Dh.harris183

Unfortunately, I have a bit of bad news regarding my novel and the Google Play store.  I know more than one reader has been waiting to get my book until it’s in the Play store, and I should point out that I’m a Google fan. I love my Android phone, and I use Gmail, and many other Google products, every day. I am predisposed to like Google, but honestly, getting a book into the Google Play store is a monumental pain. I burned an entire morning of my productive time with Google’s sign-up page open in one tab and four more tabs of their contradictory instructions. At the end of that, I hadn’t even successfully gotten the name of my book into their system.

If Google were the industry leader in e-books, I could see them figuring their system was good enough, but they aren’t. The estimates I’ve seen put them in 4^th place, with something like 5% of the market. Every other system I have used has been much, much easier to deal with.

To those who have been waiting for my book in the Play store, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it happening. The book’s available as a hard copy, on Kindle, NOOK, Kobo, Smashwords (DRM free), and will be in iBooks and Sony as soon as it works through the approval process. 

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has checked out Rick's advice column, and for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

I’ve been waiting a long time to blog this. Moko has been teasing us with work-in-progress images of his Neon Genesis Evangelion mecha for the last three years, and the finished model is finally revealed. The model stands 120 cm (nearly 4 feet) tall, and weighs 9.4 kg (20.7 pounds). I feel words will fail me in trying to encapsulate its awesomeness, but here goes. 

First off, the color is spectacular.  All that purple must have cost a pretty penny.  Second, the engineering is brilliant.  We’ve seen large-scale, articulated mechas before, most of them based on Brian Cooper’s Teknomeka design.  One of the limitations of that design was the bulk that resulted from all the gearing in the joints to support the weight of large scale mechas.  Moko was able to pull off a build that is similar in scale, but so much more elegant and slim, as befitting the source material, the Evangelion Unit-01.

Thirdly, Moko’s deft sense of style added to the equation results in probably one of the best LEGO mechas I’ve ever seen. Plus, he did not paint or modify any bricks, and it’s articulated!  Check out the second image for a sense of the scale of this marvel.

If you’re in Japan, you can see Moko’s Evangelion unit in person at the Osaka University LEGO Club’s upcoming display on May 2nd and 3rd, during Golden Week.

See even more photos in Moko’s photostream on Flickr and on his blog.