WICKEDfishes

Because chapter titles are always fun! These are subject to change, rearrangement, deletion, and addition to. But I think they're fun nonetheless.

ch. 1 | in which Trei bemoans his fate
ch. 2 | in which Trei encounters temporary hair color
ch. 3 | in which Trei repeatedly asserts his dislike of the catfish-car is carsick
ch. 4 | in which there are makhe and glass ceilings Kora makes use of suction cups
ch. 5 | in which Fynth does something foolish
ch. 6 | in which Trei experiences rage and Fynth is badly startled
ch. 7 | in which Fynth has a curious dream
/* edited to add: */
ch. 8 | in which Trei does the impossible
ch. 9 | in which Kora meets someone unexpected
ch. 10 | in which Fynth is increasingly frustrated

Awww Kora has no chapters yet. Well, she'll get at least one by the end of this thing. Maybe I should rename the makhe and glass ceilings one for her. Either "in which Kora makes use of suction cups" or "in which Kora escapes harm." Thoughts?

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Being the condition I am in after writng a REALLY SAD SCENE in Toads (which is what I am calling the NaNo project lol). OMG I want to cry. My MC, Trei, just described a few people that had died in the very beginning of the book, and he was very close to them, and he hadn't really come to terms with the fact that they were dead and he was alive and .....

*sniffle*

I has a headache now.

Plz to be giving fictional hugs/cookies to Trei. ♥

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Oh, November. Month of colored leaves, pumpkin pies, turkeys, and writing challenges that I've yet to succeed at. I didn't attempt NaNo last year, but the year before I had a very interesting idea with a girl and a robot and their adventures exploring the galaxy. It never went very far, obviously. But this year - well, this year I've already tackled and conquered ScriptFrenzy, so I'm feeling a little better about it all.

However.

I HAVE NO TITLE. I always manage to come up with titles for my stuff! I've gone through numerous ideas such as Syaniad (think "Illiad" or "Aeneid" - but then I thought sounded a bit too much like cyanide), Ohkiriad (which would work except I realized using either of these titles is excluding either "Syan" or "Ohkir" - and both are an important part of the story), and Rivertree (which combines two important aspects of the story but sounds a bit too much like a housing development or a retirement home).

It's driving me up the wall.

However, while I continue to try to think of a title, you can keep track of my word count!

I may put this in my sidebar, but right now I need sleep.

/* EDIT!!! I HAS A TITLE WHOOOO! And I think I like it. Drumroll plz...

The Council of Toads.

I feel so much better about writing now. Except that my writing FAILS HARD, but at least I'm still keeping up with daily goals! */

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So in my adventure into our garage for old squirt guns (to paint up and turn into steampunk-y weapons), mum and I came upon six old boxes full of books. I love books, of course, especially old ones. Naturally, this was exciting. The first book was actually on top of the boxes, and was GIGANTIC. As I was pulling it out, I exclaimed "Holy..." and then I saw the cover: "Holy Bible." How else should I finish the exclamation but with "...Bible!" I think this should be a new exclamation. "Holy Bible!"

Anyway, we endeavored into the boxes, and found many sets/collections of books. One that spanned nearly all six boxes was a collection of works from Sir Walter Scott. I found this the most interesting, not because I'm interested in Scott (sad, un-literary me), but because they were the type of old books with pages that need to be cut in order to be read. The extent of my literary sophistication, thanks to AP English, does include reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I very vividly remember a passage that describes Gatsby's library:

It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?

Yes indeed. As far as I can tell (I did not go through EVERY book, but at least eight), they have never been read, because all the pages are uncut. My mum's great uncle Frank was the owner, and he was a dentist, so I imagine he was trying to have an impressive library. Five boxes included other sets like "Letters from American Presidents" or something to that effect, biographies of Washington and Lincoln, books on government, and another set: The Harvard Classics and Fiction Collection. There were also a few volumes of leather-bound "American Cyclopaediae" (yes, I typed that right, they weren't encyclopaediae), but they didn't look very interesting.

The fun stuff came in the very last box: Hawkins' New Catechism of Electricity. Oh yes. Copyright: 1896.

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So, I said I was going to do more craft things, right? Well, here's a bead project. I'm calling them "Eglantine" because it's easier to name things people-names, and I'm going to just come up with random ones. However, the name has nothing to do with the actual project. Really.

And I don't want this taking up the whole page, so for one of the first times in my life I'm going to use the "more" option. Onward!

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Wow, I finally got around to doing a new layout. How long has it been since the last one? A year? TWO YEARS? Goodness. That's horrible. I apologize. Profusely.

I'm going to try to do more interesting stuff with this blog - craft stuff, to be specific. I make all kinds of things and I feel the need to share. Maybe it's ego; maybe it's a deep, primal need to share craft with the world - I'm not entirely sure. But I would like to try.

I updated WordPress (FINALLY!) and moved it to the main domain, and I'm going to go back through all my old entries and only include the most interesting. They archive was getting a bit ... huge. I have entries way back from when MovableType was not evil free installed.

The categories are getting a nice update, too. I'm unsure as to if I'm going to use the tag system, but I may try to have broader categories and more specific tags. If I decide to use them. I do like me some tags. If I did use them I could have the "tag cloud" over there in the sidebar.

Speaking of word clouds, have you been to Wordle? It's a word cloud generator with some seriously pretty options for color, font, and design. If I could figure out something interesting to do with word clouds, I'd be making a bunch.

All right, now it's time for me to actually go and fix up the categories/import past posts. Hopefully I won't break anything in the process. I worked long and hard trying to get this looking decent! (Really, I did - it was a nightmare. The code and I had many arguments. Most of them one-sided.)

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Isn't it AWESOME?!

I'm on "p" in lowercases now. I do notice from that image that "g" is still doing some funky things related to the space that it's allowed to be in, and the kerning on either "H" or "Y" is off.

Also, the font DIDN'T CRASH PSP! This is, in itself, a miracle. I have found PSP notorious for arguing with fonts, even to the extent where if a font crashes it, it won't open without crashing again immediately unless you take drastic measure. And my font wasn't even complete when I tried it in PSP. Thank you, FontForge. u r teh amazing.

(er, disclaimer - I haven't gotten a new version of PSP since 7, and frankly don't plan to, so don't take this as a criticism of the current line of PSPs by Corel. And no, it's not Vista combined with an old version of PSP that's causing the crash - it's been doing this since I got it, back when I was on Win98/2k. Also, I don't know if it's a credit to JASC or Microsoft that it still works beautifully - but I sure am ecstatic. I would hate to buy a new version 'cause I've hated them since 8.)

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I suddenly see why some free fonts have only a set of caps and not lowercase. It is TEDIOUS. Cool, and not particularly HARD (although I would say it's challenging... in a good way), but tedious.

Yesh. I am making a font. *whoooooo* Of my handwriting.

I'm using a wonderfully free editor called FontForge. This is great for you if you have a Linux machine, but is slightly more complicated if you're not Linux (or Unix). I personally have very little experience with Unix sorts of commands, so I was getting Very Angry at the computer and myself for a bit, but it worked out all right in the end.

I also want to make a font of a conlang I've been working on recently, for the Vanilla story. There is Absolutely No Reason for me to invent this language, as all the characters speak (read: so I can write the whole thing in English) it and it never comes into the dialogue, but that's beside the point (apparently). So I'm creating a script for it. It's a right-to-left script, which I foresee will be more trouble than it's worth, so I'm starting in my font-creating adventures with a familiar English type. Mine! I've always wanted my handwriting as a font, but never wanted to pay for it.

When it's finished, I'll put it here for download, but BE WARNED: I have no experience at creating fonts, and can therefore not guarantee that it will be at all compatible/safe. In all likelihood, it will murder your computer with an axe. It may even murder my computer with an axe.

Anyway, back to my tediousness. Ugh. I'm only on caps N.

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But this time, a geology one. And thank all that is good and holy in this world, geologists know how to be concise (as compared to some linguists.........). I found a bunch of papers when I was looking for info on one of my favorite little fossil dudes, the ammonite. But the ones that it turns out are best for me to use are SHORT, so when I go back looking for more info I don't have to wade through like forty pages of grossness. More like SEVEN. Whooooo! I love seeing that scrollbar in Adobe Reader being like an inch long.

Also pray for me that I did not catch Ava's sick. OMG plz no. DO NOT WANT.

(my stomach is being angry tho.... ohhhhhhh please no sick.)

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Studying for my geology test, I came across this in my notes:

Tunicates - the dudes that eat their brains.

Although accurate (well, in a sense, I don't know if they actually EAT their brains), it is vastly amusing.

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