half-real worlds of paper and ink

Wow. I wrote one (1) piece of fanfic the entire year. I didn't think of this earlier, but with all the 2009 recap posts I've been seeing, I began wondering what did I do the whole of last year, fanworks-related, and . . . there you go.

It's this one: On the Precipiece of the World; Final Fantasy X, about 6,400 words. And it was for Final Fantasy Exchange. If I hadn't participated in that, I would've written nothing.

I am boggled by this! Boggled!

A few minutes have passed . . . and I am still boggled.

. . .

Anyway. In other things: I got involved with Dreamwidth somewhat, and submitted two patches, both style-related. I still have one assigned bug to my name: #1813. Whoops. I keep saying I'd get that done, but I still haven't. I feel bad about it. I also have a style I keep "improving" on; I should really get it done with and submit it. And I should try something other than styles, really. One thing I wanted to do was learn Perl, and I guess this year would be a good time for that.

I also got dragged into tag wrangling for AO3, which is surprising addictive. Probably even more addictive than code, imagine that! Though it has managed to get me curious about what happens behind the scenes -- I'm tempted to go over and volunteer myself as a coder. But! I am torn! Because I can't learn too many things at one go, and they use Ruby and I already promised myself I'd do more for Dreamwidth. Hmmmmm.


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I went around and subscribed to a number of people that I've been seeing around and I think are awesome! If you came by to see who is this yati who has this sudden interest in you -- that would be me. Hello!

And it's a Sunday night!

This week I was supposed to do some sewing (curtains -- will have to explain in another post) and work on bug 1813. Not much progress on the bug; I was doing the fixes alphabetically and right now I am still at, uh, Bases. Yay progress? But I did Tabula Rasa first, honest! So that all the layouts based on it will have the icon placement thing fixed or partially fixed. Perhaps I should submit the ones I'm done with first.

I probably shouldn't have picked something so CSS-y, huh. Not my strongest suit, CSS.

As for the curtain, no progress on it at all! It's still on my floor, alas.

I worked on my own layout for a bit, based on some feedback I received, and ended up making some modifications of my own. I'm beginning to dislike the colours, which probably means I've been looking at it too long, XD.

Other things I've been up to: I've been reading the House of Nicolò books and have finished book seven, Caprice and Rondo. I started the last book, Gemini, but I have been rather slow at getting through it, mainly because Caprice and Rondo ended on a somewhat happy note and while there are tons of things unresolved, I'm just glad that the main characters are reconciled about a number of things. Also the writing in Gemini seems a bit more low key and toned down -- I don't feel like I need to rush through it as I did for the other books.

Re-watched Howl's Moving Castle (the Miyazaki movie) with my brother, who hasn't seen it, and now I feel like rereading the book. I love the movie -- it's so pretty! -- but I'll always love the book better.


I had also just realised, with dawning horror, that November is here and I have signed up for Nanowrimo and I have nothing to write! I don't know what foolishness makes me attempt to write 50,000 words year after year. We'll see where this will go. (My prediction is nowhere.)

Hullo! I am back from internet-less lands! Not that anyone had noticed that I was gone, I suppose, XD. I was at my grandma's for three days, and while internet is accessible using my mobile phone, the phone itself is somewhere at the lower end of the phone spectrum and it is not much fun trying to view even pages made for mobile view using that thing.

But! I am back! And currently on leave, and will only be back at work on Monday.

What I am up to right now: searching for bills and paying for them before someone comes and cuts off the electricity, etc. Which wouldn't be a good thing, considering the whole family is here and everyone will give me disapproving looks if that happens.

Once that is done I'll have to update my Dreamhack and, uh, do stuff. Poor 'hack, left alone for such a long time. Hopefully this time I'll get things done and not lose momentum after a bit. Among things I think I would be able to help with is converting stuff in dreamscapes to S2, but I haven't really attempted that yet, so we'll see how it goes!

Speaking of dreamscapes, I've posted a layout there for comment, but there hasn't been any response -- either it's good enough or no one really wants to bother with it. XD Admittedly it's much easier (and fun, I bet) to check out new colour schemes to existing layouts that go through that hassle of installing and testing a new layout. But, if you're interested, the relevant post is here, and I'm willing to help if you get stuck trying to use it. Both layout and theme layers are public, layerids are 77089 (layout) and 77090 (theme). yati is using the same layout with a different theme, which I haven't submitted.

Aaaand speaking of Dreamwidth, I still have invite codes. (Though I suppose everyone who really wants an account probably already has one.) Ask if you need/want a code!

What I also need to do: compare book prices and get The Unicorn Hunt. The ending of Scales of Gold made me go asffdfghlhl;hh;;khg WHAT? I should have known that was going to happen. Both the ending and me going WHAT? That's Dorothy Dunnett for you. (Seriously, if I had found her books earlier, I bet I would've been more interested in history in general and the Renaissance in particular and would've wanted to get more grounding in the classics than what I had in school. I can't believe I'm looking things up for this lady.)

Maybe a reaction post later. I have notes for this book. Notes.

Does anyone (or do any of your friends) want invite codes to Dreamwidth? I have some extras. Thought I'd ask first before going over to dw_codesharing. :)


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Been poking the CSS for Core 2 Testing Tabula Rasa (whoops, it's been renamed) and now my journal is a blinding sort of blue. Not a very inspired design, is it. (My design, I mean. Not the style itself.) I'm good with structure and putting things into nice, sensible blocks and all that, but making things pretty isn't my forte.

Automated colour palettes! Seriously. That's what I need!


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Other stuff: playing around with code. Sifting though Dreamwidth's repository and suddenly finding myself thinking, "hey, maybe I should give this a spin!" Um. Yeah.

Things being concentrated at IRC makes it a bit difficult, though. Am I the only one terrified of IRC? It's ridiculous but true! Generally I just hang around and feel awkward, even when it's filled with people I know. I am sort of lurking in #dw and sometimes #dw_kindergarten. (Filled with people I don't know, so it's even more awkward. Social skills stat: -90!) I have yet to ask anything though.

(. . . Good grief another network timeout. This is getting embarrassing. I'll just stay out of IRC for now.)

Also poking documentation and the Wiki and looking at Perl notes and trolling through the bug list. Setting up my own development environment looks, um, not really doable (I can't believe I've been away from servers and crazy troubleshooting and version control and patch applying for more than two years. Old job, I miss you. Not.) It's been too long since I did something like this. So I applied for a Dreamhack account instead, and am puzzling through the repository and finding stuff and going "aha!" and probably will end up doing nothing but going "aha!" for a few days. Maybe.

Hmm.