This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Love Song
Series: One Piece #32
Arc: Skypiea #9 & Water Seven #1
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 211
Words: 10K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Valley of Fear
Series: Sherlock Holmes #7
Author: Arthur Doyle
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 200
Words: 58K
★★★✬☆
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!
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Domino Pattern
Series: Quadrail #4
Authors: Timothy Zahn
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 268
Words: 103K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Mapp and Lucia
Series: Mapp & Lucia #4
Authors: E.F. Benson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humorous Fiction
Pages: 292
Words: 84K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Asterix in Spain
Series: Asterix #14
Authors: Goscinny & Uderzo
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 53
Words: 3K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Gangdom’s Doom
Series: The Shadow #5
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 166
Words: 54K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Death or Glory
Series: WH40K: Ciaphas Cain #4
Authors: Sandy Mitchell
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 289
Words: 96K
★★★✬☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Danny, Champion of the World
Series: ———-
Authors: Roald Dahl
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Childrens Fiction
Pages: 137
Words: 40.5K
★★★✬☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Enemy
Series: Victor the Assassin #2
Authors: Tom Wood
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 403
Words: 134K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Forgotten Ruin
Series: Forgotten Ruin #1
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Military Fantasy
Pages: 477
Words: 171K
★★✬☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Conan and the Amazon
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Authors: John Maddox Roberts
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 226
Words: 88.5K
★★★✬☆
After my post celebrating my Unbanning from the WordPress Forums (Out of WordPress Jail!) I wondered when I would get banned again and what would set it off. I figured WordPress would do something ultra-boneheaded and I’d say something in response and get ye olde ban hammer.
Well, it happened but I’m not sure exactly why. I have an idea and I’ll walk you through it. But first, Evidence of me being banned yet again from the forums:
When the WP Reader Changed on Me! last week and I posted about it, I went first to the forums to see if anyone else had noticed this change or complained about it. Nobody had and so I asked all of you in the post to confirm that my eyes hadn’t gone crazy. Enough of you confirmed the sudden change so I knew I was on firm ground. I have one of the paid plans (to get rid of the atrocious ads wordpress puts on the free sites) and that entitles me to email support. But I didn’t want email support. I wanted to post in the forum to get a public reaction. But I couldn’t find any way to start a new post. I could reply to other posts but I could not start one. So I caved and sent an email to the Great and Powerful Oz, or those shysters known ironically as “Happiness Engineers”.
I stated that the reader had become very narrow like the app and why had they changed it and why hadn’t they announced it. The Happiness Engineer replied back along the lines of “I understand you have a question about the reader, what can I help you with?”. Oh man, it was like they hadn’t read the email and were replying to some random keyword. I wrote back telling that person to read the initial email. They then asked me to take a screen shot to show the problem. At no point so far had this person acknowledged in ANY WAY that they were aware the Reader had been changed. I took a screen capture and gave it to them but told them since they didn’t seem to be aware of the issue that I figured they (wordpress) were lying to me and obfuscating the issue hoping I’d give up.
THAT is what I think got me banned from the forums. But what I don’t understand is why. How did what I wrote in the email translate over to the forums? And I made sure in the email NOT to claim the jerk engineer was lying or obfuscating, but WordPress as a whole. That way I was not attacking or “disrespecting” staff * epic eye roll *
So another Jerk Engineer replies back that he took a look at the screen shot and couldn’t see a problem. I replied calmly and outlined exactly what was different and that all I was looking for was the WHY of the changes, which were detrimental to all viewers who used a computer instead of a phone. I am so incredibly frustrated with WordPress right now.
I am looking into other RSS feeder options and come the New Year will be abandoning the WP Reader. I’ll still be using wordpress but I’ll access all the notifications via my own website instead of going to the reader. I’ll visit all of your sites via whatever rss feed reader I end up with. The problem is, one person’s site I regularly regurgitate upon (Aye laddie, your trossachs are totally pants’d! Begorrah!) has a problem where I can ONLY comment through the reader. As I am an avid commenter (not just on his site but most everywhere), this presents a problem to be solved. It just can’t be simple can it?
So the incredible Saga of The Bookstooge versus the Evil WordPress continues.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot, by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Groo Meets the Hero
Series: Groo the Wanderer #10
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 26
Words: 2K
★★★✬☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Kill Shot
Series: Mitch Rapp #12
Author: Vince Flynn
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 336
Words: 116.5K
★★★★✬
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: We’ll Be Here
Series: One Piece #31
Arc: Skypiea #8
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 207
Words: 9K
★★★☆☆
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: New Tales of the Yellow Sign
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #5
Editor: Robin Laws
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 143
Words: 51K
★★✬☆☆
