Daily Shoot Week-End Roundup

Last week, I found a really cool website called dailyshoot.com through a blog that I follow. They give a new assignment every day and when you complete it, then upload it and share. It's been really helpful for me, because even though you don't HAVE to do it every day, I still try. That gets me out and about, taking my camera with me, snapping photos, and picking my favorites. I've been posting them daily on a new tumblr account. Here are the pictures I took this week. Click to go to my Flickr page. You can also see a larger version of the photo.  If you have a flickr/yahoo account, please comment if you like the pictures! More next week!

Assignment for Sunday: Make a photo where two things meet.
My first ever Daily Shoot wasn't really impressive to me. I chose to feature a plug meeting a socket.

Assignment for Monday: Orange!
I made a little face with two halves of an orange and the knife I used to cut it. D:


Assignment for Tuesday: Make a photo that illustrates whether it's more like winter or spring where you live. (Groundhog Day Assignment.)
I took my dog to the off-leash dog park, to take pictures of the bare trees, but I saw her sniffing the clovers. It had been raining all day, and there was some nice dew forming. Viola, spring!


Assignment for Wednesday: Make a "sharp" photo today, any way you interpret it, either tack-sharp focus or a subject that is sharp itself.
I took my camera into Wal-Mart's garden section and snapped some shots of the cacti. look pretty pointy!


Assignment for Thursday: Contrasting ideas engage the mind. Make a photo today that tells a story with contrasting elements.
I took two apples and sliced them in half, then glued them together with powdered sugar mixed with water. Had to take this one twice, since it turned out blurry the first time and I'd already eaten the green apple. Mmmm...


Assignment for Friday: Make a photo that goes with the title of a movie you've seen, interpreted any way you like!
I went for "The Birds." Took this picture from the backseat of my car because I didn't want to go into the drizzle with my camera. That was awkward...

Assignment for Saturday: Curves carry the eye along with them. Make a photo that creates a sense of movement with curves today.
I went to the fountain store near my house and took pictures of the fountains. Not too much curve, but all the little ridges are curving, plus I just thought the picture turned out cool!

I said I wasn't going to want one...the Apple iPad.

As some of you may know, I'm an electronics junkie. I love computers, I love new devices, and I also love all things Apple, ever since I got my first blue iPod mini that I had to beg my parents to buy.

I've been following the rumors about the Apple Tablet since they started popping up. I almost considered not getting a nook because of the Apple Tablet rumors. Leading up to this event, I firmly said, no, I don't want one. Why do I need one? I have an iPhone, iMac, and MacBook. What makes this new device so special? What makes it necessary?

As I thought, it does look like an overgrown iPhone/iPod touch. But I love my iPhone! The iPad looks slick and watching videos of it operating, it's fast and nimble. You just want to reach out and touch it. It's got such a wide viewing angle that you can sit on the couch and watch it with a friend. So yeah, the bottom line is, I want one. Why? Because it's shiny, I'm a consumer, and yeah, it's shiny! Also, it's about half the price I thought it would be if I were to get the 16 GB model. Though I'd probably spring for the 3G one, which would add $130 to the final price tag. Everyone was saying that they would be about $1,000, which I thought was way too much, but this price is much more reasonable.

Looking at all the accessories you can get for it, I think it would actually be pretty neat for writing. You can use a bluetooth keyboard or one that connects to the dock and it will stand on its own, or you can use the touchscreen one that's about the size of a laptop keyboard but I don't know about that for touch-typing. I tried to use a netbook for the last NaNo, because I didn't want to carry my laptop to work, and while I don't think the iPad will be small enough to take to work and use on my lunch break, I think it would still be easier to get some writing done on the fly and around the house and also at write-ins. Here's to hoping I can get Scrivener on it! Otherwise, I'll be stuck using Pages, which isn't too awful, but I love Scrivener.

As for ebooks on the iPad. I don't like the idea of reading on this device. I'm not going to take the iPad with me to work and read it on my lunch breaks, and I'm not going to take it into bed with me and read books on it. That's what my nook is for. The purpose of e-ink screens on ereaders is that the screen does not hurt or stress the eyes while you're reading for a long time. I don't want to spend a lot of time reading with this backlit device because it's the same as a computer screen. The battery on my nook will also last longer than that on the iPad, even though the iPad is supposed to last for 10 hours on wi-fi (no numbers for how long it'll last on 3G yet). My nook fits in my purse, while this nearly-10 inch device will not. I will possibly buy books on the iPad (assuming I get one), but only those that I cannot get on my nook. Some publishers do not offer certain books through Barnes & Noble, and they may offer it on the iPad.

Apple's done it again. They've made me crave their newest shiny piece of glass, metal, plastic, and silicone. Now I have two options: read all the scathing reviews that will inevitably come out of this (most of them from Apple haters) and convince myself that I don't need one, or find a way to save up for this thing while I'm also paying bills, paying off the credit card, and paying back my IOU's. Good thing I'm getting a good amount of money back from my income taxes! Or maybe as a birthday present in May. Yeah mom and dad, I'm hinting!

Playing with my Macro Lens

As some of you may know, I received a macro lens for Christmas. I've been able to play with it for about three weeks now and it's been a lot of fun. I'm really excited for spring and summer to come around, because I think I'll be able to get some really great shots of flowers and insects. Here's what we've gotten so far. Most of these pictures were taken back home at the houses of my parents or my in-laws.

A few other things before I go on to the pictures. Click on the pictures to enlarge for full detail. You'll miss it otherwise! Please leave comments about what you think. I know this is all amateur but I'm hoping that with practice, I'll continue to get better. I may even venture into some stock photography or try to sell a few prints here and there. Many of these images are mostly unedited, so if you have any editing suggestions, let me know. I'm only posting a few of the pictures I have uploaded, so if you want to see all of the macro pictures, check out the Flickr Set.

This is a statue outside the house. It's been there for a while, so the paint is eroding nicely.

Here's an second shot I took of the paint, a more in-depth shot of what the weather's been up to.

Here's another statue that Brandon got a nice shot of. After these few statues, I really want to go into a historic cemetery and go to town. I think I could get some really nice shots.

The branches of a yucca plant, I believe. In all its spiny glory. 

The keys of an antique typewriter that was given to me for Christmas. I added the sepia effect because the picture color ended up an off-blue and not very attractive.

Water flowing off of the stone waterfall of a swimming pool.

So that's that. There are more on the Flickr Set, but I don't want to make a huge picture post, so if you check them out, let me know what you think!

My thoughts: Under the Dome, by Steven King

Last night, I finished Steven King's newest novel, Under the Dome. Under the Dome is a whopping 1074 pages in print and 823 pages on my nook (though when you change the page on your nook, it doesn't always change the page count, so who knows...). For comparison, the thickest Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, was 870 pages.

To preface the rest of this post, I will just say that I'm not some die-hard Steven King fan. I haven't read very many of his books, though I am familiar with his work. I've read Carrie and On Writing, and I think that's about it. Basically, this is not a review coming from someone that's going to compare it to his other writing. Just so you know. I will also say that I'm not doing this to give spoilers. I am going to write this post with general thoughts on the book and try my best not to spoil anything for anyone. If anyone leaves a comment, please do not post a spoiler.

Under the Dome is a great nook book. Considering it's massive size, when people ask me what's so great about an e-reader, I just have to reference this novel. I can't shove this book into my purse. It weighs a ton, and not to mention, it's huge. It isn't something that I could have carried around with me to read on my lunch break at work. It's just huge. Enough about the physical, though, I want to talk about the story itself.

Premise
The idea of Under the Dome is simple in concept: an invisible barrier suddenly appears that separates the town of Chester's Mill from the outside world. Initially, no one knows why it is there or where it came from or how to get rid of it. The book follows several characters throughout the story as events unfold and they try to figure out how and if they can escape from the dome.

Characters
Steven King does a great job of creating a bad guy. What I like about this book is that it's a great example of character profiling. As an aspiring writer, I think this book is a great example to look at as an example of how to create realistic characters that readers can love and hate. 

I'm only going to talk about one character here, because he's the one that I thought Steven King did the best job on. This character is named Big Jim. While not a really enjoyable character and definitely not a good guy, is a wonderful creation. He is someone that you can really loathe, but Steven King also makes you wonder, is he pure evil or is he doing what he's doing because he believes it is his duty to do it? Was he a deluded God-freak who thought he was justified and doing God's work or was he cold and calculating? As a writer who struggles with characters the most, it is interesting to see how he creates people that you can imagine seeing and meeting. These characters are real enough to be real people, with back stories and families and their own phrases and speech patterns. The rich characters are probably the main meat and potatoes of the book. They move along the action in the story mainly from how they interact.

Slowness
Yes, the book does move slowly. Would you imagine a 1000+ page book to have action on every page? Though there is a lot that happens in the book, and I would say that it never was dull. And, while I won't be re-reading it anytime soon since it's so long, it is something that I would like to revisit eventually. I think a re-read would be interesting, to catch things that I may have missed before.

One of the main reasons it felt so slow to me was because of all the foreshadowing that Steven King used. Early in the book, he hints at disaster, evil things to come, fire, etc. Halfway through the book, he's still hinting.  3/4 of the way through, still hinting. It's almost agonizing, but it also makes you want to keep reading. You want to know what's going to happen. You want to know if all of the terrible things that he's hinted at will actually come true.

Death
Death in the book seems very abrupt. There is a lot of it, but it's treated with coldness. "[Insert name] died." Alright, let's keep going then.

Time
Time in the book was the strangest part. Since it's so long, it seems like it would take place over a huge amount of time. Considering everything that happens in the book, it's amazing that it only takes place over about a week's span. The characters often mention how long the dome has been there, because it seems like what has taken place would take weeks or months of being trapped under the dome, but everything seems intensely accelerated. If the characters hadn't mentioned the time, I would have completely lost track of it to the point where the days would have turned into weeks in my mind. (And yes, a lot of the death in the book feels that abrupt.)

Final Thoughts
I will say this about the book in relation to the ending. Under the Dome is not a "feel-good" book. But considering Steven King, were you really expecting that? I did enjoy the book, and as I said before, I will probably read it again when I get the chance to sit down and read it. It took me about a two weeks to read. I would recommend it to friends, but probably not to family. My mom wouldn't like it. Neither would my mother-in law or any of my other religious family members. I wouldn't necessarily say that it is explicitly "anti-religious," but from the general feeling you get from the characters and events in the book, a religious person would probably get fed-up with it. It also deals with subjects like murder, rape, and suicide, so it's not warm and fuzzy.

My final word on this book is this: It's entertaining. If the book kept my attention through 1000+ pages, it's got to be entertaining. If I'm bothering to write about it, it had to entertain me. I liked it, and that's all that matters to me. It was worth the $10 I spent on the e-book and if I didn't have an e-reader I probably would have spent the full price on it, though I don't think I would have read it as fast. That would have been a book to sit on my nightstand and read before bed. I wasn't going to cart it around with me. I think now I'm going to read a book that I've long-neglected: Dracula.


Questions? Comments? Tell me what you thought of the post and if you read the book, let me know what you thought of it. Do my thoughts match up with yours or was I just completely off in my own world?
http://arielle-writing.blogspot.com/

New Year's Resolutions and Goals: What I expect from 2010

It's a new year and an obligatory resolution post. I'm back in Houston from the weekend with more Christmasy goodies from my grandpa and I'm still alive despite playing with explosives, I finished my puzzle, and I'm watching Brandon get headshots with his buddies on the XBox. Here are my resolutions and my goals for 2010.

Resolutions:
1. I will eat healthier and exercise more. Saying I'll exercise more is easy because right now I don't really exercise. I'm going to try to get Brandon out of the house more and take the dogs for walks. I want to take the dogs to the dog park and get a muzzle for Lucky so he won't be able to attack other dogs if they run up to him. I'm going to buy more fruits and vegetables and actually cook and eat them. We will eat more chicken and salad and less junk, find an alternative to sodas and cut back on sugar.

2. I will cook more homemade meals. I have tons of cookbooks that were given to me that I need to actually use. Hamburger Helper is easy, but it's also not very healthy.

3. I will be less forgetful. I left my nook at my parents house in Killeen and realized it once we were half an hour down the road to Houston. I begged Brandon to go back to get it and he did, but it still made him mad and it made our trip longer. I know it upsets him when I forget stuff, which I happen to do often, and I need to get better at it. This goes hand in hand with organization. If I were more organized, I would probably forget less.

4. I will blog more. I always have post ideas, but then I just get lazy.

5. I will clean more often. The house gets too messy mostly because I'm lazy or because we go out of town a lot. I need to keep the house cleaner and more organized.

6. I will procrastinate less. This kind of goes along with my laziness theme.

7. I will take more pictures, and get better at using my macro lens.

8. I will go to bed earlier, so I'm not so tired at work, even if Brandon does call me a wuss.

Goals:
1. To edit one of my novels and self-publish through Createspace. Because I won NaNo, I will get a free copy of my book whenever I do it, I just need to do it. I have several novels that need to be edited, I just have to do it.

2. To win NaNoWriMo again. That's not till November though, so I'm good. I will need to have an idea for it though.

3. To finally get the furniture we need in our house. We still need a real bed for our master bedroom and maybe a dresser or something. We also need a dining room table that seats more than four.

4. To get rid of all the cardboard boxes. Maybe I can get Brandon to get rid of his trash.

5. To fully move out of my parent's house. I still have stuff there that I've never brought to Houston.

6. To lose this belly. That goes with the exercise and healthy diet resolution.

7. To take some pictures that I might actually be able to sell.

8. To build our savings back up, so we have money in case of an emergency.

9. To spend less money on frivolous things, so we can buy the stuff we really need, or just save it so we can pay things off.

10. To wean myself off caffeine and sodas completely. That'll take some time.

So those are my resolutions and my goals. I think they're all pretty reasonable. They're mostly things I've been planning all along, but it's nice to get it all down in a list. That's another thing...I need to make more lists. It would help with the forgetfulness.


http://arielle-writing.blogspot.com/

A few weeks with nook.

I've been meaning to write this for a while, and I think I'm finally ready to give my thoughts on nook (there is no "the" and the "n" is always lowercase, at least from everything I've seen), the Barnes & Noble e-reader that I received about three weeks ago. My husband and I both bought them for each other for Christmas. So here goes my review. I will mostly be comparing nook to the original Kindle, which is the e-reader I had before my nook. My mother-in-law has a Kindle 2, but I have only played with it and haven't used it extensively. I borrowed it to take a few quick comparison pictures for this post.

My dog actually got the first glance at my nook. When it arrived, I was at a party and I received this picture from my husband. He had already broken into his and was playing with it by the time I got home. So much for Christmas present.

First Impressions
When I got my nook, the first thought that came to my mind is "pretty." nook is that, it is a pretty piece of hardware. The touchscreen is nice and bright, almost too bright sometimes, but that can be adjusted, the black bezel around the e-ink screen is sharp, and the buttons for turning pages are crisp. The photo below compares the Kindles and nook, with nook on the left, Kindle 2 in the middle, and original Kindle on the right. nook just looks more polished and next-gen, while the Kindle 2 looks outdated. The original Kindle just looks kind of square and odd.

Software Problems
Once I turned on my nook, I immediately noticed an intense slowness, so bad that it was nearly unbearable. However, I plowed through it, because I had just opened up a $269 piece of hardware that I could have sold on e-bay at the time for nearly double, and I was going to use it if it killed me. I was paying my early adopter tax dearly. The page turns were slower than the original Kindle, actually, nearly everything about it was slower than the original Kindle, even the book downloading felt sluggish and nook is supposed to be on 3G! I used it, though, and my husband purchased a steampunk novel titled Boneshaker, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed. We suffered through daily crashes and often wondered if our nooks would turn on the next day. Suffice it to say, we have had our shares of battery removals and hard reboots. I had to reboot the device to connect it to my MacBook to put a PDF document on it, but when I finally got it on there, it looked great.

About a week-and-a-half later, Barnes & Noble pushed through an update and I have to say that it is much better. Everything loads faster, it moves quicker, there are less button presses to get to what you want to read, and even the coverflow moves smoother. Pages turn faster and there's less formatting. It's like a whole new device. It is now faster than the original Kindle, and though I am not sure about the Kindle 2, I'm sure that it's catching up. The update process went smoothly for my husband and I, and since then, we have not had any crashes. There will probably be a few more updates over the next few months, and they can only improve things.

Comparisons, nook vs. Kindle
I would have to say that I like my nook better than I liked the original Kindle. I also like that my husband and I both have nooks, whereas he did not have a Kindle. We both have our nooks attached to his account, and any books that either of us download show up on both nooks. Pages do not sync between nooks, so we can keep our own spots in our separate nooks.

Having used the original Kindle and nook extensively now, here are a few things I have noticed:

Deleting Content
There is no way to just delete content from your nook. With the Kindle, it was very easy to manage content just by selecting content manager and then checking off what you wanted to keep and what you wanted to delete. If you purchased it, it was automatically backed up on Amazon's website and you could always get it again. With nook, any content that you download, even samples, have to be deleted from Barnes & Noble's website. Yes, strange, especially for people who may be using nook but do not have computers or internet access.

Locations vs. Page Numbers
The Kindle uses locations rather than page numbers, that way, you can resize the font to super-huge or tiny, and rather than making the book have more or less pages, you just remember a location number given to specific points throughout the book. With nook, however, you get page numbers. Sometimes you turn a page and it gives you the same number. Sometimes, you turn a page and the page is only half-full, but when you turn it again, it's not the end of the chapter. The breaks can be confusing, but they are easily ignorable and you get used to them.

Covers
The covers for nook are pretty cool, I won't lie. I would never buy one of those $125 designer covers, though. That's just a waste, and I'm not into that stuff anyway. My husband got the Chesterton Quote Cover in black and I got the Alice Cover. We both like our covers and they fit and protect our nooks quite well, and they were reasonably priced. They're also a lot more secure than the cover was for my original Kindle. The original Kindle always fell out of the cover, or the battery cover would come off all the time. Quite annoying. There's a bit of glare in the picture below, but the Alice Cover is on the left, Kindle 2 cover in the middle, and original Kindle cover on the right.

Lending Books
Haven't tried it yet, no one I know has a nook or wants to read on their computer or iPhone.

Music Player
I have loaded some MP3s onto my nook and played some music. It is more of a fun thing, since I have an iPhone for music, but it does work and it works well. The Kindle's music player worked just as well, but in order to change tracks or pause and play, there was a lot more button pressing involved.

Expandable Memory
I slid a 4GB card into the microSD slot on my nook (bought on black Friday for $10, normally about twice as much). It's kind of a pain to change the card out, because you have to take off the back cover, but once you get it in there, you really don't have to take it out much. I'll probably be using that for music, pictures, or documents.
 
E-book Stores
So far, I have had mixed feelings for Barnes & Noble's e-book store. There are a few books that I want to read that Amazon has on their store, but B&N does not. For example, the Lightning Thief. Amazon has it, I want to read it, but it is missing from B&N's store. As for the scanned books from Google, I have read several, and if you can get past the typos from the scans that are heavily peppered throughout the books, then they're great to have. I've read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for free, and my husband downloaded quite a few others. I also grabbed a Sherlock Holmes collection for free after watching the movie. I have a feeling that Barnes & Noble will make their e-book store better in the coming months, I'm sure people are complaining. I have heard that Barnes & Noble is going to revamp the store to compete with Amazon's e-book store in prices and content. As of right now, e-books from Barnes & Noble average to be slightly higher than their Amazon counterparts, which may change soon.

Reading Experience
As with all e-ink displays, the reading experience on nook is wonderful. Font sizes and types are easy to change, there is very little eye strain, and you can read forever. There is the ever-present screen flash when you turn pages, which is unavoidable right now, but you get used to it. Another big difference between Kindle and nook are the page turning buttons. The Kindle's buttons are quite easily pushed, and often accidentally pushed. It is easy to push nook's page turn buttons as well, but it seems that you have less accidents, especially when showing your nook to a friend. Especially with the original Kindle, it was nearly impossible to give someone your Kindle without the page being accidentally turned. You can also turn pages by swiping on the touchscreen, but the response is not as quick as pushing the buttons, and sometimes it does not register when you swipe. I use the buttons.

Battery Life
Battery life on nook is a lot less than the Kindle's. However, as with any device, if you leave it sitting around unplugged for a while, especially in standby mode, it will discharge. My husband left his unplugged for several days and when he came back to it, it was dead. The e-ink screen was still on, and when he plugged it in, he could not get it to respond for about thirty minutes after it had been plugged in. This is the only problem we have had since the update. Remember to keep that battery charged, and turn off the wi-fi and wireless internet if you don't plan to download anything. I charge mine every other night and don't have any issues. And if the battery wears out, it's a lot easier to change the battery in nook than in the Kindles that are out right now. You can also buy a replacement battery for travel, which is something I might pick up in the future.

Book Browsing
One of the touted features of nook is the ability to go into any Barnes & Noble store and be able to read through entire e-books while you are there. It is similar to the ability to be able to walk in, pick up a book off the shelf, and read it while sitting in a chair or on the floor, as many people tend to do. There are limitations, though. As of right now, the browsing is limited, you may only browse a book for an hour. After that, time's up! 

Wi-Fi and Internet Access
Wi-fi is a great option to have. I have it connected to my network at home and it downloads books a bit faster than it does with the AT&T card. It is also the way you connect with a Barnes & Noble store, which it does automatically when you walk in. One feature missing from nook is the web browser that the Kindle has. But to be quite honest, the web browser on my Kindle was found in the "Experimental" section along with the music player, and it was rudimentary. It felt like I had been transported back in time and I was trying to use an archaic machine to access futuristic content. The Kindle's web browser would often lock up and it was incredibly slow. It was on a 2G network instead of the newer 3G, but it was still terrible. If they do eventually add a web browser to nook, hopefully it won't be so terrible.

Free Cookie
I went into a Barnes & Noble with a cafe and a coupon for a free cookie popped up on my nook. How cool is that? My husband's gotten three, he'll be sad when the coupon expires January 6th. He took a picture with his iPhone and sent it to me because he was so excited. He said when he took it to the cafe, the people there started freaking out because he was the first one who had come in for it.

Final Impressions, at least for now
All-in-all, I like my nook. I like it better than the Kindle and it feels a lot less first-generation than the original Kindle did. The hardware is polished, and once the software catches up with that, it'll be great. I may revisit this post or update it if anything changes. I'm also going to order one of those snazzy colored backings for my nook. When I ordered the covers, the backings weren't in stock yet. My husband also likes his nook, though he doesn't have much to compare it to. I will be experimenting more and more with my nook, and I'll be interested to see how people hack it. It's basically a computer with free wireless access all the time, if you want to think of it that way. People have already hacked it and put Pandora on it, so it's only a matter of time before they do more.

Do I recommend the nook? Of course. I think it's great. Just remember, as with any new piece of technology, there is an early adopter tax to be paid.  If you don't mind a few hiccups, get yourself a nook. Give them as gifts, people will love them, especially if they've never used a Kindle before. But if you want something a little more polished, either wait a while or get a Kindle. Just remember, the Kindle started out just as rough as nook, just give it some time.

nook is on top, original Kindle in the middle, Kindle 2 on the bottom.

NaNo's Over, TGIO!

First off, yes, I did win NaNoWriMo 2009!

I didn't get as much time to update the blog as I would have liked, mostly because I procrastinated. I would watch a movie with Brandon, then write a bit, do some word wars, watch SouthPark, write some more. My final count ended at 50,476 words, and yes, I did get to the end of the story. Am I happy with it? Not really. I know there's a lot more I can do with it and I feel like this book is just mostly a brainstorm for the real thing to come. I'm going to give the story a few months to marinate, then it's rewrite and edit time.

I hate editing...

In other news, I had a great time during NaNo meeting other writers in Houston. I went to several write-ins and meetups and met some pretty cool people!

Here are some pictures from the various meet-ups since my last post. I forgot my camera for one of them, so it made me sadface.

 That's from the TGIO party, all of us are winners of NaNoWrioMo 09!

This was a nice little random meet-up. We went to House of Pies in Houston and then went to Barnes & Noble for some writing. We made a nice little mess with all our laptops.

More NaNo pictures are on my photostream. Check them out!