I like checking up on Blackmask.com every now and then to see the latest public domain e-books that have been posted. I read e-books on my Clie using the fabulous iSilo and Blackmask thoughtfully provides the books in various formats (text, HTML, iSilo, Mobipocket, etc.) for reading on digital devices. I think they’ve probably got …
Author Archives: brownstudy7975
The Warden and Barchester Towers
After listening to Trollope’s Autobiography via Audible, I got a Bantam paperback edition from Nice Price Books (local used-book store) and searched on the web for any secondary reading. I ran across the Trollope-l mailing list and this site, which is an entryway to many writings, factoids, and discussions on Trollope’s novels. And I found …
Monthly splurge list
I copied this tip from some money-management page online: Impulse purchases are always the things that trip up our budgets and cause us to overspend. You may not be able to avoid impulse purchases all the time, but you can limit them by rewarding yourself each month with something that you really want. Decide on …
Real Alternative
The only Real product I’ve voluntarily installed on my PC is the Rhapsody player. But when I want to listen to NPR stories or other feeds that use RealAudio, RealAlternative is my choice. Real Alternative lets you play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. (JetAudio is OK too.) I tried UltraPlayer, but it …
New Vocabulary
Some of the words Liz and I have invented because there was a need: “flustrated” – of course, a portmanteau word combining flustered and frustrated. A needful word I use in the kitchen when nothing seems to be going right, pots are boiling over, the smoke alarm is going off, and I grow flustrated and …
Virtual housekeeping and deck-clearing
Spent a reee-diculous amount of time recently cleaning up the hard drive and my Yahoo mail account. I engaged in structured procrastination and did the kind of end-of-year cleanup I should have done in January. I read on LangaList a comment that, if you had to reinstall Windows XP, then your My Documents folder would …
On Arnold Bennett
This blog’s subtitle, “Oddments of High Unimportance,” comes from Arnold Bennett’s journal entry for 23-July-1907: In the afternoon I seemed to do nothing but oddments of high unimportance. I went on a Bennett binge last year. I suppose I first became aware of him through posts on Zhurnalwiki, the proprietor of which has several admiring …
Volare
For no good reason, other than I’m just in a relaxed mood and Liz is out of the house, I’ve got the Dean Martin Playlist on Rhapsody turned up kind of loud. Like lounge music, it quiets that preoccupied layer of my overheated brain so I can relax and get on with things.
A monthly hit of friendly comics journalism
In my Yahoo Bookmarks, I have a subfolder called “Monthly,” which stores about 5 or 6 places I like to visit whenever the monthly odometer turns back to 1. One of the sites I like spending time with is Sequential Tart, comics news and interviews from the distaff members of the happy tribe. The interviews, …
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Susie Bright, Underground Comix, and Great Stories
Over at Susie Bright’s blog is a great journal entry where she remembers encounters with the greats of West Coast underground comix (like posing nude for them during a jam session) and then is gifted by Spain with a comic featuring her as muse. Now that’s immortality. Illustrated with some choice examples of comix work …
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