Category: Internet and Computers

I like computers. I like the Internet. I design my own website and blog. I write on them all, from time to time.

Internet and Computers

Website Update Time

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Amaryllis collage in two black and white versionsBooks don’t sell themselves. Unfortunately. You must market, publicize, convince people to write reviews for you — not rave about the book only to you. An up-to-date website also helps to sell yourself and your books. It ups your SEO on Google, a good thing as that’s how people find you. But an old-looking website plants doubt in potential readers’ minds.

So I’ve set myself a triple updating job: keep the blog pages that are an extension of Concussion Is Brain Injury updated with new info and ideas; blog regularly; and update the appearance and function of the entire site.

That last task I used to do yearly. Every year, I had to relearn what I’d done the previous year in the back end of my site: how to tweak the theme I used and how to read the HTML/CSS codes I’d copied and pasted to customize my site. Now the free — always and only use free is my motto — theme is obsolete, and I have to find a new one to customize. The problem is I feel like I can’t understand the back end anymore, it’s been years and years since I last updated (for reasons I touch on in Concussion Is Brain Injury). From my experience with SoloLearn, I know my programming knowledge is in my brain somewhere. I can relearn. But I haven’t retained what SoloLearn taught me well. Believe it or not, that is a step up. At one time I couldn’t have remembered my pre-injury programming knowledge at all, and whatever I had learnt would’ve vamoosed in minutes. So at least I can remember for a bit. It was hard to believe that though this past week as I found a new theme, tried to learn it, and all I felt was a massive wall between me and understanding.

I’m beginning this updating mountain climb with an easier site I manage. At first, the new theme was completely — I mean completely, absolutely, totally — incomprehensible to me. I’m used to clicking here, mousing there, to figure things out, kind of like how I play with my photos, trying out different looks until I find what I like. But all the options were, like, huh?‽!!! Thankfully the theme designers had made a helpful video; it just took awhile to find it.

I clicked here, played with settings there, tried and tried experimenting with almost every option to see what they would do to the site. But still the whole thing was murky. And I was seriously, painfully fatigued.

All of a sudden, I understood how their theme worked, what all the options did, how to “read” the back end. Phew.

But now I have to keep working on it, for I’ve only just begun with the basics of the site and after two days off, already began to forget how some of the options worked. I still have to relearn how to use the Events feature I installed years ago, figure out how to make some of the fonts look the way I want, and set up a gallery. And, oh yeah, why does the site title keep changing its look FFS??!!

Once I master the easier site, I’ll be set to work on my site.

If I take too many days to rest, which exhaustion probably will force me to, because with brain injury, rest is neverending, I’ll forget it all over again. Stab a fork in my eye if I have to take too much downtime and relearn it all. But right now, I’m pleased with how it’s looking and functioning . . . Except for that site title that seems to have acquired a gremlin.

Concussion is Brain Injury

Archived Storify on #HealingTheBrain Conference 24 May 2017

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Storify, bought out by Adobe, shut down operations, flinging my Storify and everyone else’s into the virtual trash bin. Fortunately, the internet has helpful coders who supplement the pathetic FAQ Adobe created, and I’ve recreated the Storify here below as an archive.

Storify Screenshot Healing the Brain Conference 24 May 2017

I attended the Healing The Brain conference on Wednesday, May 24, 2017 as a brain injury survivor and live tweeted it, both to share with the world and my way of taking notes. I came away pumped with a clearer way of seeing the brain and a renewed purpose for revising my book Concussion Is Brain Injury. Doidge spoke eloquently on why neuroplasticity can be harnessed to permanently treat brain injuries and Thompson on one effective way to do so. Brain maps prove people with brain injury/concussion have real problems and are not malingering! Read the tweets for all the deets!

https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/867482745102110720

https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/867441316992569345

https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/867414767882862592

Brain Biofeedback

Heart and Colours, the Concussion Way

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After the amazing HRV numbers a couple of weeks ago, they tanked the following week. Sigh. That’s how brain injury improvement goes, I thought. And then I began getting short of breath in the way that tells me my heart ain’t too happy, which my hypothalamus fix had made better way back when. Oh. Yeah. I’d stopped doing the CES Sleep in the evening portion of my hypothalamus fix. Sigh.

I’d skipped it one night because I was so damn tired from noveling. Novel writing is fun, rewarding but challenging and exhausting. The more tired I get, the more I need to be vigilant in using all parts of my hypothalamus fix: sub-delta audiovisual entrainment session in the evening and CES Sleep first thing in the morning and at some point at night.

I had a little talk with myself and restarted the CES Sleep at night (I hadn’t stopped using the sub-delta AVE session or CES Sleep in the morning). That shortness of breath went, and I could breathe easier again. And last week, my HRV began crawling up again while my heart rate dropped back into the 80s (from the high 90s — a number that once would have been cause for celebration is now too high — that’s what brain injury treatment is all about — returning heart and brain to normal functioning!).

I want to add here that I think the reason why my heart rate and HRV are much, much better is because of the combination of my hypothalamus fix, gamma brainwave enhancement training, and the low intensity light treatment for my neck that includes the back of my head where the cerebellum is located. I went to “laser therapy” for my below-the-head injuries, but in the last few months, I’ve realized how much it’s helped me with my brain injury, how key it’s been in improving the brain’s control of my heart. I wrote about some of that in my concussion book. But because I finished writing it before I fully understood all this and am continuing to learn about laser therapy’s effects on concussion, I didn’t put it in the book. That’s why I created blog pages as extensions of Concussion Is Brain Injury — to update it! I will be updating my related blog pages with more info on laser therapy (see the relevant URLs in Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me)!

I did write fully about my hypothalamus fix in Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me.

Sailboats screenLast week’s biofeedback also resolved a puzzle for me. The sailboat screen has the top sailboat sailing from yellow box to yellow box with a thin line connecting the boxes above the sailboat and below the waves it sails on.

Sailboat in yellow box showing yellow lineSo, I see this line as yellow. But after my eye surgery, I saw it as pink. Then my brain began to fight the influx of new visual data to return my vision to pre-brain injury and surgery, and I got confused as to the line’s colour. Was it pink or yellow?

We use this sailboat screen as the third neurofeedback training for gamma enhancement and again as the third one for inhibiting 16-20 Hz and enhancing SMR (12-15 Hz). Last week, I saw without a doubt during the gamma neurofeedback the line was yellow. Then it began to morph. Was that pink appearing??? During the 16-20 Hz inhibit neurofeedback, it was absolutely without a doubt PINK!

The line is pink.

Sailboat in yellow box showing pink lineOr is it?

The eye surgery allowed me to see fine details and colours in a way I hadn’t before. And since it, my cognitions involved in language, memory, and engaging with the world have improved a lot. Maybe I’d noticed the pink before but not enough to remember or mention to my brain trainer.

Turns out she hadn’t noticed the line colour changing before but saw it as pink. When we investigated closely, the answer was pretty simple, really. Click the computer mouse on the box to change that sailboat’s parameters, and the line turns pink to show which sailboat you’re changing. Doesn’t work too well with the pink box because the line stays pink!

All these years of using and being trained with it, never noticed before. Oy!

My ophthalmologist told me I have to keep improving the vision in my scarred eye to retain what the surgery gave me else the brain will win this battle. That means practice eye tracking. I’m thinking though maybe I should also up the light intensity during my AVE sessions (animal studies showed light stimulation similar to my AVE sessions regenerated retinas). And also to adhere to walking on streets about 1.5 hours after brain biofeedback when my vision strengthens again so as to use and cement in those networks so that my brain can lose this battle and win at seeing better. It would help to use a neck brace to force my head to sit straight and force using binocular vision but that wouldn’t be good for my neck muscles.

At least I’ve gotten better enough since the shock of 2013 to be able to think about my brain injury issues and deal with them and not resent or feel despairing that my health care professionals don’t collaborate (because my neurodoc wouldn’t know how if it smacked him on the head — his idea of collaboration is to tell others what to think and say they’re wrong when they disagree with him — well, except in the area he doesn’t consider himself an expert in, so that’s going better…anywho). Some don’t have the time, others don’t have the desire to think about and discuss these things with me as they evolve, only occasionally and only within their bailiwick when I grow desperate enough to force discussion. Then I put together what each tells me, add my own thoughts, write about it to elucidate it all to myself, implement, and hope to hell it’ll get better.

I still don’t know why any health care professional, especially my neurodoc and all other medical doctors treating brain injury, think someone with a BRAIN injury should be searching on their own actual treatments, directing their own care, and is even remotely capable of it. The part of you that recognizes, analyses, remembers, and carries out solutions is broken FFS! Sigh.

Brain Power

Don’t Read, Watch to Learn!

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Although I did well in the Oxford online short courses on philosophy of mind and metaphysics, the reading just about broke me because my neurons in the reading-related networks were injured, and so little is known about how the brain reads that treatment had been a series of guesses and so not hugely effective. Plus no one in the health professions grasped that a writer needs to be able to read for hours, not a few minutes.

In my book Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me, I write about my ongoing reading rehab adventures and draw up a theoretical program to recover reading.

Since I took the Oxford courses, I no longer need a two-hour nap after reading a newspaper article or couple pages of a book; my abstract processing has improved; my cognitive skills have improved; and my emotions are beginning to connect. But I still cannot read philosophy.

Thank God for the YouTube revolution and NaNoWriMo winner goodie of a discount to The Great Courses Plus. The GCP site has a course on mind-body or philosophy of mind. After getting help to sign up, I’ve happily begun watching Prof. Patrick Grim’s series of half hour video lectures with graphics. OK, I needed a nap after the first one, and I can feel my brain straining to grasp the concepts in the second one even though I’ve studied the Greeks back in high school and studied much of the first two videos in the Oxford Short Course. But it’s still a lot easier than reading!

Internet and Computers

Seventeen Years with a Brain Injury

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A Twitter of a crash anniversary blog post this year. Mocha in one hand, croissant flaking all over me, and iPhone in the other, for over an hour, I tweeted:

17 years. Creeping up to 20. Hard to believe this time 17 years ago, I had less than 3 hours to live without a #braininjury .

A series of unfortunate events that ordinary day was 17 years ago unbeknownst to me. Here is a series of without #braininjury tweets.

Without #braininjury I could go to the AGO to see the mystical landscapes. And I’d have friends or hubby wanting to go with me.

Without #braininjury I could organize, gussy up for, attend, and have a blast at a party.

Without #braininjury I’d be going to see a movie weekly (though w the offerings these days maybe not) enjoy and REMEMBER it!

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have to take Cogmed. I had a photographic memory & a trapdoor working memory. When they failed, I was lost.

Without #braininjury I never would have needed brain biofeedback, audiovisual entrainment, cranioelectrical stim, laser therapy.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have discovered loyalty is for the birds and trumpeter swans, talk of being there like downburst: here gone.

Without #braininjury I’d still have my full sense of humour. Laughter wouldn’t have become a stranger: strange to understand, strange in me.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt emotions are essential to thinking. Emotions assist clarity & speed of thought. Who knew!

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt one’s reputation is entirely in other people’s hands so fuggetabout it.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have sold my film camera. I probably would’ve joined @Flickr though.

Without #braininjury I wldn’t have learnt point ‘n shoot photography can be fun. I wldn’t have developed a shoot-see-what-appears technique.

Without #braininjury I’d still be in the thick of fractious family and family politics. Maybe it’s a blessing not to be…

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have met some very interesting, kind, caring, intelligent ppl – some sans concussion.

Without #braininjury I probably wldn’t have returned to the passions of my youth – brain & psychology – except thru writing. How ironic.

Without #braininjury I wldn’t be this open. Self-control, self-contained me. Losing it so freeing. But ppl prefer controlled.

Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve learnt how fed up, bored ppl get w TBI healing time & want I meet their need to not kn, not my need to heal

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have reached the limits of my persistence.

Without #braininjury I’d be reading mysteries, high brow & how-to books, 3 newspapers, magazines on cooking, science, politics, gardening…

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have lost my ability to write short stories. But I wouldn’t have written my novels either.

Without #braininjury my piano wouldn’t be silent. But it would be really cluttered still.

Without #braininjury my life would still be noisy, chaotically busy energetically noisy, not silent and under the rule of fatigue.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have met the people shut away from society in day programs so docs wldn’t have to learn how to heal neurons.

Without #braininjury I’d probably have joined Twitter earlier and forever be dealing w ppl IRL grumpy about it. At least spared latter.

Without #braininjury I’d have written, published LIFELINER years earlier. It would have been a very different book. But better??! Maybe not.

Without #braininjury I’d still have hope. Maybe I do…

Without #braininjury I mayn’t’ve learnt how different I am frm family in blowing past bounds of accepted medical thinking to find recovery.

Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve discovered an area where choosing NOT to heal a life-changing injury is accepted & imposed medical practice

Without #braininjury I wldn’t have experienced ppl giving up on me, of comparing me to others unfavourably, of fighting me on my recovery.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt what my IQ is (not really essential 2kn pre-TBI). And how much brain biofeedback can restore it.

Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have fully understood the Book of Job. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/61372

Without #braininjury I’d have a very different life. Would it be better? I don’t know. But at least I’d still be able to read, work in flow.

Without #braininjury I’d still know the insurance industry is rife with fraud by insurers and docs via IMEs are complicit. #onpoli

Ppl say appreciate their catastrophic injuries,wldn’t change. Not sure abt that 4me! But without #braininjury I’d be poorer in understanding

Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve learnt how the DSM is used to constrain knowledge of the brain & its injury & so prevent recovery. #hcsmca

Without #braininjury I think I still would have seen how the gratitude movement is used to deny the existence & thus healing of suffering.

Without #braininjury I doubt my measles-damaged vision would have returned. So there is that! #eyesurgery

—/—

Seventeen years . . . Wow. I can’t quite believe it. I’ve come so far, yet I’m so far from what my goal of complete recovery was in early 2001, a mere six months after my diagnosis of closed head injury. I doubt now it’s possible but know more recovery is possible than what the medical experts still peddle to too many today.

Brain Biofeedback

Back Behind the Rocks

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“It’s like you were in jail, got a taste of freedom, and now you’re back in jail.”

   

Apt description of my relationship and communication headaches in North America, I thought. It’s not like this is solely a North American problem or that all North Americans fear communication or trying something new in order to grow closer to others, but given loneliness is apparently the biggest disease here, I’m clearly not the only one so beset.

To help me retain what I had in the UK, my friend there invited me onto WhatsApp so that we could text for free. I’d heard of it, read about it on Twitter, but had had no desire to try it to this point when I personally knew no one on it. I wasn’t far wrong in the latter. Turns out, only six of my contacts were on it, but I digress

So I’m like, OK, I need more social connection in my life, I want to stay in touch with my friend better, I’ll download it. But my brain went: not so fast. Gotta read up on it. What does it mean Facebook owns it? How many decisions will we have to make? I’m tired. Foggetaboutit.

I couldn’t even download the app.

Even when I think I know what I’m going to do, my brain injury, and my kiboshed ability to make even tiny decisions or think through new ideas, gets in the way. It didn’t help that life back here was overwhelming me. I told my friend: I’ll get to it when my brain can handle something new. Then I sighed with frustration.

So when I was talking to my neurodoc about email and smartphones, I lost it. I told him: at least I’m trying. So many with non-injured brains don’t even try. They stay in their little bubbles of this is the only way I’ll communicate even when their profession is about clear and trusting communication, even though their way drains you, even though you cannot speak certain things only write them. I will not bend, they say through their actions while criticizing your (injury-caused) lack of flexibility or stating you just want to have it your own way. No. I want to be able to talk, to relate sans it exhausting me or resulting in me being isolated or unable to express myself to one of my health professionals because I cannot, with my brain injury and personality, pretzel myself into landline-phone-only communication, though I’ve been trying for over a year.

It must be incredibly frustrating for people with weak voices or damaged speech to deal with and receive full therapeutic value from mental health professionals who will only talk on the phone or in person, never mind trying to have social connections like mine who focus on their busy-ness over people (and over themselves ironically) or don’t do text because, well, it’s cold or would require them to have a cell or smartphone. Oy.

Anyway, I was venting all over my biofeedback trainer, who was doing her best not to laugh (yes, it is funny, but really I want to strangle a certain someone), when I told her about WhatsApp. Oh! she exclaimed, I’m on it. Oh. She immediately showed me how it works; then after our session, she worked with me to download the app and helped me make all those little decisions that had stopped me. I would have eventually gotten it done, maybe a week if I was speedy. But with her help, I was on in minutes, chatting with my UK friend!

But the look on her face when she saw I had only six contacts on WhatsApp said it all. Ninety percent of her contacts are on it, apparently. Whoa. In my circle, you’d think the person with the traumatic brain injury would be the last to join, the last to text, not be in the forefront. Apparently not.

Health

Distraction Therapy, Twitter’s Great Strength

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Distraction therapy is a time-honoured, doctor-endorsed way to cope with pain of all kinds, chronic illness, lifelong injuries, basically 24/7 health problems that drive you bonkers if you don’t find some way to separate your mind from them even if it’s only doable for a minute.

Judy Taylor, the woman who couldn’t eat and suffered the pain of stomach acid leaking onto her skin for years, excelled at distraction therapy, as I wrote about in Lifeliner, my biography on her and how she made artificial feeding possible for tens of thousands who need it. She took distraction therapy to the humorous and jaw-stopping nth degree by baking cookies she couldn’t eat, cooking pot luck dishes she couldn’t eat for community get-togethers, and taking great glee in feeding people.

Friends would greet her enthusiastically and warmly whenever she showed up at events. Everyone was happy to see Judy. What they wouldn’t do is ask her how she was — they could see it in the way she talked or held herself or what she talked about — for they knew that she was there for the same reason they were: to enjoy the company of other people and to have a good time. They knew she didn’t want to talk about herself endlessly. They knew that if she did need to talk, she would approach them.

Judy compartmentalized her life so that she could cope mentally with living on artificial feeding, never eating, and the acid burn pain on her skin. That meant she only spoke her most personal pain to her nurse, her husband, and her Pastor. Her friends respected that; if she ever shared with them, they listened but respected that most of the time she wouldn’t. And that was OK.

She lived in the time before smartphones and social media. These great inventions provide even more kinds of distraction therapy. My fave is Twitter.

The nice thing about the online world is that it’s as easy to participate in for a disabled person as for “normals.” The ease of tweeting comes not because you’re healthy but in the way you’re wired. I think people who like to talk and chat and write and who see the confines of 140 characters a fun challenge, are the ones who like Twitter best — no matter what their abilities.

Some of us are like Judy. Those of us who know about Twitter have discovered it’s a most excellent way to distract a person. When you hop into the Twitter community, you can get riled up by the latest outrage in any part of the world. And be distracted from your own intense pain. You can laugh over funny cat photos. And be distracted from the serious issues in your life. You can debate politics with fellow Canadians or international fellow Tweeps. And feel normal. And sometimes you can talk about your own personal pain and find fellow sufferers to commiserate with for a little while or sympathetic people who want to learn more or listen to you. But if someone asks you every single day or even weekly how you are, Twitter loses its ability to be distraction therapy. It becomes just another place like everywhere you go in real life reminding you that your life ain’t that easy.

There may be no visual cues on Twitter as to how a person is doing; but there are Twitter cues like kinds of tweets, tone of content, pattern of tweeting, etc. And regular followers can pick up on when a person is going south and ask then: how are you doing? And like Judy’s friends listen carefully, chat a little while for as long as one can and the person wants to, and then interact with them normally, knowing distraction therapy is the best thing one can do for the hurting person.

Brain Biofeedback

Biofeedback, Technology, Blogging, and Fatigue

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I'm getting an iPhone. Hopefully, this year; they’re a tad in demand. I made this decision after weeks of building problems and one particularly frustrating set of days. One big problem I have is that I can write on my iPod Touch within the white noise of the subway but cannot post my draft to my blog until I get home because of the lack of free secure WiFi along my routes. Not usually a problem, but these days I’m exhausted by the time I open my front door, and as a result, my blogging has fallen off. With the iPhone, I wouldn’t have to keep updating this post that I draft en route but never post once home, for three weeks now. Not good.

Two weeks in a row, I wrote and then updated:

It really is nice being able to see letters, images, and colours on my iPod sharper after gamma brainwave biofeedback. I just wish the effect would last, and brain fatigue wouldn't turn things blurry.

I was fatigued after last week’s and this week’s session [“last week” and “this week” are now three and two weeks ago], but the training effect on my vision and perception held for awhile. I was aware of my surroundings in the way of how I used to be aware in the periphery while reading or listening to music and I didn't go sailing past my stop while drafting this post on my iPod; it was the second week in a row that I felt able to type while walking (tsk). Didn't do it though!

I was fatigued more than usual afterwards last week because I read for 15 minutes! Holy cow. I usually read for five.

In the usual way of things, I begin my biofeedback session with reading while my Wernicke’s area is being stimulated for 7 minutes, and I end with 5 minutes of reading while I'm connected to the computer via electrodes on the PZ area of my skull, on my thumb for heart, my finger for temperature, and belt for breathing.

I'd asked previously that, since I've begun my metaphysics course, if I could continue reading for a little while after my session was over so as to be under the immediate influence of training sans any deleterious effects of taking the TTC (my trainer alternates clients in different rooms so that while one is getting ready to leave, she can set the next one up, so no worries about holding up the next client). That was to start last week, but since she began to set the next client up as soon as she began the reading screen for me and that turned into 15 minutes, it sort of incorporated my extra reading into my reading biofeedback screen (this week it was as we’d intended; still needed a nap). That turned out better for me because I was receiving auditory feedback during the whole of my philosophy reading. The auditory feedback is like a white noise. As long as the gamma sailboat is chugging along and the busy brain and 16-19Hz sailboats are stalled on their virtual seas, the noise buzzes. That means whenever I heard it, I was producing gamma brainwaves while not falling into rumination or producing beta spindles. I heard it a lot. This was good. Also, my trainer crowed as soon as she saw my results. My muscle tension was low. Well, I said I was sitting still and upright, the biofeedback training position, reading a computer screen, wouldn't it be low like during the three-minute training screens? No! You were reading, she said, as if that explained it. Well, it was hard stuff. I did have to take a break by reading easy stuff, then I was able to return to reading the intro to the philosopher Quine. Still, I was physically still! Maybe, that’s the point: when reading, our bodies unconsciously work out what we’re reading. I don't know. I meant to ask for clarification this week but was consumed by my dying cell phone and iPod Touch (cell battery lasted years longer than the iPod but both decided to tank at same time).

My heart rate was 10 beats per minute lower than the previous week and ten beats lower again this week and so five minutes of writing got it down to the teens as in 118. And this week, five minutes got it down to 109. Relief! I hope this time the effect is permanent and keeps dropping my heart rate to normal territory!!

I did read a few minutes longer last week after she unhooked me from the computer to finish up something. I gulped down some water, demolished my snack bar, and was ready for coffee and food both last week and this. I'm not sure why but I'm much hungrier after my gamma sessions than I have been in a long time. Oh yeah, new location, new brain area being woken up. Well, duh.

Internet and Computers

Quitting Squidoo for Violating my Terms of Service

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The Error message reads: “Whoops! No publishing allowed. This lens is currently locked for a violation of our Terms of Service, as per the email we sent you. You’re welcome to a) Grab your content and take it elsewhere, if you’d rather not continue with Squidoo or b) Review your content and make edits here in the Workshop to improve the lens. But you won’t be able to Publish the lens live until you can demonstrate that the violation has been addressed. Thanks.“

I wrote this how-to lens on autographing books for authors almost four years ago. Squidoo decided three days before Christmas 2011 (when book sales spike) that my article was  — pick one, your guess, they won’t tell, shhhh — pornographic; contained profanity; spammy (guess too many copies of Lifeliner in my pic); something they couldn’t support cause, you know, authors autographing books for readers is so … well, words fail me; a “doorway” lens  to affiliate programs like promoting authors autographing their own books; unoriginal (all those hours I spent writing and polishing was just, well, meh); article spinning (whatever the heck that is, but if I don’t know what it means then I must’ve done it, eh?); and plagiarism.

I’ve been down the false accusation of plagiarism road with Squidoo before.

They sent a nice note saying sorry, it was a “false positive” after I found the plagiarist of my article that they blocked last May. They wrote that they would greenlight it so it wouldn’t happen again, but they didn’t think to greenlight the author, namely me. They seem to have a default stance that Squidoo authors plagiarize and so no point telling Squidoo authors when their work is plagiarized, just cut out the articles. Some site.

Squidoo also wrote in their email to me dated 22 December 2011:

“We aim to support high-quality, original and useful lifestyle content that real readers will be glad to land on.”

Yes I can see how comments like these most recent ones would mean readers were not glad to land on it:

“i like this..” Oct 24, 2010 5:14 pm

“I will release my first book and it is all about my experiences as a mystery shopper. I found this site very informative and I am so excited to sign my book to someone who will really appreciate it. Thanks for the signing guides and more power” MysterySh0pper, Dec 11, 2010 6:32 am

“Thanks for the ideas….my first book signing is coming up in a few days!! http://map-thenovel.com” nitronarc, Feb 21, 2011 9:23 pm

“A lens about how to autograph a book: now I’ve seen it all! I am impressed with the research you did! (I’ve never had to autograph a book, but I have had to autograph the CD copy of an ebook!)” TravelingRae, Jun 18, 2011 12:16 am

This week, after I finished revising my novel and finally had the energy to deal with this company and do their work for them, I searched for plagiarized words from my autographing article, and it looks like it was copied elsewhere then possibly taken down or made invisible. Although Google shows other sites as having plagiarized my article, the sites themselves no longer show it, as far as I can tell.

Violations of my copyright are the only thing important to me.

Then I also noticed all my Squidoo lenses on installing and using Ubuntu were taken down. I can’t be bothered yelling at this stupid company again. If it doesn’t have the ability to know which writers are original and to see that it had screwed up before with the same writer, it’s not worth the effort to tell them. I know I said I was going to take down my Squidoo account last time they blasted me with their spraying figure-out-which-term-you-violated-then-maybe-we’ll-talk gun. But didn’t. This time I am.

There may be orphaned links on my website to my old Squidoo lenses once I’ve cancelled my account. Please let me know if you find any.

Last time, they only made nice because I blasted them back and reprimanded my copyright violator — thanks for the help Squidoo in telling me about them and helping me demand they take the plagiarized copy down, not — but I was mollified. This time, I don’t see why again I have to be treated as guilty until innocent. If they default to that position, then they have a problem with their contributors. From telecoms to Squidoo, I’ve had enough of behemoth companies banging their weight around. I quit. Writers looking for autographing advice — and my other former Squidoo essays — can come straight to my own website, thank you very much.

"We're lucky to have you around."