*contented sigh*
Aug. 5th, 2005 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7The weather is lovely, absolutely lovely, at the moment, and I am on the couch on my sunporch with my computer neatly set up and my feet up, and I am setting up the password-protected directory I promised to make so long ago for my Vikings Novel so that I could put it up online someplace not public, but that doesn't require a Livejournal membership to view.
It's taken me so long primarily because the main advocate for this system broke down and got herself a Livejournal already, and so there went that motivation. But, since then a couple non-LJ users have asked if they could read, so I thought, well, why not. And I've gone ahead and done it.
It's not terribly secure-- there's no encryption or anything sophisticated. They're not state secrets, it's just a semi-amateurish (less so with every rewrite!) novel in progress that i hope to polish to publishing standards someday, so I'm not Posting It Publicly. Any non-LJ users who want to be able to read it, let me know and I'll email you a username and password so you can view it. LJ users, I'll post a login-included link in a friendslocked post that you can click on so you can read it if you like without going through the hassle of getting a password etc.
Meanwhile, the page is here:
Password-Protected Directory O' Goodies (for somewhat subtle values of 'goodies'). It'll prompt you for a username and password. I will gladly supply one if you let me know you want one. Email me at my lj username at livejournal dot com, and I'll send you something. It doesn't matter if you share a username and password with somebody else-- just let me know who you're letting read it, just cuz I'd like to know.
Sadly, I don't have a commenting system in place there-- but I do have a "leave a comment" link at the bottom that pops up an email window to me.
So far I only have two chapters up, because they're all I have completed-- and they're the same two chapters, not edited, that i posted up here friendslocked this past week. But there's also a "character descriptions" page that has physical descriptions of the characters, photos of actors that remind me of them, and a section on the costumes of the period featuring truly awful sketches by yours truly.
It's a bit spoilerish I suppose if you haven't yet figured out which of the characters is meant to be the hero, I should warn you-- the first draft was way way less subtle, and so I didn't really focus on any of the supporting cast.
I am feeling so clever and productive, I can almost forget about how pathetically deteriorated my HTML skillz are. (Would you believe I used to be a fairly dedicated hand-coder? I used to do nested table layouts without a WYSIWYG. I even did CSS, though I never really mastered CSS-positioning in any possible meaning of the word "mastered".)
Bonus material:
me: HTML... skills... rusty....
me: can't... make... mailto:... link....
Z: Use … the … wysiwyg…
me: surely.... death... is next....
me: wysiwyg doesn't... tell me... how to mailto:
Z: all you do is mailto:user@host.com
me: in... what tag????
me: a?
Z: <a href='mailto:bridget.kelly.name'>this way</a>
me: but with double quotes, right?
z: either
me: i... thought so... but... couldn't remember...
me: light fading...
me: so... so cold...
Z: I've been using single quotes lately because I'm lazy and can't be bothered with the shift key
me: and it doesn't matter?
me: wtf?
Z: It kind of matters. You can only have double-quotes inside if it's single-quoted, and you can only have single-quotes inside if it's double-quoted
me: Right. i gotcha. That's what was confusing me-- i've used single quotes inside double quotes, and have also accidentally stuck double quotes in there and been like 'duh'
Z: It's one of those things you don't really notice until after your HTML barfs all over your screen
me: but HTML doesn't always barf. Sometimes you just go to click on the clever thing you just made and it's just... not there...
me: and you DON'T KNOW WHY. AUGH!
me: At the moment I am struggling to free myself from the icy grip of death. Er, incompetence.
Z: I'm a jerk, and I am completely convinced that HTML should barf all the time unless you're an Internet samurai
me: Are you?
me: I thought you were a monkey code ninja*, which is an entirely different caste.
me: (Samurai rank far higher than ninjas, who are just honorless assassins really.)
Z: Nigga please.
Z: Of course I'm a samurai.
_______
* he is wearing this shirt, which his mother bought him for his graduation because it was about computers and mentioned monkeys.
Edited to add: I am also amusing myself with a printed-out packet of about five pages, which contains the results of the Best Of City voting at the alt newsweekly where Z works. It's not going to be published for a couple of weeks, but they've tallied the votes. Z and I are thinking man, we oughta go to all these places now, while they're good but before the rest of the city knows they're good. It's a good way to find good eats and good drinks. I'm sorely tempted by the winner of "best dive bar", but y'know, I do have to be at work at 9 tomorrow am.
It's taken me so long primarily because the main advocate for this system broke down and got herself a Livejournal already, and so there went that motivation. But, since then a couple non-LJ users have asked if they could read, so I thought, well, why not. And I've gone ahead and done it.
It's not terribly secure-- there's no encryption or anything sophisticated. They're not state secrets, it's just a semi-amateurish (less so with every rewrite!) novel in progress that i hope to polish to publishing standards someday, so I'm not Posting It Publicly. Any non-LJ users who want to be able to read it, let me know and I'll email you a username and password so you can view it. LJ users, I'll post a login-included link in a friendslocked post that you can click on so you can read it if you like without going through the hassle of getting a password etc.
Meanwhile, the page is here:
Password-Protected Directory O' Goodies (for somewhat subtle values of 'goodies'). It'll prompt you for a username and password. I will gladly supply one if you let me know you want one. Email me at my lj username at livejournal dot com, and I'll send you something. It doesn't matter if you share a username and password with somebody else-- just let me know who you're letting read it, just cuz I'd like to know.
Sadly, I don't have a commenting system in place there-- but I do have a "leave a comment" link at the bottom that pops up an email window to me.
So far I only have two chapters up, because they're all I have completed-- and they're the same two chapters, not edited, that i posted up here friendslocked this past week. But there's also a "character descriptions" page that has physical descriptions of the characters, photos of actors that remind me of them, and a section on the costumes of the period featuring truly awful sketches by yours truly.
It's a bit spoilerish I suppose if you haven't yet figured out which of the characters is meant to be the hero, I should warn you-- the first draft was way way less subtle, and so I didn't really focus on any of the supporting cast.
I am feeling so clever and productive, I can almost forget about how pathetically deteriorated my HTML skillz are. (Would you believe I used to be a fairly dedicated hand-coder? I used to do nested table layouts without a WYSIWYG. I even did CSS, though I never really mastered CSS-positioning in any possible meaning of the word "mastered".)
Bonus material:
me: HTML... skills... rusty....
me: can't... make... mailto:... link....
Z: Use … the … wysiwyg…
me: surely.... death... is next....
me: wysiwyg doesn't... tell me... how to mailto:
Z: all you do is mailto:user@host.com
me: in... what tag????
me: a?
Z: <a href='mailto:bridget.kelly.name'>this way</a>
me: but with double quotes, right?
z: either
me: i... thought so... but... couldn't remember...
me: light fading...
me: so... so cold...
Z: I've been using single quotes lately because I'm lazy and can't be bothered with the shift key
me: and it doesn't matter?
me: wtf?
Z: It kind of matters. You can only have double-quotes inside if it's single-quoted, and you can only have single-quotes inside if it's double-quoted
me: Right. i gotcha. That's what was confusing me-- i've used single quotes inside double quotes, and have also accidentally stuck double quotes in there and been like 'duh'
Z: It's one of those things you don't really notice until after your HTML barfs all over your screen
me: but HTML doesn't always barf. Sometimes you just go to click on the clever thing you just made and it's just... not there...
me: and you DON'T KNOW WHY. AUGH!
me: At the moment I am struggling to free myself from the icy grip of death. Er, incompetence.
Z: I'm a jerk, and I am completely convinced that HTML should barf all the time unless you're an Internet samurai
me: Are you?
me: I thought you were a monkey code ninja*, which is an entirely different caste.
me: (Samurai rank far higher than ninjas, who are just honorless assassins really.)
Z: Nigga please.
Z: Of course I'm a samurai.
_______
* he is wearing this shirt, which his mother bought him for his graduation because it was about computers and mentioned monkeys.
Edited to add: I am also amusing myself with a printed-out packet of about five pages, which contains the results of the Best Of City voting at the alt newsweekly where Z works. It's not going to be published for a couple of weeks, but they've tallied the votes. Z and I are thinking man, we oughta go to all these places now, while they're good but before the rest of the city knows they're good. It's a good way to find good eats and good drinks. I'm sorely tempted by the winner of "best dive bar", but y'know, I do have to be at work at 9 tomorrow am.
