Miscellany

[chipotle]

NaNoWriMo

My experiment-for-me isn’t going terribly well, but that’s not something I’m too upset about—when it comes down to it, that’s the point of an experiment, right? In retrospect, I wish I’d picked the other unwritten experimental novel I’d thought of, although of course there’s no guarantee it’d have gone better. I’ve let my current project lapse but will go back to it—I’ll fail, rather than quit.

Part of me’s tempted to try to get going on the other project and see if I can make a mad dash, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’ve reminded myself that I really can write 1000–2000 words a day even on weeknights, although I’ve also reminded myself that I do better trying that if I go off to a café to do it.

While I know NaNoWriMo isn’t competitive (in theory), I’ve been astounded watching people on my friends list dramatically outpace the expected rate. We’re talking people averaging 3000–4000 words a day. Zoinks. During my most prolific writing time, back around my college days, I managed that on my best days, if I’m remembering right, but only by virtue of a lot more free time: a few hours of classes each week, or part-time jobs.

Also: my muse is a nerd

Yep. I’m back on thinking about Ruby on Rails projects, which is not entirely tilton’s fault but I may blame him partially anyway. I want to do a trouble ticket system for the Excursion Society—

—and, oh, yeah, that’s something else I’m getting back to. I had something of an emotional stall on it, but I’ve decided that yeah, I really do think it’s a worthwhile idea, thanks very much, so I’m beating myself into moving forward on building its initial area. Then I can work on getting other people over to start building the real adventuring areas. (The central area I’m working on, “Cracked Conch Cay,” is designed to be more of a social area/nexus, and if the MUCK is really successful, it may well be completely superceded.)

But anyway, I’m trying to get my head wrapped around a simple unrelated project first, just for my own amusement—a catalog of reviews for Keurig K-cup coffees. I have the database set up… and as of yet, nothing else. I’ll see if I get anywhere, and then I’ll see if I can figure out how to deploy the damn thing, which is the one big question mark with Rails applications. (I have lighttpd and FastCGI set up on Parmesan, my G5, but that doesn’t really do much good for me.)

AIM versus GoogleTalk

Okay, I’m not really getting too down on AIM, but AOL’s stunt with the automatically-added AIMbots earlier this week irritated me. And, you know, both the computer IM clients that I regularly use support Jabber, and that’s what GoogleTalk is based on. So, I’m going to be trying to be logged into GoogleTalk a bit more often than I have been (which is, well, never). Unfortunately, the Sidekick only does AIM and Yahoo! Messenger, so I’m stuck with those two. (Does anyone I know actually use Yahoo! Messenger? I’ve gotten the impression that AIM is the market leader here in the US, but MSN Messenger is more popular in Europe.)

So, for the ones and ones of you who might use it: my GoogleTalk name is in my LiveJournal profile now.

Comments

[jadedfox.livejournal.com]

I noticed that Evalia and I didn't get the Bots. I can only think that because we primarily use iChat and only iChat on the computer. I never saw the bots, even on the SK.

The odd thing is at work, GoogleTalk is blocked through iChat at work. I simply can't connect. I connect easily at home (when I'm on the MacMini, which lately is never due to Evalia being on it) The work laptop still has Panther, so iChat doesn't support it.

I know that Fait uses Y! And I have a screenname for it. I also have one for MSN (My email address) GoogleTalk is my gmail addy when I can use it. I should look into getting a GoogleTalk support for Panther, or one that might work at work.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

AIM is apparently pretty difficult to block from an office, as while it has a default IP port, it can zip around to any of a block of more than 4000 during negotiation. GoogleTalk runs on the Jabber port, and as far as I know, only the Jabber port, which is probably blocked by default. (Actually, thinking about it, I should confirm that the Jabber port isn't blocked inbound by the house firewall--it may be.)

The AIMbots weren't terribly annoying and you could delete the group without incident afterward, but it was very ham-handed, AOL announcing "since you're using our servers, we're reserving the right to force changes to your contact list." It's a pointed reminder that (a) your privacy settings are irrelevant to whoever controls the server your contact lists are stored on, and (b) no matter what good free things have come out of AOL's satellite companies, AOL still has the same marketing department that thought physical spam -- blanketing you with free AOL client CDs -- was a good idea. It leaves one wondering what the next "great idea" will be.