Archive for March, 2009
In Her Name: Chapter 1 Excerpt – The Priestess
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Book News on March 5th, 2009
This excerpt is from In Her Name, chapter 1:
The sky was black as pitch, black as death, as the priestess walked alone over the arena this planet had become. Her sandaled feet touched the earth but left no sound, no footprint. She looked up toward where the stars should be, yearning for the great moon that shone over the Homeworld. But the only sight to be had was the glowing red smears of the fires that were reflected by the wafting smoke and dust.
As she made her way across the field of carnage, she touched the bodies of the fallen children to honor them as they had honored their Empress. They had sacrificed their lives to show their love for Her. She grieved for them all, that they had died this day, never again to feel the flame that drove them to battle, the thrill of sword and claw, never again to serve the Empress through their flesh. Now they basked in the quiet sunset of the Afterlife, someday perhaps to join the ranks of the Ancient Ones, the warriors of the spirit.
She moved on toward her destination. It had once been a human dwelling, but now was a mound of ashen rubble. It squatted impetuously in the wasteland created by weapons the Kreela disdained to use. The humans had never realized that the destruction of their worlds was caused by their own predilection for such weaponry, to which the Kreela sometimes had to respond in kind. The warriors of the Empress sought battles of the mind, body, and spirit, of sword and claw, and not of brute destruction.
Watching the battles rage here for several cycles of the sun across the sky, she had become increasingly curious about these particular humans who fought so well, and at last had decided that perhaps they were worthy of her personal attention. She bade the young warriors to rest, to wait for her return, before setting out on her own journey of discovery.
She paused when she reached the back of the crumbled structure that hid the humans that had piqued her curiosity. She listened for their heartbeats, smelled their pungent body odor, felt for their strange, alien spirit with her mind. After a moment she had a picture of them, where they sat and stood within.
Silent as the dead around her, she moved to a specific point along the wall. Her breathing and heart stilled, she concealed everything about herself that made her presence real. Unless one of them looked directly at her, she would be utterly invisible.
Then she stepped through the wall, her flesh and armor melding with the essence of the barrier as she passed through without so much as a whisper.
Learn more about In Her Name…
The Garmin Forerunner 405: A Great Fitness Gadget!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog, Reviews on March 4th, 2009
As my wife, Jan, and progressed further along in our Beachbody fitness journey, we thought it would be a good idea to get a heart rate monitor to see how hard our hearts were working, and – hopefully! – how well we were recovering.
We went out and bought a heart rate monitor at a local sporting good store. It wasn’t fancy (but wasn’t cheap, either), but was one of the kinds that you have to hold your finger down against one of the buttons for it to measure your heart rate. That was really inconvenient in the middle of our P90 Sweat workouts, and to top things off the silly thing stopped working about two weeks after we got it.
Our Beachbody coach, Doris, had just bought a Garmin Forerunner 405 and was telling folks in her club about it, and it sounded really good. I thought at first it was probably over the top for our needs, but since we had done a bit of running (and planned to do more), having something that could not only monitor our heart rate, but could also keep track of our distance and speed, was an appealing idea. I did some additional research, and finally we decided to order one.
I have to say, the Forerunner 405 is pretty darn slick. It does a really good job of monitoring our heart rates, and measures not only the current rate, but keeps tracks of the maximum and average rates, can be programmed for up to five zones (if you happen to use that), and can even display a graph of your heart rate on the watch display. The downside is that you have to wear a heart monitor strap; that’s not a big deal, but you have to make sure to moisten the contact points so it gets good conductivity against your skin, and make sure that it’s tight enough (but not too tight).
The Forerunner 405 also has a built-in GPS to keep track of your running or bicycling. From what I’ve been able to tell, it seems to be quite accurate, although mine takes a while (maybe a minute or so) to lock up enough satellites. It’s not a big deal, just a minor inconvenience when you’re ready to start running!
The 405 has a ton of other features that I’m not going to try and cover here, except for a couple of my favorites. One is the pace keeper: you can set your pace in minutes per mile, and it shows you a little graphic of how far ahead or behind you are from your target pace. So you can see at a glance while you’re running how far off your pace you are (which, being a slooow runner, is usually quite a bit for me!) without having to even read the numbers.
The other feature is the Garmin Connect site and their Training Center software. The Mac version of the Training Center software doesn’t seem to work with the 405 (yet, at least), but they did just release the ANT Agent software for Mac that allows you to transfer the data from the wrist unit to your computer and upload it to your Garmin Connect account (which is free); there is, of course, a Windows version of both the ANT Agent software and the Training Center. Both Garmin Connect and the Training Center display stats for all the information the Garmin collects, and also allow you to enter and track goals. The only downside is that it’s very heavily oriented toward running (I’d like to see some more options for strength training, for example), but for a free application, I certainly can’t complain!
As for downsides, the biggest one is that it’s not cheap: new Forerunner 405s with heart rate monitors (be careful, as some are sold without the heart monitor strap) are currently running at $349 new at Amazon. That’s a lot to spend, but if you’re serious about your fitness – or you just enjoy cool gadgets – I think it’s a good investment. So good, in fact, that we bought two (his and hers).
Another thing to consider – particularly if you have a small wrist – is that the unit is fairly bulky, about the size of a large men’s watch. That’s not necessarily a showstopper, but is something to keep in mind.
The last thing that a number of people commented on in the Amazon reviews was about the bezel. It’s touch-sensitive, and most of the settings and adjustments you make are by tapping, touching and holding, or scrolling your finger on the bezel. It takes some getting used to, but be advised that if your finger is wet it won’t work. Also, any time you set it down or something comes in contact with it, it can “click” something. But there is an easy way to prevent all that: by pushing the two buttons on the unit simultaneously, you can lock and unlock the bezel. So that’s no big deal.
The bottom line for us, as I mentioned, was that we liked the Forerunner 405 enough to buy two. For me, it’s not only something to help me keep track of how well I’m doing, but it’s also proved to be a motivational factor, as well, by setting and monitoring my goals and progress.
The Future of Food: A Very Scary Movie
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green on March 3rd, 2009
My wife and I didn’t need any additional incentive to move away from industrialized food toward organic foods: pick up just about anything in the grocery store aisles nowadays and see how many ingredients you don’t recognize, not to mention all the chemicals you can’t pronounce. Does anybody wonder why the incidence of cancer and other health problems continues to grow?
But even that paled in comparison to the shock at watching a documentary called The Future of Food. The show focused on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), specifically grains and soybeans that have been genetically modified to be be unaffected by the weedkiller called Roundup.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q
On the surface, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, does it? Have a crop that you can spray with a weedkiller that will wipe out just about anything that’s green: the Roundup kills all the weeds and leaves the “good” plants alone.
But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that all that glitters is not gold, as the saying goes. First, the genetic modifications Monsanto makes to the plants – using similar techniques to what viruses use to invade cells (sorry, that sounds melodramatic, but it’s quite true) – involves insertion of genes from a variety of organisms that include a variety of bacteria and other non-plant species. What are the long-term effects of mutation and cross-species pollinization? What if someone who consumes the GMO grain products is allergic to one of the elements introduced into the grain?
Then there are the legal aspects, which were equally shocking. Monsanto and other companies conducting this sort of development patent the genes they develop, and have – successfully, it seems – made the legal case that anything that those genes can be identified in is essentially owned by the company. For example, if a truck carrying Monsanto GMO grain drives by your farm and some of the seed blows off into your field and germinates, guess what? You just violated Monsanto’s patent rights and are subject to a fine!
I just about dropped dead: if somebody else’s grain contaminates your crops, you’re the “bad guy” who’s on the hook. I had thought that the legal system was pretty well rotten, but this was too much.
But the scariest thing is that companies like Monsanto have developed genes for crops that are variously called “suicide” or “terminator” genes. There are different types, but basically that means that the crops will grow one season and not produce any viable seed that could be replanted.
So what happens when crops that have this terminator gene cross-pollinate with non-GMO crops? And yes, I said when, not if, because if crops like this are allowed outside the laboratory (heck, who knows, maybe they already are) it’s inevitable that they’re going to come in contact with and contaminate non-GMO crops.
But the worst part is that there’s no requirement for food manufacturers to label GMO ingredients in our food. So you could be eating something right now that has genetically modified corn, and you’d never know it. Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with so many senior government positions (up through 2004, at least, when the film was produced) being occupied by senior executives of Monsanto and other companies. That doesn’t strike me as a conflict of interest. Really.
So, what’s to do about it? First, learn more and – as with many things – express your feelings to your congressional representatives. I, for one, would at least like to see appropriate labels for food containing GMO products. That’s a good place to start, but there’s a lot left to do.
Kindle Publishing Tip: Formatting Differences With Kindle 2
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on March 2nd, 2009
If you publish (or are interested in publishing) on the Amazon Kindle, I wanted to direct your attention to an outstanding post by Joshua Tallent from www.kindleformatting.com on some of the display differences in formatting between the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2. I’m not going to steal any of Joshua’s thunder, so go check it out!
Kindle Publishing Tip: Do You Need An ISBN For eBooks?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on March 1st, 2009
This question seems to come up an awful lot: do you need to have an ISBN – International Standard Book Number – for an ebook (on the Amazon Kindle or otherwise)?
The answer, bottom line, is no.
Currently, ISBNs are only required for printed matter books. The purpose of the ISBN, according to ISBN.org, is “to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.”
At this point, the main use of the ISBN in Kindle publication using Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) is to help Amazon link up the catalog entries for the Kindle and print editions of your book so that the reader reviews posted to one version will also appear in the other, and so on. The same is also true for books you publish through Mobipocket.com that are then distributed to the Kindle store: if you have a print edition of your book on Amazon, make sure to put the print edition ISBN in the ISBN field of the ebook metadata.
