Blogger Pro

Just noticed the "Pro" features kick in on the menus et al. Took me by surprise for a moment. :-)

posted by Lynda at 23:47   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Style Sheet of 'new look' Surfin' Pages on the ORU

... very nice, by the way. Think I forgot to say that on the phone. Interested to see what you come up with for the nav bar.

posted by Lynda at 23:45   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Bley accepts Amel's Case

Just went to take a quick boo that that chapter again, thinking about your reading it, and noticed it gets a bit choppy in the passage where Solomon joins Bley and Nubia. Should reduce to one bit of acting up from Nubia or two max. I was cutting down and trying to introduce Solomon simultaneously and I think the seams show in those few paragaraphs. There's also a negation opps in one of the bits of temper tantrum where Nubia should be saying "she'll say no" and is saying "she'll say yes" instead. Feel free if you want to take a run at fixing it up and notify me here if you upload a new version. I'll get hold of the Erien interview with Bley soonish -- maybe one evening while I'm in Vancouver for this event this week -- and refresh my memory. Yes, and take advantage of the restored blog archive to get those chapter summaries. :-)

posted by Lynda at 23:44   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Got it!
(Thanks David). And no, I could not have hacked that one! So file is there.
posted by Anonymous at 19:13   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Phoo!
Oh no you won't. Not until you tell me the new password!
posted by Anonymous at 19:02   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Relsite stylesheet
Lynda: In the depot you will find a new directory, containing a glossary file adapted from the short TP glossary, which is set up to work with my first take on a stylesheet for the formal reference material for the site. Please critique! I plan to link from it to the longer articles, etc (using standard colour links with hover underline). Need to sort out the navigation, but here's a start.
posted by Anonymous at 18:54   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Opal
Started taking another pass through Opal, in the first chapter muttering darkly, "I don't know how I could have made this any plainer," because, dammit, Noon was being downright gracious (for Noon). However, I started to notice difficulty in chapter 2. Couldn't figure out what it was, because the text was all there, and then realised I could hardly see my punctuation marks. When Orion published LEGACIES, the copy editor switched all my double quotes to single quotes. So subsequently, I wrote with single quotes. However I've also been in the habit of switching off smart quotes, because of the way they get gibberished by UNIX systems. That, coupled with my bottom-end laser printer's spacing added up to make my quote marks almost invisible in a lot of places, so dialogue, description and interpolation are all running together. I know I can't stand reading even mundane work that's unpunctuated, never mind the kind of complexities I'm throwing in in OPAL. So I think part of the problem is the punctuation. There are other problems: Noon is not nearly so gracious later on, when he's unsure of himself. And there are sections of the story I have to rethink. But just putting in proper quotation marks may well make a considerable difference. Assuming my toner cartridge holds out. A trip to Staples may be on the cards this weekend.
posted by Anonymous at 01:14   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
I am a sawed-off genius
I have found out how to republish our archives. (The vicissitudes of blogging is the kind of thing that the blog-snobs say Is Not Done to discuss in public, innit? Well, since I've already offended them, shall I go all the way by asserting the undeniable supremacy of the Mac?? Nah, might as well exhibit some class.) Anyway, for future reference, assuming we can find this post again: it's under Archives, above the posting blank.

You now have no excuse!
posted by Anonymous at 00:58   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Found Chapter 19

... and have it down to 8,874 words as of tonight. Still a way to go and not finding it too difficult to tighten up. Do we have a target chapter length, say N +/- M not to be too hopeful of miracles. Some will be a bit longer which is okay so long as some are a bit shorter but it would probably be Good For Us (like eating spinach) to target the discipline of N +/- M per chapter.

By my estimate, the average reduction needed will be in the vicinity of 25%. Some will lose more - probably the really long ones. Others will lose less. I'm not overly sweated about uniformity of length - A.

Browser

I noticed PRO doesn't support Opera, either. :-( but they claim they are working on that.

posted by Lynda at 00:50   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Maybe a longshot
But I am trying republishing the last 100 posts, which isn't quite all, but is a lot.
Regarding going pro - it doesn't support Netscape 4.75, which for all its quirks is my main browser. I haven't been able to face upgrading. But I will use IE. For this.
posted by Anonymous at 00:45   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
We just went PRO. But where do I put the PRO button in the template? Mmm. Probably replaces the "powered by Blogger" thing. Dare I try? I dunno. You're better at fiddling with the template.
posted by Lynda at 23:27   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Still sans older blog pages

This is upsetting. Wanted to go back to those tables your posted for chapter by chapter breakdowns of Far Arena and it looks as if our oldest logs are really just gone. I am going to make sure I backup the blog directories on my home PC via Dreamweaver hence forth. I have asked for restoration of backups on the ISP of the blog directory and will see how that goes.

posted by Lynda at 23:12   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Version and such

Thinking I will delve into Amel arriving at the group home and confronted by my horrid directory arrangement. I will go back and read the blog to sort the chapters out. Modern prayer: ... and preserve me from duplicate directory trees.

posted by Lynda at 23:09   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
A 'con' re: web site overhauling

Occurred to me while searching google for something ORU related that we will be losing something quite significant by changing the web site design too radically. The ORU site has been around long enough to have seeped into a lot of indexes not just at the homepage level of indexing but in secondary and deeper pages. Might be worthwhile not to change the "background" pages too much even if we shine up and tidy the more superficial (as in, here for a quick look around) entrances. If you search google for "Sexual behavior of female primates" for example, you get an ORU page about 3 down and a search on the three words duel honor law unquoted nets the ORU article on sword law right at the top. Might be something worth considering for the denser stuff, in particular.

Links in are good! We should be able to improve the navigation within the site and give the pages a consistent look in the areas we want them to have a consistent look without affecting the underlying directory structure, and I'm all in favour of minimum motion: we might actually get it done sometime this side of 2020 - A.

posted by Lynda at 02:00   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Gallery

Also stuck up that cleaned up rel symbol you wanted in the gallery (http://www.okalrel.org/gallery ) where i have taken to putting nuggets for reuse or ones I wish to make available to friends of the ORU. :-)

posted by Lynda at 13:00   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
ORU Memo
Created a memo template to write up a memo on for Kyle, who'll be tackling Second Contact for me, and thought you might like to have a copy. You can find it as a word doc in the stash. Also put a copy of the Feb 19 version of the evolving style sheet in the virtual root of our stash. I've been updating it in the throne price directory and that doesn't make sense now we are applying it both to Second Contact and Far Arena.
Sleep deprivation and longevity
"Ah, sleep, it is a gentle thing...." Actually the notion that we may not need as much sleep as we think if we can psych out our sleep/wake cycle featured in my Biopsych text, by Pinel, but my prof who worked with Pinel for a while suspects he was just trying to out macho another guy who was making a big deal of burning the candles at both ends. :-)

Yes, I remember reading a book called "The Sleep Thieves" where the author conducted his own experiment in on running less than four hours a night, and described a striking deterioration in performance of which he was quite unaware; he was months afterwards rewriting material he'd written in a semi-demented state. The macho-types always seem to aim for 4 hours or less - not realising, I suspect, that the 'captains of industry' who are always quoted as doing this are catnappers. Or stimulant users! According to the research mentioned, at 5 hours you've lost the advantage. Nancy Kress has written at least three novels about a world in which genetic engineering created a class of people who did not need to sleep, and the reprocussions thereof - A.
posted by Lynda at 12:55   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Testing to see if we are up again.
posted by Lynda at 10:38   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Sleep
Betwixt the usual interesting musical offerings from Radio FM this am, a snippet on a major study about sleep and lifespan. Seems that 6 to 7 hours, rather than 8, is optimum, at least for longevity. Large epidemiological study, hence causuality cannot necessarily be assigned and there's still a problem with confounding - I'd have to actually read the papers to see how they addressed the potential for confounders such as ill-health (liable to disrupt sleep patterns) or socioeconomic status (the 6 to 7 hour a night people are liable to have stable work-lives rather than be unemployed or insecure in their jobs), both of which influence lifespan. And who's to know whether 6 to 7 hours sleep leads to longer lifespan, or the vitality required for longer lifespan allows tolerance of the 6 to 7 hours.

But maybe it will turn out to be like food and a little deprivation promotes longevity. Now, who was it who came up with the joke about the doctor who tells his patient to give up drinking, smoking and sex, with the punchline that even if it doesn't make him live longer, it will certainly feel like it does?
posted by Anonymous at 08:09   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Coming closer ...
TP has now made it to Edge's current books page, although I notice now it's the whole North American release that has snuck back to September 1 and not just the US. Grr. STAR WARS is ostensibly the reason. But it's always going to be something. Both my last two novels were released in November and never actually seemed to get on the shelves until after the last batch of Christmas movie tie-in books. But the publisher's release - which I presume means the book will be available from Edge and the online booksellers - is still May.
posted by Anonymous at 08:03   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Lynda on e-mail today

Yes!!!!
Second Contact being the first (chronologically) book of the series, which takes up the story of how the Reetions and Gelacks were forced to acknowledge each others' existance for the first time in 200 years.And it's all Lynda's. Ie, I get to have all the fun (of reading it) without any of the work!
Friends and family have all laid claim to their favourites. Lynda's eldest daughter's demand is: More Ann and Amel. I'm fond of Di Mon, myself: repressed, impulsive, bad tempered, miserably failed fatalist, who'd like to just watch Gelion go to hell in a handbasket, but when it comes right down to it cannot stand the mess!
posted by Anonymous at 22:56   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
All done
Nothing to do with the ORU - except it keeps the writer and dependent Mac in shelter, food and repairs, and nights like this interfere with the ORU - but I have just (as in about long-enough-to-start-IE-and-log-on-ago) sent my first clinical study report out to internal review.

Almost but not entirely unlike sending a MS off to the editor, to borrow Douglas Adams' immortal construction.

Now I wonder if I should leave my 40 lb box here such time as I bring the car or depart when the buses are running frequently. There's a pawnshop-type place downstairs that got in a whole bunch of freeweights this week. I'd been looking for some, but the ones in SportsChek were pretty but pretty wussy - purple moulded 5 lbs just were not going to cut it for long, even at my advanced age. I want back some of the leg-power I had when I was fencing and could do reps with 2/3 of the weight machine stack - whatever weight that was - 330 somethings, probably lbs. Only machine I ever got to move the pin DOWN on after a guy had been on it. The bench press was and is a zone of humiliation; sometimes I can't even get the pin OUT, never mind up. Never mind Freud's Thing, it's the androgens I envy. So I bought these weights, the real bar and changeable disc affairs. 40 lbs is no heavier than a box of books, and more compact. But I wouldn't want to lug a box of books the mile or so home!
posted by Anonymous at 19:12   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Posterity on Lunacat

Placing Posterity on Lunacat got me editing the list of works on the Okal Rel Universe web site. [What a sprawling beast it is, too.]

New bits for your inspection are:

• List of Novels (formerly muddled up with other, shorter works)


• Index of Stories (with shorter things moved from "list" to here)

Don't know if it's inspiring or depressing to see the whole body of stuff listed like that. We seem to have an awful lot of half finished work on our hands. I suspect, in my case at least, it is because the drafting part is more fun than the hard work of making it presentable. :-(

posted by Lynda at 23:36   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

I am exceedingly tired of seeing this little graphic on the weather site.
I am exceedingly tired of what it portends.
I know, that is what I get for moving to the West Coast.
And yes, it does that here.
Precipitates.
Pluit.
Pleut.
*Sigh*

Weather

On the other hand, PG is begging for snow because we have a movie in progress called Dreamcatcher which requires it.

posted by Anonymous at 23:11   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Frustrated blogger
You're doing better than I am, accessing me blug. I messed around trying to post earlier on - two Netscape/OS8.6 freezes, such that I had to reboot. Then I couldn't post my updates: transfer something-or-othered, try again. Now I cannot even call it up. Server must be tribulated.

I'm impressed re: construction. Everyone else I know who has had any kind of house renovations eventually began to feel like the ultimate nightmare houseguests have arrived as some fitting or other doesn't fit, some measurement proves incorrect, some part does not arrive on time, some other job has to be finished etc etc and the chaos, dust, disorder and wanderings in and out go on and on.

Marie's BLACK CHALICE is officially out from Ace tomorrow. I can start haunting Chapters with a legitimate agenda.

And Cheyenne says IT'S OVER. Did you get the e-mail. Positively the last changes are being made tomorrow and then IT'S OFF TO THE PRINTERS. We should ask for cover-flats.
posted by Anonymous at 22:51   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Dropped in on biblio-blog. Like the layout. Construction in the basement nearly done. Should be back in my den by the end of the week.
posted by Lynda at 21:06   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments