A.C. Flory's Blog, page 115
December 9, 2016
A.C. Flory Author Page
Forgive me, me, me, me, me!
For a very long time now, I’ve been ashamed of my Amazon Author Page because it looked so sparse. Now, at last, I can point to it with pride. It’s a real body of work, and I’m so chuffed it’s not funny.
[Chuffed means proud and happy].
At some point in the very near future, Episode 5 will go up to complete the series and then, maybe for my birthday in January 2017 [if I can manage it] I’m going to put all five episodes together in one doorstop of an omnibus à la Hugh Howey and Robert Chazz Chute. They’re both brilliant science fiction authors, they’re both Indie and they both wear their mantles of creative freedom with pride. -cough-
I have no idea how many pages my Omnibus will be, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to make it available as a print book. Doorstops simply cost too much to print, unless you happen to be George R.R. Martin. I think he gets a special discount in order to supply deep sea tankers with anchors.
December 8, 2016
High C’s – from Vanquish #TSFH
This is my next favourite trach from the new Two Steps From Hell album – Vanquish. It’s called High C’s, and it hits them, effortlessly.
New #Music from Two Steps From Hell -dance-
What a great way to start the day. This is ‘Enchantress’ :
As I discover more new ‘favourite’ tracks I’ll post them.
Good morning, World
Widow-makers, compost and a tooth
It’s been an odd week, starting with the widow-maker. And no, in Aussie parlance, a widow-maker is not a psychotic gigolo, it’s a tree, or tree branch that falls without any apparent warning. You can see it in the pic below with my foot for perspective:
I don’t have huge feet, but they’re not tiny either, so that should give you some idea of the size of the damn branch.
The tree it fell from is that Red Box there at the back. Red Box are tall, eucalypts with spreading branches as long as some smaller trees. The next pic shows where the leafy bits landed. I still can’t believe that they missed my roses by less than a metre. Roses on the left, the tips of the branch on the right:
As the branch fell, it tangled with a second Red Box and stripped it of a couple of big branches as well:
It took a man with a chainsaw most of the morning to cut up the widow-maker and cart it away. Twas not cheap. And then this afternoon I had to have a tooth extracted. Not counting my wisdom teeth, it’s only the second tooth I’ve lost but I still feel rather depressed. I’d hate to end up having to gum my pork crackling.
December 6, 2016
Allelujah! Innerscape, Episode 4 is finally free…
I’d better make this quick. Episode 4 is now available for free download from December 6, 2016 to December 10, 2016. To get your free copy, please follow the link to Amazon below:
The Innerscape competition is ready to go as well. Simply read the ‘Look Inside’ below [use your browser’s back button to return to this post] and answer a simple, multiple choice question in comments, and hey presto, you’ll be in with a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift voucher.
December 5, 2016
I just became a fan of Twitter!
Still no news on the Amazon front but…Roger Subirana replied to one of my tweets about his music!
I am trying to restrain myself – dance – but Roger Subirana is one of my favourite Indie composers! How can I not be excited when his music played such a vital part in the ‘feel’ of Innerscape?
I’m going to go calm down now. Happy Tuesday everyone.
The free Amazon promotion…that wasn’t :(
Having learnt from my experience last week, I enrolled Innerscape, Episode 4 in KDP Select early yesterday afternoon. Then I specified the free promotion I wanted, clicked the appropriate dates on the calendar and sat back to wait for the promotion to go live.
At 7:30 this evening I went in to KDP Select to check when the promotion would go live and discovered that there was no promotion.
I have no idea what happened, but now, despite my best efforts, the free download days won’t start until December 6 – i.e. tomorrow instead of today.
I’m more than a little peeved about this delay. It sets everything back and takes the promotion into the weekend, and we all know that very little happens on the weekend. Ah, well, too late to do anything but apologise. Episode 4 will be free tomorrow, and the new competition will begin tomorrow as well.
Thanks for bearing with me,
cheers
Meeks
Filed under: Innerscape Tagged: competition, December-6th, delay, Episode-4, free-download, Innerscape
December 3, 2016
State Zero – short, sci-fi movie – brilliant and Indie
I don’t like zombie movies, or horror movies in general, but I loved Alien when I first saw it at the movies.
Okay, stop sniggering, I was a lot younger then. Anyway, this Indie short reminded me of the very first Alien movie with a hint of Silent Hill because of the intelligent use of fear. Plus the graphics blend seamlessly with the live action. See for yourselves:
State Zero is top quality movie making at an Indie price.
Apparently DUST is a channel on youtube created to showcase short, Indie movies and I, for one, intend to see more of what’s available.
Happy Sunday,
Meeks
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 5/5, Dust, film, Indie, science-fiction, short, State-Zero, youtube
And the winner of the Episode 3 #Competition is….
Cue drum roll!
Sherry Fundin of Fundinmental.com is the latest winner in the Innerscape launch competition.
Congratulations, Sherry, you have won a $20 Amazon gift voucher, and I’ll be sending it your way as soon as this post is done. Thank you for entering my little competition. It’s been fun meeting you.
November 30, 2016
#WordPress dumbed down for mobile phones
I tried to show a friend some tips and tricks for her new WordPress.com blog site yesterday.
Imagine my confusion when I realised that her version of WordPress.com does NOT have the WP-Admin button! This is what it looks like on my blog:
Clicking the WP Admin button takes me to the original WP Dashboard, which looks like this:
I cut a bit of the screenshot out in the middle so you could see it more clearly. Click the image to see it in full size.
This old Dashboard is quite powerful and great for serious bloggers who, like me, have literally hundreds if not thousands of blog posts to manage. I admit that it might be a bit daunting for the casual blogger. I also admit that the new WordPress interface may be easier to learn/use for the casual blogger, but so far, every time I’ve tried to use it, I’ve just been frustrated by how awkward and clunky the whole thing is. And slow, let’s not forget slow. As a fairly seriously blogger, I find the new-ish interface a poor tool. But horses for courses, right?
Wrong. Apparently, I still have WP Admin because I’ve been a blogger on WordPress since 2011. New bloggers are not so lucky, they don’t get a choice at all, and I fear that in time, us old guard bloggers will end up with no choice as well.
But why dumb WordPress down so badly?
In search of answers I went to Papa Google and found this:
Again, click on the image to see it at full size.
The screenshot was taken from a WordPress forum dating back to late [November?] 2015. The thread is about WP users complaining about losing the link to the old Dashboard [via WP Admin]. A couple of European Moderators have chimed in as well, complaining about not being notified of such a serious change by WordPress, and hence not being able to help their forum members.
The thing I found most interesting on this forum was the comment by an actual WordPress staff member – supernovia – who says, and I quote:
If it helps, all of the mobile apps have been like the newer admin area for a while now,
and as we transition WordPress.com to make everything more consistent, having two different interfaces was confusing new users.
And right there – ‘the mobile apps’ – is the nub of the problem. WordPress doesn’t want to maintain two separate interfaces – one for mobile apps and one for pc’s – so the interface for the pc is being dumbed down as much as possible to save development costs.
Lots of large developers have done the same thing – remember Windows 8, the OS that was meant to bridge the gap between mobile phones, tablets and pc’s? All seem to have missed the most basic point about demographics – app users don’t work on their mobile phones. People who work still use pc’s because pc’s are still a million times more powerful and convenient to use than something which can only be used by your bloody thumbs.
The corporate world doesn’t like the dumbed down, mobile version of programmes because they are not cost efficient for the user. Many of us on WordPress run what amounts to a small business via our blogs. Something designed to work efficiently as a mobile phone app will NOT allow us to work more efficiently at home, in front of a nice LARGE screen with a full-sized keyboard.
Don’t believe that the new interface is weaker and less efficient? Here’s proof. Just before starting this post, I ran an experiment using both the old Dashboard search function and the new interface search function.
The result? Dashboard 1, new interface 0. The new interface search function failed. Completely.
What did I search for?
I was searching for a draft post on making scones. This is the original post title:
Lois’ Soda Water #Scones
I typed ‘scone’ into the old Dashboard search function and it found:
This is a ‘closest match’ which found the post I was looking for.
Then, I tried to find the new interface search function. This is what it looks like:
Before you can type in any search words, you have to click the magnifying icon…excuse me? The standard for most programmes is to type the search words into the search box and /then/ click the magnifying glass to carry out the search. I guess the WordPress devs wanted to be…different.
Then, having finally found out how to actually do a search, this is what happened:
The one nice thing about the new search function is that it searches as you type so it begins displaying possible search results before you even finish typing. Or in my case, not.
Clearly the new interface search function is set for exact matches only – remember the title of my blog post is Lois’ Soda Water #Scones. The hashtag threw the search engine off completely.
Now, in the real world, I have 996 blog posts, including close to 100 drafts. I often link back to previous posts when I write new posts. After 4 years, I very rarely remember the exact title of any of my posts. That means a ‘closest match’ is VITAL. For me, the new search function is next to useless.
So, will WordPress see reason and give serious bloggers back the tools they need to work efficiently? Or are we going to have to live with this dumbed down, mobile phone app?
Sadly, I think we’ll have to live with a poor interface until someone, somewhere, realises that you can’t do real work with just your thumbs.
Unhappy, WordPress.
Meeks
Filed under: My soap box Tagged: app, dashboard, inefficient, mobile, new-interface, phone, poor-design, weak, Wordpress, WP-Admin
