Writing a New Novel.

Just a quick note to let everybody know that I have restructured the Gotschland map to be more suitable for some of the changes I want to make to it.

Also, I’m now writing a new novel. Well, I think what I’m writing now will end up being a bit more like a textbook, but it’s the beginning of what will eventually be a novel, or collection of short stories. I’m not entirely sure yet.

I am mostly doing this because I found an interesting (far from finished, though) app that’s specifically for novel writing. It is only available on the Mac, (which is fine with me) and it’s got a few nice additions such as a full screen mode that doesn’t waste 75% of my monitor, and a database function that lets me easily keep track of the characters I’ve introduced, and store information about them.

At any rate – Gotschland, Ahoy! (not Chips Ahoy! – unfortunately.)

May 26, 2007 | Tags: , , | No Comments »

Visit to Mom’s

I just got back from visiting Mom’s house. It was better than over Thanksgiving, but I had difficulties in getting to my 68k Macs. Apparently a whole lot more stuff has been added to the garage, as well as the office, making neither location suitable for playing with old Macs. Additionally, it was very difficult to get to the Macs.

Luckily, I was able to find my 17″ VGA monitor, the displaced PC133 memory (128mb sticks from the Dell/500, apparently) and the SGI Octane. I didn’t, however, seem to be able to find my Powermac G3. Unfortunate, but I am sure it’ll show up. That, or I’ll use the Dell/933 as my main Mom’s-House computer.

While I was there, I found out that Intel uses really cool codenames for their processors. Examples include Deschutes, Banias, Dothan, Cedar Mill, Conroe, Merom, Merced (boy do I remember the Merced!) , among others. (Prescott isn’t that great, but I suppose I have to say “whoo for prescott!” because I have friends from that particular location. — At any rate, I intend to give my unnamed computers names from a selection of Intel codenames. I may even give one to my iMac.

Schlangenbeschwoerer, however, is still a very tempting hostname for the iMac. Truthfully, who can resist something like “Snake Charmer?” It is currently named PRAGMA-II after the PowerBook G4 it officially replaces. (The PowerBook G3 being considered a stopgap machine, and now filling a different usage slot.)

Also, I really like Initial D music now. The Eurobeat stuff they use is nothing short of excellent. I will probably use this stuff for NaNo Writing Music this coming November.

May 25, 2007 | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Gentoo Linux

Hey everybody! I am just writing this to let you know I am running Gentoo Linux on my PowerBook G3. It’s working well enough that I am even comfortable using it unplugged, although I have yet to find out exactly how I am going to monitor the life of my battery or batteries.

One of the things I’m interested in is whether or not Linux can really manage the power very well. Naturally, it’s not of the greatest concern right now, but I will be interested and concerned when it comes to me using the machine for school, taking notes for classes. Next semester, I have a lot of classes in a row, so it’ll be me with my backpack and my notebook computer for probably eight hours straight. I suppose it won’t really be a huge problem if the other battery were working, I used to be able to get ten or more hours of use without any problems in my dual-battery setup.

Another thing I am concerned with is whether or not wireless will work properly. I’m sure I can make it work but it’s another thing I have to figure out *before* the next school year starts, elsewise I will end up using Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.3 again. (While that’s not so bad, I do think I’d like to give
this operating environment a proper chance.)

I must say though, that I do quite like xfce4. Everything works properly, and nothing is too glitzy to be functional. OpenOffice, Xchat and Firefox2 can all be open and running quite well without many issues.

May 19, 2007 | Tags: , , | No Comments »

Timber Inn

Well, I said I would, and I am.

Last Wednesday, Megan and I went to Timber Inn, the sit-down burger/fries/shake joint. It was pretty good, and as an added benefit, it has transfers and I was only a few minutes late for my photo final. :D I think I’ll have to eat at the Timber Inn more often next year, if it’s still there.

May 14, 2007 | Tags: , | No Comments »

CS3!

I bought some Adobe CS3 apps today. I now have the Adobe CS3 Design Standard suite, as well as the independent Dreamweaver CS3 kit. I bought them instead of Design Premium because the NAU Bookstore didn’t have Design Premium for Mac in stock.

So far, the applications all look and work great. Several improvements have been made in Illustrator, and so far, inDesign, Photoshop and Dreamweaver all work as expected. I am also working on the next generation of my Dana/CLW249 website, which will hopefully start coming together this summer. I intend to include more of my photography and a few other things in the new website. I will eventually start moving my old Dana/CLW249 content over too.

I have also determined that I would at some point like to get a Wacom tablet and start getting into doing some stuff with Illustrator. Brandy even mentioned that it wouldn’t be too difficult for me to get into doing a webcomic if I really wanted to, if I were to do fairly simple and/or stylized people, so I may just have to bust out the pen and some paper to get some practice with that.

I also downloaded and installed the cool free font bonus, and I am currently partaking in 30-days of free training from lynda.com, another registration gift from Adobe. Both are pretty interesting, I do like the font, and I will probably use it somewhere, for something. The lynda.com training is interesting too. They’ve got training on just about everything, and I intend to use it to improve the way I use these Creative Suite apps. Plus, I’ve been learning loads of cool tips from the Adobe Creative Suite podcast, which is now covering mainly CS3.

Needless to say, I will have a lot to do this summer, a lot of which includes the Creative Suite.

May 6, 2007 | Tags: , , | No Comments »
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