Random fan stuff

Book rec: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. I think I've found a new series to love. :D I've been looking for ages for something else that hits me the same way Dresden Files does, and I think I've figured out what it was that wasn't working for me in so much of the urban fantasy I've been reading -- it's either hyper-serious, gritty and dark, or so silly that it verges on parody. Midnight Riot hit the exact right balance of funny/absurd and serious for my tastes, plus I really loved the cast of characters, and the world-building (and sense of place) is absolutely first-rate. Peter Grant is a rookie cop in London who discovers that he has a talent for magic, which leads to the subsequent discovery that there is a branch of the London police force that handles magic-related crimes, which he is now a part of, whether he wants to be or not. Aside from the fact that it was a little disconcerting reading a book in which the protagonist is named Peter while concurrently fanning on White Collar like a mad fanning thing, I had a blast with the book and I've just ordered the sequel, Moon Over Soho, from Amazon. If you're looking for something generally Dresden Files-like, I strongly recommend!

fkficfest/fkficfest has just started posting stories. Somewhere in the mix, there's one by me (and one for me, too!).

I posted my official stepping-down notice over at sga_genficathon. I've been reluctant to admit that I've wandered pretty far afield from SGA these days, but I think it's become increasingly obvious from the content of my journal that this is, in fact, the case. I still consider SGA a "home" fandom for me, and I suspect that I'll continue to wander in and out of it over the years (like I do with ST:TOS and a couple of others), but I don't think I'll be participating in any more SGA fic exchanges/challenges/etc. in the near future -- the inspiration is no longer there. It's been a good long run, though.

Random fan stuff

Book rec: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. I think I've found a new series to love. :D I've been looking for ages for something else that hits me the same way Dresden Files does, and I think I've figured out what it was that wasn't working for me in so much of the urban fantasy I've been reading -- it's either hyper-serious, gritty and dark, or so silly that it verges on parody. Midnight Riot hit the exact right balance of funny/absurd and serious for my tastes, plus I really loved the cast of characters, and the world-building (and sense of place) is absolutely first-rate. Peter Grant is a rookie cop in London who discovers that he has a talent for magic, which leads to the subsequent discovery that there is a branch of the London police force that handles magic-related crimes, which he is now a part of, whether he wants to be or not. Aside from the fact that it was a little disconcerting reading a book in which the protagonist is named Peter while concurrently fanning on White Collar like a mad fanning thing, I had a blast with the book and I've just ordered the sequel, Moon Over Soho, from Amazon. If you're looking for something generally Dresden Files-like, I strongly recommend!

fkficfest/fkficfest has just started posting stories. Somewhere in the mix, there's one by me (and one for me, too!).

I posted my official stepping-down notice over at sga_genficathon. I've been reluctant to admit that I've wandered pretty far afield from SGA these days, but I think it's become increasingly obvious from the content of my journal that this is, in fact, the case. I still consider SGA a "home" fandom for me, and I suspect that I'll continue to wander in and out of it over the years (like I do with ST:TOS and a couple of others), but I don't think I'll be participating in any more SGA fic exchanges/challenges/etc. in the near future -- the inspiration is no longer there. It's been a good long run, though.

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/358529.html with comments.

Adventures in word processing

Apparently it's been announced that the upcoming release of the Mac OS (what are they up to now? Jaguarundi? Housecat?) will no longer support PowerPC apps. On the one hand, I suppose I can understand this, since it's been, what, 5 years since they started manufacturing all their computers with Intel hardware. On the other hand, HOW FAST DO YOU PEOPLE EXPECT ME TO LEARN NEW SOFTWARE. XD I've only just managed to wean myself off the last of my OS 9 apps in the last few years, and they haven't manufactured that system since the '90s!

... so basically, the next time I buy a computer, most of the programs I use will no longer work. Foo. Aside from just having to apply my dinosaur-like brain to learning new software, the area where this gives me the biggest headache (and cause for concern) is in the realm of word processors.

I've been using AppleWorks since 1998. I like AppleWorks. It's a very simple, small, quick-to-load-and-run program that doesn't try to do anything special for me (no grammar-checking, no autocorrect) and -- perhaps this is the single thing I like most about it -- saves totally clean HTML: no kludgy stylesheets or special tags beyond the ones *I* want to include, which mostly consists of italics and the odd bit of centering. What this means is that I don't have to hand-code tags for posting to LJ. Which I like.

But AppleWorks is not without its problems, most of them stemming from the fact that Apple not only no longer supports it, but hasn't supported it since (I am not kidding) 2004. Among other things, it only has one level of undo, crashes a lot, has to be reinstalled regularly or it won't run at all, and is basically living on borrowed time, if not actual life support. I am not too freaked by the whole idea of using a new word processor (I've downloaded OpenOffice and I am cautiously liking it so far), but what does worry me a hell of a lot is backwards compatibility with my old files. And I'm not talking about just right now; I'm talking 5, 10, 20 years in the future.

I have literally thousands of AppleWorks files scattered all over my hard drive. Short stories. Novels. Comic scripts. Character sheets. Notes for novels as yet unwritten. In my teens I handwrote everything in longhand, and I still regularly go back and reference the notebooks that I meticulously kept -- because some of my current novels saw their first incarnations in the early '90s, and because even many of the abandoned stories have characters or worlds that I would like to steal for other, later, better stories.

All is not completely lost with AppleWorks, because, even if the program stopped working tomorrow, I can still open the files as plain text and get out the content, even if I'd lose the formatting. I suspect that, at least in my lifetime, there will always be plain text editors or some equivalent. OpenOffice, on the other hand, saves files as XML directories, and these cannot be opened with a text editor. If, 20 years from now, OpenOffice no longer exists and there's nothing that can handle XML, then anything I write in OpenOffice will be utterly lost to me. And, as a writer, that freaks me the hell out. Losing all my files, everything I've written, is pretty much my worst nightmare except for the ones that involve losing body parts or loved ones.

... which leaves me wondering what to dooooo. The idea of writing all my rough drafts in plain text is something I've been floating from time to time (I already write my shorter fic that way), but I really do like having access to italics and spell check. But, since I'm jumping ship from AppleWorks anyway, I'd like to switch to a word processor that gives me the best possible chances of long-term backwards compatibility. I figure OpenOffice is likely to have a nice long shelf life, but the fact that .odt files cannot be opened in anything other than OpenOffice freaks me right the hell out. I don't like it. I want the backup Plan B of being able to open the files in some other program, even if it's not ideal -- my AppleWorks files don't look pretty when I open them in BBEdit (my plain text program), but all the words are there, the information is there.

I'm starting to see why some of the more old-school writers (of the pre-computer generation) print out all their files on a regular basis. Possibly I should do that.

In the meantime, I decided to try writing my new novel in OpenOffice to see how it works for me. I wrote a couple thousand words last night and, after I figured out how to turn off all the stuff I didn't want (AUTOCORRECT, I HATES IT) and got used to the slightly different-looking user interface, I like it pretty well. At the very least, having more than one level of undo is nice.

Adventures in word processing

Apparently it's been announced that the upcoming release of the Mac OS (what are they up to now? Jaguarundi? Housecat?) will no longer support PowerPC apps. On the one hand, I suppose I can understand this, since it's been, what, 5 years since they started manufacturing all their computers with Intel hardware. On the other hand, HOW FAST DO YOU PEOPLE EXPECT ME TO LEARN NEW SOFTWARE. XD I've only just managed to wean myself off the last of my OS 9 apps in the last few years, and they haven't manufactured that system since the '90s!

... so basically, the next time I buy a computer, most of the programs I use will no longer work. Foo. Aside from just having to apply my dinosaur-like brain to learning new software, the area where this gives me the biggest headache (and cause for concern) is in the realm of word processors.

I've been using AppleWorks since 1998. I like AppleWorks. It's a very simple, small, quick-to-load-and-run program that doesn't try to do anything special for me (no grammar-checking, no autocorrect) and -- perhaps this is the single thing I like most about it -- saves totally clean HTML: no kludgy stylesheets or special tags beyond the ones *I* want to include, which mostly consists of italics and the odd bit of centering. What this means is that I don't have to hand-code tags for posting to LJ. Which I like.

But AppleWorks is not without its problems, most of them stemming from the fact that Apple not only no longer supports it, but hasn't supported it since (I am not kidding) 2004. Among other things, it only has one level of undo, crashes a lot, has to be reinstalled regularly or it won't run at all, and is basically living on borrowed time, if not actual life support. I am not too freaked by the whole idea of using a new word processor (I've downloaded OpenOffice and I am cautiously liking it so far), but what does worry me a hell of a lot is backwards compatibility with my old files. And I'm not talking about just right now; I'm talking 5, 10, 20 years in the future.

I have literally thousands of AppleWorks files scattered all over my hard drive. Short stories. Novels. Comic scripts. Character sheets. Notes for novels as yet unwritten. In my teens I handwrote everything in longhand, and I still regularly go back and reference the notebooks that I meticulously kept -- because some of my current novels saw their first incarnations in the early '90s, and because even many of the abandoned stories have characters or worlds that I would like to steal for other, later, better stories.

All is not completely lost with AppleWorks, because, even if the program stopped working tomorrow, I can still open the files as plain text and get out the content, even if I'd lose the formatting. I suspect that, at least in my lifetime, there will always be plain text editors or some equivalent. OpenOffice, on the other hand, saves files as XML directories, and these cannot be opened with a text editor. If, 20 years from now, OpenOffice no longer exists and there's nothing that can handle XML, then anything I write in OpenOffice will be utterly lost to me. And, as a writer, that freaks me the hell out. Losing all my files, everything I've written, is pretty much my worst nightmare except for the ones that involve losing body parts or loved ones.

... which leaves me wondering what to dooooo. The idea of writing all my rough drafts in plain text is something I've been floating from time to time (I already write my shorter fic that way), but I really do like having access to italics and spell check. But, since I'm jumping ship from AppleWorks anyway, I'd like to switch to a word processor that gives me the best possible chances of long-term backwards compatibility. I figure OpenOffice is likely to have a nice long shelf life, but the fact that .odt files cannot be opened in anything other than OpenOffice freaks me right the hell out. I don't like it. I want the backup Plan B of being able to open the files in some other program, even if it's not ideal -- my AppleWorks files don't look pretty when I open them in BBEdit (my plain text program), but all the words are there, the information is there.

I'm starting to see why some of the more old-school writers (of the pre-computer generation) print out all their files on a regular basis. Possibly I should do that.

In the meantime, I decided to try writing my new novel in OpenOffice to see how it works for me. I wrote a couple thousand words last night and, after I figured out how to turn off all the stuff I didn't want (AUTOCORRECT, I HATES IT) and got used to the slightly different-looking user interface, I like it pretty well. At the very least, having more than one level of undo is nice.

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/358775.html with comments.

I haz a pretty

Tim DeKay is a very good-looking man. *flutters*

I need to do a White Collar recs post, but as usual, I'm too busy reading and watching stuff to sit down and make a rec for any of it. However, I have to drop a quick insta-rec for this one: The Many and Varied Reasons Why Neal Caffrey Should Listen to His Friend Moz by dhrelva (the link goes to an LJ post that links to the story). There's not a whole lot of long fic in this fandom, and this is a nice, long, gen fic set in season one, with a unique and original plot involving Neal's artistic talents. Everybody is very much in character, with a particularly neat take on Neal.

I haz a pretty

Tim DeKay is a very good-looking man. *flutters*

I need to do a White Collar recs post, but as usual, I'm too busy reading and watching stuff to sit down and make a rec for any of it. However, I have to drop a quick insta-rec for this one: The Many and Varied Reasons Why Neal Caffrey Should Listen to His Friend Moz by dhrelva (the link goes to an LJ post that links to the story). There's not a whole lot of long fic in this fandom, and this is a nice, long, gen fic set in season one, with a unique and original plot involving Neal's artistic talents. Everybody is very much in character, with a particularly neat take on Neal.

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/359105.html with comments.