American Idol – I know why Pia got the boot.

Posted by Ironspike on Apr 11, 2011 in General | 0 comments

Ok,  My blog usually is about weird-random stuff. I would never thought in the day I would post something that dealt with American idol.

Yet, here I am.

I never watched American Idol until this year. The wife like’s Steven Tyler and started watching it – hence I started watching it. It was ‘ok’…

Well, then Idol got down to 12 folks and I found myself pleasantly hooked on the show. For me, it was seeing people who were 15-16 years old just belting out some fantastic vocals. I cannot believe some of these people are just kids. I was intrigued to say the least.

So I watched week after week and never voted once. Then Casey – the one I liked because he actually has talent (can play and sing) got voted off. Here, for weeks he was never in the bottom 3 yet – wham! He’s gone. We all know the judges saved him.

That’s when I got suspicious of this whole voting system. Someone who is never in the bottom 3 is suddenly gone? Could a person sing just one song and get the boot? Could someone who has been in the bottom for weeks on end – suddenly fine new popularity and be spared?

No clue.

Last Wednesday comes around and the remaining idols put on their show. I was heckled by the wife to vote. I cast my single vote for Casey and Lauren and went on my way. Then I noticed my daughter – she really likes Scotty. She cast no less than 45 votes (all text messages) from my wife’s phone for the Alfred P. Newman look-a-like.

That’s when I realized that if American Idol’s voting system is not rigged then the winner is going to be determined by a bunch of 13 year olds.

America could like Pia more than any other singer. Collectively, more families in America could have voted for Pia. However, does an elderly couple from Oklahoma have the passion to cast 20 or so more votes? No. Would a 15 year old boy who thinks Pia is super hot cast more than a couple of votes? No.

It’s the tween girls.

Steven Tyler was right, it’s all about passion the young girls have it – everyone else doesn’t.

I might like Casey on idol but I’m not voting a 100 times to make sure he stays there. That’s just stupid. One vote for one person is how it should be. But hey, that’s not how it is.

So, that means we get to see folks like Stephano and Haley still be on stage when they should have been booted long ago.

I can deal with all this just fine. That’s the way of Idol and everyone needs to deal with it.

What I do have a big issue with is the Judges at the moment. At this point in time they serve absolutely no purpose. Each week they tell everyone they did great. And each week when someone is voted off they act like it’s the end of the world and that American got it wrong.

Well, if this is the case then tell America who they should vote for. So, Pia got the boot and the judges acted all stunned. Why not man up and say “Hey Pia you should have stayed and Stephano should have left”. Or even better “Omg Pia America got it wrong. Jacob should be gone and you should have stayed.”

But no, we get the same surprised looked each time. Right now, I’m slowly starting to grow tired of my first Idol season. The judges sit up there and comment – but they have no value add.

 

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SuperMoon

Posted by Ironspike on Mar 25, 2011 in General | 0 comments

SuperMoon

On March 19, 2011 I seen my first ‘super’ moon. In a nut shell the SuperMoon or Perigee moon is when the moon is closest in it’s orbit to the earth.

I decided to try and take some photos with my kid’s telescope.

Equipment used:

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 127SLT Mak Computerized Telescope

Lense:  Celestron Omni 2X Barlow Lens

Lense: Celestron Nexstar Plossl Series 32MM Ocular

Filter: Celestron Moon Filter

Camera Mount: Celestron Universal Digital Camera Adapter

(Click on the photos to enlarge)

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English Class

Posted by Ironspike on Mar 4, 2011 in Humor | 0 comments

Over the past several months I’ve been converting some of my short stories for publication. In essence,  at the time I wrote most of them – I wasn’t really concerned with the small details like, grammar, sentence structure, spelling, flow. Now I’m paying dearly for that little error.

In the process of editing some of these gems – I would have a brain storm about a new stories – so awesome that it they would kick ass, take names, solve world hunger, and talk sense in to Charlie Sheen!

Score one more for ADD! I’ll never get this crap done. L

Anyway, I haven’t updated my blog in a while. I decided I’d dig back into the old memory archives and share a story that happened to me in my senior year at high school.

It was close to graduation and our senior class was planning our senior trip. I was out of school sick for a few days and missed some of the discussions. Before my English class – I found out our English teacher was going to be one of our chaperons.

Now, the guys were perfectly happy with this choice because our English teacher was pleasing to the eyes. Let’s call her Mrs. K.

Our English class had just about all of us seniors in it. A discussion got under way because Mrs. K was going to take her personal vehicle on the trip instead of riding a bus with the rest of the kids. Some of the girls in the class saw this as a opportunity. Riding with Mrs. K would be hell of a lot more fun that cruising around on a  bus or cargo van.

While the girls were egging Mrs. K to let them ride with her – Mrs. K politely said her car was small and their would not be much room.

It was widely known at school that in past months Mrs. K drove a big truck. So, Timmy  (I kid you not – his name is Timmy) made a suggestion:

“Why don’t you drive the big truck Mrs. K?”, Timmy asked.

Looking a little defeated, Mrs. K. replied “I can’t. It was Bill’s”.

First, I don’t think the “Bill” was the correct name. It was a guy’s name – that’s all that matters at this very moment.

Second, Timmy is Timmy. He was a big city kid busted for drugs and sent to live with a relative in our small country town. He was a poster child for what drugs can do to you.  Sorry ADD again.

At this point, I piped up and said “Bill won’t mind”.

The class fell silent. Mrs. K looked at me with tears welling up in her eyes. It was like I just clubbed two baby seals using a horn from a javan rhino.

She said, “That was the most insensitive thing I have ever heard! Get out of my class!”

Everyone was silent. I didn’t ask why. I just got up and left. I went down to the principals office where I explain to him I had no clue why I was there. He thought I was pretty much full of shit.

He left for 10 minutes and when he returned he was laughing.

Seems the story went like this:

“Bill” was Mrs. K brother –n-law. Mrs. K would frequently drive around “Bill’s” truck. Rumor had it – that Mrs. K and “Bill” was an item.

While I was out of school sick – “Bill” went to feed cattle. He jumped out of his truck and forgot to put it in gear. When he went to open the cattle gate the truck ran into him and killed him.

I had no clue about any of this. So when I popped off “He wouldn’t mind” … I didn’t know he was dead.

So, I was told that I needed to apologize but I refused to. I mean, really ? Apologize for something I had to clue about. I decided “NO!” not going to happen. So for a few days I just skipped her class.

Finally, I decided I’d break down and apologize. After class one day I approached her an said I was sorry about what happened.

She looked me dead in the eye and said “I don’t believe you.”

Interestingly enough – I really didn’t mean it either.

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Self Publishing – Step 1. Format – Part 2

Posted by Ironspike on Feb 14, 2011 in Writing | 0 comments

So, here I am trying to self publish some of my work. In my last article I went straight into publishing for the kindle and going the e-book route.

There are other ways a person could self-publish their books. A family friend wrote a book about the small town I lived in while growing up. Once the book was completely finished the author went to kinkos and printed out about 100 hard back books. She then sold them to folks around town.

Now, this is a way to self publish and there isn’t anything wrong with it. But, you will severely limit your audience if you go this route.

Over the past few months I’ve learned all kinds of cool stuff when it comes to be a self publishing author. For instance, CreateSpace is a place where you can upload your e-book and have it converted to an actual hard back. I found this totally interesting! There are other online sites that do this too.

What makes this cool is that they split the profit with you on the sale of your book. While you might not make a lot when folks order a hard back, you still do no go out a lot of money upfront.

Let me get back on task here. When I started converting my writing in the Kindle (mobi) format I looked up various samples on the internet. Now, in all honesty there wasn’t a lot. I manage to dig up a format guideline pdf from Amazon.

Using this guideline I created my first eBook. Cover page, table of content, the works. It was a lot of work in HTML and considering I found it ‘labor intensive” and I’m an IT programmer!

I gen’ed my book and viewed it on the various Kindle readers (windows, iphone, actual kindle) and I was pleased with my work.

I will say that I suck at drawing so my cover art is little lack luster. Now, I haven’t published that book yet because I’m in the middle of putting together a short story collection. My plan is to publish both at the same time.

So, I down loaded several eBooks from Amazon – some free and some not. And while I read them I make notes on the differences between my eBook and theirs.

This is what I have noticed:

Now, content on all the one I’ve read is fine. I’m the last person to critique someone’s writing. However, layout in most cases is weak.

It took me a while to figure out what why. Between the time I started manually creating my own e-book and the time I finished my first one – Amazon had upgraded their e-book services. Now, you can upload your material in a pdf format, msword format, and txt format.

This allowed authors to just upload their material as one giant document. So here I am reading this cool book called The Accidental Demon Slayer (at least I liked it) and my Kindle dies on me. It reboots and for the life of me I cannot figure out where I was. I couldn’t skip ahead by chapters because there wasn’t a table of contents and I didn’t set a book mark.

Another eBook had fonts on one page in one size but the next page it was really small. Some had dead end hyperlinks and graphics that was unreadable.

Now, granted not everyone has the time or expertise to meticulously set up their eBook. I know. However, being from the programming field I’m a stickler for the user interface.

Overall, all of these really are not big detractors and easy to deal with from the readers perspective.

However, if you are a perfectionist then get to learning some HTML because your going to need it.

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Self Publishing – Step 1. Format

Posted by Ironspike on Feb 7, 2011 in General | 0 comments

Self Publishing – Step 1.  Format

As I said in a pervious post I wasn’t out to try and publish my works. That changed last year when I started writing some material and couldn’t stop. I was on a writing high (if there is such a thing). Material just flowed out of me and on to paper (more accurately –  MS Word). When I stopped I had A LOT of material.

Then like a brick – it hit me – ‘I think other folks would like this!’

That was when my journey of self publishing really took off. I wasn’t going to ‘print’ my material myself – I needed an electronic format. My options would be to go with an online solution such as Amazon or one of the other online eBook providers.

I did some research and it seemed logical to me to go with Amazon. In my mind since Amazon sold the number one e-reader on the planet – that going with them would be the best route. Now a lot has changed in the e-book world since then, more companies have entered the market, Amazon changed up it’s royalty programs, etc.

However, I still decided to stick with Amazon for my choice of e-book publishing.

This brings me into format of an e-book. My number one concern was getting my book that was in MSword format into a readable e-book.

I found several ways to do this:

1. Upload a supported file and have Amazon convert it for you.
2. Use Amazon’s Kindlegen.exe and create your own e-book and upload it.
3. Create an e-book in a supported format that Amazon can convert.

After reading countless conversion horror stories on the Amazon KDP forums – I decided that I would use Kindlegen.exe and convert and create my e-book myself.

This turned out to be a big pain in my ass but well worth it.

In a nutshell Kindlegen.exe will take a group of files (html files mostly) and convert them into a e-book with the *.mobi extensions. These files are natively handled on the Kindle which means they could just be dragged and dropped on to the device to proof.

The .mobi files are also used on mobile devices and mobi readers too. Using an html editor I started the long task of converting my MSWORD file into html. I found it easier for me to create multiple html files – by breaking the book apart by chapter. The mobi format requires a toc and .prc file too. These files help in navigation of chapters.

I would use Kindlegen.exe to combine all these into a e-book. At the time I didn’t have a kindle but I was able to open up the file locally on my desktop with the kindle app. It wasn’t until after Christmas when I got my Kindle that I actually was able to read my e-book in it’s final form.

Now, I think I went the hard way by controlling every aspect of my e-book creation. However, at least I know it’s presented in the EXACT way I think it should be.

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