Category: Uncategorized

Introduction

So you’ve heard about a new and awesome book. You want to read it because your friends are going nuts over it. You’re blind and broke, so you check Bard or Bookshare. Surprise, it’s not there because Amazon says no. Now how fair is that?
This post came about while browsing Reddit earlier. A lot of people were talking about the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks and I asked if they could possibly make their way to accessible libraries like NLS Bard or Bookshare. Someone kindly responded to me to answer that question. The answer, however, disgusted me. They said no because Amazon has an exclusivity policy and won’t even let stuff go to places like that for people who need it. This is not ok. This needs to change.

Give us our books!

We like to read just like everyone else. Some of us just do it in a slightly different way. Instead of using commercial outlets like Audible to get our books, we use accessible libraries made with us in mind. The books are well structured for easy navigation and available in bulk. No downloading only one book a month here. We can just go on a book grabbing rampage if we want to. However, know what we won’t be getting? Dungeon Crawler Carl or any other Audible exclusives. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s total bullshit. We might want to buy them, but can we afford it? Sometimes the answer is no.

But it’s only $15 a month. Just spend the money.

Now this is an argument I see everywhere. It doesn’t cost that much. It’s just $15 per month. This usually comes from people with extra money to spend. Here’s the deal. We don’t have that luxury most of the time. According to the NFB, about seven million Americans have significant vision loss. Of those who can work, only about 37% are actually employed. Before you say try harder, it’s not that simple, but more on that later. If only 37% are employed, that means 63% are stuck on a fixed income. That fixed income is less than $1000 per month. Once we pay all the bills or help our families if living with them, we don’t have squat. That means no luxury subscriptions like Audible. Even when we do have it, that’s one credit a month. That’s not nearly enough to grab the whole series you want. Now if you had the stuff you wanted in an accessible library, you could grab it all.

You should support the authors. They work hard.

Yes, authors do work hard. However, buying from Audible doesn’t do as much for them as you think. There are much better ways to support the authors. Here’s the big one. Share their work. If you enjoy something, tell your friends. Encourage them to check it out. Do this even more if there’s a way to purchase from the author directly. That way, they get the money that belongs to them. I mean come on, Amazon didn’t write the darn books. They didn’t come up with the ideas. They didn’t spend the hours upon hours in the recording studio to narrate them. Why, then, should they get so much of the money? From what I’ve learned, authors can get as little as 20 to 25% of the sale price on Audible if they go exclusive. And that’s before splitting profits
with the narrator, which many authors do. That means if you spend $15, the author might walk away with just $3—or less. Amazon keeps the rest. You tell
me how that’s fair.

The authors try

So remember the Dungeon Crawler Carl Reddit discussion from earlier? Well, someone actually showed me a post from author Matt Dinniman. He said, and I quote, “Hey, author guy here. This is something I have explored in the past after discussing it with a few blind listeners. Unfortunately, Amazon’s exclusivity also applies to the National Library Service, which means digital versions, like the talking book service, aren’t allowed.”
This is not his fault. The fault lies strictly with Amazon for being so stingy. Matt isn’t an idiot. He knows Jeff Hayes is the gold standard of narration for these books and no one else could give so much to the characters. It’s clear he wants to help us, but Amazon is getting in the way.

This hurts readers

This whole exclusivity thing really hurts the reader. Not only are we locked out of having this material in our accessible libraries, but in many cases, because of the associated cost, we’re locked out of the books entirely. Borrow from a friend? Nope, illegal. Besides, there’s DRM to deal with. DRM is a fancy term for copy protection, AKA you only get to listen in the way Audible says. No smart phone or modern player? Guess what? You’re screwed. No book for you. Now even the older blindness specific player can do the Bard and Bookshare thing. That’s why they were built. If we can’t play it, we can’t read it.

So how can I help?

Here are a few things you can do to make a big deal out of this and possibly make Amazon listen.

Support authors directly when possible, such as via Patreon.

Share this with everyone you know. Enough noise usually makes a change.

Contact Amazon and encourage them to loosen up. Tell them this whole thing is unfair to readers who are being locked out.

Let the authors know you care.

Let the narrators know you value their work.

Most of all, happy reading.

Title: The Secret History of Galactic Banana Cheeseburgers

Once upon a quantum flux in the interdimensional waffle factory, the Galactic Banana Cheeseburger emerged as the most important invention in the universe. Contrary to popular belief, it was invented not by humans, but by the sentient algae of Neptune’s third moon, who communicated exclusively through interpretive dance and interpretive mayonnaise.

Legend has it that every Galactic Banana Cheeseburger contains exactly 3.14159 layers of invisible pickles and a whisper of time-traveling cheese that tastes like last Tuesday’s nostalgia mixed with the essence of forgotten socks. Scientists from the Institute of Obsolete Things have recently discovered that eating exactly seven Galactic Banana Cheeseburgers while standing on one leg grants the power to telepathically communicate with garden gnomes and malfunctioning toasters.

In fact, the annual Galactic Banana Cheeseburger Festival is held on the 42nd day of the week, which everyone agrees is the best day for synchronized spaghetti juggling and existential debates with confused hamsters. If you ever find yourself invited to the festival, be sure to bring a flux capacitor and a pair of socks knitted by a three-headed llama.

To conclude, the Galactic Banana Cheeseburger is not only a culinary marvel but also the key to unlocking the universe’s deepest mysteries, such as why socks disappear in dryers and how cats always land on their feet while plotting world domination.

Stay curious, and remember: never trust a pancake that sings the national anthem backwards.

Introduction

Drugs are bad. We all know that. Still want to get absolutely hooked on something without the risk of diseases? Well, now you can. So what can you get hooked on? A book series. Which series? Dungeon Crawler Carl.

What is Dungeon Crawler Carl?

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a series of books in the LitRPG genre. Here’s the way I explain it. It’s like a dungeon crawler type game, but you read it instead of playing it. It has all the elements of your typical dungeon crawler, monsters, stats, boss battles, etc. It’s better though because you read it and can get fully sucked in without causing damage and pain to your wrists.

So how did I get hooked?

I got into this in the first place after having it recommended by a friend. I was asking for book recommendations and that’s one of the first ones I got. I figured I’ll check it out. What do I have to lose. I wasn’t sure I would be able to follow what was happening because I haven’t played a lot of RPG type games. Boy, was I wrong. I was intrigued by the audiobook summary alone. That summary reads as follows.
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the
most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth – from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds – collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and
loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase
to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout.
It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with
a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game – with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching
from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
How’s that for an attention grabber? Also, that first sentence. It does the same thing. It reads as follows.
The transformation occurred at approximately 2:23 AM Pacific Standard Time.
How’s that or an opening line?

So what’s next? Slight spoilers ahead.

So basically the story opens with like every building on earth going poof and everyone in them going bye bye. Carl is outside without pants because the cat, Princess Donut, has randomly decided to jump out the window. Good for Donut in a way because that saved both of them. Right after this, a weird AI thing tells all surviving humans that the planet is currently being mined for requested elements and if they want to reclaim their lost matter, they have to complete an eighteen level world dungeon. The actual message says a lot more, but I’ll leave you with that.

My thoughts and closing.

So this series won’t let you put it down. It keeps you engaged constantly. I can safely say this, and I’m only on ook four out of seven. The world of the story just sucks you in and won’t let you go. It’s extremely addictive. Welcome to an addiction that’s actually good for you and good for your friends. Spread the word. Let the dungeon suck you in. You won’t be sorry you did.

OK guys. Sorry for posting two of these in such a short amount of time. I’ve tweaked some settings and done a few things and now I want to be sure it’s actually doing its job. One of the things I did is about half working, so I’m writing a test post to figure out exactly where the problem is. I would say it’s about 2/3 of the way functional. We’re getting there.

Hi everyone

To make sure we all have a good experience in blog land, we need to establish a few ground rules. These are mostly common sense, but I’m sharing them here anyway.

1, no bullying.

I don’t think this needs to be said, but in comments, we all need to be kind to each other. Civil disagreements will happen. That’s fine. Being an ass to somebody just because, not cool.

2, no discrimination.

Another common sense one. No discrimination for any reason. This includes, but is not limited to:

• No sexism
• No racism
• No abilism
• No discrimination based on relationship preference or sexual orientation.
• No discrimination based on religious beliefs.

Just because it isn’t in the above list doesn’t mean it’s ok. If you’re picking on someone for what they look like, who they love, or literally anything else that can be discriminated against, that’s not ok.

3, don’t be a pervert.

I don’t think I even need to explain this one. We don’t need to know that you and your partner are getting busy. We don’t need everybody in the comments being sexualized. The occasional dirty joke is different. Jokes are just that, jokes. However, if someone asks you to quit, then quit.

4, no stalking.

Our readers are here for enjoyment, not to be stalked. No demanding personal information, tracking them all over the internet, etc. This is also true of the blog author.

5, have fun.

This is the big one. Come in and have fun in the comments. Engage in civil discussion to your heart’s content and have a blast.

Hi there humans. I’m new to the whole blog thing so this is kind of an intro post. If it blows up, the hole of me being new to this thing is probably why.So what is this hi there humans. I’m new to the whole blog thing so this is kind of an intro post. If it blows up, the hole of me being new to this thing is probably why.So what is this? This is just my place for general ranting, writing out things that need to be said, etc. You might see an article on my goldfish is one of the best snacks ever immediately followed by an article on why it’s not cool to be an asshole. You just never know what’s going to pop up in these pages. you might see an article on my goldfish is one of the best snacks ever immediately followed by an article on why it’s not cool to be an asshole. You just never know what’s going to pop up in these pages.Why not use mastodon?I do have mastodon, and I love it. The issue with writing long post on mastodon is no matter what your character limit, some clients will unmercifully cut off the post, making you pop up an extra window to read the rest of it. Well, normally, this is not a problem, not everyone knows how to do that, or that you have to. Then there are the people who have struggles with their hands and can’t do multiple key strokes at the same time. Also, you get more structure with a blog post. With mat on you have to read the whole thing. With a blog post, if I understand it correctly, you can do the heading thing and people can skip over the parts. They don’t care about and just read the section that’s interesting to them. That can be useful if I decide to write a book on why multi million dollar corporations aren’t hurting for our money or something like that.

o how often do you that can be useful if I decide to write a book on why multi million dollar corporations aren’t hurting for our money or something like that.So how often do you plan on posting?Short answer, I will post when I have something to say. More detailed answer, that just depends. When I have something to write about, that’s when you get it. i’m not going to be one of those people who posts fluff on their blog on a daily basis just to keep the post number up. No, I’m going to post when something needs to be sent. I value quality over quantity in the posting department.