Imre Z. Balint, BSc, MPM, MBA

Well here I go again! I just finished Rave Girl: Change My Mind , and I've already started on a new sci-fi / fantasy web novel, Protostar: Error in Transmission . This is my first foray into this arena, but I'm hoping it'll have some benefits. First off, this book is currently free to read! So click the link above or the book cover below, and have at it. Second, this book is incomplete. Only chapter one is done, and I'll upload the rest as soon as I'm done writing each one. I'm aiming for a chapter a week... we'll see how that goes, but I should be able to pull it off. Anywho, below is the description. I think this'll be a fantastic story and merges the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, in a hopefully fun and entertaining way. Enjoy! ***** Captain Kane St. James never expected his post-service life to be as exciting and outlandish as this. Leading the IFS Protostar, a retrofitted frigate now scout vessel, St. James and his crew of five would commonl...

As some folks might know, woodworking has been a hobby of mine for ages, and recently, I took to making some slingshots (for sale in my Etsy Store ). There are a couple of varieties I've created thus far, but the latest one has to be one of my favorites. It's an asymmetrical, over-the-top (OTT) no-tie type. I'll likely create a few more like this, but using different types of wood to mix things up. Here are a few pics:

I’m ecstatic to say that my sci-fi novel, Circulum, is ready to be enjoyed on Kindle or Kindle Unlimited! Click here or the thumbnail image of the cover to snag your copy today! Trent needed change. He was fed up with his dead-end security job and needed to escape; especially after a nasty reminder of his duties. His escape would come to him in the form of a lucrative contract that would take him off world. Trent swore to himself that he’d never leave Earth after that horrid day left him scarred forever, but in the end, circumstances would prevail. At least the job would be quick, and the credits would help him start a new life, putting distance between him and the Chief. But if only Trent knew a fraction of what he was getting into... Follow Trent on his exciting journey to a strange world as he dances with death, grapples with his sanity, meets a special lady, and discovers that there is more to him than he could ever imagine. Contains some explicit language and scenes...

I've just finished the planning stage of my novel... for now, and I've finally begun writing the first chapter! It's a wonderful feeling. Planning out all the scenes might have taken several weeks, but it's well worth it. Several twists and turns evolved during this process, but I know this will add value to my story and characters. I'm also glad that I used Microsoft Excel for this, a suggestion from some of the books I mentioned in my previous posts. It made it a snap to add, remove, and rearrange the scenes. Although the planning will help when fleshing out the novel, my path is still going to be long and winding. Breathing life into characters that exist as nothing more than mere words on a page will be both art and science. However, I will ensure that I put maximum effort into this task. I need those characters to come to life in one's mind, along with the story world. Readers must experience the same pains, joys, fears, confusions, anger, and love on the...

Ever visit a website where if you start to scroll then certain elements on a page will stick to a particular location, like a navigation bar that stays put at the top of the page? Sometimes even a link will also appear from a side of the document which allows the user to jump back to the top of the page with a single click. Well that's what this tutorial is about. In fact the concepts I'll be discussing can actually be taken a step further and you'll be able to create other "sticky" elements on your page (like a social media link list that can slide into view). With this walk-through I'm assuming you're somewhat familiar with jQuery and CSS, so as with pretty much all things jQuery please download the library if you want to try this for yourself. Overall this example is really easy, so even with minimal experience it should be a snap to get this working on your site. First let's take a look at how this works. Click here to view the example and ...

Not only is it a full moon today, but it's also Friday the 13th. So it's only fitting that I tackle a scary topic: CSS only dropdown menus that work on mobile devices! Ok, so really it's not that scary and I'll try to make it as painless as possible... don't mind the machete. First off, it's nice to see what we're trying to accomplish. Because this example is geared for mobile type devices only you should be viewing this example on such a platform, or if you are using a desktop computer, pretend that you can only "tap": http://www.imrezbalint.com/blogexamples/csstargetmenu.html The actual presentation of the example is not critical; you can create your own design in pretty much whatever manner you wish. The focus here is that on a mobile device one can tap a menu to see the dropdown list that will then stay open until the user taps another menu item or the "Close Menu" option. Secondly, I have not bothered to create media queries ...