Veinwriter

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Poker Trophy: River Card Cup

Midnight Sunday (tonight) some lucky poker player will win the first River Card Cup at Pala Casino's poker room, being sponsored by River Card Inc., a clothing brand recently formed by local residents Morgan Brown and Greg Whistler.

There are about 117 players in the tournament, Brown tells The Roadrunner.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Palomar Mountain Barbecue Planning

The next Palomar Mountain Volunteer Fire Dept. Barbecue Planning Meeting will be Sunday, May 22 at noon at the Community Center (21610 Crestline Rd., next to the firehouse). Want to help out? Stop by the Community Center and see what they’ve got cooking. Everyone is welcome and volunteer opportunities are still available.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Latest Boulevard Magazine

In the latest Boulevard Magazine one of my featured articles is about the late Frank Capra, director of It's a Wonderful Life and many other great movies of the 1930s and 1940s. I also have an article about a wonderful local breakfast restaurant called The Golden Egg Omelet House, which carries over 90 different kinds of omelets. But my personal favorite is where I was able to participate in sampling wine and food pairings at four different wineries in Temecula, California.

You can find the entire magazine at: http://www.theboulevardonline.com/

IN A NEW PLAY

I am currently participating in a new play that is presented in the town where I work. The name of the play is "All the Time in the World," and I play a corrupt art critic who is trying to persuade a genuinely talented artist to "sell out." The final performance of the play will be May 8.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Latest Boulevard Magazine

Read my latest articles in the Boulevard Magazine on the Fallbrook Avocado Festival, the Fallbrook Film Festival and the Family Winemakers of California "Tasting 2010" event that was held in Del Mar, California. Visit The Boulevard's online presence at http://www.theboulevardonline.com/

Dave's Journal

Welcome to the inaugural, the premiere, the birth of, launching and first, halting steps of Veinwriter, the professional blog of David Ross.

In this journal I hope to accomplish at least two things: 1) talk about writing, specifically my own writing (both non-fiction and fiction) and what I hope to do with it and 2) talk about other writing by people I admire, along with the culture, film and television.

Thanks for reading, and, in future I hope to give you something worth reading.

Media Technologies

As part of my current communications "capstone" class, I was assigned to write about four different "media technologies." The technologies I chose to explore are:

• Social Media
• The iPhone and its various imitators
• Google, and its various services, including the ubiquitous search engine, but also life-enhancing services such as Google Voice and Google Docs.
• Casino slot machines

Social Media
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMjZjZjkzem5oZg&hl=en
• The iPhone and its various imitators
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMjdkcDRrazRnb Q&hl=en
Google, and its various services
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMjhmZjd0bXBn Nw&hl=en

• Casino slot machines

Since my characterization of slot machines as a form of media is somewhat controversial, or perhaps original, I'm providing two articles on slot machine technology that I wrote within the last couple of years for casino magazines. For those interested these articles explain some of the technology that is being applied in the modern casino.

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMjlxYmdwemNmaw&hl=en

Here are the two articles:

New Technology in Slots
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMzBmbWZnOHNneA&hl=en

Slots Management

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUycJ7eKRLWaZGQ1NnczbnpfMzFmNm0zOWpkMg&hl=en

About David Ross's books

A brief introduction to "The Argus Gambit"

Should he expose the secret society of scientists that was trying to destroy his world--or join them?

In this science fiction thriller set in the second half of the next century, very little is as it seems as a policeman investigates an assassination that cost him his job, and may have deprived humanity of its only hope of surviving a devastating famine.

America has become isolationist and anti-technological, facing inwards from its responsibilities as a great power, and from the challenges of the future. It seems that the only hope lies in the immensely talented scientist Dorian Nye, who has translated the cryptic Strubeck Equations, which can save the world from a South American grain blight that threatens the planet's survival. But Nye is killed, and the policeman charged with protecting him, Mel Hardrim, is held responsible for his death. But it isn't Nye's body lying in the morgue, and suddenly Hardrim has gone from being just an incompetent cop to a suspect in a kidnapping of international ramifications.

Hoping to salvage his career, Hardrim investigates the scientist's disappearance, but as he digs deeper and deeper, he is drawn into a maze of deception, murder, and political intrigue, which has as its center a shadowy group of scientists known only as the Argus Society. Nye may have belonged to this group, and they may have caused his disappearance. They may be plotting the destruction of civilization, or they may be Mankind's only hope of survival. With his life threatened at every turn, Hardrim's choice is to expose the Argus Society, or to join them.

"The Argus Gambit" was first published by: St. Martin's Press.

Author's notes: It took me 12 years to write my first novel, "The Argus Gambit," but in reality I wrote the novel several times before I got to the point where I was satisfied with it. I was such a perfectionist when it comes to my writing that it took the common advent of the personal computer for me to be able to finish what had come to be more a member of my family than a book. It also took me a long time to finish because, in the nature of an extremely immature writer, I wanted to throw in everything but the kitchen sink: every wonder, every political twist and turn, every societal evolution, every fad and fancy that ocurred to me. Writing this book was such fun for me that I never wanted it to end. Fortunately, on reflection, much of this additional material did not find its way into the finished book.

Not autobiographical in even the slightest degree, the novel does contain some characters who strongly resemble friends of my youth, as well as a character my friends claim physically resembles me. Many of the scenes and bits of dialogue I constructed as I spent long nights pushing a broom and running a cash register as a night clerk of a convenience story. Many's the customer who probably thought I was a little bit wacked out when they saw me muttering to myself, when actually I was polishing bits to submit to the typewriter the next day. It's amazing to me how the most mundane of jobs can give wing to the imagination if the writer is willing to let it do so.

Where the book is definitely me is in my insistence to populate it with passionate, romantic, larger-than-life characters who believe in the greatness of Man, that the greatest good of Man is creation and technological advancement and his greatest joy the expansion of human knowledge.

This philosphy has been stated far better than I by literary giants of the 20th century, such as Ayn Rand, but I borrow the overall title of the two-book series (the other book being "The Eighth Rank") from T. E. Lawrence, who in his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" wrote "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." That sentiment is also at the bedrock of the philosophy of my protagonists.

"The Argus Gambit might be called a philosophical novel, yet I hope that I have had enough fun with the plot that the reader will have fun with it, too, whether or not he or she cares for philosophy.

A brief introduction to "The Eighth Rank"

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that if was vanity; bur the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." -T.E. Lawrence

Jason Scott, Sherlock Michlanski, and Jacob Kane were the most prized pupils of the Argus Society: three brilliant young men of extraordinary and diverse talents. Three prominent members of the secret international conspiracy of intelligentsia. Three people whose dreams were humanity's hope. Mankind's madness has threatened the entire world. President Jeffrey Shefferton, having seen no answers, has authorized the Sunside Project, Jason Scott's plan for feeding the world by utilizing the Strubeck equations. Only the equations are not what they seem to be nor is the Sunside Project. It is, in fact, a dream that only Kane, Michlanski, and Scott can make possible. In this thrilling, Panoramic vision of the future Davis Ross has brought to life the future first depicted in The Argus Gambit. Bold and adventuresome, The Eighth Rank is a dynamic science fiction novel of the highest rank.

Praise for David Ross's first novel "The Argus Gambit"

"In The Argus Gambit, David Ross shows how the balance of military and political power can change and change. I enjoyed his vision of our world after a few more turns of the wheel, and look forward to later books in the series,"

-Vernor Vinge, Hugo Award winning author of Marooned in Realtime

"Ross's political struggles are convincing and dramatic…. Top marks for presentaton and effort." -Kirkus Reviews

"David Ross's The Argus Gambit, is that rare kind of novel that attempts to be both general philosophy and interesting fiction. With this book, Ross places himself in the Libertarian/Objectivist tradition. I'm neither, so I can't speak for his orthodoxy, but for the non-Libertarian, non-Objectivist, this book is more accessible-and a lot more fun-than Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. He didn't convert me, but he certainly entertained me. Ross's world-building, characters, and plot are more credible than Rand's-where she gives us lecture, he gives us real blood-and-thunder action." -John Barnes, author of Mother of Storms

"Ambitious….it has everything from taps into the earth's core for energy to the search for FTL travel, from political conspiracies great and small to protagonists who play the sitar." -Locus