Cool and drier than yesterday. I hope.
Yesterday was very nice. Blue sky, sunlight, light breeze. Weather says clear for two more days. Hooray. Last year we got rained out. This year, we’re going ahead full bore, and so are the neighbors. It will be interesting to see how many little grifters we get. In past years it’s been between 100 and 150 approximately. Mine are going out to hit up the neighbors for the treats and I hope we see a bunch. I think we can hand out candy without spreading the wuflu.
In most years I like to add a new thing to my yard display. I build them very quickly and cheaply so they don’t last too many years anyway, so I retire stuff too, or just put it away for a while. For years I’ve wanted to do a flaming Eye of Sauron. I found some hemispherical lamp parts to use as the eye, I’ve got projectors, and I found a great animated loop on youtube. I’ve just never had time to put it all together. This year I just pointed the projector at the window and Lo! it works pretty well! I’ll save the white hemisphere screens for some other project. Other than taping up the projector body, this setup took about 15 minutes. Win!
The other thing I’m adding this year is a candy machine to dispense the goods. I got my conveyor belt all wired and running and back together so all I have to do today is add the lighting and dress it up. That will probably take longer than I’d like.
I’ve got all the more delicate stuff to put out today too. A couple of skeletal pirates, some other ghosts and bones, fog machines, colored lights, fun stuff that wouldn’t really survive being wet for several days. Most of it is stuff I take in at the end of the night too, so it doesn’t disappear.
If everything goes well and I have the time, I might even get to making a third soft sculpture animated witch for my little vignette. They are basically just a head and two arms made from pantyhose stuffed with fluff, black hats, and a piece of black cloth as a dress. They are supported by a mic stand up the backside. One stirs a cauldron, one turns a spit with a stuffed pig on it, and if I add a third, she’ll be tasting the cauldron with a spoon. There is an arrangement of sticks and flicker bulbs to look like cooking fires. They look great and took very little time or work. I use BBQ grill rotisserie motors to power them.
I think it’s worth the effort. Providing a sense of ‘normal’ for the kids during this prolonged disaster is hard enough without skipping holidays. They’re not dumb. They know we’re working under restrictions. Most of them have to do with school after all. But they want things to go back to the way they were SO badly. In an adult that wish should be just that, with the acknowledgement that things won’t ever be the way they were- they never go back. In a kid, I’m inclined to do whatever I can, at least for a while to smooth out their transition. Plus, I like candy. And I like putting on the display.
I’ve been stacking the stuff for my Halloween and Christmas displays as long as I’ve been stacking the food we’re eating. Don’t forget about things like Birthdays and Holidays in your preps. That little bit of extra thought goes a long way come the day.
nick
Good on you for keeping Hallow’een going, Nick. Hope you and the kids have a great time.
“Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man” on “Svengoolie” tonight.
Kinda rare that this movie sees screenings — in a bit of a casting switch, Bela Lugosi plays The Monster (!), but Lon Chaney Jr. whines his way through the Wolfman/Larry Talbot part as usual.
(Lugosi only played Dracula twice — once in “Dracula” and a second/final time in “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein”. The producers of the latter cast originally someone else thinking Lugosi was dead!)
If you have Amazon Prime, “Truth Seekers” is interesting but not the laughs implied by the leads/writers. “Hot Fuzz” is still among one of the best film comedies I’ve seen in the last 20 years and still manages to mix in the horror elements really well.
As with “Good Omens”, Amazon spent the money and kept the show British with authentic locations.
And of course, “Baby Yoda 2.o” debuted this week to bail out Disney’s flatlining subscriber base for Disney+.
Mailing an EBay sale at the contract USPS in a u-store-it type facility near our house, I noticed a sign posted indicating that the office would be closed on Tuesday.
–“street actions” I wonder if it was the writer that used that phrase, or someone interviewed…. ‘cuz it sounds like something out of a playbook or manifesto
–Walmart decided not to lock the guns away from potential rioters, except in places that have seen riots. Initially I quoted the article mainly to show how widespread the idea of coming violence was, and thought walmart was trying to reduce gun sales but they were acting fairly responsibly in that they were locking them up in advance of having them looted and stolen. Frankly, I don’t know how they could have any stock left, unless shoppers couldn’t find a sales clerk to do the sale…
n
Sean Connery dies.
Dang!
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824
–Such wonderful people, we should welcome them here…
—but, but , but…. I thought the US was the worst evah? And anyone think cartel control has really been reduced in the last 2 years?
n
–yeah, saw that. Passing of an icon.
n
Sean Connery dies.
RIP. I figured that he had been unwell going back to the mid 2000s since he never appeared with Craig Ferguson on “The Late, Late Show”. I don’t think there is a bigger fan of Connery on the planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aanBjxHwI4A
I want to see the Eye of Sauron! Could you post a YouTube? Sounds like great fun, for you as well as the kids.
@Greg Norton
Hot Fuzz is brilliant.
For those not familiar, it’s the second of three films done by the same cast: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and World’s End.
Amazing value on Blue-Ray at $14.99 for the set.
I concur.
You guys go right ahead. I’ll just stay here and play with this shiny ring….
Hot Fuzz is brilliant.
For those not familiar, it’s the second of three films done by the same cast: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and World’s End.
“Hot Fuzz” works on several levels — comedy, horror film, and, if you are really paying attention, a “Wickerman” (the old 70s movie) tribute.
IIRC it was Edgar Woodward’s last film, with Woodward lured out of retirement realizing what Wright/Pegg/Frost had in mind as soon as he saw the script.
Official Democrat Cemetery Vote Collector
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-supporters-troll-biden-campaign-bus-with-hearse-called-official-democrat-cemetery-vote-collector
Someone down there is a pretty funny.
My daughter plans to start the afternoon and evening handing out candy to the mostly younger crowd. She’ll dress as a cat, to be non-scary to small kids. After that, put on her real costume, a plague doctor, and go out mooching herself. I’ll be accompanying her, as the costume is all black and has limited visibility.
Unfortunately, her two friends who live nearby suffer from terrifiedmotheritis. One of the girls hasn’t been allowed to have any non-family contact for seven months. The other has been going to school for the past two months but has to shower and change her clothes immediately upon coming home, and hasn’t been allowed to have contact with anyone outside of school.
Unfortunately, her two friends who live nearby suffer from terrifiedmotheritis. One of the girls hasn’t been allowed to have any non-family contact for seven months. The other has been going to school for the past two months but has to shower and change her clothes immediately upon coming home, and hasn’t been allowed to have contact with anyone outside of school.
Biden voters.
“Joe Biden won’t take my house or German grocery getter away. *We* worked hard for this, and Joe understands. Wearing the mask *is* a patriotic duty. Orange Man bad.”
They want to believe.
“Bond, James Bond”
The best Bond.
How much does the Tampa Bay Times suck?
Check the picture at the top of the page before they realize the mistake.
Or is it the AP’s mistake? That’s worse.
https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2020/10/31/sean-connery-james-bond-actor-and-oscar-winner-dies-at-90/
Looks more like George Lazensby to me, Photoshopped in a hurry.
Did you mean Edward Woodward? The old Equalizer TV show is one of my favs.
“IIRC it was Edward Woodward’s last film, with Woodward lured out of retirement realizing what Wright/Pegg/Frost had in mind as soon as he saw the script.”
Did you mean Edward Woodward? The old Equalizer TV show is one of my favs.
Yes, Edward Woodward. Thanks. My bad. I had Edgar Wright in my head.
@nick – re Chad’s comment …
I didn’t do anything with his comment other than approve it. He just ‘linked’ the words to the URL.
Like this Rick’s Forgotten Winchester Book link.
(Type in the link word. Highlight it. Click the Link button. Enter the URL. Click OK. You now have an uncle named Bob.)
@Rick
Small world!
My cousin told me about your book. He thought it was great. He loves abandonded mines up in that area.
For some humor:
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/10/31/high-times-in-the-plague-year-booze-cannabis-stores-have-no-trouble-paying-rent/
I’d suspect a jump in the birth rate come late January, too.
@Jim — glad your cousin liked the book. It was an interesting subject. Actually went to the Great Basin NP visitor center last year and saw the actual rifle in their display. Went to the caverns in that park, but couldn’t take the tour – it’s usually booked….although not sure of their status now with the “CC” (Covid Cooties) problem. I went there last year, “BC” (Before Cooties).
The person that found the rifle still works at that visitor center, but she was away from the building, so didn’t get to meet her and talk to her.
(If your cousin can leave a review, that would be great. Marketing books is hard. Getting past the ‘friends and family’ sales level is also hard. And I’m still waiting for the movie producers to contact me. I suspect they haven’t because of the “CC”.)
Working on a second Western at the moment. It’s about 90% finished. Need to make a final editing pass and tweaks, and figure out the cover and blurb. But it all keeps me busy (when I don’t procrastinate about working on it).
Thanks to your cousin being one of the ‘select few’ that have read the book. Feedback is always appreciated.
I like that!
BC – Before Cooties
AD – After Dempanic
“SpaceX Starlink: User terms of service declare Mars as ‘free planet’”
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-mars-city-starlink-terms-of-service-declares-free-planet
“SpaceX has released its terms of service to beta testers, and it makes a strong statement about Mars’ future government.”
Cool !
Don’t forget to fall back tonight ! An extra hour of sleep before church at 830am in the morning, whoo-hoo ! Even though I slept for 12 hours last night.
https://xkcd.com/2378/
“Biden Advisers Sound Red Alert Over Black, Latino Turnout”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-campaign-red-alert-over-black-latino-turnout
“Senior Biden campaign officials are ‘becoming increasingly worried’ over low turnout among black and latino voters in key states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.”
Sounds good to me. And I know several black and latino people who are voting for Trump as the alternative is offensive to them.
xkcd: Probability Comparisons
https://xkcd.com/2379/
That is a lot of probabilities.
I have suspicions that other members of my family are secretly voting for President tRump. They would never claim such and tarnish their lib credibility. They all have degrees or are working on them and even they are scratching their heads at Plugs’ eef-ups.
HARRIS/plugs 2020!
Trunalimunumaprzure!
Mailing an EBay sale at the contract USPS in a u-store-it type facility near our house, I noticed a sign posted indicating that the office would be closed on Tuesday.
My father is worried about the dum-bro-crats crashing the ATM, ACH, and Credit networks (the money networks) on Nov. 2 or after it. Especially if the Trumper wins.
For some humor:
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/10/31/high-times-in-the-plague-year-booze-cannabis-stores-have-no-trouble-paying-rent/
I’d suspect a jump in the birth rate come late January, too.
And a jump in the divorce rate.
“Priest Killed In Lyon As France Rocked By 3rd Terror Attack This Month”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/priest-killed-lyon-france-rocked-3rd-terror-attack-month
”Another terror attack has apparently been carried out in France, the third in two weeks and fourth in 2 months, leaving a Greek Orthodox Priest dead.”
Time to reset the zero days board since a fatal attack by a crazy muslim.
HARRIS/plugs 2020!
Trunalimunumaprzure!
Kneepads/Plugs 2020
Of course, Kneepads could apply equally as well to Newsom, since he had a matching embroidered set next to Kamala’s in Willie Brown’s bottom desk drawer.
A commenter at Instapundit says:
“
”
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
“Mailing an EBay sale at the contract USPS in a u-store-it type facility near our house, I noticed a sign posted indicating that the office would be closed on Tuesday.”
My father is worried about the dum-bro-crats crashing the ATM, ACH, and Credit networks (the money networks) on Nov. 2 or after it. Especially if the Trumper wins.
The EBT network is the one to be most concerned about. That is under the direct control of JP Morgan/Chase via the Paymentech subsidiary.
A couple of people in my GTE training class worked at Paymentech in Tampa before Chase bought them ~ 20 years ago. One is now a director at JP Morgan — a Lefty with a flexible morality.
Be afraid.
Rick, I’ve added your book to my wish list. It sounds like a fun read.
You asked for feedback? My dad and my sister both drive a LOT and enjoy audio books on CD, especially westerns, especially mysteries. Not Audible or other “e” versions. They need something they can put into the truck CD players. I don’t know if there is any market for such outside of those two people, but they have a hard time finding new books in that format. Everything is being pushed to Audible it seems.
Galloping towards closing on the 1964 home I mentioned we are buying. So far it has been easy and low stress working with the mortgage company, insurance folks, real estate agent, sellers. Home could be moved into as is but we will be redoing virtually all of the floors (no thank you 50 year old carpet) with raw red oak upstairs (this is old hat for us – easy peasy) and LVT downstairs. About $4,000 in materials. We did solid maple floors in our current home (sanding is simple with the right equipment) and they look gorgeous. The red oak will be a fair amount of effort however the end result and longevity is worth it.
Going to demo the bathrooms to the studs because we know there have been leaks in the past and there are minor controlled leaks now. Watching lots of ‘Home RenoVision DIY’ – we’ve got a construction friend we trust and it looks like we can tackle without too much heart ache. We expect to find rot and problems inside the walls. We will use a licensed / bonded plumber to deal with the water aspects.
Only surprise was that the garage heater is defunct. Quote to replace was $3,100. We found a unit identical to what is already in place for $210 on clearance, plus labor will be under $1,000.
Rabbit care at 20 Fahrenheit isn’t much different from rabbit care at 40 Fahrenheit. I deal with poop / pee three times a week. If I leave it too long the pee freezes in the bottom of the buckets and requires smacking to knock out. This gets splashy and unpleasant. The poop freezes into solid chunks where the water nipples leak. The tarp has remained flexible so I just give it a thump and everything slides down to my bin. Easy. Rabbit care this morning (pellets, hay for six cages, pee and poo clean up for three sets of two cages, bashing ice loose from under leaky nipples) took 12 minutes. My 500 watt tank heater arrived. The 250 watt heater is working fine at 20 Fahrenheit. Ice crystals have formed around the rim of the water barrel. I intend to wrap some bubble insulation around it. The chickens need a bit of cold weather attention before that, though. Chickens are doing fine so far. Their coop has been running just above freezing with no heat added. That’s good because if it gets into the 40’s they won’t come out to eat or drink because the temperature differential is too great.
Politics in Anchorage. Our court fight against the homeless shelters is not looking promising. Our injunction was denied, the municipality of slow walking everything, and time is sharply against us. The earliest we would get a ruling on collecting signatures is year end (that’s expedite!) and the municipality has been clear they intend to close on the four buildings no later than year end. We also assume that the municipality will take it to our supreme court if we win a positive ruling at the end of the year. There’s more but that’s discouraging enough.
I’m glad we found the 1964 house. We intend to be out of our current home by year end. I expect to have our current home on the market by the end of January. Tough work ahead of us.
“Shell says it plans to shrink its refining portfolio to six sites”
https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2020/10/shell-says-it-plans-to-shrink-its-refining-portfolio-to-six-sites
So much for having 98 refineries in the USA. Looks like we are going to drop another 20 or so.
Galloping towards closing on the 1964 home I mentioned we are buying. So far it has been easy and low stress working with the mortgage company, insurance folks, real estate agent, sellers. Home could be moved into as is but we will be redoing virtually all of the floors (no thank you 50 year old carpet) with raw red oak upstairs (this is old hat for us – easy peasy) and LVT downstairs. About $4,000 in materials. We did solid maple floors in our current home (sanding is simple with the right equipment) and they look gorgeous. The red oak will be a fair amount of effort however the end result and longevity is worth it.
Yes, we replaced 21 year old carpet in the new used home we bought last year. It was … greasy.
We put in a cheap LVT in the daughter’s third bedroom that we call her kitchenette. Works very well.
I hope that you do not run out of energy. I did.
Good luck !
Going to demo the bathrooms to the studs because we know there have been leaks in the past and there are minor controlled leaks now. Watching lots of ‘Home RenoVision DIY’ – we’ve got a construction friend we trust and it looks like we can tackle without too much heart ache. We expect to find rot and problems inside the walls. We will use a licensed / bonded plumber to deal with the water aspects
Bathrooms are always freaking disasters. But it is so nice to have indoor plumbing. Dry cabins suck after a very short while. A lot of my extended family grew up with 2 holers behind the farmhouse.
Of course, swatting the wasps while peeing was good exercise.
“Could Trump Flip California? Together, We Could Achieve The Impossible”
https://redstate.com/mrate/2020/10/30/272462-n272462
No freaking way. The voting fraud alone will ensure that.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
@PecanCorner – re audio version of my book
I’ve been thinking about audio books – but the process of getting it done can be a bit expensive. There are people that do that, but the cost gets into $1K+. Don’t have enough sales to justify that expense, I think. I’d rather spend that amount on advertising (which I need to do more of).
Of course, I could do it myself, but there are costs and quality issues to that – I’d have to set up a home studio (about $100 of equipment just for the electronics), and then hide in the walk-in closet and spend the time doing it (a walk-in closet is best because all the clothes help absorb background noises).
There are some geeky alternatives, though. Text to Speech can be done, although those voices are a bit robotic. I found a free program called Balabolka that converts text to speech using the ‘voices’ that come with your OS. Pretty easy to use.
So I installed it, and made a short demo of a couple of paragraphs from the new book. Converted the WAV into an MP3 file, and its’ here https://www.theforgottenwinchester.com/audio/sample01.mp3 .
Still a bit robotic, but perhaps ‘listenable’. What do you think – is that something that sounds ‘good enough’ to listen to in the car?
“Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse claims he was hired as security, told police where to find gun used in fatal shootings”
https://abc7.com/i-shot-two-white-kids-rittenhouse-describes-deadly-kenosha-shootings-to-police/7521611/
Sounds like Rittenhouse is militia to me. There is USA federal law about militia in the USA for 17 year olds and above. This is clear cut self defense.
I’ve been thinking about audio books – but the process of getting it done can be a bit expensive. There are people that do that, but the cost gets into $1K+. Don’t have enough sales to justify that expense, I think. I’d rather spend that amount on advertising (which I need to do more of).
Book signings at some of the independent book stores around you ? The ones that have not been burned down that is.
https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2020/06/02/don-blyly-watched-his-bookstore-burn-and.html
Your websites are the primary advertising along with your listing on Amazon. They are good !
It is easy to blow a lot of bucks on advertising and get zero results. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising in the last 25 years and my best advertising is still word of mouth. The only advertising that I do now is our website and a couple of engineering conferences, I have give up on magazines.
So I installed it, and made a short demo of a couple of paragraphs from the new book. Converted the WAV into an MP3 file, and its’ here https://www.theforgottenwinchester.com/audio/sample01.mp3 .
http://www.audible.com ???
One of my favorite authors is contracted to release his books under Audible first for four months before the Kindle and dead tree versions. He says that Audible can auditize his books in a week. Of course, he is an indie and sells a lot of books.
http://dennisetaylor.org/wheres-the-xxx-version/
The Audible site is for use *after* you have created an audible book. My problems is getting the book into a spoken form.
Haven’t found a good text-to-speech program. There are some out there, but not all handle dialog, and punctuation (especially commas) in a ‘natural’ manner.
And I think that the audio book market is well under 10% of book sales. And when your book has sold under 100 copies (I’d be happy with 100 sales for now), I’m not sure that the expense of creating an audio book is worth it. And creating a lousy-sounding audio book with text-to-speech is probably not a good idea.
But hiring someone to create your audio book will cost $3k+. That requires a selling price of 3x a paperback – since royalty rates on audio book is about 40%, compared to up to 70% on the Zon. A lot of sales needed to recover those costs.
There are ways to read a Kindle book out loud – I think that Kindles support that. I have to dust off one of my old Kindles to see. Not sure how good it is.
There’s probably a good market in the indie-book-publishing world for an inexpensive way to create an audio book that doesn’t involve live ‘actors’. Or a guy in a closet with a microphone.
So much for having 98 refineries in the USA. Looks like we are going to drop another 20 or so.
My hope is that the suburban female swing voters eventually realize that “Old Joe” may not take their German grocery getters away, but Kamala will if they don’t do something really fast.
If Plugs wins, 2022 has to look a lot like 1994 or we’re hosed.
Rick, thanks so much for the old college try, but I think they would find the robotic voice annoying. The story excerpt is good tho! I had no idea it was so expensive to do audio …. thanks for adding to my education. I knew that *talent* costs would be high if the author wasn’t reading his own work, but didn’t understand the hardware / software part of the mix. I guess that explains why more aren’t offered in audio format from the beginning.
And, I understand that the tech is moving away from hard copies of anything. I’m guessing that in my lifetime, CDs and DVDs will go extinct.
We will still get a paperback copy of your book, and I’ll pass it on to them for reading when they are not driving. 🙂
Jenny, we’ve always felt we know the place is meant for us when it all goes smoothly. Sounds like your family has found a home to keep living your dreams in. So happy for you!
You had the luxury version.
Swatting? Rookie. You are supposed to try to pee on the insects. Good training for writing one’s name in the snow.
Re marketing: Be sure you let those folks know about your book…. they might want it for their gift shop. Offer them quantities of 10 or 12 paperbacks, small shops can’t afford to stock more than that (some may only want 5 copies at a time). Ditto with your local bookstores and gift shops, including the hospital auxilliary. Do you have a box of the books in the trunk of your car, so that you can offer them to likely stores and deliver immediately?
@Pecancorner
When I first published the book (last summer), I got 12 copies of the paperback and sent it to the Great Basin NP Visitor Center, no charge. I suggested that they put it in the gift shop for sale, and contact me if they wanted more.
No response, even after one followup email.
As for handing them out; I don’t really go out much – even BC (“Before Cooties”). And I live in a rural area – not too many book shops around here. I have provided a few autographed copies to friends/family. And did some FaceBook advertising earlier this year. Got a few sales from that.
Probably should do some more FB marketing, but I have a well-used procrastinator. Will probably do some when the 2nd western is ready to publish. There’s a FB group that has some good tips on how to market. And another one that helps with blurbs and covers. Will be taking advantage of both of those, if I can get the procrastinator to leave me alone. I keep getting distracted with web sites…and reading, which I call ‘research’, but is really another form of procrastination.
Well, Halloween was pretty much a bust.
On the giving-out side, in two hours we had one person come. And her parents had obviously been driving her around and stopping at the (few) houses with lights on. She got a big handful of candy. After that I set a basket of mixed candy on a chair on the porch. It didn’t look like any had been taken, last I looked. I’ll note that our house is at the end of a curvy dead-end street about 1/8 mile long. We and the across-the-street house can’t be seen from the other end and no one else had their lights on. I’d guess most people glanced down and didn’t see anything and didn’t bother coming down.
The Child dressed up in her plague doctor outfit and was pleased with herself. Hit the house across the street. So far so good! But then in walking around the neighborhood we saw that maybe a third of the normal houses were lit up and giving out candy, and most of them just had a basket on the porch. On the plus side, two people gave her quite a lot, on account of so few people coming by. The overall haul was only a little below average for the distance walked … which was less than usual because the costume’s goggles were fogging in the cold, which hadn’t happened on the test runs. The kid was practically blind and having to hold my hand so she wouldn’t walk into, say, black cars in the driveways. (No sidewalks in the neighborhood and all of the walkways from the front doors go to the driveways.) We saw only one other group, of five early teens, though we heard a couple others.
And the capstone to this debacle: I bought over 30 pounds of candy. That was in part due to a miscommunication, as I’d planned to give a lot to the school for the younger kids, as many of the parents “don’t believe in Halloween”, but it’s every kid’s natural-born right to load up on sugar at this time of year. Eh, I’ll figure something out. I know that one teacher gives out candy to students as rewards, so he and maybe others will likely take some off my hands.
Tangentially related: I picked up my daughter from piano lesson after school and also two teens who live nearby after their sport practice. I knew everyone would be hungry so I brought several bags of chips, cookies, a bag of Halloween-sized chocolates, juice boxes, and soda, as well as apples, oranges, and beef jerky. As expected, they tore into the junk food. They were so enthusiastic about it that I asked if I should take them to McDonalds for some real food if they were that hungry. “No,” one said. “My parents don’t buy this kind of food so I’m taking maximum advantage of it.” The other agreed. Wow. No corn chips. No cookies. No junk food at all. Looks like I have to up my game if I want to win Rottenest Dad of the Year.
@Pecancorner – re reading ebooks.
I’ve been digging around, and there is text to speech built into IOS and Android. With the Kindle app, you can turn on text to speech, and then have your phone/tablet ‘read’ the screen to you.
There are many googles/bings/ducks on how to do this. On my LG3 phone (Android), it’s in Settings, Accessibility, then turn on the “Select to Speak”. Then back to the Kindle book, and there is a speak-bubble icon you can tap to get into the speak mode.
I only got the female voice. Didn’t see where to change it to a male voice. But the speaking portion is pretty good, even with punctuation. Not perfect/life-like, but ‘good enough’. Interesting to experiment with.
The Audible site is for use *after* you have created an audible book. My problems is getting the book into a spoken form.
Haven’t found a good text-to-speech program. There are some out there, but not all handle dialog, and punctuation (especially commas) in a ‘natural’ manner.
And I think that the audio book market is well under 10% of book sales. And when your book has sold under 100 copies (I’d be happy with 100 sales for now), I’m not sure that the expense of creating an audio book is worth it. And creating a lousy-sounding audio book with text-to-speech is probably not a good idea.
But hiring someone to create your audio book will cost $3k+. That requires a selling price of 3x a paperback – since royalty rates on audio book is about 40%, compared to up to 70% on the Zon. A lot of sales needed to recover those costs.
There are ways to read a Kindle book out loud – I think that Kindles support that. I have to dust off one of my old Kindles to see. Not sure how good it is.
John Scalzi uses Wil Wheaton. I suspect his rates are astronomical (snicker !).
Of course, it is the height of fashion for authors to read their books out loud nowadays (even the great James Patterson does this occasionally). I suspect a sound crew would help immensely though.
I love the audio versions of the Jack Higgins and Tom Clancy books. I have FreeRipped them all into MP3 files for my CD less truck.
http://www.freerip.com/
Haven’t found a good text-to-speech program. There are some out there, but not all handle dialog, and punctuation (especially commas) in a ‘natural’ manner.
Get Alexa to read your book to you !
https://www.hellotech.com/guide/for/how-to-have-alexa-read-a-kindle-book
and
https://www.zdnet.com/article/alexa-can-now-read-kindle-books-aloud-from-an-amazon-echo-for-free/
That would be freaking cool !
swatting the wasps while peeing was good exercise
Swatting? Rookie. You are supposed to try to pee on the insects. Good training for writing one’s name in the snow.
South Texas ! Lots of insects, very little snow.
Besides, I have lived my life trying to not piss off the Black Widows.
Summary report as soon as the kids are asleep..
not a bad day at all.
n
Well, Halloween was pretty much a bust.
On the giving-out side, in two hours we had one person come.
You had one more trick-or-treater than we did. Of course, being on a country road with deep ditches, no street lights, and no sidewalks seems to inhibit them. We now have to eat a lb of candy. I was coming home and did stop for a pickup truck with 10 or 12 treaters in the bed three houses away from our house but I guess we were not on their list.
Well, kids are in bed, hopefully asleep, but possibly reading under the covers – despite me confiscating the FLASHLIGHT.
Big day of steady work getting ready. Made and decorated the candy conveyor machine. It looked great and worked like a champ. Got the other stuff out and lit. Didn’t have time to make my third animated witch, but there is [probably] always next year.
The evening started slow, but picked up. Most of the kids on our street are babies or toddlers. It took a while for all the neighborhood and surrounding area kids to filter in. Then we had a pretty steady night. There were clumps followed by pauses, but that was a steady rhythm. Definitely not as busy as normal years, but I didn’t count, and we didn’t give out glow bracelets so I don’t know how many of anything we did give out.
One other house on our street had a bucket of candy on the porch but no one else was answering the door. Usually there are 5 or six. My kids didn’t get the full buckets of a normal year either. They did our block, the other block opposite us, and two blocks one street over. (Wife went in tyvek with a hard hat and face shield, daughter one as a research scientist in a lab coat, metal clipboard and stethoscope, daughter two was the Covid, round red disk front and back painted and with applied items. Dog wore his hot dog costume.) Since I had a big fat pro-grade blacklight pointed at the house, I figured I’d paint my hair, mustache, eyebrows, and beard with UV reactive makeup. I threw on a lab coat and was quite the dashing figure….
All in all, a good day. I wish more people were participating, but I was glad and heartened to see the ones that did. FFS, it’s an outdoor activity, and we can do it while maintaining our distance and masking rules.
I’ll need to shower before bed to get the makeup out of my hair but it was worth it.
n
Ok, photos or it didn’t happen, right?
Eye of Sauron–
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201031_183216-scaled.jpg
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201031_193946-scaled.jpg
Video of the eye projection– 8 seconds —
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201031_185729.mp4
Animated soft sculpture witches–
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201031_183123-scaled.jpg
Candy Conveyor–
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201031_201449-scaled.jpg
Your host–
Nah, not gonna rick roll you or goatse you…. and can’t have my mug out there on the intarwebs…
n
Got the last normal trick or treaters, a big flock of grade school kids and younger, about 9:20. I was already taking in stuff for the night. I took in most of the stuff, turned off almost all the lights, and yet we still got a hopeful RINGING THE DOORBELL at 11:45pm. Jeez. And from the girl’s profile, late high school or older. In a silver cat suit. I just watched the cams and after she rang a SECOND TIME, she gave up and left.
I’m headed for the shower and bed. Gonna sleep in…
n
Thanks for posting the pics, Nick. That eye is seriously creepy cool.
We have spent the last umpteen years at a friends for Halloween. We put out a bucket of candy, lights, etc, in our drive as usual, then went trick or treating in our friends neighborhood (they have sidewalks, we don’t). Normally their neighborhood has virtually every neighbor participating. This year maybe one house per side of a block. Very sad. Those participating were overcompensating with generous candy disbursements. A couple yards had pretty inventive displays. Our friends usually get a steady stream of children. This year 4 or 6 in 3 hours. I checked our Wyze cams after the fact. We had a single group of 3 and a singleton.
Daughter had a good time.
I miss the glory days of Halloween. Roving bands of children, fully home made costumes, the expectation that it was about it being a child’s holiday that need little parental participation beyond handing out the goods. The only parents I remember seeing as a kid were either walking the littlest of littles that were too small to keep up with the older kids, and the parents handing out candy.
I miss that liberty.
“2020 General Election Early Vote Statistics”
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
“Total Early Votes: 92,038,417 • In-Person Votes: 33,141,215 • Mail Ballots Returned: 58,897,202 • Mail Ballots Outstanding: 32,303,784”
Wow, that is a lot of early votes. 10 million in Texas, 11 million in California, and 8 million in Florida. There were 129 million votes in the 2016 election, I wonder how many will end up in this election ?
And more importantly, how many of them will be fraudulent ?
https://www.lifezette.com/2020/10/florida-officials-uncover-massive-election-fraud-scheme-to-register-dozens-of-dead-dems-as-voters/
For some good advice on marketing books, try Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Nick, that’s amazing. I’ll pass that video along to my friend that goes overboard every year!
I was at his place for Halloween, it was a decent turn-out, perhaps 75-100, between 5-9pm. The weather was warm, but clouds rolled in at sunset, so no moon.
We had the usual assortment: Spider-man, Superman, Princesses and dinosaurs.
There was one young lady in a very well done plague doctor mask & suit.
We had one plague doctor too, but either didn’t comprende ingles or didn’t know it was a plague doctor costume, or maybe didn’t want to engage the old guy with florescent red hair, yellow eyebrows, and orange goatee.
It was a good looking costume, with coat and mask.
n