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Hi all, My computer acted up last week. I thought it was going to suffer a premature death. It wouldn't shut down properly sometimes, it stalled sometimes, and then it started beeping at me and turning itself off. I did all the diagnostic tests I could find, and it passed them all. I then did what HP help suggested, a systems restore (not a recovery). I restored the computer's settings to a week before the trouble started. At the same time I found and installed a HP update for its modem that said it should solve problems with the computer automatically shutting down. I also fiddled with the connections to the CPU and rattled it. Either the restore, update or rattling seems to have fixed it. It has been operating without problem for five days now. After messing around with the computer, I got back to some writing and finally finished the first draft of the novella I have been working on for months. I will now edit it and then get it critiqued. I reckon I have been writing if for...

I enjoyed this novel by Australian Graham Storrs. It is about terrorists going back in time and causing mayhem, resulting in ripples in time. These ripples splash through to the present causing havoc capable of destroying cities. After a friend of Jay's dies at a timesplash gig, he becomes a policeman who is seconded by interpol to try and stop the terrorists. He is aided by Sandra, the beautiful ex-girlfriend of the chief timesplasher Sniper. From the start of the novel I was drawn in and the tension continued for it entire length. The novel travelled the world and, with my limited knowledge, that world seemed real. I was interested to read that Graham Storrs lived in London where much of the novel is set. It reminded me of a James Bond type spy thriller set a few decades into the future. Perhaps the one quibble I had was the dialogue, which sometimes seemed more last century, than the way they might talk in mid-21st century. This was the first ebook I have read. I read i...

Hi all, I spent more time writing last week than I have for months. Most of my energy went towards an article I was writing for Divine online magazine. I really earned my money this time, because I changed and edited it at least 20 times. I finally emailed it to the editor this morning. I managed to spend some time on my novella, getting it a few sentences, I hope, from the end. I have the final line, I just have to fill in a few words to get there. It has taken me way too long to write its 21,000 words. My new Kindle arrived. I have used it for two days and it still works. Amazon are a fabulous company and they deserve to totally dominate the world publishing industry. Hopefully that raises the karma quota between me and them. A courier just left with the broken one. I must have telekinetically caused something to go wrong with it because I kept the box it came in, in case I had to return it. I was lucky my mind caused it to malfunction within the 90 day warrant...

Hi all, My Kindle broke. Whaaaaaa. It had been given me trouble all last week. Most days it would work okay for 15 to 20 minutes and then for some reason the search box would just appear at the bottom of the screen. So I pressed “back” to get rid of it, and then it would reappear again and fill up with qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq, like a button was stuck. When I pressed q, jo8b came up. I tried to press “back” faster than the q’s came but to no avail. The previous page button on the right hand side did not take me to the previous page either, it brought up the search box and filled it with a qjo8b. Ebooks would also automatically flip backwards through their pages. All this made it very hard to read. I looked up the amazon website and there were suggestions for fixing similar faults of holding the power switch on for 15 seconds to reset the kindle. This I did, and it worked for a little while. But this morning the thing with the search box started as soon as I turned it on. If mad...

Hi all, I have been marvelling at the incompetence of the media lately. I have noticed technical and intellectual stuff ups all over the place. Last night I was watching the local Prime news and for the third time in recent weeks the bulletin had blackouts and ads breaking in during news stories. Last night those errors wrecked a story on the Wangaratta floods, and as I live in Wangaratta I was particularly interested. I've heard that the news will be no longer located in the local region soon, they are moving it to Canberra, so maybe the current staff don't give a stuff anymore. Pity, I used to work for Prime. Next we have The AGE , where I have frequently spotted typos over the past few weeks, making me feel better about all my typos. Are the journo's too overworked to check their work? That may explain their ridiculous front page story of a couple of days ago. Evidently WikiLeaks published a secret American memo saying the Australian media was full of stories about ...

Hi all, I have a new article up on Divine . This one is about my father’s time in residential care. He had dementia. I looked on track to do a bit of writing last week, but constant electrical storms had me turning off my computer just as I was about to start writing. When I lived in Sydney my flat was struck by lightning and half the wiring had to be replaced, so I am can justify my concern of unplugging valued electrical items during storms. My noisy neighbours also distracted me from writing. Their teenage son, who lives in the garage, was playing his doff doff music on Tuesday and after I went next door and my doorbell ringing was ignored, I went back into my backyard and I screamed – not yelled, the whole street would have heard my complaint – over the fence for him to turn it down, get some headphones or cease because the bass noise just flowed through my house and was driving me mad. Much to my surprise, the noise ceased. I then decided to attack the probl...