Favorite Literary Characters: Conan

Since I’m all about fiction, I thought that I might share with everyone my favorite literary characters. First, I’ll start with one of my top favorites: Conan. Yes, he’s only been around since the 1930s, but he’s still awesome, and he’s still kicking butt all these decades later. And to think, he’s one of the most popular fantasy characters, to the point of being iconic. However, his origins are very humble.

Pulp fiction maestro Robert E. Howard had come up with other notable barbarian-esque characters, including Kull, but it was Conan that most of us know best. Conan is many things: Barbarian, thief, womanizer, warrior, and king. And the best thing about Conan is that, though he doesn’t set out to, he usually does end up doing the right thing–and doing it in a way only he can.

There’s no wussy material here. And no, Conan is no dumb caveman. He’s intelligent as well as viscious. His cunning far outweighs his obvious shortcomings. Honestly, I think all of us have a little bit of Conan inside. Anyway. This enduring character has spawned books, movies and video games–even after the author’s death nearly seven decades ago, Conan continues to thrive and that’s saying something. Think about it, what other literary character is as well known when it comes to fantasy? Outside of maybe Frodo from Lord of the Rings, most people probably draw a blank if they don’t read fantasy.

So, I raise my sword as I yell my fierce battlecry!

Site Changes

I’ve been working on redoing the site, mainly because the current theme makes the text hard to read. Something I want to avoid, of course. I know if my eyes are having a hard time focusing on the text, then everybody else’s are too. Oh, and I want the site to give off a slightly more professional appearance–the site of a semi-sucessful fiction writer. Anyway. I’ve already gone through a few different designs, and here’s the latest–basically just a new take on what’s already here.

Ogre Found Netflix…Oh my!

I made a bad discovery the other day: Netflix. I mean, it’s extremely addicting. And I’m not talking about the Netflix through the mail, though that’s not a bad deal either. I’m talking about the Netflix now available through the Xbox 360. The “Watch Instantly” titles, while usually not the latest releases (though I have found a few), is well-worth the $8.99 a month, I think. However, I’m just doing the free two week trial for now, but chances are I’ll end up getting it.

Now, there are only 12,000 titles (versus the 100,000 mail-to-you titles) on the “Watch Instantly” feature, but what I do like is that you can place as many titles as you want in your queue. And you can watch one, pause it, and then go check out another–you don’t have to watch them in the order in which you selected them! Also, you can watch the movies on any Netflix-enabled device, which is kind of cool if you’re at, say, the airport and your flight’s been delayed, as long as there’s a Wi-Fi connection, you can watch the movies on your laptop at no extra charge. By now, I’m probably sounding like a commercial for these guys. Anyway. There are, of course, some negatives. 1st: the titles for “Watch Instantly”, like I said, are much more limited (a lot of older movies). 2nd: you can only add movies to your queue through the Netflix website, not via the Xbox 360’s interface. 3rd: it’s point-to-point, meaning that if your access to the Internet goes down, your movie stops until you reestablish a connection. But, there is a plus side to the p2p, that being you don’t clog up your Xbox’s hard drive.

Of course, with all this said, you do still get DVDs by mail. But, I found out you can only receive one at a time–unless you want to pay more money (and even then you can only get up to three at a time). But, with 100,000 titles…It’s not a bad option, either. Oh, and, while I was looking around, I noticed that you can get Blu-Ray discs, though I’m not sure if there’s an extra charge involved or not.

Anyway. I’ve been checking out a lot of the older movies so far through the p2p deal. I wouldn’t have even tried Netflix had they not had the two-week free trial. I even discovered this morning there are television shows available for watching over the Net. And those are anything from classics to much more recent stuff. Weeds, for example, is even on there. So, all in all, it’s a pretty good service. The picture quality is about that of DVD. Though, I do believe there are some HD titles available as well. I do have one pet peeve, though, to complain about: Many of the titles are in 4:6 and not 16:9. You can set the screen to go to full screen, but some of the picture gets cut off. Still, it’s not a bad deal over all.