I don’t think I’m good at writing steampunk-style titles. None the less, Awakening Part 9 is now available.
Classes are going well so far. Thanks everyone for the well-wishes on my return to higher education.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Part 8. Tari just can’t catch a break.
I’m going to rework the index page when I can, and create a logical division in Terra Fabula. Everything before Awakening 1 will be ‘Part 1’ and Awakening 1 through wherever we wind up will comprise a ‘Part 2.’ It’ll also wind up renaming the individual bits from ‘Part x’ to ‘Chapter x.’
Haven’t quite managed to roll together an e-book format, but this way it’ll let me segment off a ‘Part 1: (something descriptive I haven’t come up with yet)’ for a first epub file, and then ‘Part 2: Awakening’ to build on for a second file. Still working on getting the formatting to export nicely.
It was -17F when I woke up this morning; this places my room at about… maybe +40F at eye level. I didn’t feel like checking the thermometer on my floor but a bottle of water was frozen solid. It was a miracle the vehicle started. It was apparently a greater miracle that I haven’t wound up stranded in the last weeks.
Had an appointment to have said brown beastie’s pushbutton 4x4 checked on today; I also had a 9am class. (But more on that in a second.) After classes I called the shop and found out two things:
1) The worm gear on the shift motor was worn out. 2) The advice given to me about “hit the transfer motor with a hammer, it should take care of it” was apparently only ever meant to be a temporary fix. (And, I might add, it worked every time except this last time.) The sensor cover was cracked, too.
So there goes $300; new tires (the back pair are balding on the inside tread. It’s no wonder I can’t back out of my driveway) are probably another 600. And last week the bushings on the radius arms were replaced - another $200. All this for what was originally a $600 vehicle.
Oh well. Gotta have it working, now that I’ve re-enrolled in college classes. Back in ‘the day’ (circa… 1998-2004?) I was a part time student, attempting to major in Computer Science. For a variety of reasons I won’t bore anyone with I wound up not finishing that degree. A month or so back I finally decided it was time to do something about that and had my transcript sent up to the local college here in Bottineau. Despite the terrible things on said transcript they enrolled me anyway.
Their programs don’t include a computer science degree; the closest they have is ‘Information Technology.’ I’ve built more computers than I care to admit, programmed in C++, Visual Basic, assembler, Perl, PHP… Unfortunately part of their requirements for a 2-year degree include an Intro to Computers class. Not everyone who comes to school routinely uses (or even wants to use) a computer, and they need to make sure everyone at least has a baseline. I understand the reasoning for it, and I could probably test out of this particular course. (Next week we’re going to open a computer and see what’s inside! Whee!) But part of this course also covers Office 2010, and I’m not as proficient in those applications as I could be.
I’m also taking a separate pair of classes (Word Processing, Spreadsheets) that are supposed to be like second-semester followups to this class. Beyond these, an Information Security class and a Desktop Publishing class (using InDesign CS5) round out the weekly schedule.
Hope the holiday season treated everyone well. We’ve been dealing with a variety of winter weather here in the high plains as well as some various equipment failures and other general detriments to sanity. I also did not get to see the eclipse (due to inclement weather), which did not help the sanity levels. Oh well.
Here’s another installment of Awakening - Part Seven.
Unfortunately, Paradigm Shift is still on hold. There was a little story I wanted to share over the holidays but between everything that was going on around here I just never managed to sit down and hammer it out. It still wants to be told and it’s part of the background leading into PS, so it’ll eventually appear.
Have a great week.
Sorry for the delays. Here’s Part 6.
It’s been promised a long time; I never could get things to look the way I wanted, which in addition to a severe lack of time to tinker with it is what’s delayed the function for so long. I suppose I shouldn’t worry about the look so much. I mean, it’s just plaintext. Why worry about presentation?
Because I, apparently, am picky about such things. I almost called myself a ‘diva’ but I went ahead and ate a candy bar. TV taught me that would help.
I’m still hungry.
Anyway, here’s an example. It’ll offer you a lightly-formatted text document to print, as well as a PDF link to save. The link for these is located in the upper-right of each individual chapter’s text, near the next/previous links.
The look is still not perfect - for one, once downloaded, there is no way to discern the intended order unless you’re careful to do so while you fetch the files. I could fix that by adding in a number to each chapter’s title, but I think that may change the permalinks as well. I could instead add a number as the first line of the text, I suppose… My original intent was to do so by providing an in-universe date on which the particular chapter takes place.
I’ll wind up generating my own PDFs I can better control the look of, but for now this should help the e-reader blues. Also, a single, monolithic PDF of the entire collection (or sub-sections, perhaps) might streamline the process. For example, one logical division would be from Blizzard through Two Thousand. That however is a sizable chunk. A few smaller installments might work better. This is something to further examine en-route to an .EPUB or .MOBI edition.
But that doesn’t change the main reason for this place: further progressing through the story itself. Sadly, there is no new installment today.
It’s been a rough few months timewise, as should be mostly evident from the lack of any sort of updates other than quick blurbs on twitter and this out-of-the-blue rant. I’ve worked on Awakening’s sixth part as I’ve been able, but spending a mere five minutes here, fifteen there, another half-hour over there… With all the separate sessions breaking up the creative process, the chapter’s very rough and doesn’t logically fit together. I’m not happy with it, and as soon as I can dedicate an entire afternoon to working on it I might actually make some progress.
There are a few things I’d like to share in the interim, however. It’s likely they’re not new to anyone, but I’ll do it anyway.
First, from @baltakatei via Twitter - Dinosaur Comics debates the scientific merits of immortality. I think the green guy should have eaten the yellow guy at the first sign of dissent.
From me: A photo from the very first high plains snowstorm of the 2010 season. It dumped as much as 13” in some areas (such as in front of my outward-opening door. The residence pictured is not my house). Much has since melted, but it has really made things a mess while working in the woods.
Also, as someone publishing content to the web, I feel compelled to mention this. There’s been a bunch of controversy in the last several days about an alleged theft of intellectual property by a magazine who supposedly stated ‘the web is considered “public domain”’ in defense of said theft. If the story is true… It’s quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve read all year. I won’t rehash it as it’s been thoroughly covered almost anywhere else you care to look and I’d probably miss important details.
It won’t change what I’m doing here, I don’t expect. This site is my sole current method of publishing my work. I don’t mind if someone prints off a copy for their own reading, or loads it on an e-reader for the same… Heck, even downloading it for offline reading, fine. Enjoy it.
All I ask (and all I’ve ever truly asked) is: Please, don’t distribute it elsewhere unless you’ve asked me. If asked, I’d almost certainly okay a repost. Mainly, this so I can keep track of where it’s gone across the Great and Scary Intertubes. It’d be something else if the site actually was a source of income for me.
Which, sadly, it’s not. I’ve never made a single cent off of this site (a very rough estimate is that it has actually cost me approximately $2000 USD to date in hosting and domain fees alone). To the best of my recollection I’ve also never asked for donations towards domain upkeep. More than once, I’ve thought about asking - but unless I can get myself on some sort of routine schedule for updates, I simply don’t feel right rattling a tin cup. The most I’d likely do is toss up a paypal button somewhere on the sidebar and never mention it again.
What I’d much rather do is finish the story and create a nice, clean epub/kindle version, perhaps with illustrations… Really wish I could afford to commission a couple of pieces right now. I’d like to get a group-portrait of several of the characters done.
Let’s see if I can’t make the most of the next hour or two before I fall asleep…
TL;DR:
“You’re still talking but all I hear is ‘blah blah excuses blah blah.’” —T’bia, from Awakening pt 6
Working on it.