I saw two very cool things:

• SoftWire (Rings of Orbis)
  
  

  In the future a ring system in controlled by a massive computer. A boy has been born that can link with computer using only his mind. This represents a problem for the five or so alien races vying for control of the Rings of Orbis.

  What is really cool about this is the author has teamed up with a software developer to create a free MMORPG to promote his books! Very cool.

• The Looking Glass Wars
  
  

  Alyss is fighting against her aunt, Red. She finds a portal to our world and meets up with Lewis Carroll who is fascinated by the girl’s tale. Soon Alyss will have to go back.

  I got a signed copy of the book and will blog about it when I am finished with Digital Fortress

The one other thing that was strange was the amount of copyrighted material for sale. I couldn’t believe it. Movies, TV Shows, Cartoons, Porn. There were at least four booths selling this stuff. I can understand if the shows are not readily available and in fact support that but they were selling stuff that was available. Of course I didn’t let that feeling get in the way of buying the entire Seaquest DSV series on 12 DVD’s for $45 dollars:) I had just season one in my Amazon wishlist alone that alone was $44.99. Now this set was basically burned to DVD from SciFi channel but that’s okay. I wanted Seaquest but not enough to pay a premium for it and have the nice transfer and sound.

Based on how much fun I had I am going to try to go to Norwescon 29 April 13-16. One of my favorite authors, Robert J. Sawyer, is the “Toastmaster” (not sure what that means).

I also got The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from Direct2Drive this weekend as well. On a side note Direct2Drive is great if you have a fast internet connection. I have 7Mbits down and download the 4.3GB oblivion in about 90 minutes. I then burn it to DVD and its mine. No going to the store. Price is the same but the instant gratification factor too awesome to pass up.

Anyway back to Oblivion. I never got into Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind but I wanted too. I think it was the clumsy graphics. I am probably too superficial when it comes to gaming but if it looks good it helps me enjoy the game more.

Oblivion looks fantastic. The engine uses HDR lighting and it is well used. The game feels faster pace and right off the bat there is a lot to do. I felt in Morrorwind, at least in the beginning, you wandered around too much just talking to people. Within 15 minutes of starting Oblivion I was fighting baddies and getting better equipment.

Speaking of Rowling her site is one of the worst I have ever seen. Flash only sites are a horrible blight upon the internet and should be outlawed. She does have a text-only version but even that is ugly – white and yellow on black. Normally if I mention a site I would link to it but I can’t bear to put anybody kind enough to read my blog through that kind of pain.