Saturday, November 25, 2006

CUTE AND ADORABLE PRECIOUS MINIS 11/25/06

Drifting around web
at night I found your minis--
cute precious delight!

Who: Goowy did it. I tried it. I liked it.
What: Little prepackaged widgets. Flash. News. Mail. Pop3. Weather. Blog RSSes. More.
Where: On your own yourminis page. Free. Password-protected.
When: Whenever you sign in from any computer.
Why: Cuz they are cute.

http://www.yourminis.com/

Thursday, November 16, 2006

BLOGBURST 11/16/06

At first the BlogBurst site looked like a pretty good deal. Enter your url which then gets reviewed for quality and after acceptance, get a chance at having your blog seen by people and companies all over. I entered my url, was "accepted," asked to place a blogburst button on my blogsite, and then was taken to the Terms and Conditions page of Using their Service.

In exchange for their right to place advertising on my site and to advertise my site, I was to sign over worldwide royalty rights to my material forever. BlogBurst would suffer no obligation to pay me for any income generated to them for my stuff. Nope. I bailed out.

This review is a warning. BlogBurst sounds good. It isn't. Any writer who has been published regularly will tell you, "Don't sign away your worldwide royalty rights." Signing away First Serial Rights would be permissible but not the whole she-bang.

No thank-you BlogBurst. I will continue on my path of discovery and future syndication without your help.

sapphoq reviews

THEY CAGE THE ANIMALS AT NIGHT by Jennings Michael Burch 11/16/06

They Cage the Animals at Night, by Jennings Michael Burch.
New York: Signet, 1985. paperback, 293 pps.

The author, J. Michael Burch tells the story of his childhood and adolescence quite well. His mother was not a well woman; his father a drunk absent from his life. Periodically, his mother would drop him off [and later on his youngest brother] at an orphanage or at social services because of her inability to provide for her offspring. The two oldest boys were able to go to relatives to live, the middle brother had a heart condition and lived at a hospital for most of his life.

This book recounts the horrifying abuses suffered by the author and other boys entrusted to New York City's foster care system during the fifties and how the author was able to find his way out.
Definately worth a read for anyone with their own childhood memories of abuse. Not for those who dislike sentimentality.

sapphoq reviews