Day One, all over again

Published on June 1, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: , , , .

Today was our first day in the new place. Given the overlap we have in our tenancies we presently have two addresses. I guess we technically live at our new place as our mailing address has been switched over with Canada Post, but our asses are still residing in the old non-air-conditioned, non-mail-deliverable apartment.

After nearly all morning screwing around, signing the lease, picking up painting supplies, taking the dog to get groomed (which unknowingly became a necessity as she slept under the bed Monday and Tuesday night as it was the only cold area in the bedroom thanks to Mr Heatwave: May 1st started near freezing, literally lows of 4 and ended with a heat warning on the 31st of a humidex of 42), etc. We finally got to paint, not nearly as much as we wanted, this afternoon with the accent wall in our master bedroom. In the quasi-bastardised-Imperial measurement system used in Canada we ended up roughly the true difference between a genuine “litre” of paint and the quart they sell you as a so called “litre” of paint. Alas the wall will now get a full second coat as a 6″ section of dappled wall won’t be over-looked.

Saturday is looking to be a tackle-the-bull-by-the-horns day to get the bathroom and second bedroom painted and the second coat on the master bedrooms accent wall and we’ll be sleeping in the hopefully (if we paint it in the morning) paint fume free master bedroom on the luxury of an air mattress in the genuine luxury of an air conditioned bedroom.

The basement needs a fair amount of work, but is generally quite good considering it counts as ‘unfinished’.

Kelly seems to like the place. There was no movie-moment of her running through the paint tray and all over the house. In fact she fell asleep whilst watching us and staying out of our way, which is actually atypical of her. Although we will have to doggy-proof the back patio as she can get under the gate without effort right now.

All in all, it means busy busy Nik. ‘Official’ move in is the 18th when our apartment loses our cable and internet and the new place gets it. So it’s not likely I’m going to be getting any writing done before that date.

The Bad Reviewer

Published on May 21, 2011 in Movies and Review. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Okay, I’ve been really bad with reviews lately. Like unbelievably bad. So here goes on the last batch of movies we rented.

You Again, with Sigourney (spell check thinks that should be Eastbourne, Swinburne, Dourness or Glyndebourne – I think we’re still a far hail from a robot uprising, so we can all relax for a few years) Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis in a family ‘coming of age’ blah story. My personal edits would have left the movie with Weaver and Curtis and it would have been a hilarious, albeit short, movie. To put it succinctly they stole the show. The younger women’s story was probably around a 6/10 because while it wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t worth paying attention to and the story given to them to act was rather highschool-imaturity crap. Weaver and Curtis’ parts of the movie were easy 8/10 possibly even a 9.

Overall I’d say 6.5/10. Unless you like Weaver and Curtis in their comedy roles, you’ll get zero out of this movie beyond a bunch of young adults acting immaturely.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was great, but Nicholas Cage and Jay Baruchel are both actors you can’t go too far wrong acting. Baruchel is actually one of my new favourite actors (I watched him in Undeclared so I really can’t say favourite new actors, although certainly favourite new lead actor). The story is typical young-adult sci-fi of nerd likes girl, impresses girl = love. Albeit the story surrounding it is actually well put together and planned.

Overall I’d say 8/10. It’s fun to watch and is original enough to feel new. The acting is good quality so nothing kills your engrossment. It also very discreetly left an opening for a sequel rather than the typical BTW SEQUEL SET-UP RIGHT HERE like you get out of many young-adult targeted movies. Heck it’s Baruchel, 8.5/10.

The Switch was a good all around romantic comedy that wasn’t just about cheap and easy laughs. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston played their roles excellently, plus Jeff Goldblum was good comic relief throughout. Like a lot of Bateman’s comedic roles, he lets you find the humour. This was what I got from Arrested Development, his role in Juno and many others. He’s funny, but he’s not trying to be zany to get laughs.

Overall I’m giving this another 8/10. It was a good all around movie that only helped its own story. It was funny, it was touching and most of all it didn’t feel like the happy ending was being forced on the characters.

Country Strong again was a good movie. Gwyneth Paltrow played the alcoholic country star good. The best actor in the movie was Garrett Hedlund (IE Tron Legacy) as I fully liked the character before I caught why he felt familiar and IMDB’d him. He played a guy in the middle of it all quite expertly and he managed to make his character feel real.

Overall it’s a 7/10. Kelly Canter’s (Paltrow) twist ending was rather forced. I know things are predictable when both me and my wife are guessing it before it happens. I like a good twist, but it has to be well executed and in this case it wasn’t. So it ended with me feeling rather cheated as up until they pulled the ‘twist’ card I would have given it an 8, but don’t piss me off with the damn ending. They could have played straight into it, but didn’t.

Of Amazon and eBooks, again

Published on May 19, 2011 in News. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

And so the time has come that yet more horribly misleading, but awfully optimistic figures are being announced. eBook unit sales have matched print sales for Amazon.

Before I go any further, I’ll point to Of Amazon and eBooks. That fracas was over Amazon attempting to force lower eBook prices to help subsidize the sales of Kindle units, which thankfully was dropped fully in favour of their incentive program at 70%. It also has a full and comprehensive book pricing breakdown; what you need to know: 10% of cover price covers printing, 10% goes to the distributor and a whopping 40% is taken by the retailer, which is why Walmart manages to sell big titles at 30% and sometimes even 37% off and still make money.

Now onto the news. Amazon’s present claim is grossly misleading, eBook sales still only attribute to around 9% of the total publishing market. Total Book sales for January 2011 was at $805.7 million, and eBooks were only $69.9 million of that.

What’s actually going on?

Mass Market Paperbacks and Trade Paperback sales have been losing ground, notably Mass Markets as this is the key area where eBooks are cannibalizing the market. Why? Because eBooks are the new mass market books. They have virtually zero expenses for editorial work as this has already been done in more expensive editions. They’re released cheap and you’ll likely see the ebook copy only about 10% less than the paperback. Why? As I said, 10% of the cover price goes to printing. The 10% for distribution is still in the midst with Amazon charging kickbacks to the seller.

Hardbacks quite interestingly are still going strong, they have yet to see a true loss in sales. This may be because publishers are recognizing them for what they truly are – luxury items. They’re coming in limited editions, and I don’t doubt it’ll be long before they’re coming in boxed sets with extras and short stories, author commentary and such attached to justify a $50 cover price.

What is truly great news for the publishing industry is this: Mass Market and Trade paperback sales aren’t just disappearing into eBooks. It appears that on the whole, a portion of eBook sales are complimenting the industry, meaning eBooks might actually be increasing the amount of money people are spending on reading (which will mean in about a decade we might have some awesome book->movie adaptations going again).

So is there any really great news? Yes, there actually is. In the month of February, publishings generally low-point eBook sales were higher than any category with $90 million in sales.

Is there any awesome news?

Perhaps, if you have patience.

This story isn’t new, after all we were hearing these claims 5 years ago about MP3 sales, but they’ve been forgotten now. Perhaps we nerds just like to tout the indie stories like Amanda Hocking and all the other self-publishers doing amazingly (which incidentally aren’t included in any industry figures, electronic or paper). What’s the news? Music physical sales will hit a record low this year (estimated) at $5.7 billion, and MP3 sales will hit a record high at $5.7 billion. Although it’s entirely possible MP3 sales will finally overtake physical sales.

So what does this tell us? Aside from the fact that I haven’t played a CD in around 3 years, and haven’t bought a CD player since my Sony Discman in highschool, it tells us that in around 5 years we may see eBook sales matching total Print sales.

What will be truly amazing is that people could have a $400-million dollar market available literally at the click of an upload button. Given companies like Smashwords, distributing purely indie artists through Amazon, Apple and Sony, it could be great. Even though I’ll be sad to see the sexy hard covers go, it will be a great day for the author.

Last words? Don’t hold me on the predictions, eBooks aren’t purely cannibalizing the market like MP3′s were. We have radicals that people aren’t capable of predicting here like Ms. Hocking. I hadn’t heard a peep of her at the time of my first Of Amazon and eBooks, she didn’t publish until 2 months later and made 2 million dollars in sales in 1 year.

Which leaves me with my last words. Someone kick the crap out of me if I’m making another one of these posts without at least having an eBook up for sale.

The Apartment: A Residential Torture Story

Published on May 13, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: , , .

This story starts out with a sheet of paper. A notice to show our apartment.

On Wednesday night said slip of paper had been shoved under our doorway. Now as our apartment was torn apart for that process known as “sorting”, which is a big part of that process known as “moving”. The biggest problem of all is that Kelly’s obedience class is every Wednesday and Saturday. On Wednesday it’s from 7 to 8:30 and just so happened to be on the far side of Hamilton, so with getting dinner we weren’t home until 9:30.

We were quintessentially fucked. Suffice it to say, to have a nice tidy apartment by 8:30AM on Thursday morning, we were cleaning until 2:30AM. We spent every second working at it, and basically just threw a lot of stuff into storage totes at random. At least the job got done. Although 4 hours of sleep doesn’t make for a very happy Englishman. I think by the afternoon I’d entered a mild state of delirium as I actually ceased being tired and went into that manic frame of mind, which lasted until I forced myself to go to bed at 10:30PM.

All of which was for 5-minutes of them being in our apartment.

Although the utter nuisance of apartment living is only illustrated by the fact that at 9:40PM last night someone decided to pull the fire alarm. I think we’re currently at 5 pulls in 10 and 1/2 months. I’m glad it happened at 9:40PM when I’m wide awake and don’t feel like a complete irresponsible ass by waiting it out. If it had happened at 1AM like usual, I would have ended up outside because I’m not going to be able to react at the first sign of smoke when I have my head under a pillow shouting ‘laa-laa-laa’.

So that’s just another story of why you don’t move into an apartment.

Dare to be bad

Published on May 10, 2011 in Personal and Writing. Closed Tags: , .

In between writing I’ve been reading Dean Wesley Smith’s essays on writing. You’d probably expect to hear something at least a little more inspirational, but ‘inspiration’ is probably a myth he should tackle in his New World of Publishing essays.

Suffice it to say, it had one great piece of advice I haven’t fallen on nearly enough when I’ve been struggling: Dare to be bad. The irony here is that I started writing because I bought one too many books that I found wholly substandard and spent $5 or more on. I always found myself thinking “I could do better than this shit”. So I try and when I get stumped, I’ve often failed to think “shit, well they’re selling that crap and making a living, why shouldn’t I?”

Aside from a great voice, I don’t get why the Harry Potter franchise even managed to appear given the limited initial print run. The opening of the book relied entirely on Rowling’s voice to carry it through until it eventually hit intrigue. As a child I lost interest, it took being in my 20′s and thinking “maybe I should actually read the damn book now” to actually read the damn book. It still has massive pacing issues to say it’s allegedly a kids book (note: a book featuring a child as a protagonist doesn’t make it a children’s book).

Now, again, I’ve got to dare to be bad if I want to get anything sold. Nothing is ever forgotten on the internet, but you have to be (in)famous for a search engine to find it.

Dogs and Beds, but no dogs on beds

Published on May 9, 2011 in News, Personal and Pets. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

It’s almost been a month since I posted, and then I barely posted in April so I don’t think that counts either. So Nik’s putting himself back into writer mode, and apparently into the third person too.

We’re busy in the midst of putting Kelly through obedience classes, which are going amazingly. I can’t give higher praise for Brad Pattison’s program. I find it rather hilarious that people criticise him and his program, despite it getting results and dealing with the dogs rejected from the commercial dog training programs like pet smart.

The other time sap right now is the apartment and moving. We have a lot to pack and get ready, but thankfully we have a whole month to do the move. So I don’t think we’re overly concerned. If we had to be out on the 31st, this would presently be those few slow-motion seconds as you see the dog turd drifting towards unprotected fan blades.

Along with the plans of moving, I’m planning on constructing a wooden bed, which is going to be an exceptionally fun project. I’m going for maximum sturdiness as I only plan on building it once and for it to survive not only me and my wife, but the future possibility of kids jumping on it. I have memories of my brother throwing me through my bed, quite literally I ended up ass on floor with the mattress pinning me in place against the side rail. Thankfully we had a second set of slats in the garage so I still had a bed to sleep on that night.

That childhood incident is partially the inspiration for why I want to construct my own bed. Basically because all the ones in stores today are shoddy as all hell. As we’ve currently got our bed frame propped up on books, it certainly tells me that steel bed frames aren’t any stronger.

Club 54 and a Blizzard

Published on April 17, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: , , .

We went to Comedy at Club 54 last night for one of their charity fundraisers and saw the hilarious Ben Guyat. It was a great night, the acts weren’t as funny as Guyat, but that’s always to be expected (don’t show up your host). Although whomever was up first was quite funny, I can’t recall names (the Molson brewers are responsible for another memory lost to a good time, I hope they can live with themselves!), in a crude way.

We also just randomly got a blizzard, in the middle of April. There’s no evidence, or trace left. But for some bat-shit crazy reason we got an hour long blizzard when they’ve been calling for virtually no precipitation for today all week.

Mother Nature – that bitch is crazy.

Men can nag too!

Published on April 10, 2011 in Games and Personal. Closed Tags: , , .

For the past few years I’ve been pressuring my wife to pick up a controller and play games she wouldn’t ordinarily try with me. I doubt I’m going to get her into an abstract game like a real/turn based strategy, simply because there really isn’t many introductory games in the market. I got into Strategy games through The Settlers II, where there was a minimum of combat for the first 6/7 levels until you was squarely into how to plan and coordinate. I then got into C&C Red Alert shortly after. My defining moment, like most RTSers, was the sheer immensity of Total Annihilation.

I also doubt I’ll ever get her to play an RPG. There’s too much journey. Final Fantasy 7, Zelda, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and OMG Fallout 1 & 2 that epitomized the awesomeness of the genre for me, and TES: Morrowind.

So I wasn’t fully expecting my wife to ever pick up a controller and play Halo with me, but I was delightfully surprised that she actually did exceedingly well for a first timer (well we won’t count Golden Eye on the N64). We played the original, and it might become a regular occurrence to coop them as we play through the series.

A post about time, dogs, and chocolate cake

Published on March 30, 2011 in Personal, Pets and Writing. Closed Tags: , , , , .

So I’m eating a lovely piece of double-chocolate cake left over from my birthday. Why am I eating delicious cake at almost 10pm? It isn’t because I just finished an awesome gourmet dinner (although I did make a yummy dinner earlier, but that’s four hours ago now). It’s because we just got back from Kelly’s obedience class and took her on a half-hour walk, meaning we didn’t even get in our front door until 9:40pm.

Well, that’s a lie, I got in at around 5pm and made dinner and got cleaned up to take the dog to obedience class. My wife got back around 5:30pm and took the dog out for a half-hour walk and ate dinner.

Why am I saying this? I honestly don’t know, perhaps so a random morphine addict can stab me with a needle and sedate me so I actually get some rest.

I haven’t written in a few days, which bugs me. I need to haul my ass to Writer Obedience classes so I learn not to procrastinate. Although I feel more like marching Mr Procrastination out back down by the creek and blowing its head off with a shotgun. Not so much because I dislike procrastinating, I quite enjoy it which is the whole problem for me doing it so much. It’s because if I didn’t procrastinate and actually finished one of the half-dozen half-finished stories I have, I stand the off-chance of actually selling something and resolving this problem.

Although if I ever do become a writer for a living, I feel like I’m going to look back on this and feel like marching younger Nik down to the creek and blowing his brains out.

23

Published on March 26, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: , , .

As of present I am about 8400 days old, which also means I’ve been alive for the approximate figure of 12-million minutes. These figures really mean nothing besides it is my 23rd birthday, which actually means this is my 24th year of life.

Although if you count the time I gestated, I still have about 3 months to hit the point my life actually began. Which, had I not gone to an all boys highschool, this thought would have likely broken my mind. However the “You know your parents had sex” game was a frequent hit. The best I remember was someone pointing out, just before Christmas break, that Christmas was likely the day he was conceived (going on the special occasions theory of procreation).  It really kills someone’s Christmas spirit when you make it remind them of their parents fornicating… and that’s why children are evil!

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