Category: Announcements

Old Tom and the Old Tome

2016-01-14, 10:57 am
Categories: Announcements, Books, Tech, Work

Old Tom and the Old Tome

I've just released my first eBook. It's a short story called Old Tom and the Old Tome. Here's a plot synopsis:

Old Tom is a mercenary. In his youth, he fought for Mordred in the war against King Arthur.

But, as his name implies, Old Tom is not as young as he used to be. These days he prefers simple, low-risk jobs.

When a witch asks him to find an old book in the ruins of a school of magic, Old Tom thinks it will be exactly the kind of simple, low-risk job he’s looking for.

He is wrong.

I've released the book under a Creative Commons license; you can download it for free right here on good old corporate-sellout.com in the following formats:

If you like the book, you can send me a donation:


It's also available through these sellers (with more to come; I'll update the post when it's available elsewhere):

This was an interesting project, and I hope it will be the first of many. In the coming days I expect to share some of the Making-Of information -- what tools I used to make it, the learning curve, etc.

Hope you enjoy it!

Updated

2015-10-19, 9:10 am
Categories: Announcements

The migration should be complete and everything should be here. If you trip over any missing images, wrong formatting, etc., contact me.

Magical Disappearing Posts

2015-10-18, 7:19 pm
Categories: Announcements

My hosting company is in the process of moving servers and I didn't get the memo; all my stuff was copied over a week ago but I haven't changed DNS settings yet. So if some posts disappear and reappear, that's why; normal service should resume within the next couple of days.

I'll Call It a Good Start

2015-09-20, 4:18 pm
Categories: Announcements, Tech

Well, that's the update done, and you should be looking at the new theme now.

It needs work (the current "Archives" list in the sidebar is 67 lines long and I need to remember how to limit it to just the last few months like in the old version), but it's a start.

I'll be puttering around behind the scenes for a little while yet. Course, the point of all this is that I'd like to start blogging regularly again; there's not much point to going to all this trouble to pretty it up if I don't start using it.

As you might expect, just the update itself gives me plenty of things to talk about -- what I like about modern Web design and what I don't.

More to come, I should think.

Hang On to Your Butts

2015-09-20, 2:35 pm
Categories: Announcements, Tech

Gearing up for a major site update -- first I'm disabling all my plugins, then I'm updating WordPress, then I'm installing a brand new theme, and then I'll be beating the theme into working shape. Things may break at any and all points of this process.

And We're Back

2014-12-31, 11:41 am
Categories: Announcements

Up and running on the new server, and if you're reading this, that's what you're seeing.

Server Migration

2014-12-29, 10:54 am
Categories: Announcements

You may have noticed that the site's been down for a few days.

I need to move it over to a new server, so there are likely to be some sporadic outages in the meantime.

Thanks for your patience.

KateStory XIX, Now In Progress

2014-10-22, 9:07 am
Categories: Announcements

It was twenty years ago today...

So today is the 20th anniversary of the first post of the KateStory, a rather silly collaborative story that my friends and I have been making up as it went along since the days of Prodigy and 14.4 dialup.

I've gone ahead and kicked off KateStory XIX over at the Brontoforumus. Feel free to join on in.

Theming

2014-10-06, 7:18 pm
Categories: Announcements, Stream of Consciousness, Tech, Work

So I made a few changes to the site design.

I've still got a ways to go -- so far all I've done is tweak my existing, circa-2008 codebase. I'd like to redo the backend and base it on the latest WordPress default theme (for better compatibility with widgets and things, and ideally to get responsive CSS and semantic tags working from the get-go), but that's probably going to take me a bit.

In some ways, I'm veering more retro than ever (you'll note the red links are gone and we're back not just to blue but to good old #0000FF); in others, I've made a few modest concessions to CSS3 (rounded corners and box-shadows aren't so bad -- gradients and transparencies are still bullshit, though).

I thought about writing a lengthy post discussing my design sensibilities and how I've applied them in this latest update, but I think I'll hold off because I'm not actually done yet and I'm still deciding on some changes. (Links aren't currently underlined; I'd like to underline them, but post titles are also links and if they're links I want them to look like they're links, and I don't like underlines on post titles. Considering adding a colored background to post titles, but I'm still deciding. Stuff like that.)

I've learned a lot about modern Web design over the course of the past year and a half or so, since it went from being hobby/occasional freelance gig to day job. I'm still not much of a graphic designer, and my sensibilities are still very much those of a programmer rather than an artist. (I'm disappointed that XHTML was deprecated in favor of updating the HTML4 standards base, but on the other hand I dig the semantic stuff.)

And speaking of Web design as day job...well, I feel like one of these days I should continue my Tempin' Ain't Easy post and talk about the jobs I've had since. It's been interesting.

September

2013-09-29, 10:21 pm
Categories: Announcements, Music, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Yeah, I haven't exactly been keeping up my post-a-day habit.

I've been busy -- yes, busier than when I was planning my wedding -- and, well, it's been that kind of month. If I were to pick a single photo to sum up the kind of month I have been having, it would be this one:

Cone of Shame

So I've been busy. And I've also been a little wary of divulging too much about certain comings and goings and details of my life since last month's burglary. I don't think it's likely that the thieves are monitoring my blog, but it's not impossible.

Anyhow, I'm okay. It's been a tough month, but I'm hanging in there.

I turn 31 in a couple days. I admit that the future of this site isn't the biggest thing I'm considering, but it's on my mind.

Don't know if I'll get back to posting daily. But I liked doing it.

Don't know if I'll get back to daily Zappa posts, either -- I liked doing that, too, and I'm confident I could continue to do it for a long damn time, even if I continued to try not to use the same song twice -- but the bastard about looking for things on YouTube is you tend to find the same dozen or so videos repeated over and over again, with stuff you haven't seen buried somewhere around page 30. It kept taking me longer and longer to find something I hadn't posted before.

The site's probably due for a fresh coat of paint, too. I've spent enough hours of my day job fucking around with CSS that I've actually managed to develop an appreciation for rounded rectangles and box shadows. (But not gradients. Never gradients.) Of course, if I were to sell out my minimalist, oldschool street-cred with such eyecandy, I could make some back by getting rid of the red links and going with good old-fashioned blue. Possibly even straight-up #0000FF.

Or not. I'm hoping October's a better month, but so far it's not showing any indication of being less busy.