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Learning AI if You Suck at Math
If you’re like me, you’re fascinated with AI. Maybe you’d love to dig deeper and get an image recognition program running in TensorFlow or Theano? Perhaps you’re a kick-ass developer or systems architect and you know computers incredibly well but there’s just one...
Nine Ways Legendary Writers Achieved Mastery
This is an early excerpt from my forthcoming book on writing: The Fire of Creation I recently re-read the amazing book "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work" and it got me thinking about what master writers do differently than everyone else. What does it take to do...
Scorpion Game Illustrated Edition is Coming this Summer!
I've linked up with awesome concept artist, Chen Liang, who's done a bunch of work for Epic Games, makers of "Gears of War" and we're putting together an illustrated edition of my gritty SF crime saga the Scorpion Game. The first images are coming along beautifully. ...
The Three Most Dangerous Books Ever Written
Ideas are dangerous things. Wherever there are ideas there are people who want to destroy them. You can't kill an idea but you can burn the paper it's printed on. Since ancient times, when monks first scribbled on parchment, people tried to suppress ideas by...
Star Wars the Force Awakened Plot Predictions
First off, this post is likely full of spoilers. While I have absolutely no advanced knowledge of the plot details, I do have a history of accurate story predictions, such as predicting the ending of Breaking Bad with 100% accuracy. (Well, apparently not since they...
Killer Robots, Gene Editing, Personal Factories and the End of Work as We Know It
There's an old curse: "may you live in interesting times." Right now, we live on the cusp of one of the most interesting times in the history of mankind. A number of incredible and incredibly terrifying technologies loom just over the horizon. Few people seem to...
The Common Sense Diet
There's a mind-boggling amount of advice out there on how to eat healthy that leaves people feeling confused and frustrated. I think it's a lot simpler than folks make it out to be. The basics of healthy eating are: Eat: Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and...
Writer’s Toolbox: Tropes – Black and White Insanity
The deeper I get into writing, the more I learn. There's always something new around the next corner. Learning never ends. As such I wanted to start sharing some of the bits I've picked up along the way, in the hopes that other writers might find it useful. One of the...
Hacking Your Health
So you decided to change your diet? Good for you. Now you just have to figure out what to eat and that's when the problems start. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad advice out there. If you're not careful you'll wind up no better off then when you started. Should we...
The Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make
The single most important decisions you'll ever make in life are how you eat and whether you exercise. And yet most people never actually make these decisions at all. They get made by default. That's how it was for me. Then I decided to change something. You can too....
Why Bungie Will Never Fix Destiny
A few months after its launch, Destiny remains the worlds hottest game, with more than 3.2 million people playing daily. Now that a flood of new games is finally coming to the market like Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Farcry and others, those numbers may drop. Like...
Dominate the Crucible in Destiny
For years I have always sucked at Player vs Player (PvP) matches on first person shooters (FPS) and Halo creator Bungie's new game Destiny was no exception. I got slaughtered in the Crucible just like I always did in other games. Except this time I decided to do...
Finding Root
More from my upcoming book on the spiritual aspects of writing: *** One of the most crucial skills you'll want to learn as an artist is what I call "finding root." The term comes to us from the engineering world. "Root cause analysis" or RCA attempts to get to the...
Self-awareness
This is the second early excerpt from my book on the spiritual aspects of writing. It's a little rough, but it's coming along. *** I cannot think of any trait more important to an artist than self-awareness. But what is self-awareness and how do you know if you have...
Interview with Author Graeme Ing
I had a chance to sit down and talk with author, Graeme Ing, who just released his latest novel Necromancer. We spoke at length about writing, art and the state of publishing today. Check out his responses to my questions below. Q: You’ve got a new book out now. Tell...
Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom
Every since I set out to write my Chinese epic, the Jasmine Wars, I've wanted to use a modified version of a famous communist propaganda poster for the cover. You see it in the corner there on the left. The communists used it in the Hundred Flowers Campaign, an...
To Live
I've watched a lot of Chinese movies as of late. As I dig deep into the second draft of my new novel, a Chinese epic war saga, I wanted to immerse myself in the arts and culture of the Middle Kingdom, so I can add as much of that flavor to the stew of my story. Many...
My China Odyssey
For the past year I've immersed myself in Chinese culture, reading biographies, histories, novels and articles, even cramming a little Mandarin. My next novel takes place in the Middle Kingdom and I wanted it to feel authentic. Luckily, I live in the age of...
