I just had kind of a revelation about reading on my laptop. One of the things that bugs me about reading PDFs is that it’s very difficult to maximize your screen real estate since laptop screens (and most PC monitors) are widescreens, displayed in the landscape view. For a PDF, a laptop screen would be ideal in portrait view, since it approximates the dimensions of a sheet of paper and it would allow you to view one whole PDF page at a time, which makes turning pages in the PDF much easier. So I thought, if I turn my laptop on its side, can I make Windows change the orientation of my display? The answer is yes.

For some machines, apparently the default Windows hotkeys will be in place, so all you have to do is hit CTRL + ALT + [Right Arrow] to rotate your display orientation 90 degrees to the right. To return to normal orientation, hit CTRL + ALT + [Up Arrow].

If, like me, that doesn’t work for you, you can go into your display properties (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings) and click on Advanced. Click on the tab for your video adaptor. Then from there, you’ll have to play around with your settings.

In my case, with a GeForce FX Go5200 video adaptor, I have a list of options, including "NVRotate". Opening that screen presents you with the option of changing your screen orientation. That’s kind of pain to do, though, if you’re going to be switching back and forth. So you’re going to want to setup your own hotkeys to accomplish what some lucky users have setup by default. In the same tab for your video adaptor, in that same list of options, there will be one marked "Desktop Management." Click the plus sign to expand the list, then select Hot Keys. Click on the plus beside "Display Mode" then select "Rotate Display" and double-click and follow the on-screen prompts to select your hotkey to change your screen orientation (the default Windows hotkeys mentioned above seem to make sense to me, so that’s what I used). Note you’ll have to setup two hotkeys, one to rotate the screen 90 degrees to the right (CTRL + ALT + [Right Arrow]), then another hotkey to return the screen to normal orientation (CTRL + ALT + [Up Arrow]).

I’m rather pleased with myself for figuring out how to do this. Given all the reading I have to do on screen (while reading for anthologies), it helps a lot to be able to just use my laptop rather than having to put stuff on my Pocket PC phone (which requires file conversion and doesn’t read PDFs well at all). I briefly investigated doing the same thing on my PC, but the settings were different (although the video adaptor is made by the same company) and there didn’t seem to be any option for changing the orientation.

So anyway, I thought I’d share my discovery in case that would be of use to anyone else. Of course, if you have one of those sweet rotating monitors, you don’t need this.

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Jeremiah Tolbert, who has stories in both The Pirate Issue and in my forthcoming anthology Seeds of Change, just updated his bibliography on his website, and included links to all of his online fiction. Some good stuff there, go check it out.

• "Spooning," Ideomancer, June, 2003. (read online)
• "Storm Come’s A’Callin," Ideomancer, February, 2004. (read online)
• "The Girl With the Sun in Her Head," Polyphony 4. (read online)
• "Instead of a Loving Heart," All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories. (listen online)
• "The Yeti Behind You" Fantasy Sampler, 2007. (read online)
• "Captain Blood’s B00ty" Shimmer Magazine, 2007. (read online)
• "Babe, I’m Going to Leave You" self-published, 2008. (read online)
   

Complete bibliography is here.

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Night Shade Books is releasing the entire text of Richard Kadrey’s novel Butcher Bird available as a DRM-free download, in a wide variety of formats.

See below for the press release.

Back in 2005, a very different version of Richard Kadrey’s novel Butcher Bird began its life as a free download posted online at The Infinite Matrix. At the time, it was called Blind Shrike. In 2007, Night Shade Books published our version.

Now it’s back. With the cooperation of Richard Kadrey, Night Shade Books is proud to make the entire text of Butcher Bird available as a DRM-free download, in a wide variety of formats, so that everyone can enjoy this amazing novel of black magic and arcane mysteries, however and wherever they want. The World of Butcher Bird is one where angels and devils brawl in the streets, where the Black Clerks charged with keeping the Dominions in check have developed their own dark agenda, where the swordswoman known as Blind Shrike battles monsters in deadly combat, where a civil war has broken out in Hell, and where Spider Lee, an unassuming San Francisco tattoo artist, and his drinking buddy LuLu Garou, have been dropped right smack into the middle of the action.

Richard himself describes the book as "the Gnostic Gospels meets Wild at Heart." Butcher Bird is an odyssey that will take you from the San Francisco underground to decadent palaces to the very gates of Hell… and beyond!

Richard Kadrey is the author of six novels, including Angel Scene, Kamikaze L’Amour, and the quintessential cyberpunk novel Metrophage. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as the magazines Asimov’s, Interzone, Omni, and Wired.

Visit our Downloads page at http://www.nightshadebooks.com/downloads

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In case you missed it, the first issue of the new horror magazine Noctem Aeternus is now available. It’s 100% free–all you have to do is sign up for a free email subscription to receive the magazine in PDF format. I haven’t read much of it so far, but I did read Charles Coleman Finlay’s story, "The Rapeworm," and was blown away by it. He’s written lots of great stuff in the past, and this one ranks right up there with his finest work to date. Go check out the magazine, if only to read Charlie’s story!

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