Oh, Nemo! My Great Pyrenees is going to look great! He'll be wearing this Bantha costume as we wander the entire .4 of a mile that is our neighborhood designated trick-or-treating run.
You know, every once in a while you run into a real gem on Amazon. A self-published work by an “outsider” author who must also function as their own publisher. When you find a gem like that, you drop to your damn knees and thank Jeff Bezos for creating a space where this sort of thing can happen.
It happens in this synopsis of a book published by P. Arden Corbin of Topeka, Kansas.
Here is his own synopsis of his self-published novel, “Unanswered Letters,”
A very young boy writes letters to his parents, who never answer them. Then when this person grows into an adult, he writes letters to his first wife, his second wife, and lastly to his fourth wife, of which she never answers any of those letters. Because this wife never talks to that husband, like a wife is supposed to do. But while all of this is happening, this male person is also taking care of his various positions in his life, trying to earn a living with all of the many things that he does. And while he is doing this, he is also raising a family of six girls and four boys. Not all of them are naturally born to his family. Meaning some of them he has adopted as a single father, even when he was a married man. Trying to keep his sanity while doing all of these things has put a lot of stress and strain on this person. Will he survive? You will have to read this Novel to get that answer. The trials and tribulations of this man is something that all of us can learn from as we read this book. Will any of what this man experiences, happen in your lives? One can only wonder. Don't miss reading this Novel, because you may learn something that will help you in your own lives. This is a long book. Read this book, because you will learn how to survive in this world, when you think there is nothing you can do. The tenacity this main character used when he went out into this world, will inspire you to do great things with your own life.
Mr. Corbin has lived a long and interesting life of service.
P. Arden Corbin was born on the family farm in northeastern South Dakota. When he was in High School, he was the Editor of the School Paper. He pursued higher education throughout his working years, earning Degrees in various fields. Mr. Corbin was instrumental in establishing a Veterinary Hospital in Southern California in 1977.
After Mr. Corbin retired in 1995, he also taught school in a particular school District as a Substitute teacher, wherever he was needed. He was also a Special Olympics Coach for a Topeka, Kansas Chapter for three years, and a Para-professional teacher for two years. Teaching Handicapped children how to survive and function in life today.
Mr. Corbin's most recent novel is a science fiction title, The Lake That Wasn't There. It is available in both eBook and print.
At the beginning of the summer my son Ronan, age 12, and I built him his first high-powered gaming PC. Me being a dad and all, I did so happily, but with one proviso -- he’d have to dedicate time every day to learning a programming language. He was slightly sceptical of this, having taken a few less-than-interesting intro to programming classes in the past. Prepared for this, I recommended that we enroll him in Youth Digital’s comprehensive Java course called Minecraft Server Desgin 1. This got his full attention, as he had dreams of creating his own custom servers and gameplay modes to host Minecraft sessions with his friends.
We signed him up and dove in. Our immediate impression was that site and course are smartly designed and easy to navigate. All material is introduced through clear, well-produced, often funny videos that didn’t talk down him, but instead did a great job of walking him through new concepts, then pausing while he took pop quizzes and did hands-on coding exercises.
The course includes a year of server hosting, 24-hour tech support (that was fast and helpful the few times he’s needed it), and perhaps best of all, a browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) for editing the game, player, and team Java files. Within this Codenvy IDE (Windows and OSX only), you can launch the updated server with one button, which makes it fast to test code and correlate newly learned concepts with the “real world” Minecraft results.
He chose one of the four pre-built maps, learned to modify the default server file description text, whitelisted a few friend, and launched his Minecraft server within the first hour of instruction. Compared to a typical “Hello World” exercise, I think Ronan was thrilled that the programming was taught so he got results relevant to his interests.
By the time he’d been through six lessons, Ronan had learned and was putting into practice fundamental programming concepts such as arrays, conditional statements, and while loops. He was using these to create lists of items that randomly appear in chests, and to place command blocks in his map that power up player health stood upon -- providing their health is below a certain threshold. Somehow, this is much more enticing to him than learning to code arrays of grocery lists as some other courses do…
Ronan did become impatient at times with the pace of the videos, wanting to get into the meat of a lesson. He would sometimes skip ahead in the videos, or start to code as soon as he got the gist of the lesson, before instructed. In his own (blunt) words:
“The videos were good at explaining the points they needed to make. But they spent too much time bantering around. A lot of the video is usually skippable.”
I asked Ronan to say a few words about the course in general:
“I learned a lot of Java from this course, such as how to use methods which came into play a lot. I also learned how to make an array because I needed different items to be placed in chests. Another thing I learned is how to use an If-Then statement. An example would be, if playerIsStandingOnBlock, then givePlayer(Item.stone_sword).”
“I am now able to do all kinds of awesome things. I have an idea for a new server where there is a player-supported economy and town. Players could farm crops, set redstone monster traps with the click of a button, become shopkeepers, barter goods, and become rich!”
“With my newfound Java skills I might be able to actually create it. I know how to assign values, set timers, spawn monsters, and all kinds of other things. Now that I’ve taken this course, I can make an awesome server! I would definitely recommend taking this course if you are new to Java and like Minecraft.”
[embed]https://vimeo.com/129721713[/embed]
The cost is $249.99 for roughly 30 hours of instruction/hands-on exercises, a year of server hosting for up to 5 players, and a year of 24-hour tech support. For the quality level of the instruction and the ease of setup/development/hosting the price seems fair, although you can often find discount coupons online if you search a bit.
Sebastian Errazuriz’s Wave Cabinet is made of connected movable slats that can be arranged by brushing your hand against them. Beautiful! I want a desktop sized model to fiddle with.
Gamer Daniel Fisher used an old golf ball balancing trick to test the integrity of his D20 gaming dice. To set up the test, he mixed 6+ tablespoons of salt with 1/3 cup room temperature water in a small glass jar. By floating and spinning a die in the jar, […]
Ever wanted your own personal BattleBot competition? Well, you’re in luck, because that’s exactly what the Bot Bash Party service delivers. When you book a party, one of their seasoned robot battle professionals will bring an arena and four remote-controlled battle robots straight to your door. You can duke it […]
Lord Summerisle, Dracula, Saruman—all immortal. Alas, the legendary actor behind them, who created villains of imposing intelligence and dignity for generation after generation, is dead at 93. Read the rest
Amazon has released their list of 100 Young Adult books not to miss. It includes some of my favorites, including Maus and Cory's renowned Little Brother!
Coming this November (pre-order here), Thing Explainer expands the premise of Up Goer Five, Munroe's blueprint of the Saturn Five rocket that restricted its vocabulary to the thousand most common English words.
Read the rest
SStarting May 8, 2015 at 10 a.m. Pacific time, visit the Humble Store for two weeks of new discounts every day, publisher sales, $1 daily deals, and more.
The Humble Store Spring Sale will end on Friday, May 22, 2015 at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
A report (issued by a college savings business, caveat lector) says that the US graduating college class of 2015 has more debt than any other class in history.
Read the rest
Take a quick tour of how your brain processes patterns by blinking at different speeds while looking at this GIF. You'll probably see concentric circles appearing in different places, and possibly pentagonal lines now and then. Read the rest
For more than 3 billion years, the cyclical light of sun, moon, and stars governed life on Earth. Then along came electric light. Our bodies and brains may not have been ready.
Netflix's new DIY project allows you to dim lights, silence phones, order food, and then "Netflix and Chill" at the push of a button.
Gamer Daniel Fisher used an old golf ball balancing trick to test the integrity of his D20 gaming dice. To set up the test, he mixed 6+ tablespoons of salt with 1/3 cup room temperature water in a small glass jar. By floating and spinning a die in the jar, […]
Ever wanted your own personal BattleBot competition? Well, you’re in luck, because that’s exactly what the Bot Bash Party service delivers. When you book a party, one of their seasoned robot battle professionals will bring an arena and four remote-controlled battle robots straight to your door. You can duke it […]
Take a quick tour of how your brain processes patterns by blinking at different speeds while looking at this GIF. You'll probably see concentric circles appearing in different places, and possibly pentagonal lines now and then. Read the rest
Take a quick tour of how your brain processes patterns by blinking at different speeds while looking at this GIF. You'll probably see concentric circles appearing in different places, and possibly pentagonal lines now and then. Read the rest
