Yzabel / December 21, 2005

Launching The Vectorized Blog

Here’s a blog project I haven’t advertised heavily, since I first wanted to start it and see if I could get it going for more than just a few days. The answer to this being a definite yes, I’m therefore proud to announce that Vectorized is alive and kicking, and that everyone is of course invited to go and take a look at it, if the theme remotely interests you, that is.

So what’s the theme? Illustrations and animations done in vector-based software such as Illustrator, Freehand or Flash. What’s often called “vector art”, for reasons of convenience, is used in advertising and logo-making, among other fields, due to the scalability of the images it produces. I’ve even written entries there on what vector art is and what vector art isn’t. I use this media a lot myself in my illustrations, and I’ve come to realize that there weren’t many blogs dedicated to it (in fact, I found one only, and a handful of “personal” blogs which creators put their own works on). My resolve was strengthened. I decided to launch the blog.

The template itself isn’t totally fixed yet, but this is something I’m working on as well.

Yzabel / December 20, 2005

Performancing Extension For Firefox

I admit it, I’m an extension junkie, and I lay my hands on whatever gets out for Firefox. Nothing surprising, then, to the fact that I grabbed the Performancing extension, which allows you to blog about a page in a split window within your favorite browser (well, alright, my favorite browser). Currently testing it to write this very post, I must say that so far, it’s proved quite an interesting add-on, and worth the try, if only because one doesn’t need to bother with pop-up windows or, worse, leaving the web page one’s blogging about.

I can’t say yet how it’s going to behave with different kinds of blogs, but at least on WordPress.com and right now here on WP 1.5, it seems to be working well enough.

So, the word is out, if you want it, grab it here: Performancing for Firefox (Firefox 1.5; aye, kids, you need to upgrade from time to time).blogging, extension, firefox, performancing, wordpress

Yzabel / December 19, 2005

Manifesto Of The Point In Writing

I’m bouncing off a comment I posted earlier on, itself triggered by several posts I had read on the NaNoWriMo forums. At times, some people would ask “what did your family/friends said when you announced you were going to write a novel in one month?”. And at times, some people would answer that they got told “what’s the point of writing a novel if you’re not going to publish it?”.Perhaps this is why there can be such a rift between authors and non-authors, artists and non-artists. As odd as it can seem to me, who love what I do both as a hobby and in the hopes of taking it onto a professional path, there are people who don’t see the point of writing just for the sake of writing.Read More

Yzabel / December 17, 2005

I Love This Blog, It’s Making Me Write

You know, I wonder if, without this blog and without posting entries about this journey into writing, I’d get as much done.I know I’m a whiner, up to a certain extent. I often think too much, wonder about too many things, and “whine” about them here, because as always, writing helps me to understand my feelings better, and to define what exactly is wrong. It’s somewhat efficient, but not always. After all, if I throw my words in a well, I don’t get any feedback, and it’s easy for me to forget about it, or rather, to pretend to forget.Read More

Yzabel / December 15, 2005

FYI: Yzabel.Net

A few months ago, I gave in and got a domain name with, well, my pen name in it, and found myself facing the following problem: what to do when you have a brand new Yzabel.net to deal with, but nothing to put on it? Granted, this webspace has been put to use for more than only a handful of pages (I direct other domain names to these, is all), but it was the entrance one, the index.html, that I didn’t know what to do about. I contemplated migrating my illustrations site, but what for? Paradygma does very well where it is now. A writing site, maybe? Sure, but what to put on it? I can’t afford to give away first print rights on everything I write, and if it’s to publish a couple short stories only, it’s not really worth it.Thus, for anyone who’d be interested, Yzabel.net will, for the time being, feature announcements regarding my available blogs, websites, updates, and the likes (yes, including Paradygma). I figured out it might be easy enough to keep everything in one place this way.You can start stalking me now.blogging, internet

Yzabel / December 14, 2005

Dilemma of Writing

From www.gamerselite.orgWhat is the best method when dealing with an inspiration overload? Yes, mine is not over yet (somehow, I hope it never dries out, because too much is always better than not enough when it comes to ideas), and I’m torn between the two main choices that I see lying in front of me.One of the roads leads to dropping the novel I’m finishing these days, to jump to another idea, fulfill my desire to write that one, then come back to the previous novel—with the risk of this taking weeks or even months.The other road goes through forcing myself through finishing the work in progress first, even though this may feel very painful and end up in written crap just for the sake of “getting rid of it until the moment to edit comes”.Read More

Yzabel / December 13, 2005

Misunderstandings Or Real Attacks?

I’m pondering this matter today, after having considered a discussion I’ve had (well, started, too) on a forum in the past few days.The thread itself turned out in an unexpected way. I was ready to wake up to a flood of insults and to an angry mob flaming me for my “evil” views (which all readers here know of: I don’t want children, and am tired of seeing certain people trying to persuade me into it); instead, I discovered that a place I thought ridden with angst and immaturity was in fact also home to a good deal of sensible people respecting others’ opinions.Save for one.Read More

Yzabel / December 11, 2005

The Way of the First Draft

After a good week spent reattuning with my drawing desires and abilities—which is something I needed to do since long before November and NaNoWriMo, due to various reasons—I’ve gone back to finishing my first draft, and setting a final goal for it. I’ve decided on 75,000 words; it seems balanced enough for me to reach it, while not needing to focus so much on “writing fillers”, which I’ve never liked doing, even in the heart of NaNo. My problem very often being the contrary, I don’t think I need to worry much about running out of material. The daily amount I want to put in is 1,000 words, since in the frenzy of Christmas, I don’t want to eat more than I can chew. This will carry me to the end of the year without problem, I think.Thus the evolution of the WIP bar in the sidebar of this blog. I’ve also settled on the title for the moment, but evidently, if by the end I find one that sounds better, I once again won’t hesitate to change it. If I follow my plan, I still have three scenes to write, including two action-filled ones, which still frighten me a little (I must confess that, as much as I’m at ease with dialogue these days, I’m still unsure of how to properly write fight scenes). After this, I’ll be back to deciding on a final plan for The Second Continent, and get this trilogy going the right way.Wish me luck and commitment, please… I’ll need both * smiles *NaNoWriMo, novel, writing

Yzabel / December 9, 2005

Free Blog Hosts

Not that I need any myself, but I thought this list of free blog hosts could be interesting. Since I’m a user of WordPress, and since I consider it like a pretty good platform, here’s in excerpt a list of hosts that function with the WP system:http://www.wordpress.comhttp://www.blogsome.com/http://weblogs.us/http://www.wpblogs.com/http://www.blogthing.com/http://globbo.org/http://www.theblog.cc/http://learnerblogs.org/http://uniblogs.org/http://edublogs.orghttp://hrblogs.org/http://beblogger.com/http://www.evilsupergenius.net/Personnally, among all of these, I use WordPress.com, and for one blog only, so I can’t really tell more about the rest. As they’re free, though, nothing prevents anyone from trying them, then switching to another one if it doesn’t strike one’s fancy.(Via BlackhatSEO and The Blog Herald.)blog, blogging, free, host, wordpress

Yzabel / December 8, 2005

When Projects Get Unexpected Attention

Something a little weird happened in the past two days, within the frame of my work.Not really believing in it, I had suggested a few ideas/improvements for our technical manuals. You see, I’ve never received any teaching/training to become a technical writer. Everything I know in that domain, I’ve had to learn it the hard way, through trial and error, through personal research. Since I’ve felt, in the past months, that things were stagnating and that it’d be a shame to not try and make them better, I had taken upon myself to push said research to another level, which in turn made me realize how much I still had to learn, as well as how much I could improve things in the job itself.It looks like this may actually go further than what I had in mind, and that my idea struck the right nerve at just the right moment. This is, in fact, very exciting. It means tons of work in perspective, but I like and need having deadlines and structured schedules, as I already mentioned it here. It’s writing, too—not fiction, but writing all the same, and I somehow have the feeling that being able to produce good manuals in that regard will further my craft no matter what, even if not adapted to novels themselves. (I write these manuals both in French AND English… hence my expected improvement with the language itself.)projects, technical+writing, writing