I was really looking forward to getting it.  Possibly too much, because my first reaction on opening the package was disappointment.

Problem 1: It was clearly a second-hand device (thus explaining why it was so cheap) and had been sent to me with the wrong power cable.  Utterly wrong – it was the power cable for a mobile phone and would never have fitted.

Fortunately we had an appropriate power cable on hand which just required its plastic coating being cut down a little to enable it to get fully seated in the socket.  So, one problem down and we could actually charge it and switch it on.

Once it was charged, I eagerly switched it on and was disappointed again.

Problem 2: The screen was full of ghosting.  A moment’s Googling proved that the “flashing refresh” option ought to have been on, but it wasn’t.  We set the flashing refresh on, and that solved the screen problem.

By this time I was feeling fairly despondent about the whole thing and thinking of sending it back.

Next I tried to transfer some of my books from the computer to the Cybook, and we had disappointment again.

Problem 3: the connection between the device and the computer was so unstable that it flickered in and out faster than a snake’s tongue.

Oh God, we thought, that’s it!  it’s going back! But further Googling suggested that the problem might be that we’d used the USB port at the front of the computer, rather than one of the higher speed connections at the back.  So… I re-plugged it in in the back of the computer, and yes, that solved that problem.

Problem 4: Then I transferred my ebook library over to the Cybook.  It claims to support .pdf, .prc (mobipocket/Kindle), .txt, .html and epub files.  Most of my library were .pdf files, so I was disappointed once again to discover that in order to get the pages of the .pdf files into the screen, the font size used on the pdfs was so small it was almost unreadable.  And if you used the zoom function to make it larger, the text spilled out over the edges of the screen and you had to scroll right and left at the end of each sentence to read it.

This was deeply disappointing because almost all my books were pdfs, and I really couldn’t see myself clicking backwards and forwards every single line.

However, I noticed that the .prc files all displayed beautifully – right in the centre of the screen, just filling it but not spilling over, and in a nice, large easily readable font.

So I googled “how to convert .pdf files to .prc”, came upon a forum where someone was advising someone else that you could just drag and drop .pdf files into the free mobipocket reader software, and it would convert them into .prc files.  I already had mobipocket reader on my computer, so I fired it up and spent the better part of four hours converting all my .pdf files to .prc.

And the result was that I now have a library of over 160 books on my Cybook, and all of them display correctly, are beautifully laid out and easy to read.

I also downloaded the Cybook software update and installed that, which gave me the ability to change the font size of my books while keeping the page size the same.  This may have solved my pdf problem on its own, but I’d already done all the conversions by that point.  Whether or no, it’s a great feature, and I’m glad to have it.

The device itself has a nice big screen, very sharp e-ink display, and easy intuitive controls with the single big button on the front.  In its case it feels like holding a paperback book, but with the bonus that I can also listen to music on it!

Now that I’ve leapt the hurdles to get it to behave the way it ought to, I’m really happy with it.  I take it everywhere and relish having an entire library in my inside pocket.  I’m pretty certain I’m going to repurchase some of my books in ebook and then give away the print copies in order to free up some space on my shelves.  I’ve also gone mad and ordered myself a skin from Decal Girl because I don’t like having the CyBook logo confronting me every time I try to read.

Moral of the story?  Good things come to those who Google?  If at first you don’t succeed, find out why not and fix it?  LOL!  I’m not sure.  But I’m certainly not sending it back now.  Soon it will be clothed with the visage of Mount Doom, and just try taking it away from me then!

Sign the Petition here!:
http://restoreequality2010.com/ipod.htm.

Check out the full article here:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-20225-SF-LGBT-Issues-Examiner~y2010m3d16-Repeal-Prop-8-Theres-an-App-for-that-iPhones-help-restore-marriage-equality-in-CA

Thanks,

Jay Matthew
ErasetheH8 Campaign

This year, False Colors is in the starting blocks in the LGBT section, facing desperately stiff competition, so if anyone fancied going and voting it through to the next category, that would be fab!  (If you fancy voting for one of the other books instead, that’s also fair enough )

It’s kind of complicated to explain, so I’ve linked to the explanatory post first, but this is where the actual voting goes on.

I’m very chuffed indeed to be even in the first round, but trying to avoid getting my hopes up any further, as there’s every possibility that the first round will be as far as I get

So today I thought I’d start small and see if I could take a modern photo of a guy in a modern Arabic headscarf and turn him into an oil painting of a man in a turban which might do for something historical.

From to  in five fairly longwinded stages.

I started off with this, from which I removed as much of the watermark as possible (just because it looked unsightly, not because I intend to use the photo for anything afterwards.)

Then I got a big round brush and smudged all the lines of his scarf and his headcloth.  You can see where I’ve started here, and I just carried on until the scarf was all pink, the headcloth was a more turban-like shape, and that distinctive lozenge shaped weave was hidden.

After that, I changed to the path tool and marked around the edges of the scarf.  Changed the path to a selection (using the “path to selection” button,) and then clicked on Colours>Colourise and fiddled around with the sliders until I had changed the colour of the scarf to yellow.

Then I deleted that path, made a new one around the grey/blue area of his jacket and repeated the same thing, but this time I made it purple.  That left me with this:

(I smudged the sofa as well, because it didn’t look very historical.)

Something I did seemed to have washed out a lot of the colour from his face, and I wanted to get some increased saturation and contrast and to take away from the fact that it still looks like a photo.  So I duplicated the layer and set it on Overlay.  That gave me this:

I liked that, but I thought that his face was now more naturalistic than the rest of him – his clothes are smudgy and sweeping but his face is still very sharp.  Also I thought that the colours were maybe a bit *too* bright now.

So I did a Copy Visible and pasted it as a new layer.  Then I desaturated it to black and white and smudged his face quite a lot .  Then I went to Filters>Artistic>Oilify and applied an oil-painting filter.  That gave me this, which looks like a mess:

but then I set the whole layer to Multiply and the result was:

Where his face now looks equally painted as the rest of him.  I’m quite pleased with that.  It’s not exactly correct – the scarf probably ought not to be there at all, but at least he looks like he could conceivably be dressed a bit like one of these chaps http://www.uniformology.com/T-1.html who’s thrown on a scarf because it’s cold.  So although not right, it’s better – which is all I’m aiming for at present.

I’m calling that a very positive result, and will see if I can apply the technique to other pictures to make them look vaguely historical too.

And partly because I wouldn’t know if he was a relative even if he was.  The Beecroft side of the family is my mother’s, and I don’t know even what my grandparents’ first names were, let alone any relatives further back than that.

When I was googling to see if I could find Admiral Beecroft, I did come across a John Beecroft, British Consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin who had splendid mutton-chop whiskers and apparently was

“H.M.’s first consul for Bights of Benin and Biafra. In this capacity he did very good work and was instrumental in making many of the treaties for the suppression of the export slave trade. The naval expedition of 1841 up the Niger under Captain Bird Allen would have suftered even more terribly than it did had it not been for the prompt action taken by Governor Beecroft in going to their rescue. Governor Beecroft was the first to discover and survey the Cross river as far as the rapids.”

It would be interesting if he was a relative, but I have no way of knowing (not without some hefty genealogical research for which I don’t have the tools or time.)  He probably wasn’t, though.  I’ve always thought we were a lot more lower deck than that.

Then Chris decided he had a big mysterious secret.

Then Ben decided he had to have a bigger mysterious secret than Chris.

Then George, Chris’ old flame, turned up out of nowhere and said “I’m still alive, you know!  Also trapped in Elfland.  Help!”

Then Sumala turned up and said “yes, and there aren’t enough female characters, so I need a story!”

Then Oonagh, Queen of the elves, felt it was important to kidnap some people in order to explain to them why she was doing all this kidnapping of people.

There were incidents with a photocopier and well dressing, but that was OK because they had always been meant to be there.

But then Oonagh acquired a rival in the shape of Liadain, and suddenly the elves had politics.  And Chris got arrested for murder, Ben got brainwashed, George got put in suspended animation, and Sumala discovered that the elves are mobilizing for war…

And then I realized I didn’t really have a romance on my hands any more.

The damn thing keeps growing and growing and getting more complicated, and now it’s in the process of getting a spine transplant, because I can’t get all the elvish stuff into the story if it’s only a story about Ben and Chris and how they fall for each other.  It’s going to have to be a story about elves first, and a love story (love triangle?  love square?) afterwards.  But that means there needs to be something new to drive the plot.  A fantasy can’t stand up on its own if it’s built around the skeleton of a romance.  It would only end up being a deformed romance if it tried, and I can’t imagine a deformed romance doing anyone any good.

The worst thing is I’ve written 40K of it as a romance, and I don’t know how much of that will survive the transition into fantasy.  I keep going back to the drawing board with this one and re-plotting it.  I’ll be very glad when it fixes itself into one shape so I can start actually writing it again.  I feel as if I’m trying to run up a down escalator with this one at the moment.

Also, I had a bit of a family crisis in which I discovered that not everything was OK between me and my sister, so that took precidence over everything.

It was kind of a miserable week, as a result, and I let my email pile up and didn’t post on my blog.  If anyone’s been wondering about my new “were-snail” icon, that’s what it’s about – the fact that if there is trouble I deal with it by drawing in my horns and huddling in my shell.

However, this week, I have finished the edit, finished the Cheyenne cover, finalized the series concept and sent off the art for covers #1 and #2, and (due to a lot of forgiveness all around) the family crisis is no longer a crisis.

So I thought I would celebrate by (finally) spending some of the money I got as a Christmas gift from my Dad and buying myself an ereader.  I was going to get a Sony, but as I scrolled down the options at Amazon.co.uk, I got distracted by the Cybook Gen 3 of which even the 3 star review said (paraphrased) “it’s a nice, basic ebook reader with no fancy stuff.”

I checked out their website, and it sounded just the job.  Also it came with a free case, and was cheaper than the Sony.  Now that I know that all the hints I’ve dropped over the past six months have been in vain and I’m getting 18th Century shoes for my birthday, I decided to buy it for myself.  More news on that when it arrives!

Also, yay!  Shining in the Sun is showing up on Samhain’s “Coming Soon” page.  First unfolding seedling of a new release

This must mean I’ll be getting a cover soon.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  While I can’t expect anything as outstanding as the cover art for Captain’s Surrender twice in a row, Samhain’s cover art is always very good.  But  it’s still nerve-wracking when you don’t have any idea at all of what you’ll get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Beecroft

Wow!  Fame!  I feel as if I’ve really arrived.  (And my children are now broadcasting it about the internet in an attempt to one-up their friends.  Your mother might be a brain surgeon, but I bet she isn’t on Wikipedia….   )   Whoever you are, oh Wikipedia Page-maker, you are a complete star.  Thank you so much   How cool is that?!

I Do Two – The Charity Anthology Promoting GLBT

Right To Marriage

in which she interviews Lee Rowan, Kris Jacen and I about the I Do anthologies.

On other news, eagle eyed LJ readers may notice that I’ve changed my LJ style.  I envied Erastes her sidebar with the pictures of her book covers on it.  So I went looking for a three column style and then tweaked it so that it (a) fits with my website and (b) doesn’t look too much like hers, I hope.  It would look less like hers if there wasn’t only a single three column layout to choose from.  Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but being unexpectedly cloned can offend.

A bonus feature is that I’ve discovered the list of links on the right hand side, and how to add more of them.  So if you have a website you would like me to list there, just comment here with the name and URL and I will add it.