I realize it’s been kinda quiet at gneech.com for the past couple of weeks — life and work (mostly work) have conspired to keep me silent. But that’s finally lightening up a bit, and my latest batch of buttons just arrived from UPS today, so it’s time to break silence!

Over the years I’ve designed a lot of buttons to sell at conventions. Most of these have been specifically designed as merchandise for Suburban Jungle or NeverNever, but in keeping with the general broadening of my focus these days, I’ve decided to go with some more universal appeal. The new batch of buttons have some roleplaying motifs (I particularly like the “Button of Charisma +2″), some computer nerdery (“iGeek”), and a handful of designs that are just … interesting, such as the one pictured here.

This was a pretty small run, only ten of each, and they’ll be making their debut at AnthroCon. Whatever’s left after AC, if any are, will hopefully go up on Merchandise Maven shortly thereafter.

-The Gneech

From a review of “Black Dragon Codex” … put out (if you trace it back far enough) by WotC of all places.

“Enough!” Gneech barked. “You two, always fighting! Traps are good. If we find no traps, then they had nothing to protect–or someone been here before. Traps mean this right way!” His voice raised into a screech as the little goblin beat both of them lightly with the length of his weapon. “So you both stop fighting and shut up, or the ogres will find us from you making . . . so . . . much . . .”–Gneech’s staff slowly came to a frozen halt, and his wide, flat eyes peered down the corridor behind him–”. . . noise. Uh-oh.”

Apparently somebody’s written an unauthorized biography of me … or something.

-The Gneech

I thought about doing a spoof video of myself geekgasming as I opened the box a la Stephen Fry, I really did. But in the end, I was thwarted by the fact that Mrs. Gneech wasn’t here to operate the video camera, and that I was too bouncy to wait.

So, how is it really? Is it like a laptop? Or just an iPod? What’s the verdict?

Granted, I haven’t exactly been running the thing through its paces, but I did buy the limited 30 days of 3G access and took the thing with me on some errands, I played the first few minutes of “Sam and Max: The Penal Zone,” and now I’ve got it on the keyboard and I’m posting to my blog. So it’s not a bad little test. I haven’t tried the funkadelic “Periodic Table App” or keyboard toy — I’m looking for a gadget I will actually use, particularly when I’m at conventions. Really, that’s what I wanted it for, to replace my Old and Busted laptop with some New Hotness.

Overall, I like it. While it is heavier than it looks, it’s not so heavy as to be unmanageable. The interface takes a little getting used to, (although people with an iPod/iPhone/iWhatever already will have a much easier time) and the apps need a little more baking. On the other hand, sliding, swiping, and touching the screen quickly become second nature and it won’t be long before you’ll wonder how you managed so long struggling with a mouse.

Regarding the apps, most of the ones ready out of the gate are just iPhone apps with either a big black margin, or blown up to double size and fuzzy as all get out, so they will take some time to catch up. Stanza particularly suffers here, because if you double the size of the app, and then shrink the font down in order to get more words on the screen, they’re still fuzzy from being blown up. Guh. That would quickly give me a headache. The iBook and Kindle apps are much nicer in this regard. iPad native apps that make better use of the larger screen real estate are much better, and by this time next year there will be a lot of awesomeness in that department. (I haven’t tried out the native word processor yet; I’m not sure if I want to go that route or just write to the cloud with Google docs or something. I have yet to see how much writing on the road I’ll actually want to do.)

I will say, the shiny shiny screen can be a turnoff, especially once it’s covered in thumbprints. It’s not a deal breaker, but it is just a tad annoying.

Still, the iPad is exactly what I expected it to be — the first generation of a new and all together different type of computer. This is going to be the “pushbutton easy” machine that will start showing up everywhere — in the doctor’s office to call up patient records, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office in place of a magazine or portable game, in the kitchen looking up recipes, lying in bed and watching that episode of Doctor Who you missed last week, sitting on the tray in front of you on the plane and showing a movie you actually want to see. It’s the internet from your comfy chair. It’s your e-mail while you’re riding the bus. It’s gonna be big.

That said, I don’t necessarily recommend running out and buying one now, unless you particularly want one right now. For me, the iPad came at just about the perfect time, as I was looking to replace my laptop anyway and had the money allocated to spend. Certainly, the apps could use some time to cook, and no doubt next year’s model will have a camera and better multitasking (i.e., any at all).

But if you find yourself gazing longingly at one and you’ve got the money to spend, I say go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

-The Gneech

Because I love you all, I spent the weekend compiling the Brigid and Greg fictionlets into e-book form, two volumes of 100 fictionlets each which should be much easier to read than going post-by-post here on gneech.com. You can get them here:

• Volume I
• Volume II

These two volumes will bring you almost up-to-date (into late 2009, anyway); from there, I have in mind to do a new volume for every hundred new fictionlets.

As far as I can tell, every major e-book platform is represented, although it may take a little while for the books to propagate to Sony, B&N, and so on. I know for a fact that they’re already available for Stanza (the version the goofy mug in the photo above is holding). The cost is a low, low $0.99 (which is basically the minimum amount that most distributors will let me charge).

Since the books went up, I’ve had inquiries about doing print versions, and I’ll be looking into that in the not-too-distant future as well, probably digest-size and distributed via Merchandise Maven. Meanwhile, fire up your Kindle/Nook/phone/iPad (*sob*) and enjoy!

(Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that even if you don’t have a separate e-reader, you can download free copies of Stanza, the Kindle reader, and so forth, or even just grab the books in good old-fashioned “plain text” and read ‘em in your word processor of choice if you’re so inclined.)

Enjoy!

-The Gneech

Well, the keyboard came today, anyhow.

…

…Curse you, late April!

-The Gneech