I thought I’d make an entry about this. Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo starts, and you can expect me to be busy enough during the upcoming month. However, I’m not sure of how often I’ll keep the blog updated (and my other blogs as well; it all goes in the same basket). I’m not going to make a “will update on such-and-such days only, blah-blah” disclaimer, because I’m pretty sure I will have the opportunity to update more regularly than I thought, or less often, or at different times than I normally do… Not going to make a fool out of myself with a false statement. If I update, it means that I had the time, if I don’t, it means I didn’t have it.

What is sure is that:

• I’ll do my best to keep things updated more than only once every two weeks.


• I can be a damn fast writer when I need to, trust me. I may actually end up becoming a power engine with words shooting out of my fingers at light-speed. The downside is that I’ll probably not edit, nor even re-read anything, so expect typos.


• I may go the road of short posts, instead of long essays. These will likely resume in December.


• Long live the laptop, the WiFi and the 20m CAT 5 cable that allows me to write wherever I want to in the house, including the cellar, and bathroom, and even in front of a movie. No, I won’t be asocial, only multi-tasking!

This said, good luck to every NaNo participant. Thanks goodness November 1st is a national holiday here, this way I can start like a rocket.

Y Tags: blogging | NaNoWriMo | posts | updating

I’m posting this entry from Flock, just to test the blog function in it. Believe it or not, I hadn’t done that yet (although I’d say the only real interest with it for the moment would be to get the WordPress.com account, if there’s still someone around who hasn’t gotten one). So far, things seem to work well, except that… “where are my categories?!” I wonder if I’ll be able to pick one later on. Hmm.

The other new of the moment is that I think I’ve finally set on a non-web RSS feeds reader. To be honest, SharpReader and FeedDemon, as hyped as they are, don’t cut it for me. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s a question of looks, of “feeling” with them. A software can be extremely powerful, if I don’t have the right feeling with it (and this has nothing to do with “looking like an OS X interface” or anything of the same kind), I won’t be at ease with it. Alright, I also didn’t want to settle down with something I needed to pay, I admit; there are way enough pieces of software I’ve paid for, and I’m starting to grow broke.

Thus, I’ve been using RSS Reader since the beginning of the week, and it seems to do the job well enough for me (BottomFeeder was nice, but getting on my nerves, with some new posts it’d pick ten times a day and crashing every hour or so). It’s also been able to read feeds that BottomFeeder couldn’t; don’t ask me why, I just know it couldn’t. The only not-so-funny thing is that there hasn’t been any newer version in the past months. However, I don’t know if this is really a problem per se.

I think I’ve pretty much toured enough readers as of now. I’ll still keep an eye open, though.

EDIT: Indeed, no way of choosing categories. Argh.

Y Tags: blogging | flock | rss | rss+reader

Somehow, I must be crazy, masochistic and liking to juggle many tasks, because it’s been days I’m toying with an idea for a blog about vector artists. Not as a community, not as a place to submit works, simply as a page where I could present these artists I find on the Web, whether professionals or not. (Alright, no kidding, I wouldn’t start running a whole community; this is WAY too time-consuming to my liking, and from past experiences, it’s really not that gratifying at all in the end. I don’t like burning out.)

You’d think such ideas would come to me when I have really plenty of time, but noooo, of course, it has to hit me right before NaNo starts and I’m seriously revising the whole outline for my sci-fi/science-fantasy/fantasy-that-isn’t-fantasy-anymore big story (now that Kittin has said she wanted in, a lot of things deserve the reworking). I both love and hate being like this, my mind bubbling with ideas, because I know I’ll absolutely want to put them to use yet will end up despising myself for taking on yet another project.

What do you want… I have such a soft spot for vector art and blogging…

Y Tags: blogging | vector+art

What I’m going to point at today is LJ Book.

I’ve discovered it earlier on this morning, and thought it’d be interesting to share it. While one of the aims of this tool is to generate a PDF of all the posts on a LiveJournal blog (in order for the blog owner to publish it using LuLu or another POD service), another one is the backup of one’s posts. Yes, I do have a small blog on LJ, that I really use for personal purposes only, and it’s good to have a trace somewhere of what I’ve written, in case it someday disappears—which will surely happen sooner or later: nothing on the Internet is truly immortal.

If you’re anything like me, you probably dislike not having this level of control on your own words/webpages. With WordPress or any system that you host on your website, it’s of course easy to backup the database, but what about LJ or other services that don’t offer this function? No more worrying or saving the HTML pages one by one! The output isn’t schmancy-fancy nor full of user pictures and colors, but the text is safe, and it’s what matters.

Y Tags: backup | blogging | livejournal | PDF | POD | writing

Via Blogging Pro: if you go to the WordPress.com page, you’ll see the following message: “Want WordPress.com? Then download Flock”. The necessary link to do so is provided, but just for the record, here’s where to find the download page directly. Once you have installed Flock, just click “Getting Started”, right under the standard navigation buttons, and choose “Get yourself a blog”. There, you’ll have access to the WordPress.com, which will take you to asignup page.