I've actually been tired of my old blog template for a really long time now, but was not tired enough to overcome my inherent laziness when it comes to actually changing it. Until now, apparently. Because I just now saw the "Edit Pages" tab and thought: "ooo. I should do something with that."
It occurs to me that both General Comments and My Dragons ought to have been pages, if pages had existed at the time I made those posts. There doesn't seem to be any way to move them over, however.
Anyway: the biggest thing that annoyed me about the previous template was the width. Pictures refused to sit next to each other unless I forced them to - and then they'd go off the edge of the post area. This current template doesn't have that problem, so it's already a step up. :)
I might fiddle with the color scheme later on. Or not. I can feel my inherent laziness already setting back in again....
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
19 February 2010
22 December 2009
Arrrrrrr. -.-
It has been brought to my attention that spammers have recently found a way to post comment spam on Blogger blogs without it notifying me via email. How they're doing it, I have no idea. I just cleaned off a bunch of them from General Comments and Smileys, which they seem to like for some reason. If you see more anywhere, please tell me.
To cut down on this nonsense, I've turned on captchas (which I typically hate with a passion), and all comments on posts over 30 days old now go into moderation. Hopefully that'll help. And hopefully I'll be able to turn off the captchas again at some future date.
To cut down on this nonsense, I've turned on captchas (which I typically hate with a passion), and all comments on posts over 30 days old now go into moderation. Hopefully that'll help. And hopefully I'll be able to turn off the captchas again at some future date.
14 April 2009
Oh, The Pressure
My blog is up to six followers. Last week there were only three. I should probably say something entertaining. o.O
03 January 2009
Now that I've lost my entire audience...
One of my resolutions this year is to get back to writing blog posts at least 5 times per week, like I was doing back in 2007. Previously, my posts tended toward cryptic or encyclopedic, and while I don't get quite as excruciatingly detailed as some others (*cough* Eric, John *cough*), I do try to make sure I have all my facts straight before publishing. In the past year as I've picked up other pursuits and had less time for everything, that has meant fewer overall posts.
So this year, I'm going to try out Nathan's Blurt MethodTM of blogging and see how that works out for me. I've already started; that Buffy Musical post qualifies. ;)
So this year, I'm going to try out Nathan's Blurt MethodTM of blogging and see how that works out for me. I've already started; that Buffy Musical post qualifies. ;)
20 June 2008
One Year
My blog is a year old today. I commemorate it (and renew my adherence to international blog law) with one of my favorite cat pictures from the Internet. :)
02 May 2008
General Comments
This post for general comments that don't fit on any particular blog post already in existence. Such as things people want to tell me, or random hijacks...
24 March 2008
Different minds working off the same brain
When my former coworker Colton wanted to find out how to do something, he would do keyword searches. Upon finding a promising-looking page, he would scroll rapidly down to the exact spot where his keywords appeared, read that, then look around for an example of the code in action. He was capable of making some amazing leaps of insight for which parts of which pages he needed to see and how to apply what he found there. Then he would write some quick test code - and keyword search all the inevitable error messages. In that way, he could quickly cobble together something that functioned.
When I want to figure out how to do something, my approach is to read everything I can possibly find that's even remotely related to the problem, before I even start. If there's a keyword search leading to a page, I'll read the entire page and any related pages. If there's a manual, I'll read the whole thing from beginning to end. It takes me forever to get started, and once I do I tend to be very slow and cautious with each and every step forward. In that way, I can make something extremely sound and solid that will last for a long time.
And when Colton and I worked together with our completely opposite approaches, we could do some astounding things. He was fast at making something that worked, and I was thorough about understanding why it worked. He was great when it came to creating something out of nothingness, and I'm great at taking the beginnings of something and optimizing it. He was much better than me at some aspects of a given project, and I was better than him at others. We could (and did) learn a lot from each other. Overall, however, one couldn't say that either of our approaches was superior or inferior to the other. They were just different.
So, too, is how I think of the different genders. Neither men or women are better than each other.
But there are differences. A masculine brain is better suited to doing certain tasks, and a feminine brain better suited to doing other ones. This doesn't, on the whole, make any particular part of the masculine-feminine gradient superior or inferior to the rest. It just makes them different. Different approaches to the same task are neither inferior nor superior, they are just different.
There are things I want to say here about gender differences. Some of them have a fair amount of personal importance to me. If for whatever reason you are unable to accept my basic underlying starting point - that there are differences - then you probably won't like anything else I have to say on the subject. Nevertheless, this is my blog and I'm going to say them. And after this post, I want to move on from the question of "Are there any differences at all?" My answer is that there are. If you want to continue disagreeing with my starting point after this post, you can certainly do it on your own blog.
And for those who can get past that first question: yes, I'll be delving into still more stereotypes. For that, Tania's 80/20 rule seems pertinent; 80% of women will probably fit the stereotypes about women, 80% of men will fit the stereotypes about men, and 20% of each will mix it up. I suspect most of my audience is in that 20% range about most things.
Here's an opposing-logarithms illustration of how I view the gender gradient. I slaved over it for many minutes, try not to nitpick the details too much.
When I want to figure out how to do something, my approach is to read everything I can possibly find that's even remotely related to the problem, before I even start. If there's a keyword search leading to a page, I'll read the entire page and any related pages. If there's a manual, I'll read the whole thing from beginning to end. It takes me forever to get started, and once I do I tend to be very slow and cautious with each and every step forward. In that way, I can make something extremely sound and solid that will last for a long time.
And when Colton and I worked together with our completely opposite approaches, we could do some astounding things. He was fast at making something that worked, and I was thorough about understanding why it worked. He was great when it came to creating something out of nothingness, and I'm great at taking the beginnings of something and optimizing it. He was much better than me at some aspects of a given project, and I was better than him at others. We could (and did) learn a lot from each other. Overall, however, one couldn't say that either of our approaches was superior or inferior to the other. They were just different.
So, too, is how I think of the different genders. Neither men or women are better than each other.
But there are differences. A masculine brain is better suited to doing certain tasks, and a feminine brain better suited to doing other ones. This doesn't, on the whole, make any particular part of the masculine-feminine gradient superior or inferior to the rest. It just makes them different. Different approaches to the same task are neither inferior nor superior, they are just different.
There are things I want to say here about gender differences. Some of them have a fair amount of personal importance to me. If for whatever reason you are unable to accept my basic underlying starting point - that there are differences - then you probably won't like anything else I have to say on the subject. Nevertheless, this is my blog and I'm going to say them. And after this post, I want to move on from the question of "Are there any differences at all?" My answer is that there are. If you want to continue disagreeing with my starting point after this post, you can certainly do it on your own blog.
And for those who can get past that first question: yes, I'll be delving into still more stereotypes. For that, Tania's 80/20 rule seems pertinent; 80% of women will probably fit the stereotypes about women, 80% of men will fit the stereotypes about men, and 20% of each will mix it up. I suspect most of my audience is in that 20% range about most things.
Here's an opposing-logarithms illustration of how I view the gender gradient. I slaved over it for many minutes, try not to nitpick the details too much.
20 January 2008
What am I beyond human?
I suppose there's no point in being abstract and cryptic about it when 95% of my audience already knows exactly what I'm talking about.
This blog was intended to be about who I am, not what I am. Those of you who knew me before already know what I am, and those of you from the Whatever didn't need to know because who any of us are (other than Scalzi) is more or less irrelevant. I've carefully avoided specifying because I want my words and actions to be considered completely separate from any preconceived notions based on knowledge of whats.
But then we (the Whateverite side of the crowd) started having Group Blog Incoherence. And then we became Collaborating (Co-conspiratory?) Founders. And then it was only a matter of time before the Big Question came up to the spotlight. Am I "he" or am I "she"? Because of course gender matters, of course it's important. And of course there's a difference. A lot of people would like to pretend otherwise, but then it's unnerving not to know, isn't it? At some point as you want to know me better as a person, you start quietly digging around, scrutinizing and analyzing my posts, hoping to figure it out - or in one case, emailing me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, or with you - it's natural and human. Gender is one of the three basic defining characteristics of a person you've just met - so much so that it's part of a standard greeting in online chat ("ASL?" - stands for "age/sex/location?"); it covers what would be immediately obvious offline. There are people wandering around online who are actually incapable of proceeding with a conversation until ASL is first answered, whose minds are blown at the concept of doing such a thing. That's how basic it is.
So what am I? I thought I knew when I was two or three. That's when children first become aware of gender. But then everyone else told me I was wrong, and even my own body agreed with them. When I was eight or nine, I assumed I was one of those mutants that hadn't developed quite right, and when puberty hit, all would become clear. I would no longer have to play along.
Puberty hit. It didn't turn out to be the ending. It turned out to be the beginning of something that had no end at all. My body betrayed me again, everyone else went along with it, and the only reason I'm not dead at 16 is because I'm too much of a coward when it comes to physical pain.
There used to be a voice of protest in the back of my mind. It insisted that I wasn't what they told me I should be. It got quieter after puberty, and then it was overriden by the voice insisting that I merely didn't want to be what I should be. Fifteen years later the first voice had more or less succumbed. By then, when I finally discovered that transsexuals aren't, in fact, merely insane, that there are actual physiological bases underlying the condition - I'd been playing the part for so long that what I knew as a toddler was no longer right either.
So am I he or am I she? Sometimes I wish that English was one of those languages where the third-person pronoun was gender neutral. (I certainly could've evaded doing this post for far longer.) Neither sounds right to me anymore. Along the gender gradient between masculine and feminine, I'm pretty close to the middle overall.
I think at this point I can only conclude that I'm human.
This blog was intended to be about who I am, not what I am. Those of you who knew me before already know what I am, and those of you from the Whatever didn't need to know because who any of us are (other than Scalzi) is more or less irrelevant. I've carefully avoided specifying because I want my words and actions to be considered completely separate from any preconceived notions based on knowledge of whats.
But then we (the Whateverite side of the crowd) started having Group Blog Incoherence. And then we became Collaborating (Co-conspiratory?) Founders. And then it was only a matter of time before the Big Question came up to the spotlight. Am I "he" or am I "she"? Because of course gender matters, of course it's important. And of course there's a difference. A lot of people would like to pretend otherwise, but then it's unnerving not to know, isn't it? At some point as you want to know me better as a person, you start quietly digging around, scrutinizing and analyzing my posts, hoping to figure it out - or in one case, emailing me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, or with you - it's natural and human. Gender is one of the three basic defining characteristics of a person you've just met - so much so that it's part of a standard greeting in online chat ("ASL?" - stands for "age/sex/location?"); it covers what would be immediately obvious offline. There are people wandering around online who are actually incapable of proceeding with a conversation until ASL is first answered, whose minds are blown at the concept of doing such a thing. That's how basic it is.
So what am I? I thought I knew when I was two or three. That's when children first become aware of gender. But then everyone else told me I was wrong, and even my own body agreed with them. When I was eight or nine, I assumed I was one of those mutants that hadn't developed quite right, and when puberty hit, all would become clear. I would no longer have to play along.
Puberty hit. It didn't turn out to be the ending. It turned out to be the beginning of something that had no end at all. My body betrayed me again, everyone else went along with it, and the only reason I'm not dead at 16 is because I'm too much of a coward when it comes to physical pain.
There used to be a voice of protest in the back of my mind. It insisted that I wasn't what they told me I should be. It got quieter after puberty, and then it was overriden by the voice insisting that I merely didn't want to be what I should be. Fifteen years later the first voice had more or less succumbed. By then, when I finally discovered that transsexuals aren't, in fact, merely insane, that there are actual physiological bases underlying the condition - I'd been playing the part for so long that what I knew as a toddler was no longer right either.
So am I he or am I she? Sometimes I wish that English was one of those languages where the third-person pronoun was gender neutral. (I certainly could've evaded doing this post for far longer.) Neither sounds right to me anymore. Along the gender gradient between masculine and feminine, I'm pretty close to the middle overall.
I think at this point I can only conclude that I'm human.
06 December 2007
Quick housekeeping note
Normally, whenever someone posts a comment here, I get an email notification. For some reason this stopped happening two days ago. If you've commented on any of the older entries, please be aware that I'm not ignoring you on purpose - I probably haven't seen it at all. Feel free to drop a note here if you've commented on something older than the last 4 or so posts and you want to make sure I see it.
Thanks, and hopefully Blogger/Google will fix itself soon.
Thanks, and hopefully Blogger/Google will fix itself soon.
01 November 2007
Nanowrimo
November is (Inter)National Novel Writing Month. It's an annual writing marathon wherein participants attempt to write at least 50,000 words toward a single story in 30 days. The quality of the words does not matter - there just has to be 50,000 of them. Winners get a lucky special certificate to print out at the end, but more importantly, they get an astounding sense of accomplishment.
That's what I'll be doing all of November. It'll be my fourth year and I'm looking forward to adding a fourth certificate to my wall. :) My progress will all be posted to my writing blog at Hobgoblin. Realtime chatter will be with SFFMuse, which has a small, cozy chat community on irc.worldirc.org (come join in, those of you who are also writing and aren't there already!). Nanowrimo has a chat channel on irc.goodchatting.com but I find it too big for my tastes.
My posts here might slow down a lot in the interim.
That's what I'll be doing all of November. It'll be my fourth year and I'm looking forward to adding a fourth certificate to my wall. :) My progress will all be posted to my writing blog at Hobgoblin. Realtime chatter will be with SFFMuse, which has a small, cozy chat community on irc.worldirc.org (come join in, those of you who are also writing and aren't there already!). Nanowrimo has a chat channel on irc.goodchatting.com but I find it too big for my tastes.
My posts here might slow down a lot in the interim.
12 September 2007
Siram
Jim Wright asks in one of the comment threads: "What's the Blog name mean?"
Short answer: It's the name of one of my fictional planets. I have a whole fictional star system that I created in my early teens, called Swodonia. Alas I wasn't as good at coming up with workable characters and plots as I was at worldbuilding, so there are no stories set in that star system (yet?).
Longwinded answer:
Originally this was "The Blog of Sodor." See how the address is "kayara.blogspot.com"? Well, "Kayara" is the name I started using for all my writing-related online haunts after Nanowrimo 2004, including my gmail address where I intended to store offsite backups of my writing (but never did). The blogname suggester picked the address as its default; this was just a test blog while we figured out how Blogger works while finding a place to set up a private family blog. Kayara the Blue is from Sodor, so it made sense to call the blog that. (So is Nerwen the Green, incidentally, for everyone who knows me elsewhere as Nerwen (and no, I didn't steal that from Tolkien - it's a coincidence. I hadn't even read Tolkien by that point).) (Also, Sodor bears no relation to Thomas the Train's home island. I originally changed the name from Sodoron to Sodor to get away from them, but then they changed it too!! I refuse to change my planet's name again until just before publishing something that mentions it.)
Kayara and Nerwen have only been in one fictional place thus far, and that was an online freeform roleplay area set in an interdimensional space bar and grill called Indy's. It's long gone now; the forum it was on died in 1994. Someday I might get around to writing up my characters' story.
Anyhow, last June I decided to start a daily blog. Partly it was to see if I could actually do it on a daily basis, and partly because I had curious relatives who were apparently grilling my brother about my life. It's impossible to tell someone else about one's life in a couple conversations, so I figured a daily blog would show it to them in small glimpses. (Ironically, I don't think any of them are actually reading this.) As it happened, I still had this test blog lying around unused... But I didn't want to use "Sodor" because that name is tied in with my characters, and a blog about Sodor should rightfully be about the planet and stories set there and the rest of Swodonia.
So I went with Siram. Siram was the first planet, before there was a star system, created with my sister when we were children. The name is derived from Mars spelled backwards. It fits a lot better for something that's more about me and my life, rather than the life(lives?) of my fiction.
And that's how the blog got its name. :)
Thus far I seem to manage around 5 posts a week, which is close enough to daily for government work. I started with "stuff I think about while driving" to give me topic ideas, but it has broadened from there. Now I go with three guidelines: a) emphasize the topic and de-emphasize my relation to the topic; b) try not to talk about the same things too many times in a row, so that there's a broad range of stuff to peruse at any given time; and c) try to stay general, because the potential audience is very diverse (people who know about this blog include family, coworkers, a few roleplayer friends from RPoL, a couple small writing communities, the Whatever, former gaming buddies, and assorted other friends). It seems to be working out overall. Although I don't get that many comments (until Jim showed up :) ), I do get feedback via IMs and IRC chat channels; everyone seems to like different posts. And I'm always open to suggestions for topics, which ones people like or dislike, etc.
Also I try to write much shorter posts than this one. In my other blogs, I tend to just go on and on forever, and I'm trying to cut down on that. This'll (hopefully) be one of the very few lengthy ones.
Short answer: It's the name of one of my fictional planets. I have a whole fictional star system that I created in my early teens, called Swodonia. Alas I wasn't as good at coming up with workable characters and plots as I was at worldbuilding, so there are no stories set in that star system (yet?).
Longwinded answer:
Originally this was "The Blog of Sodor." See how the address is "kayara.blogspot.com"? Well, "Kayara" is the name I started using for all my writing-related online haunts after Nanowrimo 2004, including my gmail address where I intended to store offsite backups of my writing (but never did). The blogname suggester picked the address as its default; this was just a test blog while we figured out how Blogger works while finding a place to set up a private family blog. Kayara the Blue is from Sodor, so it made sense to call the blog that. (So is Nerwen the Green, incidentally, for everyone who knows me elsewhere as Nerwen (and no, I didn't steal that from Tolkien - it's a coincidence. I hadn't even read Tolkien by that point).) (Also, Sodor bears no relation to Thomas the Train's home island. I originally changed the name from Sodoron to Sodor to get away from them, but then they changed it too!! I refuse to change my planet's name again until just before publishing something that mentions it.)
Kayara and Nerwen have only been in one fictional place thus far, and that was an online freeform roleplay area set in an interdimensional space bar and grill called Indy's. It's long gone now; the forum it was on died in 1994. Someday I might get around to writing up my characters' story.
Anyhow, last June I decided to start a daily blog. Partly it was to see if I could actually do it on a daily basis, and partly because I had curious relatives who were apparently grilling my brother about my life. It's impossible to tell someone else about one's life in a couple conversations, so I figured a daily blog would show it to them in small glimpses. (Ironically, I don't think any of them are actually reading this.) As it happened, I still had this test blog lying around unused... But I didn't want to use "Sodor" because that name is tied in with my characters, and a blog about Sodor should rightfully be about the planet and stories set there and the rest of Swodonia.
So I went with Siram. Siram was the first planet, before there was a star system, created with my sister when we were children. The name is derived from Mars spelled backwards. It fits a lot better for something that's more about me and my life, rather than the life(lives?) of my fiction.
And that's how the blog got its name. :)
Thus far I seem to manage around 5 posts a week, which is close enough to daily for government work. I started with "stuff I think about while driving" to give me topic ideas, but it has broadened from there. Now I go with three guidelines: a) emphasize the topic and de-emphasize my relation to the topic; b) try not to talk about the same things too many times in a row, so that there's a broad range of stuff to peruse at any given time; and c) try to stay general, because the potential audience is very diverse (people who know about this blog include family, coworkers, a few roleplayer friends from RPoL, a couple small writing communities, the Whatever, former gaming buddies, and assorted other friends). It seems to be working out overall. Although I don't get that many comments (until Jim showed up :) ), I do get feedback via IMs and IRC chat channels; everyone seems to like different posts. And I'm always open to suggestions for topics, which ones people like or dislike, etc.
Also I try to write much shorter posts than this one. In my other blogs, I tend to just go on and on forever, and I'm trying to cut down on that. This'll (hopefully) be one of the very few lengthy ones.
20 June 2007
Thoughts of the Day
Twice a day every weekday, I drive over the most beautiful salt marsh in the world. The drive lasts somewhere between ten and twenty minutes, depending on traffic, and it's a time for a lot of introspection.
Sometimes I think about things happening in my daily life, or the lives of friends and family. Sometimes I think about things going on in the daily news, or about big social or political issues. Sometimes I get highly philosophical. Sometimes it's all just random free association on the days when I'm unable to string together a coherent thought of any length.
This blog will be a collection of those ruminations. When I have time, I'll write out full explanations for exactly what the thoughts are from, what they mean, and why I thought them. Other times I will be too busy to explain, and the posts will be very short and cryptic. Either way, I'll try to write at least one post every day. Let's see how long I can keep this up...
Sometimes I think about things happening in my daily life, or the lives of friends and family. Sometimes I think about things going on in the daily news, or about big social or political issues. Sometimes I get highly philosophical. Sometimes it's all just random free association on the days when I'm unable to string together a coherent thought of any length.
This blog will be a collection of those ruminations. When I have time, I'll write out full explanations for exactly what the thoughts are from, what they mean, and why I thought them. Other times I will be too busy to explain, and the posts will be very short and cryptic. Either way, I'll try to write at least one post every day. Let's see how long I can keep this up...
26 October 2005
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