Showing posts with label Wordpress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wordpress. Show all posts

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Need More Space? Bookstooge Has You Covered Part II

 


Two years ago I wrote a post (Part I) detailing how to utilize Dropbox as a picture hosting site so you didn't have to eat into your free space here at Wordpress. I've been using it on any picture over 100KB and it seems to work well for me. But just because something is working well doesn't mean I am content to sit on my lees and let Wordpress continue to work against me behind my back. It would be just like them at some point to disallow outside hosted pictures on free sites, so I decided to investigate what I could do for picture compression. Just in case you can't tell, I have an extremely adversarial relationship with WP.com.


What I found was the Caesium Image Compressor. Here is the website and the download for various OS's is part way down the page: Caesium Website.

I have been very pleased so far. Once I installed it, it took a while of playing around to get all the various options set up how I wanted. What I didn't realize, and was very pleasantly surprised with, is that Caesium can also resize your photos along with compressing them. This is wonderful for me as I use the high quality pictures from my Calibre Library for my book reviews. Instead of having to use a separate resizer tool and then Caesium to compress that, I can do it all in one step. I even have it save the picture where I want so everything is conveniently stored for upload.

I use it on the little pictures for the book reviews (which are 194px wide) and I regularly get 30-60% compression. Going from 30KB down to 18KB isn't a world breaking but if I want to continue blogging for years and years, every little bit adds up. I also use Caesium on any files I upload to Dropbox as well. Saving space any way I can means I don't have to worry about hitting that 3gb limit (or 1gb if you're a poor new user to Wordpress. You newbs really have my sympathies in that regards!) It is another step in the blogging process however. So you have to decide if that is worth it to you or not. For me, it totally is. It is free, it is small and once you set it up to your taste, it is almost just 3 clicks of the mouse and you're done.

I hope this post has been helpful even if just to inform you of options that you have. Because knowing is half the battle!

GI Bookstooge is the REAL American Hero, but we all knew that anyway




Saturday, December 31, 2016

Bookstooge Reviews 2016

2016 was on the whole a very good year for me. There will be lots of pictures and links in this post and the wordcount is the highest so far this year, so lets get cracking!

The Year in Visual Review. I continue to use Ipiccy.com for my collages, as their 25picture box works very well with the number of books I read each month and their iphone4 setting keeps all the squares pretty close to the cover sizes so the covers don’t get chopped off. I am sure there is a lot more I could be doing, but a monthly roundup is about the limit of my artsy-fartsy’ness.

2016review




I read 228 books this year. This was up from last years 183. Much of that is due to starting up Manga Monday again.




goal



My pages read went up as well. From just under 63000 to just over 77000. Even though, in all fairness that includes the full number of pages for books that I DNF’d and abandoned. So take that number with a pinch or two of salt.
pagesread



Each month stayed pretty steady in terms of overall books read with only 3 months dipping below the 18book mark. Even in August when I had to take some emergency time off to go move my parents when they unexpectedly sold their house in 2 weeks instead of the 3 months everyone was planning on. Which just means that I’ve made reading my main hobby this year and put most of my time and attention into it.

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The Stars shall speak


13   star50-custom-custom
  star45full-custom
58  star40full-custom
53  star35full-custom
49  star30full-custom
13  star25full-custom
12  star20full-custom
1    star15full-custom
14  star10full-custom
4    star05full-custom
3    star00full-custom

That makes my average for the year right around 3.25. Considering that a 3 is a good and completely average read, 3.25 means I pulled ahead of just plain good. I am more than satisfied with that.



On to the Books themselves!

Venetia was probably the best 1Star of the Year. It was fun to do a buddy read outside of my genre. It did reinforce my thoughts on the Romance genre however.

Worst 1Star was a tossup between Obsidian Worlds and The Store. Both got my stomach churning with disgust and outrage.

Best Non-Fiction wasn’t that hard because it was the only real N0n-fiction I read AND it was a 5Star’r. The Many Faces of Evil. It was just what I needed this year with my friend Amy losing her preemie twins and dealing with stage 4 cancer, all at the same time.

Best 5Star was once again a tossup. This time it was between 2 Re-reads, Dune & Way-farer. If I had to pick a new book, I’d go with Heirs of Empire, as it just hit me right at the right time.

Weirdest book of the year was definitely Gregor Xane‘s TaboogasmIt just doesn’t get any weirder than that. If it does, I don’t want to know about it๐Ÿ˜€


Project ReRead
This was a complete success. 11 books that I had read before being read again with the aim of comparing how my tastes had changed and how that was reflected in my enjoyment and rating of said books. I still enjoyed every single book. However, I was able to determine that this was the last time I would read some of them.

I cherry picked specific books just so I wouldn’t bog down. That did lead to me realizing that some of these books are going to be favorites of mine for quite some time.  It also lead to the realization that while I’ve matured as a reader and can articulate the why’s and wherefores better, at heart, I’m still just a big geek/nerd.

Because it was such a success, I decided to expand upon the whole idea in a big way for ’17 and quite possibly into ’18. I’ve got a whole bunch of SERIES that I’m going to be rereading. They are:

I) Malazan books of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
II) Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert
III) Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede
IV) Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
V) Patricia McKillip’s books
VI) Space trilogy by C.S. Lewis
VII) Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky
VIII) The Malaz Empire novels by Iain Esslemont
IX) Swan’s War trilogy by Sean Russell
X) Polity books by Neal Asher

So be prepared for a lot of whining and angst from me as I rip into these. I did choose books that I think will stand up to my high standards, hahhaaha.

For my other plans for 2017, please feel free to read them HERE.




booklikeslogo

2016 is the year that Booklikes crashed. Crashed and Burned. Staff literally disappeared, the site kept breaking in new and varied ways, people left, people couldn’t join up. Some of the more patient and determined members made a supreme effort to stick around, figure out ways to work around the broken bits and keep members from totally hemorrhaging away. One staff member has returned at the end of the year but the site still crawls or doesn’t load right for long stretches at a time.

I am staying at Booklikes but it is no longer my primary social booksite. When it takes me 3 tries and 5minutes to just comment, that pretty much kills my desire to be there. You can find me there at: Bookstooge.booklikes.com

To anyone who I have followed at wordpress who also is on booklikes, just let me know which site you prefer interaction at. I unfollowed a lot of people at Booklikes who started up blogs at WP but I know not everyone will make the move to WP and I don’t want to lose interaction if I can help it๐Ÿ˜€



logo4_medium

I joined Librarything with a free lifetime membership, thanks to some other Bookliker’s. I am using it as a backup catalogue site since I can’t export from Booklikes and I don’t know how long BL will last.

It is VERY different from what I am used to and you’re going to hear me complain about those differences, a lot! That doesn’t mean I will stop using it or that I hate the site. It just means that I am set in my ways and learning a new way brings out my inner cranky.

You can find me there at: librarything.com/profile/BookstoogeLT


wp_logo

I’ve been on WP.com since ’13, but more as a backup than as anything serious. As BL kept pushing me away, I started looking around at other booksites to find an alternative. I tried a lot of places but one thing or another just made them unpalatable. So finally I started making a serious effort to find new people here on WordPress and connect with fellow Booklikers who also had backup blogs here.

I’d like to thank you all who I follow for writing such fun things and I’d like to thank all of you who have chosen to follow me. It is nice to know that I am not screaming into the void. I plan on find another handful of bloggers to follow and to refine those I already do, as I see who posts regularly and who does it sporadically.



AND I think that about wraps it up. I’m plum out of words anyway, so that forces the issue. So onward to 2017 and a lot of Good Books!

Sleep-is-good-he-said-and-books-are-better..jpg

Thursday, December 01, 2016

November '16 Roundup & Ramblings



This month was pretty good, in the scheme of things. Made my way through 20 books, 4 of which were manga and 1 graphic novel.

I did have 3 DNF's, which is higher than usual, but each was for a different reason, so that helped soften the blow of wasting my time on something I didn't/couldn't finish. To balance that out, I did have One 5Star read and Five(!!) 4Star reads. Getting even a single 5star is a good accomplishment and to have so many 4's is wonderful.

After 6 months I finally got Superman: Doomed scratched off my list. That was a real weight off my shoulders. I'd left it on the couch arm where I sit to remind myself to keep on trying to read it, even a page here or there. That just never happened, so I had to dive in, seize the beast by the throat and just choke it into submission.

In general terms, I solidified the next years reading plans, started the move from Booklikes to Wordpress and continued my reading of Don Quixote. All of which made for a busy but satisfying month.

In finishing, here are my two picks of the month for cover love:


I LOVE hooded figures on covers. They are just cool.



I have always been, and most likely always will be, a Superman fan. Even though I was disappointed by the storyline, the Idea of Superman and Doomsday as one is wicked cool.