Category Archives: Media

State of the eReader

When the nook first came out, I fell in love. It was the first e-reader I’d found that I could actually use and enjoy. I still have it, and though it’s suffered a hairline crack in the page turn button from sheer overuse, in many ways it’s better today than the day I bought it, thanks to excellent software updates along the way.

That’s not to say that it’s still the best reader out there.

(insert collective gasps here)

In fact, I’d say that there really isn’t a “best” reader to buy right now, but a whole lot of options for different reading habits. There’s too many for me to look at all of them here, but I did take a look at the most recent and most common readers available for people in the US. Here’s my short, quick and easy shopping guide: Continue reading

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Hunger Games: Why in the world did I love this book?

I’m confused.

Not that this isn’t a normal state for me, but this time I have a reason. I loved a book that I wasn’t supposed to.

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nook: not a gadget

Disclaimer: No, I don’t get any money from Barnes and Noble or anyone else for touting the nook. I spend most of my time giving money to them in exchange for still more books.

I wasn’t planning on writing a post about my nook for two reasons: first, I kinda already did with my rant about the iPad, and second, I think I’ve established my love for it such that anyone who reads this blog will not need reminded.

But then I saw the need.

I was explaining the nook (The people at B&N, for reasons entirely their own, do not capitalize “nook”…hence the title of this post, as capitalizing just the other words gave me nightmares.) to a friend over the phone who knew that I recommended it, when she stopped me with this statement:

“Yes, but you know, you’ve always been more of a gadget person than I am.”

I blinked. I very nearly dropped my phone. Of course the above statement is a correct one – I am a gadget person – however there was one glaring error.

The nook is not a gadget. Continue reading

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Why You Should Play Dragon Age. Again.

I am somewhat slow to complete video games, as a general rule.

For example, I finished Portal, for the first time, a few months ago. Portal was first released in 2004. It was a relief to finally understand all the cake jokes, although I did identify with this a little too much.

Many games I simply leave unfinished. I played FF X-2 to within probably 4 hours of 100% completion, got to a part I didn’t like and just stopped. The reason for this is simple – I play video games because I enjoy the story. More often than not, the actual gameplay tends to bore and annoy me after mere hours. Expressed in a simple equation:

desire to see how the story turns out < amount of suffering from actually playing the game = point I turn off the game system This also explains why I consider watching my husband play through a game as essentially the same thing as me playing through it. So when I tell you that I have completed Dragon Age:Origins three times, one of which I actually held the controller for the entire time, and that I and my husband have additionally started five more characters and logged well over 200 hours of gameplay, you can surmise the following:

Damn. Good. Game. Continue reading

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The new Harry Potter movie is out, and by the timing of this post you may infer that I saw it fairly early on. As a matter of fact, yes, I did go see a midnight showing on opening night/morning. And yes, I did wear a costume. If you feel the need to mock me, go ahead, I’ll wait.

All done? So, given the above information, you probably already know what I’m going to say below. Here, I’ll sum up for you: some good parts especially a few scenes done well and Slughorn/Snape/Draco were awesome, they changed things I didn’t want changed, the kids still can’t act, but I’ll probably buy the Blu-Ray and wait anxiously for the next movie. There we go. Everything below can now be considered a nit-picky rant from a serious fan of the book.

Ok then. Let’s talk about the Half-Blood Prince. (no spoilers, but I am going to talk about it in general terms, so if you don’t want to know *anything*, you’ve been warned) Continue reading

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Darwin’s Black Box

Evolution has always interested me, both as a theory and as a philosophy (some might even say faith). Science is basically just figuring out how the world and things in the world work, and I love that kind of stuff. It makes perfect sense to try and figure out where we came from using the tools of science if at all possible. I am, however, a believer in Yeshua (Jesus), and so the concept of intelligent design has a great appeal to me and is generally more the direction I tend to lean. So, given that I’ve read plenty of books on evolution in my lifetime (much of it required reading for school, I admit), I thought it would be beneficial for me to read one of the main books that started the ID movement – Darwin’s Black Box – the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.

That, and I thought it’d be nice to demonstrate here that I do read non-fiction. Occasionally. Continue reading

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Top 3 Reasons to (still) Jailbreak an iPhone

There was an article on Lifehacker recently that asked if people still jailbroke their iPhones and if so, why? After all, the new 3.0 OS adds most of the things that you used to have to jailbreak for, right? Right?

Maybe not. Continue reading

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To Say Nothing of the Dog

Very few sci-fi books are set in Victorian England, and for good reason. There’s usually a shocking lack of advanced technology there, for example. Or ideas about the future of mankind. Or time travel. (yes, that last one is key) Continue reading

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UP

Here’s what I love about Pixar: Most of the entertainment industry is capable of making a great kids movie, which adults can watch and enjoy too. Pixar makes great adult movie, which kids can watch and enjoy too. Continue reading

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7 Reasons to Write Fan Fiction (and one reason not to)

There are some people who believe that there are two kinds of writers in this world – real and fan fiction. While, granted, there is a lot of bad fan fiction out there, there’s also a far bit of horrible “real” fiction, so it seems to me that the stigma of writing fan fiction must have more to do with the idea itself than the products that come out of it. This is something that strikes me as unwarranted.

I write fan fiction. There, I said it. I’m also a published author, and yes, I do think there’s a connection. So let me share my top few reasons why I think writing fan fiction can be worthwhile and even really helpful for any budding fiction writer. Continue reading

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