If you’re curious about our Pinterest ebook, Pin It to Profit, but not sure about spending your hard earned cash, we have a few copies to give away. Send us a note at info@thosedewolfes.com for more details (we can also send you an invite to Pinterest if you don’t want to wait for a “beta” invite).

And finally, Mike, Jason and I are progressing on the cyborg body parts short story collection; the ebook should be ready to go soon!

I download a LOT of free apps and will pay (either upgrade or right off the bat) for those apps that are most useful. Sometimes I would happily pay for a free app; sometimes it goes the other way. If an app or service sucks enough, I stop using it and/or delete it from my device.

My fave thing ever?

Kindle. Not the Kindle reader itself, I don’t have one of those, but the Kindle app(s) which I now have on my MacBook, my ASUS EEE Transformer and my iPhone. I love this app. I’ve used lots of other reader apps (Callibre is pretty swish) but I love that I can now sync my ebooks between all three devices. I can read electronically almost anywhere now and close a book on one device then open to the same page on another. I also love Amazon’s “whispernet” delivery for buying/downloading ebooks. Because everything lives in the cloud, it’s pushed to my tablet by default but can be pulled to either other location instantly.

Almost as good?

Evernote and Dropbox also use the cloud to sync things. Both allow me to share files or folders with others and to quickly file things I find at work or on the go. Sure, I have used Google Docs for ages (which is now merging with Google Drive) but the mobile interfaces suck. Evernote is ridiculously simple to use — once I figured out how to make the most of it. I used it on my coffee breaks this week to make point form draft outlines of articles and blog posts I wanted to write. Once home, I could fill out the point form in to paragraphs. Ridiculously efficient. Dropbox allows me to shuffle files around efficiently and access them anywhere. As with Evernote, the mobile interface really makes the difference.

I’m also putting a couple of PopCap games in here: Chuzzle, especially, continues to amuse the hell out of me after more than 5 years playing; BookWorm, too. I have paid for these on multiple formats — on my former PC, on my iPod (which transferred to my iPhone) and for the PS3. Still not bored. If they come to Android, I’ll put them on my tablet, too.

One Chrome app I love is Timer Tab — when I need to suck it up and focus, the timer tab gives me some boundaries. I can set it on countdown for 30 minutes and during that time I will write and not surf the web, check Facebook, wander away to make coffee, or anything else. Often it’s enough to pull me out of the Bermuda Triangle of WebSurfing (Facebook-Twitter-Pinterest) and when the alarm goes off, I re-set it for another 30 min.

Still worth having around:

Yeah, Angry Birds falls in here but Angry Birds: Rio makes me insane — I can only play that one for short bursts because I find it much more difficult than the original. Difficult but not lousy so it stays.

The Cineplex app for my iPhone does one thing really well: stores my Scene card so I don’t have to remember to put it in my wallet (most of my loyalty cards travel coach in another card holder that doesn’t always get tucked in my pocket). Will I ever use it to buy tickets? Time will tell.

A great big “meh.”

I signed up for Mindbloom a while ago and ignored it until sometime in April. It’s basically gamification of goal-setting and I decided to give it a shot but after a week of use, I walked away. The truly annoying thing about Mindbloom is its insistence on “watering” your garden by looking at or listening to motivational pablum. If you don’t mind that sort of thing, Mindbloom is not a bad way to track regular goals (e.g. exercise for 30 min per day).

Also in the meh stack is Rdio — think of it as Netflix for music. I signed up for a free trial and while I love the idea of it as a music discovery service, I didn’t really like the way browsing worked and decided it was not worth paying $4.99 per month for music ($7.99 if I wanted to add mobile streaming). Right now, the value isn’t there for me.

I’d also throw every single solitaire app I’ve downloaded into this category but sometimes, I just feel like a game of solitaire so, I keep them around.

And finally, the “burn in hell” award goes to….

ReadLaterFast. I downloaded this Chrome Web app for bookmarking and promptly forgot it was there since I realized it was redundant between my many other services (Dropbox, Evernote, Delicious and Pinterest). One day, it went rogue, inserting crappy banner ads under every medium to large image or video (anything wider than 300 pixels) on most web pages. Truly detestable! I didn’t make the connection right away but through some careful sleuthing found that others were discovering the same problem and had tracked it back to the app. I deleted it, restarted my computer and =POOF= the ads disappeared.

The ReadLaterFast fiasco is a good reminder that apps are “As Is Where Is” and “Buyer Beware” — on the Android, you can see exactly what each app is asking for access to; it makes me think twice about downloading many of them.

Most will probably remember Sendak for Where the Wild things Are, a great book but far from his only great work. Pictured are some of his little books, collected as the Nutshell Library. Alligators All Around and In the Night Kitchen were some I read as a child. Later, I discovered other books he’d written and illustrated and I loved each of them. When We Are All In the Dumps with Jack and Guy was released and immediately landed on banned book lists, I bought a copy even though I was in my 20s and didn’t have a kid.

As of today, all are now silent and will write no more but I am thankful that they left the words and pictures that have meant so much to me and that I passed on to my daughter. I hope that she will pass them on, too.

Photo: “Picture of the Day #51″ CC-BY-NC-ND Jamie Anderson on Flickr.

Friday, I finally took a sick day. I needed it; I ended up going back to bed at 9 am and sleeping for over 2 hours then resting the remainder of the day.

Friday night, I put the finishing touches on our brand new ebook, Pin It to Profit — everything you wanted to know about Pinterest (what it is, how it works and why you should get on board). I uploaded it to Amazon and by morning, =poof!= it was published and ready for purchase in the Kindle store! I’m proud of this one (just like everything we put out there) but Mike and I and our co-author Dave really poured everything into it for a month. I’m hoping it helps people to really get the most out of Pinterest.

Saturday was a whirlwind of fun (with some coughing). We took in an early matinee of The Avengers — short review: lives up to expectations then headed into town in search of Free Comic Book Day fun. We were almost SOL but did get a couple of titles then I bought some toys — adorable little Dr. Who minifigs (they’re blind packed but I was happy that one was a Cyberman). Lunch was next (Beirut Express — Kiddo has a new fave! Whee!) then home for a rest (nap for me). We wrapped up the evening with a Cinqo de Mayo celebration with friends.

Today started with a trip to Island Blueprint (Art Store) to burn off my last Groupon, plus a gift card… I got a great haul, including a lot of art card blanks that I’ve been eying a long while. Back home, I started the outside work by washing the van (with Kiddo’s help), then we moved to the back yard, clearing a fallen branch (it was HUGE) while Mike built some window boxes for the Hobbit House. Yard cleanup continued as Mike did the prep work for putting up the clothesline. That’s right, we will be airing our clean laundry in the very near future. WOOO!

As one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys he helped bring rap to greater suburbia as a generation fought for their right to party. You could tell they were mainstream when “No Sleep til Brooklyn” was parodied in “Stutter Rap (No Sleep til Bedtime)”¹.

Their next album, Paul’s Boutique was ahead of its time and remains one of my favourite albums. I picked it up as an over-run CD in the discard bins at A&B sound and I played it a lot. “Hey Ladies” and “Shake your Rump” are my favourite tracks but “Eggman,” “High Plains Drifter” and “Sounds of Science” also get plenty of play even now, after more than 20 years. The samples they used introduced me to some of funk’s greatest and I still manage to find a sample I’d overlooked before.

Unlike many rap acts, the Beastie Boys routinely topped the charts without violent or misogynist lyrics. They had some fun with songs like “Girls” and “Hey Ladies” but there was never any ill will. In “Sure Shot” from 1994′s Ill Communication, MCA specifically spoke out on the topic,

I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through
To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends
I want to offer my love and respect to the end

Around the time they released that album they started to show signs of growing up; they reference grey hair and get political. To the 5 Burroughs, released in 2004, includes “An Open Letter to NYC” which is a perfect love letter to New York City and “It Takes Time To Build” which is anti-Bush and anti-war. I also love that as they aged, the band started to suit up, as in this performance from 2007:

Yauch was also a film enthusiast and director; he directed the star-studded, cameo-filled homage to their beginnings, “Fight For Your Right (Revisited)” from their most recent album, Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (2011).

It’s worth watching the full extended version:

And if that’s not enough, check out the Annotated Beastie Boys where you can learn a little more about the references they pack into their lyrics.

I have no idea if the two remaining original members will continue to release albums or not. If not, we have seven great albums of  music. I have spent chunks of today immersed in Beasties tunes, feeling nostalgic and, yes, mortal. This tweet put it all in perspective:

Rob Sheridan ‏ @rob_sheridan
RIP MCA, but don’t forget the 19,999 other people who will die of cancer today. Good time to learn more and donate: cancer.org

(in Canada, check cancer.ca)

I do get annoyed about cancer-related fundraising (see Pink Ribbons) but getting informed is always a good idea. Following Pink Ribbons, we started to make a concerted effort to get rid of the remaining BPA in our kitchenware and start to really think about the kinds of ingredients we ingest. Cancer isn’t going away any time soon so we need to take some responsibility to filter through the news reports and decide what we can do to improve our odds.

¹ Morris Minor and the Majors released Stutter Rap (No Sleep til Bedtime) in 1988, two years after No Sleep til Brooklyn. It also references the Paul Hardcastle song 19.

Photo Credit: “the beastie boys – sonar day 2” CC-BY michael morel, on Flickr

I feel like someone needs to take Zuck aside and say, “Oh, honey. No,” because it’s not going to work. It might look good on the surface but it is not going to be effective or legally recognized. I may not have much faith in The Bureaucracy, but I have far less in Facebook.

Consider:

How many of you or your friends have marked their relationship status as “it’s complicated” when clearly, it isn’t. Or used a name that isn’t quite legally accurate. Or changed your location, even on a lark. You do it because Facebook is not a legal entity. Sure, if someone felt vindictive they could ban your account, but you can’t go to jail or even be fined for misrepresentation on Facebook; it crosses too many political boundaries.

How is it going to work? Imagine your teen states on FB that they are an organ donor but they never officially signed up. In B.C., “registrants under the age of 19 must have a parent/legal guardian sign on their behalf,” so I can’t imagine it will have any legal weight for teens who haven’t officially registered. For that matter, I doubt it will have any weight for adults either. Following a declaration of brain death, medical staff check the official registry for a statement of intent. If there is no statement, they may still approach family members to ask but I guarantee you they are not going to check Facebook.

The one thing this will do is raise awareness. It’s going to get every news agency in North America reporting about the dire need for organ donors — this is legitimate.

It may also have the peer pressure effect, although really organ donation should be a carefully considered decision that is discussed with one’s family rather than a status one can change “because everyone else did.”

If you are in B.C. you can register online at transplant.bc.ca. It takes very little time and it can save a life (or more likely, several) in the event of your death.

Do it after you discuss it with your family. Do it because you want to help. Do it in the memory of someone you lost who was waiting for a transplant. But, please, don’t do it just because Zuckerberg told you to.

But Arthur had not left his room
remaining there ensconced in gloom,
the book and key so tempting
He’d placed them both upon a chair
a voice inside him warned “Beware
for Mae was ever vexing.”

My big question: when it is complete (to my liking) what should I do with it? Options include:

• make an audio recording
• make a video to accompany its reading
• illustrate it and publish the resulting book (or ebook)
• wait until I have other creepy poems and publish them together (then I could also do the audio version)

I’m leaning toward the illustrated book option; I think it would be comparable to Haiku Miscellany and a good fit for LuLu with a print/ebook option. Then again, if I can make it an epub, I can fling it in other online marketplaces… but I don’t know what the market is for longish rhymed poetry these days. I also like the idea of collecting some of my creepier poems into one volume.

Before I leave the topic of Edgar Allan Poe, and because I suspect some of you will ask, I don’t like the look of the new movie, The Raven. Yes, it stars John Cusack who can make a pile of pablum like Must Love Dogs watchable, but I fear that, like the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes it’s just an excuse for the set and costume designers to put “steampunk” on their resume. View the trailer, below, and be your own judge. I probably won’t bother while it’s in the theatre…

This morning, I finished the first draft of what is now called, “Tracking Number” That draft clocked in at 5945 words — longer than I had anticipated but still well within our guidelines. After getting some feedback, I trimmed and plumped and adjusted some punctuation and mechanics. The new word count is 6195 which makes it officially the longest short story I’ve written to date.

I think our goal is still to collect all three (or possibly 4) stories into one Kindle e-book but to also make each story available separately.

It ended up in the ballpark of dystopian sci-fi which is where I was aiming, so that much is good. I also really liked the off-kilter world I created and, in the future — you know, when I have time and/or the muse strikes — I think I will write more short stories based in the same world that can then be collected into one book. It’s possible that some of my unfinished stories can be tweaked to fit into this world, so I may be able to do that sooner than later.

Once the collection is out in the Kindle store, we will be promoting the heck out of it including, likely, a limited time free promo; I’ll let you know when that happens!

Photo credit: “Private Eyes” CC-BY moriza, on Flickr

What triggered the meltdown, you ask? Trying to find a place to put a re-potted plant that was both difficult for the cats to access and also offered the plant some natural light. It was one domino in a cascade of “little things” and I lashed out at the person who pointed out my planned action was not going to work (i.e. jade plants, while not particularly appealing to cats are toxic so I couldn’t just leave it on the table). I didn’t lash out because someone had placed an obstacle in my path, only because they had alerted me to the obstacle’s existence. It wasn’t fair of me in the least.

I really hate losing control of my anger. Even as I was yelling, I was growing angrier with myself, but it was like watching a proverbial train wreck, once the engine went off the rails, there was no way to stop the cars from following. To explain this to someone who has never lost their temper or flown off the emotional rails is very difficult. I can at once see that what I am doing is hurtful, unfair and unproductive and yet be unable to stop myself mid-meltdown.

I’m not going to dwell on this issue  but I felt the need to acknowledge this behavior as a step toward managing it.

(Two good things did come out of this mess: (1) I created a collage of family photos now hung on the wall that replaced the haphazard cluster of frames on the mantelpiece and (2) we now have a(n almost) complete list of our movies & tv series seasons that we can access via smartphones on the go.) 

Image, “Rage Wallpaper” CC-BY “Thoth, God of Knowledge” on Flickr.

“This!” Kiddo declared, her hands held out to frame her view of  trees silhouetted in the evening sky, “This is why I love being a night owl!”

We had just come out of a parent-sponsored fun night at the school last Friday so Kiddo was already in a great mood but I was surprised at just how emphatic she was about the view, the trees and the sky. I quietly snapped the above photo on my phone to capture what she saw. Interestingly, around her age, I remember drawing and painting a lot of scenes that looked like this: silhouettes of trees with sunrise, sunset or night sky in behind. Kiddo doesn’t seem drawn to that kind of art but it made me pretty happy to know we shared a love of this scenery.