State of the Geekdom Address

As with every first-rate political regime, my personal Geekdom deserves an update on what their ruler is doing.  Here is where I address any concerns that you may have about what I am doing with this webspace and with my time.

First of all, I would like to assure you that this is not a dictatorship.  That’s what the comment box is for both here at brainofdane.com and in your Google Reader.  Or, if you are reading this on Facebook, you’re more than welcome to ‘Like’ my posts.  However, as with any government, you must stand and be counted or I will go on uninhibited.

Now, down to business.

I’m sure all of you are wondering, “what the heck happened to that silly book Dane was writing?”  Well, I’m still working on it.  You might imagine that I have been studiously sitting at my desk under a writing lamp every night, scribbling away at what will no doubt turn into a work of art for the history books.  In this case, you would be wrong.  I am still taking it in bite-sized chunks.  Those bite-sized chunks are usually taken about a month at a time.  However, I have a wonderful wife to motivate me and encourage me.  I believe our anniversary plans involve me reading some of the story to her while editing.  Romantic, right?  I would like to have a completed first draft by the end of the year, which is realistic, but scary.  As far as this year’s NaNoWriMo, it’s still up in the air as to whether I will participate or not.

On the baby front, things have been pretty smooth.  Sometimes, I feel like i’m doing it all wrong, but Shari assures me that Caleb is perfectly fine at home alone with me.  I have taken a lot of video using the HD camera that my father-in-law gave me and it turns out that Caleb is very photogenic.  Actually, either Caleb is photogenic or I am just infinitely amused by him.  Either way, I should be uploading some video of him soon and sharing it with the world.  He is already 3 months old and he is everything I could have ever hoped for in a son.  I almost don’t want to share him with the world.

Babies from xkcd.com

Source: xkcd.com/441

As far as this blog is concerned, my readers have the right to give me feedback whenever they want.  I am always open to suggestions, and I love to hear when I hit on something you like.  Hopefully, I can deliver a good blend of topics from the geek world as well as the literary world.  And with those powers combined… I will attempt to entertain and inform.

Until next time,

God Bless this Geekdom

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The Romany Rye

My experience at the Delta Spirit show I had last week was much more than I had expected. While I was distracted by the excitement of the main attraction, their opening act was preparing to blow me away with a sneak attack.  Without hesitation, The Romany Rye stepped up on stage with the swagger of a seasoned road band and simply kicked back for what turned out to be a very relaxing and engaging journey through the mind of a California kid lost in Tennessee.

Please, head to myspace.com/theromanyrye and have a little listen.  I think you’ll like them.

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Books Become More Digital

Amazon announced in their ever-familiar web store juggernaut way that their book-reader–the Kindle–is overtaking hardcover book sales by a whole lot more than some people care to admit.

Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

- source: amazon press release

Let me sum it up:  Amazon has sold 143% as much digital books as hardcover books.  Can you imagine if they had included free Kindle books?  If you went out and picked up a $189 book reader, you certainly aren’t a cheapskate, but who doesn’t like free?  It seems that Amazon has become for books what iTunes was/is for music.  You can finally put all of your eggs in one big Amazon basket and not have to worry about your devices and data becoming obsolete anytime soon.

However, there is still one big, undeniably annoying difference, and that is DRM (Digital Rights Management) and its firm clutch on your copy of the book.  Now, before you check out on me for being a digital rights freak, hear me out.  When you first got your hands on a copy of The Hobbit or Pride and Prejudice, how did you do it?  Did you borrow it from a friend, or a relative?  I know I did.  What if your friend couldn’t loan you their copy because they had to keep it on their bookshelf in order to read Harry Potter?  If that were the case, you probably never would have gone on to buy the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or found out that you liked Sense and Sensibility way better.

With the Kindle, you buy a book, read it on your device, and keep it there forever.  You probably won’t lend your friend the Kindle, since you’ve had your nose buried in the latest Twilight book and you can’t let go.  When you find a book or an author that you like, how are you going to share it with a friend?  I personally hate to tell my friends to go out and gamble their hard-earned money on something they might or might not like, knowing that they probably won’t unless I beg them to.  The portability just isn’t there like it is with hardcover books.

Please, don’t read this as “Kindle is evil, down with Amazon!”  That is not the message I am trying to get across.  I just want you to think before you go down a road you might regret.  As an aspiring author, I can’t help but wonder what this will mean for me if I ever try to publish.  Sure, I could self-publish on the Kindle, but what will happen when my readers want to share my book with someone else?  I can only hope that Amazon will have come up with a solution by then and you will be spreading your favorite author’s works to everyone you meet.

These ideas are not original.  I practically stole them from a favorite author of mine, Cory Doctorow.  Please read more about the other side of the anti-copyright movement in the download page for his book Makers.  Heck, you might even want to download the book for free and see what he’s all about!

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The Age of ‘Why Not?’

My wife is a photographer.  Actually, she is an amazing photographer, and I owe everything I know about photography to her.  A couple of years ago, we embarked on a quest to learn about how to take pictures with a “pro-sumer” SLR.  That quest then blossomed into a passion for my wife, and a whole lot of optical knowledge for me.  That is why the iPhone DSLR project is interesting to me.

In the same way, Jeremy Salvador decided to embark on a mission to learn how to take better pictures on an iPhone.  Why would he do that, you ask?  Because this is the age of ‘Why Not?’  While technology zooms exponentially ahead of itself, we geeks are becoming both more creative and more ridiculous with how we use that technology.  The iPhone DSLR is only one example in a vast sea of projects, and only some are finding their way onto the internet.

iphonedslr.com/blog

Technically, the iPhone DSLR isn’t even a DSLR for a whole lot of reasons, but the fact that one man had the guts to put an SLR lens on a comparatively low-res digital camera makes it very much blog-worthy.  Who knows, Jeremy Salvador might find that he could produce these rigs in a higher quantity and make some coin off of it.  I know there’s a few photographers out there who might like to have it just as a novelty to show off to their friends.  Imagine strapping your favorite lens (maybe just a nifty fifty for kicks) to your iphone 4 and taking some HD video with it.  But then again, I’m just a sucker for specialized gadgets.

What crazy ideas have you come up with, but never executed?  If you could make anything in the world and post it on your social network of choice, what would it be?

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Delta Spirit

Tonight, I am going to see a band called Delta Spirit.  I really don’t know much about them.  A friend of mine is into their music and when he heard they were coming to town, he asked me if I would go with him.  I love experiencing new music, and I can’t wait to see what these guys are like in concert.

If I don’t see you, have a great weekend!

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