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The Truth Fairy Reads III

There's a new book out by one of my favorite authors. Well, technically, it's not out yet, but it is available for pre-order from four retailers, and more expected. The pre-order price is just $2.99, which will rise to $4.99 when the book is released on Friday, March 23rd. This book is a book on how to build a solar energy system for off-grid use on a rock bottom (they call it shoestring) budget, and then expand it to provide full energy to your home within a couple of years. Get this while it is still available at this rock-bottom price.

Solar Energy on a Shoestring Budget

The Truth Fairy Reads II

This weekend starts the traditional spring rush to buy new cars, so EVERYONE should go out and buy, read, and understand the book I mentioned in my last post, Jay Hamilton's wonderful book HOW TO BUY A CAR Without Losing Your Shirt. I don't care if you are looking for a new car or a used car, (there is one thing in that book that everyone looking for a used car should understand--and nobody else is teaching it!) this book will help you save money when you buy, and save more on maintenance!

But today, I would like to talk about John Waaser's recently published book, PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION: Because a Technically Perfect Picture Without Good Composition is of No Interest to Anyone. This is Book One of John's photo course. John spend two decades photographing motorcycle races for a living, and wound up as the Eastern US Contributing Editor  for "CYCLE WORLD MAGAZINE," which at one point was purchased by a division of CBS, Inc. You don't rise to that point without knowing what you are talking about! In this book, without any technical rigmarole that might be hard to understand, John teaches you how to take a picture that will simply LOOK good. He does not talk much about the controls on your camera, or any later manipulating with Photoshop, or any of that stuff. He talks about backgrounds, foregrounds, how to separate the background from the subject, and the foreground from the subject. He talks about color, and about relative size of the subject, and cropping, and lighting. All the stuff you can and should control before you actually take the picture. And except for some discussions about zoom lenses, the book will work for you even if you are just using the camera in your cellular phone. And he talks about several photos he took that he sold in spite of the fact that they were technically very imperfect, because they just looked good, because he snapped the shutter at exactly the right moment. The so-called rule of thirds is the photographer's version of the ten commandments all rolled into one, and he not only does an excellent job of talking about it, but he drew a diagram that puts it all into perspective. If you take pictures, even if they are only of your kittens, or your new child, and even if they are only for distribution to your own family, this book will have you taking pictures that will put your audience in awe of your photographic skills. And it does it all in language that anyone can understand.  The above link will take you to the book's own page on the publisher's website, from which you can find links to purchase the book from the iBookstore, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Kobo, and Google Books, among other retailers. The cover photo alone is an absolutely lovely sunset photo, and he tells you exactly how he chose and cropped it to make it fill the bill as a cover shot. And no, it's not something he found on some free photo page on the internet! He was standing on the dock at a local lake where the county shoots off fireworks over the lake every July 4th, and while waiting for the fireworks to begin, he noticed how beautiful the sunset was over the treeline at the far side of the lake, and he took about fifty photos of it as the sun got lower and lower. He was able to crop this one to show the sun in the center, with the clouds coming down an equal amount on both sides, giving him the space for the contrasting text he wanted at the top and the bottom.

Price at the time of this writing is $3.99 for the eBook, but better hurry, there are rumors of a rise to $4.99 very soon. The Paperback is $19.99, because interior color pages are vastly more expensive than black and white, and this book has a few interior photos in full color.

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION

The Truth Fairy Reads!

HOW TO BUY A CAR Without Losing Your Shirt is an excellent primer for anyone in the market for a new or used car. Car dealers train their salespeople, and each dealer belongs to a large support group that teaches them what words will incite people to buy NOW! When you walk in there you are a serious underdog in the negotiating arena. This book will teach you how to negotiate with a professional negotiator, and come out, if not ahead, at least far better than you could have on your own. The book also goes in to other areas not covered in most books of this kind. The author had worked in at least two dealerships which wrote phony warranty claims on every new car that came in for service, for instance. Those phony warranty claims are part of the manufacturer's cost of doing business, and they get marked up at the normal profit margin, and then are added to the price of every new car that you and I buy! Jay tells you how to spot these claims, and tell the manufacturer about them. This book sells for under $5 as an eBook and under $10 as a paperback, and it will absolutely save you far more than the price of the book itself, so this one is a no-brainer. Everyone should read it! It is available in a wide variety of formats from a wide variety of retailers, including Google Books, the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Smashwords, and many others. Their first review was from Wikipedia-listed performance artist Tom Miller, who is a published author himself. Tom says as follows:

Jay Hamilton (motorsports journalist and former manager and salesman for several automotive dealerships) wants to make sure if you’re buying a car, it is you and not the dealership in the driver seat of the negotiation. His straight-talking ninety-two page primer is folksy and filled with personal anecdotes and insider information designed to give a buyer the money-saving advantage needed to make a smart deal. It is well worth the price of the quick-read book. In fact, with the information provided in the nine chapters of HOW TO BUY A CAR WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SHIRT, the reader will come to know exactly what the salesman knows, and more.

Like having a personal consultant at your side, Hamilton’s casual but detailed primer is a fun and easy read. Topics range from researching your dealership to motivations of a salesman, and even to specifics regarding some of the tricks and traps which plague the industry of automobile sales. Using personal experience and anecdotes, Hamilton breaks down the psychology of buying by illustrating the complexities of the buyer/seller relationship in layman’s terms.

Particularly in the chapter, The Five Steps in Selling a Car, we learn how salesmen can play to a buyer’s habits, tap into a customer’s behavior patterns, and subtly connect to their customer's psychology in order to dampen intellect, amplify passion, and compel them to just say ‘yes’. But with the help of HOW TO BUY A CAR WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SHIRT, the reader will be informed not just in the buy/sell process (including used vehicles), but also in the servicing of the vehicle for the future, and even right down to the nitty-gritty of the warranty package.

Beginning with a simple concept--actually practicing to buy a car out in the real market before opening one's wallet--Hamilton’s no-nonsense advice and personal experience will literally save the buyer hundreds and possibly even thousands of dollars. And with hand-drawn comic illustrations (by artist Michael Garvin) and witty personal examples from real life, this book distinguishes itself as a serious, but seriously fun way to very quickly become a wise consumer—and not just for automobiles, but also in the practical buyer/seller situations we face each and every day.

If you are in the market for a vehicle, preparing with this book is an invaluable asset!

The truth fairy is in complete agreement with Tom on this one!

The cover is a painting to the author's specifications by Gainesville, Florida artist Michael Garvin. Note that the salesman is depicted as a vulture, and that he has the customer's shirt thrown over his left shoulder!

The website also has a couple of pdf files available telling you how to go about cracking the dealer cost code that often on every price tag in furniture, appliance, and electronics stores, so you can use the negotiating techniques from HOW TO BUY A CAR to save money also those items, and a pdf that tells you how to use the information in this book to start your own business as a car-buying negotiator for other customers!

Find links to retailers who have this book for sale, at the book's website
This is a link to the book's website

Well, it's been another long while. We had a too-warm winter, with a deep freeze near the end of February, that totally destroyed Blueberry crops around here. I lost virtually all of my own early crop, and the late crop came early. Only a few berries left, and they are not getting ripe. I probably will spend the next couple of days pruning the plants to allow for more growth for next year's harvest. And the mosquitos are fierce. I neglected to buy fish because my seasonal pond was virtually dry at the start of the season, but then we got some rain, and the pond looked more normal, and I still failed to buy any fish to stock the pond, and now I can't stand to be outdoors for long.... Trying to get a cell phone repeater working in order to have internet access at the house. AT&T has the best signal, but I can't afford their internet. Second best should be Verizon, but even though they are getting better plans, I still can't afford theirs either. Sprint and T-Mobile are decent plans, but no worthwhile signal at my place.So it's time to try to boost the signal. I have an outside antenna, with a Wilson cradle to transfer the signal to the phone. There is no real amplification with this setup, but I pick up 6-7 db, going from -113 to -106, which still is not good enough. So I'll have to find the best amplifier, or see what kind of performance I can get from the cheapest amplifier???? And the election is heating up. I work in retailing, and I always mention that the price with tax is after we pay Rick--as in Rick Scott, the governor of florida. This is the guy who is hurting the people of the state by refusing to go along with the Nation's health care law, and who, after being elected on a pledge to bring jobs to the state, laid off 4000 state workers, and increased payroll deductions on all who remained, and who has 4000 more teachers in fear of losing their livelihood, and his line item vetoes on the state budget affected contracts that were already signed, and resulted in layoffs of people hired to perform the work. He's probably got a 10,000 jobs deficit before he creates the first new job, and he has yet to do that. Anyway, I have only talked to about eight people in that whole time who admitted to having voted for this guy, and two of those said that they were sorry they did so. WE NEED RECALL! But of course, the republic controlled legislature won't give it to us, so it will have to be done by voter initiative. You can tell if a republic candidate is lying (and by the way, if they can shorten the name of my party, I can do the same to them) by looking at his lips. If they are moving, he is lying. Far too many of them support this clown who murdered Trayvon Martin, and we still would not get any support to renew the automatic weapons ban, even after Aurora. This has got to stop! We must make sure that we get the elderly and porr people, including minorities to the polls this year, even if Rick Scott pulls the same shit jeb bush pulled with the state troopers in 2000, intimidating minority voters on their way to the polls. Scott has already gotten in hot water over his attempts to drop "non-citizen voters" from the rolls, and his photo id law. republic candidates are saying now that voting is not a right, but a privilege. There is already case law in Massachusetts, I believe, that says that driving is essentially a right. Voting certainly falls into that category as well. This state is doing everything it can to remove that right from anyone who might be tempted to vote for the Democratic party. The most important thing in November is to strengthen Democratic control of the Senate, to at least sixty votes. If we get enough voters to the polls to do that, we should also be able to ensure an Obama victory. I am not particularly fond of Obama, as I prefered Hillary Clinton, and I believe the health care reform should have included VA-style health care for everyone who wanted it. During Katrina we heard that a new combination VA and charity hospital was being built in New Orleans. We need a lot more of those. But I don't want to see anyone waste a vote on a liberal third party candidate. If only a fraction of those who voted for Nader in 2000, in Florida alone, had cast their vote for Gore instead, we would not have had eight years of the George W. Bush problem. So I am prepared to cast my vote for Obama, even if I have to hold my nose to do so. Because NOTHING would be worse than to see someone named Mitt in the White House!

Phew! Where to start?

So much stuff happening lately. I HATE BAD COPS! Cops all over this country are reacting like Arab police during the Arab Spring. I can't wait to see Arab news sites referring to the American Fall! Wouldn't that be ironic! I've long felt that the only reason that existed to become a cop is the desire to abuse the power that goes with the badge. Peaceful protesting is a right guaranteed by our Constitution.

Now, I've owned two corporations, and I approve of them in general. But when they rip everyone off, and injure innocent people, and spend millions to influence laws. it's time to reign them in.

And when cops hurt the people they are paid to protect, we MUST make an example of them and show the rest of them that we will not tolerate such conduct! Ditto for Judges and other people involved in law enforcement--including attorneys on both sides of the issues.

And the Republicans! We all know what happens when you turn 999 upside down...well, the devil is in the details.... And Cain now saying that Jesus was a conservative. That is the stupidest thing he's done since he slayed Abel!

Troy Davis, RIP

My chief reason for opposing the death penalty is that so many on death row have been proven to be innocent. Now we have a case where 77 per cent of the witnesses who testified that Troy Davis shot an off-duty cop, have now recanted their testimony and stated that the police pressured them to identify Troy Davis as the shooter. THESE ARE BAD COPS! There was no physical evidence at all to indicate that Troy was guilty. All the evidence came from witnesses, the vast majority of whom now say they lied under pressure from the police. Yet the state of georgia (it doesn't deserve to be capitalized) has now murdered a man who in all likelihood was innocent. This is not a civilized society, and georgia is not a civilized state!