New post up at MilPages.COM

My third blog in the "veterans going to school" series for MilPages.COM is now live, covering the final preparatory steps to graduating from college.

Second post at MilPages.COM

The second of four blog entries I wrote for MilPages.COM is up, this one about how to plan the rest of your college career. Hope you enjoy it!

Guest Blogging

I have been working with the excellent people at http://www.milpages.com/ to put together a small series of blogs for veterans going to college after their military service. The first of those blogs, Using Military Planning for your first year of college, is now live on their site, with three more to come over the next few weeks. The entry is not just for military veterans, I believe the advice in the article is relevant for any students, but veterans may find it more helpful than other students.

In any event, I hope you find it useful and if you do, tell your friends!

Update on Sasha the Shape Shifting Cat

Any of my blog readers who have been around for a bit will remember that earlier this year I'd tried to fund illustration and publishing costs for my children's book Sasha the Shape Shifting Cat through Kickstarter. While that was ultimately unsuccessful in being funded, I did note that I would continue to find other ways to get it illustrated and published.

I just received word from the awesome people at The Story Shack that they've accepted my story, and are going to pair me with an illustrator, as well as put up the resulting story on their website. While this does not involve any sales, payments, or publication in any of the traditional senses, what's most important at this time is the combination of illustration and marketing that this represents. After going through the process, I will have more information about when and where it will be available, and also possibly other publication avenues that may open as a result of this excellent opportunity.

So, you think you want to write a book ...

I've been doing a lot of hemming, and hawing, about writing a book. Some days I feel charged, and inspired, and I write a lot. Other days, I feel defeated, and it's hard to motivate on those days. Like a lot of my readers, I suspect, I have a thousand ideas floating in my head, and focusing enough to get them written down and polished to a high gloss shine is a real challenge.

To combat some of the pitfalls of writing, I do an awful lot of reading and research, not just about my writing topics but also about the art, craft, and science of writing. Today, I came across an article on Writer.ly about the 9 steps to self-publishing a book, and in that 9-step system is a link to six ways that a writer can get started. I read through it, and I think they forgot maybe the most important piece of advice ... READ!

It's a little bit of a forgotten step, I think, but if you are a writer and are stuck, or having a hard time motivating, I've always found it helps tremendously to go back and remind myself about what's possible. It's certainly a great idea to sit down with a book or three, in the same genre as is your writing, but don't forget to also read great books regardless of the genre. Grab Tolkien and Herbert and Dickens, sit down with Joyce and Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, get a cup of coffee with Hemmingway and Heinlein and Nabakov. Sometimes, I realize, reading some of the great novels can feel intimidating ("I can't write like that!"), but it is still worthwhile. I can't write like Hemmingway, nor do I want to. I don't want critics and reviewers to pick up my book, read it, say to themselves "eh, just another Hemmingway knockoff," then never read another of my pieces again. Instead, I want them to read it, write things like "who is the next Bacil Donovan Warren? Is there another author like him out there?" and enjoy my writing for what I bring, not for how much it is like Nabakov's writing.

And that, dear readers, is often quite motivating. So if you find yourself stuck, having a tough day of writing, maybe try sitting down with your dog-eared copy of Dune or For Whom the Bell Tolls, and you might just find the spark that's been eluding you!

Replacement for RockMeIt?

For my daily social network interactions, I have for several years been using a Chromium-based browser called RockMeIt (no links from me, and I will tell you why in a moment). I open this browser every day, and use it for quite literally all of my social interactions from Google+ to Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn and Tumblr. It's really quite a brilliant browser, built specifically for this role, and really does it quite well.

Today, RockMeIt deigned to finally post, in the "New Tab" page, an end-of-life announcement for the RockMeIt browser. I've known for several months that they'd stopped updating the browser, while they were working on some ridiculous web portal thing (um, guys, the whole Portal concept, which tied back into the Mosaic homepage and the Yahoo, Excite, and iGoogle thing, back in the late 90s? It's dead. Long dead. So far long dead that even Google has given up on it.), which really isn't the social networking thing I needed to have so I have mostly ignored their site.

I had posted a tumblr response to their initial announcement that the browser was no longer being updated, basically noting that most of their user base had revolted against that idea, and that by continuing with it they would likely watch their numbers drop off precipitously, the proverbial rock off a cliff. Time will still tell on that one, but what I'm mostly upset about is that RockMeIt announced the EOL for the browser as the 31st of July, then for more than a week after announcing it didn't actually make the people who USE the browser aware of it (it was posted on their website, which I don't use for any reason, and on their tumblr feed, which I don't follow) until less that two weeks were left on the EOL.

Yeah, you read that right. Though internally, the EOL was announced three weeks out (still too close for any reasonable person; Google, for example, announced their EOL of iGoogle about a year in advance, and notified users every time they opened iGoogle) there was not even a single notification in the browser (despite the fact that RockMeIt LOGS IN TO THEIR WEBSITE every time you open it up, if you have it so configured) until today, twelve days before they completely pull the plug. Completely, as in you can no longer log in at all, can't access or use any bookmarks, saved site information, feeds, edges, nothing.

I can't say I didn't expect that RockMeIt would flub the browser EOL—they've been making bad decisions ever since they decided to switch away from the browser to a web portal—but this really is quite poor customer service.

Now, I'm on a rapid hunt for a replacement for the browser, and if anyone has any input please let me know. For the moment, I'm shifting to Chrome with a small number of extensions that will help manage the flow of social networking on multiple networks, but it's not ideal and certainly is not a replacement for one browser that really, actually, does an outstanding job in this space. I will also share any additional insights I can come up with or find.

Contest entries

As some of you may know, I started as an author primarily by writing poetry. I have a fairly sizable collection of poems I've written over the years, and am in the process of putting some of the best of these into chapbooks for submission to several contests. I will certainly announce any results here!

The Nineteen

Do not cast your eyes upon the fire burning there,

Eighteen and I have laid to rest among the towering pine.

Do not wait for us to come, we've been recalled elsewhere,

Heaven needs a hotshot crew to clear and cut a line.

Do not mourn too long for us, the job is not complete,

Fire rages, homes endangered, and we need more hands.

Our part is over now, yet do not admit defeat;

We have simply been recalled to protect Heaven's lands.

Work remains, and noble too; destruction yet to thwart;

Do not shed a bitter tear, nor hold a lasting grudge,

Our brothers dear, sisters too, will need moral support

To finish what we've started here, a line that won't budge.

After all the fire's out, and we've saved all that we can,

Remember proudly how we rushed to aid our fellow Man.

MacBook Air review (13", mid-2013 model), and the "Write Anywhere, Anywhen"™ concept.

When last we were talking, I'd posted several blogs about the capabilities of being an author in the CloudAge, using the capabilities of the Cloud and the power of tablets and smart phones (and specifically, the iPad) to empower writers to "Write Anywhere, Anywhen."™ ... well, those things still remain high on my list of things to think about, blog about, and concern myself. What I have noted in the meantime is that the fundamental bedrock of my writing, the amazing software program Scrivener, does not run on a iPad. I also found all of the existing ways to use various iPad Apps to write on the iPad, and then later pull changes into Scrivener, to be not just less than ideal but really quite a pain in my butt. So I pulled a few favors, collected some spending approval, and dropped the hammer on a new laptop.

A new laptop has been on my WishListOfThingsToHave for a long time, since the last laptop I'd owned (a white dual-USB iBook) was laid to rest many years ago. Since that time, I've been kind of limping along with (at first) a refurbished eMac, and then later a shared iMac with a family member, neither of which was ideal for my needs but was better than nothing. After recently needing to lower my amount of time shared on the iMac, and reverting back to the eMac proved to be a BadIdea, my needs have become much more emergent. The purchase of the iPad about this time last year alleviated some of the most acute of those needs, permitting me to take care of certain aspects without spending the money a full laptop would have required, but even that has proven to be a stop-gap for specific needs (like, Scrivener, office productivity software, my software programming work, and etc.).

After some considerable research, review-reading, personal experience, and much wringing of hands, I was lucky enough to have the time to watch this year's WWDC Keynote, where they announced the immediate availability of upgraded MacBook Air laptops, taking advantage of a new battery-saving CPU from Intel (the Haswell), and some upgraded components. The timing was perfect, and I was able to snag for myself a new MacBook Air 13" (full specs after a bit, and the rationale for the 13" instead of the 11" as well).

I've had this machine for only a few days now, but I am really, truly, happy with my laptop. Crazy happy. Super-duper over-the-moon happy. Yes, I've spoiled the ending, but let me explain why I like this machine.

First, let me say that at first glance, the changes looked like modest upgrades. The new MacBook Air line is not to the 2012 model as the MacBook Air was to the iBook: a radical change in perspective, or hardware, or utility. Generally, the changes amount to a minor change of bus, an upgrade in CPU (though, technically, a downgrade in clock speed), a change in SSD provider, adding a microphone, a change of battery, and an upgrade in WiFi. What these individually minor updates do, however, is make up in the gestalt and synergy what they seem to lack in their individual impressiveness.

In fact, what they combine to create is a true road warrior's dream of a laptop: a fully-capable, very fast laptop computer capable of being used pretty much all day long without recharging. When I say "all day long," that's really just what I mean: I've gotten up early in the morning, headed down to my local coffee shop, and started at 6 am with a full charge, worked there for several hours then headed home and worked until almost 5 pm before I got the warning message that my laptop was on reserve power.

Yes, you read that right. Right about eleven hours of use on a single charge, with a 13" laptop. And that's not eleven hours of open it up, type one email, sleep it, lather rinse repeat. No, that's sitting with iTunes playing, headphones in, writing in Scrivener with three web browsers open (RockMeIt, Chrome, and Safari), with multiple tabs in each, mail open, writing and doing online research for several hours, then going home and doing some more of the same. In other words, working.

Since I can't compare my laptop to prior models myself, I will point you to several other reviews by people who can do direct comparisons. What I can tell you is my experience with this one in particular.

As for my machine specifically, I opted for the 13" MacBook Air with a 1.3 GHz CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Now that Apple laptops no longer come with optical drives, I opted to purchase the USB SuperDrive ($79; I still have backup disks of previous computers with data I need to access, on DVD or CD, as well as a small number of applications that came only on CD/DVD originally). I also added a $29 cable to connect my 19" VGA CRT monitor at home to my MacBook Air's thunderbolt port (to use the larger screen at home when I needed to). All told, with tax my configuration came to just over $1,500. I originally had a crisis deciding about the screen size, 11" vs. 13", and realized that the 11" monitor would only just be larger than the display on my iPad, which is a retina display to boot. In addition, I have an external USB hard drive at home that I use for development, backup, and storage for things that I don't need to carry with me, including VMWare Fusion and several virtual machines (Windows, Kubuntu, and HaikuOS). These would definitely benefit from a larger screen, as well, and so I decided to snag the larger of the two.

Here are a few of the things that I've noticed about this laptop. It's lightning-quick. Waking it from sleep is nearly instantaneous; my experience with PC and previous Apple laptops is that waking from sleep is time-consuming (and in the case of most Windows laptops, a dicey proposition ... over the course of my life I've had several PC laptops, mostly from work and top-of-the-line, which would never recover from sleep. Windows does sleep/hibernate very poorly, in my experience). Launching most applications, including all of the ones I use for work, takes no time at all. Wall-clock time for Scrivener to launch† is 4 seconds with two projects open. Wall-clock time for Chrome is 2 seconds. Browsers, email, Word, Pages (I'm a writer ... I have nearly all of the word processors! Oh, and I prefer Scrivener for most things), "normal" applications launch in two or three seconds, only bounce once on the dock, and it's off to work. With the combination of crazy-awesome battery life, and lickety split reactions, the only thing getting in my way for work is my own motivation.

I also game. Naturally, this eats more battery than the work that I do, but it's still wicked fast. Wall-clock times: launching Neverwinter Night 2 on my laptop takes about ten seconds (from clicking "Full Screen" in the Aspyr launcher window, and skipping all the load screens, to the screen from which to resume the game). Launching Diablo III, from "Play" on the Blizzard Launcher screen to typing in my password, takes about fifteen seconds. Steam takes only a few seconds to load Civ V, and Civ V itself only takes about fifteen seconds to load completely.

I can work all day long without needing to plug in. This alone makes it an excellent choice for me, since what I like to do is to go from one place to another place, sit, write, think, work, and then get up and go somewhere else, and I don't necessarily want to have to be someplace with electricity "just in case" ... and now, I don't have to. I can take my laptop to the trailheads of Saguaro National Monument, watch the sunrise while working on one of my novels, or poetry anthologies, and then swing down for some coffee, work for a few hours, then pack up and hang at a park with some friends (or just people-watch) while working on my characters, and then go home, and still have battery life to spare. It helps that this laptop weighs less than three pounds; I can toss it with my iPad and the 2013 Writer's Market into my Ogio Newt II Mono and carry them all around all day long.

Overall, I have only one regret about this purchase, and that's my own shortsightedness: I wish I'd gotten the 512 GB SSD instead of the 256! I really enjoy the freedom of location that I have with this laptop, and the battery life on it is amazing. All in all, this has proven to be an outstanding purchase, and one I would heartily recommend to anyone looking into a laptop for all-day-long work.

†: For me, "time to launch" means from the time I click the icon in the Dock, or double-click in the finder, until I can do something useful in the application.

Hansen's Roughriders: The Beginning

"It was here, and it was now. Here was the place where Hansen's Roughriders was born; here, after this reverse-slope disaster on the plains of Ilion V, where the 12th Atrean Dragoons pitched a furious defense for Anton Marik and were betrayed by a coward. Now was the time where I first started to feel the slip; where my thoughts first left the scene of the carnage and skipped like a six-year-old girl across the landscape of my deteriorating mind."

So begins Hansen's Roughriders: The Beginning, my new novel. It details the formation and initial history of the classic BattleTech® unit, Hansen's Roughriders, and their initial foray into mercenary work. It's a novel I've been working on, off and on, for several years, and I am hoping to get the first draft of it finished by the end of NaNoWriMo this year (2013, for reference ;).