Nanowrimo Title Revealed

With the 3 Day Novel Writing Contest now weeks behind me, I've been using the last couple of weeks to diligently prepare for Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month.

Status so far: I'm working on my first "outline draft" and I've finished part one of three of the story so far. So, so far so good. My goal is to finish my "outline draft" and then clean it up a bit before November 1 comes along.

After several ideas, I have also finally decided on a name for the novel: The Departure Protocol. As an inspirational item, I have also created a little graphical banner (at the top) that I'll be using in my Nanowrimo forum signature as well as on here whenever I blog about the progress of this novel.

One thing I'm still trying to decide is whether to separate the Nanowrimo blogging from this blog itself, since a lot of other stuff on this site really relates more to technology. Feedback on that is welcome.

Djl - Steam for Linux?

Digital distribution of software and games in particular has grown quite a bit in the last couple of years. I've checked out some of these services myself, such as Steam by Valve and Direct2Drive.

Being a Ubuntu user for much of the time these days, PC gaming hasn't been much of a focus for me lately. However, I'm always on the lookout for interesting thing to take my mind of the more serious stuff. Today I stumbled upon Djl.

Djl? What kind of name is that?

Naturally, my curiosity got the best of my so I decided to check it out.

In a nutshell, Djl is essentially Steam for Linux, except that Valve has absolutely nothing to do with it.

If you're not familiar with Steam, let me explain how Djl works.

Djl provides you, the user, with a client with direct access to a repository of games. To play these games, you select the game and click "Install" and after downloading the game, it's installed through Djl and started through Djl.

Sounds simple, right? The question is, is it as simple as it sounds?

The answer is yes and no.

The Djl interface is easy to use and works as advertised I guess you can say. However, when it comes to playing the games, it's a bit more hit and miss. All games I've tried to download seemed to download without problems. However, only half of the ones I tried actually worked.

The ones that downloaded, installed and ran as intended were a great example of what the potential of this product is. Unfortunately, the majority of the games I tried to install failed to run for a variety of reasons. In some cases due to incompatibilities with other software, in some cases without any real reason.

So, although Djl has a lot of potential, at this point there are just too many things that are not working. I do have to say that I have found a number of very interesting games I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't tried Djl. Since it's also updated quite frequently, I expect I'll continue to find new entertainment gems in the future.

Review - The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Robert Langdon, famous from the adventures of "The DaVinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" one night finds himself on the way to Washington D.C., summoned by his close friend and mentor for a favor. He arrives in D.C. only to find that his friend had actually been kidnapped and that he must solve a mystery to grant the release of his friend.

That's how "The Lost Symbol", the latest novel by Dan Brown, begins. Once again, Robert Langdon is faced with a mystery that must be solved and if he doesn't solve it, his friend and mentor will die. He must use his knowledge in symbols to follow the clues and find the answer that the kidnapper is looking for and he only has a few hours to do it.

In short, it's a plot set up to be fast paced, intense and full of action. It involves plenty of references to the Freemasons, their rituals and other related mysteries. "Neotic science" plays a prominent role, closely tied to the mystery Robert must solve and for the first part of the book turns into a bit of a parallel sub-plot involving the sister of Robert's kidnapped friend. Add a little bit of mysticism, new age and general history about the USA and you have a very interesting mix that makes for an interesting read.

Unfortunately, it's not as riveting as Brown's previous books. His writing style hasn't changed and frankly started to annoy me in TLS. As before, he reveals vital information to his main characters but the reader only finds out later what this information is. The chapters are short and very often ends with mini-cliffhangers. Now and then, he dumps a lot of information, whether it be background information or an involved dialogue about mystical concepts. Very often, it slows down the pace of the story and although useful information, it seems that at times it just feels inserted in the wrong places. In short, his writing style still makes it a page turner but not because of the plot being as interesting as before but because he writes the novel in such a way that to find out what is happening, you have to turn the page.

All the mysteries and puzzles in this book are just not as fascinating as in the previous books either. Although the Masons has a lot rituals and mysterious aspects of it, they just don't seem as intriguing as Opus Dei in the previous books. The New Age aspects and the mysticism that Brown introduces as plot elements just aren't convincing enough. I have no doubt that plenty of people in the religious community will be unhappy with Brown's portrayal of God and religion in this book. Although Christianity isn't really the focus of this book, Brown takes up plenty of space with philosophical arguments about man being god and God as we know him not really being real, that all religions really worship the same deity in one way or another, just with another name. In fact, the last 20% of the book is very much focused on this. While reading, I noticed that by the time I was about 80% through the book, the major aspects of the plot were done, yet the story kept going for many more pages. At first I figured that there would be one final twist to the story but in the end, the ending was very anticlimactic and left me disappointed.

Overall, "The Lost Symbol" was a page-turner that disappointed in the end. If you're a Dan Brown fan, you'll no doubt like it either way but you're more likely to get a more riveting adventure out of a Lee Child or David Baldacci book than this one.

The Kindle Experience

Being an avid reader of everything from fiction to religion to science, I love books. I love reading. With fiction, it's a way to escape reality and dive into another world somewhere else, where things may be completely different. Religion teaches me a lot about "why" while science tells me a lot about the "how." So, reading is definitely a passion of mine, not to mention that doing my own writing is a lot of fun (hello to all fellow 3 day novel contestants out there).

Anyway, I'm not just an avid reader but also a tech junkie. I love technology, what you can do with it and how it can improve your life. Computers, laptops, gaming consoles, Blackberry etc., they are all present somewhere in my life. A couple of months ago, I started looking a bit closer at the ebook readers. For one, with a two week vacation coming up, I was planning on reading a lot of books but I wasn't looking forward to bringing along a suitcase of books just for that purpose. Yet, I wasn't sure and kept looking at the Sony ebook readers, the Kindle 2, the Kindle DX and a few others. Ultimately, at that point, it ended up being something I'd love to have but didn't have to have.

My wife took notice of my interest in the Kindle and, sweet as she is, got me one for my birthday. In fact, it arrived late which magnified the surprise by quite a bit.

First impression? Very impressive.

Of course, those are not very objective assessments of anything so let me try to give you a better idea of what my impressions are after a week of being a Kindle 2 owner.

First of all, let's touch on the features of the Kindle. The most important part of the unit is obviously the screen. On a reader intended to replace books, the importance of a good screen cannot be overstated. With the eink technology that the Kindle and other ebook readers use, Amazon has succeeded in providing a very readable screen from every angle and it's completely different than what I expected it to be. Essentially, the screen is pretty much the size of a paperback novel.

Of course, without books, the Kindle would be pointless. To help out on this front, Amazon has come up with a pretty neat solution. The Kindle has built in wireless data service as opposed to wifi. For me, this was actually one of the main selling points. The Kindle uses EVDO and 1xrtt data service provided by Sprint or their roaming partners and it allows you to literally access the Amazon book store anywhere you are and buy the Kindle version of the books on the go, something you can't always do with wifi. Since I live in Alaska, I had to find out whether any of Sprint's partners actually provide the service up here. A quick call to Amazon's customer service confirmed that there is indeed coverage in Alaska.

Another aspect that helps out on the reading front is the dictionary that comes pre-loaded. Find a word you don't understand? Just look it up, right there, on your Kindle.

As far as the interface goes, a full keyboard is available, which comes in handy for searches, taking notes, bookmarks etc. The Kindle has strategically placed "Next Page" buttons on both the right and left of the unit making it easy to hold it in either hand and easily navigate to the next page of whatever you're reading. The Kindle also has a five-way directional joystick for navigation as well as a couple of additional buttons related to navigation.

On the top of the unit, there's a headphone jack which can be used listening to music, audiobooks etc. The on-off switch is located next to the headphone jack.

There are also a few other features worth pointing out. First, the Text-to-Speech is definitely one of the more exiting ones. For the ebooks that have this feature enabled, it basically allows you to listen to the book instead of reading it. Although you can still notice that the voice is computer generated, it is a whole lot better than the typical reading voices I've seen previously on computers. I imagine, though, that text-to-speech will work best with non-fiction material. I can see some serious problems emerging with the software properly trying to convey dialogue in a realistic manner. So, for "Liberty and Tyranny" it's ok but I doubt "The Lost Symbol" would survive it properly.

The Kindle also has limited browsing capabilities, which allows you to use the wireless connection to do Google searches and to view other basic pages. However, despite the EVDO connection, it is pretty obvious that the browser is not intended for more than the just most basic browsing. Some of the mobile web bookmarks saved by default are a testament to this.

Another of the "experimental" features (text-to-speech and browsing are the other two) is MP3 playback. What this allows for you to do is to not only listen to your favorite music but also listen to your favorite music, all at the same time.

There are a number of other small features as well but let me point out a couple of things I've found the Kindle to be missing:

First of all, the Kindle does not have a background light. Although a light can be purchased for about $20, it is a bit disappointing that this basic feature is not available. However, for me, it wasn't a deal-breaker. I usually read a book with a light on and I expect I'll be doing the same with the Kindle.

The second feature that I miss just a little is a touch-screen. Although not something you absolutely have to have on a device like this in my opinion, it would make some aspects of using the device a bit easier. The five-way joystick takes a it of getting used to but ultimately, it does the job that it was designed for. Being a Blackberry user I would actually like to see a trackball similar to what's used on the Blackberry instead of the five-way joystick.

The third thing I noticed is that the Kindle lacks any memory card slot of any kind. However, considering that the Kindle has around 1.5GB of available internal memory, the missing memory card slot really isn't a big deal. The Kindle isn't intended for watching high resolution photos, after all, and it's not intended to replace your iPod.

Finally, it would be good if the Kindle came with some sort of software package to accommodate transfer of files, music and so on. As it is right now, it comes with a USB cable that once plugged in treats the Kindle as a large USB drive. Any copying, you'll have to do manually using the typical drag and drop or copy and paste functions of whatever operating system you may use.
Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party options that will give you the software you need to do this. On Linux in particular, Calibre is an excellent piece of software (I'll post a separate post about my experience with Calibre in a couple of days).

Ok, so I think we can leave the discussion about the features the Kindle has and doesn't have behind and look a bit closer at how it actually works. Is it a good substitute for reading a real book on paper?

My short answer is yes, it most definitely is. Obviously, being a new owner, the first thing I had to do was to get something to read. The manual, the welcome letter and the built-in dictionary only goes so far in satisfying my desire to read.

I started thinking about what books I've been wanting to get and quickly decide that "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin would be my first purchase. Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" would be my second.

I logged into my Amazon account on my computer and added a credit card for quick, 1-click payments. Focusing once again on my Kindle, I found the titles I wanted and clicked "Buy" and then waited. About 10 seconds later, my first book was downloaded and ready to read.

Very impressive.

"The Lost Symbol" ended up being a pre-order so I had to wait a few days to get it. However, thanks to the Amazon wireless service, the book was delivered to my Kindle the day of the release, before I even woke up.

Very impressive, once again.

Buying books is, in other words, very easy and very quick. The price is also pretty good. Typically, Kindle books are $10 or less, which is very affordable. In addition, search for "-domain" and you'll see a selection of free titles. In fact, one titles currently on the Kindle top sellers list, "Full Moon Rising", just a couple of weeks ago was $6.99. Now it's free.

In addition, there are quite a few sites that offer free books, everything from the King James Bible to classic literature such as Sherlock Holmes and more.

How about the reading experience?

Well, I'd say it compares very much to reading a regular book. Thanks to the e-ink, fonts and the screen, reading a book on the Kindle feels like reading a book on paper with the exception that instead of having to flip the page, you just click "Next Page" and you'll have the next page right there. In fact, holding the Kindle with one hand is very comfortable and whether you use your left or right hand, your thumb is pretty much always in a comfortable position to click that button.

The only negative I've found so far: if you're flying, since the Kindle is an electronic device, it has to follow the rules that apply to electronic devices on aircraft. No use until the crew gives you the ok, usually around 10,000ft. When you're reading a part of the book that is particularly exciting, it's a bit irritating to have to stop reading just because someone else tells you to. So, a bit annoying but not a big deal.

I've also found that battery life is excellent. Once you actually start reading, there is really no point in leaving the wireless connection active (it'll just drain your battery) and with it off, you can read for days without recharging.

So, what's my impression overall?

I'm very happy with my Kindle. It's a fantastic device. I love reading and sometimes don't just because going to the book store to get one takes time. With the Kindle, I buy my books right there and they are delivered instantly. It saves me time and I get to do more of what I really like to do: read interesting books. If you are anything like me in this aspect, I warmly recommend it. Yes, it may be a bit expensive at $299 but for the convenience and for the amount of books available, it's definitely something to consider.

I know I love it.

Prism and Web Apps

For decades, applications and their use have been limited to computers and their specific operating systems. We as users have been used to going about our computing needs using a variety of applications.

For word processing, MS Word has been the main contender.

For spreadsheets, accounting, tables, graphs and all kinds of other calculating needs, we've had MS Excel.

We've played games on our computers.

We've created graphical masterpieces using Photoshop, websites using Dreamweaver and chatted with friends using MSN, ICQ, AOL etc.

Now, these days, much of the normal use has moved out of the desktop realm and into the realm of the world wide web. As a freelancer, I use numerous apps online already to provide me with the tools I need, no matter where I am.

A few examples of these are:

• Freshbooks for invoicing, billing and time tracking
• Outright for accounting services
• dotProject for project management
• Google Apps, such as docs, email, reader for various other needs
• Dropbox for syncing files locally and remotely
  

Bottom line: much of what I used to do on my computer, I now do online.

Recently, I've heard about a project by Mozilla called Prism. In essence, what Prism does is to create separate "apps" from all of those web that you can access from your desktop and view independently of your browser.

Let me explain a bit further, using Freshbooks as an example.

Typically, when I use Freshbooks, I open up my browser, type in the URL, log in and do my work.

With Prism, I don't need my browser anymore. Instead, I click on a link on my desktop, a windows opens up just like any other application and I proceed to log in very much in the same way as I do in the browser. So, what Prism does is show you whatever web app you're using without opening up a browser.

You may ask, what is the benefit of this? Well, for one, you avoid any browser issues you may experience. There's less clutter and it's quicker to get to. For me, that means I can save a bit of time and be a bit more productive. Best of all, it's free.

Is it easy? Yes, it's very easy. Prism can either be downloaded as it's own standalone app or added as a Firefox add-on. I used the Firefox add-on. The add-on adds a "Convert Website to Application..." option in the Tools menu in Firefox. Once you click on this, you will get another window that will allow you to select the name and the graphic icon for your desktop icon. Then you're done. It literally takes no more than 30 seconds to create.

So far, I've "liberated" Freshbooks and Outright and more are to come. Google apps, for example, would fit perfectly into this. Even better, it works for Ubuntu!

How about problems? Well, to be honest, I haven't had a chance to use it long enough to see how stable it is. Time will tell.

Links:

http://labs.mozilla.com/prism/
http://www.freshbooks.com
http://www.outright.com

My 3-Day Novel Writing Experience

One time, a few years ago, I stumbled upon an interesting experience: write a novel in a month. The event, appropriately named National Novel Writing Month, was very interesting and I decided to participate. The problem was that it was almost over by the time I had found it.

I had to wait for year before I could participate and by the time November came around again, I had forgotten about it again and just barely made the beginning. I started with an outline for one day and ended up writing 50,000 words in a month. Subsequently, I added another 30,000 words or so, just to get the story closer to an acceptable end.

The problem with that novel for me was that writing without a clear plot and end in sight, it ended up being a mess. I have since decided that at some point I need to just re-write it and add some new story elements that I always wanted to have in the story as well as be a little bit more organized.

After the NaNoWriMo, I found out about the 3-day novel writing contest. It sounded interesting but it ended up taking a couple of years for me to actually decide to participate.

In early August, I started thinking about what story to use for this particular contest. I had one story in mind I had been working on an outline for since the beginning of the summer but it felt like too much for three days. Maybe more suitable for NaNoWriMo. Fortunately, I had another story in mind that has been brewing in the back of my mind for the last year and it felt more suitable lenght-wise for a three-day rush.

During the last weeks of August, I set out to put together a suitable outline that I felt was doable in three days. I came up with locations, characters, events and so on. I ran the general plot by my wife, a few friends and since they seemed to think it was a great story, I felt confident I would be able to produce something of substance.

In preparation of the Labor Day Weekend event, I took one day before and one day after the event off, the one day before because it happened to be my birthday and I just wanted a day off but also because I wanted to get a few things done that I normally would do on the weekend, the day after because I figured I'd need to sleep.

Today, it's the day after and I figured I should recount this experience and what it really was like.

First of all, let me share the "tools" I used for this event. I found that everyone has their favorite way to write their stories and naturally I do as well.

• A Dell laptop loaded with Ubuntu 9.04
• Gwibber for keeping up with the #3dnc Twitter feed and posting updates to Twitter and Facebook
• The excellent yWriter5 novel writing software for writing my story, running on Windows 7 in Virtualbox
• Google Earth for mapping routes for the story
• Dropbox for off-site syncing
• Pandora for music (although I wrote without music for the most part)
  
• Firefox & Google for quick research mid-writing
• Plenty of Irish Breakfast and Black Peach tea from Stash
• Mountain Dew (regular and Code Red)
• Other unhealthy foods
  

Initially, my greatest fear was that I just wouldn't have enough time to type my story. I had a pretty good outline with a good beginning, middle and end but I was unsure about the time. As a result, I pushed ahead fairly aggressively the first day, finishing about 13,000 words the first day. Had I not taken that one nap, I could easily have reached 15,000 or even 16,000 words. However, I found that when I get tired, my mind doesn't work well, no matter how much caffeine I pump into my system.

Progress was pretty good on Sunday as well and at some point Sunday, I was confident that I would have no problem finishing the story. I actually took a couple of longer brakes for other projects, like dinner and painting my porch.

Monday was the hardest day by far for me. It was just rough going. The story was there in my mind but it was difficult to get it out, for some reason. Eventually, I managed to get it out and finished it with plenty of time to spare, just a few thousands words short of my 30,000 word goal. However, to me, the most important thing was that the story was done, not that I got to 30,000 words.

I then spent several hours editing, adding and removing. My wife was very helpful in that area, reading through much of the finished story and correcting grammar, punctuation and other things I didn't have time to focus on while writing.

Overall, the 3 Day Novel Contest was a very positive experience for me. The thing that surprised me that most is that while I before had punched out 50,000 words in a month, I did more than half of that in three days straight. To me, this was amazing and puts a new perspective on NaNoWriMo for me. I easily made the 50,000 words last time I participated but having gone through this, I don't see a reason why I couldn't get much further now, as long as I prepare properly.

I do want to point out all of the motivation and support I received from my dear wife. She was one of the first people that I ran the story by and she was very supportive throughout the whole event, putting up with my constant typing for three days straight and reading my work in progress with great interest, which motivated me even further. The rest of my family was also very supportive, understanding my need to continue my writing, as well as being curious about the story itself (patience, you'll get to read it!).

Naturally, I can't forget all the folks on Twitter and #3dnc that constantly posted about their progress (and lack of progress). You were all a motivation to me and helped me put my own writing into perspective. It was a joy "hanging out" with you all this weekend. Let's do it again!

Also, all of those who encouraged me through Facebook, thank you. The work is done, the novel is written.

For those of you curious about what happened during these intense hours of typing, check out my Twitter feed at:

http://www.twitter.com/tallswedishguy

Also check out the combined 3 day novel contest Twitter feed updated by numerous contestants on an hourly basis at:

http://twitter.com/search?q=%233dnc

What's next? It's too early to tell yet. With this behind me, I'm shifting a lot of my thinking to the other project that has been brewing in my mind. For those curious, the first sentence of the first chapter of the draft I've started goes something like this:

Waking up for the last time didn't feel any different than any other morning, Wared decided as he opened his eyes.

The reset, well, you'll have to wait for that.

PS3 and Ubuntu

With the recent release of the PS3 Slim and the removal of the ability to load other operating systems onto it, my thoughts went to my original release PS3 that I have Ubuntu installed on. I figured that if I have the ability that many new PS3 owners don't have, I may as well find a way to use it for something useful, right?

So, I left the games and the flashy new firmware 3.0 behind for a bit and booted into my Ubuntu partition. It looked so bare but then again, I haven't done a whole lot with it, so no surprise there.

Next, I figured I better run a few updates...and that's what I'm doing right now. So, for a few more hours, I'll be busy "waiting" while all the updates are downloaded. From there, we'll see what happens.