I wrote more words. Almost done with Chapter 8. It’s hard to write from the Right Hand’s perspective. He has no awe whatsoever. How am I supposed to write about the Crown, the Left Hand, and the throne room through a man with no awe? Harumph.
In other news, I need to find a way to get my two year old to stop licking things and people.
“We had Cian’s birthday party this weekend, and I’d call it a huge success.”
I’d still call it a huge success. You might even be able to see some of it here. Also, you are jealous of my slippers.
“LJ Comment spam on the post about the miscarriage.”
I had a lot of rage about this. I know that this kind of thing is automated, but whatever piece of code did it, they chose poorly. When someone comments on one of my posts, I receive an alert via email. So, when the comment spam hit, I got an email, with the original post front and center. It’s still painful, the loss of a child I never met, and this revisiting was neither helpful nor appreciated.
“Even at room temperature, Tim Hortons coffee is yummy.”
Yup. Still true.
Chapter 8 of The Glass Crown is inching along again. I got some words down on my lunch break, and I’m pretty happy about it. The Right Hand really is a jerk. The things that he’s doing to Robin and Caroline, just to see how they’ll stir the pot… you know, he might make a good writer. ;)
Just a short little geek note. I’ve created WordPress pages for each of my published works. Now, when you click on one of the cover images, you’ll go to a page with the cover image, the blurb about the book, and a list of where and how you can get it.
I’m planning to add EPUB on the end of those lists very soon. Keep your eyes peeled.
I am having an adventure.
As an experiment, I am making Todd’s Story more friendly for eBook readers. My experience with my wife’s Nook has told me that pdf files and eBook readers are not exactly the best of friends. So, after some Googling (yes, it’s a verb now, shut it), I decided to go with EPUB format. It seemed to be the most cross-compatible.
I downloaded a copy of Calibre, and off I went. Okay, converting from pdf was terrible, but converting from low-formatting formats like .rtf is better. rtf it is. The next hurdle came in variable-width formatting. Normally, not a problem, but both Calibre and my wife’s Nook interpret hard carriage returns as a double space, which is on top of the 1.5 spacing it already gives text. Okay, no problem, I went through and changed my paragraph separations. There was nothing to do with the song lyrics, so I left them as-is.
The next step was to make sure that the cover image would show. Calibre puts the EPUB file, the source rtf, and the cover graphic all in the same directory, so I couldn’t be sure if the image was included in the EPUB file or not. More Googling ensued, and Aldiko ended up on my Android phone. I moved the EPUB file over, imported it, and… success! Cover graphic! I won’t have to archive multiple files into a .zip or whatever to distribute it!
So, I start flipping through the pages in Aldiko. All of the formatting is gone. Centering, bold, italics, everything. Carriage returns are normal. This looks like it was written in Notepad. Not exactly easy on the eyes.
On top of that, my wonderful WordPress install is telling me that it won’t allow uploads of EPUB files into its Media section, because it poses a security risk. Yeah, XML based files would.
Geek note – Yes, I could host and link the file manually, but that’s not what I’m trying to do here.
My next steps include checking if Lulu will allow me to upload my own EPUB file instead of paying them more than I can afford to convert it for me and testing my EPUB file out on an iPad 2 and any other eReader that I can get my hands on.
Wish me luck.
Two years ago today, this happened.
Happy birthday, Cian.
“What do you do?” asked the fern of the gear.
“I spin. In spinning, I turn others,” answered the gear. “What do you do?”
“I drink in the sunlight from the sky and the water from the earth. I change the light into energy and the dirt into food. I spread over vast fields, and penetrate deep forests. I feed some animals, and when I die, I will return nourishment to the earth for those that will come after.” The fern stood tall, pride showing.
The gear thought as it spun. “Sounds complicated.”
“It is miraculous! I am a product of untold changes over untold years. I will pass that on to those that come after, who will also change, becoming perfect for the world in which they live.” The fern shook its leaves, thrilled with its perfection.
The gear thought again for a time. “I came from a factory. There are many others, exactly like me. We spin, and in spinning, turn each other.” It thought again as it spun. “I perform the task for which I was designed.”
The wind blew through the fern’s leaves, tickling them. “Hee!”
The gear spun, and in spinning, turned others.
My wife is not a fan of Valentine’s Day, saint or no saint. She is, however, a HUGE proponent of showing people that she loves them. I woke up to the bright pink sock monkey over there, as well as the card. The kids got sock monkeys, too. Even though my wife thinks they’re creepy, she practically bathed in the smiles that the stuffed buggars brought to our faces.
And yes, I’m proud of still having enough of a kid in me to be overjoyed by the gift of a stuffed animal. I mean, seriously. SOCK MONKEY! How can you NOT be thrilled?
WARNING: Here there be geek!
She also got me this, which I am enjoying immensely. While I do dig mice, trackballs need no extra space in which to move around. It is very comfortable, and my wrist has been thanking me. I don’t even have to bring up how cool the lack of ridiculous dongle is.
I’ve been talking a lot about Windows Home Server. It doesn’t dig actual server hardware, which I find odd. It does run just find on a broken-down old laptop with no battery, connected to a 1TB USB HD. It takes its time during the initial backup, but does what it’s supposed to do. It also, after some driver trickery, reliably serves print jobs to an aged color inkjet printer.
Compared with getting a Linux server up and doing the same thing reliably, this has been painless. Now, if my Windows vs. Linux maxim holds true, I will see problems later on. In my experience, either operating system presents battles. With Linux, all of the swearing and hair-pulling comes at the beginning, when you’re trying to get it to do what you want it to do. With Windows, it comes later, as errors and problems creep into the software. In any case, Home Server’s mechanism for adding the USB hard drive to its data store took two or three whole clicks. Just awesome.
It feels good to know that all three PCs in the house are backed up in case of hard drive failure. Because, you know, that NEVER happens.
END GEEKERY
I feel that there is more to say, but I don’t seem to have the words.
The total number of cars that have gotten stuck in the snow on my street in the last 24 hours is bordering on ridiculous.
We’re a dead-end residential street which is less than a block long, so we don’t get much attention from the plows. When the big storm hit last week, we were snowed in for three days, because we simply couldn’t get our cars out of our driveway, let alone down to the (plowed, salted) cross-street. Once the plowing was done, there were still several layers of compacted snow and ice left behind from the earlier snowfalls, melts, ice storms, etc.
So, as time went on, that snow and ice and slush got churned up, slowly making our road nearly impassible all over again. This culminated yesterday. A small car got stuck in our driveway while trying to turn around. By the time I noticed, it was rocking itself out of being stuck, which was good. Later on in the evening, a car got stuck badly enough that a local police officer stopped to render aid. Eventually, the vehicle was released from its snowy prison. Then the police car tried to use the driveway of an empty house to turn around.
That police car was stuck for about two hours. Half of the neighborhood was out there trying to get it free. Eventually, they decided to get a tow. I mean, even in winter in Michigan, tow service is lickety-split for the police. So, what does the semi-size flat-bed tow truck do when it tries to turn around in our driveway to get a better angle to free the cop car?
That’s right, it got stuck. Apparently, the snowbank created by my shoveling and by the one plowing was too much even for this monster of a truck. It was a half an hour of tow truck rocking before we noticed that the flashing lights of both the tow truck and the police car were gone. So, what happens when both a police car and the tow truck sent to free that police car get stuck in a residential dead-end street?
It gets plowed. Again. In the middle of the night.
My wife was able to get the van out and over the mini-snowbank created by the plowing, and she only left a few pieces of plastic behind. Our neighbor’s Honda was not quite so lucky. (We have a shared driveway with our next-door neighbor.) So, bright and early, (for a second-shifter) we were pushing and shoveling once again. So, to sum up, since yesterday afternoon:
As a final note, freeing cars is as much exercise as straight-up shoveling. Who needs a gym when you’ve got winter?