Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 9 - Milan, Genoa, and Nice

No trip to Venice would be complete without a gondola ride along the Grand Canal. From there, I visit Doge’s Palace and Saint Mark’s Square and Basilica. Sometime near three I head back to the airport and prep for my trip to LIML Milan Linate Airport. After takeoff, I do a flyover of Venice, following the canal.

The first leg is rural with fields and scattered houses.

Later, it turns hilly as I grow nearer to Milan.

I set down at Linate Airport without any issues.

Here, I visit Piazza del Duomo and see the gothic Milan Cathedral. It was constructed in 1386 but not completed until 1965. A half-millennia project - now that’s impressive. Next, as a great fan of da Vinci, I visit the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology. I get some dinner before seeing an actual opera at La Scala Opera, then call it a night.

The next morning I have a sunrise flight to LIMJ Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport. The horizon is an orange band as I take off.

Wispy cirrus clouds drift across an otherwise clear sky.

Soon, I am crossing the western coastal mountains once again.

As I clear them, Genoa’s airport is nestled right along the sea.

I fly a loop and come in along the coast, setting down. Here, I visit Genoa Harbor and the Maritime Museum before heading off to Piazza de Ferrari and Porta Soprana. Lunch is at Fuori Orario. In the afternoon I prepare to leave Italy. The flight will be straight along the coast to LFMN Nice Cote d’Azur. Scattered clouds rolls in as I fly alongside coastal mountains.

The time passes quickly and soon the red houses of Nice come into view.

I set down at LFMN, admiring the beauty of the Azure Coast.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 8 - Bologna and Venice

As I leave Pisa, I’m a bit nervous with the mountain crossing planned for my next leg. Italy’s mountains run the full length of the coast, and, if I want to get to the other side where Bologna is, I’ll need to cross them. They are relatively low compared to the mammoth peaks I faced in the middle of the United States, so flying over them in my Piper won’t be a challenge. The real issue is that, in the event of an emergency, there’s no good place to set down.

As I cross over the peaks and stare back at the green slopes, I breathe a sigh of relief.

The trip to LIPE Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport is 64 nm and takes forty minutes. The airport is named for Guglielmo Marconi, the famous engineer who invented the radio.

Once in Bologna, I visit Piazza Maggiore, wandering to Piazza del Nettuno and checking out the Fountain of Neptune. Next, the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana is home to two leaning towers which have names - Asinelli and Garisenda. Asinelli is taller than Pisa’s. Lastly, I grab a dish of tortellini at Trattoria di Via Serra. With a full belly, I head back to the airport.

Scattered clouds roll in, but the weather shows a ceiling of 6500 feet. I’ll keep at 4500. Visibility is good at twenty kilometers. When I take off, puffy clouds dapple the sky.

A patchwork of green and straw glides beneath me.

As I approach the halfway point, the Po River snakes east. I follow it towards Venice.

As I approach LIPZ Venice Tessera Marco Polo airport, the waters turn azure and sea green with sinuous channels.

One I set down, I find another pilot prepping a twin-engine Piper PA34 Seneca V. He’s Italian, but speaks fluent English, and has two female passengers who seem more like friends than customers. We get to chatting and I offer to kick in some gas money if he’ll take me up with them.

The Seneca’s cockpit is fairly modern — not as high-tech as the Cirrus SR22 I saw in Florence — but still much more advanced than my 70’s-era Arrow.

We take off and fly over Via della Liberta, Venice to our left.

It’s a beautiful plane, but I still prefer my Arrow for sightseeing. Those huge 220 HP engines extend well past the cockpit, giving me a view of nothing but propeller when I look out from the co-pilot’s seat.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 7 - Pisa

Because I’ve previously seen all of the architectural sights, I decide to spend my time in Florence touring the Uffizi Gallery. With works by Botticelli and Da Vinci, you can’t go wrong. Botticelli’s Nascita di Venere (Birth of Venus) is here, a work which everyone will immediately recognize depicting a naked Venus standing on a clam shell. Botticelli lived in Florence, so the Uffizi Gallery is dominated by his work. I eat my dinner at Trattoria Da Burde Firenze, then I’m in the air for a sunset flight to LIRP Pisa International Airport.

The Pisan Mountains pass to my right, but most of the journey is over flat land.

Pisa’s lights glimmer as the day’s last light fades. The Arno River continues to snake its way toward the ocean. I could have visually followed it from Florence and arrived at Pisa.

Soon I’m lined up with runway 4L, setting down gently,

Tomorrow morning I’ll catch a taxi across the Ponte Solferino bridge and follow Villa Roma to the Piazza del Duomo. There’s I’ll find the Cattedrale di Pisa and the well-known leaning tower. The area surrounding it is very modern, and I recall when I was here in 2003 just how much of a juxtaposition the plaza was compared to the neighboring houses. When I was last here, it was a brilliantly cloudy day with intense sunlight which made for sharp black and white photos.

I head to my hotel for an overnight stay. I’ve got a little sightseeing planned before tomorrow’s trip to LIPE Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 6 - Perugia and Firenze

After spending the day in Rome, I awaken the next day and eat a breakfast panini accompanied by a cappuccino. I just can’t get enough of the coffee in Italy. When I head to the airport, there’s blue skies and puffy clouds. I’ve got a short 78 nm flight to LIRZ Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi – Umbria International Airport.

Green and ochre fields greet me at the start of the journey.

Soon towns dapple the landscape.

The vegetation becomes lusher, greener, as I approach my destination.

After landing, I visit Piazza IV Novembre in Perugia. The Cathedral di San Lorenzo in the Piazza took two-hundred-and-thirty years to complete. I try to imagine a modern-day project planned for a such a duration. I get something to eat at Borgomela, then I’m back in the air. The trip to LIRQ Firenze Peretola Airport is nearly the same length, covering 71 nm.

I skirt along verdant mountains.

In no time, I’m lined up with Florence’s field.

As I’m walking away from my Piper on Firenze’s apron, I spot another American pilot inspecting his plane. We start up a conversation and I tell him about my Italy tour, Tomorrow he’s heading west to Nice, but he’s about to do a little VFR sightseeing over Florence. His plane is a Cirrus SR22, a half-million-dollar marvel of modern technology, I admire its graceful beauty.

He asks if I’d like to fly along for the ride. I’ve never been in an SR22, and accept. Inside, it's posh, with a dashboard comprised of two computer screens. Both pilot and co-pilot controls are single-handed joysticks. It’s like being in a two-seat spaceship.

He points up to the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). In the event of an emergency, the plane can deploy a parachute and float to the ground. I ask him what he thinks of it. He says Cirrus’s statistics state there have been ninety-six deployments of the system, with one-hundred-eighty-six survivors. It’s nice to have the option.

We file VFR and takeoff. The Cirrus accelerates quickly with its 310 HP engine. Soon we’re flying over Florence, following the Arno River south. The famous bridge, Ponte Vecchio, passes beneath us. The last time I was here in 2003, I snapped a picture of it from the river bank.

Nearby, the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Marie del Fiore is easily spottable just behind our left wing.

I recall the rust-colored dome visible from the busy Florence streets when I was last here.

We finish our aerial circuit and return to the airport. I thank him, and wish him well with his travels. I’ll be at Nice myself, but not for another week or so, after I finish my Italy tour. For now, I head over to my hotel and consider where to visit first.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 5 - When in Rome

I spend some time in Naples touring the Castel dell'Ovo before just getting lost strolling the endless Via Toledo. After lunch at La Masardona, I’m back at the airport. It’s sunny and clear as I fly the 107 nm course from LIRN to LIRF Roma Fiumicino Airport.

This landscape starts as a patchwork of clays and greens.

Soon it changes to grassy fields.

The airport comes into view, but I’m not ready to land yet. First, I’ll fly northeast for a bit of aerial sightseeing over Rome. I’ve been here, twice, in 2001 and 2003, and I’m curious to see how it looks from the air compared to on foot.

Rome is bisected by the Tiber River, with the Vatican on the north side, west of the river, and the Colosseum east of the river in the heart of the city. Saint Peter’s Square and Saint Peter’s Basilica are the first to come into view. Inside is the famed Sistine Chapel. When I was there, I recall shushers — men who instructed the crowd of tourists to keep quiet and show respect — and Swiss Guards who would look at place in a Renaissance Faire wielding actual halberds.

Next, I head east towards the Pantheon. From the air, it’s a dome with a hole in its roof.

On foot, it looked a bit more dramatic.

A bit further east is Trevi Fountain. For luck, you’re supposed to sit with your back to it and throw in a coin over your shoulder.

Further south, the white marble of the the Altar della Patria is visible.

Just beyond it lies the ruins of the Roman Forum, which terminate at the magnificent Colosseum. I recall walking those ruins on a warm autumn day.

Having satisfied my curiosity, for now, I turn my Piper into a lazy loop, heading back towards Roma Fiumicino Airport. The day is still young, and there’s endless things to do.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 4 - In the Shadow of Vesuvius

I spend the evening in Salerno, strolling along the Trieste Lungomare and eating seaside at Casamare Via Porto 31. When I awaken the next morning, I lay out my map and plot my course. Route E45 continues to travel where I want to go, so I’ll fly by eye and follow the road from Salerno to Naples. At forty-one nautical miles, it’ll be a short flight.

I lift off shortly after breakfast, the morning sun rising.

E45 winds along the mountains.

Red-roofed houses gleam in the morning sunlight along the Amalfi Coast.

Soon, I fly over Pompei. I’ve been here, long ago, on a rainy day trouncing amongst the ruins. I recall the plaster casts of people entombed in volcanic ash and the looming proximity of the Goliath of Vesuvius. Perhaps it was the rain, or the gloom, but it felt solemn, quiet, like visiting a graveyard.

As the memories play in my mind, Vesuvius appears off my right wing.

Soon after, Naples comes into a view, a sea of buildings dominating my view.

When I set down at LIRN Naples International Airport, Vesuvius still lingers, watching.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 3 - Lamezia and Pontecagnano

The next morning I awaken and grab a cappuccino. Walking around Reggio Calabria, it’s impossible to miss the thousand-year-old castle, Castella Argonese, and I spend some time sightseeing before heading back to the airport. Just after nine I’m back in the air.

Today it’s a bit cloudy with light gusts, but the view along the coast continues to be spectacular.

As I fly, I’ve been working on getting my trim set up just right. When it’s dialed in perfectly, the plane flies straight and level with no effort needed from me on the controls. The trim wheel is located on the floor between the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.

The landscape gives way to carefully delineated fields.

The sky is full of puffy cumulous clouds which I need to keep an eye on to maintain my minimum VFR separation, but there is plenty of breathing room between them and the ground.

Lamezia Terme International Airport is along the coast and I approach from the water. A nine-knot crosswind keeps me on my toes for my landing, but soon I’m on the runway.

I spend the next two hours exploring Il Giardino Botanico di Lamezia Terme and getting lunch at Novecento, then I’m back pre-flighting my Piper just after noon.

For the next leg, I’ll be flying to LIRI Salerno Costa d'Amalfi Airport. The most direct route is a 120 nm straight line spending half of the journey over the ocean.

But I didn’t come to Italy to see the water. So, instead, I’ll be doing something a little more adventurous.  Route E34 is a 305 km (164 nm) winding road through the mountains, connecting the two airports. If I  follow it, I can navigate by sight, and see some beautiful scenery along the way. There’s no navaids - no VORs or NDBs - just my eyeballs and a road. Should be fun.

At first the road follows the coast, but soon it turns east, into the mountains. The first half of the trip has me flying over populated areas with plenty of open space to land in the event of an emergency, and I feel relaxed.

But soon the mountain appears ahead.

I turn west and follow the road into the valley.

The mountains flatten as I approach the coast.

Salerno Costa D’Amalfi Airport appears ahead on my left, the ocean not far beyond it. I breathe a sigh of relief as my wheels touchdown.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 2 - Comiso, Cantania, and Reggio

I spend my early afternoon in Comiso, strolling to the center of town and touring the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Stelle before grabbing a late lunch at Cantunera. I’m back in the air by four en route to LICC Vincenzo Bellini Airport. The landscape turns green with grassy fields and pastures along the way.

As I draw nearer, the towering volcanic peak of Mount Etna looms dark against the horizon.

The airport leads right out to sea, nestled in the city.

I get my approach wrong, coming in too high, and need to do a flyover of the airport. I make left pattern traffic and loop around, setting down cleanly. From the apron, Etna dominates my view.

I only have two hours here, so I visit Piazza Duomo and ask a bystander to snap a picture of me in front of the elephant fountain. After grabbing a snack from a street vendor, I’m back in the air again as the sun grows weary. The sky is a volcanic red as I skirt past Etna.

The sun sets behind Sicily’s rolling mountains to my left.

The transit across the Strait of Messina from Sicily to continental Italy is short, with both shores visible at all times. LICR Reggio di Calabria "Tito Minniti" Airport is also along the coast, its lights a welcome beacon,

The sky is awash in gold as I glide in for a touch down.

I head on over to Buono Calabria for dinner. I’ve worked up an appetite from all of the travel, and my mouth is watering at the thought of some pasta.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 1 - Malta

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, I wrote about a project to virtually fly across the continental United States in a Piper Warrior II in the flight simulator X-Plane. That project ended when I landed my plane at its final destination in San Francisco. Along the way I learned about aviation and navigation along with countless interesting facts about the thirty-seven airports I visited. Now, it’s time for a new plane and a new location.

Pixel Plane Arrow III - Day 1 - Malta

The Sun blazes overhead as I finish my pre-flight inspections of the Piper PA28R Arrow III. Malta’s International Airport looms to my left.

I step up onto the wing and enter the cockpit. It’s sweltering in here, and I leave the door open, cracking the small window on the pilot’s side to let in some air. An Air Malta heavy taxis a distance ahead of me, and I watch it through the cockpit windows.

After going through my checklist, I set up the NAVs and heading bug then dial in my destination in the Garmin. First, I’ll do a complete coastal circuit around Malta for some sightseeing, then I’ll fly direct to LICB Cosimo in Sicily. That’s nearly forty-minutes over open-water travel over the Mediterranean Sea. I glance to my right. My life vest sits on the passenger seat and on the floor is an inflatable raft. In a water-tight bag rests a satellite phone and a VHF radio. I hope I don’t need to use any of it.

I get my clearances and taxi to the runway. It’s just before noon, with blue skies and high cumulus clouds. In no time, I’m rumbling ahead and rotating up into the sky. From the air, Malta’s landscape looks assembled, like paper mâché strips were pasted over a form to create a model. Azure waters bracket the island in all directions, salted with sailboats.

Cliffs rise up from those crystal waters.

When buildings appear, they’re old, organic, following sinuous lines.

To the north, cruise ships and hotels dominate the land.

I’ve been here in real life, sixteen years ago, and I remember the blistering sun on my shoulders as I hiked up the rocky cliffs. The view was spectacular. Afterwards, my boat stopped at the Blue Lagoon, where I dove off and swam in the clear waters.

Once I complete my island circuit, I ascend to forty-five hundred feet and leave Malta for Sicily. I’m a bit nervous as the safety of the island falls behind me.

Soon there’s nothing but blue-gray water surrounding the plane.

Finally, lands comes into view, and I’m over Sicily. It’s rural and sparsely populated where I’m flying.

Comiso Airport’s runway comes up quickly as a descend, and I set down smoothly. The Piper Arrow III is very similar to the Piper Warrior II I flew in the United States, and it feels, in many ways, like the same plane. The most notable difference is that it’s turbo-charged and faster, has retractable landing gear, and a variable-pitch propeller which adds feathering controls beside the throttle. As I taxi to parking I consider how I’ll spend the next few hours exploring Comiso, before doing a late-afternoon flight to LICC Cantania.

Cover Update for Titan's Shadow

Titan’s Shadow has a new cover! Keeping with the visual theme of Erebus and Janus, I created a 3D model of Iapetus in Blender along with Galen’s cruiser. The background is from the same stock image set I purchased for Janus (different image - I licensed three images with my Adobe subscription). The image map of Iapetus, if you’re interested, comes from NASA, which publishes planetary maps and even 3D assets. A little Blender trickery created a bump map from the image, granting Iapetus realistic craters which interacted with light sources.

Here’s the cover:

Here’s the cruiser in Blender:

The Iapetus model in Blender:

And the final composite in Photoshop. Note the difference between the Blender version of Iapetus versus how it appears in the final composite. There’s some heavy photo editing to make the image colorful and vibrant.

Indie Publishing - The Good, the Bad, and the Pointless

This weekend I updated my social media headers to include all my latest releases. I felt a bit of pride seeing all the covers side-by-side:

It’s been  two-year journey to get here and I keep learning new things as I go along. Here’s a short post about what’s worked best and worst during that time:

BEST

1. Reading Self-Editing for Fiction Writers before I began. I was spared many of the one-star reviews new indie publishers typically receive due to grammar issues because I was given a very clear template of what not-to-do from this book.

2. Buying Scrivener and Vellum. Vellum, in particular, makes my books look professionally typeset and produced.

3. Getting an Adobe Photoshop license for $10 per month. All of my covers and social media graphics are created in Photoshop.

4. Getting Blender for free. Blender is open-source 3D-modeling software. I’ve used it to create most of the photo-realistic graphics in my cover artwork.

5. Creating this webpage and blog on Squarespace. The blog is a forum for me to write but also drives more traffic to my site than just having my static book pages.

6. Creating an author Twitter page and connecting with other authors. I really enjoy participating in weekly hashtag games like #scififri and seeing what other authors are writing. You get a real sense of belonging to an author community.

7. Setting the first book in my series permafree on Amazon.

8. Creating an Amazon series page for my stories. Sometimes people read 43 Seconds, go to the series page, and buy the entire series at once.

9. Submitting my books to unpaid review sites such as Long and Short Reviews, which netted reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and their webpage, and gave me blurbs for my Amazon editorial review section.

10. Having a first reader. I’ll get a good work-in-process read about what plot elements are working and failing, and make course corrections or rewrites as necessary. My first reader has spared everyone else from countless bad chapters and cheesy ideas.

11. Creating a physical paperback. Even if you sell no copies, there’s something pride-inducing about buying one for yourself and seeing your works in print.

12. Just having fun. The blog post series Pixel Plane Adventures was about my personal journey learning about aviation. There was no agenda for it — I wasn’t trying to sell copies of my books, and I didn’t even think many people would read it. Still, it’s one of my favorite things on my blog.

WORST

1. Doing a Goodreads Giveaway. The winners simply sold their free copies on Amazon and eBay. The single Goodreads review was negative.

2. Creating a book trailer using Adobe Spark. In hindsight, I’ve never bought a book based on a book trailer.

3. Using Twitter for self-promotion. The occasional “my book is free this weekend” post is okay, but, in general, you will not get any sales from self-promo links on Twitter, and will likely lose followers if you use your author page mainly for this reason.

4. Sinking a bunch of money into multiple layers of ads for free book giveaways. Maybe you’ll pick up one or two reviews, but it’s not worth the cost. My stats show that for every two-hundred copies I move, I get a review. You really need to move thousands of copies with a promo to pick up more than one or two reviews. When giving out your book for free, keep in mind people will scoff up freebies simply because they’re free. The quality of the review differs from people who intentionally buy your book because they are fans of the specific genre.

I think the last bit of advice I have is that it helps to accept that not everyone is going to like your stories, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how you write. The genre of sci-fi is very wide. Some people want space opera and others want hard sci-fi. Finding your core audience, and, more importantly, helping them to find your work, is the real trick (one I’m still working on). Your audience is out there, though, so keep looking.

Janus 2 - Story Extras

WARNING: Major Janus 2 spoilers follow! Be sure you’ve read it before proceeding.

Janus 2 is the longest of the Hayden’s World stories, racking up just over thirty-thousand words spread across seventeen chapters. It’s also the most complex, sporting a moderately large cast, and is the first major story in the series to use multiple point-of-view characters. If you’re counting, you’ll get point-of-view segments from the following characters:

• James

• Ananke

• Ava

• Hitoshi

• Isaac

When I wrote Erebus, I needed to choose between maintaining a single POV (Sarah’s) or doing multiple POVs. I kept with single. It was Sarah’s story, and much of the plot revolved around finding James. This sacrificed all of James’s off-screen action, such as crashing Bernard’s, but I think it was the right choice for that story.

I have to admit that it’s hard for me to imagine Janus 2 told from a single POV. Imagine sticking with Hitoshi and just getting a data dump of James and Ava’s visit to the alien ship, or sticking with James and missing out on Hitoshi’s character arc to step up and take command of Bernard’s. It’s something I may get dinged on — some readers don’t like multiple POV characters in shorter fiction — but I think it’s the right choice for this story.

When I set out to write Janus 2, I knew my beginning, end, and major plot events, but I had some flexibility about how to get there. I have an entire folder in Scrivener titled “Scrubbed” which houses my deleted scenes. Sometimes I’ll write a segment and realize it’s best condensed with another existing scene. Other times my first reader will give me a puzzled look after reading a chapter, and I know I’m in trouble. One of my favorite chapters to write was Penitente, which starts at the crystal crater and ends with a blast. In the first draft, the crystal crater was simply the crater next to the cryovolcano where Bernard’s had crashed. There, the crew discovers a mysterious tunnel which they send drones to explore. Here’s a snippet:

James motions to the tunnel. “We good to send the drone in?”

“Alright,” Beckman says. He moves over to his console and taps a few commands. His drone zips over to the tunnel entrance and flicks on a flashlight. The rock gleams with reflections as the drone descends. As the tunnel wreathes about it, they notice a spiral pattern etched in the stone, as if a mechanical bore cut the passage. The signal pixelates, fades back in, pixelates again, and goes black.

“Too much rock to transmit through,” Beckman says. He stares at the three-dimensional map. “Give it ninety-seconds to do a loop and come back.”

Everyone waits, arms folded. The chronometer spins. Sixty seconds. Ninety seconds. One-twenty. No drone.

Beckman stares at the screen. “Hmm. Well, we have two more.”

James nods and Beckman sends in the second drone. Its signal pixelates and it disappears into the depths. Three minutes goes by. Nothing returns. Beckman scratches his head.

“Alright then,” Hitoshi says. “Gave it the old college try. No harm, no foul.”

“What do you think?” James says to Beckman.

He raises his eyebrow. “Could be something screwing up their sensors. Might be stuck down there.”

“Or maybe something ate them,” Hitoshi adds.

“What do you think of us suiting up and taking a look?” James asks.

Beckman and Hitoshi both say simultaneously, “I think that’s a bad idea.” Beckman arches an eyebrow at Hitoshi.

Hitoshi holds out his palm. “Seriously, have you guys never seen a sci-fi flick?”

It was fun, and gave the characters an excuse to explore on foot. Ultimately, however, the panspermia plot worked better with the separate locations, and the way the characters investigated each location gave the whole cast a chance to shine.

One of the more significant choices was whether to allow Ananke to establish communication with the alien probe after it abducts her. Another way of saying this, from a plot perspective is: does Ananke rescue herself, or do James and Ava rescue Ananke?

Here’s a snippet from the scrubbed chapter “Qubits”:

Ananke’s built a very basic vocabulary of one to two hundred concepts. She’s been most successful with stellar objects such as star, planet, moon, or items related to these, such as orbit or crater. Items located on Janus have also netted recognition, such as the life forms at the crystal crater, the biological life at the cyrovolcano, and Gossamer Goose. Verbs have been maddening. The entity doesn’t seem to grasp her examples of something doing an action to something else. Each concept she presents is done pictorially through her input/output matrix. Anything abstract, such as letters or numbers, is nearly impossible to present and nets no results. The one consistent thing about their conversation is that the entity will only answer queries as true or false, and does not initiate any of its own queries.

Query, Ananke projects. Origin - Janus?

The entity shifts its qubits. FALSE.

Ananke conjures an image of the one-hundred-and-fifty stars within twenty light-years of the Sun. Query: Origin - local?

FALSE.

She expands the star selection to include the three-hundred light year span of the Local Bubble in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. Query: Origin - Local Bubble?

The entity illuminates. TRUE.

Unfortunately, as interesting as her conversation would have been, the trade-off is the sacrifice of the dramatic rescue scene with James and Ava aboard the alien ship. My first reader also felt the alien probe, as introduced in the Penitente chapter, was very scary (which was a good thing) and maintaining the lack of communication kept it scary. The true/false dialogue served to dilute its impact, not enhance it.

One other choice was a bit less dramatic. Originally, after Penitente, I followed Hitoshi’s investigation before eventually returning to James. The benefit was that the reader didn’t know if James was alive, and needed to discover it along with Hitoshi. But, I figured the reader wouldn’t seriously wonder if I’d just killed off the series title character, so I cut right to the chase by hitting the rewind button and watching the cockpit events from James’s POV.

On the science front, I found this story unusually difficult. Most of my stories have some planetary science, which I feel is in my comfort zone. Janus 2, with a main character who is an astro biologist, put me in a pickle writing about biology, which is not at all in my comfort zone.

A few bits of science which took some research for the story:

• The Cayman Rise is already being studied, full of unusual deep sea hydrothermal vent life forms. When people talk about possible life on Enceladus, they reference the deep sea vents of the Cayman Rise.

• The bit about vibrio fischeri is true. It’s a bioluminescent bacteria which lives in the Hawaiian bobtail squid, and forms a type of invisibility cloak for the squid by reproducing lighting conditions which are above the squid.

• The International Academy of Astronautics does currently have first contact protocols, but they’re more along the lines of what you see in the move Contact (swinging telescopes off axis, verifying signals, then figuring out what to do). In general, however, we don’t really have much of a plan for what to do if aliens say hi. When you read about some of the things we’ve haphazardly done — like beaming a bunch of Twitter messages to nearly star systems — you will probably be dismayed.

• Ava discussed looking for molecular hydrogen and methanogenesis when investigating the cryovolcano for life. The real-life Cassini probe found evidence of both in Enceladus’s cryovolcano plumes, intensifying speculation that life may be present in its icy saltwater oceans. She also mentions looking for vinyl cyanide and azotosomes. Both are hypothetical non-carbon based life structures which could survive in Titan’s methane lakes.

• Julian’s quote, “We are all made of stardust,” is popular and accurate. All heavier elements and metals in our bodies were produced from supernovas, which is kind of a cool thought.

• Kate’s ATP synthase deficiency is a real-life mitochondrial disease. When I considered what type of disease Kate had, I realized it couldn’t be something which was presumably curable in the future. Instead, I thought her disease would be a consequence of future technology — in this case, an unforeseen consequence of genetic manipulation.

• As Julian says, polyoxometalate is an inorganic metal-ion which has some medical properties as an anti-viral and anti-bacterial. It’s also nearly impossible to spell, based on my numerous proof readings.

If you’ve read my previous stories, you’ll notice a few shout outs:

• The “keep dreaming big'“ business card which James gave to Julian is the same one he gives Kyan Anders at the end of Last Stand.

• Titan’s Ligeia Mare station, where Julian worked previously, is the same station which sends an autonomous rescue vehicle to pick up Jia and Ping in Titan’s Shadow

• Ananke reveals that she is an Intentional Consciousness, but that she’s always thought it would be romantic to be Emergent. In the story, Last Stand, Rios is classified as an Emergent Consciousness after developing sentience while aboard the Aristarchus

• The U.N. Hermes played a part in Last Stand, Aero One, and Titan’s Shadow. Despite it hassling Bernard’s upon arrival at Janus’s conclusion, it’s one of the good guys, keeping Cassini Station safe.

Thanks for reading! Hope you found the tidbits interesting.

Janus 2 Launch - Erebus is free

Janus 2 is live in the Kindle store today. If you haven’t read the prequel to Janus 2, Erebus, you can get it FREE over the weekend (11/16 - 11/20).

Janus 2 (First Chapter, 1500 words)

One

Fairway Cove

Late-day sun drenches asphalt as the motorcycle winds along the coastal highway. James banks right and the sky leans left. Kate’s arms encircle his waist, her chest rising and falling with each breath. To their left, the Pacific is a tapestry of shining diamonds with a single sailboat silhouetted against a goldenrod horizon. They watch the boat bob against the waves for a moment before James rotates the throttle, the motorcycle’s engine whining, veering them off the highway onto a dust-soaked road. 

“Going somewhere?” Kate asks over her helmet mic.

James glances back over his shoulder. “I want to show you something.”

The landscape flattens as the bike clears the crest. Two buildings stand to the right, the first a long-abandoned convenience store with sand-blasted lettering. Dirty windows show hints of counters and chairs inside. The second is a twenty-meter rectangle with a girder roof and two huge sliding white doors. Parallel one-kilometer roads run in front of the buildings, the closest overgrown with dirt and grass, and the furthest paved and clear with white dashed lines and huge block numbers reading 30. James pulls the bike beside the sliding white doors.

Kate removes her helmet and runs her fingers through her blonde hair. A silver ring dangles on a chain from her neck. She’s eighteen, same age as James. “Why do I get the feeling we’re trespassing?”

James grins and waves a hand. “No worries. I got permission from the owner.”

She arches an eyebrow. “You asked permission for something?”

He motions to the door and walks over towards the handle. “Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”

Her eyes dart to the structure. “Okay, now I’m curious.”

James anchors himself and tugs with both hands. As the sunlight spills into the hangar, the white wings and black propeller appear. Gold glares from chrome accents on the nose and the livery is marine blue with brick-red stripes stenciled with N147CP.

“Woah,” Kate says. “Will you look at that?” She walks over and runs her hand along the airplane’s cowl. “It’s a classic. Did you…did you buy it?”

James nods. “Found it in a salvage yard. Bought what was left, pieced it back together. Purrs like a kitten.”

“What’s it run on?”

“Good old gasoline. Nineteen-ninety-two Piper Arrow Three. They only built six that year.” He moves to the passenger-side. A foot-step juts out from the fuselage and the wing has a black non-slip surface next to the door. James leans over, opens the door, and steps up. He extends his hand and Kate accepts. They slip into the cockpit and settle into their seats. “What do you think?” James says.

She sets her hands on the yoke and turns it slightly. He points over her shoulder at the right wing and she watches the aileron move up and down. “Oh, this is awesome. I love it.”

James flicks the red battery switch on. Indicator lights illuminate. “Would you latch that door?”

She pauses a moment, a smile creeping across her face, and pulls the door closed. Without saying a word she slides the seatbelt across herself. “Where are we going?”

He hands her a headset and motions towards the plane’s nose. Rich blue sky awaits. “You know, that-a-way, just higher,” he says over his mic. When he flips the beacon switch, red light spins in the hangar. Leaning towards the window, he says, “Clear prop!”

The propeller sputters to life when he turns the starter. He adjusts the throttle and turns on the avionics and navigation lights.

Kate taps the Garmin in front of her. The individual pixels of the airplane stick figure are visible. “Oh, wow, look at this navcon. That’s….is that even a computer?”

James taps the power button off. “We don’t need it. Guys flew for half-a-century with nothing but eyeballs and radios.”

“You sure this is safe?”

“Safe as anything else in life. Wanna go?”

She eyes the crystal sky and glances back. “Yeah. A little different than your dad’s planes, huh?”

James snorts. “You’re just along for the ride in those. This…” He turns the yoke. “…this is real.” He clicks the thumb button. “Fairway Cove Traffic, Piper one four seven charlie papa at east hangar taxiing to runway three zero.”

Kate quirks her head. “Who are you talking to?”

“Whoever’s out there. Maybe there’s another James and Kate puttering around in a seventy-year old plane. Gotta do it right.”

She sets her hand on his. “I think the universe can only handle one James Hayden.”

He winks at her and edges the throttle forward. “Well, I’m lucky this one found his Kate.”

* * *

James at forty-one doesn’t look much different than he did at eighteen, one of the fortunate blessed with a baby face and sandy hair hiding any hint of gray. He taps the Sandpiper’s controls and watches Earth’s blue marble spin away. As the star field pans, Hayden-Pratt’s MEO2 shipyard swings into view, a brightly-lit lattice cradling a sixty-two meter wedge. Gold interior light glows from the wedge’s cockpit and spotlights illuminate patches of the fuselage. Black registry letters read HP-G01 Gossamer Goose. In the ship’s aft, robotic arms spin hull plates into place.

Ananke is beside James, her slate affixed to the dash. Blue ripples spill across her screen. “I remember the first time I saw Gossamer. I was so proud to be a part of fulfilling Bernard’s dream. With her ivory white paint, she reminds me of a spinnaker, catching starlight.”

James smiles. “I think that’s the perfect description of Goose.” As the shipyard grows, filling the cockpit windows, he stretches forward and examines the aft construction. “Looking good. On track for end of week.”

“Any word on launch authorization?”

A quirk of his head. “Larson wants to meet one-on-one.”

Ananke’s screen splashes orange. “Well, that should be interesting.”

“Yeah, curious what he’ll say when it’s off-the-cuff. I kind of like it. Two guys sorting it out, no audience.”

Green ripples slide across Ananke’s face. After a pause, she says, “If I could offer an observation.”

James arches an eyebrow. “Shoot.”

“Two guys sorting it out is often more brawn than brain, so to speak.”

He chuckles. “You think I’m going to deck him?”

“No. But ego might overtake intellect.”

A shrug. “I think I can handle it. Anyway, it’s a negotiation. He wants something. If it was just him digging in his heels there’d be no need to meet.”

“Agreed.”

James taps the comm. “MEO Control, Sandpiper four four three, ready to dock.”

A synthetic voice replies, “Cleared to dock Sandpiper four four three.”

A tap on the arm panel and the ship spins ninety-degrees. Thrusters hiss with corrections as the Sandpiper settles into the umbilical with a clank and a jolt. James picks up Ananke and tethers her to his flight suit belt loop, then pushes out of his chair and sails to the belly hatch. When it opens, he ascends through the umbilical to Gossamer’s starboard entry, emerging into the passenger cabin and a din of conversation. Hitoshi is here, peering through augmented glasses. Six other techs have bits and pieces of the cabin disassembled.

“Hey, boss,” Hitoshi says. “Don’t mind the mess. So, what’d you think on approach?”

“Cargo area looks good. Saw the new ventral heat shielding. Black, kind of like an old NASA shuttle.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Got confirmation that the last Bernard’s repair parts are fabbed and loaded.” He motions around the room. “You now have a level two starship. Plus five hit points, plus three dexterity.” A pause as he waits for a response. “And you’ve never played a video game in your life, have you?”

James holds up his hands. “Sorry.”

“You know, between you and Sarah, it’s like you two were separated at birth. She’s been very helpful, by the way, doing telepresence uplinks for questions. I know she’s supposed to be on leave, but she knows all of Gossamer’s quirks.”

James raises his eyebrows slightly. “Goose will always be her ship.”

Hitoshi extends his slate. “I’ve got something for you, Ananke.”

Ananke’s screen pulses orange. “Ah, beautiful! The new Boseman interference patterns, like peaks and valleys beating in a symphony. Ready for the low-power test?”

“With your approval, Friday.”

“Yes. It’s perfect.”

“Alright, you got it.” He shows the slate to James. “This started as a permanent fix for the strangelet event from the last mission, but Ananke ran with it. Some adjustments to the wave generator placements and parameter tweaks will give us a big efficiency boost. We’ll hit ninety-nine point nine six percent light-speed. Had to carve out more fuel space for the reactor. Best part is that it’s reapplicable to Bernard’s.”

“That’s fantastic,” James says.

“Told you. Plus three dexterity.”

* * * *

Find out what happens next for $0.99 on Amazon

Janus 2: Now Available for pre-order

The new sequel to Erebus, Janus 2, is now available for pre-order on Amazon for 99 cents. Release date is Friday, November 16th.

Janus 2 is a 30,000 word novella featuring your favorite Gossamer Goose crew members on a return mission to repair Bernard’s Beauty and discover what the silver probe was doing on Janus. It’s another interstellar adventure with plenty of discovery, danger, and fun - this time with James in command - so be sure to grab your copy.

Plug-and-Maybe-Play

Long ago, my house had a spare bedroom. It was tiny by bedroom standards - one of those closet-sized spaces which realtors class as a bedroom to enable houses to meet the magical three-bedroom descriptor which so many buyers crave. I’d built my little computer empire there. I remember when I ditched my CRT monitor in favor of a flat-screen LCD snatched from an open-box sale at Best Buy. The other big purchase I recall was a graphics card. At the time I’d been playing World of Warcraft, and after booting up the game post-card installation, I wondered what have I been playing all this time? It was a similar experience to switching from an SD TV to an HD.

Fast-forward a decade later and my computer room has dissolved and relocated to a desk on the first floor. Another few years and it’s a laptop in the living room. Modern laptops are quite powerful, with their lightning-fast SSD drives and, depending on the model, discrete GPUs. But, what they grant in portability they trade-off in upgradability. You simply cannot plug a new graphics card into your laptop.

With Apple’s recent OS update to Mojave, however, you can connect an external GPU enclosure via the laptop’s Thunderbolt port. If you’ve ever upgraded a graphics card in a desktop PC, you know it involves sliding the card into a slot and potentially upgrading the laptop’s power source. An eGPU enclosure is similar. It has its own power source as well as a slot for your card. It just exists outside of the laptop. It’s not that eGPUs couldn’t be used prior to Movaje with Apple computers; it’s just that Mojave provides official software support.

Sort of.

For those who followed my Pixel Plane project, you know I’m an X-Plane enthusiast. X-Plane is a bit demanding on system resources, and I have a desire to play it at more than 20 fps. So, this past week I purchased the Gigabyte eGPU with an RX580 graphics card.

Unlike most enclosures, the Gigabyte Game Box is slightly smaller than a lunch box. The box has four USB ports, one Thunderbolt port, three display ports, and one HDMI port. It’s capable of charging your laptop while connected via the Thunderbolt port. From an Apple Mojave OS perspective, it’s plug-and-play. No drivers to install. It just turns itself on when you open your laptop. A little icon in the system tray allows you to eject it, similar to a USB drive.

One of the things I waffled about prior to purchase was that eGPUs are designed to be an intermediate between the laptop and an external monitor. Meaning, the eGPU intercepts and accelerates the graphics on their way to the external monitor, but does nothing for the graphics on your laptop display. Since I don’t intend to use an external monitor, this was a bit of a deal-breaker.

Prior to Mojave, there were some work-arounds for this, including a shell script which redrew the eGPU’s output back to the internal display. With Mojave, it’s now a checkbox on the application. When you View Properties for any app, a checkbox titled “Prefer eGPU” is available if you have an eGPU present. This will, in theory, force your eGPU to accelerate the graphics and display them on the laptop’s internal display.

When the eGPU arrived on Friday, I remember unboxing it and saying to my wife, “I know how this is going to go. It’s supposed to be plug-and-play, but I’m going to end up spending all weekend troubleshooting it.”

My experience:

The unit itself was plug-and-play in terms of Mojave recognizing it immediately. There’s a row of color-changing LEDS visible through the eGPU grill which illuminate when it’s connected. The fan, which is about as noisy as my laptop’s internal fan, runs whenever the lights are on.

Whether the eGPU accelerated graphics and which display it was capable of accelerating was entirely dependent on the specific application.

• Eve Online: all I needed to do was check ‘Prefer eGPU’ and it was accelerated right on my native laptop display.

• Divinity Original Sin: could only be accelerated on an external monitor. The laptop display always reverted back to the integrated display chip.

• X-Plane: could not be accelerated at all, either via internal or external displays. I also tried running X Plane in Windows via Bootcamp (which was its own technical saga to get the eGPU working in Bootcamp), with similar results. The weird thing about X-Plane is that it engages the eGPU, switching off the internal chip (you can verify this via Activity Monitor), but it doesn’t seem to actually use the graphics acceleration of the eGPU, giving you much, much worse performance (single digit FPS) than using the laptop’s integrated chip. I suppose this performance hit makes sense because it’s neither using the external nor the internal GPU for acceleration. If you visit the X-Plane forums, you’ll see a statement from the software developer that eGPUs are not supported at this time.

So, there you have it. It’s application dependent. For X-Plane, I’ll need to wait until Laminar adds eGPU support, or someone clever develops a work-around. For other games, I’ve ordered a headless ghost emulator ($10), which plugs into the back of the eGPU, tricking it into thinking it’s using an external display. I suspect this will get Divinity to render on the internal display. I’ll keep you posted.

Edit: I ordered the headless ghost emulator, and indeed it did allow Divinity to be accelerated directly onto my laptop’s internal display.

For X Plane, the answer is still “X Plane mostly doesn’t work with eGPUs on Mac and works poorly on Windows”.   Consider the following FPS using identical setups running high world detail, high textures, HDR, and shadows:

• Mac X-Plane no eGPU: 16-24 FPS

• Mac X-Plane eGPU with headless ghost adapter on internal display 10-12 FPS

• Mac X-Plane eGPU with external monitor, mirrored 11-12 FPS

• Mac X-Plane eGPU with external monitor as second display,  11-12 FPS
  

Windows X-Plane via Bootcamp fared a little better, at 8 FPS on the internal display and 28 FPS on the external.  28 FPS isn’t bad, but I can get that with no eGPU on the internal display on Mac just by turning off shadows. It’s not worth the real estate of maintaining a dual OS partition just to have shadows. Also, I should be able to manage more than 28 FPS with an RX680.

Reality Check

When I first purchased X-Plane, like many, I loaded up my home airports. The main regional airport is on the east side of the river and the small county airport is on the west. I’ve practiced virtual pattern work at the county airport, as well as doing countless short hops from the regional to the county.

This past week I had a business trip flying out of the regional airport. As a passenger aboard a CRJ900, I found the departure especially exciting. I’d been on the virtual versions of all of the airport’s runways and taxiways and knew them well. I knew how to read the assorted signs and taxiway markings. I could see the hold short lines approaching ahead, and expected the airplane to stop and await clearance. As it did, I eyed the block numbers on the runway. 22. I visualized the two-hundred and twenty degree heading out of the airport, pointing southwest, and produced a mental image of the VFR landmarks I’d spot after take off. And here I was very curious - would I be able to pick out the small county airport from the air, and how would it compare to my virtual experience?

The jet rolled down runway twenty-two and rotated, smoothly ascending. I watched the main airport drop away, eyeing the general aviation area and trying to pick out the models of the assorted aircraft parked there. Green grass spun by, then the white roof tops of an industrial complex. To the right, the blue-gray of a winding river appeared.

When I practiced my virtual pattern work, I used two islands in the river as reference points. They were easy to spot in real life from my window seat. And here is where my jaw dropped. They were so close. Walking distance close, and huge. The small county airport also wasn’t so small, its surrounding grass swathe impossible to miss (although the runway itself was difficult to make out, blending in with the landscape).

My brain stumbled trying to readjust its reality. It’s like thinking a house is a mile away when in fact its right across the street. Was X-Plane wrong in its depiction? Had I been experiencing the thirty-seven Pixel Plane airports through binoculars held backwards? I loaded up the same flight in X-Plane, now with a Cessna 172, and checked it out.

The island is on the right near the bottom of the head rest. The airport field is on the right 3/4 of the way down the wing strut.

There it is, above. A bit hard to see unless you know what you’re looking for. It’s a little easier with an exterior view of the plane:

Field on left, island on right.

I checked the Cessna’s Garmin. 2272 feet to the county airport from my position in the sky. It actually was walking-distance close.

This perhaps is one of the best arguments for VR. It’s a matter of scale and depth. On my 13” laptop screen the field is just under 2” wide, which looks tiny and distant. Now, indulge me in this mental exercise. Take a moment and look up. Mentally place markers at the furthest left and right point in your field-of-view. Divide that view into six equal pieces. One of those pieces would would be the airport. Big, isn’t it! Something which takes up 1/6 of your visual field when viewed from a three-thousand foot altitude must be large and close. Now, add depth perception to that mental image. That’s a very different experience than a 2” collection of pixels on a computer screen.

I admit I’m still not 100% sold on VR, mainly because of my play style (I gave up a desktop long ago in favor of a laptop’s portability), but I’d be curious to experience how different flying would look at full scale with depth perception. It’d be like turning the binoculars around and looking through them the correct way.

The last comment I’ll make from my real-life flight is that it was a partly-sunny day with brilliant white clouds scattered in drifting pockets. For all of X-Plane’s amazing photo-realism, it can’t come close to the beauty and complexity of a real sky. Hopefully future versions will bridge the beauty gap, because the views are half the fun of flying.

Thoughts on Amazon's Jack Ryan

I admit, as a movie-goer growing up I didn't make the immediate connection that Harrison Ford in Patriot Games was the same character as Alec Baldwin in the Hunt for Red October.

One was a bit of an intellectual desk-jockey and the other was Indiana Jones. Many years later, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and eventually John Krasinski would play Tom Clancy's CIA analyst, Jack Ryan. Each tried to put their own spin on the character.

The first Tom Clancy novel that I read was Rainbow Six, which doesn't feature Jack Ryan at all. Although parts of it were silly - the elite anti-terrorist squad happens to be on a flight which is hijacked, resulting in them quietly separating and picking off the bad guys one-by-one, Liam Neeson style - the rest was fascinating. Tom Clancy has a knack for making you feel like you're training with the elite squad and that you understand what it takes to plan and free the hostages. His stories feel like a series of chess moves, each side taking their turn. President Reagan famously said that "The Hunt for Red October" was his "kind of yarn” - perhaps the ultimate endorsement of the story’s 80s sensibilities - and is chided with propelling Clancy to his bestseller rank.

So, what to make of a 2018 Jack Ryan, when Russia's threats come not in the nuclear form but as cyberattacks and election-influencing? Rebranding Ryan as a fighter of modern terrorism simultaneously feels like a no-brainer while coming a decade too late. The reason shows like 24 were such a success is that they were post 9/11 during a time when Americans wanted to see jet fighters incinerate terrorist bases and smart guys keep us all safe. After nearly twenty war-on-terror-weary years, though, it just feels a bit tired. Shows like Homeland freshen it up a bit by taking Clancy's hardware knowledge and applying it to Homeland Security’s inner workings.

Half the fun of Homeland comes from its political maneuvering to get things done - spies being spies and politicians having agendas. In that show's first season, the actual attack is not the show's thrust. The viewer instead is lost in the gray area of whether the lead is a good guy or bad guy, and when we find out, it's not so much we want to see the attack stopped as we don't want to see the fallout for his family. It's character drama over plot, and the scene where Brody is on the phone with his daughter trying to decide what happens next is truly intense.

Amazon Prime's Jack Ryan starts with simple chrome block lettering which reads "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan". It looks like iMovie's stock trailer footage, which is perplexing for a big-budget production, but seems the perfect metaphor for the show’s straightforward world view.  Krasinski is a likable Ryan, spinning the character more towards analyst than brawler. His boss, played by the Wire's Wendell Pierce, brings the same intensity you'd expect, and makes the best of the script’s limitations.

The two are on the trail of the "next Bin Laden", globe trotting and always landing where the next shoot-out occurs. The actual plot is very 24-ish, where they thwart an attack, but it's just a stepping-stone to the next attack. There are cliches - higher ups don't listen to the main character's dire warnings, Jack's love interest ends up at exactly the same place as the bad guys - but perhaps most disappointing is that the elite military assault teams fumble through ops with the same precision as Star Wars stormtroopers. If you're going to wear the Tom Clancy badge, do a little research. Authenticity was his thing, after all.

The show has mixed results when it treads into moral ambiguity. The antagonist’s flashbacks of facing subtle discrimination as a Muslim in France are surprisingly restrained, and one of the better parts of the writing. One can imagine a very good Breaking Bad-type series detailing how he spiraled from earnest intellectual to terrorist. His brother’s loyalty is similarly well-written. When his brother is on the run and must choose between murdering an old friend’s family or jeopardizing his mission, the viewer honestly worries what he will do. However, a sublot on the American side with a guilt-riden drone pilot ventures into “what the hell?” territory when we find ourselves in a Vegas hotel room while a perverted husband beats the pilot after a voyeuristic tryst with his wife. This sets up the psychological motivation for the drone pilot to stop an overseas sexual assault with a hellfire missle. Even worse, the bad guy hit by the missile reappears later, Terminator-style, to continue his arc. In Clancy’s books professionals are professional and miltary weaponry is not set to stun.

Despite my grievences, Amazon’s Jack Ryan wasn’t a bad diversion. It’s been renewed for season two and I will watch it. Some very good series - Breaking Bad for example - meandered their first season but later hit their stride. I see Michael Bay listed as a producer - so I’m not optimistic that it won’t all be explosions and gunfights - but I’ll give it a second chance and see where it goes.

Cutting the Cord - 3 Months Later

Three months ago I unplugged my Comcast cable box, packaged it up, and shipped it back. After a flurry of app setups on my new Apple TV 4K, I'd gone fully digital, streaming cable channels via the DirectTVNow app and watching network shows via their assorted apps. Now that I've had the summer to experience the ups and downs of cutting the cord, I thought I'd provide an update for all of those dreaming of losing the cable box.

Short answer: I'm happy I did it, and so is my wallet.

My setup: DirectTvNow ($35/month) + HBO ($5/month) + Comcast Internet ($80/month) = $120/month, versus my previous Comcast Xfinity Bundle which topped $300/month. 

I also received a free Apple TV 4K with my DirectTVNow trial.

I admit I wanted to go fully Comcast-free, but their internet speeds and pricing were considerably better than anything offered in my area.

Result:

• Streaming quality: No issues with buffering or stutters. The only change versus regular cable is that when you first open apps like DirectTV, there is a two second progress bar as the channel loads. 
• Channel surfing: You surf channels on DirectTVNow the same way as normal, with the usual channel guide. DirectTVNow also has a built-in cloud DVR at no extra charge. The channel guide is designed to use Apple TV's swipe up/down/left/right remote. Unfortunately it's executed in a logical but non-intuitive manner.  To get to a menu directly left of where your cursor is, you would naturally want to swipe left, but  instead you may find yourself swiping up to the top menu, left across the top menu, then down to the side menu. Not a big deal, but a bit quirky.

• Finding content: Similar to Comcast voice commands, the Siri remote will let you search for programs by voice. In this case, it searches all apps (not just DirectTVNow), so it may respond with something like "Watch on AMC", seamlessly opening the AMC app and streaming the show. Often I just go directly to the network app. For example, I'll just open the HBO app and click on the John Oliver Show to watch the latest episode. Because nearly every tv show can be streamed from its network app, I rarely open the DirectTVNow app (because I'm usually not watching episodes live).

• Interface: The network apps in particular are very polished. The Disney Kids app has animated full-screen characters interacting with you as you browse episodes for their shows. It's much more engaging than just reading text on a channel guide.
• Local channels: At first, DirectTVNow only had Fox available for my local channels, which was an issue because there was some local content I wanted to watch on NBC. I bought a cable antenna and watched it live. Since then, DirectTVNow has added NBC to my local lineup, allowing me to record it using DirectTV's free cloud DVR. I still have the cable antenna - it's nice to know that if there's an internet outage I can still watch over-the-air tv.
• Games: I bought two Nimbus game controllers. Apple TV has similar games as your iPad, so you can play Minecraft, Asphalt 8, Lego Batman, etc. I have fun playing these with my daughter. Games like Asphalt 8 or Skyforce really feel like console games on a large TV.

Negatives:

• It took a good two hours to initially set up all the apps. Every single one needs to be activated by going to a webpage and typing in a code, and everyone needs to be connected to your DirectTVNow account.
• Infrequently an app will log itself out of DirectTVNow, prompting you to enter your email/password to watch content. It's quick - AppleTV remembers your logins - but a bit of a nuisance.
• The Apple TV remote is a bit too modern. When surfing, you swipe up/down on its touchpad, which gets old quickly, and you end up fighting with it as it overshoots channels. Call me old-fashioned, but touch surfaces are not always an improvement over physical buttons. Although the remote does turn your tv on/off and control the volume, it oddly has no mute button. I use the pause button when I have to mute the TV.
• Apple TV lets you do text searches, but does so in the most maddening way possible - by arranging the letters alphabetically in a straight line and making you swipe left and right one letter at a time. It's worse than trying to text on your cell phone from 1998. Fortunately you can use voice commands to either spell things or simply say their names.
• Not really a negative, but a bit of a surprise that the Apple TV app store is somewhat sparse compared to its iPad counterpart. I'd like to see more apps ported.

But, all-in-all, I'm very happy with my cord-cutting choice. Picture quality is excellent and I like how well integrated everything is. I'm continuing along my cordless journey, and enjoying the extra money each month.

Pixel Plane Technical - X Plane Setups

For the X Plane fans out there, I thought I'd share my setup for my recent coast-to-coast Pixel Plane project.

A few basics:

• My computer is a 2016 13" MacBook Pro with a 240 GB SSD hard drive, 2 Ghz i5 processor, 8 GB memory, and an integrated Intel Iris 540 graphics chip with 1536 MB memory. Surprisingly, this runs X Plane moderately well. My graphics settings are:

On the most part, I ran vanilla X Plane. Here's the small list of tweaks:

• I downloaded satellite photos from Bing using Ortho4XP. By far, the biggest improvement you can do for X Plane is to use ortho photos. These use up a lot fo disk space, though, so in my case I'd download a set for the next three airports and delete the previous set.

• I added MisterX's free KSFO and KLAX airports, available from the X Plane forums
• I used MisterX's Airport Environment HD, HD Forests, and SierraPappaYankee's 4K Moon
• I added Simheaven's VFR Landmarks
• My airplane was JustFlight's Warrior II.
• I installed WorldTraffic3, which I had mixed feelings about. It did add thousands of flights in the air. In game, however, you would usually encounter those flights immediately over airports. It didn’t add much to my in-flight experience but did add some eye-candy for airport ground operations.

For flight planning, I used SkyVector.

I enabled X Plane's real-world weather, which downloaded the weather every fifteen-minutes for wherever I was flying. I liked this - clouds would roll in, fog would develop, and winds would change over the course of a flight. You could see storms and fly around them. Its only downside is that it could be abrupt. You'd hit the fifteen-minute mark, get a data download, and suddenly clouds would appear around you with wind gusts. In reality you would have seen those clouds and not entered them in the first place. It did make me cut some flights short and find local airports to set down until weather improved.

The few times I used X Plane's built-in ATC were disappointing, because it tried to murder me. It's oblivious to terrain and other aircraft, steering you in mountains. On approach to Albuquerque it kept telling me to descend two-thousand feet below surface level. I did like that it was easy to use, though, and had real voices, including other aircraft's comm chatter. Its main function is more of a talking GPS. Using it for an IFR flight where ground visibility is limited would be disasterous.

I'm looking forward to trying real ATC via human networks (most likely Pilot's Edge). Flying into LAX with no ATC just felt weird.

One piece of equipment I didn't use (because I'm too cheap to buy it) is TrackIR, which gives your cockpit a VR-like experience by tracking your head and moving the cockpit view to suit. But, as I try to do pattern work and learn more about flying, I find I really need to move my head and look around. Pressing function keys to look ninety-degrees left is clunky.

That's it - hope this helps if you're considering your own virtual adventure.