O frabjous day: we have a new book reviewer over at the reviews blog—Rene! She’s great, and has already posted a handful of reviews. Here are hers so far:
There I was, reading Cracked.com’s 10 Awesome Ads (for Traumatizing Children), when I came across the Nike ad embedded below. And I watched it. And watched it again. And watched it again. And again. Maybe I’m the one who’s cracked, but damn, there’s something about this ad I just like. It appeals to the creative part of me, the one that’s somehow tempted to get about half a dozen RPG characters (and at least one major plot) out of this one ad:
While I’m at it, here’s today’s book review, of Yasmine Galenorn’s Demon Mistress!
Amazon has a new program that allows blog owners to publish their blogs to the Kindle and charge money for it. I wasn’t going to do it, but then I learned that it’s appallingly easy for other people to claim your blog and get the money for it. (How the Kindle Now Lets You Steal This Blog) Because of that, I felt I had to go ahead and claim our blog to make sure this didn’t happen to us.
However, Amazon’s terms for blog owners are frankly appalling. The percentage of revenue that Amazon takes is ridiculous. They set the prices, and they have an inordinate amount of control over what they are allowed to do with your content. I also didn’t see any way to claim a blog but then block Amazon from publishing it via the Kindle—so you can’t say, “that’s mine, don’t touch,” as far as I can tell. And if you want to sign up your blog, you then have to give them 30 days’ notice if you want to back out. So you’re in it for at least a month.
I went ahead and claimed our reviews blog because I felt that, under the circumstances, I needed to keep anyone else from doing so. But I also sent Amazon a message, to kindle-publishing-blogs at amazon.com:
I want to let you know that I’m not at all happy with the terms and conditions for the Kindle Publishing for Blogs program. The only reason I registered my blog right now is because it’s so easy for people to claim each other’s blogs and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. Unless the terms, which give Amazon an egregious percentage of sale price and an inordinate amount of control over how content is used, change in the near future, I don’t expect to continue publication of my blog to Kindle, and I will recommend to others that they do the same.
In a not-entirely-related note, here are links to recent book reviews: Liz Scott’s yummy Zero-Proof Cocktails, and Lora Leigh’s most recent Breeds book, Bengal’s Heart.
I ended up spending a good chunk of yesterday following along with the massive furor over Amazon. Here’s the short of it if you haven’t heard about it yet:
Amazon decided to exclude “adult content” books from sales rankings, and thus from certain searches. I can at least understand the point some people are making that it’s reasonable to want to protect children from sexual material. However, there are a couple of problems with that idea. First, the listings of these books don’t contain explicit material of any kind; someone would have to order them, and that generally requires a credit card, which means an adult is involved at some point. Second, the actual books being deranked belie the assertion that Amazon is deranking “adult” material.
In other words, they’re deranking material that certain segments of the population would consider inappropriate or controversial, such as GLBT parenting and children’s books, while leaving “Girls Gone Wild” and “Playboy” material alone. There’s a very clear double-standard at work here that is forcing one brand of morality onto all of Amazon’s customers. It appears that category metadata is probably being used to filter out GLBT and sex-related materials.
Amazon is now claiming that this is a result of a glitch, despite having told at least one author that it was policy. Hopefully this means they’re back-pedaling and will undo the deranking. However, it would be foolish to simply assume we’ve won. Keep an eye on the ongoing news regarding this. Make it clear to Amazon that you don’t want them determining which categories of books you can and can’t find when you do a search on their site for reading material. Many people are switching wholesale to buying their books from other outlets. You can also contact their customer service department (politely but firmly!) to let them know how you feel and what actions you plan to take. Digg, reddit, stumble, and FARK the good articles you find regarding this subject so more people will find out. If you want to tweet about it, just check out #amazonfail and you’ll find more information than you know what to do with!
RICHARD’S EASTER NECKLACE SPECIAL: Many of our lovely necklaces were made by Richard, a member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and beading fiend. He typically works in glass or natural semi-precious gemstones.
In honor of his lovely work, we’re having a special Easter promotion! From now until Easter day, order any necklace from our etsy shop or our Shop Handmade shop and get 10% of the necklace’s purchase price off of your order—just wait to pay until we send you a revised PayPal invoice! If your order is placed within the continental US we’ll also upgrade your shipping to priority mail for no extra charge.
Order as many necklaces or jewelry sets that include necklaces as you like and we’ll take the discount off of each one!
And, here are reviews 3-5 of the 10 aforementioned books:
After having computer troubles over the last week (turned out to be a trojan) and mostly doing a lot of reading, I now have TEN book reviews to write. Yes, ten. However, because I happened to get shipments of upcoming/just out books by a bunch of my favorite authors at the same time, they’re primarily a set of VERY good books. So stay tuned this week—I’ll have a lot of wonderful reading to recommend to you!
Yesterday I got to chatting with my husband and someone else about some of the hijinks that went on at MIT when I & my husband were there. One that I didn’t think of at the time but that for some reason popped into my head last night was the human chess game.
About 10-15 years ago we noted that the tile squares in lobby 10 at MIT were the perfect size (and came in enough number) that they could hold a human chess match. So we taped off a board, rounded up two ranked chess players to play the kings and give directions and enough people to play the pieces, and held a game. When one piece “killed” another there would be a mock combat, followed by the defeated piece’s “death” and removal from the board. It was great fun, and drew quite the crowd.
I’m a bit behind on listing book reviews. Here are the latest ones for you; there are some truly brilliant entries this time!
There’s plenty more where that came from; I’ve already read three more books that I plan to review this week, and of course it won’t stop there! We also recently received two cookbooks for review, which we’re currently making recipes from, and so far they’re holding up quite well. So if you’re looking for good books to buy, come back often!
First, that promised update on where all my time has been going lately: our cats.
Selene’s medical problems are under control with once-a-day medication, but she was still trying to kill her brother. So we caved and put her on prozac. Boy are we glad we did. It’s almost two weeks later and we haven’t had to separate the cats in days. She’s happy again, and snuggly, and cuddles up with her brother. She seemed a little gooned last night, but I understand that too will tend to fade as she adjusts to the medication, and we can always call the vet and adjust her dosage if necessary. She’s lively and happy today, as you can see in the photo I took this morning:
Anyway, the reason this connects to my lack of productivity is that it’s remarkably difficult to concentrate with that much feline viciousness and noise in the vicinity. Suddenly I’ve gotten six book reviews done this week:
Unfortunately, we’ve just solved one cat’s health problem to step right into another. Last night at 1 am Cahlash vomited (not that unusual), hid under the couch while drooling (rather weird), and then slunk downstairs and peed on the carpet (never happened before). We took him to the emergency vet, and he didn’t make a peep on the way there (another first). During the exam he was breathing very fast and hard, with little whining sounds. They took a full-body x-ray and said both his lungs and his heart looked a little off.
They kept him to do blood work (which came out normal), and to give him albuterol in case it’s asthma (it didn’t help). Next he gets to see a cardiologist today. It’s a rotten time to have to spend that much money, but worth it if they can figure out what’s wrong and make him better. I’m still waiting to hear from the cardiologist and hopefully bring him home.
This is why you should never get a pet as a casual thing. You have to understand it’s a responsibility, that you’ll have to take care of them when they get sick just like you would anyone else you’re responsible for. But in my opinion, it’s well worth it for the joy cats bring us.
The first book review of the new year is of Yasmine Galenorn’s Night Huntress. I had some stylistic problems with it, but it was a very enjoyable book. Also, if you enjoy our reviews, please consider voting for Errant Dreams in the Preditors & Editors Poll!
Meanwhile, someone who shall remain nameless got me addicted to a game called Dragon Tavern. It’s a simple D&D-esque web adventure game. You don’t even have to give them your email address in order to create an account and play. Nor do you have to pay a dime, although there are ways to spend money on it if you really want that. If you don’t spend any money on it then it’s pretty good at limiting your addiction through limiting the number of turns you get per day… although you can even find your way around that easily by creating a ton of characters.
We also have a bunch of new items that I’ve been putting up at our Etsy shop and Shop Handmade shop, mostly a bunch of Richard’s gorgeous necklaces right now. Soon we’ll be cleaning out the level 70 designs at cafepress, so hurry if you want one!
I’m also addicted to DragonWars on Facebook. *sigh*
Harder to get things done these days. As someone with mental disorders, I find my motivation dramatically reduces during the winter months. I love winter, but the lack of light isn’t good for me. I’m sleeping much better now thanks to Seroquel, but it’s adding to the appetite-increasing effect of the Effexor, which also isn’t good. Particularly when you like to cook things like homemade honey-gingerbread marshmallows:
I plan to take most of the batch to a friend’s this weekend!
Two brief thoughts on politics. As usual, I prefer to stick to process here when I touch on politics at all, not partisanship. So take partisan arguments to other blogs.
First, I read an article this morning that said that young people really aren’t turning out much so far in Florida’s early voting. Guys—VOTE! We all like to complain that past generations have left us with a mess of a world, politically, environmentally, etc. But one of the major ways we have of trying to make a difference is by voting for the candidate we think will best clean things up. So I don’t care who you vote for—just do it! It doesn’t take that much effort!
Second, after Obama put out his ad quoting John McCain as saying he’d need a VP who could advise him on economic matters, and then showing Palin winking, there appeared a fresh wave of complaints of sexism. As a woman I’m calling bullshit. The question of whether Palin is qualified to lead the country in economic matters is a perfectly legitimate question. If she is, she’ll withstand the questioning by proving she has the credentials. If she isn’t, well, it’s important to find that out. We ask these questions of male candidates all the time. Refusing to push a female candidate for her credentials just because she’s female, THAT would be just as sexist as saying that she couldn’t understand economic matters because she’s a woman.
I’ve been making more jewelry, and I’m very pleased with some of the new pieces. Here are two that I particularly like, Ice Queen Jewels:
You can click on the images above to look at larger versions at deviantArt. Or, you can click on the text links above them to see 5 different photos of each at Etsy, and to buy them if you wish!
My last customer commented that she was extremely impressed with our packaging. You see, I try to package each piece separately within a little jewelry gift box inside of a padded mailer. I do this for entirely practical reasons. Our mailman has driven me insane with his treatment of packages. He’s shoved things into the mailbox so hard they split open and tore the contents open. He throws things at the house—and I don’t just mean a tiny little lob. So when I package something, I ask myself, “How can I package this so it would survive treatment by someone like him?” If this has a side effect of giving the customer a really nice little box for the jewelry, that’s great!
It’s been two weeks since I skinned my knee and it’s finally scabbing over. I’ve had notoriously weak ankles all my life—I do exercises specifically to strengthen them, but nothing ever seems to work. I was on the last step of the stairs to the sidewalk out front when my ankle gave way. My foot stayed on the step, and my knee hit the concrete below it. I’m really very lucky that all I did was skin my knee. But it took enough layers off that the center refused to scab over for two weeks. Once or twice a day I had to clean out my knee and make sure it wasn’t getting infected. It’s great to finally be able to wear long pants without having to tape gauze over my knee!
Anyway, between the fact that I was in constant knee-pain until a day or two ago, and the days getting darker, and my husband having been out of town on a trip, I’ve been incredibly unproductive. But I’ve made some jewelry, and I’m looking forward anxiously to this election being over. I hope you all have a great weekend!
We also recently received two cookbooks for review, which we’re currently making recipes from, and so far they’re holding up quite well. So if you’re looking for good books to buy, come back often!