Annoying browser tricks

From Instapundit:

THE BROWSER UPGRADE I’D LIKE TO SEE: One where the tab that’s the source of the autoplay audio flashes or something so I know which one to shut down.

To  which I'd like to add a hearty Amen.  When I open a whole list of bookmarks in tabs, and one of them starts playing an annoying advertisement, I have no alternative but to hit the mute button as fast as humanly possible.  I'd like to avoid that.  Some alternatives:

1. Mute all tabs except the one in the foreground. While simple and direct, there are situations where you might want to listen to sound in a background tab.  While listening to music from a browser-enabled cloud player.
2. Mute a tab until a user interacts with it. This would allow a tab to start playing music, but only after you click on it.  Of course, this would be annoying with YouTube's autoplay videos, but I find those annoying anyway.

What is love?

On a writers' forum that I participate in, the question was asked about how to motivate a character to stick with his first love once he becomes famous and successful, and suddenly finds himself surrounded by willing women.  I found this something of an odd question.  True, in real life, many men abandon their first wives once success gives them more opportunities, but I never would have thought it difficult to figure out a motivation to stay.

I've been married for two years, which is not much in the scheme of things, but I can say with some certainty that the reasons I love my wife don't go away the moment another opportunity comes along. So often what we love about someone is in the small things, the quiet moments when nothing is demanded and we can just be together, and it doesn't matter how rich one is or how successful someone's become. How much do they trust one another? How willing are they to share their secret fears and dreams and doubts without worrying about being judged? What inside jokes do they share? How well do they know each other's failures and weaknesses, and accept one another anyway? What do they talk about when they lie in bed together at night, just talking? How do they argue and make-up, and either compromise or agree to disagree? How do they show support for each other, when no one else in the world does? How do they sacrifice for each other, giving up what they want for what the other needs? How do they make each other feel needed and essential? What beliefs do they share, about what's important and what's not and what's right and what's wrong? These are the things that love is made of.

And though it happens a thousand times a day, you would have to be crazy to give up all that to be with someone beautiful but selfish, duplicitous, and shallow.

Which is pretty much what I said in the thread (though it was more directed to the specific question).

Boskone

Kristin and I went to Boskone this weekend, one of the science fiction conventions local to Boston.  It's not as literary as Readercon, or as costume and media centered as Arisia.  However, it is a lot of fun, as it has a good mix of panels, demos (including a lot of sword play), and an art show.  I only ended up going to two panels.  One for Military in Fantasy, and another for Advanced Writing Advice.  The first one wasn't as useful as I had hoped.  I wanted to hear about common military mistakes in fantasy, but they were pretty focused on avoiding deus ex machina, and didn't cover as much other ground as I had hoped.  The Advanced Writing Advice did offer some useful advice, but I don't think there was anything I hadn't heard before.

We went out to dinner with the Brotherhood Without Banners, a fan group for George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice, on Saturday night, and by the time we got back the parties were winding down, so we hung out with the BWB and George Martin himself instead.  I also ran into John Murphy at Boskone, who I know through the Codex Writers' Group, though we didn't have much chance to talk.

Kristin will probably have a much more detailed con report,  but it may be a little while before she finishes it.

Ninth blogiversary

Today marks the ninth anniversary  this blog. I  know, it's Valentine's day.  Why did  I start a blog on Valentine's day?  Well, at the time I had nothing better to do.  Being a married man now, that's no longer the case.  Still, nine years is a long time. Hopefully it'll be around for another nine years.

Review of Throne of Bones by Vox Day

Throne of Bones is the first book in Vox Day's Arts of Dark and Light series. It is not the first story in this world, however, and Vox Day has previously written Summa Elvetica (under the name Theodore Beale) and A Magic Broken (which I've previously reviewed at Black Gate). The latest book, more than the first two, centers around Amorr,  a city where the Roman Republic meets the Catholic Church in a world of elves, dwarves, and magic.

I really enjoyed this book, but it needed better copy editing.  There were misspellings and misnumberings (particularly egregious when you identify legions by their numbers), homonyms mixed up, timeline errors, and I lost count of the number of times that the quotation marks were out of place.  None of these things are uncommon mistakes for writers--I make a lot of them myself--but that's why we have copy editors to catch them.  Some are bound to slip by, and I often see them in published books, but rarely this many.  Then there are the editorial decisions that I disagreed with but couldn't tell whether they were intentional.  Chapters from different points of view were out of chronological order, so a character who was dead in one chapter was alive again in the next one, only to die immediately.  Writers and editors sometimes do that sort of thing intentionally, and sometimes it's very effective, but other times it's just annoying (though still not as annoying as it was in Robert Jordan's Towers of Midnight, where Tam al'Thor was in two places at once).  Nor do I really enjoy the George R.R. Martin technique of apparently killing off a character, then having him reappear later without explanation, leaving us to guess at what happened, so I'm annoyed that I still don't know how Lodi and Thorvald escaped the dragon.

Now that I've got the gripes out of the way, what did I like about this book?  A lot.  I loved the use of Roman culture, although the prolific use of Latin to refer to everyday things may pose a challenge to anyone less familiar with Roman daily life than I am.  I like the fact that religion played a prominent role which was mostly positive but also corruptible.  I personally like dwarves, so it was good to see Lodi (an old friend from Summa Elvetica and A Magic Broken) as an important point of view character.  I thought all the characters were great, from noble Corvus to honest Marcus to self-absorbed Severa (who grows a lot in the course of the story). I liked the fact that the Amorran conflict is between two sides which have legitimate interests, both of which will use underhanded tactics to achieve them.  It was refreshing to see the good guys (to the extent that there were good guys) get fed up with the enemy mastermind's betrayals and killings and turn to the simple expedient of assassination.  Where honorable doesn't necessarily mean stupid.

So, for the most part, I forgive the novel for its mistakes.  However, I do hope that the next book has better editing.  And I wouldn't mind a corrected edition to the first book, either.

Local 623

My most recent story, "Local 623," is out at Nature Futures. Now all members of the Fraternal Order of Mad Science Assistants, Test Subjects, and Abominations can know their rights.

More of my writings can be found on the Writings page.

New Review at Black Gate

I've posted another review of a self-published book at Black Gate, this time of Noggle Stones: The Goblin's Apprentice by Wil Radcliffe.  I really liked this book, and I hope that my review will introduce more readers to it.  It's not without it's flaws, but then no book is.

New story out

Daily Science Fiction published my flash story, "Draconic Motivation," a week ago in their e-mail list.  It came out on their website earlier today.  It's a silly little story, but I liked it, and apparently I wasn't the only one.  Read it here.

New stuff, a lot of work

I managed to acquire quite a bit of new stuff in the past couple of weeks.  So much so, that it's been keeping me from getting work done.

One of those items is a Kindle Fire HD.  I knew I wanted one as soon as it had been announced, as it fixed many of the annoying things about the original.  I received a couple of Amazon Gift Cards for Christmas, and this seemed the perfect use for them. My first impression of the new Fire was that it was sleeker than the old one.  I got the 32 GB 7" version, since I liked the 7" form factor of the original Kindle Fire.  But in comparison to the new one, the old Fire is clunky and boxy.  I'll do a more thorough review later, once I peel myself away from Final Fantasy III for the Kindle long enough to experiment with some of its other capabilities.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with my old Kindle Fire.

The other thing that arrived this week is a desk.  I ordered the Versa Center from VersaTables and spent some time this week putting it together.  I got this desk because I was buying a desk treadmill from Lifespan, and needed a standing desk to use with it.  The Versa Center isn't really a standing desk, but each and every shelf is adjustable to any height, so I was able to make it into a standing desk.

Treadmill and Versa  Center

From the treadmill, I have a good view of the television in my living room, which is hooked up to one of my computers (the one I mostly use for gaming).

The view of the television, and my wireless keyboard.

I really liked the Versa Center's flexibility, but I'm reluctant to recommend it to others.  There are no fixed mount points--all the shelves clamp onto the poles on either side of the desk, and it took two people, a measuring tape, and a level to get the two sides of each shelf lined up. Nor was there any indication of the angle that the components clamp on, so getting them parallel was an iterative process of  eyeballing it, bolting in the shelves and support bars, and then adjusting so you could get the other side bolted in. And even then, I don't think the tolerances were quite right--I still wasn't able to line it up well enough to get all the screws in.  But I think I'm at the point where it's good enough for now.  I can now walk on the treadmill while writing this post on my laptop (I suppose I could use the computer connected to the television, but that's for games).     I haven't quite decided whether I'm comfortable with the distance, or whether it's worth going through the expense and trouble of installing a keyboard arm.

I like having a treadmill desk, but I still miss by old treadmill.  I got rid of it when I moved into my previous apartment.  The old treadmill was significantly bigger, and wouldn't have worked with a desk anyway, as its lowest speed was 2.5 mph, which is too fast to comfortably write.  Right now I'm walking at 1.2 mph, which works for me, and I may pick up the pace a bit more, but I doubt I can comfortably type above 2 mph, and certainly not while running.  But at least I could run on my old treadmill.  The new one only goes up to 4 mph, which is just a light jog.

My old treadmill.

Review of A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I was going to write a long review of the final book of the Wheel of Time.  But, really, I'm not sure that much more needs to be said.  The Wheel of Time has been an important mainstay of epic fantasy for over 20 years.  Begun by Robert Jordan with the publication of The Eye of the World, after his death it was completed by Brandon Sanderson with the last three novels: The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light.  At least portions of the final novel were written by Robert Jordan before his death, though I won't hazard a guess as to which portions.  The Wheel of Time has had ups and downs.  I personally didn't get into it until the third book, The Dragon Reborn, and there were certainly books along the way that were significantly below par.  Some of the novels around books seven to nine  seemed to contain no significant plot developments, and the whole book seemed to be spent catching up with each character, reminding you of what they were up to, and then switching to the next.  But then things began to pick up just before Robert Jordan died, and Brandon Sanderson was able to bring it to a conclusion.

The whole final book centers around Tarmon Gaidon, the Last Battle.  It's actually about a series of battles, on numerous fronts.  And if you find battle scenes boring, then you're going to have difficulty with this one.  There's one 200 page chapter about a single battle.  It is the main one, and deserves a lot of attention, but still, that's a long time to spend on a single battle. Rand al'Thor, the main character, has what is actually a pretty minimal part on this front.  He's too focused on his own struggle with the Dark One, which is a lot more personal and focused--practically a duel, though one fought with ideas and the threads of reality, not swords or magic.  But many of the major characters, and most of the minor ones, are involved in the battle, including Lan, Elayne, Egwene, Suiane, Gareth, Tuon, Gawyn, Galad, Faile, Olver, and especially Mat, in the role we always knew he would have.  Now, I've said before that Brandon Sanderson doesn't really seem to get Mat, and that shows up in the early parts of the novel, but in the Last Battle he seems to be in fine form, showing the sort of mad brilliance we expect from him when it comes to war.

I won't say the battle dragged, because it kept me up all night trying to finish it, but there were moments where I wished Brandon would pick up the pace.  On the bright side, everybody had a role and a chance to shine in this book.  They needed to.  On the other hand, not everyone's role was what I might have wished.  Perrin managed to miss the big battle in the south, and only showed up for the showdown in the North, a smaller but equally important battle.

One of the requirements of the final book in a series is to fulfill all the promises given in the previous ones.  As there were a lot of prophecies, that was a lot to fulfill, and not all of them were met in a very satisfying way.  Suiane's and Gareth Bryne's, for example.  Or Alivia's.  In some places it felt like shortcuts were taken to get the prophecy resolved, but I suppose that was inevitable, given the scope of this vast series, and exactly how many promises there were to fulfill.

But ultimately, I was satisfied with the ending.  Not everyone survived, and in some cases I was surprised by who did and who didn't, but that was satisfying in its own way.  And the last chapter contained a couple of final surprises that I think were worth waiting for.

Redundancy Checker update

A week ago, I discussed my travails in getting my Java program working.

After some hunting, I've found an improved version of the RTFEditorKit at this site--an AdvancedRTFEditorKit. It's still not perfect, and it still loses smart quotes, but it does allow you to subclass its classes, which is something the old RTFEditorKit did not allow. You could subclass the kit itself, but not any of the classes it used to do the real work, which is what I needed. By subclassing the new RTFReader, I may be able to do some preprocessing and post processing in order to deal with the idiosyncrasies that are showing up. Unfortunately, some experimenting showed that my original idea (replacing \'93 with \ldblquote) won't work, though I suppose I could replace it with straight quotes.

It's all very annoying.  The whole idea of object oriented programming is that I wouldn't have to write an RTF reader from scratch.  I'm beginning to wonder just how much time I'm willing to dedicate to this.

Book Review at Black Gate

My first book review of a self-published book is up at Black Gate.  First up, Tiger Lily by K. Bird Lincoln.

In other news, I just finished A Memory of Light, the final book of the Wheel of Time series, begun by Robert Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson.  I expect that I'll be writing a review, after I get some sleep.

Redundancy Checker

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been spending some time learning Java.  In addition to the exercises suggested by the book I'm using, I've also been working on my own project, developing it as my book (Head-First Java) covered each topic that I needed.  I've finally reached the sections on the GUI and saving objects, which means that I have now completed a working alpha version of the code.

Here's what it looks like:

Screenshot from Redundancy Checker

Redundancy Checker loads an RTF file, and scans it.  Every time it finds a word or phrase used repeatedly in close proximity, it marks it as a redundancy and highlights it in the text.  That produces the output above.

You can also change the settings, controlling for how close the words or phrases need to be, and what words should be skipped for being too common:

The Options window

Finally, you can edit the text and save it.  So the program works, and does all the things I set out to do, but it doesn't necessarily do them well.  The biggest issue is that the RTFEditorKit in Java is buggy.  It doesn't read smartquotes properly, and it can lose other basic formatting too.  So loading a file, editing it to fix the redundancies, and saving it  isn't really an option.  I'm not sure how, or even if, I can fix it.  I suppose I could make my own RTF parser, but that would be quite a pain, and I don't really think it would be worth the time.

Update: One thing I've realized is that the source code for the RTFEditorKit is available. Rather than replacing it, I could edit the original. I'd have to check to see how the code was licensed. I should probably create a class that extends the kit, and then only modify the methods I need to.

New Year's Resolutions

These are a bit late this year, but I hadn't really come up with them before now.  I'm actually not much of a fan of New Year's Resolutions.  When I decide to do something, I do it, and don't worry about making silly promises to myself.  I'm usually pretty good at disciplining myself that way.  That said, there are a few things I intend to do this year, of various levels of difficulty.  I'll list them in order of easiest to most difficult.

1. Finish my RedundancyChecker program.  Off and on I've been teaching myself Java.  One might think I'd already know such an important and popular language, and if I were a real programmer, rather than an Electrical Engineer who graduated just before Java became popular, that would probably be the case.  But no, I'm just learning Java now.  Of course, I do know C++, which Java was based on, so it's not really that difficult.  In the course of learning it, I've been writing a simple program called RedundancyChecker.  It's purpose is to improve my writing.  I've discovered that I have a tendency to repeat myself in my writing, using the same words and phrases repeatedly.  I usually manage to catch myself in the revision process, but I'm writing this program to give myself some computer assistance.  It searches through an RTF document, finds examples of repeated words and phrases, and highlights them.  Just today, I've got it working in loading and scanning a file, and highlighting the redundancies.  However, it doesn't allow me to edit the RTF and save it.  That's mostly because Java's RTFEditorKit is buggy, and it manages to lose smart quotes in the process of reading the file, so I'd be very reluctant to replace anything I've painstakingly written and formatted with the output from this Java program.  I suspect that I'll be spending more than a little time trying to find a workaround.  Other than that, it's mostly polishing, and adding features such as an editable common word list and adjustable phrase length and proximity parameters.  So this is almost done.
2. Exercise more. When I started this job about a year and a half ago, I had to decide between writing and exercising, because I didn't think I had time for both.  I chose writing.  Now it's time to see if I can put some exercise back in my schedule, preferably by finding a form of exercise I can do while writing.  A treadmill or bicycle desk would be ideal.
3. Write more consistently. I go through phases with this.  I'd like to spend at least an hour every weeknight writing.  Unfortunately, my weeks are often interrupted by things like travel, or visiting with friends, or a late night at work, or our weekly Church small group.  I can't avoid all of them (and probably shouldn't), but my plan to make up for it on the weekends keeps running into difficulties, especially when I'm supposed to make up three nights worth of writing.  But the biggest problem is not the unavoidable interruptions, but the sheer laziness that causes me to skip a night, or slack off and spend only half an hour on writing, or blog instead.  That I can help, and if I can consistently write for an hour three weeknights each week, then making up the two nights I unavoidably missed on Saturday is a lot more reasonable.

Year in Review -- Sort of

I've been letting this blog sit idle over the holidays, while I've been enjoying time with my wife and friends, and a few days off of work.  I'm almost reluctant to break that, but I have a tradition of doing a year in review, and I'm reluctant to break that as well.  So, instead of not doing it entirely, I'm just going to do a lazy and sloppy job of it, and that way I can have it both ways.

The most relevant news for this blog is that I've begun blogging regularly again.  At least twice a week, which is not exactly phenomenal, and I've kind of slacked off during the holidays, but it's better than I've been doing.  In honor of the new blogging, I redesigned the blog.  On the other hand, maybe it was the other way around.

Kristin and I went to a lot of conventions this year: Boskone, Readercon, WorldCon, and World Fantasy.  We also went to visit her brother and his family, her parents and sister, and my family.  All this traveling used up most of my vacation time, so I didn't have enough to travel for the holidays, so it's just been some relaxing  in Boston for us this holiday season.

Also a big story is that my short novel, A Phoenix in Darkness, was finally published at Black Gate.  I'm fond of that story, and I'm glad that John O'Neill wanted it for his magazine, as one of the first stories published in the new online format.  It is an older story, though, and I like to think that I'm a better writer now than when I first wrote it, so there are some places where I wish the prose was more polished and the plotting cleaner and the pace smoother.  But I'm sure that five years from now I'll look at the stories I'm writing now and wish I could revise them, and if I waited for stories to be perfect before they were published, I'd never publish anything.

In other news, I now have a book under contract, meaning that it will be published someday.  Unfortunately, I don't know the release date yet, and the publisher hasn't yet announced it, so I'm keeping details under wraps for now.

I've also begun blogging occasionally at Black Gate.  I'll be doing monthly reviews of self-published books, the first of which should be out soon.

So it's been a busy year for me, and I've had a lot of fun.  I'll be back in a couple of days with my New Year's Resolutions, such as they are.

Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Kristin and I saw the first episode of The Hobbit last night, in "glorious" IMAX 3D. We didn't feel that the 3D added much, and because it was done with polarized glasses, the movie tended to get blurry whenever we tilted our heads, but overall the experience was fun.

My strongest impression of the movie was that it was too long. Peter Jackson, the same director who did The Lord of the Rings, split the book into three parts, and this part, at least, had considerable filler and flashbacks. Thorin Oakenshield's backstory was interesting, and probably worthwhile for the story they're trying to tell, but did we really need ten minutes or so of the older Bilbo working on his book and discussing the Sackville-Bagginses with Frodo? That seems like it was just an excuse to have an Elijah Wood cameo.  And did the fight between the rock giants add anything? Did the running fight with the goblins have to go on for quite so long?  In case you're wondering, I'm thinking the answer to these is no.

Since you can't get eight hours worth of three movies just from the book alone, there was always going to be plenty of additional material. Some of it was rather silly. Radagast, the brown wizard and Gandalf's peer, came across that way. However, while I wish his character had been treated more seriously, I approve of his inclusion and what it means. Radagast was the means of introducing the audience to the necromancer who is responsible for the darkening of Mirkwood. That necromancer barely gets a mention in the books, but the wizards' battle against him is an important chapter in the events preceding The Lord of the Rings. I take his presence and Radagast's introduction to mean that Peter Jackson intends to give this battle a full treatment, of which I approve.

Other silly parts were pretty unavoidable, as they were lifted directly from the book. The dwarves singing as they cleaned Bilbo's dishes while flinging them around, for example. Actually, the treatment in the movie was probably more serious than in the book, and helped to give some insight into dwarves. The dish washing scene showed them working together with preternatural coordination, and in this sense the song becomes a work song, meant to keep rhythm as the dwarves work together in concert. A scene of dwarf smiths working together in the prologue served both to foreshadow and explain this. I would have liked to see more of this coordination, especially in the fight scenes. It came through in the fight with the trolls, but not so much in the fight with the goblins. That was partly because there were hundreds of goblins, and the running battle, where each dwarf has to fight off a dozen or so goblins at a time, made it hard to show this. Plus the scene was so frenetic that I may have missed what there was of it. I hope that Peter Jackson does show more of this dwarven coordination in the future, as it helps to give them more character, and explain how they can be such a powerful influence on Middle Earth without the magical power of the elves.

Speaking of the dwarves, one problem with both the movie and the book is that there are a lot of dwarves, and it's hard to keep them all straight. Peter Jackson did a decent job of making them visually distinctive, but for the most part only a few of them stand out. Thorin himself, the twins Kili and Fili, the old warrior, the deaf dwarf, and the youngest one--see, I'm forgetting their names. But these did and said stuff that made them memorable. The other six, not so much. With three movies, I hope Jackson has a chance to develop them more.

So what did I think, overall? Some parts of it work better than others, and it's not always because of whether it was in the books or not. And I think the movie could have been at least half an hour shorter, if not more. But if you're a Tolkien fan, or you liked The Lord of the Rings movies, it's not a question of if you'll see this movie, but when. And being both of those myself, I think this was worth seeing.

Kristin has a new story up

My wife now has a new story up at Silver Blade Magazine.  The Guild of Swordsmen is sword-and-sorcery without the sorcery, and it's worth a read.

Review of Cold Days by Jim Butcher

The Dresden Files have been around for a while. Cold Days is, I believe, the fourteenth book in the series. Like any long series, there's a lot of backstory and supporting characters, and it's easy to get lost if you haven't read the previous books. But that same history gives the characters and conflicts a lot of richness. We've had over a dozen books to get to know and care for these people, starting with Harry himself.

After having spent the previous book as a ghost, Harry Dresden is back from the dead. This is not a good thing, as it defeats the purpose of his suicide by assassin. Harry's sold his soul to the Winter Queen of Faerie, Mab, to become the Winter Knight. That grants him a great deal of power, but it comes at a price. For one, it means that he has to become Mab's assassin, killing anyone she wants dead. Worse, the Winter Knight Mantle is changing him. Winter is sometimes called the wicked side of Faerie in the books, but that's not entirely accurate. Winter isn't evil, but it is primal, reflecting the part of nature that's about survival of the fittest and procreation of the species and the ultimate end of all nature: death. The changes the Mantle causes, and Harry's fear of them, are the reason for the aforementioned suicide by assassin. Too bad Mab and Demonreach, the genius loci of Harry's island, won't let him escape that easy.

The story starts with Harry going through rehab in Mab's palace. Weight training, motor control, assassination attempts--that sort of thing. Once he graduates from that, he's off on his first assignment, to kill an immortal. Along the way, he discovers that someone's attacking his island, intent on freeing what's imprisoned there, with possibly disastrous consequences for the Midwest. Fortunately, both plots come together in a spectacular finish.

The greatest strength of this book is its place in the series. We get to see old friends, and learn how things have changed since Harry's been away. This is also the greatest weakness of the novel. Old problems get brief mentions and remain unresolved (the Swords of the Cross, for example), new problems get created but remain unresolved (Molly's new role, Mac). And when old mysteries do finally get answered, it's often unsatisfying--I didn't find Demonreach's true purpose as interesting as its promise. Ditto for the Gatekeeper's role in things. On the other hand, sometimes the payoff is surprisingly good, such as the purpose of Winter. (The fact that it was one and the same as the Gatekeeper's role is what diminished the latter's reveal.)

However, I think that the biggest disappointment with this book is that it didn't feel like Harry did a whole lot. Sure, Dresden always spends much of the book floundering around, trying to figure out what's going on. But he usually manages to get his act together and beat the big bad at the end. This time it felt like he kept on floundering until someone else had to do the job for him. Oh sure, he was still there, hitting stuff, but at each step he'd been manipulated to where he was supposed to be, and at the end, he doesn't even throw the deciding punch himself.

Ultimately, this didn't feel like a book so much as an episode. That's not entirely a bad thing, and a series this long isn't ruined. by a book or two where the hero never really gets his act together. Failure is part of the drama. But I hope that Butcher doesn't make a habit of it.

First books to review

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you probably know that I'm reviewing self-published books for Black Gate. To that end, I've set up a submission system via which authors can ask me to review their books. This weekend, I selected the first two books to review, and asked their authors to send me review copies.

This does not mean that I've rejected all the other submissions. It's not even a sure thing that I'll review the books I've requested, though I most likely will. I expect that I'll be doing one review a month, and it's quite possible that I'll dip into the submissions I've already received when it's time to find a new book to review. In the meantime, I'm still accepting more books to review in the coming months.

Where's my Android? (or Why can't they make a normal sized phone?)

I've been looking at Android smartphones recently. I still have a year left on my contract for my iPhone 4S, but once that's done, I'd like to get an Android.  However, I'm having trouble finding one that meets my stringent specifications. So, I'm putting you on notice, Android phone manufacturers. If you want my business, you're going to need to make the phone I want, with at least the following specifications:

• A 4"+ AMOLED display
• A top of the line processor
• Plenty of memory, and an SDcard slot
• 4G LTE
• Decent front and back facing cameras
• Preferably, an HDMI port
• Small enough to fit comfortably in my hand

The last point is the trickiest. Android manufacturers have concluded that bigger is better, and all of the top-of-the-line phones have a 4.7" screen, if not bigger. And they're talking 5" screens for next year.

I've had a chance to play with the HTC Trophy and Titan (Windows phones, I know). While the Trophy fits in my hand well enough, the Titan is too big. Now let's compare sizes:

• HTC Trophy (3.8" screen)-  118.5 x 61.5 x 12 mm (4.67 x 2.42 x 0.47 in)
• HTC Titan (4.7" screen) - 131.5 x 70.9 x 9.9 mm (5.17 x 2.79 x 0.39 in) 

And here are all the top-of-the-line Android phones:

• RAZR MAXX HD (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 67.9 x 9.3 mm (5.19 x 2.67 x 0.37 in)
• LG Optimus G (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 68.9 x 8.5 mm (5.19 x 2.71 x 0.33 in
• HTC One X+ (4.7" screen) - 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm (5.29 x 2.75 x 0.35 in
• Samsung Galaxy S III (4.7" screen) - 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm (5.38 x 2.78 x 0.34 in)

Notice a trend? They're all about the same size as the Titan--a little bit taller, and, at best, an eight of an inch narrower. The width is what matters the most for comfortably holding the phone upright in one hand.  Apple, meanwhile, offers the iPhone 5:

•  iPhone 5 (4" screen) - 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in)

It's the exact same width as the iPhone 4 and even narrower than the HTC Trophy. In order to get an Android phone I can comfortably hold, I'd have to get a midlist phone, such as the DROID RAZR M:

•  RAZR M (4.3" screen) - 122.5 x 60.9 x 8.3 mm (4.82 x 2.40 x 0.33 in)

To be honest, it looks like a pretty nice phone, though I hear the camera leaves something to be desired, and I'd really like an HDMI port. But it's the best I can find right now.

The problem is, I want a top-of-the-line Android phone. I'm willing to pay a premium for one. But if Android manufacturers can't figure out how to make a top flight phone that I can comfortably hold, my next phone may be an iPhone 5S, or whatever Apple calls next year's model.