Getting ready to head back to the word processor after a little break.  I’ve been smiling at the returns from my latest in my third name, and finishing stage 3 of testing and coding for my automated contest tracking software.

Up to the point where I can grab all the necessary information from the contest page, then grab the score and category from each individual author’s page, then grab the comments, views, and favorites from the story page itself.

Only one data set left, and that’s the votes from the toplists.  Once I have all my markers located, it’s a matter of putting it all together in a single program that actually saves to the database.  Hoping to complete the main testing during this contest, then give it a full alpha run during the Halloween contest.

If all works well, I’ll be ready to track full-on with the next Winter Holiday contest, and should be able to track all the contests to gather data from that point forward with little to no work on my part.

Yah, I know it doesn’t mean much to those of you who only care about my writing, but these little victories boost my feel-good factor, which is always good for creativity.

It’s also good to keep my hand in, so to speak, because I need to update the software that runs the site soon, and there’s likely to be glitches and corrections needed.  Plus, I’ll be expanding new sections of the site in time.  That at least should be of interest, because there will be a lot of behind the story info in those new sections.

Also need to fix the frikkin’ widget that displays the updates from this blog on the main site…  Grr… don’t know why it broke, but I think I’m going to eventually ditch the default feed grab and write my own.  That is, if the update to the software doesn’t fix the glitch.

Now, off to write.