Persistence of Memory

Well, I'll be immersed in the world of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 for some time. Rather like with the Sims 2, I suddenly feel this burning urge to download build sets and make myself some purdy "buildings" I can shove food stalls in, or run rides through. (Actually, I already found a ton of sets. I just need to dump them into place, then go rampage in the building editor.)

I expect to not come up for air anytime soon. And then... Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis should arrive shortly, too! Whee! Yes, die tourists!

Course, I found out fairly quickly that this game doesn't like running on XP 64, so I guess that's why Compatibility Mode exists, huh? And oh, I am absolutely overjoyed and nearly speechless to find out that I now have Securom on my machine. Swoon. *muttersnarlbitchwhine*

Rambling, yes! It's what I do!

So, I finally watched The Dark Knight the other day. I liked it. (And reading rumors that Johnny Depp may be a villain in a rumored #3 was a squee moment.) Don't get me wrong, I liked Keaton, and I love Burton, but that set was rather campy in style, whereas the new set is more... real, which is also good.

( Read more... )

I have come to the conclusion that there are a whole lot of story-telling methods out there that make it impossible for me to get past the first chapter. But that's okay, right? Right?

But really, the whole reason I bothered to post anything today was to say, I wish more people would link up using the handy &hideFramework=true option. Let's face it, girls and boys, the official site is a blight to the eyes. (And frames are usually evil.)

That is all.

It's that time of year again. I know, because both times I've been to the dentist in the past seven days has seen me in hell. The radio channel they have going in there is all Christmas music. *sobs wildly* And can those bastards at the station (I'm talking to you, John Tesh!) just once play Carol of the Bells while I'm there? Nooooo. Jerks. Went in for three fillings, only got two (because one obviously needs a crown *sigh*), came home, and promptly passed out from the sedatives. Yay, nap!

On a side note, a pair of booties were 'rescued' from the gun closet and settled next to the toolbox. They're black and fuzzy, originally purchased to keep my feetsies warm in Maine. And who gets the most use out of them now? Of course, Shadow! He curls up next to them and uses them as a pillow. It's so cute! Rick keeps making jokes that Shadow thinks they're his kittens.

The whole debacle over InSimenator got me reading Sims 2 boards again. And as much as I was appalled by the situation, I also laughed my ass off reading the thread at PMBD (plus the little ficlet to be found as a comment in the Fandom Wank write-up). That legions of readers are all now heart-farting Pescado is a riot. (And it means I'm reading Sim stories again, eesh. I may even get off my lazy ass and install Apartment Life.)

Finally checked up on the Canada thing. *shakes head*

Watching/reading another recap. And this is twice now that it's come up.

In Xenosaga, Cherenkov makes a reference to Pollyana, using it as a 'name' for one of the female bridge crew members near the beginning of the story. Twice now I've seen people not get what that means. One didn't seem to get the reference at all, and another went and looked it up.

Whuh? Does this mean I'm showing my age, or what, that I knew without having to check?

Ack. It's a mere 70 degrees here at the One Desk in balmy Florida. I am wearing my fleece 'jacket' and wondering if I should put socks on. *shivers*

I know, I'm a wuss. Even after being here again several years, acclimation to Florida over Maine carries some ridiculous side effects. It's even worse going backward, which is why I never visit home during the winter if I can help it. I'd rather not deal with the nosebleeds and flaking skin from lack of humidity.

The most recent revised and new icons from Nimby Studios (he forced me to say that). As usual, nothing special, but feel free to use.

1. 2. 3.

On a side note, did you realize the utterly whacked things people put in lollipops? Scorpions, ants, bacon flavor? Ewww.

First:

One story has been added to Harry/Severus.
One story has been added to Miscellaneous Het.

( The Babbling )

I am so speshul.

This is now the second time it's happened. The first time involved the foil on a container of yogurt. This time the foil on a bottle of Midol.

You wonder what I speak of? I shall tell you, and reveal to all the idiocy of my life. Paper cuts! (Or rather, foil cuts?)

*sigh*

People are so strange. Now, I've been over at YouTube for quite a while, searching for and finding particular tunes. But I tend to glance at the comments leave. And people are strange. Like getting all in a pother because some guy turns out to be gay. "Oh, no! I can't possibly let his velvet voice croon in my ear anymore! The tragedy!"

And I noticed for a video of Kate Bush's Army Dreamers that some moron got all offended by it. Stuff like how it was a horrible thing and how it was so unsupportive of our brave military men over in whatever-the-hell country risking their lives.

WTF? Yeah, it's so wrong for there to be a song about boys going off to war, from the POV of "a mother", and not exactly being happy her child ended up dead. I repeat: WTF?

My advice: if you're like me and terrified of even stepping into a dentist's office, and then proceed to shake like a leaf and cry like a baby during even routine fillings, opt for a sedative if they tell you need a root canal. It worked wonders. I was mellow. Jaw is starting to hurt a bit now, but I'm cool with that.

Go for the sedatives!

I was just tortured with the William 'Drama Queen' Shatner version of Rocket Man and I may never recover.

More photographic evidence that I was once young. Murfle!

( One photo behind the cut )

( Firefox, Sims 2, and Firewalls )

Do not, if you've never made it a habit, decide that today is a good day to close the bedroom door before lying down for a nap (short or extended). Yes, yes, we know you did it because you wanted to maintain the level of darkness in the room, and Mr Shadow and Miss Storm have a habit of gliding in and out and pushing the door wide open, thus letting incidental light from the hallway to spill in, or the kitchen, or the bathroom....

You see, Mr Shadow will sit outside said closed door and mew plaintively, without ceasing, until you guiltily get back up and crack the door open.

Still on the laptop, folks. Still not writing. Still playing games, reading videogame recaps, and generally futzing around. Still wondering exactly how Bella bites the big one. Can't be too obvious, right?

Downloaded and watched an English sub of FF VII: Crisis Core. Interesting, though I wish more of the storyline stuff was added. Didn't quite have the heart to read the game script itself. Kinda bugs me that comment Cessnai makes about not revealing her true name.... Ah, well. On the other hand, allow me a moment of indulgence while I swoon over pixelated cuties again. And I guess Gackt voiced Genesis? I replayed a scene with him just to hear him speak. Didn't hear any music that set off my 'Must Have' sensors, though.

Stopped before the Domo Carrier in Xenosaga Ep. I, after finishing Ep. II. Man, even buffed to the nines, I remember now about the things that bugged me so much about II. Damn difficult to wipe the floor in one fell swoop in that one.

Played a bit of FF X, then wandered off to read my redux version instead. Then I whipped through Star Ocean: Til the End of Time. Now contemplating Suikoden V or FF XII again while reading the latest recap episodes for Grandia II, FF VII, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Part 2.

To anyone wondering... well, you know the sort of luck I generally have with computers. Windows decided a few days ago that it was a good time to gift me with BSODs on startup, so it's out of commission again. (That's strange... just the other day I was bitching that Semagic didn't have spell check, but the copy on the laptop does?)

Anyway, until we can do a repair install, I'll continue to indulge in PS2 shenanigans. And, just like the last time, my floppy doesn't work, my CD drive is a piece of fickle garbage (yeah, sure, the face plates on it and the DVD drive match the blue of my case, but what's the point if the quality sucks bilge water? Is it any wonder I prefer no-CD cracks for my usual games?), and I have very little patience for anything other than blasting enemies into the next great adventure. Already done Xenosaga III, and working on II. Might even manage another run-through of I, who knows?

So, no recs, no story rants, and no progress whatsoever on my stuff.

On the other hand, apparently it's Cadbury Cream Egg time again, so I can be pleased for that.

So, I'm there in bed, attempting to sleep.

I do that occasionally, just for kicks. Most recently, I woke at 5am on Christmas day, went to bed at around 4am on the 26th, and still couldn't sleep. I tried again today at 7.45pm, and failed due to a phone call I knew might be coming. And then I tried again, at around 8.30pm. What should happen...?

I began to hear such strange noises! Beeping, voices, and what I was positive was my husband. Naturally, I leapt out of bed and staggered to the door to peek out, squinting against the light, and said, "Hon, what the hell is going on!?"

Turns out, our neighbor (we're on the end, so we've only the one) came over to inform us that her refrigerator had shorted out and caught on fire. There's a fire truck out there, too, with flashy lights, associated noises, etc.

I'll have to try this sleep thing again in a few minutes.

In other news, I've lost my senses entirely and am redesigning Grazhir (and don't I effin' hate IE6 quirks). I do that when I get bored and my muse is out of town. I'm shooting for the least possible amount of graphics. Just the odd icon for specific reasons, and maybe this time I'll try a gradient background. Today we experimented with styling a form! (Among other things.)

On the other hand, I did manage to get some work done on Infusion, and a tiny bit on Breakpoint. I've been using OpenOffice still, but I found out that I can't seem to copy|paste text from it to Dreamweaver, which sucketh mightily. I also realized I still have a fair amount of spelling errors in my chapters (converting stories to PDF revealed a bunch, so I'll have to address that at some point). I suppose... I can have OO export to HTML and cut and paste from that source code. I hate the extra step, but it does preserve certain styles, so....

So, I installed OpenOffice 2.3.1, and I've been screwing around. I'm torn, really. There are two things right off the bat that I really dislike.

1. This isn't an MDI, so I have a new window for every document. With UltraEdit I can have multiple documents open and just click the tab I need (obviously, it's kind of difficult to have project files if you couldn't do that) to deal with the chapter/file I need to edit. Given that I tend to have the current WIP chapter of several fics open along with a couple of research files, this presents an issue for me. I'm used to seeing Firefox, Thunderbird, Dreamweaver, and UltraEdit on my start bar, not eleventy-billion instances of the same program. (Semagic and WinAmp minimize to the system tray to save space.)

2. Line numbering seems to be document specific rather than a global setting. Every time I open a file I have to turn it back on if I want it. This wouldn't be such a big deal if I was going by # of pages rather than lines as a general guide. I know I can convert that thinking so long as I stick to a monospace font. I just think it sucks that I can't set it and forget it.

On the other hand, I like that I can convert stuff straight to PDF without having to install Adobe Acrobat or find a plug-in of some kind, and that I can specify a separate dictionary to add words to, and of course it shows me immediately when something isn't recognized.

Of course, I've had Microsqueeze's ClearType font smoothing enabled recently, which causes some interesting issues. Generally speaking it makes screen text so much less jagged, but it makes monospaced fonts in UE look absolutely horrific (which is interesting, since Courier New in OpenOffice looks fine). I turned it off for a bit, just to see, and recoiled from the screen (such as when viewing the average web page), and to compare skipped over to the laptop (which is default). Geez, man... is that usually how crappy the display looks for text?

Anyway, I realized very quickly that having ClearType enabled wreaks havoc when trying to make icons which contain text. All the fonts seem to explode in thickness, so I suppose I'd have to keep toggling whenever I went into PSP. I realized this when I had gone in to create a 'Grazhir' icon... the Grazhir part came out okay, but any subtext was bloated... not that I could think of anything appropriate except to label myself as 'sadistic'. Honestly, that was the only word I could think of to describe me, which is really pathetic.

It also, apparently, wreaks havoc with certain games, such as Lineage II. Rick enabled it briefly and quickly found that it futzed up any underlined text in the game and made shop displays all wonky, like text breaking out of the boxes. He turned it back off, of course.

For those who are interested, a number of Grazhir-type fics have been PDF'd. At the moment we have:
1. Control Issues (file includes Snapshots)
2. Crumbling Pedestal (file includes Snapshots)
3. Disovery
4. Forsaken (file includes Snapshots)
5. Induction
6. Infinite Shades of Grey (ISG)
7. Masks
8. The Nightmare Before Bedtime
9. One Winged Angel (file includes Snapshots)

1. Choices
2. Forbidden
3. Kaleidoscope

Each can be found at the respective detail page for the story (or via the pairings lists). Look for the cute little red Adobe Reader icon, and right-click|save to download. All chaptered fics (should) have an index, so you can click straight to a chapter or snapshot rather than having to page like mad.

Biology is on the list, but as it desperately needs editing, that might be a while. Once I have the completed fics done, I'll consider the WIPs... but I dunno. Would people like that, even though they aren't finished? I know bunches of you transfer copies of stories you read onto PDAs and whatnot, so....

I got to wondering, as I often do, about visual elements. I can't help it, really, though what I consider to be visually appealing probably isn't everyone else's cup of tea.

In any case, now that I've gone through and splashed CSS classes all over hither and yon, I couldn't help but wonder if it was possible to include stuff like Parseltongue and Al Bhed at Grazhir in an easily translatable format. (Granted, I have no idea how a screen reader would interpret this stuff, or even the effects of yanking the page down into straight text. I'm lazy that way, you know?)

So....

Chapter 2 of Spiral, and chapters 4 and 10 of Kaleidoscope (I actually spelled it from memory that time, go me!) have been updated to allow for text that swaps on hover. Now, because the original version of this trick will not function in IE (because the only way it recognizes the hover pseudo-class is for links, the bastards), those sections of text are actual null links. Clicking on them does diddly, but hovering will swap the text, and without the need for javascript or any of that crap.

(My experiment page is here.)

First, let it be said that I've been horrifically distracted lately. I've been reading actual books, if you can believe it, for one thing. Among those number are the first four books in the Betsy the Vampire Queen series by MaryJanice Davidson. Rather funny, actually. Also, Stork Naked by Piers Anthony, and by Mercedes Lackey was Fortune's Fool and The Wizard of London. I dunno, but, I'm thinking Mercedes is losing her touch of late. Everything seems so horribly convenient and so many people are vying for roles as a Mary Sue... or so it seems to me.

Shockingly, a number of minor cosmetic details have been attended to for the entire site (Grazhir). Sadly, I could not find the damn font I used for the favicon (pixies must have stolen it), so I used Parseltongue instead. You'll see what I mean if you go look.

Also, a new section of sorts has been added to the site. I've been motivated (heaven knows why) to start an Apocalypse Challenge, and didn't really want to dump the pics into a journal entry (it's such a pain having to use LJ's weird twist on "img src" what with that extra space and slash. Why on earth it's necessary....

Anyway, currently up are 1.1, 1.2, and 2.1. You can find them:



( And now, for today's seasonal inbox, with 12 pics. )