It’s been a busy couple of weeks. It’s performance review time at my day job but I’ve also been proofreading Travis Heermann‘s new self-published book – Sword of the Ronin. I backed the original Kickstarter project and when Travis emailed out to backers asking for help proofreading the manuscript I stuck my virtual hand up.

Sword of the Ronin is the second book of the Ronin trilogy (the first being Heart of the Ronin) and I’d originally planned to read the first and second novels back to back. Obviously, that wasn’t practical – Travis needed the proofreading done by the beginning of May and I don’t read quite that quickly so I jumped right in with the second book. I wasn’t sure whether that would be an issue but Travis drip feeds information from the first book so I never felt lost.

Sword of the Ronin mixes historical elements with fantasy into a fast paced adventure and I really enjoyed reading it. There’s plenty of action and some really effective writing – particular the part where our hero, Ken’ishi, ends up in…okay, no I won’t spoil it. Things get quite graphic in places so bear that in mind, but those scenes worked well for me; particularly that bit where Ken’ishi ends up in…okay, okay, no spoilers.

It was odd, reading a book I wasn’t familiar with as ‘work’ rather than pure enjoyment but it was fun – I’m a sucker for stories set in feudal Japan – and I was able to spot some typos and point out some things that seemed confusing or inconsistent, at least to me so hopefully I’ve helped make the book a little bit better.

Travis recently sent out sample of the limited edition and it looks fantastic, I’m looking forward to seeing the final product. I also need to go back and read Heart of the Ronin.

We’ve also been making our final preparations for our third marathon, tomorrow’s Vancouver Marathon. Basically, that means a handful of runs at “race pace” to get a feel for what that’s like, and lost of sitting around. I also use this final week as an excuse to eat things I really shouldn’t be eating (Twix being the vice of choice this week) but that’s not really recommended. We’re aiming to beat our Victoria Marathon time which was 4:41 but it feels like I haven’t been training as diligently as I should have been so that may be optimistic, especially as it’s going to be pretty warm tomorrow.

Thanks to our local Running Room store, we got to see Ultramarathoner Ellie Greenwood on Wednesday. She talked about race prep and motivation and I came out of the talk feeling really pumped up about the race. We’ll see how long that lasts – did I mention it’s going to be warm tomorrow.

Oh, and we went to see the Canucks in the first round of the NHL playoffs but the less said about that the better – heartbreaking.

[The article Proofreading in the Pudding by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 4th, 2013]

Like so many people, I’m horrified by the bombings in Boston on Monday and my thoughts are with everyone affected.

My connection with the running community is modest but it was enough to bring it all a little bit closer to home; to make it all a little bit more real. I watched a recording of the elite race on Tuesday evening and it was impossible to reconcile the happy, cheering crowds lining Boylston Street as the leaders completed the race with the carnage that we saw a couple of hours later.

As the human stories behind the tragedy become known it’s clear that, once again, we’ve seen both the worst and the best of mankind this week.

[The article Boston  by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on April 18th, 2013]

I’m writing this post on my new toy – a Samsung E5250 Chromebook.

If you’re not aware of the Chromebook concept, it’s a class of laptop that runs Google’s Chrome operating system instead of Windows or iOS. There are some expensive models but the main draw is that the base models are very cheap – the Samsung costs about $270. The downside is that they only run Google apps so you’ll be using Google’s web based word processor and spreadsheet app rather than Word or Excel. That said, there are plenty of apps out there, including games, so you should be able to find most of what you need.

The Samsung Chromebook is one of two available in Canada (the other being the Acer C7). As laptops go its fairly low spec but it does come with an SSD drive. Essentially SSD drives work just like a memory card that you’d put in a digital camera which means that they’re small, fast and completely silent. As a result, the Chromebook boots up very quickly and although there’s only 16Gb of onboard storage you get 100GB of Google Drive space (free for the first two years) which lives “in the cloud” and is more than enough to store the sort of files you’ll be working with on a Chromebook. The lack of a hard drive means the E5250 is very thin and very light – just over 1kg which is less than the bag I carry my traditional laptop around in.

The reason I have a new Chromebook, despite the fact that I have an iPad, a laptop and a PC, is that our apartment has really big windows.

(Bear with me, you may be able to use some of this to justify your own unnecessary purchases).

Our windows give us a really good view of the water and the south of the city. They also let in a lot of sunlight. When I’m working in my office on a sunny day (yes, Vancouver does have sunny days) I have to wear a cap to keep the sun out of my eyes. During the summer, those south facing windows turn the apartment into a very effective oven and my office into an oven in self clean mode so I’ve been looking for a way to write away from the apartment, or at the very least in the bigger and slightly cooler living room.

Although the iPad is a fantastic device, touch keyboards are really not conducive to long periods of writing and certainly don’t work well for editing. I could buy some sort of keyboard but it’s still not really a great solution – I’d be propping the screen up somehow while balancing the keyboard on my legs. I do already have a laptop but it’s very old and slow, takes several minutes to boot up and the battery is useless so it’s not something I can use away from a power source (say on the beach). And it’s heavy and I’m old.

So, when the Chromebooks arrived in Canada I decided to give one a try. I’ve only been using it for a couple of hours, so obviously these are pretty early impressions but so far I’m very happy with it. It’s a little bit slow on some web pages but I’ll probably be using my iPad or main PC for serious browsing anyway.

Considering I’ll be using it for writing, the keyboard is critical and although there are a few minor differences (no dedicated caps lock key for example) it’s a good size and it seems like I’ll be able to switch between my desktop and the Chromebook without too many muscle memory related typos. The Google integration is nice, I already use Chrome as my browser and Google Drive for storing data I use across machines so it will fit nicely into my day-to-day life. Boot up speed is very impressive (less than five seconds) and with a 6+ hour battery life it should be okay to take on trips or to coffee shops, or more likely, the library.

If I had to find something to criticise at this point (and this is the Internet after all) it would be the hinge. It’s not embedded into the case so when the machine closed it has a ridge running across it which rather spoils the sleek, super thin look. It’s not a big hinge though and it’s a purely an aesthetic “issue”.

I’ll probably post some more thoughts on the Samsung E5250 in a few weeks, once I’ve been using it for a longer, but in the meantime, if you’re in the market for a cheap laptop for writing and other lightweight work and can live without your Windows/Mac apps, check out the Chromebooks.

[The article The Emperor's New Toy by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset April 11th, 2013]

My wife introduced me to horror films one afternoon when she suggested we rent out Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. That film has since become one of my favourites and even now, <cough> years later, we’re still drawn to horror films. So, it was inevitable that we’d go to see the Evil Dead remake.

And by that I mean this one:

Not this one:

Let’s get something straight right from the start. There are no plot surprises in this film. This is the type of horror film that The Cabin in the Woods skewered so beautifully. There was some attempt at a credible explanation for why our protagonists don’t run from the cabin (which given the amount of rain in this film is located somewhere near Vancouver) at the first sign of trouble but beyond that you get all the requisite plot holes and dumb decisions you would expect.

But that’s not why people watch Evil Dead and the remake has updated the story without losing the flavour of the original. Which makes it a very gory film. Very. Despite being labelled on the Cineplex website as a “thriller” this is not a watered down PG-13 teen-horror. This is a full on, in your face, R-rated, blood soaked horror film -  apparently two full 50,000 gallon tankers worth of blood in fact.

All the requisite Evil Dead imagery is there – the evil book, amorous undergrowth, the trapdoor, gruesome decapitations, a shotgun, the chainsaw of course and lots and lots of blood. I rewatched The Evil Dead at Christmas a while ago and I’d forgotten how much blood there is in the original. Clearly the writers of the new version have not. They do steer clear of the original dialog though – we’ll have no “dead by dawn” or “boomsticks” here, thank you very much.

So, nothing that’s going to stretch your brain cells but definitely an Evil Dead movie.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of the series stay right until the end – after all of the credits have finished – even the weird logos.

Evil Dead (© 2012 – TriStar Pictures, Inc.)

The snot monkey has packed its bags and is saying its last farewell’s and today is a holiday here in Canada so I decided to try a short 6km run.

Ouch.

The run itself was fine and we kept a reasonable pace but as soon as we stopped I felt a bit light headed and even now, a couple of hours later, my body is still complaining. There’s less than six weeks to our next Marathon so this is “not a good thing”(tm).

Progress on The Ghost Smuggler continues apace (I’ve always wanted to be able to say apace)  - mostly because I’m most of the current chapters are brought over from previous drafts.

That said, Ethel the Muse was on fine form at 4am this morning and she’s insisting that I need to weave two characters from early chapters into the final act (actually four characters, but three of them are a related group) and add a sprinkling of technology. No idea how I’m going to do that but it shows that the outline isn’t stopping me from continuing to write like the Simpsons.

Oh, and I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the key characters needs to change dramatically – the current incarnation is a walking, talking cliche.

Now…to the keyboard…(yes, I’m already there but you know what I mean).