Just didn’t have enough time to write earlier, so I did something that didn’t require such complete attention — added more old news entries.

I cranked in a bunch more Darkniciad updates, and the whole of the LST3K News page.  I’ll probably go ahead and add the Les Lumens News next, just to get everything other than my entries as Dark out of the way.

Once I finish that, I’ll link this up from the main site, and it will actually be a functional feed of what’s going on.

I’m leaning toward making the whole site PHP now.  Reason #1: Ease of updating.  Reason #2: I can set it up to allow you to create a username, and set preferences.

One important preference that I’ve always thought was a good idea was SFW (Safe For Work) versions of the pages.  What I would do is set it up so that if you have that setting on, the pages wouldn’t display any of the nude/risky images.  You’ll still have to deal with hiding the text from your co-workers, but at least there wouldn’t be easily seen from the next cubicle pictures.

Also good for straight women who don’t really want to see pics of naked women adorning every page.  There may end up being some pics of guys on the page eventually in that state of undress, so there may be a setting for “Censor Male” and “Censor Female” nekkidness as well.  That way, you could ogle whichever tickles your fancy without getting creeped out by the other.

I could also set it up to deactivate links and add a “SFW MODE” notation in place of links that lead to things like the cover images that contain nudity.  That way you don’t accidently click on one of those from the office and have to panic as you try to close it before anybody sees it.

Once I get rolling on things again, I might start adding new categories to the blog for specific long stories.  SOTM is the obvious one.  That would allow you to subscribe to that story category and have what is essentially a notification of new stories in that category.

I’ll probably create a New Stories category too.  Then you could set it up to know whenever I have anything new coming out from across my pen names.

At least I think that’s how it works.  I’m new to this whole blog thing.

This is certainly a hella lot easier than screwing with the HTML, so I might just feel like updating this a lot more often.  That will mean that you’ll be subject to more of my rambling, but you’ll get more frequent news, too.

My writing enthusiasm is still there, but the energy is waning.  My job has transformed into something much more fast-paced and draining.  It used to be laid back, but they’ve added some new security practices a couple of weeks ago.  The only way I could work around those new security practices and still accomplish my job was to take on a new duty on top of it.

What that results in is me running back and forth from a computer to different places in the warehouse all day long, keeping every department informed and prodded as to exactly what’s going on at any moment.

Taking a little bit to get adjusted to, but I think I’ve got it worked out into a routine, now.  This is why I’m in the position I’m in.  They know damn good and well that I’m the only one who could figure out how to deal with the impossible stupidity that they throw at us sometimes.

With the routine down, it will get easier, and I won’t be so worn out when I get home.  It’s been as much mental exhaustion as physical up until this point, because I was still working the kinks out of the new process.

That’s enough for now.  I’m going to give writing a try again for a little bit, until I need to crash out for the night.

At least for Darkniciad.  I still need to put the Les Lumens and LST3K entries in here, too.  This should be the long part, because I’m sure everyone knows that I updated less as I went along.

Time to eat and take a nap.  Then some writing.

Footloose and fancy free!  Pardon my Muppets.

Even though nobody can see this at the moment, I finished adding the first two pages of update archives to this blog.  No more editing three pages when I want to shunt something off the main news page!  WooT!

I’ll soon be hosting RejectReality, in exchange for the artwork that’s going onto the site to replace all the pics of my Babydoll.

Damn, but it’s hard to remember not to frikkin’ double space when writing in this blog.  I guess that if that’s the only pain in the ass, I’m doing pretty good.

Now that I feel like I’ve accomplished something, I just might be able to write again.  The sudden decision to take the pages down has been a bit nerve-wracking ( even though it’s been in the works for a while, and in my head for far longer than that )

Once I have a few critical pages finished (Author, Story Links, LST3K Info Site, Etc.) I’ll actually restore the site to functionality.   Once I have the archives of my news inserted into this blog, it will go live.  Not sure how anyone subscribing and setting the feeds would receive the old posts going in, so I don’t want to cause confusion with that.

I’m going to look into some other PHP solutions for updating certain pages such as Character Listings, Story Links, etc.  If I can find something close, I can use the experience from coding the Battle Mod for IPboards to modify it to suit my needs.

Yes, if you’ve seen my name on the Battle Mod pages of Invision boards, same critter here.  Kinda nice to see my name up in lights in so many places on the Internet.  Fear the DarkniciadBot!

If I can get a PHP solution going for that, it will increase the website updates dramatically without costing me writing/me time.

Enough babbling for now.  I have some emails to answer, and then it’s off to bed with me.

It will certainly be easier to update news with this method.  I’m still playing around with how well this will display my informational pages.  Seems like it will be workable, and it should be easier to get around.

Not sure yet, but I may need to reinstall WordPress in its own directory, eventually.  I need an index page for the warnings about the adult nature of the website — and perhaps a fork in the road to link to a simple archive of my old FAQs and midi files for which my pen name as Darkniciad is better known.

Just have to see how things go as I tweak and play around with this.  Odds are that it will be a long time before the full content of the orignal site is restored.  I might go through and do some quick, dirty edits of the old pages to remove my babydoll’s pictures (reason in previous post) and put that up in the meantime so the information is there.

One thing I hope to accomplish with this is an easy way to dramatically increase the amount of character information.  If I can point-n-click to create new entries and add pics, I might just be able to realize my goal of putting a lot of the characters on here, with links to stories where they appear, pics, etc.

I’ll play around with a few of the information pages to see how they look, and then make the determination about what I need to do with structuring the site/reinstalling wordpress.

One thing is certain, all three websites and subsites ( Danica’s World, Les Lumens, LST3K, Laresa’s World ) will be accessed from one link — darkniciad.com.  I should be able to categorize everything in the top links to have a single home page.

This might just provide a constructive distraction on those days when I’m not in a writing mood, too.  At least I’ll still be doing something with my writing then, and won’t get into the vicious circle of feeling bad because I’m not producing anything.

I’m having a few down days, though thankfully I do feel like writing.  I may actually do that after I finish this post.  I missed the deadline at Lit to put “Barren Harvest” into the Halloween Contest, but it will still probably go up soon.  Then, I’ll get back to “Lowborn” and trying to gear up for SOTM.