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Found 13 entries.
Just thought I would add a copy of a post I put on the NaNoWriMo forums in response to the question "What are you doing after NaNoWriMo?" Lots of things to do it seems.
I have a number of things I'm going to do after NaNoWriMo, some short term, others a bit longer term.
Short term, I am going to be adding 'Member Excerpts' to KiwiWriters with the help of the others in the KW committee (Kerryn, Travis and Cassie). We also have many other writing challenges planned throughout the year so check it out when you can (especially if you don't want the excitement of writing to die down once NaNo is over.
There are a few other more personal projects - mainly websites - which are in need of my attention. And I shall certainly be posting more blog entries over the coming weeks. I might even do x365 this year like I said I would last year :-)
Longer term, I have found out that ScriptFrenzy will be April next year instead of June which is awesome. That means I can do that in April and still do SoCNoC in June, as well as all the short story weekends planned over the coming year. At the moment, it looks like I'll also be ML (Municipal Liason) for Wellington for ScriptFrenzy too which will be pretty cool.
Oh, and I have lots of housework to do. Yay, what fun (NOT). Phew!
Labels: nanowrimo, kiwiwriters, planet-catalyst, x365
Inserted: 2007-11-29 22:06 (4 years, 2 months ago)
It looks like Asus are going to adhere to the GPL and fix the violations they've been accused of.
Thanks to Cliff Biffle who wrote ASUS eeePC: First impressions and GPL violations and probably many more like him, Asus are fixing up what I think was probably just an oversight. It may have been on purpose but I suspect (and hope) not.
Anyway, they're remedying their lack of providing the source code for their Xandros based OS on their EeePC. Beforehand, they had provided some source code but apparently it was incomplete.
Hopefully this means that all the Open Source people out there can hack on something that already works rather than have to do something from scratch. Of course, people will do their own things too which is the way of the world in Open Source but now they can also use the newly released Asus code as a starting point.
Oh, and the release of an SDK for developers also looks like a good thing.
It's already looking up in the EeePC world. It was good enough before but now it's even better.
Labels: planet-geek, planet-catalyst, eeepc, asus
Inserted: 2007-11-29 14:24 (4 years, 2 months ago)
It's 2/3rds of the way through November but I have only just passed the halfway mark.
With only 10 days left and 20 days gone, I still have half the novel to write. It's been a crazy month so far, lots of things happening and work taking far too much time, but I'm determined to finish the novel and get my 50,000 words within November.
Even though my average word count required for the rest of the month is 2,500 words per day, I still reckon I can do it.
I realised that there was only one more weekend left in November but hopefully that won't be too busy (unlike all the other weekends so far).
Still, that didn't stop me from creating an extra artificial one. I'm going to take next Thursday and Friday off work because:
...it just wouldn't be the same if I didn't win.
As I've said before, I'm just loving Macy Lights and the Battle for Ashton's Gate so that's added incentive to finish as if I needed any more.
Interestingly, I decided yesterday that the novel itself could be split into three parts. I have written Part I in the first 25k and have hinted at what happens in Part II. Part III will be written for my second 25k.
This means I shall be delaying writing Part II until after November, which will also be about 25k.
This turn completely took me by surprise since my plan had always been to write Part II right there inside the novel (not that I knew it was separate part back then). The only shame is that I had to write a short synopsis right in the middle of the novel instead of writing the whole lot. Ah well, sometimes that's just got to be done during NaNo.
Finally, wish me luck for what will be a mad rush for the rest of November.
Labels: nanowrimo, macy-lights
Inserted: 2007-11-21 00:11 (4 years, 2 months ago)
Brenda and I have been working on a new site for all the Wellington Geeks out there. And it's now live.
After trying to do about a thousand things this month, one of them is mostly ready. Brenda and I have been working on http://wellington.geek.nz/ recently and it looks like people have found it before we were fully ready to release.
As it turns out, that's okay, Release Early, Release Often is the Open Source mantra so that just means we get more eyeballs at it earlier rather than later.
One good thing is that doing the site made me add a new Calendar model to Zaapt and now that's up and going very well. We'll also use the new Calendar model over on KiwiWriters so everyone will know when all the challenges are. It's great how all these sites benefit from each other :-)
The one issue I need to fix up for wellington.geek.nz is the fact that it thinks it's yesterday for most of today since the server is running on Central European Time (it's in Denmark), but I'll fix that up soon when I get a chance.
We have some thoughts and ideas for the future so hopefully some of these will be added in the near future.
... and probably more, so let us know if you have any suggestions. The site is still beta (I've always wanted to say that) so please be kind.
Labels: zaapt, kiwiwriters, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, wellington-geek-nz
Inserted: 2007-11-19 10:21 (4 years, 2 months ago)
NaNoWriMo isn't all about writing a 50,000 word novel in a month, it's all about random stuff too. Like podcasts.
Thanks to Kerryn organising the Wellington NaNoWriMo Kick-Off meeting, we had Phillipa Ballantine come along and interview us for a NaNoMonkeys podcast.
I love it the way they say we're from middle earth. Anyway, you can get to hear me on there once or twice. I'm one of the two English accents you can hear and in some people's minds, the funny accent.
Anyway, it was a fun gathering and hopefully we'll see Pip later in the month or at the Thank God It's Over Party.
Labels: nanowrimo, nanomonkeys
Inserted: 2007-11-14 21:24 (4 years, 2 months ago)
Not sure why, but there has been a lot of this recently.
At the moment, I am tired of certain types of people who:
Usually I see the bright side of things but there seems to be a lot of the above happening at the moment. This makes it all a lot harder but pushes me to do more of the same.
Now I'm just waiting for that thing someone does which will just blow me away, make me say "wow, that was amazing" and restore my confidence in the human race.
Labels: people, human-race
Inserted: 2007-11-14 08:31 (4 years, 2 months ago)
Good news for the Asus EeePC - in my eyes at least.
After I got my shiny new Asus EeePC last week I knew a community to put their own Linux distro on it would grow around it soon enough.
The OS that comes pre-installed is a Xandros-based system and while I'm happy with it now, I'll eventually replace it. Lots of people have already installed Ubuntu on it, though they had to use ndiswrapper for the Wi-Fi (new Atheros chipset apparently) and also suspend doesn't quite work yet.
Lots of people have also been adding both Debian repositories and Xandros repositories on the assumption that they will work, but there are also reports that some things stop working. I'm also not convinced that they'll be completely compatible.
But there is good news on the horizon. I thought a community to port Ubuntu properly onto the EeePC would crop up first but already Ben Armstrong has stepped up to the plate with his Debian-EeePC project.
Happy happy joy joy! I can't wait.
Labels: debian, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, eeepc
Inserted: 2007-11-11 21:30 (4 years, 3 months ago)
This past week, I didn't managed to write a huge amount for Macy Lights but today I played a whole lot of catchup.
One of my friends wondered if my inactivity was caused by me not being interested in my novel much or it being too hard but it reality it's quite the opposite. It was just a busy week, that's all, not to mention that a couple of nights were completely wiped out.
Regarding my novel, before today I really liked - now I absolutely love it. I knew that when I had the chance to start writing again that I would just spill my ideas out onto the keyboard and that's exactly what happened today. I was on 9.5k this morning and after doing 4.8k today I'm almost back up to where I should be (on a quota/day basis).
I read in one of the forums on the NaNoWriMo site the people were falling in love with their characters or their plot and I'm doing the same. I mentioned that the story had grown on me every single day since Oct 29th when I first had the idea. I liked it then and now I love it - which makes the whole thing a fantastically enjoyable thing to do.
Not to mention that I'll be meeting up with the other Wrimos in Wellington tomorrow which is also always great fun.
As always, every single day's writing is being posted on my Macy Lights and the Battle for Ashton's Gate novel page. Today's is already up.
Labels: nanowrimo, macy-lights, planet-catalyst
Inserted: 2007-11-11 00:00 (4 years, 3 months ago)
NaNo has just put their widgets up again and there are more features than last year.
Instead of posting a load of links to them here (since blog entries are timed and these things keep changing), I'll just post the final versions at the end of the month.
I have posted two on my home page if you want to take a look how I'm going.
On the left is the Word War widget on which I've added myself, Kerryn and Travis.
On the right is my progress through the month.
I think that they've put some serious caching onto the widgets, so I think they'll only update every day or two. I reckon just putting a few hours on it would suffice but that's alright, better to have late ones than none at all :-)
Actually, I think the progress one is going off another timezone (one much behind ours) and that it'll only be generated after midnight of that day. That's why it says 22 days left. I dunno but there's something weird about it.
Labels: word-war, nanowrimo, macy-lights
Inserted: 2007-11-10 19:32 (4 years, 3 months ago)
Before I started writing tonight, I ended up catching up with three days worth of blogs. I didn't realise I'd been so busy.
An interesting one I found was Kerryn's article about Subplots.
As it turns out, one of the things I'd been planning this year is to have more than just the main storyline which is what my previous two novels have done (they were very one dimnesional). I have also decided to write in the 3rd person too since NaNo '06 was 1st person and SoCNoC '07 was a mix of both (and a horrible mix of other stuff too).
Already I feel that I'm flowing through this one a lot easier than either of the previous two and you can probably tell this because of my wordcount. After two days, I am already at 6,177. It's going well so far and I hope to do lots more over the weekend.
For those who have missed it, I'm serialising every single day's writing about Macy Lights. Day 2 has been posted :-)
Labels: nanowrimo, macy-lights, writing
Inserted: 2007-11-03 01:54 (4 years, 3 months ago)
It seems details are leaking about Google's new OpenSocial application API.
It also looks like the launch date for Open Social will be on Thursday which is what was rumoured at the end of September.
Unfortunately for me, it doesn't sound like what I was hoping for. I was hoping that there would be Application Services, Data Services and Mashup-Services and that you could do it on your own site anywhere.
From what I can tell, the Application Services and the Data Services will be there, but the Mashup Services won't be. This is because the final point above - being able to host your services anywhere - doesn't seem to be allowed.
So far, it looks like the API is for Application Services to be embedded into the Data Services' own website. Limiting or what?
As you might be able to tell, I'm a little miffed about that since for me, the big adventure was to open up where you can host your applications/mashups and not just copy Facebook's walled-garden approach and embed all the applications within one site.
It looks like my initial look at OAuth will be the thing that now excites me most and I'm going to have to start reading a bit more about it. I feel that this can be used for what I would like to see in the real Open Social scene ...
... and what is that? ...
... that the Data is open (using proper Authentication of course), and not just that the Application API is open.
The fact that an Application API is open really just means it is a standard and nothing more than that.
Things have changed in this day and age. The application doesn't matter anymore because the web is the application. Not one site. Not a few sites, but the whole web.
And while we used to say Content is King, in reality these days Data is King, or even more specifically Social Data is King.
Over the next few days, I hope to learn a little more about Google's OpenSocial and I'm almost preying it isn't what I think it is now.
Labels: google, open-social, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, oauth, magnolia, social-graph
Inserted: 2007-11-02 10:00 (4 years, 3 months ago)
After attending the launch of the NZ versions of the Creative Commons licenses, I've decided to release this, my third novel, under a Creative Commons license.
The Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand site and NZ specific licenses were launched last Saturday and I had the pleasure of attending. It was a fantastic event but I shall be writing it up another time. Let's just say that I was amazed at the number and type of people who turned up.
In honour of the new license, I shall be making my NaNoWriMo 2007 novel available under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.
The novel is called Macy Lights and the Battle for Ashton's Gate and I shall be filling in each day's quota, so check back every day for a new installment.
At the end of the month, I shall tie up all the pieces together and produce a book that I will print using Lulu. You are welcome to order a copy off me (to be honest, it's not going to be that good but hey, it's for the kids) and any profits will be given to a charity to be determined by me - I hope to find a writing/reading based charity here in New Zealand, so I'd appreciate any comments. Unfortunately, price is also to be determined but I don't expect it to be too high.
Depending on demand (yeah right) will depend on when and how many I order, so please be patient.
Overall, this is mostly an interesting excercise for me so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
Wish me luck.
Labels: nanowrimo, planet-geek, macy-lights, planet-catalyst, writing
Inserted: 2007-11-02 00:38 (4 years, 3 months ago)
NaNoWriMo has begun and I've got a flying start.
We in Wellington had the Kick-Off gethering last night and it was great. Amazingly we got 17 people there and I know there were more who intended on coming. Overall though, it was a fantastic start.
And now, we're just 8hrs 25mins into it and I've already got my daily word quote. I'm on 1685 and I would love to double that tonight. I'm making no promises though I intend to finish at least more than a few days early this year.
The other news is, I shall be posting each and every day's writing on this site. I'm as yet undecided if I shall be just putting it up as content or as a blog, but I'm leaning towards the former since I already have a writing section and even though it's based on time (one a day) it's actually for a brief moment (one month). Every so often I'll point to any new stuff there from here so you don't miss out.
Wish me luck :-) This is going to be oarsum (oh wait, I should say awesome if we're talking about writing and not geek stuff).
Labels: nanowrimo, planet-geek, macy-lights, planet-catalyst, writing
Inserted: 2007-11-01 08:29 (4 years, 3 months ago)
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