Review Recap For September 18-24, 2016

Lost our home internet service for a few days, which cut into this week's reviewing. It did give a bit more time for reading, and I ended up finishing up the Catherynne Valente novel I'd been making my way through.

On Goodreads

Silda the Electric Eel, from Adam Blade's Seaquest (AKA Deep Dive) series. This is the latest chapter book I finished reading with the Kiddo.

The Boy Who Lost Fairyland. Book 4 in Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland series, this installment went in something of a different direction, with a new main character and more of the story set on Earth rather than in Fairyland.

On Comic A Day

Pirate Shorts. Just in time for Talk Like A Pirate Day, I reviewed this cute minicomic that I picked up at Anime Boston eight years ago (and ended up reading halfway around the world.

Upcoming

I've been reading a lot of fantasy lately, so I'm taking a bread with Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War, which is an account of the Vietnam War from the point of view of a North Vietnamese soldier. Great so far.

Trips coming up: Singapore for Fall Break, and then the ISPPMUN Model United Nations event in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with students toward the end of October.

We're also planning a family trip to Cambodia for sometime in the winter.

Review Recap for September 11-17, 2016

Busy week at the day job, so just a quick update with a couple of new reviews here.

On Goodreads

Eve of the Emperor Penguin by Mary Pope Osborne: Another entry in the Magic Tree House series (and one of the stranger installments), read with the Kiddo.

On Comic A Day

Action Comics #957: A fairly well-handled soft reboot for Superman that also restores original numbering to Action Comics.

Upcoming

I'm close to finishing several books so look for more fiction reviews next week. On the travel front, Singapore in mid-October, and then a school trip to Phnom Penh at the end of October.

Review Recap For September 4-10, 2016

This week was my school's celebration of Vietnam's Mid-Autumn Festival. Other than that, it was a busy work week, with only a few reviews written.

On Comic A Day

Detective Comics #934 from DC Comics. This was the issue that restored the title that DC is named for to its original numbering, as part of this past summer's Rebirth event.

Mother Planet Volume 3 Issue 1: A local Columbus OH based zine, dealing mostly with tabletop gaming.

Also This Week

I'm supporting the effort to fund the release of 35 rehabilitated pangolins back into the wild here in Vietnam.

My photos from our trip to Vung Tau, Vietnam, last week have been posted in a series of albums on Flickr.

Looking Ahead

I have trips planned to Singapore with family, and to Phnom Penh with students for October.

Review Recap For August 28 - September 3 2016

This was a short week at school, as we had a day off for Vietnam's National Day on Friday. We went to Vung Tau for the long weekend, where I did manage to get in some reading, so hope to have more book reviews soon. I also reviewed a restaurant I ate at this week, as well as putting up a review for another restaurant that we visited back in June in NYC.

On Comic A Day

True Believers Star Wars #1 from Marvel Comics. This is a new Star Wars adventure featuring most of the original series main characters. It takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.

On Goodreads

Polar Bears Past Bedtime by Mary Pope Osborne, a Magic Tree House adventure set in the Arctic. I read this with the Kiddo, and it was one of my favorites of this series so far.


On Trip Advisor

El Luchador: A quick lunch stop for some Mexican food near South Street Seaport in New York City.

Soul Burger: A Motown-themed burger joint looking down on Ben Thanh Market in Saigon's District 1.

Also This Week

I'm supporting Mike Rees and Cycle For 16 in their efforts to raise funds to help children in medical need here in Vietnam.

Looking Ahead

The weekend in Vung Tau was loads of fun. I took something like 600 pictures. I've already posted a small selection of my favorite photos on Instragam (I'm @dandelionstudios there). The rest will be be going up on Flickr this week.

Coming up Friday of this coming week is my school's Mid-Autumn Festival event.

Next trip is to Singapore in early October, then probably followed by a school MUN trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Review Recap For August 21-27. 2016

Three comics reviewed this week. I haven't been doing that much of my own prose reading, but I did finish reading one book with the Kiddo.

On Comic A Day

Bathtub Baby: A true-to-life minicomic about pregnancy by MinDo.

Palookaville #1 (10th Aniversary Re-Issue): A story of life in 1980s Toronto by Seth.

Am I Immortal: To Wake... : A vampire minicomic preview by Shawnti Therrien.

On Goodreads (Crossposted to Amazon)

Junie B. Jones Is (Almost) A Flower Girl by Barbara Park:Read to the Kiddo. This was my favorite of this series so far.

Also This Week

I made travel and hotel arrangements for October's trip to Singapore. Very excited about that!

Also this week, I'm supporting Livvy Blomdahl and her family on Cape Cod as they deal with financial difficulties.

Review Recap for August 14-21, 2016

This was my first week with students (after the school's opening got delayed a couple of days due to ongoing construction). Work went well enough that I didn't find myself bring piles of it home, but it was still an exhausting week. In the midst of all of the day-job stuff, I did manage to finish reading a book I'd been working on all summer, and I also got a couple of items in the unread comics stack read and reviewed.

On Goodreads (crossposted to Amazon.com)

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. This is the third volume in A Game of Thrones. I started reading this on the flight back to the USA in June and have been reading it on and off all summer. I actually lost my paperback copy, bought a replacement, and discovered that the replacement copy was one of the split TV tie-in editions that only contains half the book. So I ended up buying another copy to finish it. Glad I ended up liking it!

 On Comic A Day

Maintenance FCBD 2008: A Free Comic Book Day edition from Oni Press in 2008, telling the story of a couple of regular maintenance workers at a very mad-science lab.

Drafted: Free Comic Book Day Edition: Another 2008 FCBD book! I own a LOT of these! I must have been pretty busy that day in '08. This was from Devil's Due Publishing (DDP), and presented an interesting first-contact story as Earth is drawn into an interstellar war.

Also This Week

I wrote up a blog entry on my use of Twitter in my social media series. I also made time to do a little photo safari today, and came back with a few good shots that are posted in this album on Flickr.

How I Use Social Media #2: Twitter

This is the second entry in a series of blog posts about my social media use.

Platform: Twitter (@dandelionstudio)
Followers: 1504

I've been on Twitter for a while, but it took me a long time from first learning about it to actually trying it out. Twitter has something of a learning curve to it. The idea is simple: Post entries limited to 140 characters in length. The flow of using Twitter can be tricky to figure out.

Twitter depends heavily on hashtags to attract common interest (although they are sometimes more used for humorous or other effect), and it depends on the retweeting of others' tweets in order to reach larger audiences. The noise-to-signal ratio on Twitter is enormous, so it is impossible to keep up with everything, or ever to keep up with everything posted by those you follow, once you're following a sizeable number of accounts.

I seldom read my Twitter feed. I'll occasionally glance at it to see if anything catches my interest, but mostly, I'm using Twitter as a way to boost the signal of my other endeavors: My writing, my blogging (this entry will get tweeted), my photos on Flickr and Instagram, and the occasional update on what I'm doing or where I'm going.

I allow myself to get a bit more political on Twitter than I do on other social media, but this usually takes the form of me retweeting the tweets of others, rather than getting directly involved in political discourse.

I follow about 1800 Twitter accounts and am followed by around 1500. I make an active effort to manage and organically grow my followers by adding new accounts and unfollowing accounts that don't follow me back. This is not exactly a recipe for fast growth, but it has allowed me to expand my reach steadily. I have no interest in buying followers, in spite of the promises of the many spam accounts that add me. I'm looking for people with common interests: Writers, readers, comic fans, convention people, travel bloggers and expats, general geeks and nerds.

I've made use of some specialized hashtags. I use the #ff hashtag, which stands for "Follow Friday", a Twitter tradition where users tweet out lists of suggested accounts to follow on Friday.

I also made up a #seenfromsaigonbustoday hashtag for a series of phone photos taken while riding the public busses in Ho Chi Minh City. When I was taking the public bus to work during my first year in Vietnam, I was posting to this hashtag almost daily. I still use it occasionally when I take the bus around town, and I've got a minicomic about the hashtag in the works.

I've also found hashtags to be great for events, as you can easily find other accounts tweeting from the same venue.

While I don't get as much interaction on Twitter as I do on Facebook, I find it a very useful site for expanding my brand, introducing my work to others, and spreading work of my postings on other social media sites.