Farsite: Working toward a million score.

 Just working on getting to a million score points for the next ship upgrade.  I hope to be able to get a ship that can use gates with the next item drop.  Took a week off to spend with a visitor from out of town.  Now I need to get back to work on the score points.

Still Working on Farsite

 Haven't had much time to play Farsite much My GF is coming out from California this week for a short stay. 

Still trying to figure out how to get credit and still completing tasks to get more score points in the hopes of getting a good crate next time they do a crate drop. 

Once the GF goes home I'll have time to actually spend working with this game.

Farsite Gameplay Update

 Finally for enough rewards to upgrade my little ship.  Still trying to figure out how to use the ship to earn credits with which to buy a sector.  I realize some players who have been with the gamer since day one have a huge advantage over a newcomer. But I'm sure that has to be a way to earn enough to eventually buy a sector.  Still excited about this game!  Check it out.
https://play.farsite.online/

Farsite New items and Sectors.

Today Farsite released another update; this time making some essential items available for further game development.  Radar is the most crucial because one cannot mine without it.  Now it's available for cheap.  Since I cannot afford to buy a sector on a planet I will try to find some work and make some money.

Farsite is Outta Sight!

 Just started an new game, Farsite.  It's a persistant virtual multiplayer universe.  This is by far the the best structured "colonize the universe" game to come along thus far.

At this point I know little about it but will make posts periodically to update my progress.  I am excited to get into this game.  Seems there is also a crypto currency factor I have yet to explore.

There are in addition to the games  there are websites of communities you can join all over social media.  Here's a link to the games site.  There is nothing to download and install, the game is all online.

https://farsite.online/

Check it out!!!

Cut Flowers from Walmart Radioactive

I was at Walmart a while back and had my radiation detector with me. I discovered all the cut flowers they sell were mildly radioactive. Nothing too dangerous but twice the background reading. That means to me that the flowers are being grown using some sort of fertilizer that is contaminated or being grown on contaminated land because they are not for human consumption..
This also mean the radiation may not be uniform and some flower bunches may be dangerous.
Just a heads up, I would advise against buying Walmart cut flowers or at least check them first if possible.

Amazon Lies Again.

Just got off the phone with Amazon.   They lied to me and insulted my intelligence by tell such an absurd, blatant lie.  This is not the first time I've caught Amazon outright lying to vendors and customers.

I first discovered Amazon was a lying, corrupt website was in 2013.   Amazon had just gone through the books a deleted thousands of book reviews with no explanation whatsoever.
Authors contacted them asking what happened to their reviews.  Amazon said they could only discuss it with the reviewers.  Reviewers asked what happened to their reviews and were told they would only discuss it with the authors.
Amazon flat out lied to everyone and never explained their actions.  So I expect not less from them at any time, sometimes they're great sometimes they are insulting liars.  Here's their latest lie.

I bought a copy of Fallout 4 from Amazon and downloaded it through the steam website.  I wasn't crazy about having to log on to some website to play my stand alone game in the first place.  Well nearly a years ago Steam pulled some extra security crap.  Although I have the correct login and password, they say they will also require a security code to login that they will send to my email.  The code never shows up in my email, preventing me from logging in so I can play my game on my computer.

I try to contact Steam, apparently the only way to do it is to log on to their website.  There is no email address, no phone number.  No way to contact them unless you login to the website.  Catch-22.

I contact Bethesda, the game manufacture, and after explaining the problem they just keep parroting contact steam.

As last resort I go to where I bought the game, Amazon, and they tell me they can't contact Steam about the problem.  Now tell me, how many vendors and third party sellers on Amazon do you think Amazon is unable to contact in any way?  Zero, that's how many.  They told a blatant, absurd, intelligence-insulting lie.

Facebook Goes Down.

Don't know how long it's gonna last but facebook went down around 6:30 pem CST 10/09/2017.

Why Religion Harms Children

I was attacked in a post on Facebook recently for saying that I thought it was child abuse to teach religion to young children but I never did explain why I think that. Here's why.

It damages their minds and creates cognitive dissonance. It distorts their world view. They come to believe that faith is fact and science is opinion. That is a very distorted view of reality and a form of mental illness.

Children should be given fact based teaching not faith based teaching. When they get older and have some sense them maybe introduce them to religion. But when I see videos of toddlers in church mimicking the hand raised in praise and swaying with eyes closed before they can even reason, I find it disgusting and am outraged,

No matter how you cut it brainwashing toddlers with religious dogma should be criminal and faith based schools outlawed.

It is because of such practices we have Muslim and redneck mass murderer terrorists, They were brainwashed as children and can not reason or think properly, logic eludes them.

That's why teaching religion to small children is child abuse, it turns them into mentally ill adults who end up either dangerous fanatics or hypocrites.

Facebook's Attack on the First Amendment and Their Political Agenda.

I have proof Facebook is targeting certain people and pushing a political agenda with their censorship. I posted a photo of Dick Chaney as a dickhead and was promptly given a 30 day block within seconds of reposting an image I originally got from Facebook and had been shown on Facebook hundreds of times. The excuse was it is sexually explicit, a lie. 

This is the second frivolous 30 day block from posting in 2 months. As an artist, writer and publisher who does business on Facebook this has a devastating effect on my business. 

Yet if I report Asian porn, a naked woman sitting on a guy with his penis clearly in her vagina, I am told by Facebook it does not violate the community standards. Clearly there is specific material and people being targeted by Facebook for censorship that is not based on the posting guidelines. 

Their option to report a block as being in error is a joke and they NEVER respond to a wrong block and never remove them or respond in any way. There is no way to actually contact FB to challenge a wrongful block and no-one ever responds in any way to their forms.

I also had an incident yesterday where I was prevented from going to a website that had the letter Michael Moore wrote to the electoral college. Twice Facebook refused to allow me to click through claiming the site was malicious. The third time I tried the facebook post with the link disappeared. Rather than censoring false news Facebooks is censoring out political satire and real news that doesn't meet their political agenda.

This leads me to believe two things, First facebook has a political agenda and is targeting people critical of Republicans and their agenda, and second they are using a double standard by which to judge content. Yet they would presume to be the safeguard of truth.  This is the vilest form of censorship and a direct attack on the first amendment. Once they destroy the first amendment the 2nd is right behind.

UPDATE:

Here's yet another example of facebook's selective censorship.  This is not in violation of community guidelines yet if I posted the very same thing I would get yet another 30 day ban. Part of the problem is that the people who check these things are in some room in India or Pakistan and don't have English as a first language and the treatment of any given report is left to the discretion of whoever sees a report at any given time.  This abusive hater calling people cunt's and telling them to drink bleach seems to be sanctioned behavior.

Clearly Facebook and Twitter sanction the abusive haters for one reason, the preponderance of numbers.  

The mentally ill with OCD are their greatest source of traffic and they greatly enhance the numbers they can show stockholders.  

Facebook in particular is desperate to hide the fact that of the over the 1 billion member accounts they claim the vast majority are dead or abandoned accounts.  The numbers would look far different if it weren't for the rabid haters who obsessively make dozens if not hundreds of posts a day.

So basically facebook allows the sociopaths to abuse you so they can make money.

The Itinerant Artist Project

I have been a commercial and fine artist for 45 years.  Over that time I have lived many places, mostly in California and Maui.  During that time I have done over 100 paintings, murals and artsy signs that I have lost track of and have no photo of them either.

I have decided to write a book about my art career and the difficulties an artist faces when they don't come from a wealthy family and have an unlimited budget. While everyone seems to think I should be wealthy because of my artistic abilities they always fail to realize the high cost of doing art.  As an example, to do an art show all the art needs to be matted and/or framed.  The more prestigious the gallery the more expensive the matting and frames need to be.  On Maui I could do enough paintings for a show at a cost of a few hundred dollars.  But to display those painting in a gallery in Lahaina would require a $1500 frame and matting job for each painting to be on par with the rest of the art in the gallery.  This is $18k out of pocket for a show of 12 paintings effectively pricing me out of the market although my art was comparable to the other artists.  the same applies in all the major cities of the world.  Basically if an artist doesn't have money to start with they don't get too far regardless of their talent.  I am finding this true for writing too.  Without a substantial budget to promote your work, you don't get to far.

So over the last 45 years I have painted some very nice art on commission, the only avenue open to me.
Most of these painting were done for private parties but some, most notably my murals and signage were for businesses.

What I am trying to do now, since I lost my portfolios of most of my work over the years, is to use the internet to call for previous clients and businesses who have photos of my work to contact me so I can assemble a master portfolio to include in my new book.

I expect this project to take a few years to complete although I have recently managed to track a few pieces using google, there are still dozens that I need to find, if possible.

So this is a call for those people who I have sold are to in the past 40 or so years to help me create a compilation of my work for posterity.  If you live in California or Maui and have any paintings, mural or signage signed either Beauchamp or Richter, two professional names I've used as an artist please contact  me.

Here's a photo of a mural in a house on Maui I stumbled upon while looking at homes for sale:

I painted two portraits for Emil White at the Henry Miller Museum  One of Henry and one of Emil.  They seem to have disappeared from the museum.  If anyone has any pictures of them I would love to hear from you.

I also painted a huge mural in Eureka Ca. That I have no photo of.  It was painted in 1989 and has since been altered.  I am trying to find anyone who has a photo of the mural of Venice I painted in Sergio's Italian Restaurant that used to be on 2nd st.

Hopefully I will get some response and be able to gather photos of my life's work.

A Happey little Halloween Tale for my Readers.

The Face Behind My Eyes

I cannot continue in this state of horror. I have been afflicted with a malady, a mental aberration so terrifying that I can see no relief save my own demise. The continued torment and anguish has become unbearable. I have finally deciphered the inscriptions from the site where all my misery began. I cannot bear to endure this knowledge and will, in the hopes of warning others away, commit this to paper before I end my torment. I fear if I wait much longer I will completely lose control of myself and this evil will be free once again in the world.

My sad tale begins in 1934 in the Carpathian Alps. I was on expedition from the Miskatonic University with a group of archeologists investigating rumors of eldritch ruins found high in those grim reaches when the face of a glacier had collapsed and revealed an archway that led deep into the heart of those unnatural peaks.

We started out in a state of great anticipation and excitement, expecting to perhaps make our name in the annals of archeology for discovering some unique remnant of a lost civilization. Fully equipped with the latest gear and the best guides—one the actual discoverer of the ruin—with high spirits.

All went well and in less than a day we reached the entrance after departing the local village on horseback as there were no roads in this area of the range.

The local villagers had legends of some unspeakable evil residing within those peaks but we dismissed it. The locals always have tales of evil in the ruins no matter where in the world one goes.

On our first approach to the archway we were struck by two things. One was the immense size of the aperture and the other the unknown writing that inscribed it.

As we stood at the opening we could see it was no less than thirty feet in height and half as wide. The inscriptions were vaguely familiar appearing to be written in an ancient form of Cyrillic not used for many centuries.

Our first bit of bad luck happened even before we entered. A loud crack was heard overhead and a large icicle broke loose over our guide. Looking up at the sound the guide, mouth agape, was struck by the ice stalactite. It struck him in the open mouth and extended through him while tearing his mandible nearly off, and exited through his back just below the shoulder blades. He stood silently looking at us with his jaw hanging by shreds of skin from his left cheek for several seconds before collapsing to the ground, dead.

I had unfortunately seen such savagery during the great war but several of our expedition were unnerved and a few vomited at the sight.

This set the tone for the entire exploration to the ruins.

We had started out with a compliment of a dozen scientists and twice as many local men to manage the pack animals and camp. We had the men wrap the body in a tarp and sent it down the mountain with a man on horse back so the family could properly inter it according to local customs.

We set up camp and settled in for the night ,each of us reflecting on the terrible accident of the afternoon. We planned to get an early start exploring the ruins that had cost the discoverer his life.

The morning was overcast and grim, dark and foreboding with the promise of severe weather soon to break. We entered the arch which turned out to have once been barred with thick wooded doors that had long since crumbled away. Only the hardware was left to indicate their existence. This, it was discovered was not so much a ruin but the entrance of a series of caverns that had been worked to resemble great halls and galleries.

We ventured slowly into the first gallery and encountered the remains of an epic battle. We were shocked by the sized of the combatants, considering our first view of them was from a massive peal of thunder and a flash of lightening that illuminated the entire chamber. What was particularly startling was the number of the dead and fact it appeared they were fighting to get in. Because of the cold and dryness within the cavern more of the bodies were mummified than not. Many appeared to have been burned and others seemed to have literally been torn apart. But what was most unsettling was the massive size of the remains. Most were eight to ten feet tall with some as large as twelve feet. Although they resembled men they were not. These were a different branch of evolution, no doubt related to humanity but not of it. The skulls had double rows of teeth and the hands six fingers each.

These appeared to be the giants of legend and lore, spoken of even in the bible.

The number of the fallen was astonishing, we estimated there were better than ten thousand dead.

As we ventured further in we reached the end of the battle. At the back wall of the last gallery sat a creature on a throne. The throne looked to have been wrought from a single enormous emerald.

Seated on this throne was a creature not of this world. It was larger than the largest of the fallen and we estimated it's standing height would have been over twenty-five feet tall. It too had been mummified and was something from which nightmares are made. Its head was like a humans in shape but with the bottom half of the face a mass of tentacles with a beaked mouth like that of a squid or octopus. Its hands and feet were over sized with webbing and long claws. It was dressed in golden armor and had a very large spear thrust through it's chest. The giants too were dressed in exquisitely crafted armor as though all parties concerned knew there would be no survivors so they dressed in their finest for their last battle.

Although the giants were fascinating the throned creature was the center of attention. It was while we were setting up lights, powered by a small generator we had brought along, the next fatality occurred. One of the scientists slipped and fell on a sword that was pointing upward still in the hand of a fallen warrior. This time the fatal wound was through the neck at where the scapulars meet and due to the width of the blade, severed the spinal column and separated the head.

We decided to take our dead colleague to camp to prepare him for transport back to town when we discovered the weather was a raging tempest with driving rain and high winds. It was decided we'd stay in the caverns until the storm abated.

I and another professor of archeology, Professor Long, decided to spend the time examining the strange creature on the throne. For some reason we decided to try and remove the spear from the chest. This was no easy task and it took all the strength of both of us to dislodge it. When it finally came lose the creature made a discernible groan and a green vapor seeped out of the wound. It caught Long full in the face. I was lucky, or so it seemed at the time, to have fallen backwards to the cavern floor six feet below and was spared all but the tiniest of the vapor which spread quickly through the galleries and affected everyone.

I was on the floor, semi-conscious, due to the fall, and watched in a dream-like state as the unbelievable events unfolded.

Everyone in the cavern went mad and grabbed whatever weapon was handy and began hacking each other to bits. This frenzy of murder only lasted a few minutes before the last person alive eviscerated himself and fell to the floor dead. At that point I lost consciousness.

The next thing I remember was being carried to a tent in the rain by the locals that were left in the camp with two of the scientists to prepare for our return with artifacts from the ruin.

The storm had abated to a light rain and I was transported to the village several miles away where I lay in a fevered stupor for several days before coming to my senses.

It was then I discovered the full extent of death's visit upon my party. Of the 12 scientists who were on the expedition only myself and one other survived. Fully twenty of the locals were dead. When the huge flash of lightening illuminated the cavern it had struck the camp and killed many including eighteen horses and a dog who had come along with his master from the village.

Upon my recovery I discovered the locals had decided the best recourse to contain the evil they had told us lived in those mountains was to dynamite the entrance closed and it was now buried under a huge overburden of stone and ice. I had no choice but to return to the university nearly empty handed. What was salvaged from the expedition was the careful drawings of the writing on the cave entrance that the professor who survived had made on that first afternoon from extensive photographs he had taken. It was remarkable the film had survived the storm and lightening strike but it had.

Professor Booth-Ames, the photographer, had provided me with a set of drawings of the writing and I was determined to decipher them.

I was never completely well after the events of the expedition and soon after began having dreams, nightmares really, of the thing in the cavern. It would appear in my dreams very close to me as though I was looking in a mirror from a few inches away. I tried to ignore them as they would happen only every fortnight or so.

Meanwhile I endeavored to unravel the writings. Finally with the use of several rare books on dead Eastern European languages I started to make some little progress.

Unfortunately the closer I got to the solution the more frequent and severe the nightmares. The frequency was now so often that I feared sleeping. The face now spoke to me in some inhuman dialect that although I could not understand the words I could grasp that it intended to possess my body and bring its evil back into the world through me.

Thus I have become the wreck I am today. My worst fears are true, the dreams are not just nightmares, but real. Some evil monster is trying to take my body from me and destroy humanity to bring once more its nightmare reign back into to the world.

Today the final piece fell into place. I finally completed the translation. It reads thus:

“Here lies an evil from beyond the stars and outside of time. Do not enter these caverns. We have sacrificed the last of our race to put it to rest here. Do not awaken it.”

I understand now what I must do. In some inexplicable way the green mist contained the essence of this creature and some small part of it lives within me and is trying to gain control. I must not allow that to happen. I only leave this journal to warn others to never open that cavern, never seek to investigate those sinister, evil galleries.

The police were called to the garret of professor James Whyte on Oct. 13, 1937, after the landlady reported the smell of something dead and not having seen the Professor for more than a week. Upon entering the suite they discovered the decomposing body of the professor hanging from the rafters, a pile of note and papers burned in a basin and a journal with the tale above written within. One of the coroners who autopsied the body noted that when the body cavity was opened there was a small wisp of green vapor released that drifted out through the ventilation.

(c) Rick Carufel 2013

A Seasonal Gift for All Self-Publishing Authors

Hi All,
I thought it would be nice to share all the bits of wisdom I have picked up over the last five years of self-publishing.  There are many pitfalls with all the parasitic services available to separate the writer from his money.  I have compiled a list of the things that need to be done to present a professional quality product to the public.

You've finished your book and now you're ready to be the next hot author and sell a million copies.
They never told you that writing the book is the easy part.
There are three things that you absolutely need to have done where you cannot spare expenses.
I will provide links to different resources at the end of this blog post.

1) You absolutely must have your work edited and proofed professionally.

This will be the biggest expense for your book.  Editing rates vary wildly, usually for $.01 to $.05 a word.
This is also the area where it's easiest to get screwed by some self-appointed editor who doesn't even have a degree in English.  There are literally hundreds of websites offering editing services.  I rate these from fantastic to rip-off.  If you have a social presence on facebook or goodreads, find some friends who are very happy with editing services they have had done.  Try to not use someone who has not been recommended by friends or who you know nothing about.  I am lucky enough to know an excellent free-lance editor who I trust to do a thorough job. Your number one biggest priority as a writer is to find a reliable editor and proofreader.  Nothing will make a bigger difference in the quality of your work.
Try not to pay for editing in advance and carefully check the work.  Some editors will only make changes that make your work grammatically correct, others think they have free reign to cut whole chapters and sentences and change elements around altering the entire story.  Be sure you keep a copy of the original to compare the edited version.  Editors need to be watched closely to insure quality work with minimum changes to your story.

2) Get a professional cover.

You can't tell a book by its cover but you can sell books with great covers.  This is an area where there are a few thing that you must insist on.
First of course is any images and/or art work must not be copyrighted.  If it is, you need written proof granting you the rights to use the image. Get an email from the artist/photographer and print it for your records.
Second the cover has to work.  Many times the first view I get of a book is a thumbnail of the cover.  It is absolutely essential that both the title and the author name can be read when the cover is thumbnail sized.  The most beautiful cover doesn't work if you can't read it.  Common elements also fuel sales such as the same font used on multiple books.

3) The actual publishing.

You do not have to pay to get your book published although there are literally thousands of companies willing to charge you to do so.  Never use a vanity press where you pay to get hard copies of your book published and shipped to you.  No need.  Publish on a POD (print on demand) site for free.  The same goes for eBooks.
What you do need to pay for is to get the book properly formatted and submitted for both POD and eBook.
I can't count how may books by authors that have paid for publication that either have terrible formatting and/or poor quality images.  Each venue, be it different size paperbacks or hardcovers or formatting for different eReaders, have different requirements for formatting to get the optimum quality for you book.
Most of these publishing venues will provide free of charge ISBN or ASIN numbers for your books.  You do not have to buy one.  You can easily copyright your work, before editing if you worry about your work being stolen through the US government Copyright Office for as little as $35. It will take 6 months to get the official document of copyright but you are protected from the day of submission.

The last and most  distasteful aspect of being an author is the marketing.  In my next post I'll talk about that.

Helpful Links.
Form to copyright your work for $35 through the US Copyright Office.
Print on Demand paperback publishing  with free ISBN at createspace.com.
Print on Demand hardcover publishing with free ISBN at Lulu.com.
Ebook publishing at smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Nobels, Kobo.
Book editing service and cover design with free consultations: Byron & Kugler.
Cover design, formatting and publishing.  Complete service from edited manuscript to paperback or hardcover proof in your hands with free consultations:  Richter Indy publishing.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Rick

The Insidious Detective

Do you have a problem with a recurrent character appearing in your stories?  I do and so does some fellow Authors.  Mine is the insidious detective.  The insidious detective seems to try and sneak into every horror story I write. He/she comes in many forms but always seems to pop up sooner or later.  It may be the nature of my stories, that by their structure require the literary prop of an investigator of some sort to make the stories work.  Or it may be that certain characters take on a life of their own and demand to be written in.  Several authors have addressed this very problem.  Personally I think it's a phantom from the subconscious, a device that the mind constructs to make the chore of organizing a complex plot a bit easier.
Whatever the cause or origin of this recurrent literary archetype it seems to demand inclusion in many a story that I have written.  Of the two books I am currently writing, the insidious detective has insisted on participation.  I can only write the stories as they appear in my head and the seemingly recurrent character/s that plague me.
In one story it may be a father searching for a lost child, in another two professors trying to solve a mystery concerning a student, or outright homicide detectives investigating savage, unexplained slayings.  Over and over there appears a recurrent investigator who battles the horrors and solves the mystery.
If I try to write them out the plot collapses and the story just won't work.
Am I the only one with this serial problem with my writings, besides a few I know about, or is this a widespread or common occurrence that  appears in the writings of other authors whether intentional or not?