Book Review: The Mating, The Keeping, The Finding by Nicky Charles

I really love to read -- so for me one of the best things about the Nook is the ability to download free books! You can find some on the B&N website as well as other sites such as SmashWords. My genre of choice is mystery novels; and when I find an author I like, I tend to buy (or sometimes borrow) as many books as I can find by that author. What I've found with e-books, however, is that if I want to take advantage of the books being offered free, I need to expand out to other genres. So it was with some trepidation that I decided to try the werewolf series (The Mating, The Keeping and the The Finding) by Nicky Charles. These books are available for free both at SmashWords and (for the time being at least) at Barnes&Noble. I would definitely recommend them!

Unlike some free e-books, these are full-sized novels - the page count on The Mating is 251, The Keeping is 347 and The Finding is a whopping 1120! While the later books can be read and understood independent of the earlier ones, I read them in order and would recommend that. They can probably loosely be described as love stories in that each book focuses on a couple and how that couple meets and eventually gets together - although at over a thousand pages, the third book has quite a few sub-plots interwoven. The whole series hangs together really well in that minor characters in an earlier book become the main characters of a later book. Conversely, we also get glimpses of how the relationships from the earlier books are evolving as these characters become minor characters in the later books.

Without delving into the actual story lines, I would just like to say that in general I found the books to be very well-written, easy to follow and generally a fast and enjoyable read! Perhaps they are a little predictable in that they follow the basic boy meets girl, boy and girl overcome obstacle(s), boy and girl get together in the end. But with all the stress, turmoil and problems of real-life, a book with a feel-good story and happy ending is often just what I want!

My bottom line is give these books a try. Even if you are not into the whole werewolf fantasy thing, you might find that you really enjoy this series!

Giving Google Reader a Try

As a recent convert to Google Chrome and Google Calendar I can't believe I am writing about starting up with yet another Google product! Now it's Google Reader and here's how it came about.

The other day I watched an archived webinar from Millennia Corporation (makers of Legacy Family Tree) on blogging for beginners. The presenter was Pat Richie, better known as Dear Myrtle. She gave a really nice presentation on how to get started with blogger. But the part that peaked my interest was a little side discussion about subscribing to blogs and using Google Reader.

Previously, well, actually a few years ago, I downloaded and installed an RSS reader add-on for my firefox browser. I subscribed to a few genealogy blogs as well as some technology and news ones (this was before I got into digital scrapbooking, so none of those at that time - LOL). But after getting it all set up and using it for a couple of months, I was finding that it just did not seem that useful to me, and so I eventually just stopped using it all together.

Shortly thereafter I started getting involved in digital scrapbooking - and from the beginning I knew that I wanted to learn how to design my own papers and elements. I joined a yahoo "learning" group and everyone was talking about designing freebies and setting up a blog. Now I already had a genealogy blog on wordpress, but, of course, I wanted to create a scrapbooking blog too. So I started this one on blogger because blogger allows for more flexibility in the customization of the layout and the background.

In addition to that, Blogger/Google has implemented a feature called "following." It's similar to subscribing, but not exactly the same. When I got immersed in the digital scrapbooking world, I started "following" other blogs because, let's face it, that's where designers post their freebies!

Now I know that you can read the blogs you follow from your blogger dashboard - but I just never really got used to that. So for the last year or so I've just surfed the blogs periodically to check for new postings. I know - not very efficient! Well, Dear Myrtle was just singing the praises of Google Reader. It handles "followed" blogs, as well as sites that allow you to subscribe through an RSS feed. Bottom line -- she sold me on it! I've set it up and I'm giving it a try. Hopefully I'll still be using it in a couple of months!!

Checking out Google Chrome Browser

For several years I've been a devotee of the Firefox browser (can't actually remember when I last used IE regularly, but I think it was back on version 6!). But lately Firefox has been a little sluggish at times, so I decided to give Google Chrome a try. I've been using it for about a week and the bottom line is .... I really like it! I had heard that it is fast, but since there are so many factors affecting web surfing speed, I was skeptical that a browser could make that much of a difference. I have to admit I was wrong. Chrome is actually noticeably faster. It's also very intuitive and easy to use.

The biggest drawback at this point is that doesn't have nearly as many add-ons as Firefox. One that I really miss is an integrated ftp tool like Fireftp. While I do have a stand-alone ftp program (Filezilla), when I'm making quick changes to my genealogy website it has been really convenient just open Fireftp as a tab within Firefox. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Chrome doesn't have an equivalent add-on. The other main drawback (and this is a big one for me) is that the enhanced image viewer at Ancestry.com doesn't work with Chrome. For that reason alone, I'll definitely still use Firefox when I need to do research at Ancestry.

On the other hand, I did find at least one amazing Chrome add-on called "Awesome Screenshot: Capture and Annotate" -- and it fully lives up to its name!! I was using it in combination with google newspaper archive search for my genealogy research. I was able to digitally snip out articles of interest (like old obituaries) from the browser (Chrome) window, annotate them with the newspaper name and date and save the annotated clips on my computer. Awesome!! I just know I'll be using that feature a lot!!

Anyway, just thought I'd write this quick post on Chrome. Bottom line -- give it a try!

I love my Nook!!

I have really been ignoring this blog for a while now, so I thought I would write a quick post about one of my favorite "toys."

Last July, shortly before we left for a week's vacation, I bought a Barnes and Noble Nook. This was right after they announced the WiFi-only nook and dropped the price on the original. I went to the store fully prepared to buy the WiFi only, but wound up going for the original with both WiFi and 3G. (This, of course, was long before the ColorNook became available.) I decided to buy it because I generally like to take several paperbacks on vacation and this seemed like a good, space-saving alternative.

Well, in the last six months or so since I got it, it has become on of my favorite toys! The e-ink is very easy on the eyes and I find it much easier to hold, flip pages, etc than a regular paper book. I have also taken advantage of the free books available at Barnes & Noble and downloaded virtually all of them. Hence I have read genres that I have never bothered with before. Some of it is barely worth reading, but some of the free books are real gems! I have also downloaded books from other sites like smashwords, google books, internet archive and others. And I have borrowed ebooks from our local library as well. And did I mention there is also a web browser....

Bottom line, if you like to read, you should definitely consider a Nook. Best of all, you can go to your neighborhood Barnes and Noble store and give it a try before you buy!!

Geocaching Washout!! Ugh!!

Well we finally have an absolutely beautiful Saturday and no other plans for the day, so the youngest and I decided to go geocaching! I guess the popularity of geocaching must be picking up around here, because when I logged on to find caches in the area that we haven't found yet there were actually quite a few. We found three in a fairly close area only about 3 or so miles from our house -- that's three miles as the crow flies, so the real distance is actually a bit further. Anyway, I guess we've been away from it for too long and we've lost our geo-sense because we had no luck on either of the first two we tried -- and they were supposed to be easy. I hate when that happens. :(  And of course I neglected to print out the hints, which actually probably would have helped quite a bit. The third one we couldn't even try because the road was closed. So total wash out. Oh, well, there's always next time.

Big News!!

Well, I have big news -- I joined a digi-scrapping store!! Yes, I answered a design call and was accepted! The store is relatively new and is called A Moment in Scrap. I have posted more information about the store and about my debut kit over on my scrapbooking design blog: http://designbyjmdt.blogspot.com. (Of course, I'll add a previews to the end of this post also!)

I've also decided to officially change the focus of this blog to general musings. I'll be posting all scrapbook-related  stuff on my designsbyjmdt blog.

So here are the previews (by the way, Irish Eyes is a freebie!):

Thanks for looking and don't forget to check my other blog.

~J

Learning Photoshop

Here is it mid-February and as of yet I haven't posted any freebies on my other blog. There's actually a couple of reasons: with all the snow my kids have had a really long, extended vacation the past week; I've gotten a couple of genealogy-related emails that have prompted me to do some (as of yet unfruitful) research; and I downloaded and am trying out photoshop! Yes, after all these years of being a HUGE fan of PSP, I decided to give photoshop cs4 a trial run.

It all started with Corel releasing a new version of PSP. I downloaded the 30-trial and was really disappointed in the new feature set. They really focused on some of the photo-editing features, and particularly work flow using the organizer. Personally, I am not a big fan of the organizer. In earlier releases it slowed my computer down so much so that I created my custom workspace without it - and, yes, PSP performance on my computer was greatly increased without it!! What I was most hoping for was better text support -- like creating text within a shape -- and also better support of layer styles.

So the timing could not have been more ripe when a few days after checking out PSP X3, I got an email from Adobe for a special offer for Photoshop CS4! So I downloaded the trial to give it a try. The last week or so I have been trying out all the photoshop tutorials I can get my hands on (one of the best sites is scrapbook-bytes). I am absolutely loving clipping masks and layer styles!! Naturally I'm still on a learning curve with much of the product. It's a little frustrating - especially learning a new set of keyboard short cuts, but I am really enjoying the added functionality that I have come across so far!!

At this point, I am trying to learn the product better by working on tutorials and making some scrapbook layouts. Hopefully before long I'll be back to creating some papers and elements. So stay tuned - I will hopefully have more freebies ready soon!!

P.S. A special thank you to Rachel who left a comment on my last blog post confirming that Shutterfly books are glued, not sewed. It is, however, reassuring to know that Shutterfly stood behind their product when some pages came loose from her photobook.