geekyAll things considered, it's probably not a surprise that when I was offered the chance to blurb Michael Underwood's Geekomancy, I said "sure, why not." A magic system based on and powered by the geeky joys that run my universe? Yes, please. And to no one's shock or amazement, I adored it. It's fun, it's peppy, it's about people I recognize, because they're the kind of people I voluntarily surround myself with every day of my life. The sequel, Celebromancy, came out recently, and is even more fun.
But here's the thing: these books are e-only, which means they miss out on bookstore browsers and surprise eyes, and too many of the awesome geeky people I know haven't encountered them or had the opportunity to give them a try. So I asked Michael's editor if I could do an e-book giveaway for the first book, to get people hooked on the series, and he said sure (after he finished blinking at me a great deal). And so I now present...
SEANAN GIVES AWAY SOMEONE ELSE'S BOOKS FOR A CHANGE!
This giveaway is for three electronic copies of Geekomancy by Michael Underwood. The limitations:
1. You will need to get the book through a specific channel (the publisher's website), because what I have are download codes.
2. The book is not going to be "Kindle ready," and may not be transferable onto a Kindle without evil magic.
To enter, leave a comment with your geekiest moment. No geek is too great! I, and the Random Number Generator, will select three winners on Friday, June 28th. Open to US residents only (sorry), please leave your comment on the entry itself; comments on comments will not be eligible to win.
Game on!
June 25 2013, 10:17:28 UTC 4 years ago Edited: June 25 2013, 10:18:45 UTC
My husband's a programmer; I'm not any sort of computer professional, just a technophile, technician, tinkerer, and lifelong science fiction lover. My husband is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM. He hardly ever goes to the monthly meetings, but on one occasion the speaker was announced to be Bill Cheswick, whose book on how to build a hacker-proof firewall had just come out. My husband was interested, because part of what he was working on at the time involved a firewall. Cheswick is also known for creating a map of the internet, which interested me, so I asked my husband to bring me along as his guest.
Cheswick talked about the material in his book, using his laptop to show a PowerPoint presentation. He then digressed, talking about a graphics program he was working on that would help people visualize complicated objects. When he asked for questions, I stood up and asked him if his program could be animated, so the user could rotate the object in various directions (I used the word "grok" in the question, without conscious intent). He said, "That's a very good question! In order to answer it, I have to bring up the program..." He closed Windows and attempted to boot his machine into Linux, and the first attempt failed; I said "Hey, I crashed the presenter!", and he laughed. He demonstrated his project, and took a number of other questions. Then he said, "I brought along a few internet maps with me. They're for sale, but you" (pointing a rolled-up map at me) "asked the most interesting question, so I'll give you one." It's hanging on the wall beside me right now :-)
Small-scale geekiness:
My computer's name is NCC-1701-X
:-D