michelel72

Sometimes story titles are just there for me, but when they're not ... ugh. I thought I had worked out a title for my current story, but then I realized the direction I was going kind of spoiled the story, so I've been flailing. And I start posting a week from today. I don't like deadlines.

The best title candidate now is a lyric from an Air Supply song. Air Supply. It's kind of doofily appropriate, but still.

So if anyone out there tried to get hold of me via AO3 recently and thought I was ignoring them ... it turns out that I broke my notifications there several months ago. (I had to turn off forwarding from my @livejournal.com address because of spam inundation, and I didn't realize that was the only address I had defined at AO3.) I'll be going through my inbox there in the next few days to catch up.

So I have a new toy, as of this past Thursday.

( A picture of my new toy. )

It's fun. It does have drawbacks relative to the Prius (primarily storage, OMG, I've never seen a wimpier glovebox, and the rear storage is both small and hard to access); but since I've been thinking about changing vehicles for a while, it's probably best to do so before the snow and ice start for the year ... and seeing a claim that I'm getting 250+ mpg is nice.

I'm not yet really charging from my solar panels**; the charge cord is short enough that I have to park under the "bird bench" (electrical and cable service lines), so I charge at night and then move the car to the other side of the driveway before the birds arrive for the day. (I'm looking into the service to install a high-speed charger in a better location.) I can get all the way to work and halfway back again on one charge in this weather, which is sweet, and it'll be sweeter if work does in fact approve on-site charging. We'll see.

Hee hee hee.

**(The electrical supply is largely fungible. I try to keep my usage to the daytime when I can, so that it's more directly tied to my solar panels rather than to the coal/nuclear network; I pay extra per net used kWh to add renewables to the mix; blah, blah. I would rather have a large solar array and battery system to go completely off-grid, but "clean" battery technology isn't really there yet. On the whole, I'm probably doing better environmentally than if I were using a straight-gas engine.)

(Yes, I know, I deserve to have even my apprentice-geek credentials revoked for this.)

I could flail about, or I could just ask the knowledgeable folks on my flist: My Cat5e/wireless home network currently runs off a Linksys BEFW11S4 4-port wireless router. I need to add more ports, which this model supports via its "uplink port". I could spend about $23 or $130 (or even more). I'd prefer more than 5 extra ports, but I want something that's simple to implement and likely to work with my existing router. I don't see a need to buy a second router to daisy-chain or anything like that; all I need is more ports.

Do I just go cheap (and ... make sure to connect it to my router with a crossover cable, I think??), or do I need to look for anything particular? What do I need to know here?

ETA: Or I could just borrow a lonely 8-port router from the fantastic ninjamonkey73 and use that as the extended switch. Problem solved! \o/

[For extra credit: violetcheetah can use her Mac laptop on my wireless network at any time with no problems. I consistently find that, in the summer, either of my Dell Windows-based laptops using IE and/or Firefox and MacAfee-or-Norton can't maintain a stable-enough-for-VPN wireless connection. Changing the wireless channel doesn't help or makes the wireless unusable; the current channel was fantastically stable over the winter. The router is in the basement, as I was assured that the signal is likely to be weaker below the device than beside or above it. Is there an explanation/solution beyond "Windows/IE/Norton sucks"?]

So, I'm a writer. I get how that works; I hope that I'm steadily improving and learning, but I'm not worried about the basics. I'm also a lazy bastard; writing doesn't feel much like work to me, even when I'm cursing and laboring through difficult passages, but I really don't have the tenacity for anything that requires dedicated time, or a complex sequence before real results can be seen.

So of course I keep getting ideas that don't work as straight text.

The first is along fanart lines. My drawing skills are Stick Figures 101, and as much as I would love to be able to sketch, the little time I put into trying to learn was enough for me to realize that's never happening. So if I have an idea for something that's a cross between a PostSecret and a collage, or if I want to create graphics to go with a story series I'm developing ... what do I do? Would I pick up Photoshop? (If so, what version?) Would other software be better? Would any software help me find the images I'd need, or would have to be one of those folks who trolls through Google Images and "borrows" them? Would I be able to produce decent-looking stuff reasonably quickly, or would I need to spend weeks or months learning and practicing first? (Because I'm one of the more annoying kinds of perfectionist: I'd rather not do it at all if I can't make it look good.) Or should I just see if I can find someone who knows what they're doing and provide my rough layout ideas?

The second is vidding. [Insert hysterical laughter here.] I've randomly started having ideas for fanvids to go along with various songs, and for one I have a very, very rough storyboard. Is there something easy out there to use; is it good? I'm talking something with moving video and cuts timed to the music, by the way, not just music and stills (which I've also seen). I have video-capture software (InterVideo WinDVD) that I've barely poked at; is that useful, or would the Windows ... thing ... be better, or ...? (I'm on WinXP SP something-or-other.) How finicky or time-involved would it be? Because I can work through plot or dialogue problems as I drive or walk to the caf, but software tweaking ... not so much.

For either of those, are there any primers out there? "Fanvids/Fanart for the Lazy Beginner"? Some sort of dos-and-donts or general advice post would be simply fantastic.

What say you, flist?

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I just wrote a 5500* hundred word scene.

Five. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Words. As one scene. In, need it be said, a larger story.

Remember that I'm, like, the un-frith_in_thorns when it comes to description, too — she writes evocative, vivid worlds and I have ... stuff happen in ... y'know, places that have, like, walls sometimes.

5500 wooooooords. ONE SCEEEEENE.

Awwww, whose a logorrheic little writer, hmmm? You, self! That's right! Yesss you are!

*Unless MSWord is lying. Which totally happens, right? Right??

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I've long joked that my mp3 players, whether standalone or PC-based, are psychic. It's selective attention, I know, but they play apropos selections so often it's sometimes frightening. I mean, I always use "randomize collection" and I've got 6500 songs on the standalone, you know?

Tonight I was further researching Los Angeles County and ran across mention that Pearblossom Highway was the shooting location for parts of "The Long Long Trailer", of which I had only heard from a They Might Be Giants song.

Five minutes later, a TMBG song started playing. Not that one, or I might have screamed.

And just now it started playing a song I'm planning to reference in the next scene of the fic I'm literally in the middle of writing.

... Somebody hold me.

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violetcheetah will tell you that I am horrible at recognizing people, including actors. Horrrrrrrrible. She has grown quite practiced at the "Are you blind?!" expression when I mention finding some actor interesting.

I missed spotting Paul McGillion in the new Star Trek; I'm not remotely surprised. I also managed not to recognize Simon Pegg in the same film, which is pretty much inexcusable. I completely failed to recognize David Nykl (Zelenka!!) in Sanctuary. And I just learned that Dr. Tess Newman (Eureka) = Lt. Laura Cadman (Stargate: Atlantis).

Subclinical prosopagnosia FTL?

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