Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Strawberrysingh.com Book Meme


In the interest of providing something of a readable nature, I have once again found inspiration from Strawberry Singh and her daily or weekly blog memes.  Todays was an interesting one, having to do with books.  The pic is taken from our home in Second Norway.  Both Shaylin and I are taking part in this one.

1. Are you a bookworm?  Shaylin yes, Me not so much.  She can find herself burrowing into a novel, while I rarely open the cover unless the powers out.

2. Which do you prefer: hardcover, paperback or electronic?  Shaylin likes the ease of Ebooks, as well as the capacility to store vast amounts of literature in a small space.  If I had to choose between the three, I would probably choose hardcover, but there is a fourth (though it could be considered electronic) that I have been a fan of, particularly when I used to travel and that is the audiobook.

3.  Which book is your favorite? My favorites usually include a mix of tech and fantasy, usually involving some super-secret corporate evil empire and some lone wolf's attempt to break it, while Shaylin favors subjects of a metaphysical or parapsychological nature.

4.  Which children's book is your favorite?  Green Eggs and Ham for Shaylin, and I guess my children's book of choice would be the pop-up book, which is more of a style of book than an actual story, but nevertheless I was taken by them.

5.  What's the last book you've read?  A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving for me, and Shaylin is currently reading To Heaven And Back by Mary C. Neal,. M.D.

6.  Name your top five writers?  For Shaylin; Danielle Steele, Harold Robbins, George Anderson, Laura Lippman and Scott Spencer, while I favor John Irving, Douglas Adams, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Paul Auster.

7.  Name a book that had a strong impact on you.  When I turned 39, I had a breakup of a relationship and was floundering a little, and my older sister gave me a book on my 40th birthday called The Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz.  It changed my life, and is the basis for my current relationship with Shaylin.  It also had a strong impact on Shay, as well as The Holy Bible.

8.  Favorite & least favorite book genres?  Shay favors metaphysical, and dislikes horror.  I find technothrillers enjoyable, and I guess if I had to choose my least favorite, it would be owners manuals.

9.  Favorite & least favorite book-to-movie adaptations?  I think Peter Jackson took a great deal of care in directing the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, so right now that would be my current favorite adaptation, Shaylin (and I did too) enjoyed Moneyball.  Shay thought that the movie of Carrie was disappointing, while I found the big screen version of Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy fell quite a bit short.

10. Have you ever bought a book based on the cover alone?  Shay says she has, but for me, I need to leaf through it a bit, or get a review of some kind before laying my money down.

11. Where do you usually buy your books?  Brick and mortar store:  Borders Books and online ebooks through the iTunes store.

12.  Do you go to the library?  We both do on occasion, me especially when I'm looking for material for research for my RL career as a performing artist.  Shay searches for romance and, once again, the metaphysical.

13.  How many books do you own?  Shay lists 30 to 40, and that's pretty close to what I have.

14. If you were to write a book about Second Life, which topic would you focus on? Relationships and communication, and music promotion for both of us.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Black & White Portrait Challenge

I've been quite a bit silent on this blog for many reasons, but mostly I believed that I had little to say or to present.  But Strawberry Singh, blogger extraordinaire, has created a series of meme challenges to keep bloggers (and herself, perhaps) on their toes.  I've been quite active on my Flickr account, and had been thinking of taking the plunge one of these times, and today I figured, No time like the present.

So here it is, my answer to Strawberry's Black and White Portrait challenge.  Simple enough, either dress yourself up in black and white and create the pic that way or fiddle around in post-edit to create the B&W pic that way.  I decided to flex some photo-editing muscles (plus I didn't have black and white garb or scenery to create it inworld.

 Here is the image before I took all the color away.  I know, some of you must be sick and tired of me taking images of Shaylin and I together.  I say you're just JEALOUS!!! ;)

I added a white prim behind the sofa, which is by a company called Convair and is part of the February FaMeshed collection, just to add some contrasting background.
Here is the completed black and white image.  I have to say, it took me a little time to figure out how to lose color in the image, but I'm quite pleased with the results.

Keep your eye out for some more entries to this blog, as I get impired by Ms. Singh and her SL-blogging cohorts.