On-Demand Movie Update

This past week I tried watching an on-demand movie from Amazon.com with the PC that I have connected to my TV (see previous post). I found out that Amazon has a much higher hardware requirement than I expected. My system has an 866 Mhz P3 processor and the video was so choppy that I had to switch to my P4 3.0 Ghz system in order to view the movie. After looking around on the Amazon site, I found that their minimum requirement is a P4 2.33 Ghz system! I am able to watch most movies on Hulu.com without too much trouble. Although there is some slowdown in frame rate. The bottom line is that processor speed is just as important as your Internet speed when it comes to on-demand video.

I added 256 MB of ram from Computer Memory Outlet.com, which bumped up the ram from 384 to 640. Computer Memory Outlet had the most reasonably priced 256MB PC133 memory that I could find. That made Internet Explorer run noticably faster, but did nothing to speed up the video frame rates. My advice would be to use at least Amazon's minimum requirements if you are thinking about building an on-demand Internet movie box.

Don't forget to checkout our book!

Computer Video System

I mentioned in a previous post that I was thinking about connecting one of my old computers to my big screen TV. Well, I finally got around to it this past weekend and here is what I did to make it work. The computer I used was an old PIII 866Mhz with 384MB of Ram running windows XP. The first thing I had to do was get my hands on a graphics card that had some good TV output capabilities. A friend gave me an old ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 32MB video card with S-Video output.

I connected the S-Video cable and an audio cable to my Philips DVD recorder. The Philips DVDR3575H is connected to my Philips 51" projection screen with an HDMI cable. So far so good, unfortunately, the screen resolution still needs to be set at 800 x 600 in order to see the whole display from the computer. This made the screen fuzzy and hard to read. After enlarging the screen fonts and learning how to use the magnifier which is located under the accessibility menu in XP, things started to look a little more usable.

Next, I connected a Hawking 108G wireless USB adapter so I could have access to the Internet. The final touch was adding a Micro Innovations 2.4Ghz wireless keyboard and mouse. I just happened to see this wireless keyboard/mouse combo at Walmart for $29. The package said that it had a 33 ft. range, so I thought I would give it a try. The quality is on the low end and the mouse is flaky sometimes, but XP recognized it without any additional software. I like having one USB mini plug for both keyboard and mouse. Now I can sit on my couch and surf the web.

One of the best web sites for feature films and TV shows is hulu.com. You don't have to worry about illegal content, this site is totally legit and I highly recommend it. The movies have a 30 second commercial every 15 minutes or so, and some get repetitive after a while, but this is a small price to pay for the wide selection of free films and TV shows they have to offer. The video is a little choppy with the wireless connection, but I plan on running a cable to the computer and upgrading the memory soon. Otherwise, the picture looks and sounds great in full screen mode on the big screen and it's hard to believe that it's all coming in over the Internet.

Book for Sale

My girlfriend's latest novel is now available for purchase. The story took several years to complete and it feels good to finally have it out there for people to see. The book is available as a 356 page paperback or as a PDF download. We hope that people will enjoy this story about a young girl who travels from Texas to New York to find her birthmother.

The screenplay inspired writing style moves the story along quickly. I added to many of the more suspense filled scenes involving drug dealing gang members and other assorted shady characters. It even has a sadistic serial killer who terrorizes our young teen runaway. Don't be fooled by the title, In a Sense of Love is a story that will satisfy any true book lover. For information on how to purchase a copy, click on the cover image.

Hard Times

Any time my bank account is bigger than my retirement account I think about the financial gurus who said that the stock market is a good investment. It's true that stocks historically have been one of the only ways to get a better return than a bank CD, but what they don't tell you is that you can lose 25% of your savings in a single week. This past week has been a wake up call for a lot of people who trusted the financial advice of experts. Now we find out that the whole global financial system may be corrupted beyond repair.

It's too late for the average Joe, who has the "proper mix" of stocks in their retirement plan. We will have to ride it out and hope that they restore some level of stability in the system. The old saying goes: "you haven't really lost anything until you sell". But, I know that's only partially true, because I've been around long enough to have owned stocks that have gone to zero. I only hope that most of us can continue to stay employed and are able to pay our food and utility bills if we run into some serious hard times.

Our fall book is in the air

This week fall was in the air as you can see by the color of the maple leaf in the photo. I have been researching options for publishing the novel that my GF wrote and I edited. We tried going down the query letter path with trade publishers, but found that to be a disappointment. The next option is to have our book published with a print-on-demand (POD) publisher.

Over the past few years I have acquired a lot of knowledge about book editing and the publishing industry. If you are lucky enough to find a publisher to work with you, they are likely to request changes to your book and will expect you to travel to events to help promote the project. On the other hand, a POD publisher will print your book in a few weeks, exactly as it is, and will leave book promotion entirely up to you. There is also the quality issue to consider. Books printed by the POD process are typically lower in quality than those printed by a traditional publisher. You also have to be aware that the retail price of the POD book is going to be much greater than that of a traditional publisher. Most people will not pay over $20 for a novel from an unknown author. This, and the fact that POD books can not be returned if they are stocked and not sold by a distributor, works out to low sales numbers.

So, this is the dilemma; we have an 118,000 word novel ready to go, but no publisher who isn't a POD, has shown any interest. The story, if you are interested, is a drama about a young girl who leaves Texas to find her birth mother and finds more than trouble along the way. I would consider an offer from a trustworthy agent who could help us bring this project to a real publisher, but those people are usually too busy to even read their email.