Discontinued on NBC, continued on Netflix. A bit similar to Lost, but Lost never did it for me. Thus far, the first two seasons of this show are available on NetFlix NL, and those are good. Season 3 isn’t available in NL because some Belgian station is still broadcasting season 3. So I’ll have to wait a bit longer even for season 4. Oh well.
Another take on Ready Player One, another love song to the eighties. Well written, but frankly I find this new take on the same trip down memory lane a little shallow. It's well written, but it's well-written fan fiction. Yet... where some fan fiction dazzles with new ideas and fresh characters I found Armada to be somewhat meh.
Definitely (?) an indie writer, and one who isn't afraid to use real people, like Obama and Musk, as characters in his book. I'm not so sure that is a smart thing to do, because it will date the book rather quickly. Otherwise the book is more a technotriller than plain SF, with plausible technology.
Mister Harbinger (a blend of Philip Marlowe and Harry Dresden) finds out what actually happened in Paris, discovers his dad blocked certain memories, works together with a vampire to fight a horde of zombies / skeletons, and ends up asleep on his own lawn.
I recently watched the first two seasons of Manifest, and this book starts in a similar vein: an airplane that departs, only to arrive years later.
And that's where the similarity ends 😎
A displaced mind (transplanted from a human body into a spaceship’s central computer) is part of a salvage team, and tries hard to keep its human compagnons / workers / assets alive.
Read by Nathan Fillion, who does a fairly good job, and the story ain’t half bad either. The ending is a little rapid, but otherwise a fine book, and a tad different from all the other stuff out there.
A ‘reverse world’ novel, where the men are rare, and thus valuable. It isn’t bad, but there’s little new in there except for the reversing of roles. It’s very well written, but halfway I gave up: there’s simply not enough happening.
(From Dapper / TellTales #110.)
Space Opera / Military SF, but with one twist: no artificial gravity thus far, which has a lot of impact on the scenes in space. Thus far it follows a predictable pattern (rogue starship flees because it’s captain was betrayed by the space navy’s top brass) but the alien races are interesting, the setting is interesting, and it’s completely without teen angst. (After sampling as many first person present tense works as I could I can only conclude that those are mainly targeted at YA / NA, and include lots of whining.)
(Click on the image to enlarge.)
I’ve been searching for more first-person present tense material to understand what I’m doing right and wrong myself. This is another YA that isn’t too bad, except for one specific scene, where the (hurt) protagonist (a 17-year-old girl) climbs onto the landing gear of a space shuttle, and then literally travels half the world, 16000 kilometers, at 600 kmph.
The fourth book in the Mindspace series, and again a very good one.
I’ve read two short stories by his (her?) hand that bridge the gaps between the larger titles, and now have started this one. I liked the short stories, but prefer the full sized novels.
As I said when reviewing the earlier installments, the narration is very good, and the somewhat seedy mix of a drug addicted ex-guild telepath, working in a post-tech-war world for the local police office just kind of works, surprisingly.
Brilliant. I want more.
Semi post-apocalyptic setting with a strong romantic vibe. Falls a little flat because it’s not as post-apocalyptic as suggested at the start.
Why I read it? Well, it's part of my endless quest for first person present tense references... It was mentioned on a list of present tense books, but it was wrongly listed.
Update: finished all four. They're okay, but not exceptional. I think the world would have been a much bigger hell had the famish as described taken place.
(From TellTales 109)
Subtitled The Last 49 Days, it’s the modern day equivalent of A Matter of Life and Death).
This isn't a bad movie either. Nothing earth shattering, but still interesting to see a Korean take on the ‘defend the good / bad guy against gods and their lawyers’.
(Click to enlarge.)
This is probably my last post this year, but who knows what can happen in the next seven hours 😁
So, let's work on the average self-publisher's depression... It's hard to get some hard numbers, so take the next bit with a bag or two of salt.
So here we go...
Google Chrome has profile support, allowing you to use different 'identities' when browsing the web.
A practical example is to use one account to write a blog, and a second account to test the functionality of that blog with a user name.
Touch Portal and OBS Studio are the (low cost) alternative to Elgato's Stream Deck and other Elgato solutions.
This page offers a quick overview of how to install and migrate both apps.
Every writer has a different approach to writing and editing. Every successful writer is probably going to tell you editing is an essential.
Every great writer without the money to afford an editor has to edit him / herself. It is my firm belief that if you don't edit, then you'll get nowhere. Period.
So, here's my current approach, until I'm rich enough to afford a real editor...
I've been trying to find a good explanation to help ease the pain, but thus far I haven't been able to write up some decent explanation, sorry.
Below's the best I could come up with thus far.
Nothing better than a morning wood... I mean, the woods in the morning...
This is a digital rendering of an early morning forest, but I can't remember where I found it, only that I like it. Works great on dual monitor setups.
(Click to enlarge.)
Touch Portal is a low-cost alternative to the Stream Deck.
Here's a little example on how to cycle through different pictos when pressing a button.
Multi-monitor setups are fun 😁
Use an old laptop or tablet an additional monitor? Not a problem, and with SpaceDesk you can mix and match iOS, Android, and Windows devices (!).
And best of it all: it is (still) free.
To show what this little tool does I decided to create a little video. Which was a little more complicated than expected, and I got distracted along the way 😁
So I learned OBS (to grab the screen), Magic Window (tracking the mouse pointer in OBS), looked at Stream Decks but opted for Touch Portal, added some features to WallX to simplify the handling and creation of icons, then had to learn how to edit videos in HitFilm Express.
Three 'direct to TV' movies. What can I say... Frank Grillo does his thing, and the monsters are nice. Everything else is meh. Think of it as a B- version of Independence Day, spliced together with a low budget fan-made scifi flick and you know what you're dealing with.
Verdict? Skip it.
I like Touch Portal but found the conversion of .ico to something Touch Portal can understand a pain, so I modified WallX a bit to make the process easier.
Well, nothing's ever completely done but WallX now runs smoothly and hasn't crashed on me yet. I've worked on importing files / exporting graphics, faster response to user action, and added some fail safe handling when writing files. Either Windows or some virus scanner was blocking my write access now and again. Also removed a bunch of smaller and larger bugs.
But... what has that to do with Touch Portal?
OBS is a nice tool, but it's more focused on streamers (seriously? 😁) than other types of users. I like OBS. I use it to record some presentations, make instruction videos with one or more screens, etc.
Combine OBS with a stream deck (an old tablet with Touch Portal will do) and it's gadget nirvana. Unfortunately OBS wasn't designed for non-streamers, and there isn't a way to force a single instance. Time for some tricks...
Of course you can buy a Stream Deck. They're actually quite nice and are great to use. Or you could use some software package and turn your tablet or phone into a stream deck. But what if your desk is already full, or you're out of cash? The Shuttle it is then.
Just like Christopher Nuttall, Bella Forrest is sometimes accused of plagiarism. I think that's not entirely fair, because she wrote some interesting stuff, but it's clear that she's sometimes - strongly - 'inspired'.
Then again, it is impossible to write something entirely original, so let's just shrug.
Another day, another update.
But I think it's a good one... No, a great one 😁
WallX is no longer merely a wallpaper manager, it's now also a mini launcher. Why? Well, 'because'... Seriously though, the new version included a systray icon, and I thought it a handy place to store my own custom shortcuts. Which, actually, works. More information or download it here.
Guild Wars 2 may have better graphics, better monsters, better frenemies, more content, easier skillsets (not sure if that's an improvement, but okay) but Guild Wars 1 had attitude.
If you never played an MMO, then download the (free!) Guild Wars 2, and enjoy!
(Click the image to enlarge.)
Remember both Pacific Rim movies? Well, here's an anime series set in the same universe, which isn't that bad. The animation is okay, the monsters are fine... though not exceptional. The story is okay, mostly.
If there's anything bad about this one, it's the ease with which the main characters accept they are responsible for murdering a village full of friends and family, that just doesn't sit well with me. Otherwise, it's fine...
This isn't entirely confirmed yet... I'm still testing this, but thus far it seems to work.
If you lose your Google Timeline data for no appearent reason, and you have more than one device, then try the following:
This is a little command line tool I wrote to help me check from a batch file for windows which are open or closed. It can also launch other programs if a specific condition is met.
I couldn't find what I needed, and so I wrote it myself... You can download waitwindow.exe and waitfile.exe here.
(Searching for wallpapers may have brought you to this page. If so, try this link for a selection from the wallpapers that I collected.)
Datatalk + Google Docs + Grammarly
I noticed that, sometimes, GoogleDocs suddenly slowed down. It looks like the culprit is Grammarly. The fix is easy, though a little illogical.
Read on if you installed Grammarly...
A little trilogy about a paranormally gifted (created?) telekinetic in a far away future. At roughly 220 pages per book these are not very large, but they are easy and entertaining reads.
Verdict: enjoy 'm!
Another supernatural PI series. How many are there by now? Never enough 😁
Harbinger PI and The Dresden Files have a lot in common though, so much that I sometimes wondered in which universe I was wandering around. Nevertheless, both are quite readable, and original enough to be called original... Euh... Sort of.
I'm trying my utter best to like this movie, but that's because I like Nicolas Cage. In this B - direct for TV - movie he plays an utter lunatic, and that's a role that, frankly, suits him well. Will we ever see him again in a larger, better scripted movie? Perhaps some day...
WallX has seen another update. Changes: some internal fixes for better image series handling, better wallx.lst support, Windows 10 support, better support for weird combinations.
Update: Video introduction and download.
Do you use wallpapers? Then you need this 😏
I've been a big fan of multiple monitor setups, ever since NVidia put two or more video outputs on their cards. In fact, I did have a multi monitor setup before that using two video cards (which wasn't great, to be honest).
This post shows different sizes and combinations, to make it easier to find your path to multi-monitor minerva 😄
There's nothing like a decent bawl, by the un-imitable Meat Loaf.
Perhaps his voice falters in his later works, but man, did Jim Steinman come up with some good songs, and did Meat Loaf pour his heart into them like nobody else could.
But... this is about wallpapers 😁 Now and again I like a shot of 'detective noir' and the cover of one of Meat Loaf's albums fits that mood nicely.
