  I’m not quite hopeless, but I’m still horribly ignorant when it comes to this kind of stuff.  Any suggestions (especially for a good WYSIWYG editor) would me much appreciated.

The technological singularity: a thing of the past?

One of the latest trends in science fiction is the concept of the technological singularity — the point in history at which technological advances occur so rapidly that we can no longer learn the new stuff fast enough to keep up with it.

I hear a lot of people talk about this at cons, and I’ve read/listened to quite a few stories about this concept.  Basically, these stories posit a world where science has become a new magic, and our world has been transformed beyond all intelligible recognition.

However, a recent post on the excellent Rocketpunk Manifesto blog made me wonder if we’ve already passed the point of singularity in our own society.  The post basically asserted that the period 1880 to 1930 saw so many sweeping technological advances that the world in 1930 would have been unrecognizable to a person from 1880, whereas our current society would still be intelligible to a person from 1930.

This made me wonder: how far into the singularity have we already come?  How much of our technological infrastructure has become so advanced that the common man lacks the capacity to comprehend it?

Think about it.  Fish around in your pockets and pull out your phone.  Do you understand how it works well enough to take it apart and put it together again?  To rebuild the device from parts?  Do you own the tools and machinery to construct the parts from which it is made?

How about the building in which you currently find yourself?  Do you possess the knowledge to build a comparable structure that performs the same functions?  That keeps you sheltered and provides the same light, heat, electricity, and internet connection that you now enjoy?

There was a time, not too long ago, when people would move out to the wilderness and homestead land by building their own homes from available natural resources.  If you needed to build your own house, as so many people used to do, could you do it?

How about your means of transportation?  If necessary, could you take apart your car and rebuild it again from the ground up?  Could you perform basic maintenance on it if you needed to?  How many of us can change our own oil–and how many of us are dependent on others for such a simple service?

Or what about the things we take most for granted–our understanding of the way the universe works.  Do you really understand the principles of physics?  Do you comprehend how electricity or magnetism really works, or are you still thinking in overly-simplified terms like electrons flowing through a circuit like water?  Even the most intelligent physicists can’t reconcile electromagnetism with Newtonian physics, so what makes you think you know so much?

How much of what we think we know is really just an illusion, meant to keep us pacified and docile?  To give us a false sense of security–that someone is in control, so we can rest easy?  Does anyone REALLY understand 100% how the economy works?  Do any of us know who or what is really in charge anymore?  Have we unwittingly handed over the reigns of control to some digital algorithm so basic to our newly networked way of life to be practically invisible?

Looking at how few of us are truly self-sufficient, and how much power we’ve ceded to forces beyond our control, our modern society seems so delicate and fragile.  Can anyone REALLY say that our society is not in danger of falling apart?  That our way of life is not an unnatural and unsustainable aberration?

Anyhow, those were some of my initial thoughts.  The more I compare the science fiction of the past with the reality of the present, the more predictions I see coming true in the most unexpected of ways.  The singularity may have less to do with uplinked consciousnesses and more to do with Google’s SEO algorithms than we are comfortable admitting.  And realistically, the light bulb may prove to be more revolutionary than anything Apple has ever or will ever produce.

The biggest scare of my life

I just had the biggest scare of my life.

Moments after finishing Worlds Away from Home, I opened the spreadsheet with my daily wordcounts and noticed that it was missing all the data from the last week.  All the data.  Not sure what to do, I saved Worlds Away, closed it, reopened it…and found that everything I’d written in the last week was lost.

I almost had a nervous breakdown.  I had just finished the last scene, written the last sentence, brought the story to an emotionally poignant ending–and it was all gone.

I freaked out.  Searched through all the temp folders, found the backup path for openoffice and searched that–it was all gone.

Not sure what to do, I plugged my flash drive into my other computer, brought up the document, and THANK GOD it was all there.  Everything down to the very last line that I’d written only moments ago.

Oh man, you have no idea what I was feeling right then.  I collapsed to my knees and promptly saved a two backups, one of the document, the other of everything on my flash drive.

Now I’m scared to plug my flash drive back into my desktop computer, though.  What happened?  Will I lose all my data again?

Maybe this will help: While I had my novel open, I plugged in another storage device to a jack next to the one my flash drive was plugged into.  You know the tone that windows makes when you unplug a USB device?  It made that noise twice, as if I’d just unplugged my flash drive.  Later, I unplugged the second device, I think it did the same thing, but I’m not sure.

Also, when I opened up the documents I’d been working on on my other computer, I noticed that while my novel (which I’d had open prior to plugging in the second device) had its most recent save, the other documents only had the data from my save on the previous night.  In other words, while everything I’d written in my novel tonight was saved, anything I’d written in anything opened after plugging in the second USB device was not saved.

Clearly, this must be a hardware problem of some sort.  Perhaps something on the motherboard isn’t fully plugged in?  Dang, I’ve got to fix it–I can’t afford to have another scare like this.

Sorry I haven’t posted much recently–I’ve been very busy with this novel.  Expect a post sometime tomorrow about finishing it.

New computer!

So about a year ago, I blogged about my dream computer, with dual monitors, a nice comfy chair, and…well, that was it.  What can I say?  I’m easy to please.

Well, now that I’m graduated from BYU and (theoretically) no longer have access to BYU’s computers, I decided to go ahead and build my dream machine.

I got a lot of help picking out parts from my friend Cognoscente, who is a pirate par excellence.  My goal was to be as economical as possible while still picking out parts that are going to last for a long time.  I bought virtually everything from newegg.com, except for the mouse and keyboard which I picked up for $5 each from the BYU surplus sale (I’ll probably pick up a second monitor from them, eventually).

Anyway, here are the specs:

CPU—Intel i3-530 (2.93 GHz, 4 MB cache) ($114.99)
Mobo—Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 (USB 3.0) ($119.99)
HDD—Western Digital 1TB drive ($69.99)
RAM—A-DATA DDR3 2 x 2GB ($98.99)
Video Card—Zotac 9800 GT 512 MB x2 DVI ($89.99)
PSU—Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450 W ($69.99)
Optical Drive—ASUS 2 MB cache DVD burner ($21.99)
Case—Rosewill Blackbone ($39.99)
Monitor—ASUS 22″ widescreen 1680 x 1050 ($169.99)
Total Price (including s&h, not including rebates): $824.05

I ordered the parts on Memorial day, and guess what? Everything but the video card showed up this morning–and the video card is scheduled to come tomorrow!

So this weekend, after I find a desk somewhere (either from DI or listed free on craigslist), I’m going to get together with Cognoscente and put together this beast.

So yeah, I’m totally geeking out about this new computer. It’s going to be sweeeet once it’s set up–I can hardly wait!

I’m also hoping it will help me write more. Right now, my only machine is my netbook, which is extremely portable and useful for travel, but not very good as a primary machine. It can get tiresome to write on a 10″ screen all day.

So yeah, I totally know what I’m doing this weekend. It’s going to be AWESOME 🙂

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed.  Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating.  I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time.  Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of  time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate.  These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it.   I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing.  I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today.  Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad.  Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook.  Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines.  Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops.  Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer.  Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse.  I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the  end of the month to buy them all.  I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down.  Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good.  I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft.  Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another  manuscript to float around with editors/agents.