Fast Fiction

Not those kinds of characters ... The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator has just posted a new record on the road to recreating the works of Shakespeare through random keystrokes:

16 letters from “King Richard II” after 24,115 billion billion monkey-years on 11 May 2004. “KING RICHARD. OlazZtssi0cwX?QDjqkP9r]xfaBmlVU]e…”

matched

“KING RICHARD. Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son, Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal”

Pretty soon we’ll have a whole block of dialogue.

Yes, I give up. There will be no new spiffy three column format. Two tries and I can’t get it to work.

So gentle readers, you’re stuck with this. Maybe I’ll change out the colors and do a new header graphic. But there’s no additional content bar in the near future. Maybe I’ll feed the buzznet photos in.

Sigh.

UPDATE: I’ve signed up for Bloglines - a one stop place to read all my favorite blogs via Atom or RSS feed. It seems that this is the way blogs are going anyway, so who gives a damn about the design?

I signed up for classmates.com some years ago. I’m not sure why. I was never particularly close with any of my classmates at Mechanicsburg Area Senior High. But I was curious what happened to some of them (the writer in me) and so I check back. Problem is that I’m not a gold member and I refuse to fill out a profile so I really can’t find out anything out about anyone except the fact that they signed up.

Well, lately there has been an outbreak of all new spam. Or pranks, I haven’t decided.

It started with a classmate signing in under the name Penis, Enlargement. Today I logged in and someone two years after me graduated under the name Well, Hung. I don’t recall him. Nope, looked through the yearbook and there is no Well, Hung fellow.

I’m getting frustrated trying to make that other design work and I wonder if it’s the limitations of designing CSS for so many different browsers.

So, I went and got another skin with three columns (because I’m damn determined on that!) and put it here to test. Obviously I haven’t fleshed out the design quite as well as the last one. So, good folks, let me know what you see. (I know the blogger banner ad intrudes ... but it won’t on fast fiction since I’m an ad-free space.)

I’ll start populating it a little better soon, maybe I’ll work on it tonight. I’m not sure I’m keen on the colors, but the trick at the moment is finding a layout that doesn’t get all wonky on Macs and Netscape.

I’m hard at work creating a new template for Fast Fiction. You can preview it here. Obviously the content isn’t there, so it’s hard to judge. I’m still working on moving over all my links and reordering things a bit. I haven’t figured out how to use the “blogger profile” feature yet, but I can roll these things out in stages.

If you visit the test site, please let me know if it looks okay on your screen and with your browser. I don’t have that many computers to test on. I need to know if the three column thing is working. I think it comes down to the fact that the center column can’t have an image in it that’s wider than 325 pixels or else it messes up the columns beneath it (but I can always make the images popups for larger versions, which will make the page load faster anyway). But that’s only an issue for folks with small monitors (or small browser windows). I’ll have to populate a few more mock entries to see how it really works. And of course my real archives take up a lot more room.

Any of the internal links on the site obviously point back to fast fiction instead of implementing the template on my archives, so if you click on them and get back here, don’t be surprised.

I found the skin on BlogSkins.com and it was designed by Michael Kelly (NaKaithus).

I’m thinking of redoing my header graphic, too. My screen at the office is 1152x864, so there’s a lot of room on the right of the top graphic. I think if I make a very wide one with little of interest past the 800 pixel mark it would look decent, but then folks with narrow monitors would get a scroll bar on the bottom. I’m not smart enough to do something that shifts bigger and smaller like blogging.la ... I also may be changing the background color to something darker but leaving the side bar fill that steely grey. Any thoughts? Please?

UPDATE: I did change the background color to a light purple-gray. I like it, it makes the white appear a little brighter. Let me know if you hate it. (I’m a big fan of purple.) I duotoned the header image (and lengthened it a bit for wider screens) and now I’m trying to deal with the overlap issues (it appears that way on Netscape as well). Thanks to everyone for their comments. Keep checking back and let me know if I’ve fixed it.

Perhaps the obsession with writing a novel in a month has worn off. The challenge is gone. I know I can do it, I’ve done it three times.

But how about a weekend?

I got an email yesterday and lo and behold a project out of India is doing just that this weekend. It’s not limited to novels either, it could be plays or screenplays or even graphic novels. I can’t quite decided whether I’m up for it, but here it is, in case you have 58 hours free:

PRESS RELEASE, MAY 11 2004
INTERNATIONAL CONTEST PITS WRITERS AGAINST THE CLOCK
————————————————————-
(Bombay, May 11, 2004)— The Great Mahakali Write-A-Thalon is an international literary contest that is spreading like wildfire. It is powered by an honour-based system, and no cash prize or money is being spent. And yet on Tuesday night it was the 6th fastest information spreading in the weblog community, including such luminaries of the digiratti as Jason Kottke.

This is why it is special. It started as a mere weekend binge between four friends. Now, scores of writers from more then seven countries including India, the United States, Norway, Ireland, and Japan, will each attempt to write an entire novel, poetic epic, stage or screen play, from scratch.  They have a weekend—58 hours, to be exact. This includes heavyweights like Tom Bradley in Nagasaki, and Mike Atherton in London.

Set rolling by Bombay columnist, Rohit Gupta, the Write-A-Thalon is generating massive interest amongst publishers, film producers and writers as far afield as New York and Bombay. Amazed at the response his weekend game has generated, he says,“This reminds me of the Memespread Project. Like a virus! The best part is the quality of writers who are snowballing us. For a zero-commerce operation, this is somewhat phenomenal.”

Nicole Hughes of Plastic Sugar Press has agreed to critique and review five of the top peer-reviewed novellas. “The main reason I was attracted to this project is because it goes so much against what we are taught about how to write”, says Hughes. “Ninety percent of the manuscripts I review suffer from a very constrictive and self-conscious quality. I think a lot of writers edit way too much in the beginning of the process, and don’t trust their craft enough to take real risks. This project is about complete and total submersion in the work, merging our objective and subjective realities, and creating a true intimacy between writer and reader.”

Jagmohan Bhanver, President of the Writerís Society Of India says, ìI expect to see some really high power energy unleashed during the course of these three days.î Other event partners like Frog Books, J Sughand Productions, Oxford Bookstore, Crimson Feet Magazine and the Industrial Theatre Company will review the best manuscripts with a view towards publication.

Writers interested in taking part in THE GREAT MAHAKALI WRITE-A-THALON(14-16 May 2004) should contact Emmet Cole and/or Rohit Gupta at their respective e-mail addresses—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)—as soon as possible.

Contest Website:  http://www.geocities.com/micereign/ 
Contest Co-ordindators
Rohit Gupta (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) www.writers.net/writers/rohitgupta
Emmet Cole (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) www.emmetcole.com

Okay, maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but Blogger changed over the weekend. I was thinking of changing my template, but this throws a huge monkey wrench in those plans, as they now have a profile. There are new templates, of course, but I’m not sure if I wanna use something that everyone else is going to have in a few days.

I’m still looking for a good three column layout - column one is linking and archives, column two is content and would be flexible width and column three is photos and additional content like a profile and maybe other longer-term content.

Oh, and it turns out this is my 133rd posting. I’ve written over 30,000 words via Blogger. Most are for this blog, but a goodly number (probably 5,000) were also for the Ojai Playwrights Conference Blog, too.

The best thing I can tell so far is that “blockquote” is now available on the toolbar. Used to be I had to hand code that and I was too lazy so I never used it. Yay!

As a spam aficionado (well, connoisseur, really), I like a good story about someone who tries to play the spammers at their own game.

The Nigerian 419 Scam is not so much spam as an elaborate shell game ... I have $38 million for you, will you give me $40,000 to help you get it?

Well, here’s a fellow how may have tried to beat them at their own game.

I was intrigued by these little fellows I’ve been seeing on my hollyhocks. They look like weevils to me. I really don’t know much about insects, but I knew enough that when I googled weevils + hollyhocks I would find my answer.

Lo and behond, what I’ve got living on my hollyhocks are called ... hollyhock weevils.

Seems that it’s breeding season for them. Or maybe they’re just horny little buggers. It was hard to not find them coupled up like this.

Anyway.

Cool.

I love google.

I’ve really gotten into digital photography lately. And now I’ve found some places online to obsess over it.

First is DPChallenge.com. It’s a great site, with real photographers and each week they have an open challenge on a particular assignment. Photos must be taken during that week and then there is a week of voting and commenting. It’s a lot of fun and I enjoy the structure of it and community.

The other one is Worth1000.com, which is known more for their photoshop contests. But they also have photography contests and they allow any photo to be used, not just ones shot in the last week. I’m not as keen on their site. It’s not very pretty and not terribly intuitive. But there’s always a bunch of contests going on. So, one competition came up for “Nature Negatives” which requested nature photos that were inverted. Well nature photos, I’ve got thousands!

I dug through and found one that actually looked good as a negative image and uploaded it. They give you 10 “credits” to start, which are entry fees. Most entry fees are 2 or 5 credits but this one was 10, so I was taking a huge gamble. If I didn’t win one of the jackpots, I’d never be able to play again.

Before and After

Lo and behold, my photo won! Whee!

Every once in a while someone finds me through google. Well, a couple of times a day. But it’s often searches like: Cybele or Nanowrimo novel or fast fiction blog. Things you’d expect this site to come up as a result.

Yesterday, late last night someone searched for “Lifespan of Pericles”. The result is 218 items. This site is the 36th one listed.

I’m hoping after I post this I come up as the first!

UPDATE: This morning someone did a google search for 958,399,000,000,000,000,000 and my site came up first. I’m not quite sure what they were looking for.

Oh sure, Will encounters spectacular dangerous wildlife on his treks in the hills.

Me?

I was threatened by a goose.

We took a hike up in Malibu Creek State Park. It was a short hike, about a mile and a half (though it was damn hot). We arrived at Century Lake and found a shaded spot with a fallen tree to sit on right at the waters edge. Off on the other side of the lake were two geese. A large female and a smaller male that we decided was probably her offspring since he was a little small and young to be breeding.

Well, they made their way over to us. We were tickled, we were going to get some great photos. Not only did they swim right up to the bank near us, the climbed out onto the muddy short. Not two feet from us. I’m not just saying “two feet” I mean, two feet. There was no zoom used to get any photos. They were right there.

I’m not sure what they wanted, but every time I moved, the big female would look at me and hiss. She’d open her mouth and stick out her tongue and hiss at me. I had bare feet, so I kind of retreated. Of course The Man and Amy (my sister) made fun of me for being scared of the goose, but come on! What’s normal about a wild goose that comes right up to you from across the lake and hisses at you and tries to eat your hat?

I’m thinking about changing my blog template. I think I’d like a three column format. The first two would be like they are now archives and linky love on the far left - main content in the middle. I’d like the far right to have a little more alternative content, maybe stuff that doesn’t change as often, like new CDs I love and some photos I’ve taken.

Any thoughts?

This template is just an adapted one from Blogger (a looong time ago) but they don’t offer anything three column anymore (or anything even remotely interesting, btw). I’ve been looking over at blogskins, but it’s just so tedious to go through their lists ... nothing is sorted by column structure.

Had a few blogging.la friends over last night. This necessitated cleaning the deck upstairs, because we haven’t used it yet this season. So I spent the morning working on getting all the leaves off and dusting the furniture and bannister to get rid of that black LA crud.

The unpleasant surpise of the morning was finding that not only did the raccoons still live in the avocado tree, they’ve been using a corner of my roof as a toilet. There’s a huge pile of raccoon crap there. I’m not quite sure what to do with it. If I get rid of it, the raccoons are gonna think that I’m their slave.

The other finding is that a bunch of wasps or yellow jackets (I’m unsure) have started a nest in the umbrella.

I’m not equipped to get rid of it myself, since my allergy is just a little too risky. I’m not keen on using pesticides either, since we eat off that table. I’m sure we’ll figure out what to do eventually.