You can't kill the dead. Well, it turns out you can. With a bit of training.
You know what's worse though than killing dead? Next to being kicked out of hell and finding out you're not entirely human? That must be staying a virgin after meeting your favorite porn star, but I guess that's only a problem if your name is Jason Stark.
Warning: 18+, not suitable for work and the faint of heart.
I grabbed a few book covers from the Internet, trying to find a few good and bad examples...
We're now entering the domain of fan fiction, and as most aspiring authors have little money, little art talent, or both (I firmly belong in that category), they'll have to rely on affordable pre-made covers, a little photoshopping, or old fashioned felt tip pens and crayons to get the message across.
With Netflix continuing to increase their pricing, the offer of HBO Max looked pretty good... Who doesn't want a lifelong 50% discount, great series and a bunch of movies? And so, I subscribed.
I might cancel any day now. When HBO Max becomes Max, and all the good stuff disappears in exchange for crappy reality stuff...
Warning: 18+, not suitable for work and the faint of heart.
I grabbed a few book covers from the Internet, trying to find a few good and bad examples...
Time may not always have been kind to some covers, because the meaning of the words may have changed. Or they were deliberately chosen, or these are completely fake. It's the internet, after all, and nothing you find on the internet can be trusted these days.
The first book was outstanding, so my hopes for the sequels were... limited. You know how that is, don't you? Great first book, mediocre second, horrible third...
Fortunately, Obert Skye manages to deliver a good sequel and a proper conclusion. These are books for kids, but still enjoyable by adults. How's about that for a change?
Can you imagine... I actually have 1000 issues of Perry Rhodan on my bookshelf. And I haven't even read most of them!
That made me wonder... When should I ever read them? It's 2017 now, and if I would read one every week that would take me 20 years to read them all. Will I still be able to read them at that old age?
And even... If I want to ever read them, I'd better start now before it's too late! So, let's start before I get too old to find my glasses...
Warning: 18+, not suitable for work and the faint of heart.
So, I grabbed a few book covers from the Internet, trying to find a few good and bad examples... Some are fake. Some are funny. Some are exemplary cases of bad taste.
Ready? Hold on to your socks, keep the vinegar at hand to wash your eyeballs, because here are twenty-five... interesting book covers...
Peacemaker is completely silly, rude, irreverent, immature, and yet it’s fun. If you like foul-mouthed superhero stuff like Deadpool, then this is your thing.
John Cena stars as Peacemaker, reprising his role from The Suicide Squad.
A Scifi story taking place in a single-star system (I think, it wasn't clear to me at first) where three different planets fought a fourth one.
Book one isn't about that war, but about what happened afterward, fifteen years later.
Disney has a lot of new Marvel series, and keeps adding to them. There’s Wandavision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If, and now Hawkeye.
Hawkeye received a somewhat mixed reception, but I liked it, although it had two problems: the ending was a bit rushed, and Kingpin seemed to be fully out of character, and surely lacking style. A straw hat? On Kingpin?!? Nah.
Although this is military SF, it escapes some of the typical pitfalls, especially the young hero climbing through the ranks and becoming the general. Finally a (military SF) series that doesn't do that!
In the old days of echo-mail, and 14k4 modems, and Fido... ah... there once was an echo ('newsgroup') called SF.028.
It was... great. I can't explain why. This is a little reminder to those days, the peaceful world before the Internet came... Unsurprisingly, this wallpaper clocks in as a .JPG of nearly 10 kb. Huge! 😂
Click on the image to enlarge, or check out the other wallpapers...
Datatalk + Music + Squeezebox
Yes. Old technology, but it's still working.
I have some issues lately, so I'm now trying to troubleshoot my ages-old installation. The problems that I've seen:
1. Random play doesn't list the right tracks
2. Sometimes the last bit of a song is skipped
I've posted about this before, but wanted to show what can be done with some post processing.
You'll find the online tool here: https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/
Sometimes, however, you want to stand out, or fix possible issues.
If one doesn't have the license to the official names, then why not simply make up some? That's what EA Sports did in Japan, back in 1994. And aren't they great?
Who doesn't remember the legendary Sleve McDichael, Jeromy Gride, or my all-time favorite, Bobson Dugnutt?
More info on Reddit, Wikipedia, Slate and Dragonfriends.
The following is a completely dishonest, biased, male-viewpoint, misogynistic, unfair and unhinged :-) approach to writing romance. So, take it for what it is: a very cynical outlook on (broken) hearts.
And before I start: there is nothing wrong with reading or writing romance! If you like it, go for it! It's not better or worse than other genre, in any way.
I bet this isn't the future Marty McFly had in mind when he boarded his DeLorean... Let's hope this never comes to pass...
(Click image to enlarge.)
Datatalk + OBS + Virtual Webcam.
WhatsApp doesn't support virtual cams, so to get OBS to work with WhatsApp on your PC takes a few extra steps.
More information here: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/droidcam-virtual-output.1580/
Step by step instructions in this post, and a 2026 update here.
How do you pick the perfect title for your story, well... here's an attempt to set some basic rules and make it easier...
(Warning: don't take this too seriously.)
Lui? Deze link zou rechtstreeks moeten werken... als de site sindsdien niet verandert is...
https://www.playstation.com/nl-nl/ps-plus/whats-new/#monthly-gamesMaar... vind Sony het nou leuk om abbonnement houders te pesten? Ik snap het wel, door iets te verstoppen hopen ze dat je zo lang mogelijk op hun website rond hangt, en daardoor per ongeluk misschien iets anders koopt... Maar... klantvriendelijk is het niet.
Nightly endless writin'
The daylight rarely sightin'
Rewrite!
Ignoring things that matter
...
Once you've written something you want to publish it.
There are too many predatory websites out there, that may or may not have your interests at heart. Some will outright steal your stuff, others will never pay, or give you very bad conditions.
Also, steer clear of 'Vanity Press' outfits. Real publishers never ask you money to publish your works!
Writing.
Questions you (never) want to answer as an author...
The following came up on Discord on the Wattpad+ server:
Q1. Who or what is the author / book / series / show / movie you stole the most from?
Writing / Datatalk / TTS.
Well, it's not really that alien 😇 but I think this is my third post with TTS examples, and this time I've added a longer sample, using a free ElevenLabs account. Now all it needs is pricing to go down.
Here's the first page of Kind's Kiss.
If you need to 'beef up' the story, for whatever reason, you might be able to use this recipe:
I know nothing! Indeed I don't! You are absolutely right!
So, here's a collection of links that are way better than anything I can ever come up with...
(Of course, I added all these links in my Touch Portal setup, so they're only a tap away, but you could just as well store them as links on your desktop. I keep a somewhat curated selection here as well.)
Writing / Datatalk / TTS.
There are many TTS engines, web interfaces, and programs out there. But... some are quite expensive, others have poor voices, and you can't always be sure of what's 'in the tin', because they won't give you a free trial first.
I don't have the money nor the time to do an extensive review (hey, someone willing to sponsor me? 😁) but I needed to do *some* investigation for one of my (writing-related) projects.
Read on for the results, and the samples I recorded.
This post is pretty much a rehash, but I just can't stress it enough: formatting, punctuation and spelling are more important than you think.
I know I'm a bit contrary to the larger group who stress that it's all about content. About story and plot and characters and worldbuilding, and in the end it is.
But... if the basics are not there, even the best story doesn't matter! Read on why...
I never could.
I know as a wallpaper this one's excessively small. WallX makes it barely acceptable using either fade, or dots+blur. The point here, however, is the message: not everyone fits in. (Click image to enlarge.)
Why doesn't Windows have a, per application, setting to allow that specific application to be brought to the front by other apps and itself? It would save a lot of headaches.
Writing / Datatalk / TTS.
I've added a TTS example for those that want to hear the difference between SAPI5, Windows 11 'Immersive Reader' and Amazon Polly.
It's on YouTube and you can find it here: https://youtu.be/xL8vxo3a2zo. It's also wrong 😇 I'm pretty sure it actually uses Azure Cloud neural... I've added a post with more samples of different sites and engines.
Datatalk / Magix.
Magix repacks and resells other products. Some of those are great (Xara comes to mind) but Magix often manages to screw up their installation and support procedures. And don't get me started on license issues...
And in several ways they did it again... sigh.
Writing / Datatalk / TTS.
Windows has a build-in TTS engine which is better than the older SAPI5 engine, but... it's a little hard to get at. And silly enough, any regular program (for example Balabolka) that calls the SAPI5 API routines isn't using the new code in Windows.
But it's actually very easy to use with a little workaround! And the quality is definitely better than, for example, Word's built-in TTS tool.
Datatalk.
Here's a nice and troublesome one. When you use an external keyboard with a tablet, such as the Logitech K380 together with the Samsung Tab S6 Lite, you may suffer from spontaneous 'language switches', which seem to eat up spaces when typing.
Don't throw away your external keyboard yet. There might be a solution. (I also found some other issues with the Samsung keyboard driver when trying to figure this out. Read on.)
Datatalk / TTS.
This is a step-by-step instruction of how to set up Amazon Polly.
Unfortunately, it doesn't solve my real problem: I am looking for a way to use Polly voices with a TTS reader, such as Balabolka. There are some problems...
Well, at least I managed to get Amazon running, in spite of their poor online instructions.
DIY.
LED lamps use less energy and last much longer. Though, perhaps, not as long as often suggested.
Ikea suggests their LED lamps can last up to 20 years. Well... probably... if you leave them off.
Violence. Explosions. Dave Bautista. And a movie without a point. Not even much of a plot.
I am completely unsure what to make of this one. It's just a movie, with lots of violence, supposedly about Texas separating itself from the rest of the US. It's not entertaining, and the only message it sends is that war kills. And even then it sends that message poorly.
In one fell swoop Scott Adams pretty much killed his primary source of income: Dilbert.
That's... sad. Not because I like Scott Adams. In fact, I never liked him much with his borderline Trump adoration, and the smug way he presents himself as the all-knowing. This time he went one step further and basically dug his own grave by publishing a near racist rant that's simply over the edge. As a result, a 100+ newspapers kicked him and his cartoon out.
I understand the worry and need for 'sensitivity readers' but I'd also worry about 'giving in' too much. You see, you can't care about each and every opinion, and you're bound to step on some toes, no matter what. So, the question is: are you looking to 'remove' sensitive matters from your work entirely (for example because you're afraid to insult someone), or are you looking for expertise on specific subjects?
In my opinion, there's a lot of difference between the two.
Wintermoon by Dean Koontz would make a good movie. As a book, it's just 'so...so...'. I can't recall the title (Splinter perhaps?) but it resembles another book I read quite some time ago. Something about 'something alien invading earth modifying (dead) animals and stuff alike'. Anyway, this book was good enough to keep my attention for three or four hours during the flight back to the Netherlands... I wouldn't read it again though.
Sandman Slim is everything Bobby Dollar tries to be... hardboiled, noir-styled, supernatural detective. It's moody, dark, first-person present tense, and the hero is just as much a jerk as you and me... if not even more so.
Wallpaper.
I have to believe Serenity is still flying...
No matter what you think of Jos Whedon, he did leave some very good television in his legacy. Buffy, Dollhouse, and Firefly are simply standouts in the (cult) television series landscape.
I'm not entirely sure what attracts people in these books. Like the previous B.V. Larson books, there is something off about them, almost something stupid. It isn't that the man can't write. He can, perhaps with a little false pathos, but the writing itself isn't that bad. By itself...
But there's so much wrong with this, I'm not even sure where to start...
Farscape returned! Okay, that's a lie... but I'd love for it to happen.
Say what? Farscape? You didn't even know? What?!? You did not even watch?!?!? You don't even know what Farscape is?!?
You must be one of those people comforting their Nielsen boxes 😔
Back in 1995 I was staying in China, looking for something to watch on late-night Guangzhou television. Well, Hong Kong television, but they had that on the hotel's channels. Just by accident I 'rolled' into The Tommyknockers based on Stephen King's story. I heard some negative stories about the book and had never read it. I still haven't, so I can't compare book and movie adaption.
Nearly thirty years of progress... Did we make any? I compared the layout of the same app on old style Windows NT / 98 (XP with a theme), Windows XP, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
Just from a stupid user's point of view... did we make any progress? If you just look at the user interface then it's still the same beast. So why is Microsoft so desperate to change the looks, when in the end we'll buy the new version anyway?
When you think about it... things haven't changed much for the last 30 years...
I like F1. I like the drama surrounding it, the games, the challenges, the emotions. Racing is more than just fastest man + fastest machine = certain win. As in any sport, drama plays a major role. Well, at least I believe it should be.
It certainly shouldn't be all about 'hate', and now that's exactly what's happening since 2019, which culminated in outright death treats in 2021 after the final race of the 2021 season
Some self proclaimed 'fans' are so narrow minded they keep repeating their view on reality in endless posts on every forum, unable to understand that others disagree with their point of view. One of those is 'Republican' who thinks he is funny. But... he isn't.
Joss Whedon delivered another classic, even though it was canceled before its time. It's cowboys and rebels in space, but not exactly...
It only took some out-of-order broadcasting to kill this show. Fortunately it received some well-deserved wrap-up in the form of a movie.
Watch it. Even if you don't like Whedon as a person, his TV shows were (and still are!) great.
Some of these wallpapers are just pretty images, others may have a story behind them. Some of those stories are intense, emotional, have a personal meaning (and I might simply not share the associated wallpapers) but others only go skin-deep.
This is one of the latter 😇 Ever heard of the game Tabula Rasa?
