For my Desktop Publishing final project, among other requirements, I needed to create a ‘menu or program.’ I wound up making a wedding program for a nice couple I know. The tentative date for the wedding is sometime in 2048. I’ll get photos of the printed version, as the PDF in this case just doesn’t show off how nice the end result turned out. (Although, I admit, I made a rookie mistake on it.)

Spring has sprung here at the lake; the ice went off about a week ago and nearly carried off our dock, deck, and my propane grill. So, I went wading in 34ºF water (with rubber waders, thankfully, but it was still cold) and tied ropes to everything before it could escape too far into the lake to save. No worries—the next day, the wind shifted, and pushed the dock back to the shoreline retaining wall… and right on through it.

In the meantime, we had so much moisture stored in the snowpack that everything’s running over. There was (and in some places still is) flooding all over the state. Mother’s house in the city a few hours away decided this would be an excellent year to leak water into the basement. It’s on a hill, so it’s not from a river or anything. No broken pipes either, and no backing up from the sewer; no, Nature just decided to open a natural spring up underneath the concrete floor of the basement and it’s leeching in as fast as she can suck it out. She’s removed something on par of 500-600 gallons of water in the last week, 8 gallons at a time, using a shopvac. I wish Mr. Mike Holmes did stateside work.

The barge still isn’t on the lake, sadly; with the water content of the ground as it is, we can’t get a trailer to where it’s parked so we can load it. We’ve now had a couple of sunny days over the weekend, and I’m hopeful (but only just) that we might make some progress on Monday toward that goal.

Classes are going well so far. Thanks everyone for the well-wishes on my return to higher education.

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.

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.

I originally took the board down because I just couldn’t keep up with spammers. That and a couple of server moves really sealed its fate. The database is still floating around but it’s hardly in a usable state.

Someone suggested another board that might be willing to host a subforum for discussion. After speaking with one of their admins, there’s now a section devoted to Terra Fabula on the Planet Furry boards should anyone still be so inclined to discuss anything related to Terra Fabula’s universe.

Is it better than doing the same inside blog comments? Perhaps.

Is it better than this delicious plate of chicken and noodles before me? Questionable. I’ll get back to you after I lick the plate clean.

As we continue on through this journey, I’m realizing that there’s a great number of things I’ve built in my head that have never made it here. Worse yet is mentally sorting what’s current, what’s from the prior revisions, and what hasn’t been seen at all (other than by my cats). My notes, honestly, are terrible.

Some of the omissions I discovered this week, as I went back and corrected small but boneheaded spelling errors through most of Terra Fabula. I’m not entirely sure how they slipped by, but I’m confident I’ve squashed most of them. I may have been designing this universe of theirs for the past 15 years, but I’m hardly what anyone would call a professional author.

With today’s installment, I’ve included what I feel is a major omission in regards to explaining a key part of the Val’Traxan culture. I think it’s been made clear that AIs are an integral part of their lives; some of what we look at in our own society as big-brotherish, they take for granted as part of a social contract. They are being watched. And for them, it works. It wouldn’t for everyone. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t for us.

I’d also like to give thanks to someone who’s helped stabilize the foundations of the universe over the last several months. I haven’t asked if he wants his online name in public for this assistance, so I won’t include it (yet). But I hope he knows I’m very grateful for the help he’s provided in finding gaping holes in the underlying framework, once I peeled back the drywall to peek behind.

Chronicles — The Stories

Messageboard — Graciously provided by PlanetFurry

Twitter — @bluevulpine

E-mail — webfox@bluevulpine.net

Paradigm Shift is briefly on hold, until a bit more of TF rolls out the door. I’m assuming you don’t want to know that interesting things happen in the time between them that I’m not going to tell you just yet, and that you’d be upset if I pulled the curtain early. It’s likely everything everyone expects, anyway, but you never know.

I won’t have weekly updates for a while, like I was doing before, but I’ll get things up as I get them done. Enjoy.