E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
So the previous four days have been quiet around here because …ta da!… I took a vacation.
First one since last year.
I couldn’t go very far away from home and it was a part of a “family” event at my younger daughter’s University yet we wound up not doing much there and instead headed to Orlando for a couple of days at the parks there. The first date was at Epcot and my wife in particular wanted to go there as they are doing their annual Food and Wine Fest and you get a chance to try out all kinds of world-wide fair.
One has to be careful, however, to not binge too much!
The next, and last day, was spent at the Magic Kingdom and…
…damn were there a lot of people there.
Used to be we Floridians knew there were certain dates you could go to the Parks (any/all of them) and there would be scant crowds to deal with and, therefore, very manageable lines to the various rides.
Used to be October was part of that time period as most people were knee-deep into their jobs/school/etc.
Apparently, that’s changed.
At one point, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, one of the Magic Kingdom’s newer and more popular rides, was listed as having a wait time of 180 minutes.
In other words, you had to wait in line three hours to go through what amounts to maybe a 1-2 minute long ride.
Sheesh.
Anyway, if you’re hoping to sneak into the area and not face big crowds, at least with regard to Magic Kingdom, you won’t have any luck.
The whole thing is becoming so damn depressing and I suspect the outcome -barring any major curve ball event- is already decided, at least when it comes to who will be president.
Fascinating article found on the Guardian notes that George Melies’ Match de Prestidigitation, a film he created in 1904 and thought lost, has been found in the Czech Film Archive…
Those who are unfamiliar with George Melies, at least by name, likely know him for Le Voyage Dans La Lune, a 1902 (!) short which is considered the very first science fiction film ever made…
The following photograph has been trending of late:
As you can see, this individual has taken the cliched bathroom mirror selfie picture using his smartphone with one very non-cliche difference: He did this while giving himself a “high five”.
Wow, many have said.
What goes up must come down, I say. It may seem obvious, but…
The web title for the article is “Microsoft Word haters have it all wrong” and the first sentence of the article states the following:
The normal way to feel about Microsoft Word, I’ve gathered, is somewhere on a spectrum from muted tolerance to outright hatred.
Ms. Schwedel goes on to note she really likes Word, despite some “general consensus” which views the program negatively.
I guess I’ve been in a cave all this time.
As an author and someone who uses Microsoft Word on a near daily basis, I agree with Ms. Schwedel that Microsoft Word is…good, though I’m baffled by the “general consensus” against it.
As an author I’m pretty much always on the lookout for good word processing programs and in my lifetime I’ve tried many of them, always in the hope they’d be even better than Word. I’ve tried Scrivener, Word Perfect, Works, Screenwriter, Open Office, etc. etc. etc.
Despite all the variety of choices, I’m always coming back to Word.
This is my personal favorite word processing program yet I can understand if others don’t like it. It’s about what works for you, of course.
The comments section of the article provides some peoples’ opinions as to why they prefer other programs but, as I said before, to each their own.
Word simply “works” for me the best and perhaps familiarity is a big part of the reason. I’ll I’ll still keep my eyes open for other word processors yet at this late stage in my life/career it seems more and more likely Word will stay my go to word processing program until up until I type out my last creative works.
Let’s face it, this world is all about Smartphones. Everyone has one. Everyone is on one, seemingly, at all hours of the day.
We use them to communicate (duh) with others, to search for restaurants, hotels, etc. etc., we use them to order things, to take photographs…you name it.
The two big smartphone companies, of course, are Apple and Samsung.
As most of you know, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was their big new release of the year…
The phone was released and had incredibly good reviews. It sold well.
And then, of course, came the problems…
For those who live under a rock, it turned out the phone had a very real, and very scary problem: It could overheat to the point where it caught fire. Several reports came to light of this danger, including one report of a man whose Samsung phone exploded while in his pants and allegedly badly burned him.
The reports built and built and Samsung was slow to deal with the issue. They eventually told people to return their phones for a replacement, but the replacement phones’ release wasn’t specified, irritating clients who wanted a “safe” version of the phone. Further, there was confusion between the various cell phone companies and Samsung regarding the specifics of the return/replace policy.
Then the replacement phones showed up and things looked to turn, at least a little bit.for the better.
Until, that is, reports surfaced that a few of the replacement phones also burned up.
Now, Samsung has officially killed off the Note 7…
According to the above article, by Charles Riley and K. J. Kwon and presented on CNNmoney, the company stands to lose a bundle because of this (I bolded the mind-boggling profit loses):
Giving up on the Note 7 will be costly. Analysts at Nomura estimate the total hit could reach $9.5 billion in lost sales and wipe out $5.1 billion of profit.
What’s even more eye opening is what comes in the very next paragraph of that same story:
But Samsung, which has a market value of about $194 billion and annual sales of $179 billion, should be big and profitable enough to weather the loss of one model.
So…I guess it’s all good?!
Why did I get into writing when I could have gotten into making smartphones?!?
Yesterday, after much delays (thanks, Hurricane Matthew), I finally finished up the revisions for draft 11b of my latest Corrosive Knights novel.
Last update I noted that I thought everything was good and that after that draft was done I’d probably do one more full draft and be done with the novel.
Not so fast.
As I’m writing the revisions into my Word file, I’m essentially doing another revision of the novel as I go along. Things were humming really nicely until I got to the last chapters of the book and realized there was some stuff that needed further clarification.
Now, for those eager to get their hands on the book -I know you’re out there, right?!- don’t despair: The problems I found amounted to only 3 chapters of the book’s nearly 80 chapters and a total of 8 pages, single spaced.
I strongly suspect I’ll get through these revisions, which I’ll label draft 11c, in the next few days and then its off to the full, and final, draft.
So we’re dealing with at best a minor hiccup here.
When the 2016 Summer Movies started coming out, like all movie fans I checked up on them to see which ones I would catch, whether it be in theaters (given my limited spare time, a hard thing to accomplish) or on home video.
Many of the films released in the summertime and by the studios tend to be big budgeted, effects heavy works aimed at almost all audiences. It isn’t often a “big” summer release has anything more than a PG-13 rating.
Anyway, while looking over the upcoming films, the R-rated The Nice Guys got my attention. First and foremost, the film was directed and co-written by Shane Black, the man who wrote many of the better action/buddy comedies of recent memory, including the original Lethal Weapon, and The Long Kiss Goodnight and who returned to the genre with the excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) before more recently directing Iron Man 3.
Naturally I was intrigued. When I saw the red band trailer (NSFW!) for the film, I was downright fascinated…
Which makes what I have to say next so agonizing: The movie turned out to be a disappointment.
Don’t get me wrong: There are plenty of laughs to be had, though the biggest ones are already spoiled by the above trailer.
Going beyond that, the movie had several problems which kept me from grading it much more than just a little above average.
To start with, the mystery the characters are trying to solve is never all that engaging. When all is said and done, it proves to be rather silly, as it involves a porn film that exposes dirty dealings in the car industry (!).
The next big problem, again to me, was that the film skewed too far in the direction of comedy. Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight worked because despite their comedic elements -more of which were present in the former than the later- there was always a sense that our heroes were in danger. This is never the case in The Nice Guys. While people are shot and killed, I never felt our heroes faced any real danger. Add to that the fact that the villains presented are mostly bland henchmen, and not particularly fearsome ones at that, and any sustained suspense is dissipated.
What also hurt the movie’s overall sense of suspense was the fact that Ryan Gosling’s character had a daughter, played by Angourie Rice, who winds up being one of those young children who are far too wise for their own good and, more importantly, gets put into the middle of the investigation and thrown into the movie’s bigger actions scenes which further dissipate the danger our heroes face.
Why is that? Because I just knew Mr. Shane -and I’m certain the studios/investors- didn’t have the guts to put a 13 year old character in danger of getting hurt, much less killed. So when she’s in the movie’s biggest action sequences, I never felt the characters, and her, were in any danger and that dulled whatever excitement Mr. Black was trying to present.
Having said all that, I again will reiterate: The film made me laugh at various points and I’d be lying if I said it was a complete bust. As I noted before, the film was a little above average and, if I were to rate it based on 1 to 4 stars, I’d give it 2 and 1/2 stars.
The NIce Guys was watchable, certainly, and at times very amusing. I just wish it had excited me much more.
Looks like my area is going to dodge this particular bullet as we’re under a Tropical Storm watch and the latest models suggest the worst part of the storm will not come near enough to us to cause any real damage.
That’s not the case further up north.
I lived three wonderful years in Jacksonville, Florida and attended High School there in the very early to mid-1980’s. I love the large yet small town atmosphere and, maybe one day, I might return.
What I have noticed in the years since living in Jacksonville is that apart from south Florida, most of the middle to upper east coast of Florida, including Jacksonville, haven’t experienced a hurricane, much less one a category 3/borderline Category 4, since well before I went to High School in those parts over thirty years ago.
I worry the amount of time between dangerous Hurricanes may make people less concerned about what’s to come. Based on some of the things my daughter has heard from others, I fear there are some (hopefully not many) up there in Jacksonville who are either blase or simply unaware/ignorant of the dangers a hurricane of this magnitude represent.
In my lifetime I’ve experienced several hurricanes, the worst of which were Hurricane Andrew (1992) and Hurricane Wilma (2005). I also experienced the eye of a much weaker Hurricane Katrina (also 2005), then a category 1 storm, as it went over our house before eventually going on its way to destroy New Orleans.
Each and every experience proved terrifying and I’ll be extremely blunt here: Hurricanes are nothing to fuck with.
Even a category 1 storm has the potential to mess up your property and, especially if you’re foolish enough to be outside when it hits, your life.
Heed the warnings of local and state officials. Do not take this storm lightly or as a curiosity.
A quick synopsis (but please, go read the article!):
Now that marijuana is legal in Colorado and Washington, a new study has found that…
The electricity needed to illuminate, dehumidify, and air-condition large (marijuana) growing operations may soon rival the expenditures from big data centers, which themselves emit an estimated 100 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year.
