Got some editing done

The boy’s been a pain, but I’ve found some time to do some editing on Ch. 14. There’s plenty of color in that one so far, so I haven’t had to set the scene like I will in later chapters ( and probably near the end of this one ) I’m mainly taking out umpteen proper names and cleaning up awkward phrasing.

Seems like he’s winding down now, so I’ll probably go hit the bath once he’s been out for an hour or so, and then do some more editing. Might even write a little, if I can turn off the t.v. or move him from the couch to the bed so I can get some quiet.

Probably take the time to record a little more for my Let’s Play series, too. I’ll try to use as much time as possible for my writing, though. The LP is just a goof off thing, more or less. Having some variety in projects is just helping me stay motivated and keeping everything moving forward. Whenever I feel a little burned, I just turn my attention to something else. The LP, the website, SOTM, Lowborn, Les stories…

You get the picture.

Doing the LP also gives me doses of gaming in there, which seems to help keep my spirits up and my juices flowing.

Time to turn the dryer back on and put another load into the washer.

New Preview Time

If you check out the Preview Pages, you’ll find a new link. This one demonstrates how the “Latest Stories” page is going to look.

On a similar note, there’s a reason that most of those say “Work in Progress”. After looking at it several times, I’ve decided that the Story Listing page really needs some sort of background color thrown into the individual stories and category headings to set them off. I’ll be experimenting with that at some point in the near future.

I’ve created the database organization for the Latest Releases page, so now I’m going to start digging through my old PHP files for what data type each table row should be. I want to keep it minimized, even though this table will have a pretty finite size. It’s never going to have more than 10 entries, because old ones are dropped when new ones are added.

Good practice for the future larger tables, though.

Once I’ve figured that out, I’ll probably load up a couple of rows with manual data and practice retrieving it with PHP pages. It’s been a while, and I’m willing to bet that little operation will take some time for me to get right *laugh*

Once I can retrieve it with a test page, then I’ll practice writing it with yet another test page. Then, once that’s working, I can actually write the admin interface to do it for real.

With any luck, I’ll have something to enter into it for real before too long. I’m writing when I can, and things are moving.

As I said before — getting this working will be the major threshold for moving the website redesign forward. This one widget will require nearly every sort of coding element that any other page will require. I should have everything down pretty well by the time I finish this.

Okay, break time for a few. Then I’m going to pop open a few files and see what’s striking me to write/edit. I’m leaning toward editing the unpublished chapters of SOTM at the moment, getting them fully ready for posting… Even if they won’t get posted for some time. That takes less concentration than actually visualizing scenes, and thus is much easier to do with tornado boy awake and up to about F-3 level.

Minor little thing

Finally got around to editing the main page with something that’s been bugging me for a long time now. Instead of linking to the latest post in my blog, clicking the link from the Updates section of the main page now takes you to the first page of the blog.

Not much, but it does represent having all my editing programs and files present on this system where I can work on them. I think I’m going to sit down now and figure out the database for my “Latest Releases” widget. This will display the latest story that I’ve released next to the Updates section.

On the temporary page, it will only display a simple text link to the most recent story posting, plus a link to the Latest Releases page.

On the actual homepage of the site ( still in beta ) it will display a mini cover image of the latest release, those two links, and probably a date for the release.

The latest releases page will track stories posting on Lit, SOL, and any other site where my work ends up. Thus, some of the “latest releases” may be the same story posting on two or more sites. I do this because some people won’t migrate between sites, and some stories may not post the same day on both sites.

This page will have either the last 10 or last 15 releases — haven’t decided yet. Each release will have a mini cover image that links to the full cover image. It will have the link to the posted story, the date it posted, a little preview blurb, and probably some other information.

That’s what I’m in the process of deciding. Once I figure out what data the page is going to display, I can design the database that’s going to store that information. Then, I move on to writing the admin function that will allow me to enter that information from a simple interface.

Instead of linking to the actual story when I post “XXX out at SOL!”, I’ll just link to the latest releases page. It will make everything so much simpler and easier for me all the way around.

By the time I finish this simple little widget, I should have refreshed my memory and sufficiently puzzled out the software I’m using to pretty much do anything I need to do. Even though this widget doesn’t actively do much each time it runs, the admin functions will need to do a lot of re-sorting and other back-end things that should cover most of the coding bases that I need to get back up to speed on.

Thus, further revitalization of the website should proceed at a quicker pace once the widget goes live.

After that, I’ll probably work on the similar story listing database. I want to get the parts of the site that link to the actual stories all restored first, and then I’ll delve into creating the “informational” pages that give detailed information about the world, characters, etc. I’ll start with new edits of what was aleady posted on the original site.

Once this widget is done, I might just open the forum up. Reason being that it will provide a better way than comments ( in my opinion ) to ask what you want to see restored or updated first on the website. That will guide me to what my readers actually want to know as a priority.

That’s all for now. Time to start puzzlin’ on the widget.

Lazy Day

I was sort of run down today because I stayed up way too late last night. I’ve only had about 4 hours of sleep in 2 hour blocks, so I’m pretty blah. Plus, I had to run to the store, which burned up most of the time while the young one was at school.

Thus, I haven’t really done anything today. I’ve pretty much sat around vegetating. We’ll see how I feel when the boy winds down. I might try to write or work on the website a bit.

If nothing else, I still have the whole weekend ahead of me now, and there’s no way I’ll be able to stay up too late tonight. I should at least have grabbed some sleep tomorrow.

A little experiment

I’ll post more about things that most of you are actually intersted in later, but I just thought I’d stick this up for giggles.

This is the first episode in my little “Let’s Play” experiment on YouTube for Gladiator.

Just didn’t feel like doing anything else after dealing with the car today. Threw my schedule all off. Putting the finishing touches on this wasn’t as taxing *laugh*

So here’s Let’s Play Gladiator 01.

Let’s Play Gladiator 01

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this has a few connections to my writing. First, I might do audio stories at some point, so I’m messing around with how to do audio while doing this. Second, I intend to put out trailers for some of my stories ( The relaunch and Finale of SOTM are what’s planned right now ). Learning how to do videos will move me toward that.

There are a couple of scenes that I might even do as videos with music in the background as website bonuses to the released stories. One of the final scenes of SOTM comes to mind. I already know exactly how that scene goes, and it plays out to the ending song of Chrono Trigger in my head.

More about my writing or the website a little later.