Friday, February 23, 2007

Hi! My website, the estimable electricwell, is down. I was keeping it on charter, and charter is a lousy webhosting service, and I wasn't able to update it for well over a year, so I just had them delete it.

One of the things I was proudest of in my old life- pre-kid, pre-remidwesting, pre-thirty, was learning enough HTML and photoshop to build a pretty decent web page on my own. Hardly anybody visited it: there were few enough visitors that I actually got lightheaded at a sign of visitation. This one time, in band camp, someone I didn't recognize actually subscribed for updates!

However: I started to get lost around passing values in Javascript, and style sheets, and the learning curve at this point is less a hocky stick than a wall for me. I'm not even sure I want to keep maintaining my clunky old webpage.

Here are my current options:

I am thinking of putting my campaign stuff and book reviews on a wiki, hopefully something mashable that I can put both my blogs on the front of.

I need a bumper sticker or something that says: my other blog is a gaming blog. Wouldn't it be cool if you had, like RFID bumper stickers that could actually act as links?

Back to options: I'd be tempted to go all blog, but blogs are shit for organizing. Far be it from me to think anybody wants to keep track of my corner of the world, but if they did... it should be organized.

I want something easy, cut and paste like the blogs, if possible. So I'm thinking of a Wiki.

It may take me some time to put together.

Lastly, if I put together a wiki and find someplace to host it, I need a new cool name.

Electricwell is no good, because while I was dithering, someone else has taken it.

Of all things, an actual company that sells fucking electric wells. I felt like I stubbed a mental toe when I found that out. Come to think of it, I found another blog titled whole nother, though I can't seem to find a link now. Which only proves that I suck at clever names.

What I'm thinking of now is expendable goldfish, a reference to potentially useful genetic outliers, which I kind of identify as. But in the time I am thinking about it, somebody else will probably register it.

Friday, February 16, 2007

I am grumpy and anxious, but that's to be expected. It is winter, the sky is gray and so is my personality.

That said, life is good. I joined a regular writers group, and I enjoyed my first meeting. Last night, I got a killer idea for my regular Dungeons and Dragons game, a space opera, fantasy tech plotline that ties previous plotlines together with the current one (which, honestly, had been foundering) and the PCs interests, and is very scalable, so that even if my game ends soon, I will be able to run a chunk of this comfortably. It is SUITE, with a capital soo-ey.

Thing two is I got a great idea for a short story this morning, as I sat down at my desk.

Plus, my daughter is lovelier and smarter every day. She made me a Valentine spider out of pipe cleaners and construction paper. Minky is happy because we have pipe cleaners around the house again. And, of course, my beautiful wife is working on the end of a novel right now. When the women in my house are happy, I'm happy.

Last, I found an abandoned die in one of our meeting rooms. I thought somebody was playing craps, maybe the senior center computer club, but it turns out the manga group was in there, so it was probably a different sort of game altogether. It has a huge yellow pip for the one, and the four is yellow, too. It is translucent and red.

I will keep it in my office for two weeks in case someone comes after it. Otherwise, it's mine.