:: Saturday, February 07, 2004 ::

EMERGENCY POST
If you're wondering why the www.babytrollblog.com site seems down, it's not. It's just not answering to its name right now. As Dolly put it:

CAUGHT US BY SURPRISE
Da Doll tried to upload an update to the RoadRunner server and got the old and tired "disk quota exceeded" message. Alger decided it was time to go to paid hosting. FWIW, we have moved our sweet asses over to pmachinehosting (thanks to the du Toits for the recommendation). Thus far lookin' fines' kind all the way.

The scary part was that we couldn't continue to have the babytrollblog.com domain name forwarded to the RoadRunner server while simultaneously waitin' fer th' new DNS servers to propagate. So, for a brief period, BTB's beed down. Nothing to be done about it, though we did have a major panicattack to see that "coming soon" page in the meantime no nevermind.

But, if you're reading this, you got to the new site and all is hunky-dory. (What is a hunky dory? I mean, I know a dory is a rowboat. Is a hunky one that's well-built? Or one that's a little... awkward?)

Silver lining department, Alger says he will now be able to get the Apocrypha back up at the old Road Runner site, once he spiffs up the HTML. (Watch him try to fob that off on Da Doll. Whatcha wanna bet?)

Oh! And you folks who linked to the old site with the home.cinci.rr.com domain URL, your links will be broken. If you used relative links within the babytrollblog.com domain, you should be just fine.

So please bear with us as we move our stuff.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The new blog is up. The URL is http://www.babytrollblog.com/. Things are still a mess, but I will not be posting at this blog any longer. The last thing to be done to make the move official is to transfer the archives. Wish me luck.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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SWMBO POINTS OUT
That this is a leap year coming up. Being's I'm on salary, I 'spect that means I'm working the extra day free. Wonder if I can get it as a vacation day.

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SO THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Was too big for the living room. We bought it last year on sale and never had it out of the box. Pre-lit artificial, narrow profile. Man, were we excited.

Then I got it out and set it up and, where the box said it had a 49" girth, it looked more like a 49" diameter. Yoiks!

After the requisite fifteen minutes of panic, rage, bargaining, pleading, acceptance, we decided to rearrange the living room for the season, giving us enough room to get around the tree.

Then we discovered we liked the room the new way and wanted to make it permanent. Which meant we'd have to move the TV and the entertainment center and the bookshelves and... out of eight major pieces of furniture in the room, two would stay in the same place — more-or-less.

Then we decided we wanted new tables — coffee and end. And I want a wall lamp. And we've been meaning to get a new couch for several years.

Then SWMBO sat in her chair in the new configuration and discovered that she couldn't see the TV in the old config (which will obtain for three more weeks).

She doesn't like the recliner. She wants a love seat instead of the couch. I spend most of my living room time on the couch (and am six-two and want place to stretch out) so tried to veto that, then pleaded like a tobacco lobbyist.

Today we went to Lazarus (the local Federated store — same as Macy's). And spent the price of a new roof on furniture. Including replacing one of those two pieces that were going to not-move in the reconfig.

Got off cheap.

Remember this started because the Christmas tree was too big.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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ART IMITATES... ART?
Author/Editor/fiction maven Chelsea Polk (Live Journal blog — no permalinks) in her 12/27/03 entry lays out a brief thesis which I, for one, intend to internalize and apply.

Comic artist Tony Cochran, in his strip Agnes (A linkable Sunday comic — are you nuts?), recapitulates Chelsea's thesis in three panels. Agnes attempts to tell a joke. Her buddy critiques it in-progress. Agness exhibits workshop burnout.

Ya hadda been there.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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ROGER'S BACK
Whew! Apparently some contretemps with Hosting Matters.

<JohnAstin>But he's much better now.</JohnAstin>

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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I WANNA KNOW
How come Lileks gets these perfect Kodak-moment pictures and all I get is baby-blur?

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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EVENING STROLL
Moonrise in the West just at sunset. The dark side of the Moon shines in faint earthlight. Venus accompanies. The air is cold and sharp.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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I WANTED TO DO THIS DIFFERENT
But time got away from me and, if I'm not careful, I'll miss the window altogether. SOooo....

While I continue to work on the site at www.markphilipalger.com, here's a reminder that the Dolly Apocrypha is up on the Web at my Old Site, and there's a story there that seems appropriate to the holiday.

("'Seems' my ass," Dolly says with a snort.)

It is called A Dolly XMas. Go and read it. Enjoy. Merry Christmas. (Or, as Dolly would have it, Merry XXXMas.)

And for those slow on the uptake, I suppose I should disclaim that — yes — the "XXX" does signify R-rated content.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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NOTHING FANCY
No graphics, no flash movie, no boobies — er... roasting chestnuts, I mean. Just an earnest wish

Peace on Earth
Goodwill Toward Men

Merry Christmas. Good night, Gracie.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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AND... CUT!
Scene! Scene! Scene! ::sigh:: I've been working toward this for what seems like a month. The cusp of conflict in the moment when Drummond and Witchlet finally meet. I've struggled with it and pounded my head against it, fought it to the ground a dozen times only to have it rear up once again. But now it's done and I can move on.

I can't wait to show the critters.

Trouble is, the oldest post — Chapter 8a — only has 3 reviews and I want to get at least 4 or 5 if I can. So I have to wait till those come in before I can replace the eldest post with this new one. I may have to wait until after New Year's.

Unless (gears turning in alleged mind) unless I offer the "chapter" early (before I post to the Workshop) to those critters who've already reviewed the earlier ones. So they can get their reviews ready in advance and argue over the two-pointer. ::evil grin::

Or I could reciprocrit. I mean... I owe Doc and Dorian, Larry, Lizzie, Jaime, and Trish. Only one who owes me (really) is JD and I 'spect he's lying in a quivering heap somewhere on account of having finally finished Fates.

::sigh:: Maybe tonight. Right now, I have to finish cleaning up the house for Christmas. ::sigh — again:: Seems like I've been doing nothing but since my vacation started.

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IT'S FUNNY
I don't entirely get the concept of word count as a measure of writing production. Seems almost like KLOCs (thousands of lines of code) in programming. It's a meaningless metric, because the goal isn't to write the lines — or words — but to create the program... the story.

Take this latest passage.

In my organizational scheme, it's a fragment of a chapter — eight of eight allotted to this fifth of the book. While most of my chapters run 3-7Kwds, this one is turning out to be somewhere around 40-45Kwds. (There's one more major segment to go.)

The fragment I just finished is about 6800 words. It started at 10K and bulked up to around 13K before I whacked off about 5K and dumped it in the next bin.

It's all the same chapter, but because the Workshop limits posts to 7K, I have to work the fragments to fit. (Which isn't all bad in terms of self-discipline.)

So... Considering that I'm recombining and reworking old parts with new — reassigning roles and dialog, changing meanings, mêmes and themes to suit the new vision of events and subplots — how much of that 6800 words can be considered new work?

And what does it mean that I trimmed a rough cut of the finished scene from around 8K to 6800? It made the 6800 words that are left that much better, but what about my word count? Is the 6800 words more important than the one scene (actually two and a half)?

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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MAKING SLOW PROGRESS
On Geppetto's Log. Am nearly down to the blowup between Drummond and Witchlet in Room A. If I can finish that tomorrow, I'll be one post ahead of the critters and feel like I should thereafter concentrate on doing reviews until I clear out the backlog. Either that, or get the hornies to write the next scene. ::grin::

Goodnight, Gracie.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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BRUCE STERLING HAS A BLOG
A tip, Bruce: coherence. It's a marvelous thing. Make sure when you're furiously communicating that people can follow what you're saying.

That was a waste of 15 minutes.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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I'VE LONG HELD THAT
America OnLine (AOL) is a tool of the Devil. Under the guise of making the Internet more accessible to (supposedly dumb) American computer users, the singular vision of Steve Case has been to dumb down the Internet. And people pay for this ripoff!

But there's a darker side to this vision, as well. And a corollary to Ben Franklin's truism that those who surrender liberty for security shall have — and deserve — neither. An ISP whose big selling point is ease of use is really talking ease of extracting you from your money for the least amount of effort possible — without regard to the quality of your experience on the 'Net.

Go for the low price.

Me, I think it's telling that AOL/Time-Warner does not use AOL for their in-house email system. If a company doesn't eat its own dog food, I'd suggest their product is unworthy of your custom.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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SCREWING AROUND WITH MUSIC MATCH
And my .mp3 library, I've built this (work-in-progress) Dolly sound track:

Amanda Marshall - Best of Me (Dolly's Theme)
Sarah McLachlan - Building a Mystery
Crowded House - Fall at Your Feet
Dido - My Lover's Gone
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
Garbage - Special
Jewel - I Won't Walk Away
Joni Mitchell - Carey
Sade - Haunt Me
Sarah McLachlan - Full of Grace
Martina McBride - Happy Girl
Laura MacKenzie - Brother Timothy the Storyteller
Sade - No Ordinary Love
Clint Black & Martina McBride - Still Holding On
Crowded House - She Goes On
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-Prelude To The Dance
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-The Setting Of Two Suns
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-Firedance
Sarah McLachlan - Possession
Sarah McLachlan - Wait
Sade - I Never Thought I'd See the Day
Sade - Siempre Hay Esperanza

If anybody cares.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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CAN YOU TELL I'M ON VACATION?
I've been doing Other Stuff for a while. And I find it takes a certain sleeplessness and hunger to muster the requisite outrage to bloviate in a blog post. As I'm sleeping late and overeating, I can't... So, here's The Mrs, guesting in the Baron's blog. I think I linked to the article when Connie posted in her own blog. Or maybe I just meant to.

Quit arguing with the idiots. It’s been two years. They are NOT going go get it. Three thousand Americans murdered should have been enough of a clue, but even that wasn’t enough.

...

Tell the naysayers to fuck off. Confront them directly. Tell them they are idiots and their opinions no longer matter or will be considered. Remind them they are in the minority and we tried their shit for decades and all it got us was more danger in the world, increased hopelessness, a more illiterate population, more children without mothers and fathers, and taxes and regulations out the wazoo. Nothing they’ve offered or contributed has benefited anyone. The time for reasonable debate is over. Now it is time to remind these fucks that they are irrelevant. They had their day. The grownups are in charge again. The silent majority has found its voice. And it's about damn time, too!

Whew! Don't hold back, Connie! ::grin::

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IT IS WITH REGRET
That I note Connie has a black-boxed notice atop her blog stating that she's stopped blogging. I expressed my sorrow in the comment thread, and must agree that it's a shame that the ones who can express it so eloquently are the ones who tire. I do, however, understand.

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ALSO TO NOTE
That something is up with Roger Schultz. There's an ehostpros (why can't ebusinesses use capital letters like grownups?) Under Construction sign (on which "reliable" is misspelled) at the other end of the terpsboy.com URL. And the content has been nonexistent for far too long, though I've seen Roger in comments elsewhere. Ominous.

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ES REGNET
We were hoping for a white Christmas, but that seems semi-forlorn. We're supposed to get flurries and cold weather tomorrow and Thursday, but... Right now it's 50-ish, rainy-clean and gray overcast — a poignant day in midwinter Cincinnati. Typical, actually.

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BEEN AMUSING MYSELF
Making mixes and playlists to serve as background for writing. The requirement is that a tune must either serve as pink noise and mask the ambient or it must suit the mood of the moment — or both. As I think a lot about Drummond's relationship with Dolly, there are a lot of bittersweet love songs. Like this one, from Crowded House —

Pretty soon you'll be able to remember her
Lying in the garden singing
Right where she'll always be
The door is always open

This is the place that I loved her
And these are the friends that she had
Long may the mountain ring
To the sound of her laughter
And she goes on and on

In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
'Till we see her once again
In a world without end

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MAKING SLOW PROGRESS
On the next installment of Chapter 8 of Geppetto's Log (we're up to "8d," now and around 30Kwds).

I've been reading a lot of Kristine M. Smith's Jani Killian stories — all of them, as a matter of fact. To me Smith is like the valedictorian of the class ahead of mine in the Writers' School, and thus someone worth watching and emulating. I learn so much every time I crack one of her books, and this time is no exception.

Of course, when new wisdom forces a shift in your premises, it takes time to rearrange your world to suit the new Weltanschauung.

The other day I commented that Smith doesn't seem to use the verb "to be". Today I add that every action one of her characters takes is fraught with conflict.

I'm working over a scene I wrote a year ago, trying to tweak it to keep these and other lessons in mind. It's slow and painful, but the results kick ass. I can't wait to show it to the critters.

If I have any left after the unconscionable delays in reciprocating this month.

I'm — like — three weeks behind. And the queue is twelve deep. It's so bad that I think one of them has actually rolled over on me — replaced one post with another before I got the chance to review the first one.

I hate it when that happens.

[Permalink]     Mark Philip Alger
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