The return of TWW

Well I haven't been here in ages!

The first thing I did when I found myself again (hehe) was read some of the old posts.

The photos are all gone.
This is because the host decided to start charging and of course, no one in their right mind is going to pay.
So I'll have to find a way around that.

My computer decided to go knees up so all my old stuff was lost except that which was backed up onto hard drives.

It's okay.
Life doesn't rely on having things saved for ever and ever.

More about Kindle Unlimited

I thought I would write today about Amazon Kindle Unlimited once again.

About a year ago, I did a 1 month trial and was not really impressed.
This year I was offered a 2 month trial and decided to give it a go again considering its had time to improve.

This time I borrowed 10 books at a time on various subjects in which I have an interest.
The first thing I noticed was, there are now more books to choose from.
While some are still not very professionally laid out or well written, at least there are enough on offer to find one or two diamonds among the rough.

I borrowed on the following subjects

3D printing
Programming
Frugality
Cookery
Sailing
Make your own
Money saving
Living Without money
Learning Spanish
Camping
Prepping

and a few more I cant remember

Over the two months, I think I borrowed around 250 books which I opened and read or skimmed through.
The skimming was because some of the books were so obviously a waste of time.

I did not borrow any fiction except for the Spanish (some were children's stories) .

At the end of the two months, I cancelled the membership because as before, the books available were rarely so interesting that I would have  thought myself lucky to have paid the months subscription instead of the usual purchase price.

One book I particularly wanted to read and the main reason I eagerly clicked yes to try the two month trial, was not actually available to borrow on UK kindle unlimited. It kept redirecting to a message saying that it was not available as a free read outside of the USA.

Amazon Kindle unlimited is it worth subscribing?

I joined Amazon Kindle unlimited at the end of January to try out their 1 months free trial.

Right from the start, I thought I would borrow from it to the max
to firstly discover,
Is it really unlimited?
And secondly to see
What the quality of the books on offer in the kindle borrowing library were like.

I borrowed my first 10 books and opened my Kindle reading program which is on my PC.
The archived section had 10 new items showing.
Clicking through they show that they are  there but have yet to be downloaded.

I clicked and clicked on each one and eventually it downloaded.
One click seemed to do nothing.

Once downloaded they are in the downloaded folder not the archived section.

Anyway to get to the point..

I now had 10 new books to read.
A quick peruse showed me that 9 out of the 10 were very poor in quality.
One was only 4 pages .

One had terrible grammar and spelling.

How to books really should describe how to actually do what the title states they will.


I speedily read all I needed to of the first 10 books and returned to amazon for 10 more.
You can have any amount of books but only 10 at once so each new book is a replacement for one that you have previously borrowed.

Every day for 1 month I did the same thing and so borrowed between 15 and 25 books a day.

All the books I borrowed were non fiction.

Strategic book authoring

A new idea revealed itself to me.
Not my idea, but that of many of the kindle book authors.
Write a vague book on any subject and just add links to your affiliated pages.!

Some of the books with links, go to empty domains which is not great either.

A second strategy was quite common too and that was the 'series' style books.
They come in 3 flavours.
1 is the  Part book. It is part 1 of a series of books all around the same subject for example
circus tricks part 1 circus tricks with balls
circus tricks part 2 circus tricks with knives
circus tricks part 3 circus tricks clowning around
circus tricks part 4 circus tricks acrobatics

Then there are the series but not that different variety for example
Women's hair secrets
Men's hair secrets
Pet's hair secrets

Last of all come the speed written series which relies entirely on the name to sell
For example
how to keep a diary for Barrington rovers fans
how to keep a diary for Collywood scrubs  fans
how to keep a diary for Hedgerow united fans
how to keep a diary for Eggbert city  fans

Some Authors kindly offer a free book or advice if you click through to their website as a reward for 'buying' their book.
On clicking through it isn't unusual to find that the free book is only available if you type in  your email and you are signing up to a newsletter .

Sometimes the link is not to a free book but  a subscription to lessons or a paid for book presumably not hosted on Amazon.

Dubious content

During my 1 months trial, I read books which suggested stealing from shops.

Some books talked about selling broken electric items to people at boot sales because they cant check them until they get them home.

One book suggested getting  food from food banks even if you can afford to buy it anyway  because it is free and easy to get!!

A most unscrupulous author described buying and gutting electrical items and then adding weight,sealing and returning them for the purchase price. I hope he was joking but it was difficult to tell.

It does lead me to believe however, that an ebook submitted to amazon for selling on their website may not actually get looked at before it is offered up for sale.


It wasn't all bad
There were a few gems floating in the scummy waters of the Amazon.
Out of some 400 books that I downloaded and read in my trial time, I came across maybe 20 that I would have liked to re-borrow a second time and ONE that I might possibly have bought .

Value for money?

So is it worth it at £7.99 a month?

Well I would say No.
Not unless you read voraciously and spend more than that every month on books.

A better way to use it would be to go onto Amazon when you are looking for a particular book, check whether it has the ' borrow this book with Amazon kindle unlimited' label and if it does, see if the price for that book is cheaper than one months subscription.
If it is and that is the only book you are after, just buy it
If you need to read several books ,they are all in the unlimited library and you could do so in 30 days, then subscribe for the month .
Obviously you can re-borrow a book that takes longer than 30 days to read but that means subscribing for that next month also.
If it is more expensive to buy it than to subscribe for 1 month and you arent going to read it more than once, then subscribe for 1 month and borrow it to read.

You can delete a book from your device but it is still 'borrowed' until you actively return it or the 30 days runs out.

£7.99 does not buy any of the books remember. If you borrow one, read it and like it, you would need to go back onto Amazon and actually buy it .

Since finishing my trial which ended on the 26 th of Feb , I have bought one Ebook on Amazon.
It was The Goldfinch by Donna Tart and was not included in the unlimited books offered .
In fact no single book that I searched for on first joining, was listed in those that I could borrow.

Anyway,if you are interested to see for yourself, why not give the free trial a try?
Write yourself a message on paper to remind yourself on which day the 30 days runs out and stick it by your computer (or kindle) .

© 2015 theamazingwitteringwench

chopping down the clover field

Well it isnt a field at all but I liked the sound of it.
I chopped the clover that has been growing in the onion beds.
It stays in the earth and helps to improve the structure of the soil.

The Phacelia still has bees buzzing to and fro so I will leave that for longer and then chop and dig it in , in the same way.

I still havent got the new onion beds sorted.
Yesterday I dug over half the spud bed (the half that is now empty).
The onions and garlic will go in there to over winter.

OH bought me and himself new (2nd hand) leathers for the motorbike.
Mine are a very fetching white with green and purple zigzags.
His are black and have a wolf logo.

We are going to look the Bees Knees next time we go for a ride together.

I canned quite a lot of Pumpkin on Monday.
The biggest pumpkin yielded 11 jars .
Then I roasted the seeds which are quite like crisps (to snack on).
I did mine with no oil by using a browning plate in the microwave.
You are supposed to use oil but they are much healthier without .
OH tends to glutton-out on anything the least bit snackable so I put them in a screw top jar and whisked them away out of sight .

There are 2 more pumpkins out there but I don't know if they have time to ripen off as we are already getting ground frosts in the morning.

Indoors it is about 15 degrees c in the mornings.
The front room warms up to 17 once the sun hits it.
I brought the greenhouse heater in so that we could give the bathroom a 10 minute zap before bathing or showering, rather than turn the heating on all over the house just for the same effect.
The heater is from OH's work and was being thrown away but is really for a greenhouse.
It would be far too expensive to run it over the winter for the amount of food I might produce from the greenhouse.

The greenhouse is now empty of plants except the box of carrots.
It becomes a store room over winter.

...............................................................................................................................
My online earning is going well.
Today I cashed out 10 pounds in Amazon vouchers from Ipsos
There is a 25 pound voucher to cash in from another survey site and nearly 30 pounds from one other so Christmas and the last birthday of the year are accounted for.
We are lucky with birthdays as they are evenly spaced across the year.
I go on Mccains site once a week and play their games which pay in spud shillings.
The shillings go towards a voucher and I am hoping to have 10 pounds to redeem in a couple of weeks.
Sadly they are winding up their voucher earning scheme in december .

...................................................................................................................................
At the moment I am reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo which you can find on Guttenberg
I'm also reading Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (free on Amazon).

Les Miserables is very long and a little hard going with its turns of language and descriptions.
If you think Dickens is too descriptive, you wont like this one but if you don't mind long detailed outlines,you will most likely love it.

Micah Clarke is one of Doyles Historic Novels which are by far his best genre and although they are very prose filled, they have a huge lot of history and factual information also.
This one is about the Monmouth uprising (after the English Civil war).  

shredding and ploughing

OH cut next doors and our hedge .
It is ours but he has to go next door to do the other side.
There was a lot of debris.

Luckily,we have a new toy.
It is a shredder.
We had one once before that we were given by someone on Freecyle but that one did tend to cut out at the least provocation so after a while we passed it on to someone else.

This one is a Bosch and is much much better.
It handled almost all the branches from the hedge and some of the old plum tree remains.
Some bits were as thick as a broom handle and it had no problem making them into little bits.
Then I had rather a lot of mulch to distribute and so , the fruit beds were added to.

I have also been busy working on my Wheel Hoe.
I wanted to make an adapter so that I could use wolf tools on it and it took all weekend of fiddling.
I did make one a couple of weeks ago but it was rather basic,comprising of a tab to hold the wolf handle still whilst bolted to the hoe frame.
This new bracket is able to be adjusted for depth and angle and is much stronger.
I got the parts out of the dustbin.
OH had thrown away a broken satellite dish that we found lying in the road but the recycling bin men wouldn't take it as it is the wrong kind of thing to put in our recycle bin.
I fished it out and saw a new use for it.
The dremel came into its own again as it was the only thing that would cut holes in the thick metal.

All we need now is for it to stop raining long enough for me to get some use of it.

I may even get some pictures up later in the week. No chance today due to the rain .

Books


I am reading 'A hat full of sky'.

I cant decide as yet if it is a saying of the 'Nac Mac Freegle' (the wee free men)
or if it is referring to a vacant space where your brain ought to be.

Books again

Growing up Amish
By
Ira Wagler

I have just started reading this one.
Another Autobiography,this time by an author who was born into an Amish Community.
Mine eyes hath been opened! but not quite in the way you might imagine.
I never thought about bullying in Amish schools for instance or the way childbirth is seen as hum drum or children as an every day occurrence.
Ragged dirty kids ,oppression and  massive peer pressure are described in vivid detail.
Not quite the idyllic world I expected.
I love the idea of a world without vices or over extravagance but not if it means you have no freedom or modern amenities when you really need them.

Book of the week

This week I am reading Feet of Clay which is yet again by Terry Pratchet.

This has a very interesting plot and reminds me a little of Bicentenial man meets Roots.
The main characters this time are known as Golem which are a sort of crude man-like drone.
I guess the nearest we would come to in human terms would be a Yunok although I find the idea that their life purpose is written on a piece of paper that is kept in their heads a little too much like a programming language and the term 'Garbage in ,Garbage out' would be very apt .



I am plagued by the whirring of the spare laptop at present.
It is virus checking which takes a few hours so i turn it all on and then disable the screen to save energy and just let it get on with it.

Better weather and rainy days

It was sunny this weekend.
I decided to get out in the garden and weed the onion beds.
They are all that is planted so far for this years veg.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to hand weed 3 beds but it was worth it.

Saturday the guys went to Karate.
They were later than usual in getting back and I was just starting to get anxious as DS drove himself and has only just passed his test.
The phone rang and it was DS.
One of the other club members was taken ill so they were helping till an ambulance came.
It was a relief to hear they were okay but sad to hear someone was ill.
At home later ,they said the man had had to be resuscitated with a defibrillator.

Sunday they heard he was better but had had further heart attacks and will need to be under a doctor for some time to come and his heart condition was most likely due to cholesterol.

Bookish Monday

I am reading Simon Pegs book

Nerd Do Well

It is a Biography with a few little fantasies thrown in.
Quite interesting if you like Biography, it reminds me of a lighter version of David Nivens books.


Shopping

We needed a new teapot this weekend as I dropped the other in the sink and the handle broke into 3.
I did glue the handle and it has held so far but it is too risky what with the content being boiling tea.

The First shop we looked in had the ideal replacement. Red with an unrestricted spout and big enough to hold 6 mugs at once.
Quite a flashy sounding name.
The shop wanted £7 but we managed to haggle as it has a slight imperfection and got it for £5.

Chilly Mondays, more books and the new TV Box

It was pretty Snowy last week.
We thought it was well and Truly over, only to wake up to a new sprinkling on Sunday.
The DS was narked because he has a Driving test this week.
OH was narked because he wanted to Motorbike into work instead of driving up there, it is more expensive for petrol for the car.
I was narked because I usually drive to the big supermarket on Sunday but I wont drive in snow.

So anyway, OH drove me to Asda and it turned out that our road was snowy but almost all the main roads were clear.
We live in a cul-de-sac which means that there is no through road to go anywhere , consequently the council never grit our road or the one leading to it as they aren't heavily trafficked.   I believe this is a mistake as we and many other residents of the town,there are numerous Cul-de-sacs due to the estate layout, must still get our vehicles TO the main roads in order to benefit from the gritting.
OH needed about 100 yards of clear road to get his Motorbike out last week and only managed it on Friday when the thaw began.
Today is warmer and we are set to have mild weather this week so hopefully DS will get his lessons and test after all.
OH buzzed off happily on the bike and said he might even get a cycle in .

R.I.P. (rest in pieces)BT Vision box

On Friday, our new free-view box was delivered by the courier. This is a non subscription box that I bought from Amazon.
It does everything that the BT vision box did , except,because it doesn't access the internet, it cant get BBC Iplayer. We can always hook up a laptop if we want to watch Iplayer though.
DS connected it up when he finished his driving lesson.
It took about 10 minutes.
We had to move the TV table forwards,de- cable the BT box from ethernet, TV out,TV in and scart.
Then we put it on the floor, put the new box in its place and reinserted TV out, TV in, scart and plugged it in to the power.
THE TV in comes from the Aerial, TV out goes through the DVD recorder, The scart goes to the Big Monitor on the wall as far as I remember.
Anyway,we turned it on and it just worked.
No faffing about.
We scanned for channels and it has the same channels as BT when you watch freeview.
The remote works and now we can use the volume control (BT's volume control was useless),instead of having to get up and go to the HIFI and turn it down.
Our HIFI is the volume on our TV because the screen is a Monitor not a Television.

The old BT box is on a table in my bedroom. I have opened the case and there is an IDE hard drive inside.
That will come out ,I will most likely salvage all the motherboard components using the Dremel and the rest of the box can be scrapped.

Tomorrow we switch over to sky for our internet and will plug in the new modem we got on Thursday and set that up.
We have a phone ready for getting our calls and can discard the rubbish that BT  were allowing us to pay £36.25 a month to use despite the fact that both home hub and phone were faulty units.
Ironically we have had a few calls on the BT phone and haven't been able to answer any as it cuts out the minute you remove it from the hub. I do hope they were from BT with offers to keep our custom.

Bookish Monday

This weeks book is Thief of time
By Terry Pratchet

I had a bit of a struggle getting into the first chapter as it seemed quite disjointed but once past that, it falls together quite well.
Each scenario fits a time-line and you must see them in entirety before you can really get into the story.
One of my favourite Pratchet Characters is DEATH.
He turns up in every book I have read so far and leads away the dearly departed whether they like it or not.
In this book ,he is a little more active and I just love that.
He even has a tiny little helper of sorts.

Anyway I mustn't spoil the story

Bookish Monday

I finished the Wheel of time book and ploughed straight on with good old Terry Pratchet once again..
I am reading 'The Night Watch'...
Which is a bit like a twist on a Doctor who story.
There are some interesting mentions of Quantum Theory - Ankh Morpork style.
If you know about Quantum theory, it is a little hint towards the plot ,if you don't, you wont guess unless you read the book !
I'm nearly finished already, it is a much smaller volume than the Wheel of time series.

Good grief a week has whizzed by!

I have been avidly survey filling in and working hard to keep the spending down.
So far the tally is 66.58 over the 3 weekends of this year.

Yesterday, we drove to Asda and I bought 10 packets of raisins.
They were 24 pence each. Since last Septemberish, raisins have been beyond our spending limit and we have bought mixed fruit instead at 64 pence.
I don't care why they have reduced the raisins, I only know that as long as they are 24 pence, we will be buying a fair few when we go there.

Yesterdays raisin bounty saved me £4.10 because we would buy them anyway and that would have been the difference in price of buying 10 mixed fruit packs.
If I had stuck to raisins (hehe) they would have been around 86 pence and so the saving would have been £6.20.

Baked beans are now 30 pence a tin minimum in Asda and Tinned Tomatoes are 38 pence.
Not so long ago I could buy 5 tins of tomatoes for £1 and 4 tins of Baked beans for £1.
No wonder people are struggling.

Today I have a chicken carcass in the slow cooker along with a meaty Turkey wing.
They will make risotto with a big bowl of rice, an onion and some mixed vegetables.

Bookish Monday

I have just finished reading
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsay.
It is rather like a modern Version of the Richest Man in Babylon.
Dave advises getting rid of your credit cards.
(We never had any).

Saving 1000 as an emergency fund by selling stuff or doing something extra to earn it...

(I did this about 12 years ago in secret).

Paying your debts as fast as you can manage it..

Luckily we just about got ours under control about 6 years ago when the car was paid off.

Saving 6 months living expenses.

We managed this last winter.

Paying off your mortgage as hard as you can..

Here we were very lucky because OH inherited enough to do that.

Investing any savings you can make above the 6 month expense fund

(This is the one I am going to work on this year although investing may just have to be banking it what with the economy absolutely frying the interest rate for savers)

OH pays into a pension pot at work so part of that is already done anyway.

His main mantra seems to be

'Live like no other so that you can live like no other'.

In other words,

Live as frugally as you can and the good times will come. 

Bookish Monday

This last week I have been reading
The Towers of Midnight
This is a book from the Wheel of Time series that was devised by the late Robert Jordan.
The latest book is part written by his chosen successor Brandon Sanderson and follows the Adventures of the boys from the Two Rivers, who are now men , and their endeavors to defeat the dark one and stop him  from either wiping out or enslaving the world.
I love these books, they have witches and wizards by other titles.
There is intrigue and religious dogma, war and love and all manner of conflict.
The books still hold the humour of the original Author with ironic twists thrown in every now and then.

Tis the first day of the new year!

Happy new year to anyone who reads this.

At the moment I am watching swagbucks TV and writing this at the same time.
I have Opera as my web browser and when there are 2 tabs open, I click Tile and can have the pages side by side.
So the SBTV can play in one window and I can go to the next video as each one reaches the progress bar point , and still do something else at the same time.

My resolution this year is to get back to frugal earning and veg growing.
I shall also continue with my fitness through exercising and running.

This Christmas my weight has not risen much despite the lack of running.
We were much more sensible about what we ate.
I bought 1 tin of chocolates before Christmas and we received another as a present.
Last year we had 2 tins,received another and also had chocolate oranges.

Today we will have a turkey dinner rather like our Christmas Day meal, with a home made Christmas pud  to follow.

Lunch time was home made bread,crackers, cheese and pate.
Coffee to follow.
The coffee was a free gift from Taylors or Harrowgate.
It is Christmas Blend and is actually very mild which I prefer.

My ebook reader has been busy this week.
So far it has only needed to be recharged once despite daily use for over a week.
I charged it on boxing day and it isnt even 1/4 used yet.


The men have gone for a driving lesson .

Wodens Day

It's been a bit of a dull day .
I have done some more exercises just to keep warm and have something to do.

• Pistol Squats X 10 each leg
• Dips X 10
• Ropeless skipping 5 minutes
• leg raises X 10
• Pull ups X8

This morning I did some work online and then read some more of the current Terry Pratchet.

I have another one lined up for when this one is finished and then a Robert Jordan book to make a change.

It has been Icy cold in the Kitchen as usual.
We have a very small radiator in there but we only have the heating on an hour morning and again evening so the rest of the time it is froozy.

Tomorrow will be spent in wrapping the presents that are sitting in my bedroom in a box.
I have saved the packing paper from an amazon delivery to use as the wrapping.
I shall make some microwaved Flapjacks too.

Bookish Monday

I have been reading more from SIR Terry Pratchet.
This one is called Jingo and is in my sons definition of the word, war without the need for a logical reason.
That fits the story quite well.
There are some thought provoking parallels with the world as we know it anyway, not just about the reason for war but also concerning the way one nation will treat another regarding tradition ,food, manners etc.
I think it is his most serious that I have read.
Still plenty of fun though.


I have to admit to having thought originally that Jingo was a retort 'By Jingo' for example and maybe the two meanings are not so far apart after all.


I have been watching the 'Ice road truckers tackle the worlds most dangerous roads' on Friday night TV.
Quite often,one of the drivers will say something quite thoughtless and insulting and the locals who are their companions, are very tolerant.
If they had been in Mr Pratchets book, they would have been lying in a pool of blood with their throats cut. Not that I am giving anything away.

My hero in the TV series is Lisa the only female driver on the series thus far.
She worries and worries but she gets the job done just the same.

Thors day

Yesterday I had to return an Ebay purchase !
It was something I was quite looking forward to using but when it came, it was faulty.
The vendor arranged to pick up through city link and they were to come in the morning.
I was fuming by the time they turned up, 3.45, because I had to say no when my son suggested we went to town together.
The courier seemed oblivious to his lateness
Then he prepared to leave with the parcel and I said
wasn't he going to give me a receipt?
Apparently they never give receipts so I had him hand write one.
I shall expect my refund to be in paypal tomorrow or there will be text flying through the ether!

I like buying through Ebay because you can pay with paypal.
A couple of times I have used their resolution center and each time it has got me my money back.
Ebay's feedback is useful too.
Once I waited 6 weeks for an expensive item and I left neutral to say good item pity about the wait,to which the vendor responded by phone refunding my post costs(£50), I  didn't think I was unreasonable to leave a neutral as I had contacted them from about week 3,every week till the item materialized, it wasn't like they didn't hear from me. It was the feedback that got the result eventually.

I bought an embroidery machine once a few years back and it came without the feet or part of the free arm. I wrote to the seller who insisted it was all there.
I think I spent about a week writing to her ,explaining that there was a free arm with it but that it had a second one which was the embroidery bit with all the feet stored in it.
She didn't realise she had forgotten to include it in the parcel until I priced up the cost of the missing feet and sent her links to where I would have to buy them and then said I would see her in the resolution center via paypal to negotiate the extra it would cost and how she could pay me!
Next day she phoned me saying she had found the other free arm complete with feet and it was in the post!
I think it was a genuine mistake but it is amazing what a little bit of help from a bigger corporation(with legal beagles) can do .

Today has been mainly spent in completing surveys and reading.

We had risotto for tea using the left over chicken from Monday,carrot,onion and the remains of a bag of Broccoli.
I thicken things with ground lentils now because it works rather like gravy powder but is less salty.

Im on the next Terry Pratchet book.
This one is called men at arms and follows straight on from 'Guards,Guards'.
That man has a fantastic sense of irony.
Seems a shame that he has Alzheimer's.

Bookish Monday rolls round again

I have been immersed in Terry Pratchet!
The book I have just finished was called Guards Guards and is very funny.
I especially like the Grim reaper who comes and waits for the deadies to realise they are dead !
Some hilarious Clichéd quoting too from Clint Eastward films.


If you have read and enjoyed any of the Red Dwarf books ,you will find these are at east equal in humour.
I think they are better but that is maybe just me.

Pull ups


I have been keeping up with the pull ups. I can manage about 14 in one go .



I'm afraid I have been slacking off on the running lately because it is cold and damp out and I am a wimp.


Presents



Presents are now all bought and paid for. I always buy them from my Internet survey vouchers if I possibly can.

This year I successfully managed to incorporate everything within that criteria . Just as well as the self employment was going nowhere.


OH has a couple of new things and the afformentioned vouchers and cover.
DS has something he will find handy(he mentioned how good they are and I took note without hopefully letting on that I was doing so ). 
DD has her reader dubries.
We don't go overboard on relatives.
OH has bought a few bits for his nephew and 3 nieces .
I haven't any on my side and all my aunts and uncles are dead .


For those of you who think Christmas us humbug, I don't disagree, I do think it is a great excuse though, when your kids are little and want everything.
I always used to say  'yes it is nice but that is the sort of thing you only get for Christmas or a Birthday present'.
It worked really well over the years and I still stick by it.
So for me anyway, it is an excuse to buy someone something when I avoid doing so at every other time of year.

Bookishness and phones

I am still reading the hunger games.
I am now on book 3 called the Mockingjay.
So called because the heroin of the trilogy is becoming an icon for the rebellion in her own right and the Mockingjay was her symbol during the first two books as she struggled through the hunger games.
This third book has interesting parallels with Logans Run and Nineteen Eighty Four.

Phone talk

I was reading about James the ecopunk today.
He has a blog named http://www.ecopunk.org.uk/ 
In which he outlines his slavery free life and strategies for living as freely as he can.
He doesn't let anything get in his way,if he needs to relocate abroad,well he just ups and goes!
I have followed his blog for years and his previous blog before that.
An interesting read.

A recent post of his describes his use of his mobile phone.

I thought I would describe my own use of mobiles too in case anyone finds it interesting and if they don't 'meh' !

I have 4 phones. Each one having been passed along to me by my husband when he receives his latest upgrade.

Nokia 3310

The oldest is a Nokia 3310 which is a basic little phone for making calls and texts.
It has a few simple games and runs in Symbian.

The 3310 was a commonly owned phone amongst school children in the UK some years ago and so has a large supply of 'new fascia covers' which are often available for dirt cheap prices in charity shops.

My phone has a customized outer because the plain grey was too dull. I painted mine dark green and it has owls painted on it. I also have a dragons scale desktop screen and Harry Potter theme for the ring tone.

NGage
The next newest is an NGage which looks a bit like a games console.
It can play some very nice games providing you have a large enough memory card installed.
I have played Lara Crofts tomb raider on it and it was impressive.
The NGage can play games against others if you use its blue-tooth connection.

I also have used it to run Route66 gps program along with a GPS receiver which worked very well and started me on the road (literally) to not worrying about getting lost when driving to unknown places.
NGage can also be used as a word processor and there are quite a lot of applications that can be found online running under Java or Symbian to make it work as a

• mini film viewer  
• mp3 player  
• calculator 
• calender
• Radio.

I think it was too bulky for the majority of phone users, they didn't want to carry such a brick around as it wont fit into a pocket easily.

Nokia E61

Next is my very favourite phone, the Nokia E61
This is a smart phone. It can do all that the NGage does but with more style.
The screen is larger and GPS is much easier to find for this as it can run Tom Tom or Nokia Maps(free from nokia) which get updated more . No inbuilt GPS,you need a receiver.
I love the keyboard.

• It has powerpoint compatibility.
• Can watch films 
• Play games for Symbian or Java
• Word process
• Spreadsheet
• Listen to the radio
• You can hook it up to a projector
• It can act as a modem
• It connects to wifi and bluetooth.
• Runs Symbian 

X6

The newest phone I have acquired is the X6 also Nokia.

This is an awful phone because it is touch screen.
My fingers are small,almost child-sized and I have trouble in typing on it so that my finger ends hit the right letter.
My son who owned this phone before me(not OH in this case) , has much bigger hands and couldn't type anything with it.

It has a saving grace however, it can take photographs.
For me,this is its main feature, it has an excellent camera.
It has become my phone number of quote in case I have to stick a contact number in on a form anywhere and my camera when I am submitting my receipts to shop and scan.

I keep the phone alive by dialing the 'whats my balance' number once a month so I don't bother ever topping it up as the money doesn't roll over month to month on 3 pay as you go tariff which is daylight robbery.

This has inbuilt GPS but it is a piece of sh**e ,it has only once connected to the satellites and when I most needed it to do so,when we were in  a hurry , it completed copped out .

The maps are still viewable without connecting however which is handy for general use.

It can connect to wifi and that is handy for Internet and email if we are not at home but in range of a wifi spot.

I did get skype on it too but my daughter couldn't get it to work on her phone so that part is untested.

This also runs on Symbian OS.

I really like the OS as it is easy to install things to it but the newer versions have certificate signing which is a complete pain in the proverbial because it means that certificates can expire and the software you once installed no longer does..

Bookish Monday

I have been reading the Hunger Games part 2 this week.
I haven't got to the end yet.
It is called Catching Fire and is the ongoing adventures of Katniss Everdeen and her family and community.
There are twists and turns everywhere in this book.
You cant predict what will happen from one chapter to the next and I like the underlying story that is just peering through.
Of course the next one I read will be part 3 as that is also sitting on my Daughters shelf calling to me.


Pull up news

Pull ups are going well.
Lost count of how many I have done today but I am now able to do 10 wide grip pull ups which are harder than my usual hand hold.

pedal power

I have had my bike for a good number of years !
28 to be exact.
I bought it to ride to work in comfort after owning a couple of other cheaper  bikes.
It is a Claud Butler Dalesman touring cycle and works as well today as it ever did.
I have replaced the gear mechanism which finally wore the teeth down and the changer became very weedy so that all got swapped out some 15 years ago.
The bottom bracket was replaced with a sealed unit so that instead of breaking it down, greasing it and replacing ball bearings, I could just forget it.

I used to read a lot of Cycling publications but mainly the Cycle Touring Club magazine .
If you live in the UK and want a cycle orientated insurance for yourself and your machine, I recommend joining the CTC and taking advantage of their excellent insurance .

I have two bike books on my shelf from yonks ago.
One is 'Its Easy to fix your bike' which is a technical book that I found handy .
The other is Richards Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine.
This latter is the best book I have ever read on cycling.
It gives advice on everything , road positioning  ,dealing with drivers , maintaining the bike ,commuting and is obviously written by a seasoned cyclist.

This weekend I found A new version of it in the Library.
It is called Richards 21st Century Bicycle book .
Written by the same man ,it is well updated.
He now mentions new gearing,brakes,tyres.
Recumbents.
Mountain bikes.
Helmet use .
You name it ,he has written something on it.
This book is worth having for the break down technical pictures of gears and mechanisms, alone.
I love the old victorian pictures the best.
It is powerful inspiration to get back on the dear old bikey.
I'm going to ask for this for  Christmas if anyone in my family asks what I would like.

Bookish Monday

Cant help it,have rediscovered books LOL

My son lent me his copy of 'The left hand of god' by Paul Hoffman which is a fantasy novel set in an alternative reality. In this world religion has gone mad.
Things are familiar but skewed. For instance,the characters are monks living in a sanctuary that is filled with rules. Not the sort of rules you would expect to find in a monastery,more what you would expect from a penitentiary .

There is no specific icon that they follow ,their saviour who died for his beliefs is called the 'hanged redeemer'. However things overlap with the real world in that there is a Bible ,only man is not permitted to read it. Sins are punished by death.

Everything in this world is surrounded by espionage and deceit.

The characters are mainly but not entirely children.
Not children as you would think of them in our world, these children are naive and yet worldly at the same time.

Everything in this world that appears to have no direction,is in fact serving a purpose or there is one intended somewhere soon.

Place names are taken from reality and have a certain irony to them at times.

I love this book for its humour as well as it's intrigue.
Just when things are at their direst,along comes a lighter element to get you chuckling again in an almost Terry Pratchet twist.

Having devoured this book in under a week,I am now gnawing my way through the sequel .