I have been a little remiss in failing to upload a photograph of myself. I do intend to add a picture to my profile, however in the meantime you may wish to take a look at the below link which shows photographs (including of yours truly) taken during a visit to the New Forest http://kevin-morris.co.uk/2012/07/15/photographs-my-visit-to-the-new-forest/
I have launched a new blog to promote my forthcoming book Samantha. As those of you who follow this blog (newauthoronline.com)will be aware Samantha tells the story of a young girl forced into prostitution in Liverpool, a city in the north-west of England. For my new blog please visit http://samanthabooks.wordpress.com/about/
My collection of short stories, The First Time is available from Amazon for £0,77 (it usually retails on Amazon at a cost of £1,53). In this collection of short stories I explore why young women enter the world of prostitution while other stories look at what happens when the worlds of sex and technology collide.
In “The First Time”, the first story in this collection, we meet Becky a young graduate who enters the world of prostitution in order to clear her debts. The story looks at the effects of prostitution on Becky and her fellow escort and friend Julie. In “The Pain Behind the Smile” Issie presents her friend, Peter with a birthday cake, however things are not what they seem.
In “Lucy” the acquaintances of a crusty old bachelor speculate how he could attract and retain the affections of a beautiful young woman. As with “The Pain Behind the Smile” things are far from what they seem.
“Hemlock” explores what happens when machines attain the capacity to appreciate high culture. The story is both humorous and deeply serious.
For The First Time by Kevin Morris please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-First-Time-ebook/dp/B00AIK0DD6/ref=dp_return_2?ie=UTF8&n=341677031&s=digital-text
As a UK-based writer I was very interested to come across this post. Prior to reading it I had no idea just how Amazon can work to the disadvantage of writers in the United Kingdom.
I am on Googleplus (https://plus.google.com/103288647937368753912/posts). I am just getting to grips with the service, consequently not all of the posts on my other blog (http://newauthoronline.blogspot.co.uk/) may have found their way across to Googleplus. I’ll get there, eventually!
Yesterday I read “In Her Own Words .. Interview With A London Call Girl”, by Ruth Jacobs. You can find my review here http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B008OALF4S/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_four/280-6753202-9043007?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFourStar&showViewpoints=0. To purchase the book please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Words-Interview-London-Destruction-ebook/dp/B008OALF4S/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top.
As with all democracies the United Kingdom has a bewildering variety of extremist political parties on the extreme left and right. The largest far-right party, the British National Party has no representation in the UK parliament, it does, however have two Members of the European Parliament (MEPS) including the party’s leader, Nick Griffin.
As with many parties of the extreme right the BNP has attempted to throw off it’s image as a racist and anti-semitic organisation. The party’s policy of the forceable repatriation of non-white immigrants to what the BNP terms their “homelands” has been abandoned as official party policy, however scratch below the surface of respectability and the organisation remains the same racist and Nazi organisation (witness for example the clips on the internet of prominent party members making racist and anti-semitic comments).
In “New British Fascism: The Rise of the British National Party” Mathew J Goodwin examines the party in detail including in-depth interviews with BNP members and supporters. The book offers a fascinating insight into what makes extremists tick and I’d recommend it to anyone who wishes to understand the disturbing growth of political extremism. For Goodwin’s book please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0053D73WC?ie=UTF8&ref=oce_digital
I am life, the one you never wanted me to be. I am a breath of fresh air when you wanted to suffocate me with tyranny. I am virtuous, rising above your tidal wave of fury. I am remembrance of your memory often blurry. I am the sea, which washes away your cruelty. I am liberty in the face of your mutiny. I am honour, which dismisses your violence. I am loud in the face of silence. I am bravery, which belittles your intolerance. I am victory above your dominance. I am all of these things, you see, but you can’t because you’re blind to what this means. There is no beauty in monsters who shut their eyes, the ones who use truth saturated in lies. The ones who wipe their hands clean of the damage they have done; the ones who walk away from the battleground thinking they have…
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I am a blind computer user who is not able to read print. As a result I use Jaws (Job Access with Speech) which converts text into print and braille enabling me to have the content of the screen relaid to me. One of the major difficulties which I encounter as a user of access software is the need to solve Captchas prior to being able to post comments on websites or perform other functions such as contacting the webmaster. Captchas are visual puzzles which are rendered as images. Jaws and other screenreading software is not able to interpret images (the software sees a blank page), consequently many visually impaired people such as myself find it extremely difficult (sometimes impossible) to post on sites which utilise Captcha.
Some sites including blogger.com do have audio alternatives to visual Captchas which should, in theory allow access technology users to post in the same manner as non visually impaired people. However I know from bitter experience that many audible alternatives to visual Captchas are virtually unintelligible and that significant numbers of vision impaired people can not post independently as a consequence of the presence of Captcha.
In adition to this site (newauthoronline.com which is hosted at wordpress.com) I have, in the past few days started a blog at blogger.com (http://newauthoronline.blogspot.co.uk/). This presents me with a moral dilemma as Blogger does, as mentioned above employ Captcha, (I face no such ethical issues with wordpress.com as it does not use Captcha. WordPress utilises Akismet software which automatically detects spam without utilising Captcha and places suspected junk comments/messages in a spam folder for the webmaster to review. Akismet is in my experience at least 97 per cent accurate and it is only on rare occasions that I find a genuine comment consigned to my spam folder). I wish that Blogger used Akismet or similar software rather than the cumbersome Captcha which the user is faced with. However given that Blogger does not avail itself of alternatives to Captcha what is the visually impaired user of my Blogger site to do? One solution is for users of Firefox to download an extension called Webvisum. Among other functions Webvisum enables the blind access technology user to solve Captcha by pressing alt, control 6 which sends the Captcha to be resolved. I haven’t a clue how Webvisum performs it’s magic, however it does work in the majority of cases and I’ve successfully solved many Captchas through using Webvisum.
While many tech savvy blind people will be aware of Webvisum other visually impaired people will not. Again some people do not like Firefox and prefer to use Internet Explorer or other browsers. For such people Webvisum is not an option as it only works with Firefox. This being the case what is the solution to my dilemma? The short term solution is to place an email address on http://newauthoronline.blogspot.co.uk/ so that those unable to solve the Captcha have an alternative means of contacting me, however this may have the effect of attracting spam so I will break up the address to reduce the potential for junk mail (For example john smith at mydomain.com). In the longer term sites such as Blogger need to explore alternatives to Captcha. Akismet is not the only option. One can, for instance ask the person wishing to post a comment to solve a simple question such as “what is four plus 2”. I really can’t imagine why Blogger and other sites choose to stick to inaccessible Captcha when there exist much better means of detecting spam while permitting visually impaired people the same access as sighted individuals.
(Kevin Morris is the author of The First Time which is available in the Kindle Store).
Postscript. Since composing this post earlier today I have come across a number of posts which explain how to turn off Captcha (word verification) in Blogger. For example please see http://britpins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tutorial-how-to-turn-off-word.html. A number of these postings argue that turning off Captcha does not significantly increase the amount of spam received while several comments in response to the posts state that turning off Captcha has increased the amount of spam received significantly. For the reasons set out above I wish to make commenting on my Blogger site as easy as possible while avoiding so far as is possible the menace of spam. I will (assuming that I can find the relevant settings on my Blogger Dashboard) turn off word verification and monitor the effects over the coming weeks. If spam is not a major problem then all well and good, however if turning off Captcha results in a large number of spam comments I may have to reniable word verification while including a contact me link on my blog so that those who experience difficulty with Captcha can get in touch.
My blog address is now http://newauthoronline.com/. The old address (newauthoronline.wordpress.com) will continue to work, however the primary address is now http://newauthoronline.com/.
