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Attention, my fellow i-Device-owning peeps

As a Big Fish Games employee, it is my duty to inform you all that we’re having a massive sale of all our iPhone and iPad games this weekend–every last one of ’em is .99 a pop. Go! Buy a few! You’ll be paying my paycheck, and hey, I’m FOR that. :D

I am personally very fond of Hidden Expedition: Amazon on the iPad (excellent soundtrack, fun plot, monkeys, and a dorky professor you have to find using clues left in his scattered journal pages), and Atlantis: Sky Patrol has some fun marble-shooty action going on, with a bit of retro, art deco sort of look to it. Drawn: The Painted Tower is gorgeous. And Azada is a nice family-friendly game that those of you with i-Devices AND kids might enjoy playing along with a youngster, since it’s all about various and sundry classic stories.

Search for Big Fish Games on the App Store, or, if you want a super-quick way to get to all of our i-games at once, you can find ’em on our site right over here.

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Norwescon 34: Made of epic and awesome

So here’s a super-quick summary of the various awesome things about Norwescon 34, this past weekend:

  • At least a couple people seem to have taken my Faerie Blood cards off the freebie rack, because two more people have added me on Goodreads. Thank you, Goodreads adders!
  • I did actually sell one of my Faerie Blood CDs, on Sunday afternoon while I was waiting for ! Thank you, nice lady in fairy dress who stopped to talk to me in the lobby, and I hope you enjoy the book.
  • Dara got props from the Seattle Geekly podcast for the awesomeness of her music programming!
  • I discovered that nerdcore is, in fact, pretty cool.
  • My and Dara’s friend took Best in Show for her Na’vi costume at the Masquerade! Go Torrey!
  • (Mira Grant) up for Best Novel Hugo for Feed! BOOYA!
  • I volunteered officially for the first time ever. I got over 15 hours helping Dara by running water to various performers, and by helping man the merch table as well! This netted me several free books and a shirt. Go me!
  • Stood in line for nearly two hours to get books signed by and his wife Shannon. Worth EVERY MINUTE. Also got to get a book signed by the awesome , and said hello to Mary Robinette Kowal as well. Told her I very much looked forward to reading my copy of her book.
  • Bought several awesome shirts, including one of Jayne’s shirts from Serenity and a new Matt Smith Doctor Who shirt!
  • Got a mass market copy of ‘s (Benjamin Tate’s) Well of Sorrows, bought directly from him after a great panel on ebooks. He very kindly signed it for me right then, too! Thanks, Joshua!
  • Had the pleasure of meeting Heather Dale and her husband Ben, and watching them do a joint double set with and and and . Bought a couple more of Heather’s CDs and a shirt, and she very kindly signed a CD for me as well. Her song about Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea, was GREAT. She is now clearly part of the ongoing conspiracy to make all my favorite music Canadian. :D
  • My and Dara’s favorite Barcon quote: VODKA OF THE RIGHTEOUS! APPLE TINIS OF THE JUST!

All in all this was a very, very enjoyable convention and I look forward to doing more Actual Volunteering next year! And maybe doing some actual readings or something. ‘Cause, like, I have a book and stuff.

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Hello Norwescon!

Taking a moment to put up a post before having dinner, just to say that I’ve left assorted business cards on the freebie table and the flyer rack here at Norwescon. If anybody happens to pick one up and comes by this site to visit, hello and welcome, and I hope your convention is being awesome so far!

If you HAVE come by because of Norwescon and you’re interested in buying my book, arrange to find me before EOD on Sunday and I’ll sell you one of my small number of Faerie Blood CDs. That will get you an ePub AND a PDF of the book, both DRM-free, along with a free short story, “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”. I’m offering Norwescon attendees a special price of $5 per disk!

So say hi if you are at the con and you see this, and tell me how your con is going! Better yet, find me and do it in person. :)

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Off to Norwescon this evening, find me there

Not doing anything in any sort of official “writer” capacity–but I’ll be showing up at various panels out of basic interest, and hope to see any of y’all who might be reading this there. :) Look for me in particular at any panels where the redoubtable and are involved!

I’ll also have the last six Faerie Blood CDs with me, so if anybody who’ll be at the con wants one, bug me about that! And I’ll leave a lot of my business cards on the freebie table as well.

Please also do bug me if you want to meet up for a meal or a snack or something. Those of you who I know locally anyway probably already have my cell number for texting purposes. But if you don’t and you want it, shoot me an email with how I can reach you, and we’ll meet up! (Gmail is my preferred email address, annathepiper as always.) I’m busy early Thursday evening, when I’ll be having dinner with . Then I’ll be playing backup guitar for my beloved later that same evening! But other than that my options are fairly open.

See you all there, I hope!

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Book Log #4: The Sergeant’s Lady, by Susanna Fraser

The Sergeant's Lady

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Carina Press had already grabbed me hook, line, and sinker before they released The Sergeant’s Lady, but I went from zero to “I MUST HAVE THIS NOW” on the strength of several delightful things, only one of which is actually immediately pertinent to the book: i.e., the author, Susanna Fraser, cheerfully admitting she’d modeled Will Atkins, her hero, on Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly. This, as you might imagine, was music to my Browncoat ears.

Happily, the book proved to be quite solid even above and beyond the pleasure of envisioning the hero played in my brain by (a strangely British-accented) Nathan Fillion. Class conflict is generally always good for setting up the sparks of a romance, and this one’s particularly crunchy with the added bonuses of Will being in the military, Anna being a married (although widowed during the course of the plot) woman, and her husband being a raging douchebucket. Fraser does a delightful job having Will and Anna try very, very, very hard to maintain the proprieties as Will must escort Anna out of enemy territory, and even more importantly, making me genuinely like these people. That Will is a voracious reader charmed me immensely, as did the scenes of him and Anna not only fighting off mutual attraction, but also talking to one another and liking each other. It was very clear to me that these two had more going on than just raw hormones, and it was awesome.

Bonus points as well for Fraser not pulling any punches with the ending, about which I will say simply that Will, as a military man, is not exempt from the dangers thereof even if he IS the hero. All that’s keeping me from giving this five stars are the scattered moments when I was thinking “yes yes get on with it”–but those moments were few and far between. (Browncoats who may read this book, keep a sharp eye out as well for the name of Will’s best friend; soon as I noticed that, I had to tweet the author and go I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.)

All in all, this was a fine read and I’m very much looking forward to reading Fraser’s newly released second book.

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Need RSS app that reads authenticated feeds AND syncs

Help me, fellow Apple geeks!

I have a whole helluva lot of RSS feeds I want to keep track of. Ideally, I would like to be able to sync reading these feeds between my computer, my phone, and my iPad, so that if I read an article on any of these objects, it updates the others as soon as I sync.

The problem is that quite a few of the feeds I want to keep an eye on are friends-locked accounts on either LJ or Dreamwidth. And the vast majority of iPhone/iPad apps I’ve found for RSS reading work by way of syncing with Google Reader–which is lovely and all except for the part where Google Reader doesn’t talk to authenticated feeds. :/

I do NOT want to use a third-party service (such as FreeMyFeed) to unlock those feeds and plug them into Google Reader, on the grounds of that would violate the privacy of those feeds. What I’d like to do instead is either a) let my Mac do the actual grabbing of authenticated feeds, and just sync that content down to the mobile devices, or b) find an iPad app that can talk to authenticated feeds locally, and just read RSS exclusively on that device.

So, do any of y’all have suggestions for how I can solve this problem? Let me know in the comments!

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IPad thoughts so far

So I’ve had the Shiny for a day or so now and am beginning to have thoughts about it.

Things I don’t like:

  • The mail app has a preview pane I can’t turn off.
  • My laptops USB ports are apparently not powerful enough to let the iPad charge when I have it plugged in for syncing.

Things I do like:

  • The on-screen keyboard is a little weird, but I can work with it. Between that and a reasonable amount of screen space, I am fairly sure that I will be able to write on this thing, although polishing of format will likely still have to be done on the laptop.
  • The smart cover is pretty nifty, and I think I chose well when I chose the brown leather one. It’ll look nicely natural as it gets more use.
  • It is amazing how cold the back of the device feels compared to my laptop, especially if I am carrying them both from room to room. And it’s pretty cool having the thing in my lap right now as I write this post, and to not have heat radiating off of it.
  • About half the apps I had put onto my phone are universal binaries that also work on the iPad, and of those, several of them look way nicer. The WordPress app, which I’m using right now, is a nice example.

I’ve been doing a bit of reorganization of my apps in iTunes, trying to determine which ones need to stay on the phone and which ones will move primary operation to the iPad. So far the book reading apps and the HD games are the big things I am moving over. And I am a sucker for those damn birds (SO ANGRY!) and zombies (brains), so I bought the HD versions of both of those games. I’m downloading a lot of Big Fish’s shiny HD releases too–as a proud Big Fish employee, I feel that is my beholden duty. :D I’ve played a bit already with Hidden Expedition: Amazon, which I’d previously played on the computer. But it looks REALLY good on the pad, and it also has a multiplayer mode in this version, where you can have two people on the same device searching for hidden objects at once, either competitively or cooperatively. I want to try that!

(switching back to the laptop)

It looks like the WordPress app has got some problems (it can’t handle HTML tags well right now and it seems to be stripping out all my damn quotes, which is not helpful), so I’m having to finalize this post via the actual web UI on my laptop. But that’s the fault of the app and not the fault of the iPad; I had the same problem using the WordPress app on my phone.

Anyway, still getting everything the way I want it on the device, but so far so good so shiny!

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On the awesomeness of technology

Something that has really come to light for me in the last couple of years is that I’m really, really, really tired of the “my choice of technology is better than your choice of technology” attitude so many of my geek brethren espouse. Whether it be “Linux is better than Windows” or “Macs are better than PCs” or “Open Source is better than paid software” or “my smartphone is better than your smartphone”, I have yet to see that this is anything more than the simple human tendency to divide up into camps and loudly proclaim how one’s camp is superior to everyone else’s.

And you know what, folks? When it comes to geek technology, this is really kind of silly.

When you get right down to it, no matter what operating system it runs, a computer is pretty goddamn awesome. So are smartphones–I mean, c’mon, you guys, we are all carrying around tiny computers in our pockets. And when I think about this, especially when I think about how computers used to be gigantic boxy things that would take up entire rooms, it’s even more amazing to me.

I’ve been thinking about this this week because I’ve gotten the expected amount of shit for the fact that I’m getting an iPad. But really, I’ve been thinking about it ever since a coworker of mine showed up at work preemptively expecting that the team was going to give him shit for having a Windows phone. That struck me. If you’re going around automatically expecting your fellow geeks to hassle you about the device you’ve chosen to purchase, that really takes a lot of fun out of having it. And it shouldn’t, because again, computers are awesome. And smartphones are just tiny computers.

So I would now like to take this opportunity to celebrate all technology, no matter who makes it. I invite folks to join me in the comments to express love of whatever technology you have and why you love it. I’ll start!

I love my MacBook because it’s clever enough to dual-boot between OS X and Windows 7.

I love Windows 7 because it’s a version of Windows that is not only not sucky, it’s elegant, doesn’t get in your face with the UAC dialogs, and able to play nicely with Bootcamp.

I love Linux because I’ve found it to be an excellent platform to write Python code on. Also, excellent for running our home servers at the Murk, and for playing Nethack on, and hosting my web pages and blogs!

I love Open Source because of healthy respect for the ethic of creating programs just because you love to code.

I love paying for programs I need or games I want because I myself work in the computer industry, and I love supporting my fellow geeks for their work.

I love Firefox because c’mon, FOXES, how can I not?

I love Safari because it’s fast.

I love Internet Explorer 9 because whoa, hey, a version of Internet Explorer that’s actually fast and compliant to recent web standards? Awesome! Well done!

I love my iPhone because it’s a tiny, tiny thing and yet it lets me do so much.

I love my nook because it lets me carry around an amazing number of books with me, and in one small sleek package.

I don’t own one but I love seeing other people’s netbooks because small, cute technology that can go toe to toe with bigger laptops is awesome.

I don’t own one but I love hearing from friends who own Android phones or Windows phones just because a friend saying “I have a toy and it does this really, really cool thing” is awesome, too!

I love flatscreen monitors because yay for occupying less desk space, not to mention no longer throwing radiation at my poor neck.

And I’ll save telling you about why I love my iPad after I’ve actually had some time to break it in. :D

Your turn, people! What technology do you love, and why? (And remember, this is not about ‘I love technology X because it’s not technology Y’–please, let’s not snark. Let’s make this a celebration of all things that are awesome. Thanks!)

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Book Log #3: The Passage, by Justin Cronin

The Passage (The Passage, #1)

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pop quiz! Which of these is a quote from Mojo Jojo of the Powerpuff Girls, and which is a quote from Justin Cronin’s The Passage?

“ONE EGG LEFT?! For a nutritious breakfast, TWO eggs is the minimum requirement! And I have but ONE, which is ONE shy of TWO! And it is TWO that I need! Curses! I must immediately purchase some eggs, for I need to have breakfast, and without the eggs I cannot have the breakfast that I so require!”

“She moved to where the bodies lay, the men and also their horses who were dead with no blood in them as was the case with all things that had died in this manner.”

Now, to be fair, it was only the one section of the book where Mr. Cronin was writing in this particularly long-winded style. And I’m pretty sure that he didn’t mean for that part of the book to be read in Mojo Jojo voice. That it did in fact pop right into my brain, though, made it significantly more difficult to take that bit seriously.

And really, that’s the first problem I have with this entire book: its length and verbosity. As someone who’s been working hard the last couple of years to learn how to write more concisely in an effort to sell my initial novels, I cannot help but react badly to an 800+ page doorstop of a novel. Especially when this leads into the second problem I have with the book: that so much has been made of how Amazing and Awesome Mr. Cronin’s effort to write a genre novel is, when he’s not doing a single thing in this story that I haven’t seen done just as well and more concisely by SF/F genre authors. Yet, since he’s the big-name literary author, he gets plaudits that the vast majority of SF/F authors will never be lucky enough to achieve.

Secret government experiment, prompted by Mysterious Investigations into the jungle? Check. The experiment going horribly, horribly wrong? Check. A rampaging virus that turns a lot of the population into vampire-like creatures? Check. Survivors that must eventually band together decades later to find the ultimate way to get rid of all the vampires? Check. Mysterious Young Girl who may be the KEY TO ALL SALVATION? Check, check, and check. Seen it, lots and lots and LOTS of times.

All that said? If you can slog through 800+ pages, and you can deal with the hard time jump between the first part of the story and the rest of it, the book’s actually not half bad. Mr. Cronin uses some tropes that did make me roll my eyes quite a few times (and which will doubtless do the same for anyone who’s read more than one SF/F or horror novel, or who’s seen more than one SF/F or horror movie), and the very end of the book in particular provoked an “oh for fuck’s sake” out of me. It did, however, keep me interested enough to make it all the way to the end, even though it was verbose and cliche-ridden.

And in the end, if a book does that and I’m even mildly entertained, I am willing to say that it did its job. I’m still trying to decide if I want to actually buy a copy to keep in my personal collection, but I was quite fine with checking this out from the library. I’d recommend the same for anyone who might be on the fence about whether to buy this one. Three stars.