thewayne: (Default)
I should have posted this when it first came up, but better late than never.

If you're interested in Zen and mindfulness, this is a heck of a collection. As the subject says, 37 books for $18! They were written by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away two years ago: he was a major writer and proponent of zen in the west.

It's a heck of a collection, however, it's only available for another three days! Entirely my bad. It's been a rough few weeks, fortunately we're leaving on vacation tomorrow and hopefully will get to unwind a bit.

The books are all epub without DRM, so if you need to convert to a different format it should be quite easy to do via Stanza or any number of other programs.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/thich-nhat-hanhs-zen-library-books

Other current Humble Bundle deals includes a nice one on Raspberry Pi's - which has, for $1, a book on the history of British microcomputers! There's also a bunch of other stuff. :)

https://www.humblebundle.com/books
thewayne: (Default)
I've almost finished the first book of the What Did You Eat Yesterday series, and it's quite fun. It's about a gay couple, an attorney and a hair stylist, the series revolves around food and their lives. From a food angle, my hope was fulfilled: each meal includes accurate descriptions and recipes! I have very limited access to Japanese ingredients here, but we do go to other cities and there is shipping available.

For the relationship side of things, also interesting. Nothing explicit - this is, after all, Japanese Manga. The men have been living together for a couple of years. The hair stylist is very open about being gay as it's not uncommon in his profession. The attorney - different story. While his parents know, the number of others who know is very, very small and do not include people in his profession.

Their relationship is interesting. In the first issue, the attorney scolds his boyfriend for buying Haagen-das from the corner market when it's on sale at another store every Friday. "But it's a new flavor!" "Doesn't matter, it's coming out of your allowance, not our monthly food budget!"

I would love to see a restaurant that served meals based on this series! Wouldn't happen over here, but one could hope. Definitely a different cooking style, but my inner fan boy is drooling when I read the cooking scenes and I can imagine the aromas.

Definitely recommended.
thewayne: (Default)
Now, they say you get 30 items for $25. Yeah, that's true. But when you download it? A HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE VOLUMES!

And it takes 32 gig of space! So you might have a bit of difficulty cramming them all into your device at the same time! It's a lot of space, but also kind of typical because you're looking at graphic novels.

And that is, of course, if you elect to buy the entire bundle.

Titles included are: A Sign of Affection(7 volumes), A Silent Voice(6), Blue Period(13), Drops of God(44!), Medalist(8), Nina the Starry Bride(10), Shangri-La Frontier(12), Vinland Saga(13), What Did You Eat Yesterday(10), and Witch Hat Atelier(11).

Extremely brief synopsis: A Sign of Affection and A Silent Voice are about deafness, Drops of God looks interesting: about a dead wine reviewer and his collection, Shangri-La Frontier is about computer gaming! Should be fun. What Did You Eat Yesterday is about a male gay couple who talk about their day over food: I'm hoping it includes recipes. Witch Hat Atelier is about a girl who wants to do magic but is told you have to be born to it - and she finds out that may not be true, Vinland Saga is a viking tale of revenge, Blue Period is about a boy who suddenly finds himself falling into the world of art, Medalist is about competitive ice skating, and Nina looks quite amusing - she's a thief with special eyes who is taken by the king(?)/prince(?) because she has the same eyes as a recent priestess, except Nina can't give up her thieving ways. Should also be fun!

Everything here has won or been nominated for awards, so it's good stuff! And by visiting the web site linked below, you can click on a title and read the description of the series and usually download a PDF preview. All titles are available in PDF or epub, and not tied to Kodo! (something HB has been doing of late.... *grumble grumble*)

The charity that this bundle supports is the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, BINC, described thusly: "Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation has helped bookstore and comic book store employees and owners who encounter unexpected financial crises. The Binc Foundation works to keep book people in their homes, in their jobs, and with their families – stabilizing the brick and mortar bookstore community."

The bundle is available for 18 days and 22 hours as of this posting.

One download option, as opposed to clicking a Download button 133 times, is to bit torrent it. This is something that HB has supported for a long time. Download the torrents, load your program, and you're off to the races and everything is done in a couple of hours! HOWEVER, when I did this last night, I found a good 15% or more of the files had not downloaded! I still had to download a bunch manually. Just be aware that no method is fool-proof, fools are far too ingenious. And you can download items after offers end, don't worry about it if you find you missed an issue on your initial download. Just log in to your account, go to the offer, and you can find a link and usually download it.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/kodansha-awardwinning-nominated-manga-books
thewayne: (Default)
This is a really good bundle if you're into movies. There's several that I'm not interested in as I'm not that much into horror, but books on Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Oliver Stone, the Coen Brothers, Christopher Nolan, and more. Books specifically about It, Pulp Fiction, and one of my personal favorite: The Big Lebowski. They are in both PDF and epub format: all of the books are in epub, some are also available as PDF.

The charity du jeur is Child's Play, described as "Child’s Play Charity delivers therapeutic games and technology directly to pediatric hospitals to improve patients’ lives through the power of play." Now THAT is a charity I can definitely back!

The bundle just launched and will be available for the next 20 days and 19 hours from this post.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/directors-filmmaking-and-hollywood-movies-books
thewayne: (Default)
What timing! Looks like someone over there reads geek technical news and sees trends. Whouldathunkit?

The bundle will server you as an excellent introduction to the Godot gaming platform development system with 20 training courses for $25. They are listed as multi-platform.

These are not books, not 100% sure they're downloadable. The web site description: "Master Godot—the lightweight, fast, and free game engine behind hits like Sonic Colors: Ultimate. Whether you want to use the brand new version 4 or the battle-tested version 3, these courses will get you building platformers, RPGs, first-person shooters, city-builders, strategy games, and more—no prior experience required! Plus, you’ll learn how to customize your games by creating your own art and assets, all while supporting Girls Who Code with your purchase!"

The bundle will be available for twenty days!

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software
thewayne: (Default)
The bundle includes two books by Dianne Kennedy, a woman who was considered a very deep expert on the food of Mexico. She spent several decades of her life driving a beat up pickup through little villages in Mexico, talking to people, learning recipes. She was very devoted to their cuisine.

Many books on tacos, salsas, books on vegan cuisine, TexMex, etc. Heck of a collection, IMO worth it just for the Kennedy books. Sadly, she passed away at a ripe old age a year or two ago.

As usual, the books are DRM-free and in epub format. The charity for this bundle is the Global FoodBanking Network, and will be available for another twenty days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/mexican-cooking-books
thewayne: (Default)
Twenty-four books for $18 with the following titles:

Post-Truth
Espionage: A Concise History
Analog
Critical Thinking
Memory
Happiness
Neuroplasticity
Extremism
Quantum Entanglement
Behavioral Insights
Nihilism
Carbon Capture
Synesthesia
Free Will
The Book
Phenomenology
Smart Cities
Macroeconomics
3D Printing
Nuclear Weapons
Gender(s)
Content
Neurolinguistics
Robot Ethics

The books are DRM-free epubs, and the charity is "Covenant House is the nation's largest movement providing food, shelter, immediate crisis care, and ongoing services to homeless and trafficked young people".

The Bundle will be available for the next twenty days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/essential-knowledge-mit-press-books
thewayne: (Default)
In addition to Murderbot, we have A.G. Riddle's Winter World series, Seth Ring's Battle Mage Farmer series, Tree of Eons by SpaizZzer and Peter Berkrot, and several other single books including Eric Flint's 1632.

20 audiobooks for $20, or fewer books for less $$$. All as downloadable MP3s with no DRM for loading on to your device and keeping forever, without having to hassle with Audible. The bundle just launched and will be available for three weeks.

The charity for this package is the National Coalition Against Censorship.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/marthawells-agriddle-and-more-audiobooks-books
thewayne: (Default)
The bundle just launched. 31 books for $18!

Oddly, the collection seems to be entirely Epub, so you may need to use Calibre to convert them to other formats.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/goosebumps-collection-scholastic-inc-books
thewayne: (Default)
From the web site:
The devastating earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria have created an urgent humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people are in immediate need of medical supplies, food, water, and shelter, and the road to recovery will continue to be extremely challenging for the people of the region. To lend a hand how we can, we’ve joined forces with game makers & book publishers for a bundle 100% dedicated to supporting Türkiye-Syria quake relief efforts.

The Türkiye-Syria earthquake relief bundle features over 70 items worth over $1,000, including:

Gotham Knights, the 2022 open-world action-RPG featuring Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin; cyberpunk slasher Ghostrunner; epic RPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker Enhanced Plus Edition; action-packed heist game PAYDAY 2; and acclaimed sim Euro Truck Simulator 2.
All 10 current digital volumes of Image Comics’ Eisner Award-winning series Saga, plus the Starfinder tabletop RPG from Paizo.

100% of the proceeds will go to Direct Relief, International Medical Corps, and Save the Children in support of their ongoing Türkiye-Syria quake relief efforts.


The package also includes the Pathfinder computer game that was Kickstarted and PDFs of the Starfinder core rulebook and a scenario book.

Sometimes the stuff available on packages like this for relief efforts get added to, so more things may become available before the bundle ends, which is in seven days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/turkiye-syria-earthquake-relief-bundle
thewayne: (Default)
The first one is gorgeous! It's a collection of eleven books related to space exploration, astronomy photos, spacecraft photos, etc. Basically coffee table books. Eleven books for $15 with two lower steps for fewer books.

Two of the books are only available as PDF, all the others can also be had as epub. They are: New Space Frontiers and NASA Mission To Mars.

This bundle is up for another two weeks, the charity is Prevent Cancer Foundation. I can get behind that one! And they're going to get more than $15 from me with a lot more going to the charity.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/space-exploration-quarto-books


The second bundle is a collection called Knowledge Master 101. This is a collection of FORTY books for $20 with an amazing array of subjects. This is the second time the 101 bundle has been offered, the previous about a year ago and I'd say there's maybe 50% overlap between the two, so lots of new stuff. Of course, you can't just buy the new stuff, but you can choose to not download the stuff that you already have.

Actually, I'll download everything, just to make sure I have it all by counting forty, then I'll delete the dupes.

This bundle just launched and will be available for three weeks and is available as PDF, epub, and Mobi for you Kindlers out there. The charity is also a good one, World Reader, described as "Worldreader is a global nonprofit bringing digital books children and their families, empowering them to read, think, and grow in order to improve their lives and their world. In its first five years, Worldreader has reached 5.6 million readers in 69 countries with a digital library of 28,500 local and international e-books via e-readers and mobile phones, and aims to reach 10 million readers with its digital library by the end of 2015 and 15 million readers by 2018. To read free books on your mobile phone, visit read.worldreader.org. For more information on Worldreader, visit http://www.worldreader.org." They're also going to get some bonus bucks from me.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/knowledge-master-101-adams-media-books
thewayne: (Default)
Tachyon Books releasing twenty books for $18 in PDF, epub, and Mobi format, featuring Brandon Sanderson, Bruce Sterling, and a host of other authors, male and female. Most of the books are novels, there are a few short story collections. A couple of the books I absolutely will not touch, but a lot of them look quite interesting. And at less than a buck per, certainly a good deal.

As usual, no DRM.

The charity for this bundle is Gameheads, described as: "We are a tech training program that uses video game design, development and DevOps to create diverse talent and bold new voices, train youth of color for the tech eco-system, and prepare them for college, career and civic life. Teaching areas include: Project management, art and animation, software development and programming fundamentals, project management, game design, level design, video game history/theory and more." Sounds like a worthwhile charity to me! You can adjust the percentage of your purchase for how much goes to the charity with sliders, personally I try to split it into rough thirds.

This bundle just launched today and will be up for another twenty days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/sanderson-liu-sterling-and-more-great-sff-from-tachyon-books
thewayne: (Default)
This looks like a very cute collection of titles, which I'm about to purchase, and they all begin at issue #1.

The titles are:
A Couple of Cuckoos (kids swapped at birth, now grown, trouble ensues when the parents want to undo the swap and want them to marry),
Police In A Pod ("female officer ... is about to resign and meets the new female director of her station and realizes maybe she's not quite done with the job yet),
Shikimori's Not Just A Cutie (Shikimori and her boyfriend are HS sweethearts, but she knows what she wants and "can turn from cutie to cool in an instant"),
Ya Boy Kongming (a general from the far past wants to be resurrected in peaceful times, and ends up in modern party Tokyo),
When Will Ayumu Make His Move? (girl who runs the school shogi club is smitten by the boy in the club, Ayumu, the only other member, who is smitten with her, but has vowed he will not profess his love until he beats her at shogi - except he sucks at the game),
and Blue Lock (about the Japanese soccer team trying to get a great striker, I'm not very interested in this one but will look at it)
The Dawn of the Witch (boy develops strange powers and a little group forms around him, also with strange abilities),
Tokyo Mew Mew Omnibus Vol 1 (girl is exposed to 'mysterious ray', gains superhuman abilities, superteam, etc).

A dollar gets you the first issues of Cuckoos, Police, Shikimori, Ya Boy, and Ayumu! $18 gets you all twenty books. They're all available as PDF or epub, except for the Ya Boy Kongmings which are PDF only. The charity that part of your purchase will go to is the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

The bundle just launched and will be up for the next twenty days.

And while it is advertised as twenty titles, it actually downloads as FORTY files, if you buy the full $18 package.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/2022-anime-season-kodansha-books
thewayne: (Default)
You can do a lot of things with Photoshop that don't include photography, so I put that little disclaimer there.

Once again, Humble Bundle has launched their Luminar Bundle. Lots of good software and add-ins, starting at $1 for their Photolemur entry product and $20 for the whole shebang. The charity for this package is Razom for Ukraine, provides "The current emergency response is focused on purchasing tactical medicine items and supplies for Ukrainian hospitals. supplies for critical situations like blood loss and other tactical medicine items. They have a large team of volunteers that tracks down and purchases supplies, and a logistics team that then gets them to Ukraine. They’re coordinating with several partner organizations worldwide and are also working with governments and embassies on establishing humanitarian corridors."

The money you pay for bundles, and you can pay more than the $20, is split three ways: between the charity, Humble, and the publisher. There's a widget on the right side that will let you divide the percentage split. Myself, I usually divide it into roughly even thirds.

The Bundle is up for twenty days.

One word of warning re: Luminar vs Photoshop. Unless Luminar has been changed to allow this, it is missing one feature that I find is kind of critically lacking. In Photoshop, you can create a new, blank, canvas to work with. For example, if I want to excerpt a graphic screen shot for reference and save it as a JPEG or TIFF, I can create a new file in PHotoshop, and it may recognize that I have a graphic in my paste buffer and size a new empty canvas appropriately, ready for me to paste my graphic into it.

Luminar does not (or did not) have the capability of creating a new blank canvas. It can (or could) only open photo files for editing. Which is absolutely fine for editing photos. It's just a slightly different layer of capability of functionality between the two products, and if this is something that you need to do sometimes, you're not going to find it in Luminar. I just wanted to give you a heads up and save you some frustration.

Luminar, and Photolemur, as amazing programs. But they're not the same as Photoshop. Some aspects are better, some worse, but they are not point to point the same.

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/photo-editing-cyber-bundle-with-luminar-ai-software
thewayne: (Default)
Great bundle with a really neat selection of titles, including one that's based around Raspberry Pi hardware! Two about women in physics, even! I'm looking forward to those! I'm currently reading a book that is sort of a summary of great scientists over time, it's really just a page or two summary of their big discoveries, and it's fun, still it's just a summary. I just read the entry for the Arab researcher who created the number zero and the entire zero through nine system, plus pretty much algebra and provable equations at the House of Wisdom, AKA the Grand Library of Baghdad. Alas, the library was largely lost when the Mongols invaded.

Still, $18 for 24 text books is a heck of a deal! My only complaint is that with one exception, they're all PDFs. I much prefer epubs. They are all DRM-free and available for the next nineteen days (almost). Donations also support the Trevors Project, which is a suicide prevention project to help the GLBTQ community.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/kickass-physics-morgan-claypool-books
thewayne: (Default)
Went live yesterday, contains $1200 worth of goodies: Steam games, HB games, DRM-free books, comics, audio books. And they've sold over $1,500,000 worth of product in just under 24 hours. Some of the material must be redeemed soon.

100% of the proceeds go to NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Bail Project, and Race Forward.

https://www.humblebundle.com/fight-for-racial-justice-bundle
thewayne: (Default)
There's A LOT of good games in here! Many of them are not only both PC and Mac, but also Penguin-compatible! The games are all downloadable through Steam with the keys provided by HB. Several of the games are multi-player in various ways.

The Bundle is very limited and is only available for another six days and nineteen hours!

Myself, Feather looks very nice, Satellite Reign looks good, and I think I might like Paperbark. Paper Fire Rookie looks awesome if it's playable without a VR headset. But I really want to play the Euro Truck Simulator and try to drive around the areas I've been and see how they look in-game.

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/australia-fire-relief
thewayne: (Default)
Mostly from Humble, what a surprise.

First, their STEM bundle, which is expiring in just under three days. LOTS of stuff here, myself I'm going to be purchasing their middle tier which has a book on Photoshop photo retouching and restoration, something that will be useful. Other books include such topics as basic electronics, particle physics, linear algebra, tensor analysis, a couple of books about SAP, a book about asthma, stuff about 3D printing, AutoCad, physics, linear programming, psychedelic drug treatments, and books about Microsoft Office. So LOTS of stuff!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/stem-bookshelf-mercury-books


Next, their science fiction bundle, available for just under five days. Personally, I'm not keen on this bundle as it's more horror than sci fi for my tastes, but there may be some stuff that you might like.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/science-fiction-start-books


Finally, Humble has a manga/anime bundle which has some interesting stuff in it. This package is available for almost ten days. The $1 Bundle has Cells At Work! volumes 1-5, $8 gets you The Quintessential Quintuplets vols 1-3 and Vinland Saga 1-5, $10 gets you Vinland Saga 6-10, Fire Force (which looks really weird) vols 1-15, and Domestic Girlfriend 1-10. $15 unlocks Domestic Girlfriend 11-18, Blame! 1-6, and Attack on Titan 1-10, $18 adds Attack on Titan 11-20 plus Attack on Titan: Before The Fall 1-16. And finally, $20 gets you Blame! Movie Edition, Aposimz 1-2, and Collected Works: Exclusive Artbook.

That's a lot of anime manga!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/manga-2-anime-kodansha-books


StoryBundle has an urban fantasy bundle called The Cities of Magic Bundle, described as "Urban Fantasy is a set of flavors and textures that form a foundation from which thrilling tales of every sort can spring. How to Marry a Werewolf will introduce you to the finer points of supernatural courtship in an alternate Victorian London. Interested in some action? We've got Relic Guardians and Cast into Darkness to feed your need for danger and excitement. If you're in the mood for a mystery, crack open A Furnace Sealed and see how murders are investigated when magic is the modus operandi. If you'd like to see the super heroic side of Urban Fantasy, Scales will teach you what sort of mischief a gargoyle can get up to, and never underestimate the Trials (and Trifles) of a Werevulture. Shadowblood Heir will make you wonder just how much of fiction is really fictional, while Arcana will make you question what depths a society will sink to if it feels threatened by mystic powers. Perhaps you'll find yourself in the city of brotherly love, peering into a darkness that just so happens to be peering back at you in A Traitor in the Shadows, or exploring Boston with a technowitch in Ghost Garages."

This sounds pretty interesting! This bundle is available for another twenty days. $5 gets you four books, including WereVulture Book 1: Trials of a Teenage WereVulture, which sounds fun to me. $15 gets you the rest of the package.

https://storybundle.com/fantasy
thewayne: (Default)
Lots of us here write with varying levels of seriousness, and here's something could benefit us! Lots of interesting stuff in this collection: a book on the Tao to help you overcome writer's block, a book of interviews with successful script writers, including the Coen brothers, Christopher Nolan, Andrew Sorkin, Seth Rogen, Darren Aronofsky and others, books on improving your grammar (which I could use), writing proposals, screen writing, writer prompts, etc.

LOTS of stuff! As usual, the collection is three-tiered at $1, $8, and $15, and all of the ebooks are multi-format and DRM-free. The charities are the National Coalition Against Censorship and FirstBook, a program that "provides new books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children in need". Good stuff.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/write-like-a-writer-books
thewayne: (Default)
Published by Hard Case Crime, the bundle will be available for the next two weeks. It's quite a collection including Gore Vidal, Lester Dent; it has books and comics, and a book collecting classic pulp detective book covers.

Quite a collection! As usual, the books are available in multiple ebook formats and are DRM-free.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pulp-fiction-books

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