Trilogies: Just say No!

I wish I had the drive to start a new campaign: STOP THE TRILOGIES!

I know that trilogies, or simply put, multi-book deals are good for the writers financially, readers tend to buy all of the series usually since they don't like to stop at the middle of a book and printers just love it for the same reason.

On the other hand, I've had enough! I can't go to Borders and pick a random SF/F book anymore. Almost any other book is a part of a series and it only is the fourth book of an eight book series! Heellooo? Why should I pick this book and walk away with it?


Unless it is a manga - then it's the opposite. I buy my mangas from Amazon. Why? Because the bookshops in my City have a stupid rule, they only have the first couple of volumes of any manga so I always get my first hit from them and then get the rest of the volumes supplied by Amazon. Surely the bookshop is losing money here, a typical Manga series is usually 13 to 20 volumes. Selling only a small fraction is useless.

Back to the books again.

Obviously emotional attachment to the characters is a strong reason for buying serial books. Writers can flesh out the characters significantly compared to the shorter books. On the other hand, are we readers getting our money's worth? In my experience a story that should have been finished in a medium-thickness volume usually gets expanded into a trilogy. The events get sparser, with lots of "character development" in between. On the other hand these character developments don't give us any more insight to the story itself - we tend to fed up all sorts of stupid stories about the character's life. For example a character might be a cynical person. In a shorter book, this can be described as such and be done with. In a trilogy, we would learn about his failed marriage, his cheating wife, sweet but now dead kids and his folding business, not because of his fault either but his partner, who also was fucking our character's sister AND wife, make our character cynical. And this takes an additional 100 pages to go through... Thinking that most of 50s and 60s novels were about 120-180 pages long...

Let's all say NO to the trilogies.
Let's get the writers concentrate on the story again.
Let's be able to finish a book in a peaceful evening and then contemplate over it for a couple of hours.

This will mean that we will have to buy more books. We will be reading more of them and we will be introduced to more interesting ideas for the same page count.
I can't see any problem there!

Inspiron 9400 and WiFi

Thanks to this fellow, I'm all ready for Dublin!

in need of sleep...?

There is something wrong with me.
I spent almost all of yesterday sleeping, if not sleeping, lying down and reading/watching something.
I have absolutely no energy or stamina right now.
On the way to the office, I almost had an accident and then banged my head when I was getting out. I am usually not this much disoriented.
I had a couple of biscuits and a strong cup of coffee but they only made me crash more.
I'm really wasted.
I almost drifted to sleep listening to "Rainy Taxi" song - just after that cup of coffee.
This is not good. I need to get in shape and get my life in order ASAP.

This story must win the Hugo award!

I just listened to Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt.
Now, I have this story sitting in my bookcase. I haven't read the Asimov's it got published in (July 2006). This is a shame. I should have read it before. It rocks!

You can read it here or listen it to here, on the brilliant Escape Pod.

Go and donate some money to Escape Pod, I always do. Steve does a brilliant job. I've been listenin gto Escape Pod since single-digit episode numbers. It is really really good. Go get it! Right now.

This story is the best story in this year's Hugo nominee short stories. The rest are all fall flat compared to this brilliant story.

I love well written alt-timeline stories.

Kudos to Steve Eley for bringing the Hugo nominees to audio for free.

Nokia 445M configuration

Here you go.
There are various pages reporting different syncs. The sync rates I found to be working are:
Horizontal: 30-79
Vertical: 50-114

Although allegedly it's supposed to as high as 90Hz horizontal but it ain't on this graphics card.

This works with openSUSE 10.0 and a crappy on-board Intel card:

Section "Monitor"
DisplaySize 370 270
HorizSync 30-79
Identifier "Monitor[0]"
ModelName "445PRO"
VendorName "NOKIA"
VertRefresh 50-114
UseModes "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
Identifier "Modes[0]"
Modeline "1280x1024" 132.75 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1067
Modeline "1280x960" 124.54 1280 1368 1504 1728 960 961 964 1001
Modeline "1280x960" 105.61 1280 1360 1496 1712 960 961 964 995
Modeline "1280x800" 134.18 1280 1368 1504 1728 800 801 804 844
Modeline "1280x800" 118.88 1280 1368 1504 1728 800 801 804 839
Modeline "1280x800" 102.80 1280 1360 1496 1712 800 801 804 834
Modeline "1280x800" 86.35 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 829
Modeline "1152x864" 115.30 1152 1224 1352 1552 864 865 868 906
Modeline "1152x864" 99.64 1152 1224 1344 1536 864 865 868 901
Modeline "1152x864" 84.44 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 865 868 896
Modeline "1280x768" 128.77 1280 1368 1504 1728 768 769 772 810
Modeline "1280x768" 113.01 1280 1360 1496 1712 768 769 772 805
Modeline "1280x768" 97.81 1280 1352 1488 1696 768 769 772 801
Modeline "1280x768" 82.91 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 796
Modeline "1024x768" 102.54 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 810
Modeline "1024x768" 90.83 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 805
Modeline "1024x768" 78.43 1024 1080 1192 1360 768 769 772 801
Modeline "1024x768" 66.33 1024 1080 1184 1344 768 769 772 796
Modeline "800x600" 76.84 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 640
Modeline "800x600" 69.65 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 637
Modeline "800x600" 62.43 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 633
Modeline "800x600" 54.47 800 840 928 1056 600 601 604 629
Modeline "800x600" 46.87 800 840 920 1040 600 601 604 626
Modeline "800x600" 39.49 800 832 912 1024 600 601 604 622
Modeline "768x576" 71.64 768 824 904 1040 576 577 580 615
Modeline "768x576" 63.82 768 816 896 1024 576 577 580 611
Modeline "768x576" 57.28 768 816 896 1024 576 577 580 608
Modeline "768x576" 49.92 768 808 888 1008 576 577 580 604
Modeline "768x576" 42.93 768 800 880 992 576 577 580 601
Modeline "768x576" 36.13 768 792 872 976 576 577 580 597
Modeline "640x480" 48.72 640 680 744 848 480 481 484 513
Modeline "640x480" 44.11 640 680 744 848 480 481 484 510
Modeline "640x480" 38.81 640 672 736 832 480 481 484 507
Modeline "640x480" 34.38 640 672 736 832 480 481 484 504
Modeline "640x480" 29.43 640 664 728 816 480 481 484 501
Modeline "640x480" 24.70 640 656 720 800 480 481 484 498
EndSection

Section "Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
Device "Device[0]"
Identifier "Screen[0]"
Monitor "Monitor[0]"
EndSection

Section "Device"
BoardName "865 G"
BusID "0:2:0"
Driver "i810"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Screen 0
VendorName "Intel"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout[all]"
InputDevice "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
Option "Clone" "off"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
Screen "Screen[0]"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection

Evo's leaving FMP!

Well, out of horse's mouth.

On the other hand, it appears that Evo's been unhappy with what he's doing lately: His words: "But I’m becoming less and less of a scifi podcaster… heck, less and less of a podcaster at all, come to think of it."

I have an other idea.

Google's cache of Farpoint's About page has the following:

Email us:
Michael R. Mennenga, Director: mike @ farpointmedia.net
Summer Brooks, Producer: summer @ farpointmedia.net
Jeffrey Willerth, Producer, West Coast Office: jeffrey @ farpointmedia.net

This is from 31st of May.

Today this link has:

Michael R. Mennenga, Michael R. Mennenga: CEO, Director
Summer Brooks, Supervising Producer, Co-Host
Jeffrey Willerth, Managing Director (West Coast office), Production Coordinator for Video and Visual Media Projects
Draco Vista Studio

Now.. There's Mike, the CEO. Where is Evo? He is not there. My totally unfounded and completely circumstantial made up theory is Evo didn't get the title he wanted, he and Mike or Summer had an argument and Evo walked out.

Well, Brian appears to know something but he's not telling us.

As they decide to put more info out, it's all speculation.

London Book Project

How cool is this!??

Sometimes I wish I lived in London - that is when I am 75 miles away from it and I'm not stuck in its traffic or when I'm not being crushed to death in its underground.