I hope everyone out there has a lot of free time this weekend, because I got lots of links this week! For some reason I kept finding good stuff that I knew you would like – so happy reading!

Anyway, it has been an interesting week, to say the least. I have been pretty distracted by the Sarah Palin book banning controversy, which I posted about a few times on this blog. Even though it’s obvious no books were actually banned from the public library, I continue to maintain that Ms. Palin had it in her head that removing certain books might be something she would like to do – especially considering she brought it up to the librarian 3 times and also tried to have her (the librarian) fired.

This weekend will be a pretty low-key affair, especially considering that Chicagoland is in the grip of more rain showers. I will be accompanying my wife and some friends to a local craft fair, however. It’s always fun to see what other people are making and usually you can find at least one self-published author at these events. If I come across anything really cool/neat/interesting/funny, I’ll definitely post about it here.

With that said, I hope everyone out there on "the tubes" has a happy and safe weekend!

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Well friends, Friday is here and you know what that means – another installment of Friday Link Love! For those of you not familiar with this regular Brad’s Reader feature, I post a handful of links from around the internet for your reading enjoyment. The links will vary in subject, depending on what I find interesting during any given week.

This week has been a busy one. Just like last week, my attention was diverted to the Republican National Convention. Not nearly as exciting as the DNC last week, but still interesting nevertheless. I was, however, abhorred to watch as the RNC tried to politicize 9/11 under the guise of a "tribute video". If you read between the lines, it’s merely more of the same fearmongering that we’ve been seeing for the last 8 years. I have a link to one TV anchor’s reaction below, which pretty much says it all!

Anyway, two days of freedom await us. So, like always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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Friday is here once again, and I have a load of links for ya’ll this week! Topics range on everything from a stroke victim who suddenly becomes very artistic to feeling confident about your own writing. Hopefully you’ll find these links as interesting and informative as I have.

This week went by fast, with a lot of my attention (like many others in the US) turned to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I didn’t watch many of the speeches save for a few, but was more interested in how, or if, the Democratic party could come together after that slug-fest of a primary they had. Next week we move to the Republican National Convention and I look forward to hearing what they have to say as well.

As always, have a happy and safe weekend! And if you’re here in the United States, enjoy your 3-day Labor Day Weekend!

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Another Friday, another week gone by. As much as I love Fridays, it is almost scary at how fast time can fly sometimes.

Now that summer is starting to wind down, my posting frequency should start increasing. Generally, during the summer months I don’t post nearly the amount of material that I do during the fall/winter/spring months. As a result, readership drops as well. But many bloggers will say that the summer is slow no matter how much they post.

Anyway, I hope you are as relieved as I am that Friday is finally here. Enjoy the links below and, as always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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When I was getting ready to put together today’s Link Love post, it occurred to me how cyclical the writing can be. I go through periods of time when I do an amazing amount of writing. And I go through periods of time when I’m lucky to write anything at all on any given day. Right now I’m suffering through the latter. I’m just having a hard time sitting down to write anything (yes, even blog posts). But I’m not worried because I always come out of these little "slumps" on my own. In fact, I’m starting to believe that it is during these dry spells when my brain "recharges" its creativity. Whether or not that is true, I have no idea.

Whatever I might be suffering through, at least it is Friday! Two days of freedom and relaxation lay ahead of me and I’m planning on taking full advantage of it. With that said, I hope all of you out there enjoy these links I spent all week scouring the internet for. Oh yeah, and have a happy and safe weekend!

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After a bit of a vacation, Friday Link Love is back! For the last week I was in Idaho visiting family and taking a vacation from the grind of every day life. I was born and raised in the great metropolis of Boise, until about the age of 15, when my family packed up and moved to the Chicago area where I still reside.

The vacation also gave me a chance to try out my favorite new third-party native application for my iPhone. It’s called eReader and comes from the same company that runs Fictionwise. I was able to read a complete book during the trip, and even bought and began reading another book. I’ll write a more detailed review later, but I thought it worth mentioning now because I enjoyed reading on my iPhone (1st generation) so much.

Well, the weekend is here and I’m getting back into the swing of things after being gone. It is always hard to come back from a vacation, especially for me, as I’m not one to jump right into my usual routines. I need time to adjust, decompress (yes, even vacations can be stressful, especially if flying the friendly skies is involved), and slowly work myself back into my own little world.

This week’s Link Love post is a little different. Rather than posting the links and then making short comments underneath about what I’m linking to, I’m just going to post the link and leave it at that. It is an attempt to save a little time, but I also want the links to speak for themselves. So please enjoy this week’s Link Love. And as always, have a safe and happy weekend.

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Another week is gone and another Friday is here. I’m happy to say that I finally got my entire iTunes library transferred from my older Dell laptop, to my Mac – which for me was no small feat. I also was able to get my iPhone synced up to the Mac which, thanks to Apple, was easy and painless. Having two computers running on two different platforms has been a royal pain. But I’m slowly shifting to the Mac and one day I’ll be able to say goodbye to the Dell (sniff).

Have a happy and safe weekend!

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Yeah, I know it’s Saturday, not Friday. As I already wrote about in this post, Friday July 11 was the rollout for Apple’s iPhone 3G and the release of the new 2.0 firmware, which includes the ability to download 3rd party native applications. So I spent the majority of the evening, first updating my 1st generation iPhone to 2.0, and then exploring the app store on iTunes. A lot of really cool apps are available – many for free and some with a small price tag (I bought the classic word game Scrabble for $9.99).

Well, instead of using up an entire Friday Link Love post on the cool new iPhone apps, I will save that for another day. I still haven’t found the "perfect" ebook reading app (there are several I’m exploring right now), so you can expect a full write-up very shortly!

It’s no longer Friday, but it is still the weekend, and that should be enough to celebrate! Have a happy and safe weekend!

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For those of you in the United States, you know that Friday July 4th was our Independence Day. Thus I took a short break from posting, but still wanted to get at least a few links up for your reading enjoyment.

The long weekend is more than half over and I hope everyone out there is enjoying it. The good news for me is that I went to Borders the other day and splurged on several new books. The bad news is that I left my reading glasses at work, so I’m stuck with an old pair until Monday! It’s always something…

Have a happy and safe weekend!

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I don’t know about you, but this week has really dragged by (the last couple weeks have really dragged by it seems like). Maybe the summer heat slows things down more and drains our energy faster. I don’t know. But I do know that I’m glad Friday is here!

This weekend will probably be a busy one, though. I have several writing projects brewing that need some serious attention. Coming home after a long day at my day job isn’t an ideal time to get some serious writing done. Ahhh, I dream of the day when writing is my day job!

Have a happy and safe weekend!

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