Tuesday, March 31, 2009

This Month's Book Review

While it is very hard to knit and read at the same time, sometimes my urge to read a good book actually overtakes my urge to knit (only sometimes). The only problem is that I am very picky when it comes to books. I usually don't stick with one genre, sometimes I need a good romance, sometimes I need an intellectual boost, sometimes a simple young adult Harry Potter type book, and sometimes a thriller. With this latest reading urge I finally gave into the crowd and read my first James Patterson novel.

I read the first book in the "Women's Murder Club" series, 1st to Die. From James Patterson's website...

A serial killer is stalking and murdering newlyweds on their honeymoon. San Francisco Homicide inspector Lindsay Boxer takes the case and along the way meets three other women–a lawyer, a reporter, and the city medical examiner. Joining forces to solve this gruesome crime, the Women's Murder Club is born.

I loved it! It had a good pace, it was interesting, and compelling. All of the characters were well developed but I liked Claire, the bold, caring, southern-momma like medical examiner, the best. While she wasn't the main narrator in this one, I felt I identified with her over the other more aggressive females in "the club." I hope that the other books in this series use the other ladies as narrators, giving each book their own personal twist. This first book had the police inspector, Lindsay, as it's main narrator, using the other three women for their insight into this career building case while battling with her own health, and social problems. I hope in the other books we'll get more in depth looks into the lives of the other leading ladies.

I believe there are currently seven books out in this series with an eighth book due out this summer, but don't quote me on that. I have the second book on hold at the library; hopefully it'll come in before my reading urges go away and the total knitting obsession settles back in.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

A Note from a Happy Raveler

Warning: If you are a non-Raveler you might not be interested in the main subject of this post, but the childish drama is entertaining!

So if you stalk blogs like I do you probably have noticed a good amount of people upset with Ravelry over some account banning. As a relatively quiet non trouble making raveler the situation as I see it is this...
Pre 2008 election there was a group that supported McCain (fine), and they loved to talk about their support of McCain (also fine). Post 2008 election they turned into "The Bunker" stressing their view that an Obama led America was something to be afraid of (not great but not necessarily hurtful). It is important to note here that Ravelry is also host to a pro Obama group and had he lost I don't claim to know what their reaction would be. So they stewed awhile on their own group peacefully (upset but not irrational), but eventually their emotions ran a little rampant and they began some nasty name calling that eventually went against the Rules to Live By on Ravelry and apparently the moderators of this group did nothing to remind their members of the rules. So to make a long story short the owners of Ravelry and the moderators of "The Bunker" went back and forth over what was appropriate on Ravelry, which ultimately led to "The Bunker" being closed down due to failure to comply with the site's guidelines (which is totally within the right of the owners because they are the owners). So the jilted members of this group stomped their feet and pouted in the form of Ravatars (avatars for Ravelry) and posts and such...
This is where I feel the story gets ridiculous... Some of the former members of "The Bunker" banded together on another networking site and then used it to hack into Ravelry disrupting it's operation. The continued abuse of Ravelry in this manner led to the owners banning the members of this outside group. Unfortunately there were some innocent bystanders who were members of "The Bunker" but not of the new militant (haha just a joke) group who were also banned.
So now this group is blogging all over about the woes of their being banned from Ravelry. When they were on Ravelry they did nothing but bitch about their rights and not being able to call other members Nazi's and other worse names.

Bottom line: The owners of Ravelry OWN Ravelry, so just like with any store, bank, and/or restaurant it is their discretion whether you are allowed in their place of business. If they wanted to ban you because of your views they would have done so with you group's conception not 6 months later. Accessing a website by means of another website is shady, disruptive, and destructive and I don't believe it would be allowed anywhere. You asked to be invited to Ravelry for the purpose of finding cool patterns, sharing your work, cataloging your yarn, and talking to people who share your hobby. If those were not your intentions you should have found another site. You are not being treated unfairly, you are being treated like children because that's what you are acting like. You are acting like children who lost an argument and then began throwing stones. Grow up and walk away with dignity without ruining Raverly for the rest of us.

**BTW the innocent bystanders mentioned earlier are being looked over by Ravelry's legal team which I'm sure will take awhile since every person banned claims to be an innocent bystander.
**If you have read this and would really like to smack me now please don't bother adding a nasty comment as I won't be posting it.

Photo Editing...

Lately I've really been into photo editing. My theory being that if I can edit pictures I take of Kaylyn well enough I won't have to have get expensive professional pictures taken as often. I tried a few different software programs, a Photoshop trial, Artweaver, and Gimp. I finally decided on Gimp. It's relatively easy to use, it has all the features I need and it's free!

GIMP stands for The GNU Image Manipulation Program. You can download it as free shareware here. There is also a manual that you can either download to your computer or read online. I found that the program itself is very easy to use, if you have a basic concept of layers and filters you'll do fine! However, the manual was kind of frustrating to read. It felt incomplete in some ways, like the person writing it wasn't the person who created all the features. If you have a specific problem or task there is really only a 50% chance you'll find it in the manual, in most cases you'll only find a similar situation and then will have to work out the rest of the details yourself. In general GIMP is really not any more complicated then Photoshop and it is a lot easier than Artweaver. So if you are looking for a free, only semi-complicated program I would definitely suggest checking it out!!

Here are some of the pictures I have edited so far... right now I've mostly been doing the whole black and white with a little color thing... here's what I got!



Monday, March 16, 2009

Moving in....



So I was getting kinda bored with Vox... frustrated with the photos and stuff like that. So, I've moved here! I will keep up my Vox blog, mostly because I had a pattern on there, so if you'd like you can visit it here.

I'm still playing with everything here on Blogspot and getting it to connect with my Ravelry page and such so give me a few days to get a clear thought out post up!