Tanj this week…

March 5, 2015

I haven’t forgotten to post ebooks I’ve found during Read an Ebook Week, I just didn’t have a chance to find any. I was going to post and say I’ll try to find some on Thursday but I lost a lens from my glasses Wednesday night, turning me from a 4-eyes to a 3-eyes, and had to scramble to least make arrangements to get a new set of eyes. My exam appointment is Tuesday morning and it turns out I’ll have to wait 4-6 weeks to get my new ones. (Tanj it Mass Health!) more “Tanj this week…” …

Get my books half off during Smashwords' Read an Ebook Week

It’s Read an Ebook Week!

March 2, 2015

Last week I was thinking it should be getting time for the 2015 Smashwords Read an Ebook Week and sure enough, when I checked my email this morning I see that it started yesterday. Read an Ebook Week is a promotion my distributor, Smashwords, runs every year to encourage people to read ebooks. Many Smashwords authors put deep discounts on their ebooks with some making their ebooks completely free. As I did last year you can get my two non-free ebooks at a 50% discount. more “It’s Read an Ebook Week!” …

Buy "No Budget, No Pay" today

Should Congress be penalized for possibly closing a part of our government?

February 25, 2015

Should we penalize Congress if DHS has to shut down because there's no budget?Unless you’ve been off spending a very cold and snowy winter and avoiding all news about what’s going on where we’re cold and sick of snow you’ve probably heard that unless something happens very soon a very important part of the U.S. Government, the Department of Homeland Security could be forced to close at the end of the day Friday. This comes because while most of the government got a budget for the current fiscal year, The Powers That Be up on Capital Hill have decided to fight one of the president’s actions on undocumented immigrants. While I won’t pick sides (there’s enough mud to go around) I find myself wondering if perhaps we need a way to penalize our elected officials for wanting to force federal employees to work while the rest of DHS has to turn off their lights and lock their doors. more “Should Congress be penalized for possibly closing a part of our government?” …

A funny thing happened while drinking my coffee…

February 6, 2015

I had a funny thought this morning as I was reading the ebook of Larry Niven’s Flatlander on my ‘Droid as I was finish my morning coffee:

Server years back I was talking to a barista friend of mine and mentioned that one of his coworkers punched in things on the cash register terminal with her middle finger, but when I was her age using the middle finger like that would be a (possibly) subtle insult. He had never noticed it but it made him chuckle when told him about it.

Lately I’ve noticed that when I type on my phone I use…

You’ve got it, my middle finger. It makes sense though because I have my phone on the table as I type this, my left hand angling the phone toward me slightly, and my middle finger extends out the farthest. If I try to use my index finger to type on my phone it feels odd. How things change over forty years.

/me lifts my cup of coffee in salute to my friends from the coffee joint

Swear Better with Literature

February 4, 2015

Insult Better with Shakespeare (from Grammarly's Facebook page)Perhaps you’ve seen the an image like the one on the right from Grammarly, suggesting that you could insult people better by quoting Shakespeare. Will was great at coming up with ways to say things in unexpected ways but he’s not the only one. I found some interesting ways to swear without running afoul of the language police while reading the books of Larry Niven.

Updated 20 March: It was brought to my attention that I had a gray moment and didn’t include a link to Grammarly’s website. I’ve used Grammarly to check my writing both here on WfaA, in web posts all over the ‘net, and even for things that aren’t completely web-based. If you do any writing in English you need to check out Grammarly and at least get the free browser plugin. You’ll wonder how you wrote without Grammarly, no matter who your English teachers were.

more “Swear Better with Literature” …

Courtesy the Franklin Park Coalition http://www.franklinparkcoalition.org/

Which parts of Franklin Park would you like me to post next?

January 23, 2015

Today I finally posted a collection of images from a scenic overlook in Franklin Park’s Wilderness (not the Overlook Ruins off the Playstead) and I was going to ask a question at the bottom of the post but I decided to split it off into its own post.

In addition to the pictures from the scenic overlook I’m hoping to get posted tomorrow, I also have a series of pictures of Scarboro Hill that my recent photo of the painted tree (posted on both Instagram (more detail) and on Twitter (more detail)), some pictures of Scarboro Pond (not nearly a complete set yet), and I want to take some pictures at Schoolmaster Hill and the Playstead, but where would you like me to get pictures of next? more “Which parts of Franklin Park would you like me to post next?” …

Franklin Park Wilderness Overlook (taken on 4 Jan 2015)

TestPics: Wilderness Overlook near Schoolmaster Hill

January 23, 2015

I’ve taken a lot of pictures in Franklin Park lately, and they serve as test pictures of the kind of pictures I’d shoot if I make a second try at a Kickstarter campaign to create a Franklin Park photo book. It turns out doing that brings some problems.

One problem I have now is that I now have a lot of pictures taken without a good way to post them online easily. The first day I went through Franklin Park I took over a hundred pictures, and Sunday I took another 80+ pictures. I could post them to Instagram but even posting them without filters will take a lot of time. There’s also the fact that some pictures don’t lend themselves to being cropped to a square without cutting something from them picture. I’ve posted pictures like that to Twitter, but again that’s a time-intensive process. more “TestPics: Wilderness Overlook near Schoolmaster Hill” …