One astute blog commenter once said that this blog was “the death of art and meaning.” I kind of took that as a compliment. Do you understand the type of power I have to construct a boo…
Source: 20 Reasons Why Donald Trump Should Never Be President
Category: technology
Baby steps, my friend
Due to the having my phone die, I have been using a android emulator to run my apps. So my writing app went from being convenient to being a true pain in the backside. So last night I decided to transfer a few of my Work in progress to the computer as text files to make writing easier. Especially since the Emulator seems to really dislike my notebooks app. It crashes way too often. Well today I was transferring Elizabeth. (I still need to come up with a better name for that one). I checked the word count when i finished pasting it to my office document. It was only 1298. I decided to do a bit more on it. When I set goals for my daily writing, it is usually only 250 words. Well after about an hour of writing, I decided to take a break and do some dishes. So i checked my word count. 2198. I am so happy with that. Yes i realize that is not a huge difference. still it felt like a huge jump to me. So I was telling another writer friend about it.
That conversation led to a discussion about when writing is more difficult. Also about writing poetry and the emotion that goes with. I mentioned that for me winter is easier to write because i am not able to get out and about. And sadness helps the poetry flow. she commented that she had maybe written four poems…ever. I have lost more poems than I have published. I had a book once with around a hundred poems i had written. The chick i was living with at the time stole it, and my son’s baby book. To be honest the poems in the four volumes i have published were only written in the last five years. I have been writing poetry since I was nine years old. Somehow the papers I have written them on have found themselves lost. So even though I have not been published until fairly recent…I have been writing my whole life. I have won some poetry contests, been published in my high school literary magazine, and a few other compilations. I’ve never won any money, and so I never felt like I had met my dreams.
Now i have made money on my writing…( a total of $0.35 lol) I find myself wondering if I really didn’t understand my dreams then. As I have aged, I keep finding that my youthful dreams were ignorant and slightly blind.
found this delightful
Found on Facebook. All credit to the Buddha Doodles. Original Quote by an amazing Poet – Maya Angelou. ❤
Teaching Chess to a preteen
Chess is a game of strategy. One that requires one to think their moves through very thoroughly. We are trying to teach our twelve year old the game. In teaching, her dad is making her explain why she makes the moves she does. He does this to make her think about why she is making the moves she does. When I tried to explain why Dad wanted the explanation, I told her in many ways chess was like life. You have to think before you act. Decide if it is worth the consequences of your actions.
I am a big fan of consequences. Every thing in life reacts to the choices we make. In the end of the lesson, it was decided that she wasn’t really ready for the game. She made it through over three quarters of the game. Claiming a headache then. This is the second time we have tried. Each time it feels like she understands a little more, and each time it feels like we are able to teach her important life lessons. it is amazing how easy it is to squeeze life lessons into anything.
Catching a cliche
Well even though my phone was my main way of writing, I found a way. There is an android emulator for windows, Blue Stacks. I have been playing around with it off and on since it first came out a couple of years ago. It doesn’t work as good as my phone did, because the computer is old and slow. But it does work. So I downloaded my Notebooks app. I went to restore…as it has the option from dropbox and google drive.
Wouldn’t you know it, I accidentally backed up on the dropbox and when i tried to restore from Google drive, it couldn’t connect. so I was miserable wondering how i would be able to continue what i had been working on. Then i was looking at Kindle fire tablets. I may try and buy myself one for a birthday gift next week. I was looking in to app compatibility, and got to thinking, So i went to Dropboxes site to see if i could restore an older version of the file. Guess what? I can. So now i am able to write again. I swear i don’t normally do this. Tonight when I was trying to write, I kept switching every few minutes to scrolling facebook. When I caught myself doing it, I felt like i had caught a cliche…a writer who is surfing more than she writes. Hopefully now that my setup is fixed, I will no longer hunt the cliche.
Technology is both blessing and bane
Last night i had the most horrific thing happen….my Phone died. Now understand….My cell phone was basically a tablet…i used it for everything. It was my calendar, my communication, my camera, my kindle, texting, my writing tool, and my gaming device. Everything except a phone. I may loose progress on some of my writing because of this. I have a laptop that i borrow from my boyfriend. It is a older model, windows xp laptop. It is missing the backspace, the tab and the m keys. It so doesn’t have the CPU or the hard drive space to do much more than simple programs…however until i can replace my tablet…i have no choice. I am not out on the streets broke, but there is no extra money. I am scraping to try and get a vehicle, and of course my microwave broke as well. So yes, i cannot afford the extra expense of a tablet. Which for me means suffering to write on this crappy laptop. It means dealing with the extra headache of accessing WordPress through an android emulator because the browsers on this laptop seem to have issues with most pages. It means in order to blog or even try and update my author page on Facebook I will have to sit down and actually fight this beast. So though i am enjoying the blogging and enjoying the spurt of writing i have been doing lately, it means life will likely interfere a wee bit more. Please bear with me. I will update, but it may not be daily. I am going to get me another tablet, it just may take me some time. thank you for understanding, or i am sorry if you don’t. This is just how my life goes.
Parenting & Media
Before I climb any soap box, I am a mother. I am not perfect. I firmly believe each child and each family are different. So even though my daughter is twelve, we allow her some media (movies, shows, music, books and video games) that is probably not “age appropriate .” She is more mature is some areas than others. So if the rating is for violence or vulgarity, I don’t worry about her. Her whole life, I have kept a close rein on what she watched. She has had leeway to choose.
She chooses horror, zombies and anime, hard rock, and rpg(shooter style). We talk to her. She understands that these are not reality. So we do tend to be less restrictive. I try to guide her towards intelligent programs. Towards a love of music that encompasses all music. Towards an open mind where media is concerned. I have succeeded and failed. After all, her father and her friends are influences as well.
The reason i am rambling, there have been a few instances where I have been accused of not being a good parent because I let her watch anime and play certain video games. I believe my child should have a chance to make her own choices ( to an extent). I keep away stuff that is heavily sexual. Blatantly sexual is more than i think she is ready for. I have forbidden only a couple of video games( gta5, south park stick of truth) and I don’t forbid music or books( most books with questionable content are still above her reading interest level for now ).
Very few shows are disallowed( got, banahee…basically stuff you would see on hbo, showtime or cinemax…) and it’s only if sex is open and blatant. Mind you not all kids are as mature as her. Some see violent or scary and have nightmares. She does not.
Really parenting is as much about knowing what will and will not be appropriate for your child as it is teaching them how to live. People who take their kids and let them watch a movie then complain about the content just ruin it for everyone. Know your kids, and be aware of what you are letting them be exposed to. It’s not that hard.
Had to share
Stolen from Facebook, was stolen by someone else from tumbler. Too funny not to share.
Welcome to my blog. ^_^
Board games
A crucial part of my childhood, there was always some game to play. Early on I was exposed to Scrabble and Yahtzee. Monopoly and Life were also major parts of my life. I remember one Christmas my brother and I received tic toss toe. Games like candy land, hungry hungry hippo, ants in my pants, snakes and ladders, rummy-o, risk, checkers, chess, batgammon, Chinese checkers, dominoes, parcheesi, clue, sorry, boggle, and various card games were how my family bonded. Video games weren’t even in my home until I was grown, so for me board games are still a family activity. We have the zombie monopoly, a card game named give me the brain, zombie dice, Life, rummy-o, and several others. My boyfriend is getting a game called Zombies!!! For his birthday and we have already started our daughter a collection of games.
I am always looking for new fun games. The market on Board games geek is a really good place to find new games at really great prices. It’s where i found some of our family favorites.
Pattimouse 