Google knows it's my birthday

I'm not sure whether to be disturbed or impressed that this is my Google doodle today:

Google's Birthday Doodle

Relativity

A while ago, a friend of mine proposed a video game based on the concept of special relativity. I believe the name was Relativity. The idea was that you'd have a starship capable of going near the speed of light, enough so to experience time dilation: while to outside observers it would take years or centuries to travel interstellar distances, to the people aboard it would be a much shorter amount of time. Then you could explore the galaxy, seeking out new worlds and civilizations, and interact with them. And by doing so, you would be seeding them with technology and concepts to help them along in their development. Then you could come back hundreds of years later and see what had happened. It was sort of a Starflight meets Civilization concept, though his emphasis seemed to be on the Civilization concept.

Civilization, if you're not familiar with it, is a video game where you guide a fledgling civilization from the Stone Age to the Space Age as its immortal god-emperor (though the last part is only implied). You set up colonies, develop technology, build armies, conquer and defend and make alliances, contesting with other civilizations in a race to either conquer the planet or be the first one to make it into space. There are also similar games based on civilizations in space, such as Master of Orion.  But the most important part for Relativity is the technological development. Each Civilization game has a tech tree. Each technology you develop requires resources and prerequisites, so the more you develop, the more technologies become available to you. And sometimes you could pursue one branch of technology only to discover that you weren't far enough along in the other branch to make any more progress (for example, if you couldn't develop a neural network in the computer science branch if you didn't make sufficient progress in the biology branch).  Adding the concept of seeding would let civilizations advance more quickly, but there could also be risks: you don't want to give nuclear weapons to a stone age tribe and watch it destroy itself.

What I'd really like to see is a larger emphasis on the Starflight character of the game. Starflight puts you in control of a starship, with the goal of exploring the galaxy, gathering resources, upgrading your ship, meeting new civilizations and trading or engaging in combat with them, and ultimately solving the mystery of what happened to the Old Earth Empire and preventing the same thing from happening again. There really hasn't been another game like it in a long time, and I'd love to see something that mimicked it. Relativity seems like a great platform for it, given that the emphasis is on a single starship exploring the galaxy. As civilizations develop better technologies, why not incorporate those technologies into the starship, increasing its speed and range, giving it better shields and firepower.

But what I felt the concept lacked--or perhaps my friend never got around to telling me about it--was a driving narrative, a motivation and objective behind the exploration.  That's something I'd like to propose here:

Humanity has finally made contact with alien life in a nearby star system. Eager to meet their new neighbors, an international team builds an interstellar starship capable of travelling near the speed of light in order to reach the star system.  Just as the ship departs, something terrible happens: the Earth is destroyed.  Soon it is obvious that there is something terrible behind the Earth's destruction, and it's advancing, destroying planet after planet.

This sets up the central mystery of the game.  What destroyed the Earth? How can it be stopped?  Soon it is clear that invaders from the beyond the galaxy are destroying the inhabited worlds in our galaxy, to pave the way for them to control its resources.  It is a slow process, though, one that will take millenia, and in the meantime, you will have to help the galaxy develop the technology to fight off the invasion. Ultimately, you may even discover the ability to travel back in time and prevent the destruction of the Earth itself.

Now I really want to play this game. Heck, if I had the know-how and the resources, I'd love to develop this game.

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.

Android Wear

Pretty, isn't it?

A while back, I talked a bit about what I wanted in a smartwatch. I was looking at a number of them, including the Pebble, the Sony Smartwatch 2, and the Samsung Gear. But after the dust had settled and I'd read all the reviews, none of them really worked for me.

Well, it's a new year, and smartwatches have another chance to win me over.  There's a new iteration from Samsung, with not one but three successors to the Samsung Gear.  There's the Pebble Steel. And I'm certain Sony will have a new iteration of its smartwatch. But what I'm really excited about are the Android Wear devices.  The picture above is the Moto 360, which is beautiful.  I currently have, and really like, the Moto X, and I'd be interested in seeing whether they can manage the same sort of innovation in a smartwatch.  We do know that it accepts voice commands, via Moto X, and that it uses Google Now type cards to push relevant information.  But these are more features of Android Wear rather than of the Moto X in particular.



The video above does a fairly good job of advertising Android Wear, but I should add a caveat. These are all things that Android Wear could do, with the right apps. It's not at all clear that Android Wear will do all those things, or that anyone's made any of those apps.

Aside from the Moto 360, LG has also announced an Android Wear watch, which they're calling the G Watch. HTC and Samsung are also expected to announce Android Wear watches.

So will this tempt me into getting a smartwatch this year? There are a few criteria that have to be met before I'm willing to buy a smartwatch:

• Price. I'd prefer not to spend more than $200, and I definitely don't see myself spending more than $300 on a watch.
• Size. It needs to be comfortable to wear.  Already, the Moto 360 looks rather large. Maybe I can accept that size with a round form factor, but I'd really like to see something smaller.
• Battery life. This is a big one. The Samsung Gear claims 24 hours of battery life, and that's not good enough, I'm afraid. 24 hours usually means that with heavy use, there's a good chance that the battery will run out before I go to bed, and while I can tolerate that in a phone, that's unacceptable in a watch. I'm looking for at least 48 hours claimed battery life, which I'll accept as lasting all the way through a day. And, of course, longer is better.
• Interface. Does Android Wear actually work like it's supposed to? I'll have to wait for some reviews to know how well it actually does.

Fortunately, there are a number of Android Wear smartwatches on the horizon, so there's a good chance that if the one that looks good now disappoints, one of the others will satisfy me.

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.

Short stories

I've come to the conclusion that I don't really like short stories all that much.  Yes, that surprised me too, considering that I've written, and published, a bunch of them, in such places as Daily Science Fiction, Nature Futures, and Black Gate. But the thing I realized is that I don't read short stories for pleasure.  I generally only buy anthologies or fiction magazines if I'm either trying to sell them a story or I want to support them, and then I'll read a few stories, but rarely do I get all the way through.  I don't follow short story authors, or buy their collected stories.  I want to like short stories more, but I always find myself drifting toward longer works, novels or even novel series.  I guess that most short stories just aren't long enough for me to really get attached to the characters, and I prefer stories where I can get to know the characters, where there's room for them to breathe and develop, and I don't feel like I really get that from short stories, with the rare exception of a series of stories about the same set of characters (which I find I do enjoy).

So what does that mean?  Despite my modest success selling short stories, I'm probably never going to be a really successful short story author if I don't actually like short stories. And, in fact, the stories I've had the most success selling are either short, funny stories--more like blog posts or Cracked.com articles than short stories, in fact--or really long stories, novelettes or novellas or even serial short novels. And I think perhaps I should focus on my strengths.  I'm not going to say that I'll never write and try to sell a short story again--when story ideas come, I need to write the form that fits them.  But most of my ideas, and most of what I want to write, are novels.  It's the fiction I love to read, and it's the fiction I should be writing.

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.

Boots

And I'm back to fashion blogging. Actually, it's been a month, so it may be a little surprising that I'm back to blogging at all.

In my ongoing efforts to acquire decent rain gear, I've moved on from coats and hats to boots.  I have waterproof hiking boots, but since they're hiking boots, they don't cover more than my ankles.  That's fine, most of the time, but in Boston, occasionally I have to trek through snow more than a few inches thick.  In addition, the hiking boots aren't that warm (they're designed for summer hiking), and they aren't a lot of protection to my lower pant legs.  So I decided that some tall, waterproof boots would be a great help in my goal of staying warm and dry in cold and wet weather.  After some shopping around, I decided on these.

They're the Muckboots Artic Sport Mid Outdoor Boot.  Mid, as opposed to High, means that they're 12 inches high instead of 15.  Arctic is the model designed for cold weather, specifically -40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  That sounds like it will work for Boston cold.

One annoyance is that they don't come in half sizes.  Instead, they're supposed to stretch to cover an extra half size.  So men are supposed to round up their size to the next whole number (8.5 to 9, for instance), which suggests that the 9 is actually designed as 8.5, and stretch to 9.

They arrived today, and they're even bigger and clunkier than they look.  Which is fine, since that's what I was after.  They feel a little large, but not too bad.  We'll see what I think once I've had a week to break them in.