hurricane

If you have unlimited money and don't like a lot of the conveniences of life, the keys are great. But the closest major mall is the top of the keys. In Key West the Kmart is the biggest store there. Cost of living is a major concern. In contrast, I live in Florida on North Hutchinson Island a minute or so from the beach. I pay a fifth of what you'd pay in the keys for the place I live in. The second decision is do you like the cold or just want to toss your ice scraper away and never see ice and snow again. I agree there's lots of historical events in the northern part of the East coast but there's no way I want to ensure a hard winter ever again. I guess the big thing is, it's what kind of lifestyle do you want, what kind of lifestyle. Do you want to be near a big city or do you want live in the boonies and what are the tradeoffs of doing so. For me, while I love island life, it takes a half hour to get to a major freeway to head north or south in Florida. That's a definite trade off. So, a great time to think about what you want in life and the kind of place you want to live. Obviously. the lower the cost of living, the more money you pocket to go play in other locales, regardless of where you live.

Yeah, I think that's all the fields that would be pertinent.

Some additions to the festival plans: For those wishing to come down early, there will be the opportunity to do vending at the Pirates in Paradise Truman Annex location from Thanksgiving until the day the fort festival opens. Set up would be 11/23 and tear down would be Thursday 12/1. The fee is $225 if commercial items, $50 less is hand crafted. With the addition of the carnival this year and live concerts each night (working on Bo Bice and The Wailers among others), the traffic should be fairly good this year. There is another new contest: Picture Pirates in Paradise... rules to follow on that one, but the winner's photos will be featured on the home page (and perhaps other pages of the Pirates in Paradise, be used for media photos worldwide and perhaps be on one of the posters for 2012 (depends on reproduction requirements of the image), complete with your PHOTO BY ____________ Winner for the 2011 Picture Pirates in Paradise Contest. We're also thinking of adding a festival songwriting contest for best theme song that captures Pirates in Paradise. Still working on that one. More coming... so much coming this year it's hard to keep track of it all.

Didn't know where to put this, but Sarah and No Rum Charlie talked to me last night and plan to be back as vendors but didn't know how to contact anyone at the fort invasion.

I saw him last night. He is another a myth but he did look like death warmed over.

I dare say it's going to be a banner year all around for these events. Anxious to see what's going on at the fort this year, too.

Since it's been getting more difficult to post everywhere as things rapidly change, you may want to join the Pirates in Paradise group over on Facebook. I know some of you area already there, but that's where the committee is posting all the latest information and answering questions. Here's the URL: http://www.facebook.com/groups/piratesinparadise?ap=1 Note, this is only about Pirates in Paradise, not the Fort Taylor event. I don't want to confuse anyone as to what's being updated on this Facebook group. It only has to do with events in town, accommodations, the contests and what's going on at the Truman Annex site during the 11 days of the festival. See ya there!

It's on iTunes. You just can pull the chords off of it by playing along. It shouldn't take more than three run throughs to figure out the progression.

The festival schedule has been completely updated. For those of you who come to town early or want to attend all the other events, some of the key events have been shifted to accommodate the 11 day festival. The El Meson Caribbean Pirate's Buffett will be Tuesday, Nov. 29. The Buxom Wench and Bad Ass Pirate contest will be Wednesday, following the End of Hurricane season flag burning. It will be held at the Pirate Pub at the Truman Waterfront, not Schooner Bar (this is new). The Shoot & Sail has been moved to Thursday for everyone who wants to compete on open water with life rounds and period weapons. A good chance to check your accuracy aboard a heaving deck. The Walk the Plank Championship will be on Saturday again, Dec. 3 with the Tall Tales Competition directly after. New to the Sea Chantey Festival this year will be Best Original Song. We're looking for chantymen and musicians who will pen and original song for the festival. This should capture the essence of the Pirates in Paradise Maritime Heritage Festival & Music Festival. Draw your inspiration from any and all events. We will be having the competition for best song at 11 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 4. Email me for more information - hurricane@piratesofthecoast.com For the complete schedule: http://www.piratesinparadise.com

The PhotoShop of its time.

The problem with a map as opposed to a calendar is that multiple events take place in the same city in some instances. For example, St. Augustine has Searles, Drake's Raid and Pirate Gathering. Which does the pin point to? This could be very confusing and even frustrating from a user perspective. For planning purposes (i.e., limited vacation time), it's far more effective to scroll through a calendar function and see events in chronological order and be able to readily see which events fall on the same date, or different dates that still may be in proximity geographically, so you could, in essence, plan a weekend at one event and the second weekend at another that you never knew were happening at the same time. This also allows someone to pull up their calendar and easily cross reference planned events with their own activities. Plus, we even planners can put in the dates for years going forward, since the dates of Pirates in Paradise are set from year to year, only the actual dates on a calendar change. I know the guys overseas on elance could whip this up pretty easily and cheaply. It would certainly make the event section here "the" place to go. Right now I'm having to rely on Jamaica Rose's calendar, as it's the only one in roughly chronological order right now.

The ideal would probably be a clickable graphic calendar widget that has the events listed. Click through the months with arrow navigation, click on the event and you can access the information for it. This way they are automatically in order, there are no repeats and old events simply become a date on a previous calendar. This would allow people to view dates for events a year or two ahead as well. Pretty simple stuff these days to do and from a user standpoint, very familiar.

So true, so true. With my shooting skills even the side of a barn should feel completely safe.

I think you're just jealous of the attention Amelia gets. Attention? or "paws on"... I mean.. ahem... free rein...with yer ... um.. person... oh never mind... HA! Nearly snorted on that! Well, Capt, you will be pleased to know she will not be joining me on the trip. So, that means you best not stand me up again! Well lads, there goes target practice. Guess we have to use clay pigeons again.

We're confirmed for the event. We have 6 to 10 of us in tow this year. Looking forward to seeing you there. --

Stuart is a good event. We will be there as well Commodore. We'll have to continue to make mischief again like we did in John's Pass. -

You wouldn't believe the difference in how the gun shoots after the Commodore gets ahold of it. It will have superb action and extremely dependable fire. Mine was misfiring after 10 or so shots. Not anymore. I can shoot all day now.

I have ghostwritten perhaps a dozen books for clients, including the genre you describe. They all went on to be published. I disagree, of course, with John's suggestion. In the book world there are two key people - the writer and the editor. An editor does not write. They only edit manuscripts once they are in relatively finished form. They aren't much help if you aren't already a writer. I would recommend using elance.com which has hundreds of highly qualified ghostwriters. Find one who is experienced in your genre. Look at their previous work. Require a flat fee structure, i.e., X dollars for X book. Ensure that all rights are released to you in your agreement. This is the way it works these days. All books written by famous people are ghostwritten. You won't be able to engage a top notch ghostwriter for this unless you have a very big piggy bank. You can save money on the project by doing the initial research and cobbling together a fairly rough draft that only needs to be expanded upon and massaged. The more legwork the writer is going to have to do, the more it's going to cost. As far as publishing. If you're an unknown author it's almost impossible to bend the ears of a publisher. You don't have to fall for the self published (vanity) form of publishing these days. You can self-publish on Amazon through their CreateSpace section. These are listed on Amazon, you can do a Kindle version and publishers watch this space for the hot books. That's when they are stepping in an optioning the book for their publishing house, often for large sums of money. The publishing industry is rapidly morphing to this model as it is less expensive for publishers, since the book already has some traction. So, in short, go to an elance.com or guru.com, post the project (free), get bids, select a writer, agree to terms (I recommend by milestones - $X up front, $X at delivery of rough draft, $X on completion. This is the way books are being done all the time. As I said, I'm in the business and have been for 17 years.

I have shared it with the committee Commodore and it's on the list. There's just a few other things on the more immediate plans to handle (grants and such). Looks like we may be adding a weeklong music festival at night. The Bad Ass Pirate and Buxom Wench will be on-site this year as part of a Pirate's Ball. I personally am looking forward to movie night. We'll be showing Crimson Pirate on the wall of the building there and Reap the Wild Wind before it. I hope to do Crimson in a Rocky Horror format.

I've placed it on my definite possibles. My cabin boy will be in town and perhaps we can head over for an adventure with the likes of ya! It looks like it's going to be pretty good. Suzi, Michael and Kathy are running it. They did John Levique and Stuart. We need to get you to Stuart this year, sir.

Was on the phone with the rest of the planners. Lots of great things on the horizon after getting our feet wet in the new location. Can't wait to share some of the plans once they are firmed up. Right now, I have to finish the marketing plan for the darned thing.

No, you won't be disappointed at all. His work compared to the imports is like comparing a Timex with a Rolex. The work is simply magnificent and the action and timing are prefect, as is the balance. It's a steal at this price, to be sure. Should be twice this after seeing it in person.

That's a good question. After seeing your silky smooth lock and timing, I was aghast. Mine has pretty poor timing and I had no idea that you could fix something like that. I think my guns are going to have to go to Key Largo for a vacation so you can smooth the action out and fix the timing. I think that's the biggest problem I have with misfires. The Indian guns so need a good smoothing out.

I found it terribly disappointing. The seemingly endless fictitious storyline was a bore. It was 15 minutes worth of solid content wrapped around 105 minutes of Port Royal 101 fluff. The visualization of the town was done the same way a previous one was done, albeit with better technology. As one who has been there, you could learn more truth walking the streets yourself. For example, even the experts at the Archives know that the silver pieces at the church are from a much later period and weren't donated by Morgan. And I won't even get started on the tricorns. I expected more from National Geo, frankly.

The easiest thing would be be called the county extension agent in the county you want to transport the chickens to. They would be able to tell you their state's regulations regarding fowl.