Star Trek Gear

Today, over at the MSN/PC World section of the internet, I ran across a slideshow of Star Trek gear. Am I really this geeky? I have to ask.

Even if I was this geeky I am sure that my wife would draw the line and say no, especially to the mousepad; we are allowed cats, not Kirk in the loo.

Of course, the home remodeling projects are out of the question, such as the home theater that looks like a starship bridge. Even I find that way too much.

And ultimately, I didn't see anything that wouldn't make the wife think about where to stick my dead body.

The iPhone ad you will never see

Today on Slate, they have the iPhone ad that you will never see.

Ironically, it features the app that we all need the most.

I wished I would have wrote this

There are times, both as a college student and as a freelance writer, that I read something and say "Gee, I wished that I would have wrote that; it is so much better than what I wrote." Today, over at Helium, I had one of those moments.

The other day, I wrote a review of a gaming suppliment that I had stumbled over: The Book of Erotic Fantasy. I suggested the title to Helium and it was approved. It is one of those titles that you hope becomes competitive, just so you can read the comments that others are making.

And this morning, I discovered that someone else had looked at the book and commented on it: Carrie Schutrick.

I am green with envy. I really wished that my review of this gaming suppliment was as good as hers. She said everything I wanted to, and some stuff I should have.

Here is the link to her review of The Book of Erotic Fantasy. Enjoy.

Short Story Link: Voodoo Economics

Voodoo Economics (The Lodestone Mine Incident)

Before you take money away from someone, you should ask yourself what they did to earn it. You may also want to ask yourself what are they likely to do when they get upset. Congressman Kelley forgot to ask both of these questions.

Are fair book reviews possible?

While I was working on my latest book review, I found myself wondering if it was even possible to do a fair and unbiased book review.

It might have been the fact that I could hear a voice in the back of my head saying "If you can not say anything nice, then do not say anything at all." I am not sure what one of my relatives said that, but I am sure that the voice is one from my childhood.

And with this particular book, it was natural to hear it.

The reason I considered writing a review for the book is simply the fact that the author rants and raves about a couple of bad book reviews that he recieved when the book came out; as in he gives links to the bad reviews...the freelance writer in me goes if I write a bad book review, will he give me free advertising too?

Probably not: my book review ended being a lot more favorable than I expected it to be. I actually found some merit in his book. Sigh. I am going to have to do my own advertising.

(My regular readers know how sad that makes me; I have never been really good at advertising.)

But over the years, I have done a lot of bad book reviews.

A few years ago, one writer that I know said that he would send a free copy of his book to legitimate book reviewers. What exactly is a legitimate book reviewer? I am betting it is one that you are sure is going to give you a favorable review.

Or at least it is if you do not know how books actually get sold. It is not the reviews that sell books, it is the word of mouth. Even a bad book review can sell books (calling something a train wreck makes people curious for some reason).

So it probably does not matter what my opinion of your book is, you just have to get people curious enourgh about it to sell copies.

Pirate Bay Trial

One of the news stories that I have been following recently is The Pirate Bay Trial.

I will admit that as a writer, I have mixed feelings about The Pirate Bay and peer to peer file sharing. On one hand, I do not like the thought that someone could rob me of potential income from my copyrights. On the other hand, there is a lot of junk published in the occult field that should not recieve the dignity of generating income for their creator.

Hopefully, I do not fall into that last category. But I probably do; remember I set the price of one of my works, the Three Officer Version of the Golden Dawn Neophyte Ritual, based on the fact that I figure that I would sell a single copy to a new budding lodge and then it would met a photocopier.

There is also the fact that many of the out-of-print books that I seek out end up going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. If they were really that special, the publishers would reprint them.

Now, I will admit using some torrents for video files. In my defense, I would like to point out that I could not find a copy of StarCops for anything close to a reasonable price.

There is also the fact that the fan generated content of Star Trek Phase II (formerly Star Trek New Voyages) is accessible though torrents. Of course, that is a non-profit operation, so they really don't care about peer to peer file sharing.

So maybe, I am a secret pirate supporter. Of course, this is like being a secret Regardie supporter. Some people understand it; other people will not.

Of course, the big argument behind the Pirate Bay trial is that the Pirate Bay is robbing movie, TV and music companies of income (I don't think that the publishing houses are terribly concerned with file sharing, but I could be wrong).

I am sorry, but the honest truth is that the companies are still not going to get the income even if they somehow manage to shut down all torrent sites. We will just have people doing this in other ways---"Bring your flash drives and I will give you a copy of the lastest season of Prison Break..."

We are living the opening days of a brand new business model (think of the days of rampant copying of other people work during the days of the early printing press). Newspapers, such as the Rocky Mountain News are going to fall due to losing classified ads to the internet, and mass media companies are going to have to figure out ways to sell their stuff on the internet despite the fact that the internet is as secure as an unguarded chicken in the same room as my cat.

Looking into my cracked crystal ball, I can make a prediction: twenty years from now, none of us will believe that the Pirate Bay was a real issue considering the new business model that we will end up with when media creators catch onto how to make money despite the internet file sharing capabilities.

The Prisoner (Number 6) died Tuesday

On Tuesday, Patrick McGoohan, the creator of the cult television series, The Prisoner died.

I must admit that I was a big fan of the series, one of those who treated the series the way that a literature major treats a classic work by a great writer: what did he mean to say; why did he use this symbol; are we trapped in the Village ourselves?

The series have influenced my witing, my philosophy, and in the past, I have ran a role playing game in that setting.

Alas, Number 6, we barely knew you.