• 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…

  • Review,  Writing Resources

    Review Present at the Future

    Present at the Future by Ira Flatow was a book I saw recommended by several sci-fi authors as being a nice overview of some of the big topics in science in the last couple decades (cloning, string theory, nanotech and such). Overall I enjoyed it… a nice idea fest. Many topics I’ve been exposed to previously but haven’t really followed up since their original announcements. I thought the sections on Alternative Energy quite interesting as were sections on medical advancements I wasn’t aware of. Some of the writing was a little rough — you’ll notice this complaint on Amazon reviews — though I think I’d blame a lot of this…

  • Writing Resources

    Stories — who do they belong to?

    I absolutely hate being locked into specific hardware or software in order to read an eBook and its one of the reason’s I’m mostly in pause mode, in regards to purchasing new books. When the next great device comes along, perhaps with some of the features current eBook devices lack, I want to be able to move my books over. Richard Curtis recently summarized an article by Cory Doctorow in which Cory discussed his dislike for “roach motel devices” — eBook readers like the Kindle that didn’t let you actually own the stories and novels you’ve purchased. I encourage you to read the article, available through the link previous. After…