Ready for NaNoWriMo
I've moved my computer upstairs so that I can work on my NaNoWriMo novel in peace and quiet. I'm in a corner of the spare room, which is entirely full of boxes and assorted junk, but it's working surprisingly well.
I've set up a new XP user with a completely blank screen and minimal applications running, and will be writing using the online word processor Writely in full-screen Firefox1. I'm not having any clocks in the room either.
National Novel Writing Month works as follows: the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel during November. It's not so much to produce something of great quality as to prove to yourself that you really can write a novel if you put your mind to it. Here's my pledge:
If I fail to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, I will donate £500 to the Institute of Creation Research.
As you probably know, I hate creationism and the subversion of education, so I don't write that lightly. I also can't afford to lose £500! If I fail, you all have permission to take the mickey mercilessly for the next 11 months, until next November when I'll try again 
The one proviso I leave myself is the Catastrophe Clause, but this can only be invoked if something incredibly awful happens, as judged by reasonable standards. If I get attacked by a psychotic iDog tomorrow and spend the next 30 days barely conscious in hospital, the creationists are getting nothing
I start tomorrow morning. I have a few ideas for what I'll be writing, but nothing final as yet. Exciting!
- Opera doesn't fully support Writely yet [↩]
Wordpress.com Strangeness
This morning I wanted to enable Matt's new spam-filtering Akismet service, and found that the only requirement is an API key from Wordpress.com - the still-in-alpha blog hosting company running entirely on Wordpress software. To get an API key you need an account and though I received a 'golden ticket' email invite a while back it turned out to have expired. However, you can get an account if you download and install Flock - the swish new Firefox distribution built for RSS junkies.
So I downloaded the package, set up an account, enabled the plugin and entered the API key. No luck - the key couldn't be validated. A note on wordpress.com stated they had a major hard drive failure over the weekend, so I figured their servers could be having trouble this morning. It still wasn't working a few hours later, so I went back to the site to re-login, and suddenly everything was weird. My username and password weren't recognised, and at first I was forwarded toa different account. Then I tried to go to my account's home page, and it had someone else's content! The domains appear to have become rather confused, and I can't get into my account at all any more.
I still haven't managed to get an API key, but wordpress.com is still in alpha so this is actually entirely reasonable - they make no promises about the quality of service. The truly bizarre thing is that there's no way to find out what's going on - they don't have a blog! How can they, of all people, not have a way of letting people know about their problems? Most odd. Maybe it's there and I just can't find it, but I've looked pretty hard...
Update: I tried again, and the new API key works - woo! Akismet has already purged my database of hidden spam. I like it
Update 2: While the API key works, any attempt to mark a comment as 'not spam' results in the invalid api key error. I emailed support a few days ago but haven't had any reply, so have been forced to turn it off for the moment. This blog post seems to refer to the problem, so hopefully it'll be fixed soon.
Update 3: Matt replied to my email and said that the latest version of the plugin fixed the problem, which it has. It's working very well now.
Taking over the world: Phase One
I was interviewed by a Radio 4 producer last week. Not on the radio or anything; they're apparently working on a programme about the Live8/G8/Olympics/London bombings week in July and found my live 8 coverage. I'm trying to sound all nonchalant, but I was quite excited when the email came through I gave them a call as requested and spent fifteen minutes or so answering various questions. I don't know whether I said anything of use, but I was quite happy with my answers. They might phone back - I guess it depends on how interesting I was.
Blog Changes
The blog should now be all moved over, and links should be backward compatible. Phew. I know there are still a few bugs, but I wanted to get it all transferred so that I can concentrate on writing from Tuesday. The domain name has changed from wandwaver.co.uk to wongablog.co.uk, as various people, including me, were typing that in by mistake. The RSS feeds should have moved transparently.
I hope you like the new design - feel free to let me know any thoughts! It should work fine in IE6, Opera 9.0P1 and Firefox 1.5, albeit with the odd quirk in Firefox. Navigation should be way faster, too. There are a couple of bits and pieces left to implement - tags and the header bar spring to mind - but nothing too taxing.
That's enough metablogging for the moment. Back to normal posting tomorrow, I hope.
Timekeeping Skills
I just realised the clocks went back last night, so I've been operating on the wrong time all day. First time I've ever done that. Woo - it's only 1500!
Serenity^2
Earlier I heard about a Serenity convention taking place in London in late November. I thought about it for a while, and decided I'd quite like to go. Why not? It'd be nice to interact with people capable of obsessing over things - most people I know personally are strangely lacking that particular personality trait - and I figure it'd be fun all round. So I looked up the ticket prices, and it's £75! Holy kak. Add £20 for the train journey and that's quite the expensive weekend! In fact, the ticket alone is above my entire monthly 'enjoyment' budget. I'm going to have to think about this some more. I mustn't let Jewel Staite's presence sway me in any way at all. Mustn't.
Success!
I'm happy to say that the party went pretty well! I was on my own in the end and undoubtedly came over as rather quiet and shy, but I didn't feel intimidated by all the young people at all. Woohoo! I actually enjoyed myself Just have to make sure I don't negatively-overanalyse the evening now1 and I've got an excellent piece of evidence I can use for future worrying events. Great!
I just hope the photos are acceptable - I've had a quick look over them just now and they seem ok, but the morning always brings a fresh perspective...
- which my brain keeps starting to do - force of habit I guess [↩]
Worrying about this evening
I'm photographing a friend's daughter's 21st birthday party this evening. Just as a favour rather than as a professional thing, but it should be interesting. I'm taking my old 50mm f1.8 lens and am trying to remember the best techniques for low-light photography. Since I had that memory card fail halfway around Paris the thought of anybody relying on me for photographs unnerves me, so I've made sure they know I can't promise anything.
Earlier in the week the blindingly obvious thought occurred that this party would mean interacting with women my own age. Crap. I've been trying to think of the last time I was around a peer group of strangers, and I can't remember. So I'm getting more and more nervous as the day goes on. My standard technique around strangers consists of: stand around looking awkward, fail to think of anything to say, go home and analyse exactly why everybody must hate me. So I'll try not to do that! The life coaching techniques will hopefully help me avoid this particular pattern. As for talking to unknown women my own age, though, I honestly haven't done that in years. Hell, I get nervous walking past them on the street, although I think that's a hangup from school than any actual fear based in reality.
I've asked Nod to come with me for moral support, but I don't know whether he's free yet. A group of us went around to his house last night and played a male vs. female game in which you chose to answer gender-based questions, with more points awarded for answering questions about the opposite sex. Nod and I did far better on the women's questions1 and I christened us 'girly-geek-boys', although I don't know how impressed Nod was by that description. We still lost by quite a long way, however.
Anyway. Deep breaths. Caaaalm. It'll be fine. It will.
- although we failed to name any of 10 "ways that women let a man know they like him" [↩]
Catchup
Sorry for the complete lack of posts - it's entirely due to working on the new layout. I'm very nearly there now; I just want to squish a couple of bugs and make sure the layout isn't too annoying then I'll get everything moved over and shall be back to full-on blogging mode.
I keep thinking of things I want to write about! Things which have been on my mind:
- The government's cop-out over smoking - pathetic!
- The government's new education policy which seems entirely dodgy to me - letting churches fund schools and have a say over the curriculum? How long until the first intelligent design biology lesson crops up?
- I've discovered Aaron Sorkin's 'Sport's Night' sitcom, and I'm enjoying it a lot!
- The Bartimaeus Trilogy = really, really fantastic
- Last weekend I wondered whether Rosa Parks was still alive...then she died
National Novel Writing Month starts on Tuesday! Argh!
Flickr Prints
Flickr have unveiled their long-awaited photo printing service, but unfortunately it's only available in the US. They're extremely apologetic about this last fact, however, and are promising to roll it out into other countries soon. In the meantime users can configure who's allowed to print their photos - I've given any flickr user permission to print mine, should they want to. I think this is a great step forward as printing is the final step to making flickr a killer app for photos. I'm looking forward to their UK service!
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often dance around humanism, photography and general wonderments, but there's dabblage aplenty.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
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