I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago. Then I got busy with work and life and didn't write for the longest time. Finally, my second novel is out today. It's a science fiction novel called "Sir Lanka Files" set in a future Sri Lanka thousands of years from now.

The book is on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9YZT5QZ

Please take a look and if you like what you see, please share with your friends who might like it too and help an indie author out 🙂

#ScienceFiction #Humour #BookPromo #IndieAuthor #Bookstodon #FediBooks #SriLanka #Writing

"Laapataa Ladies" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21626284) is interesting and thought-provoking.

Definitely not your run-of-the-mill movie.

Some might call it gender-politics, but they'd be wrong 😛 There's so much in the story that's right, or at least makes you think about the way things are ...

#Movies #Hindi #LostLadies

I'm trying to get going on a game since I've got the itch to do another game ...

I've been looking at free assets to build a quick demo version to see if the idea holds up and it seems sword wielding men are the most common characters you can find?

What about women/children? Or people not prone to violence?

I just find this interesting ... and telling ...

I can go into more detail — like how the first female character I found was tagged with “extra breast bouncing for sexiness” (or something similar). I found that rather disturbing — is the only attribute to identify you as female, bouncing breasts?

Is this how that particular person sees the world? Or are they just trying to be “marketable”?

#Games #GameDev #Artwork #Characters

Recently, British detective shows have not had the quirkiness and humour which makes them so enjoyable and watchable ...

Enter, "Mrs. Sidhu Investigates" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21259542)

It has the humour, the quirkiness ... and it has Meera Syal.

What's not to like? 🙂

This is one of the good ones. Give it a try, you won’t regret it!

#TV #Detective #Mystery #British #UK

Rocky aur Rani is a Bollywood movie well worth watching. @Fahim's in stitches laughing himself silly. Plus it's a love story!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14993250/

"Barbie" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268) is probably the best Hollywood movie I've seen in at least two years, maybe longer 🙂

It's brilliant, funny, subversive, thought-provoking and so full of quotes that I think I'm going to love (and use) for a while.

Oh, and the expressiveness of Margot Robbie’s face was just such a joy to watch!

Also, did anybody notice that the palm tree in the roundabout in front of Barbie's house works like a sundial? Or was that just my imagination?

Some quotes I loved (possibly paraphrased a little) were:

"I know I’m stereotypical barbie and therefore don’t form conjectures concerning casualty of adjacent unfolding events but some things have been happening that might be related.”

"You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy well.”

"I'm a man with no power, does that make me a woman?"

"I'm ready to be your long-term, long-distance, casual, low-commitment girlfriend.”

#Movies #English #Hollywood

I've been in a wheelchair for a month and a half, unable to walk at all for a few weeks before that. Our apartment is not built for wheelchairs and some rooms I could not enter at all because my wheelchair is wider than the doorway. And tight spaces.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a walker siince my right knee had improved enough I could put *some* weight on it (my left knee was never as bad). This made getting around in the bathroom much easier, but still, nothing above a few steps.

My right knee has been improving, but slowly. Very very slowly.

Today, I took my walker from bed to bathroom and back. Yay! It went well enough that...

I went inside the kitchen for the first time in two months today. I took my walker from the bed to the kitchen and back. It actually went well!

Now I have to be careful to not get too excited and overdo things.

#DisabledLife #Progress #YayMe

He: “What's this second base and third base?”

She: “Ask one of your friends …”

He: “My father won’t know these things …”

“Satyaprem Ki Katha” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14914988)

#HindiMovieMoments #Bollywood #Hindi #WhatDoYouSay

*Ring* It's the telephone.

“Hello?” I say tentatively.

“We are calling from your bank. We are updating the security on all our debit cards. We need to verify some information.”

Alarm bells are going off all over in my head already.

“You called me. I don’t know who you are.” I say.

“Oh, we are sending you an SMS from Abu Dhabi police. That should verify us,” they say breezily.

"Why is the Abu Dhabi police sending messages for a bank?” I wonder. But the other person is rattling off stuff and not giving me time to think. I check the phone and sure enough, there’s an SMS from “ADPolice” (“That can be anyone, or even spoofed,” my mind counters …)

I decided to play along for a little while longer and see what happened.

“OK, I got the SMS,” I say.

“See? That verifies that I am who I said, I am,” the guy says enthusiastically. “Can you verify your card number? The first digits are … “ He reads out the first few digits, which I knew would be common and well-known.

So I should probably have hung up at this point. Or, better still in hindsight, given a fake set of numbers for the card to see if they accepted it. If they accepted the fake number, then they can’t be from the bank, right?

I didn’t think of that though. But I figured they already had my card number and so gave them the number. Then they ask for the expiration date and I provide that too.

“Thank you. I’m transferring you over to my supervisor now,” he says.

Another guy, more brusque and officious sounding comes on.

“We are upgrading the card security since you might have used the card at a mall or online,” he says. This makes no sense at all to me. Everybody uses cards online etc. Do they upgrade security each time.

“OK.” I say.

“Can you read me the number on the back of your card for verification purposes?” he asks.

I know that this is as far as I can go. I say, “No.”

He says, “Why not?”

“You might be a scammer. I get lots of fake calls”.

“Yes, there are fake calls, but this is real,” he counters. “I’ll send you an SMS from the government to prove it,” he continues.

I get an SMS from a government site asking me to verify a transaction for 1 AED. This is not a verification, just somebody trying to get me to pay them 1 AED. Again, not very bank-like.

I ask further questions, but the guy starts getting loud and obnoxious, repeating the same things he’d said before.

“Don’t yell at me!” I say. He gets quieter, but still demands information, saying that the bank has all my info and that they just need to verify it. I realize that this is not going any further and hang up.

They call again 6 - 7 times. I know a bank would never do that. They’d simply move on to the next customer, not that calling each customer individually to verify is what they’d do in a situation like this anyway …

So, the moral of the story, don’t give away any info at all. And provide fake info if you suspect it’s a fake/fraud call. If they don’t recognize that the info is fake, then they aren’t who they say they are …

#UAE #Scammers #FakeCalls #CreditCardPhishing #Fraudsters

I did a thing. It involved my hand, a wall, and my wheelchair. And this does not adequately represent how colourful my hand is.

#WheelchairLife #Ouchies #ItsAllFineNow

Hello,

My name is Valerie Lillis. I'm a fairly new indie author that is still trying to "figure things out" in terms of projects, marketing, and writing style. I currently have a short story published and two WIP that are in various stages of drafting.

Mostly I like to reblog writing advice but I will also post updates and excerpts from WIPs. If you want to see a list of my projects feel free to check out my Tumblr blog. 🙂

#introduction

From Tumblr. I might as well post it myself...

# AmazingNature
#Bear
#GoodFishing
https://www.facebook.com/100057364123075/posts/pfbid02j7FFAyKo8QGjXh8pQ9C3dQkgHQbC6NkR56c1atWXdgAEQTG1ZAuKYJ5bhYiUyU75l/

Terrorism comes in many flavours...

This is real. I just took this screenshot.

#Google #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLMs #LLM

A photo to erase your generational trauma about sewing kits - actual Danish butter cookies!!! A beautiful sight.

Our annual Proof Of Life photo, aka 20 years and no one's dead yet!

Happy anniversary to us!

#HappyAnniversary

“Heart of Stone” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13603966) attempts to tell a good story, but is hampered by really sloppy writing …

It’s about an “intelligence” agency which shows no intelligence at all. The whole story hangs upon agents making really stupid decisions and not seeing what is obviously right there …

Some of the storyline just makes me so angry at the stupidity of people and their reliance on “systems” that I was tempted to stop watching it several times.

Yeah, it’s that good 😛

#MiniReview #English #Netflix #Movie

Yesterday I talked of masala westerns and how I remembered Sunny Deol (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0219971) in a masala western but couldn’t remember the movie.

I thought it might have been “Joshilaay” based on a Google search but it just didn’t seem like the right movie. I even did a quick scan through a YouTube copy of the movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFuy-yr0E3I) and it still didn’t seem right — the look and the feel was off.

I’d had a vague recollection that Amrita Singh (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0802080) might have been in the movie I was thinking of as well, but had originally dismissed as my memory acting up.

Today I did a search for movies with Sunny Deol and Amrita Singh and found what I think is the right one — “Betaab” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254179).

This is from way back in ’83 but YouTube has the movie (https://www.youtube.com) and the first few minutes seem to indicate that this might be the right movie 🙂

The grasslands, the log cabin, Sunny Deol putting his boots and chaps on and getting his saddle, it all points to a masala western and I think this might be the right one!

Guess I’ll be watching “Betaab” again soon?

#Movies #Bollywood #Hindi #MasalaWestern #Memories

Does anyone on the fediverse know enough #Armenian to translate this page from my family bible?

Also, any religious scholars who might be able to tell me about what's on these pages?

Boosts very welcome so I can reach people in #Scholar and #Codicology circles.

Edit:

Some additional context has been added in replies, but for those wondering about age:

"The oldest leaves I think are 11th century, the majority of the leaves look like 14th-16th century […]"