• My Life

    Why I Hate the Xbox 360

    A couple years ago I discussed my preferences for the Playstation3 and the Wii over the Xbox 360. Recently I’ve had new reason to renew my hate for that horrid device. As a quick background: I am a Microsoft guy… have always used their computers. In the last generation of consoles I owned only an xbox… never touched a playstation. In this current generation of consoles I had intended only to buy the Xbox360. (The Wii eventually tempted me and I broke down and bought it as well.) The only reason I bought the PS3 was because I was given a rebate on it from work (when I was with…

  • Writing Resources

    Reprints on various eReaders

    I’ve added a few support pages to help those of you who would like to read my story reprints on your digital devices. iTunes Amazon (Kindle) Barnes and Noble (Nook) Kobo Sony Reader Let me know if you find any mistakes in the listings and if you read the stories please let me know what you thought of them!

  • Apple - iPhone/iPad,  Brent's Toys,  Game Reviews,  Lego

    Lego Games on iPod and iPad

    Our sons (3 and 5 years old) are playing more and more with Lego, which pleases me greatly as I was a Lego kid growing up. Being a hoarder I kept most of my old Lego as well we have bought several newer sets for the kids. In the last couple months the two of them have started to show more interest in the Lego than simply playing with the vehicles and sets we assemble for them. Now they are starting to build their own things… which is awesome. The other night I decided to check the Apps store on the iPad to see if they had any interesting Lego…

  • Apple - iPhone/iPad,  Writing Resources

    iBooks store

    So yeah demonstrating the extent of my geekiness I was very pleased to notice yesterday that most of my story reprints are now available in the iBook store for Apple devices. While not quite as cool as holding a new magazine with a story of mine in it, this comes a close second. Just go into the app and go to search and type ‘Brent Knowles’. There’s a half dozen or so stories available. The only title that isn’t showing up there yet is my Writers of the Future story ‘Digital Rights’. If you check any of them out (the Prophet is free!) and are inclined to do so, I’d…

  • My Life

    Back from Vacation

    Been away for several days visiting family back in the homeland. Very pleased that I had the iPad this time around. In the past I’ve brought one of my laptops and I have to say that the iPad was more useful than they. I had no problems with battery life, maybe not quite getting 10 hrs but close and much of it on borrowed wifi. For draft writing (I finished a good portion of initial planning on the second novel) and semi-formal blog posts, the iPad is more than sufficient. Not certain I’d want to use it for final draft material but on the short vacations I take, that is…

  • My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    Pirating Product

    Pirates To be clear up front I don’t agree with pirating (copying and consuming commercial creative content without providing monetary compensation to the creator). But this post is a bit of a clarification on *what* exactly I do feel is appropriate. Creators (whether they be musicians, writers or game developers) spend a lot of time creating the content that the rest of us love to devour. I don’t know if pirating is making much of a financial impact on most industries (I’ll talk later about the impact it does have on videogames, an industry I recently retired from) but there are people in my social circles that do pirate content…

  • Brent's Toys,  My Life

    Reading PDFs with iBooks on an iPad

    With the latest version of iTunes and iBooks I can now read pdfs through the iBooks app on my iPad… this makes me quite happy as the other PDF reader I was using didn’t have bookmark support (and iBooks does). And it means one less app I have cluttering my screen real estate. I do like that Apple continues improving the usefulness of their myriad of portable devices. Yeah, I know its just to wring more money from us in the future, but still, I like seeing things improve. On the iPad I’m now currently reading the latest issue of Black Gate and a sample copy of Realms of Fantasy…

  • My Life

    More reasons I like my iPod Touch

    I don’t own a cell phone. Have only had one, once, and for a very short span of time and doubt I’ll ever own one again. I don’t understand people walking, driving, and standing at counters, talking and texting away on their little devices. In truth, I find it annoying. But… I consider myself a tech geek. And so last year I bought an iPod Touch… I’ve posted about it before and overall I really like the damn thing. There are things I hate about it — so much of its media is locked in and has DRM, the device is sealed and discourages hacking, you can only develop Apps…