For California Pubbers: Replace Amazon with Barnes & Noble

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

Recently, due to tax legislation passed under an emergency measure in California, Amazon dropped all its California affiliates. This has put a lot of online writers in a state of reduced income. What’s a California pubber to do? Well, when one business opportunity closes, another opens up. One good way to handle being dropped as an affiliate by one company would be to go to the competition. And who is Amazon’s greatest competitor? Barnes & Noble.

Here is one way to get a Barnes & Noble affiliate account. First, sign up with Linkshare. Linkshare allows you to open accounts with many merchants. One of them is Barnes & Noble. Once you are accepted into the Barnes & Noble affiliate program, change your Amazon products which are featured on your pubs into Barnes & Noble Products.

Here is an instructional video by Tina Razzell showing how to add a Barnes & Noble product to your article:

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This is a good solution to the problem of California pubbers who have lost their Amazon affiliate status. But it can also be used as a supplementary form of income for anyone who wants to try it. In fact, those of us who are still able to use Amazon can place competing ads for the same product from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Competition is a good thing. Give it a try and see if it works for you!

Here is my attempt to do this with my book Ping & the Snirkelly People. I’ve added an image link and a text link that will take a buyer right to the Barnes & Noble site to purchase my book:

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ping-and-the-snirkelly-people-aya-katz/1030382159

But for those who want to buy it from Amazon, they can go here:

It’s nice to have choices!

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An Interview with Julia Hanna

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Aya Katz

Julia Hanna, otherwise known as Sweetbearies here on PubWages, is a prolific writer and artist. Last night I had the privilege of doing a video interview with her on Skype. Even though she is in California and I am in Missouri, and though we have never met in person, we were able to talk together about her writing, her experiences online and off, her arts and crafts and her novel in progress. Come and meet Julia in this video!

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You can read more about Julia and view some of her artwork and crafts at her Sweatbearies site:

http://sweetbeariesart.com/

I enjoyed talking with Julia online, and I think that the ability to see one another on Skype and share our thoughts with other pubbers is going to change the experience here on PubWages. Video interviews are not just for people who live in the same city, nor are they only open to those who are already extremely well known. We now have the ability to share a conversation with each other despite the distance and without going to great expense. Good conversation and good writing go together, I think, so please take the time to enjoy this talk with Julia. Let us know if there are any follow up questions you would like to ask. We may do this again!

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Bard of Ely has a new entry in the YouBloom Music Awards

Posted on July 25, 2011 by bardofely

My song Mañana recently got through to the semi finals of the YouBloom Song Contest, so a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for it and helped it get there! Sadly though Bob

Geldof and the team of judges failed to select it for the finals. However, I believe very much in the motto of try, try and try again, so this is what I am doing with a new entry in the contest entitled Always Look So Fine.

The YouBloom Song Contest, by the way, has been renamed as the YouBloom Music Awards, and my song Always Look So Fine is in the current Q3 Heat 1 of the competition.

It is very much a pop/rock song that I recorded many years back with my then band Flowers of the City. It nearly got released on a Cardiff independent label too at the time. A popular song in my live performances it is basically a simple love song that is saying how it doesn’t matter what sort of clothes the one I love is wearing because she always looks really beautiful anyway.
The photo I use to illustrate the song is of two former neighbours of mine when I lived on the Ely council estate in Cardiff. The two sisters Heather and Maria used to dress as punks and coloured their hair with shocking Crazy Colour pink. In my song lyrics there is the line: “I’ve seen you in black punk clothes…” and the two girls often used to dress in black so they make great models for this!
I need your votes again to help me progress in this prestigious Music Awards competition so please log in if you are already a member, or join if you are not, then listen to my song and vote. Here is the link to it: http://www.youbloom.com/ybsc/entry/2552/

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Found: precise analysis of cursive defenders’ favorite logical errors

Posted on July 25, 2011 by KateGladstone


Found: precise analysis of cursive defenders’ favorite logical errors

(I disagree, though, with this blogger’s claim that long handwritten messages are always an imposition on the reader. With well-planned practice— and a simple style of handwriting — the results can be as legible as any type font.)

What are some false-to-fact statements that you, yourself, have read or heard about handwriting? Share them, please, and any rejoinders you have worked out.

Also — what other handwriting-related matters would you like to see me raise? Would you like me to post samples of interesting handwriting, to analyze for legibility and other features? … or what?

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Snippets on handwriting …

Posted on July 24, 2011 by KateGladstone


/1/

Here’s some proof that liking to use cursive is no guarantee of common sense or accurate spelling. Well, at least the cursive was competent.

/2/
Incompetent handwriting — of any style — led to these other cake disasters.

/3/
Further scribal cake wrecks:

here …

… and here.

/4/

The worst I’ve seen: what does it say? Post your guesses!
Whichever commenter produces the most convincing decipherment (by the time I get 5 comments on this post) will win a free copy of my Handwriting Repair PDF (or PowerPoint if you prefer that format).

/5/

if your chosen medium is not cake-icing, here are sites that will turn your handwriting into a font:

Thankster.com lets you create a font from your handwriting and use it to send online messages …

… while VLetter.com turns your handwriting into a font you can use in any computer program.

Or skip fonts entirely, and send handwritten e-mail (with your choice of electronic ink, pen, and paper) at Ritemail.com.

if your chosen medium is, in fact, cake-icing, Squires Kitchen/Food Online sells equipment for topping your cake with calligraphy: icing nozzles that produce the effect of an Italic pen.

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“Law Abiding People”: A song from THE DEBT COLLECTOR

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Aya Katz

Daniel Carter and I have been collaborating on a musical.  We have nineteen songs written to go with my play The Debt Collector. He composed the music and I wrote the words. But the collaborative process continues, as we recruit new singers and performers to bring the musical to life. Recently, we were very lucky to have vocalist Victoria Trestrail perform a new song for us: “Law Abiding People.”

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Victoria Trestrail’s performance is robust and evocative. She sings with great gusto, and she expresses the meaning of the song not just in articulating the words or singing the notes, but in her attitude toward both music and lyrics.

The Debt Collector is a libertarian musical, in itself a rarity. Nobody in this play is a mere victim. All the characters are strong, but human. “Law Abiding People” expresses the sentiments of Lottie Lark, the welfare mother, toward the beginning of the play. She explains to her children how the system works, and like any mother, she is concerned for their well-being.

The Debt Collector is a play without villains. But unlike most modern works, it is not filled with hopelessness and despair. Instead, we see the characters evolve as they realize that way they have been treating each other is not functional, and that it is the system that needs to be discarded, not the people.

If you would like to see this play performed in your community, please drop us a line.

© 2011 Aya Katz

Posted in Composers, Music, Musicians | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Handwriting and Vocabulary Growth

Posted on July 21, 2011 by KateGladstone

Here’s an unexpected, unintended consequence of pouring precious classroom time into cursive … according to this study from the Journal of Education Research, the longer a student has been taught cursive/required to use cursive. the smaller the vocabulary of that student will be when s/he reaches 4th grade — and even when s/he reaches 6th grade.

Specifically, the study examined the vocabulary-size of students (in fourth grade and in sixth grade) whose classrooms had changed the students’ handwriting to cursive starting at 4 different times: /a/ changeover starting at the beginning of 2nd grade, or /b/ changeover starting in the middle of 2nd grade, or /c/ changeover starting at the beginning of 3rd grade, or /d/ changeover starting at the middle of 3rd grade.

The more education a child had been allowed to have before his/her handwriting was changed over to cursive, the larger his or her vocabulary was (as measured by the number of different words used in the student’s writing over the course of a year).

The differences were huge — the kids who’d been required to do the least cursive had vocabularies THREE TIMES the size of those who’d been required to do the most cursive.

From this, for some reason, the researchers decided that the second half of 3rd grade was a great time to change everyone’s writing to cursive (which, as the researchers themselves pointed out, means putting all other aspects of written English on hold in order to go back to scratch and start all over again with the ABC.)

The logical decision, though, would have be to wonder why any age-group at all should be required to spend time on what amounted to an exercise in vocabulary-stunting — not that cursive in itself is bad for your vocabulary … but you’re unlikely to increase your vocabulary when vocabulary-building (or whatever else you might learn in an English lesson) has been pushed aside for the sake of changing your handwriting style.

The fact that the vocabulary-stunting effect was worst for those who had had the earliest change-over can — as the researchers noted — be at least partly explaned by the fact that any educational damage has worse effects when imposed on younger, more impressionable, more ignorant students.

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Not only doctors write poorly …

Posted on July 20, 2011 by KateGladstone

Not only doctors write poorly … here’s a nurse reprimanded for illegible handwriting.

And then there is another kind of bad writing.

This blog deals with “writing as handwriting,” not “writing as composition” … but every so often, very bad prose  is written to defend cursive handwriting: prose so bad that its badness actually makes it more interesting than it would otherwise have been. Here’s an example — comments?

The above is the longest example of this genre — Bad Writing Which Claims That Cursive Writing Is Good (BWWCTCWIG). Essay-length specimens are rare; most BWWCTCWIG appears as blog-comments or Letters to the Editor.

The phenomenon wouldn’t be noteworthy, except that many such pieces (including the essay at the above link) include claims that writing in cursive will make you more intelligent, more logical, and/or better at English grammar and spelling. (I could give numerous examples, but I don’t know if anyone would want to read these.)

Why is there so much BWWCTCWIG? I think it happens because people who do better at cursive writing than at other aspects of written composition (such as logic, organization, and mastery of standartd grammar and spelling) benefited from the fact that teachers and exam-graders often unconsciously inflate grades on attractively handwritten papers by as much as one letter grade — even when the teachers/graders have been instructed to ignore the students’ handwriting, and even when they believe that they are following those instructions.

Therefore, someone who writes “C”-quality prose in textbook-perfect pretty cursive may easily receive “B” grades. An actually “B-” essay may likewise receive an “A-” … in this way, the producers of poor-but-pretty written work  may grow up with an inflated estimate of their actual abilities (and a similarly inflated estimate of the actual abilities of others like themselves).

Could this be one reason that so many pieces of BWWCTCWIG also denounce the very idea of teaching (or allowing) schoolchildren to keyboard? Most BWWCTCWIG, these days, is of course produced by keyboard — and its producers may have some inkling that this keeps their words from looking pretty enough for undeserved high marks.

 


 


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PubWages FAQ: How to Toggle Between Visual and HTML

Posted on July 20, 2011 by admin

A picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes,  a verbal explanation just doesn’t do it. When you are new to PubWages, a lot of things may seem strange and hard to follow. For instance, when editing your text on PubWages, within the editor, how do you decide whether you are in visual WYSIWYG or in  HTML? (WYSIWYG is short for “what you see is what you get”. HTML is short for “HyperText Markup Language”.)

There’s a toggle on the right hand top side of your text editor, right under the subject/title line that has two tabs, one for visual and one for HTML. But what if you can’t find the toggle? Well, here’s a picture.

The picture above is of what I see when I edit a post in the PubWages editor. Can you see where it says PubWages Daily Games? That is the subject/title line. Can you see underneath that where it says “Upload/Insert”? Well, that is the top left hand corner of the text editing box. Stay on the same line and go right, far, far right. On the right top corner there are two tabs. The one is labeled “visual” and the other is labeled “HTML”. At the moment, in the screenshot I’ve embedded, “visual” is selected. But if you want “HTML” instead, press the HTML tab, and you’ll get the HTML view of your text. If you are in HTML and want a WYSIWYG view, press the “visual” tab. You can toggle back and forth between them.

If you want to insert a video from Youtube or a widget from Amazon, there are some easy plugins that help to do that in the visual toolbar. For instance, the “a” at the right is a way to select Amazon widgets.

Hope this helps! Happy pubbing!

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Get Rid of Wrinkles, Scars and Cellulite at Home

Posted on July 19, 2011 by katiem2

Get Rid of Wrinkles, Scars and Cellulite at Home With the Derma Roller the Doctors Review


What we know about wrinkles, scars and cellulite is this; we all face wrinkles, stretch mark scars and fat.  What you may not know is how to prevent them.  Today lets take a look at a great easy method to eliminate these beauty zappers.  As our fat cells multiply and divide growing in numbers we see cellulite on our bodies. While weight loss is vital to losing fat cells women are cursed with a special tissue fibers which trap fat locking it in place making it very hard to eliminate.  The constant weight roller coaster many of us face with childbirth, stress and over all day to day life causes all of the concerns of the day.

Diet alone does not work. We now know creams and lotions work if they are properly massaged into the deep tissues stimulating the blood flow and delivering the product to those pesky areas we need to assault.

Deep rubbing for penetration by hand proves challenging and we quickly grow tired of rubbing deeply to penetrate the fat tissue. This is where the derma roller comes into play. You can stimulate blood flow, helping any creams or products you use to penetrate and go to work with a dermal roller. The video included today explains how the dermal roller works as The Doctors; share their thoughts and findings on the derma roller.

You can use this process all over the body.  The small roller is great for your facial area. The video really does say it all so watch and learn how easily one tool can provide you with what you need to beat scars, stretch marks, wrinkles and cellulite at home.

Note: Check out the video at the bottom of this picture as The Doctors support the use of the derma roller and explain how it works!

The Doctors on Derma Roller

The best way to be careful and not allow cellulite to creep up on you over the winter months is to take note of your body on a regular basis. Don’t just jump from one warm and cozy outfit to the next and into those flannel pajamas just before you jump into bed.

Look at yourself naked and do so when your body is dry. Look at your back carefully for signs of fat dimples. You will certainly want to look at your legs and back side. Remember you need to work that fat out with a deep rub and or massage. Take good care of your body and love yourself!

Be on guard, drink lots of water and make a dermal roller part of your regular routine keeping lumps and bumps away.

Much Love and Success, Katie

  

 

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