A quick round-up of some useful and free iPhone applications for writers:

Quickpedia – Wikipedia is the first stop for quick overview reference data on just about anything. Quickpedia gives a nice, easy to use iPhone interface to the popular site.

Wikihow – On the heels of quickpedia, this useful little application gives you a direct portal to thousands of how-to articles on a range of subjects. Makes for interesting reading and you never know when you might find some obscure little tip that a character could use.

BabyNames, Baby Namer – I found these two free apps last night while browsing the appstore. I’ve been putting off renaming my characters in my current WIP primarily because I didn’t want to go digging around for my baby name book, these two apps provide tens of thousands of names in an easily searchable format. They stand to be incredibly useful.

All we need now is for a browse-able phonebook for last names and we can do away with the most bulky necessary reference material for any book.

Apparently an “aspiring novelist’s letter” inspired a post over at Whatever yesterday- whoever that was, I bet they were -awesome-.

That aside, the post is an excellent comment on what is actually a significant problem: the prevalent idea that you must be willing to sacrifice everything in order to be a professional writer.

There are people who write sheerly for the enjoyment of it, but far and away the majority of people write to one day see themselves in print, and many dream of giving up their day job and being a full time writer themselves.

To these people the words of those who have “Made It”, the John Scalzi’s and Lawrence Block’s, mean a great deal – and there are a lot of writers out there who are writing books, blogs and articles aimed at these aspiring novelists.

A lot of these books are full of stories about the pain that it can take to become a writer. I think some people probably think they are doing a kindness by preparing others for the pain that there dreams may lead them through: but some of the stories are horrific. They tend to go something like this:

A friend of mine quit his job to become a writer. His first book sucked but he kept trying. He ran out of money but he got a subsistence job to live on and kept trying. His wife left him and took the kids, and his dog died and he was living under a bridge but he kept trying and then his twentieth book took off and now he’s living the dream!

Sure, this is an extreme example (but not -that- extreme, compared to some of the similar stories out there), but there are a lot of them. It has bled into sort of a global belief that in order to be a writer you have to be willing to sacrifice everything – kids, wife, house, your entire life. Only then are you dedicated enough to being a writer, to your dreams and your art, that you can fight your way through the struggle.

At an intellectual level, I don’t believe that. I believe that with hard consistent work and a supportive family you can one day live the dream without having to sacrifice all else that you love. But it is this sort of irrational belief that curls up in your stomach like one of Conan’s serpents and squeezes the confidence out of you, the courage from your heart, until at midnight you are sweating in your bed and staring at the ceiling and you realise that you really -don’t- want it enough to give up your family.

I had that moment. I’ll say it without reservation, there is -nothing- in this world that I want enough to give up my family. I get up in the morning, go to work and slog through anything they throw at my purely so I can go home and see my daughter’s smile and talk with my wife.

So a big thank you to Scalzi for saying what we already knew, but needed to hear someone else say.

I am reminded of an anecdote I read once, went something like this:

A man with a burning desire to play violin met a traveling violin master and begged the master to listen to him play.

“If you tell me I have potential”, he said, “I will devote my life to the violin, but I would never want to do that if I had no chance of success.”

He played and the Master sat, and afterwards said. “I am sorry, you do not have the fire.”

The man went away bitterly dejected.

Years later their paths crossed again and the man shook the Master’s hand and said, “Thankyou, I have become a successful businessman and am glad I didn’t waste my life. I am glad you were able to recognise that I had no talent.”

And the Master said, “I didn’t listen to you play.”

The man was shocked, “Why?” He asked, “Why would you have done that? I could have been great! I could have been a master myself by now!”

“Because,” said the Master, “I tell everyone they lack the fire. If you had the fire, what I said should have made no difference.”

I guess we need to remember that in the end, no matter what anyone else says, it’s down to us.

Go read Scalzi:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/29/what-you-have-to-give-up-to-write/

Nokia sells spy systems to Iran

I find it amazing that so many people can wholeheartedly embrace Capitalism, and then get angry about things like this. The rabid defense of Capitalism makes me suspect that it has gotten too tied in with the western national identities and too few people actually understand what it is, why it’s good, or even -if- it is good. It’s become a synonym for “us”, “good” and “freedom”, much the same way that 50’s propaganda made Communism a synonym for “evil”, “scary”, “violent” and “totalitarianist”. (Though, admittedly, the communist regimes themselves did much to aid that.)

Bottom line: You have a free market and don’t be surprised when people in it realise that they can make large profits selling nasty things to nasty people. Capitalism has no social conscience. (Which is why we have regulated, moderate capitalist markets, and not complete free-market capitalism. To protect us from people like that.)

Finally.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/06/12/2043209/Game-DVD-Sales-Hurting-Music-Industry-More-Than-Downloads?from=rss

It is beyond my understanding how, even after so long, with so many people pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, the big media companies are still able to claim that every download is a lost sale and that illegal downloads are destroying music/movies/books/their-ability-to-make-billions-off-their-artists.

Well, that last one might be true.

The bottom line is, or at least should be, that not business model has any intrinsic ‘right’ to succeed. If the market changes, and it certainly has changed, and your business model no longer works to make you money then you need to adapt.

And yes, I am aware that convincing governments to pass laws making your business model sacrosanct and then having your customers arrested, charged in civil suits, and forced to give you money is in fact adapting. It might be better to adapt into something with a bit more long term survival.

If you keep biting the masses, eventually they’ll bite back.

Gamasutra – Features – What Are The Rewards Of ‘Free-To-Play’ MMOs?

Gamasutra has an interesting article here about free-to-play MMO’s and whether or not the micro-payments business model works.  It certainly seems to be working in some of the cases listed, but more interesting perhaps is the note at the end that companies can become comfortable (and need to, if they want to try this model) with bringing less money in and sending less money out.

This gives me great hope for the gaming market of the future, just as new platforms like the iPhone and Facebook have.  Each new platform has given licence to small groups to try something new.  They have to do it cheaply, they have to do it simply, they don’t have huge budgets and the limitations of the platforms don’t require them to.  They live this idea that if they spend less money they don’t need to bring in as much to be successful.

What you end up with is an awful lot of crap.  Check out facebook games, and the million-and-one “mafia” style iPhone games that rip each other off shamefully.  You also get an injection of new ideas, innovation and a lowered barrier-to-entry.  You get a spiritual return to the days of the commodore 64 and the amiga, where games were developed in a short amount of time by a single developer, or a small group of developers.

One of the great reducers of innovation is cost.  The big multi-million dollar blockbuster games are a big investment and if they go wrong, they can do substantial damage to even a large, well-funded company.  It’s no surprise really that the big game publishers resist innovation and want “the same, but different” in each release.  Innovation, where it happens at all, tends to become restricted to small changes over time.

As an example, The Sims has become one of the biggest earners in the game market ever, and it was only Will Wright’s track record and influence that ever allowed the game to be made; executives didn’t think there was any money in it and were scared by the departure from the ordinary that it presents.

So I am filled with hope anytime evidence arises to show success in turning back this particular clock, any time that games can be made cheaper, with less people and overhead, then there is potential for something more risky and potentially interesting and market-changing to occur.

Here’s web-systems based error that is tangentially related to BizTalk 2006. If you use BizTalk 2006 in order to generate a webservice this problem will often need to be fixed before your webservice will be useable.

This issue is that you receive the above error message, Unrecognized attribute ‘xmlns’., when you attempt to log on a webservice and use it. It’s easy to test for as it should show up if you use a browser to hit the service and attempt to load up the test forms.

This is caused because, although the web service/web page is using Asp .Net 2.x, the website itself is set to use Asp .Net 1.x

The trick is simply the launch the IIS management application, navigate to the Asp .Net tab, and set the target framework to the 2.x version of the framework.

Try again and hopefully, it should work.

Sometimes, when you’ve got Visual Studio 2005 installed and are using automatic updater, or manual updating, to install service pack 1, it can fail with very little indication as to why. If you search the event logs, you may see something like the above.

It happened to me on windows server 2003 where I was setting up a biztalk development environment, but it can happen on xp as well apparently.

Turns out there is a bug in windows causing it to fail to validate the signature on one of the files in this update pack, and thus windows (quite correctly) refuses to install the patch.

A hotfix has been provided by Microsoft for Windows server 2003; it weighs in at a mere 800kb and solves the problem quickly and easily. Go grab it.

Hotfix

Unfortunately it appears no such fix has been released for XP. There are workarounds listed on the above link as well though I haven’t investigated them at all. They’re worth a shot, leave a note here if you find them useful.

Slashdot Technology Story | Google Set To Tackle eBook Market

As a long-term ebook reader myself, I have been both excited by Amazon’s entry into the market raising the profile and the usage of ebooks, and disappointed in Amazon’s heavy-handed tactics and DRM, a side of the retail giant that is quickly becomming “business as usual”.

So I for one welcome our google overlord’s entry into the ebook market.  By pushing a free standard and open access, hopefully we will see some decent kindle competition – because nothing breaks down unnecessary and greedy restrictions like open competition (come on Android come on!).

In a related note, the best ebook reader programs I have found so far are uBook (micro-book) for the pocket-pc, an excellent little program that worked very well on my old iPaq, and Bookshelf for the iPhone, which is the application I currently use and makes the most of your own file formats and the beautifully clear resolution of the iPhone screen.  Reading on the iPhone is convenient and a pleasure and I generally carry half a library in my pocket at all times.

I never thought i’d say this but this guy:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/515zoozk.asp?pg=1
Makes a really good case for why control of IANA and its support structures should remain in American hands. Whilst it certainly sounds good to have an independent international body in control it would be foolish and wrong to ignore history.

The fact that international countries would attempt to convince an international body to accede to their wishes and impose their form of censorship on the entire net (something which is currently not possible) should be beyond question. If you think the Islamic countries wouldn’t like anti-Islam pages gone you’re foolish, and if you think China wouldn’t love free-Tibet pages invisible then you’ve been asleep the last decade. If you think it couldn’t happen, you haven’t been paying enough attention to the UN and the Human Rights Council, to name one example.

There are proponents of censorship in just about every country with a significant interest in the internet and an “independent” controlling body would be the perfect platform for these groups to work together to impose their own strictures.

Better then is to leave it how it is. It is a hefty responsibility, but the USA have done fine so far, and they do have a significant and -vocal- portion of their community who are serious about protecting freedom of speech, something lacking in many other countries.

Personally, it worries me a great deal to see the potential for abuse resting firmly in the hands of Americans, who have proven over the last eight years that they are quite capable of embracing fanaticism as a nation and quite capable of being rule by fear. It is telling that even in the depths of this period however, freedom of speech on the internet remained untouched (as best we can tell).

I think I’m more comfortable with it being in the hands of people who so far haven’t abused it, when you compare it to say.. Australian’s communications minister Stephen Conroy. Control of the entire internet? That sounds like a sexual fantasy of Conroy’s.

Also this post wouldn’t be readable in that horrible otherworld, as use of the word Sexual is offensive to pure Christian ears.

Looks like I’m not the only one crying bullshit at the recent censoring of Chaser on reasonably lackluster grounds. Here is an excellent article providing a compelling analysis of the recent outcry.

It is interesting to note that equally offensive humour is (and always has) gotten a free pass on Australian TV. When you see the same thing happening in multiple areas but only one is being attacked, you do start to wonder “what is special about that particular one?”….

Online Opinion – Muzzling ‘The Chaser’