A very pretty blonde woman attempts to pretend that she’s manipulating the world’s largest wall iPad using Snapseed. Unfortunately, the only thing I got out of that video was that Snapseed can be very hard to use when pretending to use it on a giant wall iPad. Look at her expression when she’s trying to manipulate the photos. It’s as if she was struggling to get her hand in the right place, and then the director would yell “SMILE!” and she’d go “oh yeah, I’m supposed to be having fun!” and smile for a second. After about 4000 takes the crew was tired and the director gave up and just cut it together with what he had.

I started wondering if the only point to the video was to get her model career started, as there seemed to be more images of her than of the app itself.

I then went to my standby app evaluation: go to the app in iTunes (iTunes) and look at the Most Critical reviews first.

Yep, here we are, from slugworthy: 1 star, “WAY overrated”. Slugworthy feels that filterstorm, photoforge2, and photogene2 are “MUCH better.” And hey! I already have those apps! Good, now I can go get an americano at *$ instead!

Elves

My mom sent Jaryth some mail art of some elves, and every picture had one elf sticking his foot out. Jaryth does that when he’s crossing the street, to check for cars. And of course the elves cracked my mom up. So she sent us the postcard. I loved the elves so much that I carved a stamp of them. And then made two books about them.

The first book is a carousel book of the elves:

This book was made on cardstock, red, white, and a pink paisley one, with red ribbon. The elves are all stamped from my hand carved elf stamps and colored in with fine point sharpie pens. It was my first attempt at a carousel book.

But I also wanted to tell a story about the elves, and why one of them needed to point his feet at danger. So I wrote a story about it. This book was made on artist paper with cardstock facing paper. The cover is bookboard covered with some fancy paper I got in Seattle. The illustrations are hand carved elf stamps, watercolor pencils, sharpie pens, and a red felt hat for the main character.

Pandas and Turtles

Then yesterday I suddenly was inspired to carve a tiny (about 1″ by 1″) panda face, which made me want to do a book with it. This is a miniature book only 1 1/8 inches square, you can see from the first photo it’s only a little larger than a quarter. It has sewn bindings and is drawn and stamped on white watercolor paper. I used two hand carved stamps and colored pencils to draw in the book and gel pen for the writing.

But the real answer is “no.” He’s 3 1/2 years old and he has no idea what Halloween is. He’s excited that I had some Tootsie rolls on the table tonight so he could have some “choc-wat” but beyond that tomorrow is just another Monday to him. Actually, it’s just another weekday, as our routine isn’t all that different except for the time he wakes us up in the morning.

Does this make me a Halloween Scrooge?

My brother sounded almost shocked when I said I wasn’t going to take him out to beg for candy. I’d be amazed if anyone in our neighborhood even has any candy to give out. The last two years we’ve gotten zero children asking for candy. We have a few M&Ms in case that trend doesn’t continue, but I’m betting we’ll have just as many M&Ms at the end of the evening as we do right now. Unless, of course, I eat some…

Cover of my 2011 Holiday Book

This is the outside. On the inside it’s blank except for the instructions. The idea is that everyone who gets a book can then customize it with their own family memories. I’ll be taking mine to Thanksgiving this year to get people to write in it.

The inside of the holiday book for 2011

Naively, I thought there wouldn’t be very many because I’d already had my draft copies (written in Pages and converted to Word) reviewed by me, two tech editors, my acquisitions editor, my development editor, my copy editor, and me again.

HOLY SHIT! was I ever wrong.

You see, whenever the copy editor made a change to one of my headlines, that resulted in crazy stuff happening in the Word conversion. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t seeing it in my copy of the .doc files, but when it would get to the production department, they’d be left with headlines that read such things as:

What What What

and my personal favorite, two sections in a row titled:

Choosing

Now, I’m all for choosing and asking questions, but that’s not what my book was trying to say.

So now I’m working on a chapter with a long table of commands. These commands are case-sensitive. But however my document was imported, some of those commands went from lowercase to title case. In other words: <code>create link</code> became <code>Createlink</code> and so on. This was probably some auto-capitalizing feature in whatever program they were using to convert my .doc files into the production-ready files. But it’s still upsetting.

I Can’t Even Imagine Proofreading a Document Submitted in Longhand!

And there was a time when all books were written in longhand and some poor (probably underpaid) person was expected to convert the writer’s (almost certainly) illegible writing into print blocks. I feel very sorry for that person.

Then they moved to typewriters, and the author probably received a galley printing of their work that they were expected to read through and correct. I can imagine, extrapolating from the number of errors I find today—using computers—that approximately every tenth word was written correctly in the galleys. I, like many writers I know, hate to edit and proofread. (Thus I come rant about it here…) But I am thanking my lucky stars that I was born in the era of the computer. That seems like it’s made it at least slightly easier.

I Promise to Never Whine About a Typo Again

Okay, I’ll continue to whine about lame errors online, but I won’t whine about errors in print books. I reserve judgement on ebooks until my book comes out in ebook form and I have to start cringing because of all the errors there… ☺ But hopefully, I’m catching most of the errors in this book. I’m sure there is at least one really horribly egregious one that I haven’t caught and will go all the way through to the second or third edition. But I hope not.

In the last week or so I’ve had the following (paraphrased) gems:

• One man asked me for some help in building a complex website. He sent his first message on day 1 and when I hadn’t had a chance to answer it, he sent it again on day 2. I finally responded to his question suggesting an answer and that if he had more specific questions, he should post them to my forum. Over the next 3-5 days he sent me numerous more questions, and if I didn’t respond within 24-hours, he would resend the message. Finally, after getting tired of answering his questions (he really needed to take a class on how to use a computer before he’d be able to build a basic website, let alone the complex one he wanted to build) I just stopped. After four days of no answers from me, he started over. Yes, he sent message 1 (which I’d already answered) to me again. Messages? Meet the spam filter…
• I got a long (LONG!) letter from a man who wanted to build a complicated photo-submission website. He seemed to have a good idea of what he wanted but no understanding of how to do it. I was getting ready to ignore his message when I saw that at the end he asked me if I knew anyone who could help him. Phew! I sent him my “hire someone” spiel talking about RFPs and Freelance Switch. He wrote back saying thanks. This one was unusual because of that thanks. Most people never respond at all.
• Then I got an email from someone asking a bunch of questions that indicated that he really had no clue how to use the interwebs or describe his problem. The questions were along the lines of “I tried for 2 hours!! to read your email, but I couldn’t open it. Um, buh? How the heck should I know what is preventing you from opening an email message? And telling me how long you flailed blindly at it doesn’t improve my chances of figuring it out, but it does improve my ability to ask the last question you asked—“Do you have to be a computer science major to understand this or am I an idiot?” Uh, I’ll take answer B!
• So, then Mr. Idiot answers my reply. His way of saying thank you “wow! I didn’t think I’d get an answer!” does not inspire me to great heights of desire to answer more stupid questions from him. Now he wants to know why my article doesn’t work on his web page. Of course, he doesn’t include a URL. Unfortunately my psychic powers are on the fritz, so I ignored that message.
• He emailed again today, this time with a URL, and to tell me that because of my site 2/3s of his entire site is gone. I think he also mentioned that he spent 16 hours working on it. Maybe I’ll answer this one, um let’s see… [DELETE].

Here are some tips if you want to get an answer from me by email:

1. Remember that I’m not paid one penny to answer you by email. In fact, in my last analysis my time is better spent picking my nose than responding to you.
2. This means that if you want a reply, sending your message a second (third or five thousandth) time is not going to bump you to the top of the queue, but it might bump you into my spam filter.
3. It also means that I respond much better to friendly emails than to rude or sarcastic comments. In fact, if I respond to mean people, it’s often to be mean right back. You have been warned!
4. If you wrote to me thinking I was not a “real person” and you say so in your message, you will be relegated to my robo-reply list. If you want to email a “real person” go call your mother. She’d probably appreciate the gesture—definitely more than I do.

What I notice is that when I was staring at the computer it was very hard to talk, as I kept getting distracted by the machine.

Some things I talk about:

• idea for an article on Webmaster tools and Google analytics
• working on editor reviews and my plan to create a video of my favorite web editors
• thoughts about a new(-ish) category of web editor—the WYSIWYG editor so people don’t need to know HTML at all
  • should I create a separate evaluation of these editors?
  • do customers make a distinction between WYSIWYG editors and “development” editors?

Unfortunately, giveaways end up making me feel bad. In one case, I commented for the first time on a post because I wanted to tell the author that I really liked her post. Then I realized it was a giveaway post as well (I hadn’t read that far) and wanted to remove my comment, as the fact that the post was a giveaway made it seem like I was posting some lame “I like your site” post just to get the crappy lavender chatchkies she was sending to “one lucky reader.” Whatever.

In other cases, I think I have a good chance of winning something, either because there are very few posts, or there is a large number of prizes, and when I don’t win I’m disappointed.

I’m reminded of the contests About would have where the person who wrote the most content in a month would win. The first one they did, I was on fire and submitted like 20-30 new pieces of content. This was easily 3-4 times as much as I normally did in a month. Of course the winner a) didn’t have another job and more importantly b) wrote about 20-30 glossary entries A DAY. In terms of word count or character count, I probably wrote just as much as s/he did. But because s/he spread it over 600+ one sentence pages means that s/he won. This was over 10 years ago, but it sticks in the head.

Of course, staff saw this contest as a huge success and so held another a few months later. And no one in the computing channel competed. We all (or nearly all) had other jobs and couldn’t waste our time on contests we had no chance of even coming in third or fourth for. At least that was the reason I didn’t bother. Our editor was very disappointed.

I’m sure that another giveaway will come along tomorrow or next week that I’ll really hope to win. And maybe I’ll have the strength to think “no, don’t bother” as I don’t need more stuff anyway… But I suspect that my willpower will be weak or the thing given away is sooooo cool that I can’t stop myself.

All commenters to this post will receive a FREE copy of my eternal goodwill. Of course, you’d get that if you comment on any of my posts.

Some of the challenges:

• every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder. This isn’t a challenge by itself, but it means that you have to use that system to find a suitable animal. And because most of the rescue organizations at best make guesses regarding breed, age, health, training level, whether they like kids or cats, etc. The data is, ahem, suspect. I can’t tell you how many dogs I’ve looked at after searching for “cat-friendly” dogs, narrowing it down to 7 or 8 animals, and having the description say “this dog cannot, under any circumstances, go to a house with cats”. I finally gave up using that search parameter, as it was useless. Same goes for the “young children” parameter.
• just like when we adopted McKinley, there is a huge “application” you have to fill out to even meet these dogs. It’s annoying to me, as I’m sure I’m instantly put on their mailing list (well, instantly in the form of whenever they get around to reading their mail. They don’t let me see any animals or even answer my mail, I just get added to the mailing list. (I’m betting on this, I have no proof, yet)
• but the rescue places are all staffed by volunteers so they don’t have a lot of time to read or respond to email, even if their site says “you’ll get a reply within 72 hours” I figure this must mean hours on Jupiter or something.
• the aforementioned application includes tons of questions about your home, lifestyle, vet, trainer, groomer, etc. which is fine, but so far 2 out of 3 have required references, one required four references – including how long they’ve known you and in what capacity, and they can’t be relatives. (because, I suppose, we all know that Aunt Mary who has been with me and my dogs all my life might be biased and give me a good review, while my co-worker Sarah, who barely even knows I have a dog wouldn’t be… <sigh>

I just wish it were a little easier. I mean, when we got Shasta, we just walked into the pound, saw him, decided to play with him and his brother, then decided to adopt, filled out the form, paid the fee and went home with a dog. When we got McKinley from Rescue Pup, I found him (on Petfinder), asked to see him, met him, filled out the application, they came and visited our house, and we adopted him. It took more than a day (because of the home visit) but definitely no more than a week.

I’m currently on week 3 of trying to find out more about Hope, Darla, and another dog who’s name I’ve now forgotten. I got an answer immediately about Darla, saying “you sound perfect, please fill out an application” so I did, and then nothing. I didn’t get an answer about asking to see Hope until today and all it said was “please fill out an application” when there was nothing on the Petfinder site about an application or anything. I had to dig around to find what I think is the correct application. And finally dog #3 they haven’t answered yet (that’s the one that said I’d get an answer within 72 hours – Jupiter hours, I’m assuming).

I would go and adopt from Rescue Pup again, except that all they have are blue heelers, which they won’t place with kids. Since I remember what Brendan’s pant cuffs were like (they are called “heelers” because they bite the heels of the cattle they are herding, and if they don’t have cattle, they bite the heels of the children they are herding), I don’t blame Rescue Pup, but it is annoying because I understand that about that breed.

What’s sad to me is that the difficulty I’m having makes me want to go to a breeder. Do you know of any “mutt” large dog breeders I can visit? Luckily the pet store that we go to only gets drop-kick dogs in their puppy consignments, so I’m not tempted to go there to get a dog. But man, if they had any large dog puppies (great dane, mastiff, great pyrenees, akbash, shepherd, wolf hound, etc.) the only thing that would probably stop me is that their prices are insane.

So, hopefully my application for Hope will be considered, and maybe I’ll be able to go visit her later this week or this weekend.

But I’m not holding my breath.

• I’ve never been a fan of alternate history
• The idea of knights mixed with pickup trucks seemed ridiculous
• And I just didn’t think I would like the book

But I couldn’t have been more wrong!

This book was very fun to read. The characters were engaging and I cared what happened to them. The fact that it was set in 1632 was an interesting historical backdrop, and I wanted to learn more about the 30-years war. For example, I didn’t realize that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person. I just thought of him as the villain in “The Three Musketeers” (yes, the Errol Flynn version, I haven’t read the book).

The stated goals of the people transported to 1632 Germany were ones I could completely get behind. They seemed like people I would enjoy having as my neighbors. I loved that they decided immediately to draft a constitution and that they did not immediately wall themselves off from the rest of the world. I’m not confident that is what would really happen, but it’s nice to think that it could.

Some of the things I didn’t like:

• many flat characters
  There was the aging hippie—she was the most developed of the flat background characters, but still had very little to her personality beyond being a liberal.
  There were the “evil CEO” and his (non-existant) wife—these characters were introduced almost immediately and then had nearly no part in the story
  And several others
• weak premise
  This was introduced as SciFi, and there was a whole reason given in the prolog about how they ended up in 1632, but it was really flimsy. I would have preferred if it were left out completely, and we just followed the main characters on their journey.
• I struggled with the politics
  I just had trouble with the idea that there was only one liberal in the entire town of 3,000 people. I can totally believe there are liberals who use guns—I had no problem with that. But it seemed odd to me that everyone always excoriated the “aging former hippie” and there was no one who took her side. Really?

But beyond that, this was a fun book. I stayed up until after midnight to finish it. And I’m going to start looking for the next books in the series. I don’t know why I was reluctant before. I’ve read other books by Eric Flint and enjoyed them a lot. I guess it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Next book to read will be 1984 by George Orwell. Or maybe Anathem by Neal Stephenson.