The Thessaliad Redux

Yeah, I know, the posting has fallen by the wayside. Again. You should be pleased as hell that I have decided not to bore you all with the tiny minutiae about my life (DOCTORS WHO CAN'T SPEAK OR SPELL OMG). Still, it's been awhile since I checked in, so here's the news that doesn't involve rampant bitchery about my workplace (not that such doesn't have its place but I like to save it for the real arsehaberdashery and lately it's just been mundane 'jobs in general tend to suck' whingeing) and the like.

So I have now been in my flat for two months and I am still very pleased with it, despite a serious issue with storage space. There is noplace to put my clothes. Like, anywhere. At all. I have a wardrobe and an end table with drawers, but since most of my clothes fold and I have few clothes hangers anyway, this becomes an issue when I want to keep the place tidy. Which, and I realise how out of character this may seem, I actually do. I think I have a couple of storage space solutions that might do the trick but I have to go out and purchase the things, which I have had not really had the time to do, though at least now I have the money. So that's probably today's chore once I finally get my arse in gear.

So I was chatting to a friend of mine from my current online oWoD RP and she just picked up the Sims 3 base game for Christmas. I don't entirely remember how it came up but I started poking around again to see if maybe, finally, some enterprising soul had managed to crack that draconian "NO CUSTOM CONTENT BUT OURS!!!" thing that EA set up back in the day. And lo and behold ... several enterprising souls have. So my big news of the day is SIMS 3 CUSTOM CONTENT! Finally, I can ignore the ugly hair and pudding-like complexions and boring furniture! Finally I can build decent-looking Sims! That's the only damn reason I liked the games in the first place, and now I can do it again! So pleased. My hard drive ... is less pleased, as now there is far less space on it. Ah well. Shit happens. I'm also enjoying the last couple of expansion packs more than I thought I would. There's actually a reason to play the game again, and I'm thrilled to bits.

Of course, it's not all shiny awesome on Hardison, my poor abused PC. There is something up with the disc drive, I'm convinced. I don't think it's a huge deal - I think what I need is a drive cleaner. It's just that when I'm playing anything that requires the disc drive in any serious way, the game randomly slows down. This is really annoying when trying to work in Create-a-Sim, and beyond annoying when you're trying to fight your way through the Tower of Ishal and everything starts going grindingly slow when a half-dozen genlocks are firing arrows at you.

Yes, I still play Dragon Age Origins. I like it. I don't like much of the DLC and I hate Awakening but I still like the game. And I still repeat Elven Mage as often as I can. Don't judge me. :P

Seriously, I'm actually really looking forward to Dragon Age 2 when it comes out. I didn't preorder it for the same reason that most people who haven't pre-ordered it decided to wait - I want to make sure my computer will run the bastard thing. It looks cool and I don't have to play it like a console game, or so say the previews - I can continue with my pause-and-play strategy and tactics set-up, which I really liked about the first game, and while it's a damn shame that there's no option for different character races in game, I think it'll be pretty cool. But I want to wait until I can hold the box in my hands and read the back for exactly what my computer will need to be able to run it. I've already got two games I can't play because I can't for the life of me find a decent USB controller that'll work with bloody Vista so I can play the stinking things and the keyboard controls are a nightmare on wheels. Those I don't mind overly because they were cheap, but to buy a brand new game and then not be able to play it because it won't run on Hardison would simply suck. And I don't really care about all the optional extras one could get for pre-ordering the 'deluxe edition', mostly because I imagine that they'll unlock those for people anyway at some stage.

Right. I really need to get my arse in gear. For some reason I was awake at 7 this morning but refused to get out of bed until 10am on general principles - it's Sunday, for fuck's sake! But now it's midday and if I want to get anything done (clean out the fridge, travelcard renewal, grocery shopping, pick up some storage things so my clothes aren't all over everywhere), I'd best get moving. I don't want to, but needs must. Off I go!

Yeah ... that one's a pretty big question for someone who's still feeling the tail-end of migraine from hell. A lot of it depends on mood, of course, and even more on context and in-scene action.

Y'know what? Because I'm a little behind schedule, I'll go for, not the classics, but something that has existed in one form or another for ages:

"Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically ... run."

It'll do. I mean, given it was coming out of the mouth of a Doctor that looks like what I might call Fetus!Registrar...

Okay, so the reason this didn't get posted yesterday was because mitchy's computer came down with a bad case of the Shutdown Blues. Basically just switched off and wouldn't switch back on again. We cleaned it out, we tightened connection cables ... nada. So I was offline for the forseeable future. The computer seems to be working for the moment but I am still watching it with a wary eye.

A photo you took

Keep in mind that I don't really have that many photos (tomorrow's going to be more or less impossible unless I fudge it a bit because I don't have many pictures of myself to begin with, and none of them are ten years old or more, and I haven't access to any of the things to scan. But at least there are a few I took, and here's a golden oldie.

This has got to be about ... what, 2003? J and Bea, friends of mine from the Daria fandom (*waves* hi guys!) came to visit me in London and the whole trip had awesome. This picture ... well, there is a story behind that one. This was when Full Tilt was still running at the Electric Ballroom over in Camden, and I was going to take them clubbing. And J dyed his hair blue - I'm ... not really sure whose idea that was but he seemed okay with it, as it was temporary dye anyway. So Bea and I played hairdresser and we shaped his dye-sticky hair into devil horns and ... photographic evidence seemed appropriate.

In other news, still enjoying Dragon Age Origins, for all there are occasionally ... frustrations. Y'know, frustrations like, "I can solo demons and take on waves upon waves of templars but I can't take down 20-odd mercenaries in Denerim? Son of a ... mabari, I suppose". (Well, it doesn't hurt that the street gangs are well-entrenched and have some quite seasoned archers. The archers are a pain. Though actually seeing your character running around stuck through with arrows is fairly gratifying, if a little preposterous considering the one cut scene where you're taken down with fewer arrows than I've seen my character running around with during gameplay, but it's always the way.) But the dialogue continues to be incredibly funny and the story's keeping me interested. This is the first time I've played one of these where it hasn't been about 'winning' so much as the story. Then again, it's not like I play many of these to begin with. But FFXI ... I'm not invested in my deathgnome as a character - just as a nifty avatar.

And I sorted out the graphics card issue - just took a download of new drivers. I didn't think of that when I was tearing my hair out over the ... erm, 'aggressive casemodding'. So now it looks even better and I have my preferred screen resolution back! Awesome!

So the 30 Days of Blog continue with the following subject:

Day 2: My Favourite Film

That one, I can give a more comprehensive answer than I could the favourite song. It may not be the one I default to, but the film that never fails to make me smile is Pump Up the Volume, starring Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis.

There are a few reasons I love this film. Firstly, big Christian Slater fan. Fairly unapologetic about it. I think he's quite good at what he does, though I've sort of lost track of him over the last few years. Second, the dialogue never fails to inspire me. I mean, it's not about anarchy exactly, but it is about speaking out about bullshit, even if it's just sounding one's barbarous yawp to anyone who's willing to listen. Whcih I suppose explains my blogging habits and ... you know, me in general. And third, it's always fun to see Seth Green sporting that ungodly mullet, and trying to work out which of the nameless extras is Juliet Landau.

Plus, the music is excellent.

So, for the record, here's the list of topics to which you may look forward:

( List! )

In other news, I have been playing Dragon Age Origins. I generally don't play that sort of thing, but mitchy said I might enjoy it and suggested I poke around with it while she was out. And so ... okay, I admit it - now I want a copy of my very own. I will probably not end up playing melee classes by choice, but given the way the game's set up, I still get to have a poke at all the races, classes and so forth one way or another. *sigh* Waaaaaant.

Well, perhaps soon. There may be good news on the job front. I am not saying too much because I do not want to jinx it. So I'll just leave it at 'may'. And gibber quietly.

I need to get organised and checklisted in terms of what to do with the whole City of Complications/HIPPIEverse indie-pub thing. So much to do, and not all of it is stuff that I'm actually sure I can do, at least not without serious help or tearing my hair out in frustration. And so, there be a checklist.

1) I need to do something about the CoC website. I am not exactly skilled in the gentle art of HTML/CSS or web design in general, and I haven't been able to make anything like Wordpress work on my site. (Of course, it doesn't help that my ISP refuses to support anything like that, though apparently that just means it's your own problem if you fuck it up. Mostly I just think I'm doing the install wrong and have no idea how to fix it.) In any case, fact remains that the site, while halfway adequate, isn't as good as I'd like it to be. At the very least, I need to get a link to my sales page on Lulu up there, but at least that's not the work of more than a minute or two and a very basic knowledge of HTML. I'd just like the site to look more professional than it does. If I had the faintest clue of how I wanted it to look (beyond something in the vein of Variant Frequencies or JC Hutchins' website), I could scream for help with a little more confidence. As it is, all I can do is whimper and consider my options.

2) Podiobooks omg. I think I have a workable Chapter One of Chaos Magic to send to Evo Terra (the poor bastard), but after the horrorshow that was trying to send him a Joint Stereo version that never actually turned out to be a Joint Stereo version, I guess I've been reluctant. The time for reluctance is over, really. I just need to convert the other twenty or so chapters that aren't in Joint Stereo into Joint Stereo and muck around with MP3Tag for awhile to get them all in order so that when I do finally get the thing accepted, there won't be any delays in sending further chapters while I do said mucking around. I did also want to re-record Chapter Three, but the problem with that will become a bit more apparent further down this little checklist from hell.

3) I need to pimp Chaos Magic like whoa. I have a few venues in which I can do so, but I would still encourage word of mouth - arguably the most powerful source of advertising that anyone could ask for. I'd be really grateful if those charming folks on my flist would consider a line or two in LJ, a quick tweet or whatever your preferred method is of spreading the word that there's a new urban fantasy/horror novelist in town. In aid of this, I will flag up the review that the podcast of the novel got in issue 91 of Hub magazine. This review starts with the following: "It’s very easy to do modern horror or urban fantasy badly. It’s extremely difficult to do it well and it’s all but impossible to do it well and make it look easy. Janet Neilson makes it look very easy indeed with Chaos Magic..." (of which I am almost obscenely proud) and then goes on to talk about the "gleeful, uniquely English sense of the absurd to a lot of Chaos Magic that evokes not only the best elements of Neverwhere and its ilk but also the sort of surrealism that lay at the heart of TV shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. This is the absurd wearing a nice hat and smiling with a few too many teeth, a polite Armageddon that can only be stopped by five unique and uniquely likable people" before wrapping up with "Chaos Magic is smart, frequently very funny and shot through with both darkness and a real sense of place. If you’re even remotely a fan of urban fantasy or horror then you need to listen to this. Just be prepared to never look at a cuddly toy the same way again..." Those are the highlights for the link-phobic, but the entire review gives me the warm fuzzies even as it flags up the reasons to actually give the podcast, or the novel, a try.

4) At some point, I need to start recording the podcast of Birth Rites. I mean, I know I need to finish the book first, but I found with Chaos Magic that having a deadline of the sort that a mostly-weekly podcast schedule imposes really helped with getting the thing written, and there is no better way to pick out the bits that desperately need editing than to read it aloud. This is a minor problem in that right this moment, I have no real way of recording a podcast, because I was fool enough to sit on my pretty Advent headphone microphone set. I have another microphone but it's a really crappy clip-on lapel mic that doesn't really sound very good. I think I can afford a reasonable desktop microphone, having looked at what Maplin has on offer, but there will be some serious comparison shopping before I actually lay out money on such things.

The microphone is the key element, really, when all is said and done. (Well, apart from the word of mouth advertising, and I don't really know if I can pay for that except by word-of-mouthing in kind.) I constantly underestimate just how much I actually need one. It's not just the podcast, though that's certainly an issue - it's advertising blurbs as well. Recording those means that I can get them onto other podcasts, and that's some pretty awesome word of mouth advertising right there. I'd rather not record on a cheap-arse lapel mic and try to fix it all up in Audacity, but I will if I have to. I may suck balls at HTML and be unable to design a website to save my pathetic little life, but I get better at sound editing every time I sit down to work at it. Besides, it would give me time to circumvent the 'Vimes Boots theory of economics' - how a rich person can afford to pay fifty dollars for good boots that will last for years while he spent ten dollars on cheap boots that fall apart after a few months, thereby spending more than the rich person does on his boots while only having soggy feet to show for it. What I mean to say is that if I can hold off on getting a desktop microphone until I can afford a really good one, I will not have to put up with this bullshit anymore. (At least not unless or until I manage to wreck the good one too, but that's neither here nor there just now.)

So ... that's what I need to do. It's only four little items, but they're four really important and potentially iffy little items. Of course, all of this is the serious problem with the whole indie publishing bit, but I am determined. I am FEARLESS. Or ... y'know, something to that effect.

So there's finally something remotely resembling good news. First of all, the yay that is my computer - my brand new, shiny, decently powerful working computer - is being brought over tomorrow. This will involve my stepfather having to stick around at least long enough to remount the monitor to the monitor stand, though. See, my stepfather wanted to make sure the thing worked okay before giving it to me so that if it needed to be taken back, it could be done straight away. It does work, but unfortunately he couldn't refold the monitor stand to properly repack it once he'd set the whole thing up so he had to remove the monitor stand and pack it separately. I could probably reattach the thing myself but like hell is he going to let me do that. I have my doubts as to whether he really gets that I can actually handle a screwdriver, but never mind. Anyway, things are relatively tidy so there should be no issues bar a whingeing cat.

New computer new computer new computer! And despite the voting, I decided to call it Hardison in the end. This is because it is awesome and shiny, but slightly broken (in terms of the non-folding monitor stand) and king of the last-minute arrival.

*ahem* Anyway, today was the Bryan Talbot signing. While almost everyone else seemed to have his new effort (Grandville, for the curious), I picked up one of his earlier works - The Tale of One Bad Rat. This one was one of the first graphic novels I read as an adult, around about the same time as Neil Gaiman's Sandman (which he also did art for - he said his favourite to work on was 'August' in Fables and Relections) and Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise. He was a very nice man; very soft-spoken. Anyway, I was a little worried that he'd be put out that I wasn't picking up the new book that he was promoting, but in fact he seemed pleased; he said how nice it was to see 'One Bad Rat' reprinted and all. He also recommended Alice in Sunderland, which I did want to read when there's a bit more spare cash. Anyway, he signed it and even drew me a rat head in profile to go with. I went away a touch flustered, but happy.

So I've been thinking about what I want to do about 'Birth Rites' (the new title of the next HIPPIE novel), and I think I'm actually going to wait until November to start it up properly. Sure, I've got a chapter and a half, but that's easy enough to chuck. Maybe it can be a tradition to start every HIPPIE novel as a Nano project. That leaves a month to refine and probably write up some supplemental story stuff. I did have a few things in mind, so that's worth working on come Monday ... or maybe Tuesday, as Monday evening will largely be downloading and installing software. This is the one major problem with getting a new computer, but ... it's a problem I can live with.

So at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future (like, next few days, please...) I will be getting a shiny new computer to replace my poor dead Eshu. Now, it's become habit to give my boxen names, ever since my very first (kinda old, kinda crappy) desktop Dustpuppy. The machines that followed were the Craptop (Compaq 286 laptop running Win3.0 alpha version and was missing the front panel), Yoriko (I think that was the old Toshiba laptop happypickle sent me ages ago, along with the Linux-running laptop Choo-Choo Bear, which I never got the hang of), the Frankenbox (too many rebuilds on that box to adequately count), iMisc (the iBook I'm currently using) and Eshu. Hell, I even name my iPods (iStress for the old NaNo, Baruti for the new). Now I'm looking at getting a whole new machine, which means it's going to need a whole new name.

[Poll #1455869]

To explain the names:

- Old WoD Mage, Order of Hermes House - basically librarians with a very Egyptian bent.
- Old WoD Werewolf, Tribe of wolfies who do actually manage well enough with cities, tech and the internet.
- Character from Matt Wallace's "The Failed Cities Monologues". Roughed-up fighter/writer.
- Character from JC Hutchins' "7th Son" trilogy. The awesome hacker with the serious psychological problems.
- Character from the TV show "Leverage". Best representation of geek on TV, hands down.
- Character from Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files". Air spirit with infallible memory, a thousand years of knowledge and a permanent if ethereal hard-on.

Answers on a postcard...

*glee* I have my computer back! And it's properly online!

See, I had to lend my computer to mitchy (with swapped hard drives so she had all her games and stuff) because her motherboard died or something. Her replacement computer arrived Thursday but no matter what we did, we couldn't get Vista, which she was running at the time, to set up a network connection. So we waited until today when her XP disc arrived and went from there. Of course, then her shiny new computer wouldn't even accept that there was a network cable connected, and I don't really know what happened then. I do know that doccy had a whack at it and eventually, all worked again! So yay for mitchy and doccy!

And with my squeeful LJ entry as demanded by mitchy written, I can bask in net-enabledness. Woo!

(Entry 1 of a two-entry series tonight)

So ... Twitter's down again. For more maintenance. I wonder what function they're going to delete this time.

This particularly annoys me because the last tweet I received before the whole thing went kerflooey was something via @iheartwordpress. See, I've been attempting to set up Wordpress on my site because I could seriously use the comment ability over there. Seriously, I have no idea who looks, who listens or what they say (more on that later). However, streamline.net is not particularly good with this kind of programme. It doesn't offer support for any outsourced programmes, so if you do want to add a message board or something like Wordpress, you can do it but you will receive no help whatsoever from streamline.net, and if something goes wrong - read: they move your server space for no readily discernible reason - you're screwed. Also, despite entering exactly what they say my details are in terms of database name, user ID and password, it won't grant me access. So something in there is screwed up and it's on streamline.net's side and they will not help me with the details I require. Therefore, they are arseholes.

However, not quite so much so as @iheartwordpress, who decided to take it upon themselves to do a search for anyone using 'Wordpress' and proceed to offer their services. Without, I might add, doing any research on the lines of what country I'm in, either. I mean, they offered to install the damn thing for $25. Sorry, faceless people, but I'm not in the US. $25 means jack all to me. Besides, I'm not giving my details to total strangers when the problem is that I'm not even sure the details, which to all intents and purposes are correct, are even working because streamline.net are a bunch of jackoffs. Don't try to sell your services to random passers-by in the tweet stream just because they are grumbling about problems. If they wanted to find professional help to install Wordpress, they'd find someone local, you tits.

But I can't tweet this to them because Twitter's down. Boo.

(Oh, no, wait - there we go.)

On the subject of the Fail Whale, let's talk about the removal of the option that allows Twitterers to read outgoing replies from people on their friends lists to people not on their friends lists. Okay, some people might not want to read one-sided conversations, but it's not going to be overly server-intensive to provide the option, is it? And yet, 'in response to the majority of Twitter users', they've removed even the option. And some people are saying, "I like it better this way; cry more, arseholes". (Yes, literally.) Someone needs to teach Twitter that the best way of staying at the top of the game is offering as many options as is humanly possible, to engage as many people as possible. But nooooooo, yet another company alienates its audience by removing a perfectly reasonable option because some bunch of arseholes can't be bothered to find a toggle button.

To hell with 'being a geek girl sucks'. Sometimes, just being a geek sucks.

Dreamwidth crossposts are fail. This annoys me.