Review: Oculus Quest

I got an Oculus Quest because I wanted to exercise more. Really.

For those not familiar, the Oculus Quest is a second-generation virtual reality headset from Oculus (owned by Facebook). Virtual reality headsets place a monitor in front of each eye (or one monitor with each eye only viewing half of it). This gives you a true 3D image, which you can look around in by turning your head. Most headsets, including the Quest, come with hand controllers as well. These create virtual hands which follow your real hands in the environment, allowing you to grip, point, and generally manipulate your environment. They usually come with buttons and joysticks which allow you to move around in your environment and interact with it in less intuitive ways.

I also own an Oculus Rift, the first-generation headset. The main difference between the headsets is one of mobility. The Oculus Rift (and the Rift S, its successor) must be tethered to a fairly powerful computer to work through a long cable. The Quest is untethered. All its components--battery, processor, memory, as well as the screen and speakers--are in the headset. This gives you a lot of freedom. You can take the Quest anywhere--even outside, though that's not recommended, or on trips.

It does make a difference. I can find a much larger area in my backyard than I could in my office with my computer, which gives you a significant area to move around in. You also don't get tangled in the cables as you turn around in the game.

But back to the exercise: I got the Oculus Quest because I had gotten into the VR game Beat Saber. This is a simple game that is also pretty effective exercise. You are given two lightsabers, one red and one blue, and you need to slice colored metal blocks as they fly toward you with the lightsaber the same color as the block, cutting in the direction indicated by arrows on the blocks. The blocks follow the rhythm of dance songs playing in the background (the beat in beat saber). There are also occasional obstacles you have to dodge as they fly toward you. At higher difficulty settings, it can be quite intense, and easily an aerobic workout.

Beat Saber. I'm not doing great here, mainly because I'm trying to capture a picture.

Unfortunately, I can't take the computer with me when I travel, so I thought the Oculus Quest would make a useful alternative. That way I can have an (entertaining) aerobic exercise even when I'm visiting my parents.

The Oculus Quest in the compact, hard travel case I bought for it. 

So, what do I think about it, especially compared to the original? Here are my thoughts:

Advantages

• Mobile
• Easy to set up
• Easier to use even when you aren't traveling--I find myself using it more than my original Rift, even though I have them both in my bedroom.

Disadvantages

• It feels slightly more sluggish. The sabers feel like they lag behind just a little.
• There are more glitches. The original Rift had its glitches as well, but this feels like it glitches more. This may be partly because of the games I'm playing, as most glitches seem to be more errors in the game than in the system. For example, every once in a while one of the sabers stop working, and goes spinning off into the void. At one point, for about a week, I was observing freezes and the screen going black in Beat Saber too, but that seems to have been a bug that they fixed.
• The system isn't as powerful, and so can't handle games that need a PC behind them.
• Since the tracking is internal, it's easier to move the controllers out of sight of the cameras built into the Rift.

So would I recommend it over the Rift S, the updated version of the original Oculus Rift? Yes, for one very important reason: Oculus is adding Link--a system that lets you use the Quest as if it were a Rift through a single USB C cable. If it works as well as promised, and you get the mobility and the power of a computer when you want it, I'm not sure what market the Rift S will fill.

Now what I'd really like to see is a wireless connection between the Quest and the computer, using WiFi. You'd think it would be possible, since the Quest does have WiFi and is battery powered. Maybe next year.

Not-a-Review of Mythic Orbits 2

As a general rule, I don't review anthologies and magazines that I'm in. Kristin and I both have short stories in Mythic Orbits 2, the second volume of Bear Publication's collection of speculative fiction stories by Christian authors.

My story, "Her Majesty's Guardian," was a very short piece originally published by Daily Science Fiction. It asked the question of how a magic society would deal with a royal family with a genetic predisposition toward madness and a ridiculous amount of power.

Kristin's story, "The Workshop at the End of the World," is a more whimsical tale involving elves, and to say any more about the premise would be to spoil it. It was also published in Daily Science Fiction.

We're very proud of both these stories, of course, but like I said, I don't review books that I'm in, and I especially don't review my own stories, or Kristin's. But I would like to talk about some of the other stories in Mythic Orbits, and mention a few that really worked for me.

My favorite was "Mark the Days" by Kat Heckenbach. Denver begins to live his days by the order that he marks them off in his calendar. He takes advantage of this, skipping over days and coming back to them later, when he can take advantage of knowing what the following days bring. But slowly he comes to realize that there is something terrible waiting for him on the one day he skipped at the beginning, and eventually he won't be able to avoid it any longer. I felt that this story was successful in creating a rising sense of tension, and showing how someone might deal with knowing the future, while fearing to know the past.

Another story I really enjoyed was "They Stood Still," by William Bontrager. Anyone who uses a computer knows the frustration that happens when the computer freezes, and you're afraid to do anything, in case that makes you lose all your unsaved work. This story imagines what would happen if the whole world stopped. Samuel, who lost his legs in Iraq, suddenly has to deal with a Las Vegas empty of all motion except himself. I thought this story really dealt with his dawning horror, and the fear that he would never interact with anyone or anything ever again. I didn't feel like the story quite stuck the landing, however. I would have preferred a deeper meaning to this event than what we received.

Less grim was "Unerella" by Keturah Lamb. This tells the story of the other young woman at Prince Charming's ball, who has to figure out her own way when Cinderella steals his heart. There's nothing really twisty about this story, once you figure out that it's not from Cinderella's point of view, but I enjoyed the determination of a young woman who had to learn to dream something new.

"The Other Edge" by C.W. Briar was a particularly memorable dark science fiction tale. Astronaut Varik Babel leads his crew to make first contact with a ship from another world. What he finds is not what he's looking for. I did find the ending somewhat implausible, given what I know of the technologies involved, but it was horrifying even so.

"Dragon Moon" by Linda Burklin was a bittersweet story about Darla, a young woman who slowly covers herself in tattooed scales to entertain and distract her younger brother, who's dying of cancer. While I can't imagine someone doing that--I kept thinking that she must be crazy to do so--it brought out the depth of her love for her brother. The fantastical ending to this story was dramatic and appropriate, but I felt that the denouement too easily canceled the price that Darla had paid.

These were the stories that really drew me in and which I found myself thinking about days after reading. But our experience of stories is subjective, and I suspect other readers might find themselves reliving some of the other stories in this anthology, such as that of the mother bear searching for her lost cubs, or a curator explaining Earth culture to his alien overlords, or a failed Mars colony recalled to Earth, or robots replaying forgotten memories. I think most people will find something to enjoy in this anthology. Perhaps even a story about a queen's guardian, or a workshop at the end of the world.

Gotham

So I've been watching Gotham for the past three years. It can be a fun show, a cross between a police procedural and a comic book show. Early seasons leaned more to police procedural, with the crimes being more gangster related, than the superscience and mystical villainy of the Batman comics. It slowly moved toward more aggressive comic book characters, and we've now seen such iconic characters as the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, Firefly, and the Joker.

But there have been times when I think it's been too slow. Because let's be honest, the reason we watch Gotham is because we want to see Batman. Bruce Wayne has been in the show since the beginning--the series began with the murder of his parents. But since he was only eleven or twelve when it happened, he wasn't exactly going to be Batman right away.  In most portrayals, we start with Bruce's parents' murder, and then skip ahead a decade or so, to after Bruce has traveled the world, training with world-class experts to become the best at absolutely everything: martial arts, investigation, driving, inventing, even developing esoteric skills such as meditation.

But in Gotham, we watch him grow up. Rather than being trained by experts around the world, his principal teacher is Alfred--though admittedly, this version of Alfred is former SAS (British special forces), so he's taught Bruce how to fight. Bruce has also been hanging out with the young thief Selina Kyle, the future catwoman, and even stayed with her for a while so he could learn about thieving. Exactly how long is never stated--it was several episodes, which could have been anywhere from a few days to a few months. It was at least long enough to learn to pick locks, which he seems to be fairly proficient at these days. Finally, one of Ra's al Ghul's lieutenants, the Sensei (who's actually al Ghul's father in the comics, though that's never stated here) briefly kidnapped Bruce, primarily to brainwash him, though there was also some martial arts training involved.

Anyway, Gotham's always been interesting, but the end of Season 3 threw away the slow part. A lot happened, with Jim Gordon, Selina Kyle, Ra's al Ghul, but the most important development was with Bruce Wayne.



Bruce has finally decided to become Batman. Well, not Batman specifically, but a vigilante, fighting criminals. On the one hand, this seems like it's too soon for Bruce to become Batman. On the other hand, we've been waiting three years for this to happen, so lots of people (like, the whole Internet) is excited to see this.

The rumor is that the showrunners didn't think that Gotham would be renewed, and wanted to end the show with everyone moving in the right direction for their ultimate destinies. It looks like they did too good of a job, and everything's now moving way more quickly than before. It will be interesting to see if they can keep up the momentum.

That doesn't change the fact that Bruce is not ready yet. He knows how to fight, obviously, and he's learned some of the sneaking and thieving skills he needs, but he's clearly not the polymath that Batman is, so it'll be interesting to see how things develop.

To some degree, I expect the next season to have a Batman Begins or Batman Year One vibe, as he slowly develops the arsenal of gadgets and techniques that Batman uses. But in both those stories, Bruce Wayne already had the skills. He just needed to work out the method to use. Here, I think Bruce also needs to learn what he needs to learn. This will happen as he runs into challenges in his vigilantism he can't overcome with his current skillset. When he does run into those, he needs to figure out how to get the skills he needs.

There are several ways to go about this.

Obviously, Alfred will continue to teach him how to fight. He also may teach him more Batman skills, such as fancy driving, throwing weapons, rock/building climbing, etc.

There are also other experts in Gotham who could help train Bruce. The first time his vigilantism requires Bruce to solve a crime, not just interrupt one, he could turn to his friends in the GCPD, especially Lucius Fox, to help him not only solve the crime, but to learn how crimes are solved. In the movies, Lucius is also portrayed as the source of Batman's gadgets (more so in Batman Begins than the comics, where most of Batman's gadgets are invented by Bruce himself). Here I expect him to not only provide gadgets, but to teach Bruce about science and inventing. Jim Gordon may also help in developing some of the investigation skills, though unlike Lucius, in most continuities he doesn't know Batman's identity.

Selina Kyle is still around, though her current relationship with Bruce is frosty. Still, when it comes to sneaking and breaking into places, there may be more teaching that she can provide.

Then there's Ra's al Ghul, who showed up in the season finale as the true force behind the Court of Owls. Ra's wants to make Bruce Wayne into his heir to lead the League of Assassins, and the fact that Bruce was able to overcome the League's brainwashing just makes Ra's more intrigued. Bruce doesn't want to be al Ghul's heir, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that Ra's is willing and eager to teach Bruce all sorts of the ninja-like skills Batman needs--from sneaking around, to impossible feats of agility, to martial arts mastery, mystical mumbo-jumbo meditation, and throwing stars (aka proto-Batarangs). This was the path that Batman Begins took to show how Batman got his skills, so closely does al Ghul's teachings match what Batman needs to know. I fully expect Bruce to undergo some significant training at Ra's's hands, either willingly (perhaps in an attempt to infiltrate his organization, perhaps because he realizes he can't do this without it) or unwillingly.

Finally, it's not unusual for Bruce and Alfred to leave Gotham for months at a time for vacations. It wouldn't be out of line for such vacations to become cover for some intensive training of one type or another with an expert that Bruce learns about, or Alfred knows through his contacts. It's possible that some of those trips already involved more than visiting a ski lodge.

I'm not expecting a full-fledged Batman next season. Maybe if they think the show's going to be canceled again, they'll give it to us in the series/season finale. Otherwise, what I expect to see is Bruce slowly learning what he needs to know to be Batman, developing the tools and techniques and skills he needs, and possibly learning that he needs something more. Not just more training, but an identity, an icon, to make him something more than a viglante: a symbol.

Iron Fist Review

I just finished watching Iron Fist. Before its general release, there were rumors that it wasn't very good from some of those who saw the first six episodes. After watching it, I can't say I agree. It does have a somewhat slower pace than a lot of the other Netflix Marvel shows, but I didn't find it dull.

Iron Fist is the story of Danny Rand, the son of Wendell Rand, the founder of Rand Corp, and heir to his company. When he was ten, Danny's parents died in the Himalayas, and he was taken in by K'un-Lun, one of the Capital Cities of Heaven, which exists in another plane of existence and which is only reachable every fifteen years. There Danny trained in martial arts and became the guardian of K'un Lun, the Iron Fist, which is both his title and the name of his ability to focus his chi into his hand and strike with explosive force.

There are a few differences between the origin story in the comic books and the Netflix series. In the comic books, Danny's parents died while seeking the city of K'un-Lun, while in the television series they died in a plane crash without any knowledge of the city. I was somewhat expecting them to lose some of the more mystical bits, like the seven extradimensional cities, or the dragon Shou Lao the undying, through which Danny received his abilities, and instead focus on a more naturalistic explanation, such as having Danny train at a remote monastery to focus his chi, but I was pleased to see that they kept the more mystical aspects of Danny's origin story. Most of the changes they did make serve to make the story more interesting: in the comics, K'un-Lun allowed Danny to leave to seek revenge for his parents' deaths, who, unlike in the Netflix series, were clearly murdered, whereas in the Netflix series, Danny left without permission for reasons which are not explained until much later.

When Danny returns, no one believes that he is who he says he is. Ward and Joy Meachum, the children of his Dad's old business partner who now run Rand Corp, assume that he's either an impostor or a crazy hobo. He certainly looks the part of the latter. This I think is the part that a lot of people found too slow. Danny spends much of the first few episodes trying to prove his identity, and his sanity (hard to do when he says he spent the last fifteen years in an extradimensional city with a dragon in order to become a mystical warrior), while avoiding getting into fights--which, let's face it, is the main thing we want him to do.

Once he's able to prove his identity and return to his company, things begin to pick up, and Danny has to begin dealing with his real enemy. The Hand (who has played a large role in Daredevil) has infiltrated Rand Corp, and is using them to distribute heroin throughout the world. If this plot sounds familiar, it's not that different from what Wilson Fisk was doing in the first season of Daredevil. But it sounds like the Hand has had its hooks in Rand Corp for much longer than that. During the first half of the season, the primary villain is Madame Gao, the drug-dealing little old lady who beat Daredevil quite thoroughly every time they met. Here, though, she's part of something bigger, which ironically makes her less interesting. In Iron Fist, she's an important figure in the Hand, whereas I always assumed that while she worked with the Hand in Daredevil, she was running her own organization. It's actually somewhat disappointing to just make her a lieutenant in the existing Hand organization, whereas the Internet was speculating she might be Crane Mother, the leader of one of the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven who bore a particular grudge against the Iron Fist.

Unlike some other Netflix shows (Luke Cage, Daredevil Season 2), where the second half of the season is something of a letdown after the first half, in Iron Fist I found the second half of the season more interesting. There's a late season plot twist that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Hand and introduces a new, compelling villain. This is followed by yet another betrayal, though this one was more obvious to the viewer than to Danny Rand. The shifting alliances near the end keep things fresh and interesting, and the season cliffhanger left me wanting more.

Let me reflect on a few of the complaints I've heard about the series. The first one I've heard is that it's too slow, and that Danny Rand's dealings with Rand Corp and the Meachums take up too much time and are the least interesting part of the show. I disagree. I liked seeing the fish out-of-water aspect of Danny trying to run a multinational corporation (more on that later). I also think that the Meachums, and their interaction with Danny and the Hand, are an important driver for the show, and that the character dynamics among Ward, Joy, Harold, and Danny are fascinating, and the way the alliances shift over time help to keep the show interesting.

Another complaint I've heard is about the fight scenes, that they aren't as good as they should have been given Danny's supposed martial arts prowess. I will say that I didn't notice any problems while watching the show. The fight scenes seemed fine to me, and I wouldn't have any reason to think there were problems with them without reading about it on the Internet. On a technical level, I realize that the actor Finn Jones is not going to have the martial arts skills of Danny Rand, who is supposed to be one of the best martial artists in the Marvel Universe, so others with a more critical eye may have picked up on some problems I didn't notice. There's probably room to make the fight scenes more satisfying for those people, and I suspect that with more practice, Finn Jones will be better able to fake it--which is all an actor is supposed to do.

So if neither of those things bothered me, what did? In a word, math. Someone needs to enroll Danny in some basic business classes. A big deal is made of a number of "compassionate" decisions Danny makes, except those decisions only make sense to very liberal writers and directors who have no knowledge of either math or economics. To me, they looked less like decisions guided by compassion than decisions guided by ignorance, and were the sort of thing that would drive Rand Corp into bankruptcy within a year if left unchecked. I'll save the specifics for another post, though.

So, to sum up, I liked Iron Fist, and my biggest complaints are completely unrelated to what bothers the rest of the Internet.

New computer

So my old laptop died.  That wasn't so strange--it was just a cheap laptop to tide me over, and the WiFi had been iffy for a year now, but now I couldn't get it to work at all. For the new computer  I wanted something better. Something small, light, but powerful, with plenty of RAM, a fast processor, an SSD drive, and long battery life.  Plus, I wanted Windows. I was going to wait for Windows 10, but I needed a computer now, and Windows 10 was a free upgrade anyway. I figured I could live with Windows 8.1 for three weeks if I had to. Finally, I wanted it to be 2-in-1, both laptop and tablet.

There are a number of options, but I wanted the best for my purposes. And for my purposes, what I needed was primarily a laptop, and only secondly a tablet. I would mainly use it for writing and web surfing, but it would also need to be able to handle work tasks, which could occasionally be more complex. So I looked at the usual review sites, such as CNET and TechRadar. There were three that stood out: the Surface Pro 3, the HP Spectre x360, and the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 12. (I wanted to like the Lenovo LaVie 360, which was very light, but it didn't get very good reviews, which generally said that it felt too flimsy and had an awkward keyboard layout.) The Surface Pro 3 was more tablet than laptop, and I wanted something that didn't need a separate kickstand.  That left the HP Spectre x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 12, and it was a close call.  The lift-and-lock keyboard of the Yoga 12 appealed to me, but it didn't seem to me to be worth the premium, and any comparable loadout of the Yoga 12, in terms of processor, memory, resolution, and SSD seemed to be several hundred dollars more expensive than the HP Spectre.  Still, it was close.  If the Signature Edition of the Yoga available from the Microsoft Store for $1299 had been in stock, I might have gone with that, even if it was lower resolution and a smaller SSD and had an older, but comparable, processor, but the version that was readily available would cost $1800 with the loadout I wanted.  So instead I got the $1400 loadout of the HP Spectre x360 (available only at Best Buy right now, but it should appear at the Microsoft Store soon).

It's slightly lighter (3.2 lbs vs 3.5 lbs) and has a slightly longer battery life. The processor of the Spectre x360 and the newer Yoga 12 are roughly the same, though the Yoga 12 had a slightly better i7-5600U available vs. the Spectre's i7-5500U. But the Spectre came with a 512 GB SSD (an option which would cost an extra $300 on the Yoga), and a 2560x1440 resolution (not available for any price on the Yoga 12).  I would sort of like a digitizer pen, which the Yoga comes with (for a price), but you can buy one for $60, and I figure I should at least try a cheaper stylus before I upgrade to that.

I've been using it for two days now, and so far I'm pretty impressed.  The battery life seems to be as expected, though I haven't done any tests on it myself.  The keyboard is nice, and works well for my typing style.  The clickpad also works well, despite some complaints in the reviews.  Right now my biggest complaint is that the rim around the keyboard has a sharp right angle corner, especially noticeable where my wrist rests when the laptop's lying in my lap at certain angles.  I'm tempted to take a dremel to it, but maybe there's a less severe solution--some sort of tape or rubber where my wrist rests?  Other than that admittedly annoying flaw, I think it works very well.

Review of Marvel's Daredevil

Mavel's Daredevil is the first of the Netflix Marvel superhero television series. In a way it's similar to Agents of Shield--it's set in the same universe as that television show, as well as the Avengers movies. But it's a very different type of show, less about exploring larger-than-life superheroes or the government agency responsible for dealing with them, than with the reasons a man with certain gifts becomes a vigilante. In that sense, it resembles Batman Begins or Arrow.

In some ways, Daredevil is a C-lister of the Marvel universe. Marvel's A-level superheroes are Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. Even the Avengers are more B-listers, which explains why, when Marvel decided to take a more direct hand in the development of the superhero movies, they still had the rights to those heroes. The fact that they did such a phenomenal job with them did a lot to move the Avengers up in the superhero world, and now they've turned those same skills to the C-list heroes such as Daredevil.

Daredevil is an interesting hero, as his superpower is his blindness. The same accident that blinded him also heightened his other senses, giving him the ability to "see" much better than most people. He's also a highly trained martial artist, and very skilled at fighting. But he's not the powerhouse of a Thor or an Iron Man, or even a Captain America, and that makes him a much more down-to-earth hero. He's not out saving the world, he's taking on more localized villains--gangsters and killers, not aliens and gods. So his story is a lot more grounded.

Daredevil takes place entirely within New York's Hell's Kitchen shortly after the events of the first Avengers. New York is a mess, and Hell's Kitchen is worse than most of it. There's a great deal of crime in the streets and corruption in the police department. Matt Murdoch has just started a law firm with his old college roommate, Foggy Nelson, trying to do good work, but that isn't enough for him. Thus he begins his own private battle against the corruption around him, using his superior senses and his martial arts ability. But it's not easy. The fight scenes of Daredevil are very good, and very bloody. Matt can take on multiple enemies, but not with ease, and he often takes a beating while dishing one, and is staggering around, barely standing by the end.

Matt struggles to maintain a balance between practicing the law and working around it, but his greater struggle is with his faith. His Catholic beliefs both convict and inspire him, and he often seeks counsel from his priest. I'll point you to this article for more on this, but it struck me as more realistic than most Hollywood portrayals of people wrestling with their faith.

Matt's law partner, Foggy Nelson, is one of my favorite characters in this series. His main role is as the plucky comic relief, but he's also a genuinely decent person and a capable lawyer. He keeps the show from becoming too dark, and when Foggy's and Matt's friendship is at risk of breaking, there's as much a sense of danger as when any of the characters' lives are at risk.

Karen Page and Ben Urich round out the cast of good guys. Karen is Foggy's and Matt's first client, and she quickly joins their tiny law partnership. Ben Urich is an over-the-hill investigative reporter who's finding it hard to get by in the world of blogs and Facebook, but still has one good story left in him. They are up against a citywide conspiracy headed by Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. Wilson Fisk is presented as a complex character, who really wants what he thinks is best for the city, but whose goals require breaking a few eggs. And when those eggs are friends of the good guys, they fight back.

One disappointment I had with the show is that there wasn't that much lawyering going on. There's only one instance of courtroom drama, and I could only count four clients over the course of the show. I'm not entirely certain how they're staying in business, but I can definitely believe that they're struggling to do so. I did like that old-fashioned, generally dull legal research helped to bring the show to its climax and expose the bad guys, but that seemed to be entirely pro bono.

Overall, I really enjoyed Daredevil. It's dark and gritty, but not so dark that it lacks hope and a moral center. The characters feel real and their struggles were meaningful, both the external fight against Wilson Fisk and his allies and their internal struggles with their own consciences and pasts. If it's a sign of things to come, I'm definitely looking forward to the later series, especially Luke Cage and Iron Fist, two characters whom I already like. Heck, I've never even heard of Jessica Jones, and I'm still looking forward to her show.

Review of Malarat at Black Gate

My latest self-published book review is now up at Black Gate.  Here's a sampling:

This month’s self-published novel is Malarat by Jessica Rydill. The book is the third book in Ms. Rydill’s shamanworld series, but also a standalone novel. The novel takes place in a world much like our own, with France (called Lefranu), England (Anglond), Jews (Wanderers), and Christians (Doxans). But these analogs are not exact (for example, the Doxans elevate Megalmayar, the Mother of God, to the position of a goddess) and there are also a number of things that are very different, such as the Great Cold, that isolated a portion of Lefranu so that it remained stuck in Medieval times while the rest of the world advanced to what most closely resembles the late 19th and early 20th century, complete with trains, firearms, and electricity.

Review of The Severed Earth at Black Gate

My latest self-published book review, this time of Chris Presta-Valachovic's The Severed Earth, is now online at Black Gate. Here's a sample:

The rock band Karma is in trouble. Despite the success they’ve had, their ex-manager Izzy embezzled most of the money before dying, leaving the members deep in debt. They have one chance to produce an album and turn their fortunes around, but their lead singer, Vao, is having a crisis of faith, and thinking of quitting after the death of his mother. The guitarist, Rafe, is fed up with Vao’s moping and unreliability and would just as soon be rid of him, while Jonathan just wants to hold the band together. Ian and Dylan just want to make music, but they, too, are stuck in this emotional train-wreck of a band. But when the record rep turns out to be a wizard, the band members soon find themselves with other things to worry about.

Read the whole thing.

Black Gate review of Pyre

My latest self-published book review is up at Black Gate. This month it's Pyre by R.B. Kannon. Here's a brief excerpt:

The strongest part of Pyre was the prose. The first person narration has a lyrical quality, filled with descriptions rich with dream-like imagery, slipping effortlessly between reality and Ember’s own dreams. Ember herself is strong and determined, qualities which initially drew the Voice to her. The Voice, on the other hand, is cynical and mocking. He accompanies Ember more out of curiosity and boredom, and his own chance at freedom and survival, than because he has any interest in her welfare.

New laptop

Not for me, this time, but for my wife.  Her old laptop was 6 years old, and it was horrendously slow, had a battery life of less than two hours, and would freeze up at inopportune times.  It was also a 15" screen monster to lug around. So she wanted something new, with a long battery life, and that was light and easy to carry around. My suggestions were either one of the Lenovo Yogas, or a Macbook Air. After going around to Best Buy, the Apple Store, and the Microsoft Store so she could try out the various models, she settled on the Lenovo Yoga 11S.  I think it was a good choice.

You can see a review of the Yoga 11S here, but it's a little outdated.  The main complaint of the reviewer is that it uses the old 3rd-generation Intel Core processor, instead of the new power efficient, 4th-generation Intel Core processor (Haswell), which has a significantly longer battery life. But the model Kristin bought has the Haswell processor. It was also cheaper, at $799, though it has half the RAM and SSD as the reviewed model, which is disappointing.  On the bright side, it has an SD card slot, and you can get SD cards up to 128 GB, doubling the non-volatile storage (though it will be slower than the drive).  She got it at Best Buy, which wouldn't be my normal choice, but as I didn't see any better specs or prices for it available online, there wasn't any reason not to walk out the store with it.

My main complaint is not with the laptop, but with the operating system. The Yoga comes with Windows 8.1.  I grabbed the Windows 8.1 Update as soon as I could, which is supposed to improve it greatly, but it's still one of the most annoying, least intuitive operating systems I've ever used.  That said, if you're going to deal with Windows 8, you absolutely need a touch screen. There are some things I've still only figured out how to do on the touchscreen in Windows 8 (and a couple I've only figured out how to do on the touchpad).

The Yoga also converts into the a tablet mode by folding the screen over 360 degrees. The keys and touchpad are still there, just deactivated, and it feels a little odd to be holding the tablet with your fingers pressing against the keys with nothing happening, but it's not as bad as I would have thought. (The Thinkpad Yoga, the significantly more expensive model that I'd probably get if I were getting a laptop today, fixes this problem by locking the keys in place and lifting the tray so its flush with them, but the cheaper 11S doesn't do that.)  I also think the Stand Mode, with the keyboard on the bottom and the screen at a 45 degree angle, works well.  I'm trying to convince Kristin that it might work for cooking with online recipes, but she's skeptical, mainly of online recipes.

Overall, I'd recommend the computer, but only if you think you can tolerate Windows 8.

And now for the tangential Windows 8 rant:

The one thing Microsoft needed to do with this operating system is leave the basic productivity functionality of Windows intact, to give us the most fundamental part of the Windows experience--the windows themselves. People started using that GUI in the first place for the ability to shuffle between programs, to use them side by side and have easy access between them. True, there's still the desktop on Windows 8, where you can do that for some applications, but many of the programs only appear to run in the full screen mode. And the desktop has been stripped of so much of its basic functionality that it's a shadow of what it once was--the most fundamental one being having easy access to every program on the computer.  That used to be in the Start Menu, but now there's nowhere on the desktop where you can do the basic task of finding your programs. You can only do that from the Modern interface, so you have to switch to the Modern interface from the Desktop, to start up programs that will then run on the desktop (if you're lucky). 

I honestly think that Microsoft just lost it the day they invented Windows 8. They saw that they were losing sales to tablets and their simplified OSes such as iOS and Android, and decided that that was what people wanted now.  They somehow missed the fact that Apple doesn't use the iOS interface on their notebooks, because that's not what people want on a notebook or desktop. For productivity, the window interface is still the best, and Microsoft was simply insane not to realize that people would still want a fully functional window interface on their productivity computers. While the iPads and tablets of the world may be number one for consumption, people still use laptops, with keyboards and touchpads, for productivity. If Microsoft really wanted to make an operating system that would work for both, then both sides of the operating system needed to be complete. People could have accepted the Modern interface as a application under the desktop, but making the desktop a Modern App was full-on crazy. 

But you've probably heard tons of people complain about Windows 8 on the Internet, so you probably don't want to hear my complaints. Besides, I've only had a day to play with it, and it's possible that it'll grow on me, somehow. Like a Lovecraftian horror, where the insanity caused by the Great Old Ones is contagious, and even the creations of those driven insane by it slowly cause insanity in the minds of those exposed to it.

Latest review at Black Gate

My latest review is up at Black Gate. This month, I'm reviewing E. Catherine Tobler's Gold and Glass. Here's a sample:

The Egypt of Gold and Glass has a mystic resonance, especially as we see it from Eleanor’s perspective, to whom Egypt is more home than the Ireland where she was born. The power of Egypt’s ancient history and mythology provide a strong foundation on which the author builds her own mythos, of gods and magic lingering in a world of airships and mechanical horses. One in which Eleanor’s own connections, to the Lady, and to the ancient Egyptian gods, are sure to play a pivotal role.

I hope you enjoy it.

Black Gate Review online

I've now posted my latest review at Black Gate. This month, I'm reviewing Wil Radcliffe's The Tragic Empire, the second book in his Noggle Stones series. I reviewed his first book a little over a year ago.  Here's a taste:

The Tragic Empire takes place a few months after the events of the first book. Martin Manchester is settling in as the king of Willow Prairie, establishing alliances with the nearby realms of dwarves, ogres, and other folk. The goblin Bugbear serves as Manchester’s diplomat while pursuing his own investigations, with a particular interest in discovering what force was behind the Shadow Smith, the villainous mastermind of The Goblin’s Apprentice. To that end, he’s allowed himself to be thrown into an Áes Dána prison, in hopes of finding access to the their archives, which contain works dating back to the Coranieid Empire. After a tricky escape and some fancy diplomacy, it seems that Bugbear may get what he wants, until the US Army attacks the Áes Dána.

The author assures me that his next book will have more distinctive villains, one of my niggles with this last one. Read the whole review for more.

Black Gate Review

My most recent review for Black Gate, this time of E. Nathan Sisk's Sorcerer Rising, is now online.  A small taste:

Sorcerer Rising falls firmly into the fantasy noir tradition, most akin to the Harry Dresden books. It has the cynical first person narrator, down-on-his-luck and regarded with suspicion by his peers, trying to make his way in the world while retaining a modicum of self-respect (and usually failing). However, Virgil is not a Harry Dresden knock-off. For one, while Harry’s a powerhouse, even when he’s overmatched, with a host of skills and a ton of power, Virgil’s something of a magical weakling. The Brand has taken away his knowledge and the incident which led to it has taken away most of his power. He gets by on a host of tricks, including a magical shotgun named Abigail. The lack of knowledge and power forces Virgil to rely more on his wits and on his familiar, Algernon, a separate part of his own mind with a knack for processing information unhindered by the filter of a superego.

Best remote control ever?

Recently I purchased a Logitech Harmony Smart Control, and I have to admit, now that I've got it set up, that it is probably the best universal remote I've ever used.  It consists of a remote and a hub.  The remote uses RF rather than infrared signals, so it doesn't require line of sight.  The hub produces both Bluetooth and infrared signals, to control my television, my soundbar, and my PS3.

What's really useful is the ability to define activities.  An activity is a macro for things such as listening to music and watching movies. By pressing a single button, you turn all the relevant devices on, and set them to the right settings.  For example, if I hit the movies button, it will turn on the PS3, the soundbar, and the television, and switch the soundbar and the television to receive input from the PS3.  The volume controls will control the soundbar, the play, fast-forward/rewind, and pause and stop buttons will control the PS3.  And all this is set up automatically, via a pretty simple online wizard at myharmony.com.  You can do more complex controls, including assigning individual buttons on the remote (which I had to do to manage the shape buttons for the PS3 remote), or building more complex macros to run, but the automatic set-up runs pretty well.  One thing that I find very nice is that while it takes some significant steps to turn off the PS3 (starting with pressing and holding the PS button, going to the turn off system option, and then confirming turning it off), the hub includes a macro which does all that.  So I can just push the Off button and not worry about turning my computer off.

There are a couple of caveats.  Set up is not as straight-forward as I made it sound just a moment ago.  The online wizard works pretty well, but the instructions that come in the box with it don't make it at all obvious what you have to do to get to that point--they make it sound like you plug the hub in, download the app to your phone, and then you're at the wizard.  They leave out the part where you have to plug the hub into the USB port of your computer, so you can set it up to use your WiFi, and then you can start the wizard.  That's a very important piece of information that's not on the Getting started documentation at all, as far as I can tell.

Second, if you want to do anything more complex than just the standard wizard, it's a bit of work.  Like I said, you can control individual buttons in the remote, or even macros, but macros are a whole other level of effort that I still haven't tried yet.

It also doesn't always behave as expected. By default the Smart Control turns off any equipment you're not using when you switch activities--but there are times I want to pause a show I'm watching, switch to the computer I have attached to my television, and then come back to the show without having to restart the PS3 and find my last point.  You can turn that off under the devices menu, but it took me several times before it finally started working, and I'm still not sure why.

Finally, if your television or soundbar automatically turns itself off when not in use, then there's no way for the Harmony remote to know that fact, and it may think it's turning the device on when in fact it's turning it off, because the remote control is out of sync with the device.  It's probably a good idea to turn the power-saving mode off.

Overall, though, I really like the remote.  It's made things much simpler than juggling three remotes, which is easier for me and easier for my wife, who rarely uses the set-up and thus isn't as familiar with how it works, to figure out.  It also lets me control things with my smartphone, but I haven't found that as useful as the remote that comes with the Harmony Smart Control hub.

Batman as a Video Game

Recently I've been playing the Batman Arkham games.  I hadn't been much interested in them at first, since they seemed like fighting games, and I'm not a great fan of those.  But Humble Bundle was offering them as a deal, and I got them both (plus a bunch of other games), for $10.  They were definitely worth the price.


The Arkham games do involve a lot of fighting--Batman frequently solves problems with his fists.  But they're primarily action adventure games.  If you're not familiar with the genre, these are games where the goal is generally to figure out how to get from point A to point B, which is complicated by labyrinthine maps, including unjumpable ravines, insurmountable doors, and the occasional enemies.  So you have to figure out the way around each of these barriers, and get where you're going.

For this sort of genre, Batman is probably the best protagonist of the famous superheroes. There are some lesser known ones who could do as well, but if you're going to pick a famous superhero to base this sort of game around, you don't want Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, or even Flash. There are a lot of reasons why:

1. Batman is human. When it comes right down to it, Batman is a vanilla human, with all the strengths and weaknesses of the species.  He can't fly, or break through walls.  Barriers that wouldn't challenge Superman require some effort on his part.  And enemies who would be insects to Superman are very dangerous.  Yeah, Batman can fight his way past a dozen goons armed with wrenches and knives, but his suit isn't bulletproof enough to make facing armed guards head on anything other than foolhardy.
2. Batman has a lot of gadgets. This is why Batman is a superhero, rather than just a vigilante.  His superpower is his money. (That, and his mind and body are honed to implausible perfection.) But that affords him all sorts of useful tools he can use to overcome the aforementioned barriers. Since the days of Castle Wolfenstein (and, yes, I'm lumping first person shooters in this genre--they're fairly closely related), the key to games of this type is the upgrade. Whether that's picking up a better gun or some other type of technological gizmo (and since Batman doesn't use guns, it's the other type), every time you pick up a new toy, you get better. You can take on stronger and more dangerous enemies, and in this game, you can get past different type of barriers, whether they're mines, walls, locked doors, or water.  For Batman, the two most important gadgets are the ones you start with: the grappler and the cape.  Both of these work much like they did in the Batman movies. The grappler allows Batman to grab hold of higher ground and drag himself up, and his cape functions like a cross between a glider and a parachute.  He can't fly, but he can glide long distances, and use the grappler to grab hold of ledges and gargoyles.  You can navigate most of the city without ever touching the ground.
3. Batman is sneaky. As I mentioned in the first point, goons with guns are dangerous to Batman.  So how do you fight them? By being sneaky. If Batman can sneak up on an enemy, he can take him out before he can raise an alarm.  He can do that by hiding either above or below, on the gargoyles (which seem like a rather common architectural theme in Gotham), below floor grates, or in the shadows scattered around the room.  From there he can take down armed enemies before they see him coming.
4. Batman has a colorful cast of villains. Good villains are critical to a game of this type.  The main ones in this game were Ra's al-Ghul, Joker, and the Riddler.  Joker is Joker: crazy, and hatching bizarre plans, and he's the main one Batman has to deal with in these two games. Ra's is different.  His plans are more subtle, and it's harder to figure out what he's up to. The Riddler has the most interesting role, though.  He makes puzzles and scatters them throughout the city, which Batman needs to solve.  This actually serves an important purpose, adding a lot of little point A to point B puzzles to the game, and significantly increasing its length.  In the second game, I got all the way through the main plot without getting even halfway through the Riddler's puzzles (fortunately, you can continue to play after the main plot ends in an attempt to resolve those puzzles, and the other sidequests--some of the sidequests don't seem to trigger until after the main quest is done).

Take all that, and consider what this sort of game would be like with Superman as the main character.  A goon with a gun is no threat to Superman, as bullets just bounce off.  No door is much of a barrier, as he can simply break through it.  And since he can fly, if he can see the location of what he's trying to get to, he can get there.

So it's pretty obvious that Batman was a much better choice for this game, and I've found playing him to be quite enjoyable.

New Review up

My latest review is up at Black Gate. This month, it's The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles by D.P. Prior.  To quote myself:

I have a soft spot for dwarves. I consider elves over-used Mary Sues and I could go another decade or two without reading another story about fairies, but give me short smiths with beards and axes who drink too much and I’ll keep reading. Which brings us to this month’s self-published book: The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles. This wasn’t a book that the author submitted to me by my normal process: I’ll get back to those next month. This time, I actually bought the book from Amazon for actual money, because hey, it was about a dwarf.

LED bulbs

I've recently been buying LED lightbulbs to replace the various bulbs we usually use around here. For a while, my wife was buying CFL bulbs, but she got tired of them, not so much for the quality of the light, but for the fact that their odd shapes and sizes kept them from fitting where she wanted them. So she's been buying the energy-efficient incandescents instead. These use a small amount of halogen (usually flourine or bromine) inside the bulbs, resulting in a chemical reaction which redeposits the tungsten evaporated by the bulb onto the filament, which allows the bulb to be operated at a higher temperature, where it has better efficiency. Most of which I learned from the Wikipedia entry.

The halogen incandescents are only very slightly more efficient than regular incandescents, though, and the GE ones, at least, are also dimmer than the bulbs they're supposed to replace. The 60 W replacements consume 43 W to produce 750 lumens rather than the standard 800 lumens, while the 100 W replacements consume 72 W to produce 1490 lumens rather than the standard 1600 lumens. Meanwhile, I can buy LED light bulbs that consume 9.5 W and produce 850 lumens, or 19 W and produce 1680 lumens. In math terms, they consume a quarter of the power and produce about 15% more light than the energy efficient incandescents.

I've long believed that LEDs were probably the light bulb of the future. They're more efficient than incandescents or CFLs, and last longer--twenty years, by standard measurements (which, unfortunately, don't actually involve waiting twenty years and seeing if they still work).

The problem is that LEDs cost commensurately more. I can buy decent quality 60 W equivalent LED bulbs for $10-20 apiece, or spend $2.50 for an energy efficient incandescent. And as for 100 W bulbs--not that long ago, you couldn't buy 100 W equivalent LED bulbs at any price. That's changed, but they're still expensive: $50 or more usually, though I have found a few available for $30 apiece. 100 W energy efficient incandescents? About $2.50 each for those too. Sure, the LEDs also have a 20 year lifespan, compared to the one year of the incandescents, but then again, LED prices are coming down pretty quickly, so buying incandescents this year and buying LEDs a year from now would probably save money in hardware costs. Not, though, when combined with electricity costs. So my compromise is to replace the bulbs we use the most--kitchen, living room, bedroom, with LEDs, and leave the rest for a little while.

LEDs in the living room's candelabra

One of the problems I've run into doing that is that a lot of pre-existing light fixtures in our apartment use the candelabra bulbs, and finding LEDs for those is more difficult--escpecially since it takes a lot more of them to fill the light fixture (6, in the case of the two we have in the living room and dining room), and they're about the same price as 60 W bulbs. Fortunately, I have found a fairly cheap option from Feit--a three bulb pack for $21. These actually work pretty well. They have a slightly higher color temperature at 3000 K (which means they're slightly more white than the yellowish incandescents), but they are close enough for us. We get 300 lumen for 4.8 Watts out of them. I have noticed that they turn on a bit slower--most of them seem to take half-a-second to come to life after flicking on the switch, which is usually something you see in CFLs, not LEDs. And one of the sockets won't work for any of the Feit LEDs for some reason--I had to use a LED from another company (one of the ones costing $10-20). But it works. And it seems to be just as bright as the fixture in the dining room, where I'm still using all (non high efficiency) incandescents.

The incandescents in the dining room.

In the kitchen, we have a five light fixture which takes normal sized 60 W bulbs. Two of them have CFLs which my wife put in a while ago, and since they seem to be working well, I haven't bothered replacing them. The rest I've replaced with LEDs, all from the Cree 60 W replacements. These have the right size, even if they're a bit oddly shaped.

The one on the left is the old style Cree 60 W, while the one on the right is the Cree TW 60 W.

I've tried both the older Cree bulb, and the Cree TW, which is supposed to have better color. I think the color of the TW bulb is a bit better, but as it's also more expensive ($18.50 vs. $12.50), and it also consumes more power (13.5 W vs 9.5 W). I think that the older bulb is a better purchase. It can be found at Home Depot, in packs of 6 (or less, for a slightly higher price), though it looks like that may not last for much longer.

I have yet to buy any 100 W bulbs. I bought a 75 W bulb from Sylvania at Amazon, but at $38 it was pretty expensive. Still, it works pretty well, and it appears to be brighter than the 100 W equivalent CFL which it replaced. That may simply be because the light is less omnidirectional, and while it produces only 1100 lumen, more of it is in the direction I want, while the 1600 lumen CFL sends more light up and to the sides.  Or it could just be that I didn't wait long enough for the CFL to reach full brightness--but if it takes more than a couple of seconds, that's an advantage for the LEDs.

100 W equivalent LEDs are mostly above $50, but at $30 apiece, this set of two seems more reasonable. I'm a little bit reluctant to buy them before I see some more reviews. They seem different from the usual orange Philips LEDs, and I'd like to know why. I've also spent a good bit on LEDs recently, and these, while cheaper, are still expensive. They're also larger bulbs, matching the large size A21 bulb, rather than the usual A19. There are places where they can fit, but they're too big for a lot of our fixtures.

I think I'll wait a month or so before buying any more LEDs, and then I'll probably buy more of the Feit candelabra bulbs, the Cree 60 W bulb, and the Philips 100 W bulbs.

Update (10/13/2013): I was clearing out my pictures on Google+, and accidentally deleted the pictures I had here.  I've replaced most of them, but I've changed the text so it's not as dependent.

New review

I've just posted my latest review at Black Gate.  This month I review Thomas Alexander's Mistress of the Dancing Bones.

Review of World's End

A week ago, Kristin and I went to the movies and saw World's End. It was an entertaining movie.  Kristin sold it to me as "A bunch of friends go on a pub crawl, and killer robots show up."  I'd warn about spoilers here, but I doubt many folks will go to this movie expecting a comedy about a pub crawl.  But just in case, there will be more spoilers below.

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Of course, even with Kristin's spoiler, it wasn't what I expected.  The movie's primarily about a guy named Gary King.  On the day he graduated high school, he and his friends went on a pub crawl through all 12 pubs in the town where they grew up.  They only made it through nine, and Gary's been stuck ever since.  All his friends grew up, got jobs, had families, but while he left the town, Gary never really grew up.  He doesn't have any job that we've seen, no family, and really nothing in his life.  Then he hits on the idea of finishing the crawl, and making it through all 12 pubs this time, as if that will let him restart his life, this time correctly.

So he dragoons his friends into joining his quest, mostly by lying, and sets out to visit his hometown.  But things have changed.  People aren't the way they used to be, and a sort of sameness has infected the pubs. If you're thinking, "oh, everyone must have been replaced by robots," then you've read as much sci fi as I have. But where the description fails is the killer part.  The robots--don't call them that, as they're offended by the term--don't see themselves as invaders.  Rather, they're here to bring humanity into the galactic civilization by changing them for the better.  Yes, this sometimes means replacing people by transferring their minds, with small improvements, into robot artificial bodies, but by using these replacements to improve society as a whole, the vast majority of people should simply adapt to the new society.  This premise, that the robots would prefer not to replace them, justifies the fact that Gary King and his friends continue their pub crawl, pretending to fit in, rather than just making a run for it.  That, and Gary's crazy.  Of course, it doesn't take long for that to break down, and soon the friends are running for their lives (though Gary keeps insisting, against everyone's better judgement, that they run in the direction of the next pub in the crawl).  For a plan to replace only a small fraction of the population, it sure seems like everyone's a robot.

One of the things I found most remarkable was how proficient at fighting everyone was.  Gary King and his friends plowed through dozens of robots with some impressive moves, especially considering that they were all roaring drunk at the time. Or maybe that was why their moves were so impressive.

Ultimately, Kristin, at least, felt that the ending didn't work.  It felt inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the story.  Personally, I didn't think that.  I thought that if you were going to call the movie World's End, you had to go apocalyptic by the finale.

Review is up

My latest review for Black Gate is online.  This time I review Milton Davis's Woman of the Woods.