And whilst I'm on the rampage because I am fed up of people moaning that they don't know what to do to help, or that they can't help because they have no money/time/don't live near enough etc. here's another website where you can help just by playing educational games at home on your computer.
http://freerice.com.
Free rice supplies rice to the UN World Food programme. This is something you can do for five minutes a day and you can play with your children, your English language students or elderly people who have to do brain exercises. Every right answer gives 10 grains of rice to the programme.
Seems to me there is a lot out there that people can do to help if only they’d stop moaning and start looking!
Saturday, 20 September 2014
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Friday, 12 September 2014
I keep hearing people moan about not being able to do anything. Or it's 'What can they do?' when some horrific disaster or event hits the news again.
I've tried to live my life following the precepts I believe in. ‘Put your money where your mouth is’ was the old challenge. It isn't easy but those international horrors, those rapes in India, or the Syrian government, or religious intolerance, sometimes you can join in a world wide protest because someone in the know cares enough to run a petition. Some years ago I found Avaaz, and have been supporting many of their petitions ever since. http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact/?footer
If you want to do something about an international event they probably have a petition going. Is it worth it? Do they work? Well, I think 3 million or more signatures from people around the world might make a nasty govt/person know that the world is watching. That tends to make people more careful!
At least it is a simple doable way of doing something, of standing up and being counted for something all people should care about. I can’t fly out to the Middle East and bang heads together until these stupid men stop killing their women and children, but I can remind them that I, and a few million others, want a peaceful settlement, not more fighting, for the sake of their children.
I've tried to live my life following the precepts I believe in. ‘Put your money where your mouth is’ was the old challenge. It isn't easy but those international horrors, those rapes in India, or the Syrian government, or religious intolerance, sometimes you can join in a world wide protest because someone in the know cares enough to run a petition. Some years ago I found Avaaz, and have been supporting many of their petitions ever since. http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact/?footer
If you want to do something about an international event they probably have a petition going. Is it worth it? Do they work? Well, I think 3 million or more signatures from people around the world might make a nasty govt/person know that the world is watching. That tends to make people more careful!
At least it is a simple doable way of doing something, of standing up and being counted for something all people should care about. I can’t fly out to the Middle East and bang heads together until these stupid men stop killing their women and children, but I can remind them that I, and a few million others, want a peaceful settlement, not more fighting, for the sake of their children.
Friday, 5 September 2014
Down with Air New Zealand.
What a joke! Air New Zealand ran a inflight safety film which was all bikini and boobs on some Pacific island. Naturally the guys drooled but we women protested. I didn't see half naked men in the ad, it was just women. Either they do an ad like that for both men and women to drool if they must or it's rank male chauvinist piggery.
There was a Twitter campaign a friend told me about. I joined in and we did get the safety film off the air. But Air New Zealand had a squad of Tweeters to protest us and I received a lot of silly tweets. They did make me laugh! Honestly it seems to me no one knows how to insult any more. My tweets were so boring - 'You're jealous 'cos you're ugly or old or fat' was popular as was 'You jealous lessie'. I tweeted back and told them they made me laugh. The idiots from Montana who emailed my private email - wouldn't it be Montana? - got a polite email from me saying I was so impressed with their standard of education I was sending copies of their emails to their State representatives with the comment that I really admired the level and standard of the Montana education system and hoped the representatives were impressed. Haven't heard back yet.
Invective has to be inventive to be of use. And Air New Zealand have merely lost a customer, but not just one as this customer is one who books flights for other people and won’t be using Air New Zealand again. Now that’s a lot more powerful and useful than a load of silly Tweets.
What a joke! Air New Zealand ran a inflight safety film which was all bikini and boobs on some Pacific island. Naturally the guys drooled but we women protested. I didn't see half naked men in the ad, it was just women. Either they do an ad like that for both men and women to drool if they must or it's rank male chauvinist piggery.
There was a Twitter campaign a friend told me about. I joined in and we did get the safety film off the air. But Air New Zealand had a squad of Tweeters to protest us and I received a lot of silly tweets. They did make me laugh! Honestly it seems to me no one knows how to insult any more. My tweets were so boring - 'You're jealous 'cos you're ugly or old or fat' was popular as was 'You jealous lessie'. I tweeted back and told them they made me laugh. The idiots from Montana who emailed my private email - wouldn't it be Montana? - got a polite email from me saying I was so impressed with their standard of education I was sending copies of their emails to their State representatives with the comment that I really admired the level and standard of the Montana education system and hoped the representatives were impressed. Haven't heard back yet.
Invective has to be inventive to be of use. And Air New Zealand have merely lost a customer, but not just one as this customer is one who books flights for other people and won’t be using Air New Zealand again. Now that’s a lot more powerful and useful than a load of silly Tweets.
September.
That will teach me!
The Indie Book Fair was great, not for books sales but because of the people I met and stayed with. I haven't had so much fun, sitting chatting round the dining table, for years.
There's a tremendous amount of work to do now it's Spring. I am planting the seeds ready for the fine weather outside. The bottom paddock is still very wet and have I have lost most of my hazel trees down there because their roots drowned. Bang goes my income.
Seems to me the whole farming lark is one long battle which one inevitably loses.
Jim Azevedo's visit from Smaswords was a great success and he left a whole group of people fully informed as to what ebooks are and how writers should be making them and why. He was a good speaker and he and his wife were fun to have as visitors.
Now with at least half the world raging mad it seems to me we need a universal peace movement to bring a little sanity back to ordinary people's lives.
The general election looms. As our current conservative government has ruined the country lining the pockets of their friends
I despair of ever seeing good government in New Zealand.
That will teach me!
The Indie Book Fair was great, not for books sales but because of the people I met and stayed with. I haven't had so much fun, sitting chatting round the dining table, for years.
There's a tremendous amount of work to do now it's Spring. I am planting the seeds ready for the fine weather outside. The bottom paddock is still very wet and have I have lost most of my hazel trees down there because their roots drowned. Bang goes my income.
Seems to me the whole farming lark is one long battle which one inevitably loses.
Jim Azevedo's visit from Smaswords was a great success and he left a whole group of people fully informed as to what ebooks are and how writers should be making them and why. He was a good speaker and he and his wife were fun to have as visitors.
Now with at least half the world raging mad it seems to me we need a universal peace movement to bring a little sanity back to ordinary people's lives.
The general election looms. As our current conservative government has ruined the country lining the pockets of their friends
I despair of ever seeing good government in New Zealand.
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Monday, 16 June 2014
It's June, and half way through already. May disappeared in snow storms, frosts and floods! This is unheard of as May is the last month of autumn and therefore usually grey, louring and foretelling of winter. It does not act like winter and dump on us with cold snow and heavy rain.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
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