Entries for archive: 2007-05

Found 11 entries.

SoCNoC is about to start

It's finally time for some serious writing.

In about 2 hours, there will be the feint tapping of keyboards as they start ramping up at midnight for the inaugural Southern Cross Novel Challenge.

Amazingly, there are 40 people signed up for it, though I estimate there are at least another 4 or 5 who are doing it but haven't yet signed up. I consider that - even before the month has started - to be a major success.

I'm also hoping to get a lot out of doing this type of challenge again. When I first wrote about starting NaNoWriMo (NaNoWriMo Starts in 1hr 03mins), I had no idea that it would be such an influence and have such an effect on me. Initially, that was because actually doing it and achieving it, I consider to be one of my best ever.

But lots more has happened since the end of NaNoWriMo. I met a whole group of really great people (Kerryn, Jane, Chris, Cassie and Josh, Travis I already knew) and since then we started our own writing site, KiwiWriters, have our own challenges, and in developing the website for it, I now have my own Content Management System too :-)

Isn't it amazing how one tiny thing can blow into something of mega-proportions. Brenda's one line message to the IRC channel in my old work about a year ago has produced all of these things. Wow, just like a domino effect.

And finally in other news for those who don't know, I shall actually be going back to my old work, Catalyst IT, and it shall become my current work again :-)

Ah, happy days are here again. Oh, and wish me luck for the novel.

Labels: random, soc-noc, planet-geek

Inserted: 2007-05-31 22:21 (2 years, 9 months ago)

My Predictions

I'm going to estimate a few things for the inaugural Southern Cross Novel Challenge.

At the moment, the statistics on the KiwiWriters site reads something like this:

  • there are 80 who people have registered on the site
  • of these, 40 are signed up to the SoCNoC challenge

Obviously, not everyone will complete the challenge (here's hoping they do though), but I predict we'll get a good percentage of finishers. Basically, because the whole thing is new, everyone is getting really excited, therefore I think the percentage will be higher this year than in later years.

So, I hope that 50% of that 40 will finish, therefore, 20 people will get their gold stars and certificates. That also means that from those 20 people, we'll have written something over 1,000,000 words!

Wow, that's a lot of words.

Of course, it might be higher (fingers crossed) or lower than this, but remember this figure also doesn't include the people who write 5,000, 500 or 50 words rather than 50,000!

There's going to be lots of bashing on keyboards in the next few weeks, both in New Zealand and abroad. Ah, happy days!

Labels: soc-noc, kiwi-writers, one-million-words

Inserted: 2007-05-29 23:10 (2 years, 9 months ago)

Bit and Byte's Adventure

Just a few days before my SoCNoC novel starts, I've finally done a brief outline of my story. Please comment and let me know what you think.

Synopsis

Computers don't run off electricity. They run because each and every one of them have some little people who live inside. The little people keep everything working from opening and closing gates, charging the batteries and moving all those teeny-tiny electrons around.

As it turns out 'Bit' and 'Byte' (who are twins and the logical opposite of each other) want to escape from their home computer. Through cunning tactics they switch, charge and spark themselves through the wires. Finally they manage to escape but unfortunately find themselves in the big bad 'Outernet'.

This is the adventure they have battling viruses, spy-ware, drive-by-downloads and ultimately come up against the evil SpamBot! They also find time to fix broken sites, help with compatibility problems and even spell check a webpage or two.

Their plan is to get back to 'localhost.localmachine', their own home.

On their own, this would be a hard task (I mean, who can map-read through network switches anyway), but by making friends with other little people who can help them, they might just do it.

Labels: soc-noc, bit-and-byte, planet-geek, novel

Inserted: 2007-05-28 22:59 (2 years, 9 months ago)

Zaapt Going from Strength to Strength

Recently I mentioned I'd added the ability add friends for users of a Zaapt site - well there's more!

I've now added the ability to Message each other - basically, a very simple form of email. It's small, it's funky and it works really well.

Granted some features are missing, but those are features for email clients and there's no way I'm implementing all that. Instead, people will use personal messaging on the site for two reasons:

  1. so they can swap email addresses and communicate
  2. so they don't have to swap email addresses and can still communicate

It's great. It also means we can chat to other users privately which helps from an admin point of view too!

Anyway, even though KiwiWriters still remains the main showcase for Zaapt (and probably always will be), I don't mind and it's only a matter of time before they both become really big!

Labels: zaapt, kiwi-writers, planet-geek

Inserted: 2007-05-22 23:20 (2 years, 9 months ago)

SoCNoC is Getting Exciting

And the weird thing is, it hasn't even started yet!

Currently, we stand at:

  • 27 participants (which is 8 more than NaNoWriMo's first year)
  • 2 special word count widgets
  • 2 flyers (NZ and General - so please, put them up in your school, your work, your place
  • lots of other stuff
  • and one more thing coming tomorrow I can't yet tell you about

Once all this organisation, code development and general work for the site has been put aside on 31st May, I'll actually be able to write the novel!

It's going to be so cool.

Labels: soc-noc, kiwi-writers, planet-geek

Inserted: 2007-05-17 22:08 (2 years, 9 months ago)

Zaapt has Friends

Recently I've updated Zaapt to allow member to add other members to their friends list. It's a good base for some fairly interesting forthcoming developments.

So even though having friends doesn't mean much, it's what you do with them that counts! Isn't that just life in general.

On that point, I had a great weekend seeing people. On each of Friday, Saturday and Sunday I met up with a number of groups of friends, listened to Wellington Brass Band, had food and drink, went to the NZSO and had a walk in Otari - Wilton's Bush. All highly enjoyable and very lovely. Especially in this Indian Summer we're having.

Labels: zaapt, nzso, friends, otari

Inserted: 2007-05-14 22:56 (2 years, 10 months ago)

Earthquake #0004

At 2007-05-14 01:25.

This was quite a big one. I was only just half asleep when this one hit. It lasted about 10 or 15 seconds though it did give the bed a fairly good shake.

I had a look at Geonet as I usually do and realised that they'd updated the site. Nice. Ah but wait, now 2 of my 3 old links don't work. That's very annoying - really, if you re-arrange your site, please make the old URLs forward to the new location. Rah!

Labels: earthquake

Inserted: 2007-05-14 22:49 (2 years, 10 months ago)

A Good Night Listening to NZ Music

Tonight I went to see an event run specifically for New Zealand Music month.

The Perlorus Trust Wellington Brass Band put on a great display of New Zealand music and one of the best things about it was that many of the actual composers were actually there.

An excerpt from their site (before they take it down):

This concert will feature New Zealand works of music by Ken Young, John Rimmer, Nick van Dijk, Aaron Lloydd, Norman Goffin, John Ritchie, Andrew Weir, Ross Harris and Anthony Ritchie several of whom will conduct their own music.

Soloists will be David Bremner (NZSO principal trombone) and David Chaulk (euphonium).

So, all in all, it was very enjoyable. You should come along the next time they do something. It's a great tradition for Wellington to have and long may it continue.

I've been along twice now and though I wasn't sure if I was a brass band fan before then, I am now! Looking forward to the next one too.

Labels: brass-band, wellington

Inserted: 2007-05-11 22:58 (2 years, 10 months ago)

Amazing Take Up for SoCNoC

So far, we now have 19 people signed up to do SoCNoC on KiwiWriters.org

That's actually quite amazing and we're still only the 10th May! Hopefully by the start of June, we'll have quite a few more.

At first, I thought having 10 people would be fun, so I think that any more than that is excellent! So come on, come and join us! Don't forget to sign up for SoCNoC too.

I still haven't prepared anything yet so that's something I'm going to have to work on this weekend. Thanks to Kerryn, she's posted a number of challenges which help with preparation. You'd have to see the forums for full details.

I've also recently added word count widgets to KiwiWriters - making graphics on-the-fly using Perl/Mason, which is always good fun. See my Homepage to see one of them.

Labels: mason, soc-noc, planet-geek

Inserted: 2007-05-10 22:36 (2 years, 10 months ago)

Wotcha Doin' in June?

If you've ever thought about writing a novel, then now's the time to do it. Otherwise, you never will.

Based on NaNoWriMo, we over at KiwiWriters are planning on writing a 50,000 word novel this coming June.

It starts on the 1st, it ends on the 30th and the only goal is to write 50,000 words - which is basically a short novel. I've done it before so I'll be writing my 2nd novel and I can tell you, it's one of the best feelings in the world.

If you've ever thought that you'd like to write a novel, this is the perfect opportunity to start along with a group of very enthusiastic people, all there together for moral support. Remember, if you don't do it now, you never will.

Come along to Kiwi Writers and Join Us! See Challenge information for SoCNoC for further details.

Labels: soc-noc, nanowrimo, kiwi-writers, planet-geek

Inserted: 2007-05-04 18:46 (2 years, 10 months ago)

OpenID is Very Cool

I've just signed up for my first OpenID. It's nice.

The best thing about it is that I'm using this site http://kapiti.geek.nz/ as a delegate to my OpenID provider. That way, if I ever want to move to another provider, I just have to change some of information in the <head> section of my index page and we're done.

Since then, I've used my new OpenID to:

It's very cool.

If you want to use your own site for your OpenID go to this help page - Using your own URL.

Finally, I might try and add OpenID comments to Zaapt or even make it (and hence KiwiWriters) become an OpenID Consumer! Now that would be something special.

P.S. If she hasn't got an OpenID already, I expect Brenda will get one almost immediately after reading this!

Labels: live-journal, technorati, planet-geek, open-id, magnolia

Inserted: 2007-05-03 22:50 (2 years, 10 months ago)