is a blog by Brendan
Okay, the highest-volume blogs are up, all content and categories and whatnot included. They also, regrettably, all look like WordPress blogs. I’ll fix that after I spend tomorrow importing the lower-volume ones.
With the exception of the calendar, category and random-entry pages, all the old links to everything SHOULD be working, so please let me know if you find stuff that isn’t. I’m tired. It’s almost 5 am here.
But there will be an Anacrusis later today.
I’ve fallen prey to the great Dreamhost CPU disaster and what that basically means is I have to change my weblog software. I’m very unhappy about this, but I can’t afford to move to a dedicated server and I don’t believe the situation would improve at another host. At least I won’t have to bug Leonard for help anymore (this is a lie, I’m writing him an email right now).
NewsBruiser did exactly what I needed it to do for almost four years and I’ll miss using it. Those of you whose blogs I host, I’m sorry; I’ll be sending out a guided tour email once I’ve got (sigh) WordPress or whatever up and running. The front page of NFD is static, so it will remain up for the duration, but everything else will go down later today.
THINGS NEVER TO DO.
Blaaah. I’m tired of computers. My hair is 10% whiter after today.
And tomorrow, deep in the pixel trenches, we peasants will still toil on.
Quick fanboy bit here, just for the benefit of Google.
There are three significant fonts in Brick, and I accidentally discovered all three of them in separate places. The block title on the posters is in Font Bureau’s Giza. The title that zooms away after the cold open is Todd Bushman’s Cipher. The front of the party invitation is MillaN’s Sand.
After a TV show about Edwardian cuisine, the household tonight spent twenty minutes in goggling horror at the idea of a duck press. Here is what a duck press is used for: squishing a duck so hard that all the blood comes out. That’s it! Apparently they were later bastardized into lobster presses (do lobsters have blood? I thought they were insects) and now duck presses cost thousands of dollars and are impossible to find.
But the ones you can find have little webbed feet.
Hey, I actually picked up last prize in the Lyttle Lyttons this year!
There’s one thing every writer agrees on: child abuse is great!
Not real child abuse, of course. Real child abuse is tragic, and people who don’t love all its victims unconditionally are hideous monsters and probably pederasts themselves. This makes it very easy to find abusers in real life. Haven’t you ever asked your friends whether they’d spank their kids? Trick question! Good writers have no friends.
The thing that makes child abuse great in fiction, though, is that it’s worth infinity points on the badness-goodness scale. Is your hero not sympathetic enough? Do your readers say she’s “selfish” or “disturbingly violent” or “clearly you with your name spelled differently?” Reveal a history of abuse to explain everything forever! Or maybe you have an antagonist who just isn’t sufficiently evil–“I don’t think Wicca is that bad,” your readers might say, or “you psychopath, stop reading this garbage and let me go.” But make your villain a pedophile and watch their eyes glimmer with hate!
Aren’t you glad we’ve discovered this technique together? It’s like our own special secret! Just remember not to let anyone else know about it.
Today’s Hack in a Nutshell: Black and white is one color too many!
I got spam today with the most intriguing subject line ever, so I googled it and bam, first result was Gordon Fay’s 24-hour RPG Blood Royal. The subject line, and its description: “A competitive game of fairy-tale intrigue and skulduggery in which players take the roles of a dying King’s children, each vying to be named successor at the end of the week.” How cool is that! Thanks, spam! Welcome to unintended consequences.
Ride the flavor horns. Dammit! I knew there was a better joke than the “hyperspace” thing in the last entry, I just couldn’t get the bat off my shoulder. Oh well. There’s always next year.
Thanks to all the people who have offered further sandwich suggestions in the comments. More! More! I should clarify that I am quite familiar with the unholy power of bacon, but will generally not eat sharp or nontoasted cheese.