Please Check This Out. It's for Charity and You

As this blog is still very young and I'm not exactly an interesting person, I don't know if this will reach many people. But that's no reason to not try!

Today Humble Bundle started the Humble Music Bundle. For those of you who don't know, Humble Bundle is a company that gets content developers to provide their content in a collection that is offered only for a limited time. Okay, that's not too special on its own, but there is more to it. The collections are only available for a limited time and when they are YOU pick the price you pay for the collection. That's right. If you want to spend just one cent you can or if you want to spend $1000+, you can. You also get to decide what happens to that money. The money can go to the content creator, Humble Bundle itself, or charity in whatever split you want. Maybe you want to help the two charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play), so you set it so most or all of the money. Maybe you want the creators to get a larger share, so you move that slider. It is up to you! You can even decide which creator or which charity gets how much money. Want all of what you pay to go to Child's Play? You can do that.

Also, all content in a collection is DRM free. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is what covers a spectrum of technology. The purpose of DRM is to make it difficult or impossible for someone to take some content and share it without the creator's permission. The catch is DRM can also prevent people from legally doing things they would think they can do. For example, if you have a digital copy of a movie but the format is only useable on your desktop. Now you've got yourself an iPad or other tablet, and want to watch it there. Well, that might not be possible because the file would have to be converted for the tablet, and the DRM prevents you from doing so. My personal opinions on DRM can be the topic of a different post.

Now, what makes the current Humble Bundle collection interesting is how it differs from every previous collection. Prior collections featured video games, and often included their soundtracks as well, all DRM free. This collection has no games. It is just music. Six albums specifically:

• Calling All Dawns by Christopher Tin
• Album Raises New and Troubling Questions by They Might Be Giants
• Jonathan Coulton’s Greatest Hit (Plus 13 Other Songs) by Jonathan Coulton
• Favoritism by MC Frontalot
• Best of the Valkyria Chronicles by Hitoshi Sakimoto
• Twelve Remixes of Four Songs by OK Go

The last album listed here, Twelve Remixes of Four Songs is actually tied to a little game the Humble Bundle collections have always had. You can pay however much you want to pay for most of the collection, but part of it is only given to you if you beat the average price everyone is paying. At the time of my writing this, the average price is $8.03, so if you want that sixth album, you will need to pay at least $8.04. It's a pretty clever system, isn't it, to make sure customers spend more than just a penny on the collection.

And remember, you can have all of the money you spend on the collection go directly to charity. The charity benefits and you get good music. What's not to like? Here's the link again, in case you don't want to scroll up for it: The Humble Music Bundle.

Took Longer Than I Wanted, But It Is Complete

Just finished the first draft of my first short story, The Death of Heroes. Now comes the exceedingly fun part of editing, revising, and rewriting it, as needed. Also making the cover image and other front material for it. There is more to self-publishing a digital book than writing, as I discovered last year and fortunately all of this should be easier to do than it was for Sci-FU, thanks to that experience. Except for the cover that is. Never been good at drawing, but the idea I have for the cover I think isn't too far beyond my skill level.

Since I've finished the first draft, I think I'll share a little more about this story than I have already. It is set in the fictional Old West town of Scurvy. (Considering some names of Old West towns, I'm surprised I never found Scurvy when I was checking to see if there was a real town.) The story shifts between the protagonist's first experience in the town and his speech directed to the reader, as though he is telling you the story himself. I felt this would be an appropriate way to break up the main segments of the story, without formal chapter breaks.

Hopefully those of my friends I send this first (and admittedly rough) draft to will find the time to read it and let me know what they think. It's style and story are different from what I normally work with, so their feedback will be invaluable.

The primary characters are John, the protagonist, Sheriff Jimmy (I'm still bad at making up names), Rose Carey, Mayor William Simon, Father Lettery, Sam, and Robert. Hopefully I can get this polished and all the work for it completed soon, so everyone interested can read it and meet this people. I don't think any of you will regret it.

Setting a Dangerous Precedent

Have to be careful now. Two posts in as many days; someone who comes across this may think I'm going to maintain this daily but there is a good chance I won't. I do not do the things I intend to chronicle here daily, and there is always the possibility I will lose interest in this blog as well. Don't know, but we will find out. Until then, onto the actual purpose of this post:

I'm not entirely sure how long one would say I've been working on my current short story. I first started writing it well over a year ago, but then dropped it for lack of interest and sense of direction. More recently though I had a brilliant idea! Instead of stretching it out to the size of a full book, I will make it a short story instead! My interest immediately returned and, when I can find the time, I have been writing it.

I call this new story, "The Death of Heroes" and I have no idea when it will be completely finished. The writing itself I should be able to finish pretty soon but then the real work begins. I intend on submitting it to Amazon to be a Kindle Single, but to do that I will have to format it for the Kindle (did this for an entire novel already, so a short story will be easy) and I will have to create a cover image for it. Someday someone may call me an artist, but it will certainly not be for my drawing abilities. Now, I did make the cover for my book, Sci-FU, but it is not overly difficult to make. White and black with gradients in between. I have got an idea for what I want this story's cover to be, and in theory it should be within my abilities, but I really can't say until I make it.

What's the story about? Well, it's about a hero and his death. Really, what the story is about is not as interesting as where it is set, and just a few things to happen in it. I do not want to share much about it though, because I do not want to ruin it. The best way I can think to describe the town of Scurvy is an Old West town with a mindset and attitude like what you wish existed in your town, but at the same time, you would never allow your town to be like it. Tolerance is a good ideal to reach for, but I doubt many of us would actually grasp it even if we could.

One thing worth noting though is that this story worries me slightly. It is a very different kind of story from just about every other story idea I have, including Sci-FU. However, I like the idea a great deal and I will try to self-publish it like any other story I write. I just hope it does not put people off me for trying something so different from what will be my norm, in just my second (published) story.

Oh, a new blog on the Internet. Interesting?

Someone might know exactly how many blogs there are on the Internet, but I'm not that person. Despite that, I'll still guess the number is big. So big in fact that a new one has to be special to get noticed. So, what's special about this one? It's written by me, that's what's special about it!

Seriously though, what makes this blog something you want to read? Since this is only the first post, probably not much. My plan for it though is to use this to spread some news I think is worth spreading. This could be really interesting science & technology news I find while getting stuff for my positions as a News Editor at OverclockersClub.com, it could be a video game I'm playing and want to share my opinion on, because you can never get enough opinions on games, or it could be something personal or dealing with my writing.

That's right, I'm a writer. Wrote an entire book already and self-published it with the resources Amazon offers; the Kindle Direct Publishing program and CreateSpace. That book is titled Sci-FU and I hope you will at least check out the preview for it. I greatly enjoyed writing it, and I hope you will enjoy reading it. I have ideas for other books and short stories (some related to Sci-FU and some not) which I may share some news about here. That's probably going to be the main thing I use this blog for actually, is sharing ideas and thoughts I have while writing or thinking about what to write next.

That's probably enough for the first post, don't you think? Hopefully I'll get in the habit of posting here, but I cannot guarantee it. I can be easily distracted.