Yzabel / November 14, 2005

9rules Network Takes on Submissions Today

Woe is me, I forgot to post this earlier on on this blog (though I have an excuse, my characters and story do invade my mind every waking hour, these days).Round 3 of the 9rules Network submissions has started today November 14th, at 12:00 am EST; submissions are open during the following 24 hours (which actualyl means less, given that I’m a bit late in writing this entry). This is for English blogs. If you’re interested in applying, here is what they look for in a site. Pretty much self-explanatroy, I think.9rules is a good blog network, in my opinion, and different from just any other blog directoy, given that there’s a screening process. In the past few months, I’ve been following several of their member blogs, and so far, they have proved to be interesting as well as nicely designed (of course, I can’t speak for all of them, only the ones I know). Even if not applying, they’re always worth being checked.9rules, blog, blogging, network

Yzabel / October 31, 2005

November Is At Our Door… What With The Blog?

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.blogging, NaNoWriMo, posts, updating

Yzabel / October 29, 2005

In The Pursuit Of A RSS Reader

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.blogging, flock, rss, rss+reader

Yzabel / October 28, 2005

Yet Another Blog Idea…

Somehow, I must be crazy, masochistic and liking to juggle many tasks, because it’s been days I’ve been 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…

Yzabel / October 26, 2005

A Little Tool To Backup A LiveJournal Blog

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.backup, blogging, livejournal, PDF, POD, writing

Yzabel / October 21, 2005

Install Flock And Get A WordPress.com Account

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.Read More

Yzabel / October 13, 2005

Niner Niner, and a Short Interruption of Service

Yesterday marked the beginning of my first cold of the season, so now I’m officially sick, and while not forced to stay in bed, I have to admit that my brain isn’t really able to, er, process important, complex and detailed information today. As a result, my usual reflexions on writing and the like will resume as soon as possible (probably this Sunday, given that I’m supposed to be away for the week-end on top of it).However, because I don’t want to leave this entry at that, I’m also going to announce that the Niner Niner network doesn’t require any beta password to sign up anymore, from what I got told earlier on this week. Anyone who’d be interested to write for them, you can register at http://ninerniner.com. It doesn’t cost anything, the network’s owners are really nice folks, and they have a range of blogs on varied enough themes for everyone to possibly find at least one domain of interest there, even a very minor one. I’ve had quite some fun working with them so far, they’re pretty laid back, and it’s even pushed me to learn a few things I didn’t know before. If only for that, I have to be thankful. (And if you don’t want to post, you can of course read the blogs.)blog, blogging, blog+network, writing

Yzabel / October 3, 2005

NaNoWriMo: A Blog

Alright, I’m a blogging freak these days, I admit it.The thing is, as I mentioned some time ago, I have this WordPress.com account sitting in silence, and I couldn’t decide on what I’d do with it. After having mulled over this during the week-end, I came to the conclusion that I could maybe use it to post about NaNo.Let’s not be mistaken, I’m not going to post there three times a day, as I want to go on updating regularly here, and during November as well (if I manage to stop playing Might and Magic VI in the evenings for the Nth time, I’ll get more time for this kind of things anyway! Damned be this game for being so addictive). Knowing the way my mind works, I simply foresee that I may find myself wanting to babble about it more than would be healthy for the readers here—it is something specific, after all, and I don’t want to turn this place in a NaNo-only blog in November. By then, I’ll have lots of other topics to post on the Y Logs, too.Besides, I really just wanted to use my wordpress.com account. Really.So… Yzabel @ WordPress.com will thus be used as “my NaNo blog”.blog, NaNoWriMo, wordpress, writing

Yzabel / September 27, 2005

Writing Isn’t Always About What Gets Our Interest

When I was younger, my dream was “to become a writer” (or should I use the word “author” here, since I was thinking of novels and of nothing else). To be honest, this is still my dream, and this is the reason why, after all these years, I’m still pumped up about writing. I’m a very cyclic person who jumps from one interest to the other in a matter of weeks, months or of 2-3 years at the most, but writing has never left me. Even when I’d spent time playing MMORPGs and tabletop RPGs, half of my interest in these was that I could write the adventures of our characters afterwards, or make up “parallel” or “intermediary” stories. I still have boatloads of these. It was still writing.Read More

Yzabel / September 26, 2005

WordPress.com, Here I Come

I had almost forgotten having entered my e-mail address on wordpress.com for an invite. Today, right out of a far away galaxy, an invite popped in my inbox. And now I’m wondering: “What will I use it for?” There are many, many domains of interest I could want to make a blog about, yet I remain so undecided right now. It’s like a big birthday gift that I don’t dare use yet, in fear of spoiling it.In any case, I’m giving myself a few days to think about it more and decide what I’ll be blogging about there, if only to test it and see by myself, not only through reviews made by other people. I’m already a big WordPress fan, after all; even though I’m used to having total control over my blogs, this still seems like a nifty opportunity for anyone who’d want to give a try at blogging without having to deal with a much more basic system.So far, I’ve had a look at the interface, and it seems to me more pleasant to use than the old WordPress dashboard, with an integrated WYSIWYG editor (what we’ll be getting too for WP 1.6?). Far from perfect, but already lss ugly. I know, it may seem shallow, but I like having a nice layout under the eyes when I spend half a hour writing and translating a post. I’m only human, after all, and my eyes can do with the relief.blogging, wordpress