Today’s Craze(s): The Xtracycle and the Hackintosh

April 12, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | 4 comments

Before we get into things, I would like to propose this post’s title for Noah Baumbach’s next feature. Done. Now, what the hell am I talking about? Let’s take the second part first.

The Hackintosh

A Hackintosh is a Mac operating system operating where it shouldn’t. My favorite current example is the Dell Mini 10V Hackintosh: a tiny, low-powered laptop intended for email and surfing — a highly portable, cheap Mac product (more usable than an iPod Touch, not tied to contract like an iPhone, and more flexible than an iPad). [update: TUAW reports that Dell has discontinued the Dell 10v altogether. Just the same, a Google search will give you other options, just not as cheap] Ever since I read the Gizmodo “how to” guide (here), I’ve wanted to try my hand at making my very own. The only problem? I just couldn’t justify spending good cash on an experimental laptop when I have a perfectly good Macbook.

Wait a minute. Who am I?

Just a few short years ago, I would’ve jumped in head first the second someone mentioned the possibility. Then, five minutes later,  I would have built it, tired of it, sold it on e-bay, then started my next hack. It’s funny what familial responsibility does to you.

Where was I?

Oh yes. So, though I pined for a Dell Mini 10V for my experiments, I did not buy one. I talked them up to friends who made the mistake of mentioning that they wanted a mac laptop were the prices not so high, and I even promised to perform the magical surgery necessary to turn the underpowered XP machine into a vibrant, happy OSX wunderkind. But I had no takers.

Then my World of Warcraft-loving Dad started talking to me about needing a smaller gadget to take  on an overseas vacation. He has a fantastic Macbook Pro that works just fine, but he thought the thing was a bit bulky for the trip. He talked about getting an iPad and I told him about it’s lamentable shortcomings (mainly the lack of USB port for working with his photos and trip videos). Shortcomings aside, the iPad wasn’t going to be available before he left.

I told him a netbook might be a worthwhile alternative. At half the cost of the cheapest iPad, it would do most of what he wanted. It could tackle e-mail, browsing, and — with a 160GB hard drive — would do basic video and photo storage just fine, though World of Warcraft was probably asking a bit much. My Mom bought the argument and ordered him a Dell Mini 10v after I pointed out the low price-point (about $250). I also touted the benefits of hacking the machine to work with OSX, but again had no takers. Off the parents went overseas, underpowered XP machine in tow.

When they returned, I asked how the netbook worked out for them. “Terrible,” my Dad said. It was slow at even the most basic tasks. Forget World of Warcraft, video and Flash games were mind-numbingly sllllloooooooowwww. My Mom hated it, too, citing a terrible trackpad in her list of gripes. I asked if they planned to return the thing, and my Mom said no. Then a bulb went off.

I promise I didn’t foresee my parents hating the machine. After all, it had pretty glowing reviews. I didn’t advise them to look at it thinking that they’d dislike it so much that they wouldn’t mind my toying with it a bit. But, you know, that’s how it turned out and stuff.

And so I made my first Hackintosh. And it was good. It’s an easy enough process (see the Gizmodo guide for the details) and it turns out a sweet Mini Mac. The netbook immediately adopted almost all of my beloved Macbook’s traits: the easy Wi-Fi access and network connectivity, Expose features, iLife apps, two-fingered (vertical and horizontal) scrolling and clicking…the case’s LED even pulses when the laptop’s asleep. Movies formatted for the iPhone ran great on the Mini 10V, and looked fine.

There are problems. The Hackintosh Mini 10V wheezes when you try to feed it high-def video, streaming video is jumpy, some windows are improperly sized for the screen (there’s a Terminal workaround, but it’s inconsistent and I wouldn’t expect my parents to use it) and online flash games like Zynga poker are a bit slow — but it’s all definitely workable and I wouldn’t expect much more from a machine with 1 GB of ram. It’s possible to upgrade the machine to 2GB of ram, but the install is difficult and I don’t think its necessary for basic computing. Also, you have to be careful about upgrades. I managed to brick the machine by installing recommended updates. Finally, the trackpad is pretty awful. I was able to tweak it to make it a little bit more palatable, but I found myself frustrated after extended sessions with the tiny, oversensitive pad. Portable wireless mice are cheap enough, though, and the Mini 10V’s USB ports make them an inexpensive and easy addition. As with the iPhone, there’s a pretty extensive community dedicated to making the Hackintosh experience better and many of these problems may be solved soon.

All-in-all, it’s an imperfect but impressive little mac. The price, size and weight make it ideal for travel. It lacks the sleekness of the iPad — and probably doesn’t run as smoothly — but its capabilities would suit me far better on an extended trip. It truly is a little laptop, not a laptop accessory.   I want my parents to give the Hackintosh OSX in netbook clothing a shot and hope to update you with their take.

Now for the second thing I’m obsessed with today…

The Xtracycle S.U.B.

S.U.B. stands for Sport Utility Bicycle, and I’ve been interested in these things for a good long time. I just recently discovered that a dude from my high school class was the co-inventor of the best-known S.U.B. frame out there: the Xtracycle. That the modification should work on my beloved Electra Townie — unlike most bike trailers — and that my younger daughter is nearly old enough for their Peapod LT seat has renewed my interest in the concept. Nine months out of the year, there’s really no excuse to use the car for in-town errands (the other three months are doable, but I am a hot weather wuss).

I’ll have more updates on these items as I learn more.

Today’s Craze: Spare Time

April 7, 2010 in Today's Craze by admin | 1 comment

There is a maxim which is probably true: “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.”

In his great book, No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty uses the phrase as a means of explaining that having all the time in the world makes lazy dogs of us all.  He should know, he founded National Novel Writing Month — a month-long writing slog involving otherwise-normal people who devote every November to churning out 50,000 word (about 175 pages) novels. What started in 1999 with 21 entrants and six finishers has blossomed into an international phenom with over 167,000 entrants and 36,000 finishers in 2009 alone.

Chris admits that most of the content the entrants create is not very good. But that, as most writers will understand, is entirely beside the point. Production is always the hardest part, sitting down and pounding out that many words is downright terrifying — and 50,000 words is a serious chunk of literary clay that can be molded into something that is good…something worth reading and maybe worth publishing. And several of the finishers went on to do just that.

Chris himself admits that he began NaNoWriMo — that’s what the cool kids call it —  because he admired authors. He and the other entrants wanted to be able to claim that they had written a full novel (according to NaNoWriMo literature, 50,000 qualifies as a “lengthy work of fiction” and serves as a “difficult but doable goal”). He spent that first year meeting with several of the other entrants in public places, spending their hours away from their day jobs producing fiction, something he’d never done in such quantity before.

After a few years, he’d written several of these NaNoWriMo novels and he decided it would make sense for him to try writing full-time. So, he did what I’ve learned many of us do. He saved up some money and arranged to take six months away from work — six blessed, carefree months when he could produce at will without the shackles of his workaday routine. And here, reader, is the really important point. Guess how much material he produced with all of that freedom, all of that time dedicated to nothing but dreaming and composing?

Nada. Or at least very little.

Why? Chris credits a lack of deadline. The very freedom he felt he needed to complete a more substantial work was his downfall. He spent his time figuring out how not to spend his time writing. He worked at doing anything but write. In his book, he writes that a deadline is essential to finishing a novel. He believes that time constraints force you to focus and complete a task that is otherwise boundless.

Okay. That makes some sense. But didn’t Chris have a deadline? After all, he’d given himself six months off of work to complete a more substantial novel. Isn’t that just the deadline for a project with a much larger scope? Chris doesn’t really address that in his book.

So I’ll take a stab at it based on my own experiences.

I gave myself two years away from work to complete one book. Ten months into my first year, I completed the task. After that, I spent a number of months on the agent-courting process, figuring out what to do next, spending time with my family, and goofing off.  Then, I started the sequel to the first book. I got about 50 pages in, then changed course and started a few other projects — one of those projects is that book I’ve almost finished, Tales from the Huge.

In this second year, a time I’ve found more difficult than the first — probably because I haven’t achieved the sort of massive success with the first book to give me the confidence to swiftly finish a second — I’ve worked entirely on concepts I dreamt up while writing the first book. And in the first year I worked entirely on concepts I conceived while working for law firms full-time. So what does this tell me?

Well, while I agree with Chris that deadlines are helpful, as are familial expectations, I think that being busy is the best tool for a writer. Writing is often a laborious business. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun, but it’s still work. And sometimes the mind drifts, or — probably more accurate — yearns for something else. And those “something else”s, the things your brain begs to do while it’s tied-up with the first something else, are often the seeds of wonderfully imaginative new projects. I think that’s part of why our nighttime dreams can be so fantastic: our bodies are stuck in stupor while our brains fly maniacally and irresponsibly free.

In our sleep, we conjure every possible fiction: horror, comedy, drama, romance, pornography, fantasy. So too do our brains fly free when tied to a task that’s really dull. In other words, when we’re busy with mundane stuff, we imagine. And when our imaginations won’t shut up, we use the time not spent on the mundane stuff — our spare time — writing down the amazing things we don’t get to do just yet. It’s like dreaming of a vacation that you’ll get to take  few months from now. What you’re doing at the present sucks, but it’s a means to an end.

And then when we finally have the time to dedicate to those new tasks — when our spare time becomes our full time job — we often find that we are not as thrilled by the idea as we were when it was just a flight of fancy, when it was a sweet-smelling brain fart. And so, as we work through and develop the now-dull ideas that were so wonderful when inaccessible, we dream up even better new things that we’d rather be doing. It’s this pent-up excitement that draws us to projects, and it is will-power, not excitement, that pulls us through to the end of a creative endeavor. It’s as though we need to enter a state of true boredom — creative ketosis, say — before we can find ourselves creatively engaged again.

So, why did Chris’s 6-month experiment in full-time writing fail? Maybe it’s because he didn’t spend enough time on the dull stuff to allow his mind to stumble onto the fun stuff that he could envision doing in the future. But maybe that’s just me.

The point is, getting busy with things we’d rather not do forces us into the things we prefer. For most of us, if we don’t dream of what we’ll do with our spare time, we don’t dream of anything.

Today’s Craze: Setbacks

April 1, 2010 in Update! by admin | 1 comment

You may wonder where I’ve been for the past few weeks. No blog posts, no updates on the books, no new poetry…what the what?

The easy answer is that we’ve been lousy with house guests for nearly the entire month of March. And last week, I —with the occasional help of my hetero lifemate Uncle Bill — drove my grandma-in-law’s furniture from Ohio to Phoenix. So, though March was full of fantastic and fulfilling experiences, it was short on actual work.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is one other, more depressing reason I’ve shied away from the blog. When I started this intertube tell-all business, a good friend told me it was imperative that I write about my successes as well as my failures. I mean, what’s more engaging than reading about someone else’s enterprise going tits up? And the journey to publication is filled with rejection, so I figured it was only natural to blog about the bumps in the road.

But then I put my book out there. And a bunch of you bought it. And I made it to the second round in the Amazon contest. And everything just felt so, so, so, so good. And then, on March 23rd, it suddenly didn’t.

March 23rd was the day they cut the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) entries down from 1,000 to 250. I checked the website incessantly, looking for the quarterfinalists’ names, certain that I’d have the good news at any moment. Finally, Amazon released the list, and I wasn’t on it. I checked the Young Adult roster to see if there’d been some mistake. Nope. I just didn’t make it. Man, was that a heartbreaker.

It’s funny. If you know me, you know I’m numb to positive feedback, but I’ll ruminate over every rejection or negative comment, regardless of the source.

As a result, I’ve shied away from commenting on this blog. I didn’t know what to say. I want to be a big writing success, I want it like nothing else I’ve ever wanted, but simply desiring it can’t make it so. Someone else — someone with juice — has to decide that I should be a success, too.

Yesterday, the ABNA released its reviews of the entries that made it to the second round. These reviews serve as our prize for making it this far, and they are released only to the author.

I got two reviews (I figure that was the norm). The first was great. The reviewer sounded a little uncertain about the path I was taking, but said that although she had no idea where the book was going or how the characters and events were connected, she wanted to read on just to see how it all would turn out. I read the review and wondered how on earth they’d held me back from the quarterfinals. I mean, I was the shizzle, right?

Wrongy-wrongy-wrong-wrong.

The second reviewer hated the developments of the first two chapters. Maybe hate is too nice a term. Maybe HATE is better. She HATED the “bait-and-switch” tactics in the first chapter, she HATED Bill and Lois MacReary — they were too “two-dimensional” — and she HATED that the second chapter was dedicated to a man and his oversized suitcase. On the other hand, she called my prose “lovely” and seemed to enjoy the scenery.

After the crush of not making it beyond the ABNA’s second round, I thought that this negative review would break me. But something strange happened. I felt grateful. The ABNA could have offered no better prize to non-winners than actual feedback from actual professionals in the publishing industry — people with juice. Feedback like this — positive or negative — is titanium-coated, pearl-drenched unobtanium to the unknown author.  The first reviewer bought my concept, the second thought it was a cruel George R.R. Martin-style joke that “bugged her immensely.” And both gave me insight that I didn’t have before. I now have something to work with, and feel ready to get back to the grind.

As an aside, “Fried Green Zombies” made it on to the quarterfinals. Best of luck to John Allen.

Today’s Craze: Perspective

March 10, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | Comments closed

You recognize this, don’t you? It’s Mattel’s LED Football game. You know, the one your older brother played in the way-back of the your gray Pontiac Parisienne station wagon? The one with the flashing red lights and constant tinny bleeps and bloops? You do? Then, congratulations, you’re officially old — just like me and Billy Corgan.

See, last week, this LED Football game was a central piece of the puzzle that made up my young adult series, Tales from the Huge. The game was a key that transported people into an alternate reality. Now, please understand, I’m not suggesting that the teens of today would know about LED Football. Some might — there’s an LED Football iPhone app, after all — but it was supposed to be something kitschy that the main character’s father recognized and tried to convince his World-of-Warcraft-loving kid to try.

Then I started telling my wife about it. She’s only a few years younger than I am, but she’d never heard of or seen such a thing. I’d like to think that maybe it was because she’s a girl — after all, what girl was playing LED Football in the early 80s? — but I don’t think so. I think the years between us obliterated a ubiquitous artifact of my childhood, a thing I wrongly assumed everyone over 25 has seen or held. And then I realized trying to find a way to describe it in a way that would satisfy a younger reader was nearly impossible.

Is it like a Nintendo Gameboy? Yeah. Sort of. I mean, it’s a video game. So it has a screen? No. No screen, but it’s still a game. So, it’s mechanical — like a little pinball machine? No, not mechanical. It’s got a bunch of little lights that represent your position on the field and some buttons that control basic actions.  I can’t picture that. I can’t describe that. I give up. Me too.

So, out goes the LED Football component of the book. And I think it’s probably a cleaner story for it. But in comes Today’s Craze: Perspective. It’s hard to remember that asserting your own vision can’t come at the price of alienating your readers — especially when those readers are two decades younger and members of a technological society that constantly refreshes itself.

Maybe that’s why the most successful young adult books stick to vampires, wizards, and mythology. These are concepts that get tweaked but never disappear entirely. These are subjects that stick when the rest of the world is in constant flux. Maybe these are ideas that appeal to teenagers and adults precisely because of their timelessness — because they exist in worlds that aren’t subject to whim.

Okay, I’m done flogging this horse. Time to get back to work.

The Inside Passage – Dedicated Website

March 2, 2010 in The Inside Passage by admin | Comments closed

Hello dear reader! Just wanted to let you know that The Inside Passage now has its own dedicated website. Check it out at www.theinsidepassagebook.com. If you have any feedback on the new site, or think something needs to be changed — or, for my Pennsylvania friends, “needs changed” — please drop me a note.

Making the Case for iPad E-Book Prices – NYTimes.com

March 1, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | Comments closed

Interesting NY Times article on the true price of books (print and e-reader editions).

Making the Case for iPad E-Book Prices – NYTimes.com.

The Inside Passage SIGG Bottle Contest Winner!

March 1, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | Comments closed

Before we get to the really fun stuff, a quick reminder: The Inside Passage is now on sale at Changing Hands Bookstore. If you haven’t yet purchased your copy, head over to Changing Hands and tell them you want your Inside Passage. Also, the digital version is still available for just $2.99, so if you’ve been on the fence, now is a great time to get the Kindle version (here) and other versions (here).

Thanks to everyone who bought or recommended the book. If you enjoyed the book, please be sure to put a review on the Amazon site and recommend it to your friends and family. Because of you, the launch weekend was a massive success!

And now, for the SIGG bottle contest winner…

Congratulations to Sue Miller, winner of The Inside Passage SIGG water bottle! Your bottle is on the way, Sue!

Sunday’s Craze: Boo’s Turn

February 28, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | Comments closed

Okay, so I totally forgot about giving the day’s craze over to Boo every Friday. In an effort to make up for this oversight, and to remember the important things in life, she gets Sunday’s Craze. Today, Boo picked…

The Sky

Boo will spend whole afternoons contemplating the exact state of the sky. Sometimes she says, “it’s overcast.” Or she’ll say, “I see clouds.” Or she’ll say, “there’s the moon!” For Boo, there can be nothing more fascinating or beautiful than the sky.

And that’s Sunday’s Craze.

Month-End Closeout

February 27, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | Comments closed

February Photo of the Month, as chosen by me

In an e-mail to The Inside Passage readers, I said that — between the ABNA news and the book launch — the week has just gotten better and better. Well, all good things must come to an end. Earlier today, I threw my back out at a kid’s birthday party and have spent the remainder of the day in bed. As a father of two, this could almost be viewed as a positive. I mean, I hear our daughters’ synchronized crying somewhere outside of the bedroom — the judges gave them a 131.4 in the event, whatever that means —  but am simply powerless to help. How awful. On top of that, I’m on the most wonderful muscle relaxers. Perhaps it’s a fine end to the week, after all.

Well, as long as I’m stuck in bed, I might as well be productive. And what better time than now to review what’s happened in our first month at jonathanhauer.com:

In just one month, we’ve covered such important topics as miraculous conception, secret doors, devil frogs, Google Voice poetry, the Prince of F$#@ing Darkness, and the word “scrumplet.” We’ve announced the launch of the debut novel by a major new voice in modern American literature. And we’re on our way to the next round in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (an award title that I still cannot type correctly all the way through)! Yes sir, I’d say it’s been an active month.

But what about the numbers, you ask?

Since launch, we’ve had well over 2,000 page-views. You’ve checked out the site from 9 countries and a majority of the states in Union. And while I am disappointed that we’ve not kept pace with the epic Kung Fu Fail (now with over 1 million views) I think we’re doing pretty well for a site dedicated to an unknown author who released his book just one week ago.

And next month promises to be even more exciting.

The first Tales from the Huge book should be in preview sometime in the next month, the next ABNA cut comes at the end of the month, and The Inside Passage will officially sit on a shelf in an actual bookstore (and in circulation in the Barnes & Noble and Sony online stores). Additionally, this month we’re cooking up a new business venture that I hope to be able to announce here sometime soon.

Exciting times, indeed.

And now, before I drop back into a relaxant-induced haze, I’d like to thank everyone who made this month such a fun and productive time:

Thanks to Scotty Hoaglund, the webmaster extraordinaire who helped me get this site up and running, and to Steph, for letting him do this on top of his already busy schedule. Please check out Steph’s website when you have a chance, it’s totally inspiring.

Thanks to the Kenneys, Bill and Kerry. Your enthusiasm is nothing short of contagious. It’s impossible to be in the dumps around you. You are the solution to seasonal affective disorder. You are creative Red Bull. I love you both.

Thanks to Jane Reddin. Your feedback and expertise have gotten this thing off to a great start. If any of my readers haven’t checked out Jane’s store, Practical Art, you must. Then, you must give it a great review on Yelp, and you must dedicate yourself to shopping locally. That is all.

Thanks to anyone who purchased The Inside Passage — available now on Amazon! — encouraged me to make it available for purchase, put a positive review on Amazon, or recommended it to your friends and family. I know money isn’t flowing as freely as it once was for most of you, and the fact that you dropped some green on my silly stories makes me immensely proud. I’m even prouder when I find out you bought two copies. And I’d be really proud if I found out you bought in the tens or twenties. Just sayin’.

No thanks to the Bouns and the Reynolds who are having a wonderful time at the Olympics right now. So jealous.

Finally, thanks to my wife and daughters. To my wife, you are the beginning and the end. There would be no book, no website, no nothin’ without you. And to my daughters who are quite advanced and can both navigate the web and read its contents, you should be sleeping right now — regardless of when you are reading this. Your mother and I just need some peace and quiet. And we love you.

To those I’ve forgotten to thank, there’s always next month. Rest assured that if you tell me I should have mentioned you, I will obsess about it far longer than necessary.

I can’t wait to see what March brings.

Round Two!

February 25, 2010 in Exciting News! by admin | 7 comments

I’m [insert cliché here] because The Inside Passage made it to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). As proud as I feel, I have to remind myself that a book called Fried Green Zombies is also in the running. Come to think of it, that’s a book I might buy. For more information about the ABNA, click here.

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