Category Archives: Website

Frikkin’ Work…

I purposely took Black Friday off because it’s a hell day.  Word is that it was indeed, but the problem is that the hell continues.  Double our recent average workload on Monday, about half again more than usual today, and tomorrow is supposed to be worse.

So much for catching up on my sleep with the long weekend… Grrr…

Needless to say, I’m not doing much once I finally do get back from the suburb of hell that is my cruel and unusual employment *laugh*

I’m using the time when I’m not running a mile a minute to muse.  It’s cold enough now to put my hood up and my headphones on, so having tunes ( Game music with no lyrics mostly ) helps with that, along with keeping me from losing my mind.

I have that beginning I mentioned locked in, and part of the scene fleshed out right down to wording.  I’m writing it in my head when I’ve got time so I can just type it out when I’m finally feeling awake enough to write it.

I think I’m going to take advantage of what I’ve taught myself to fix that annoying error on the front page with the “What’s New” section.  Something changed a while back, and the default feed from the blog no longer contains dates.  The code that displays it on the front page defaults to the last cache time, always showing posts as “today”

Changing to the advanced 2.0 rss feed causes the code to choke and display nothing.

So, I’m going to ditch the out-of-the-box feed code and write my own, using what I’ve learned in the process of planning an automated Lit contest tracking program.  It will be even easier than the tracking program, because feeds are designed to be read by machines, with handy tags built right into the generated html.

Of course, that too will have to wait until work isn’t trying to kill me :p

Now, I need to try to get the young one in bed so I can try to get more sleep tonight.  I felt frikkin’ horrible all day the last two days.  On top of how bad it actually is, I wasn’t remotely expecting it, and that makes it twice as bad.

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More SOTM and Holiday Contest

Working on the next scene of SOTM.  Just trying to figure out where I want to start it.

I had a couple of ideas in my third name that demanded writing for the Holiday Contest, so they took up a little time.  One of them is done, and the other probably won’t take long.  I’m paused on the second for the time being while I work on SOTM, because I’m not in the right frame of mind to write sex, which is what comprises the bulk of my 3rd name stories.

My Holiday story as Les should be coming out on Thursday.  Naturally I’ll appreciate your read and vote, but don’t forget that it’s a taboo story!

Putting together the next coding step for the website in my head as well.  For now, I have enough creative juices flowing to keep me writing, so I’m not going to mess with the website until I hit a bit of a slow point.  Switching gears before I bog down too much helps keep me on an even keel and gets me back to writing more quickly.  The next step is the sidebar, which is critical to making the next set of content additions reasonably navigable.

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Whew! Successful update!

Guess I shouldn’t have been so worried about updating the software that is the primary backbone of the website.  It took a while, but everything went off without a hitch.

I may end up tweaking the forum skin, but for now, it’s close enough.

As soon as I updated, I noticed that there’s another update, so I’m most likely going to go ahead and apply that today as well.  Seems like a good time, since most in the U.S. aren’t likely to be on an adult website with family looking over their shoulder *laugh*

The most important thing about this update is that it paves the way to begin coding the backend of the website again.  That’s the first step into adding new content ( and restoring a lot of what used to be here )

I’ll keep everyone up to date as things move forward.  My first order of business after all updates are applied and working properly is to move to a sidebar.  What it will be is the current floating menu ( if you have it turned on ) locked to the sidebar of the page.  If you leave the default, the menu will scroll with the page.  If you select the floating menu, then the menu will remain conveniently at the top left of the page for quick navigation.

The reason I make it optional is that some older browsers may have problems with the floating menu.  If it works for you, you’ll certainly want to turn it on!

Once that’s done, I have the missing element of navigation that I felt I need to proceed.  After that, it’s straight content addtions.  Character profiles.  Maps.  Information on how the various forms of magic work.  Gods and religions.  All that jazz.

Okay, off to apply the next update.  If it keeps going this well, I may just get some writing done today as a bonus 🙂

EDIT: The second upgrade went through as smoothly as the first.  Updated a few peripheral bits of software as well.  Still a couple more I’m going to check for updates on while I’m having such good luck, but those are entirely behind-the-scenes things, and so should be completely invisible to you even if they do go haywire *laugh*

All in all, a welcome relief.

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Well, obviously…

I didn’t make it to that mark I was aiming for :p

The young one went on a tear for a few days, and other things came up.  Looking to get some more writing done tomorrow after getting my heater in the car looked at in the morning.

I also decided to review the stories in Lit’s Winter contest, so that takes up some time each night.  Again, while it puts a delay on my writing, things like this and editing for other authors builds relationships that I’ve found highly valuable.  When I need someone to read something, or give me an honest opinion, I have more to work with when I’ve already provided same.  In the end, that improves what finally comes out on my submissions page.

I had an idea as Les Lumens that jumps into a highly popular sub genre on Lit, which I’m writing for the contest.  Truth to tell, it’s almost as much to stick to someone there as it is for me.  I just can’t help slapping down a braggart sometimes *laugh*  I’m nearly done with it now, and I’ll probably finish it tomorrow, so it won’t be draining any writing time for long.

It’s going to be a mother/son story, so if that creeps you out there will be ample warning.  This one may not even go up at SOL.  It all depends.

I won’t be working a full five days until the beginning of next year.  I have at least one day per week scheduled off from now to after New Years, and I plan on taking a week of vacation on the second week of January.  So I’m going to have a lot more time to catch up on sleep and — hopefully — get writing done while the house is quiet.

I also plan to finally upgrade the website software during one of those long weekends, opening the door to programming everything to add more content.  I’m actually planning on Thanksgiving weekend, when I expect any problems that crop up will cause the least irritation to visitors.

I already posted a mini preview of the next chapter of SOTM on the comments from the previous chapter, and I’ll probably post a longer one on the forum soon.  So, keep your eyes peeled if you want a sneak peek before I finish the chapter.

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Quarterly track

Just did the quarterly track of all my statistics at Literotica, and it was very smile-inducing.  Lots more details about this in a post on the forum.  Shouldn’t be hard to find *laugh*

Writing on SOTM Ch. 18 right now.  I haven’t been wasting the time when I wasn’t writing on it.  There’s never a day goes by when I’m not musing the story, even if words aren’t going down.  Every day coalesces a bit more of the story, and one of these days, I’m going to hit a point where everything is so structured in my head that only time to write is really going to get in my way.

Musing Lowborn as well.  I’m shifting a bit from my original idea, because I found a different direction to go for a more solid ending.  I’ll have to rewrite a bit of what I’ve already put down on Ch. 08, but it shouldn’t take too much when I get back to it.

As always, musing over what the next Wood story will be, concentrating on Earth Day.

Many more things in the works in my known names and my third name.  Just a matter of when they come together, get written, and get released.

Planning to bite the bullet soon and do some upgrades on the backend of the site.  That’s really all that’s kept me from moving forward with new content.  I knew this update was coming, and I wanted to wait until I’d put it in place and figured out any changes before I started coding the new parts of the site.

Lots of new registrations on the website, so Welcome!  And that doesn’t even count the mountains of Russian spam accounts I’ve banned/deleted as fast as they sign up *laugh*  Sites like “Stop Forum Spam” are great.  Every time someone signs up, I check the IP and email address.  If it comes up with several hits on those sites, I don’t even wait for them to start spamming.  I just ban them right out of the gate.

I can tell it’s beginning to irritate them, too.  I keep seeing some of the validating accounts viewing the site under a range of IPs.  Little do they know that I’m tracking those, and as soon as I see a sign-up…   BAN HAMMER!

Then, once I’ve found a problem IP range or email domain, I just ban the whole range and delete all the spam accounts associated with them.  Hope I don’t have any actual fans in Russia.  The odds of them being able to get onto the site thanks to those spammers is slim to none thanks to all the IP ranges and email domains I’ve banned.

Time for a little break, then a bit more of SOTM 18, and then off to bed.  Back to writing tomorrow… Probably even a little bit in the morning before I head off to work.

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