S.D. Falchetti's Blog, page 13

The Grand Adventure

A few years ago I read Patrick Smith's Cockpit Confidential, a retired pilot's behind-the-scenes look at everything which happens behind the closed doors of aircraft. I was hooked, and, intensely curious. YouTube fueled my fire with channels dedicated to people showing their in-flight videos of pilot's training and first flights. One in particular showed someone being handed the controls of a single-engine prop plane and asked to land it with no flight experience. I remember him panning across the different controls and trying to deduce what each gauge did. I wanted to know what each gauge did, so I downloaded X Plane and bought the virtual version of the same plane.

I've been virtually flying the past month, learning all of the details about how to start the plane cold, navigate via navaids and gauges, and land at different airports. When I took off from my local county airport, I was amazed at the detail in the simulations. It looked like where I lived, right down to the street. I could find my house. In he advent of full-world maps like Google Earth, X Plane has a three-dimensional model of the world for you to explore. If you're really into authenticity, you can overlay it with satellite imagery. And, so, I find myself exploring places. Flying over the Golden Gate bridge and doing a circuit past Sausalito to Muir Woods and back, seeing the sites.

Flying the PA28 Piper Warrior II just north of San Jose

After fifty-plus simulator hours, I'm ready for bigger challenges. And, so, I've planned my grand adventure: flying coast-to-coast in my single-engine plane, the PA28 Piper Warrior II, and blogging my trip along the way.

I plan to keep it as authentic as possible. This means:

I'll be following real flight plans created in SkyVector, using actual navaids and sky lanes.

 

Real weather will be enabled (X Plane will constantly download real-life weather for where I'm flying). This means some of my flights might get scrubbed for bad weather.Ortho (satellite) photos will be used for the entire route, so what you see is what it really looks like.I'll fly Just Flight's PA28 Piper Warrior II. Aside from a Garmin 530, its tech is old-school, with standard gauges and a very basic autopilot.

Warrior II cockpit. Top: exhaust gas temperature, indicated airspeed, artificial horizon, altitude, NAV1 course deviation indicator, Garmin GPS; Bottom: ADF indicator, attitude indicator, directional gyro, vertical speed indicator, NAV2 course deviation indicator. Fuel gauges on the bottom. That's about it. There's an autopilot which controls pitch, but doesn't control altitude or vertical speed.

 

My flight plan has 22 airports mapped out in SkyVector. Since the Warrior 2 has a range of 500 nautical miles, there will be small hops with overnight stays before moving on to another leg.

That's it! I'm looking forward to the sights, and learning to navigate cross-country.

Stay tuned.

 

Thoughts on Ready Player One

The first time I read Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, I didn't read it. I was planning a twelve-hour car trip when I stumbled upon the audible version narrated by Wil Wheaton. The book concluded just as I returned home to my garage.  I remember sitting there in my car an extra three minutes just to hear the conclusion. I liked it so much that I went and read the Kindle version.

RPO really connected with me. I'm the right age, growing up in the 80s, and loved all the geeky stuff which it loved. I played Zork on my Commodore 64,  reveled in computer and video games, played with all the same toys, and cherished all the same tv shows and movies.

When I saw the announcement for the movie version directed by Steven Spielberg, I was excited, and a bit nervous. Would Hollywood squash everything that was great about RPO?

Yesterday I watched the movie version, and I was disappointed.

I knew the key challenges were changed, and this didn't bother me. The originals - playing through a Dungeons and Dragons module to beat a lich at a game of Joust, replicating the dialogue of War Games- were perhaps a bit too geeky for mainstream movie-goers. So, swapping these out with car races and the Shining were understandable.

Like so many movies the past decade, the art direction, visuals, and CGI are fantastic, but the writing at times was fodder for CinemaSins. Which is surprising, because Ernest Cline has a screenwriting credit for the movie.

I know, I'm a cliche with "the book was so much better." But, it's not that the book has more, it's that the movie was a rewrite, with non-sensical plot elements.  

For example, in the movie (SPOILER ALERT):

Everyone seems to live in Columbus, Ohio, within a few blocks of each other.Artemis and Nolan deduce Wade's identity and real-life location nearly down-to-the-second. Literally, seconds after Nolan blows up the stack, Artemis has a goon waiting to kidnap Wade.When IOI attacks Artemis's secret location, Artemis shoos Wade into an escape hatch which leads to an alley. Even though it's been seconds since IOI crashed through the window, Aech, Daito and Shoto are waiting for him in a mail truck. I feel like there was some scene cut where Artemis contacts everyone in-game and says "Come here, I've got Wade" and IOI intercepts the message to find out where 'here' is. It's the only way this makes any sense.Artemis lets herself get captured immediately by IOI to set up an unnecessary damsel-in-distress rescue Nolan writes his password on a post-it note, and points out the chair with the post-it note to Wade, so Wade can later hack his account and set up the "we're still in the holodeck" trick.The ending battle with Wade in the truck swaying and affecting his OASIS motion was right out of Inception.

Yes, I know, rants, but I drives me crazy when characters just materialize for no reason to pick up the protagonist, repeatedly. 

A few things I liked:

In the book, it always bothered me that Wade was somewhat indifferent to Nolan's threat to blow up the stack, and to some extent almost dared him to do it (because he thought he was bluffing). The movie did a better job of having him try to save his aunt, as well as making the aunt and boyfriend unlikable.The Shining scene and Aech's reactions to it.  It seems unlikely Aech would not have seen the Shining, but still, it was fun.Artemis has more character development. 

A few big themes which got lost in translation:

In the book, the characters meet in person for the first time at Og's, where the climatic online battle occurs.  The reveals - Aech's gender, Artemis's appearance, and even Wade's appearance (he's overweight and bald) - are a theme of the OASIS's "be anything" approach.  The movie has these, but they're nearly incidental.  In the movie, Aech just blurts out it's her in the ally a second before Wade jumps into the mail truck.The global effort of the egg hunt.  All of the main characters are from different places, not neighbors in Columbus, Ohio.Poverty and classism. Touched upon in the beginning, slightly, but the book was permeated in the fact that Wade was poor, went to the Oasis public school, couldn't afford most of the things in the Oasis, and was generally at a large disadvantage in the egg hunt.  It was contrasted nicely with IOI, which had nearly infinite resources.  It was a great set up for the little guy winning with a shoestring budget.

Well, that's my rant. Curious what others thought of the movie.

Cutting the Cord

"I've paid twenty-thousand dollars to Comcast over the past ten years," my co-worker said, "and I just can't do it anymore."

Twenty-thousand, I thought, that can't be right.

It turns out that it's not right. My current Comcast bill is $301 per month. Times 12 months equals $3612 annually. Times ten years equals $36.210. You can buy a brand new Audi Q3 for $36,210.

Last year I tried to lower my bill (which is a bundle of phone, internet, and cable) by dropping premium channels, cutting channels, dropping phone, and lowering internet speed.  The result was $1 more expensive per month than my current bundle. This is because seemingly Comcast has a big flowchart which returns all options to the same price point.

My experience talking to Comcast customer service

So, I've been scheming and dreaming of how to go cable free. This week I started the grand experiment of cutting the cord.

When DirectTvNow offered a promo - subscribe for three months at $105 and get a free $179 4k Apple TV 4K, it seemed like a zero risk proposition. I'd already been thinking of upgrading my 2nd generation Apple TV to a 4K.

First, let me say WOW. The difference in picture quality between the 2nd Gen and 4K is amazing. Second, the addition of the full app store, including games, significantly changes the functionality of my Apple TV. I already have a MiFi controller for playing video games with my daughter.

Playing games like Asphalt 8 with a controller on Apple TV 4K is a surprisingly rewarding console experience

The Apple TV 4k comes with a small touch-surface gesture-swipe remote which has a basic wii-controller-style accelerometer. It has a Siri button, which I'm used to for Comcast voice commands, so that's helpful. It makes me miss my old remote, which had click-buttons instead of a touch-surface. I wish more companies would find the value in physical buttons and stop moving everything to touch gestures (especially for tasks where your eyes are somewhere else).

I don't know how many times I've picked this up upside-down. The top half above the menu is the swipe surface/clicker. The bottom half is for holding.

DirectTVNow works great. The experience is just like the cable guide you're used to. It also includes a basic cloud DVR service at no cost. Best of all, it counts as a cable provider, which means all of the network apps which let you watch live TV work. And, with Apple TV, there are a ridiculous amount of Network apps. You could easily watch all your usual channels without even opening the DirectTVNow app. In general, we just open the network app and stream whatever episodes we want of our favorite shows.

You have to register and activate every single app, then link them to your DirectTVNow account. Once you do, you can stream virtually every show on the network. Some even stream live TV.

Here's where I hit my first hiccup: local channels. Depending upon where you live, your local channels may not be licensed (yet) for streaming via DirectTVNow Where I live, only Fox is licensed.

Of course, the only thing you actually need to watch local channels is an antenna, so I purchase an HD antenna. To my surprise, it receives twenty-six channels over the air.  Another surprise is that many of the network apps will stream your local channels.  For example, the NBC app will stream your local NBC station live.

Next hiccup: No way to record over-the-air local channels.

Attempted solution: HD Home Run.

HD Home Run is a small box which you plug into your HD antenna and internet router. It then streams the signal to your TV (or other screens, such as iPad). The HD Home Run costs $99 and the Channels app costs $24.99.  If you want to add DVR functionality, the subscription is $35 per year.  

So, I bought one. And, it sucks.

First of all, even though the HD Home Run is a wifi streaming device, you cannot wirelessly connect to it. You must use an ethernet cable to physically plug it into your router. This means you must relocate your HD antenna to wherever your router is located. In my case, this was in my basement, which is a bad place to receive antenna signals.

Second, the DVR service isn't a really a service. By "service", they mean that if you stream your content to your Mac or PC, they will enable the record feature in their software on your Mac or PC,  which will turn your computer's hard drive into a DVR. The instructions are to keep your computer on 24/7 and disable sleep mode. Also, you probably should not have a notebook computer, like I do.

So, I'm returning it.

There's literally one show I want to record on broadcast tv. I could by a Tivo, but $400 seems overkill for one show. I may just sit tight until DirectTV gets licensing for NBC.

Anyway, otherwise I'm pleasantly surprised and very happy with my cord-cutting experiment. I'm going to run parallel paths - keeping my cable subscription for the month until I'm sure there's no other hiccups, but I can see myself living the cable-free dream.

Erebus - New Cover Art

Erebus has new cover art! The novella is available as a 99 cent standalone or as part of the Haydens World: Volume 1 bundle.

Get Hayden's World: Volume 1 for FREE

Hayden's World: Volume 1 is FREE today (May 3) through Monday (May 7). Get your copy here: http://bit.ly/haydenworld1

Creating the Hayden's Bundle Cover

I create all of my own book cover art. Some books, like Titan's Shadow, use licensed Adobe stock photos overlaid with title text. Others, like Aero One, are completely digitally hand-drawn.  A few use a mix of 3D modeling and hand-drawn art. Hayden's Bundle fits in that last category.

When I started my self-publishing journey I was at a bit of a loss for how to generate a decent cover, so I thought I'd share some of my tricks.

I already had a 3D model of Bernard's Beauty from the 43 Seconds cover, so I reused it. The ring (which is Cassini One in Erebus) was quickly created in Blender just by discombobulating a cube and radially spinning it. I didn't put much effort into materials, textures, or photorealism.  The whole intent of the 3D model was to be the pose for the hand-drawn picture.  Here it is modeled and rendered:

The goal was for the final art to have a retro, stylized look. Because of this, I wanted to have a limited color palette. The next step was to import the render into Photoshop and run it through a posterization filter, reducing the color levels. I tinkered with the color balance at this point, shifting it green:

Now comes the hard part. I masked every detail of the plate and repainted it by hand. Before I started, I worked out the color palette, choosing seven main colors for the picture. I constrained myself to only create new colors by mixing the main colors. This helped give the picture color harmony:

Main colors at top. I started mixing intermediates beneath them.

Masking the plate and hand-painting over it. Aside from assigning new colors, this let me simplify many of the complex shapes and gradients.

This was very labor-intensive. Some details, such as the starry background, must be created from scratch using Photoshop brushes. Once it was finished, I used Photoshop's color balance feature to adjust the overall color-scheme, then I moved on to the text. I have some standard fonts and effects I use in the Hayden's World series, so most of the text settings are reapplications from previous covers. The real trick here is working the layout so the text works with the art:

Text layers at right. Outer glow is enabled for the letters, but is set to a dark color, creating a shadow to enhance legibility.

That's it! I save the image in the correct dimensions for Kindle, and I'm good to go.

The last thing I do is make some quick social medial blocks, just by cropping. Here's the title block I use from Twitter promos:

Hope this was helpful. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Hayden's Bundle Now Available

Get all of the Hayden's World stories in one bundle and save 25% with Hayden's Bundle: Volume 1. The book includes: 43 Seconds, Silver-Side Up, Erebus, Signal Loss, Last Stand, Aero One, and Titan's Shadow.

Three for Free

Get the first three Hayden's World stories for FREE this week (April 2 - April 6, 2018) on Kindle: http://bit.ly/haydensworld

A Case for Cases - Update

Last month I bought an iPhone X. I have no regrets - it's an awesome phone. But, it is a glass bar of soap, and this necessitates a case.

As an engineer, I have a knack of overthinking things. This was the case with my case. I wanted the saddle brown leather case, but rationalized myself into the silicone case. In the end, however, heart triumphed over mind and I chose the leather.

One month later, I've dropped my phone a few times. Never on concrete, but a few times on the hard floor at work. It's unscathed. The leather case itself was initially a scuff magnet. The slightest brush with a fingernail or jean rivet left scratches. But, it self-heals. The more I handled it the more the oils from my skin darkened and smoothed it, and scratches disappeared.

Initially the case was quite rigid and slick. After two weeks it become grippier and soft. I think the amount of grip is just right, now. It's developed a patina, darkening around the edges, and it looks great, like a worn saddle. Originally it was a uniform caramel color, but I prefer the darker brown.

Here's a few pics. If you return to my original post, you can compare them versus new:

Titan's Shadow - Story Extras

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read Titan's Shadow, grab a copy (it's FREE this week!). The rest of this article gives away some major plots points, otherwise.

A few sciencey bits first:

Jia only wears arctic gear and a full-face breather in Saturn's clouds. Atmospheric pressure is eighty-percent Earth's and the temperature, -99 C, isn't that much colder than the coldest temperature recorded on Earth, -89 C, in Antartica.When Jia and Ping attend the eclipse party, Enceladus eclipses the Sun. Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Rhea, Dione and Titan are all capable of causing eclipses on Saturn.Despite its thick nitrogen atmosphere, Titan is extremely cold, -179 C. Iapetus is remarkably far from Saturn. At 3,560,851 km, you could fit 279 Earths between Saturn and Iapetus.The concept of celestial Julian dates is only somewhat fictional. Real Julian dates are popular for astronomy because they are not calendar dependent; instead, they use Jan 1, 4713, as '0' and count up days elapsed. In everyday-life you probably encounter a simplified version of a Julian date which counts days elapsed since Jan 1st of the current year, maxing out at 365. There's no reason, I imagined in Titan's Shadow, that you couldn't do the same thing for any other planet. For example, Venus has a 225 day year, so it could have its own simplified Julian calendar which spans from zero to 225.Although the constellations will appear the same from any planet in our solar system, the morning stars (which are planets) will change. In Park 270 at the end, Jia and Ping see two morning stars - Earth and Venus - low in the horizon.

A few writing bits:

Titan's Shadow has a linear structure, but, like an action movie, has a few big action scenes. If you break the story into normal scenes (S) and action scenes (A) for the nine chapters, it looks like:

S S A S S A A S S

Neat, huh? It's fairly symmetric. In terms of writing lingo, the inciting incident occurs when Jia spots Flynn, the midpoint is the news of the Hephaestus attack, the climax is the shoot-out with Sulo, and the Hermes's return is the resolution. If you map them out as inciting (I), midpoint (m), climax (c), and resolution (r):

- I - - M - C - R

It works out how you'd expect. The midpoint is exactly in the middle (and is the turning point for the story).

Aero One's story structure was very different. In terms of normal scenes/action scenes, its five chapters map as:

A S S/A S A

Still symmetric, but the opposite of Titan's Shadow. Aero One starts with action and lets you get caught up in the middle.

Okay, a bit technical for writing tidbits, but thought I'd mix it up and give you both the science of the story and also the science of the story.  Hope you enjoyed it.