The Vandal – Derek Haines

You can’t censor my books! There is always an ‘app for that‘ as we all know, but I think I stumbled on one of the most insidious today. One that censors my books. It is an app that blanks out all words that the app deems as bad words from an ebook, and has an option to replace them with acceptable words. This is censorship of books, and this is always dangerous. Why only replace words? Why not just burn the books? If this app is allowed to continue to be made available, it is going to change the world for writers, especially for those who like to add a little spice, a little aggression, a

Unlike the impatient millions of credit card at the ready Apple freaks around the world, I do not need to wait for a single minute, or waste my money, to experience the joy and wonder of Apple’s new marvel, the iWatch. Nor do I have to pay out between $350 and $24,000 to make myself look like a totally fashion and fad driven idiot to enjoy all the benefits that comes with this miraculous, ‘oh, I didn’t know I even needed one of these bloody things‘, iWatch. Why, because I have had a decent iWatch in my pocket for eight years now. In addition, unlike the (can you believe this?) new gold $24,000 iWatch model, I can read

I haven’t posted a recipe in ages, so here we go to fix my carelessness. I had the idea of waves landing on a beach, but I have to credit my wife with exaggerating my wave idea into a tsunami. So, how do you cook a Tsunami Pizza? First, preheat your oven to as high as it goes, but from the bottom element only. I love using pizza dough made from spelt. The flavour of this old variety of wheat adds something special to the taste and crunchiness of the crust. So, once you have the dough out flat and slightly warmed on a hot tray, cover liberally with a

Free resources for TEFL teachers For those who have read my blog for some time, you will know that apart from writing and blogging, my main vocation is as a CELTA English Teacher, and also that a number of my posts over the years have been about teaching and the English language, and about its richness and at times, quirkiness. When I looked back at how many posts I had written about English grammar, vocabulary and ESL (English as a Second Language), I thought it might be time to do something more productive with the information that is now hiding deep in my long list of posts, and with the