BLOGGING: Miracle of the Link Color

Posted on February 1, 2009 by susan

One step closer to WordPress: Finally found a method of changing the blue links on the K2 RC7 theme here and on Hypercompendia:

For the links within the posts, add a line (in bold) in the #primary section:

#primary {
position: relative;
float: left;
width: 500px;
padding: 10px;
}
#primary a{color: #A34E29;}

* html #primary {
display: inline;
}

The same in the sidebar, or secondary section:

.secondary {
width: 200px;
float: left;
font-size: 1em;
line-height: 1.5em;
color: #666;
position: relative;
padding: 0 10px;
overflow: hidden;
}

.secondary a{color:#26D96E;}

#sidebar-2 {
clear: right;
}

I must have come upon a dozen different suggestions to change the color of links, and tried quite a few before stumbling upon the notion in a post somewhere thru Google that the K2 theme was default blue so it wasn’t in code on the stylesheet in the usual manner. I also realized that ‘link’ was only referred to as “a” and between that and the 3-digit color coding I was going nuts–remember, I’m not a coding person; all I’ve learned I’ve learned through working with Typepad. I think it’s time I study the html book I dragged out for reference.

Posted in BLOGGING | Comments Off on BLOGGING: Miracle of the Link Color

BLOGGING: One Step Forward…or maybe best to go two steps back

Posted on January 31, 2009 by susan

This has been taking up all my time, all my brainpower, all my reading since I bravely embarked on the great migration to WordPress. I’ve upgraded the WordPress platform to 2.7 with no problems, remembering to save the old wp-config.php file amd the themes. Fiddled around with some themes while I was setting up the sidebar and ended up back with K2 Beta, but then upgraded it to K2 RC7 and find it remarkably easy to work with–except for one quirk: I cannot find the color blue code on the links to change them after looking through the CSS over and over again and changing any numerical (usually 3-digit) or spelled out color anywhere on the sheets.The new K2 is widget-friendly which has made the sidebar setup amazingly easy.

Got around the WordPress limit of importing no more than 2 megabytes of files (my files were 9 mb) by changing the php.ini file to reflect a larger limit of 15, and also by lying to the WordPress menu and naming a .htm file a .txt file and using the mt-export.txt  method.

All this stuff was done with Hypercompendia as well, so the sites are all ready to go except for two problems. One is the transfer of all the images (possibly need to do them one by one) to wordpress because even though the images are there, they are being pulled from the Typepad sites.

The other major problem is the permalinks which don’t transfer. While I’ve managed to fix the permalinks internally, in other words, the permalinks on the WordPress site do point directly to WordPress, I cannot seem to find good directions that work in this particular instance with this set of circumstances. Some of the great ideas are too old, some of the directions don’t apply to my particular setup. I’ve tried three plugins so far that sounded promising except they redirect from within the weblog itself only, not covering external links to the old weblog. Yes, I can certainly tell everyone I care about to change the site addresses, and I certainly don’t care about my Google ranking, but there are a few sites like Wikipedia, a couple high school English classes, various sites that link to a particular series on a work of literature or a review of software, and somebody in Poland who has graciously posted a review and links to the downloads of my own hypertext work.

So that’s where I am right now with this project and I can’t really put it aside both because of WordPress’ renewal date coming up and more, because I’m liable to forget all the mumbo-jumbo I’ve read in the past five days (believe me, you either get vague help or too much information but I’ve studied it all and tried most of it till my brain is fried). So it’s going to be either I figure this out and delete the Typepad weblogs, or I drop WordPress if I can’t find my way around the problems or learn to suck it up and live without a blogging past.

Posted in BLOGGING | Tagged , | Comments Off on BLOGGING: One Step Forward…or maybe best to go two steps back

REALITY?: The Main Difference Between Online and Physical…

Posted on January 30, 2009 by susan

…is that Online doesn’t have aisles:

homedepot

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY?: The Main Difference Between Online and Physical…

BLOGGING: Uh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Posted on January 29, 2009 by susan

I’ve been excited about finally getting down to making this move from Typepad to WordPress but when I started the project back in March of ’08, I was too-skeered by some of the instructions to go beyond setting up the weblogs and putting a theme and a post on each. Once I got involved again with the move this week and actually exported the entries, set up some new plug-ins, transferred some of the categories and links, I realize it’s not as easy to move close to 6000 posts (5300 on spinning, 550 on Hypercompendia) intact.

I haven’t deleted the Typepad blogs yet, and I won’t until I’ve gotten all the problems sorted out. The two left are the redirections of the permalinks and I’ve been working on that problem for a couple days because there are a lot of different ways to do it, but none are the same and time and updates make a lot of the old suggestions I’ve found obsolete.

The other problem hit me like a ton of bricks. All the images, 5 years of images, have to be uploaded somehow to WordPress or once I pull the plug on Typepad, they will disappear. Oh yeah, they show up here now, but they’re linked to the Typepad files.

Nothing is easy. Unless I feel like finding and uploading all the photos, and redirecting the links, I can leave the old posts blank.

I’m beginning to think that maybe I should’ve just stuck with Typepad, or be willing to lose the last five years of my life and start out fresh.

Posted in BLOGGING | Comments Off on BLOGGING: Uh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

WRITING: Published!

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Susan

Happy to read the tweet this morning from a friend to say she's gotten six short stories published up at the Espresso Stories sites.

Online publishing is a growing opportunity for writers and I'm excited to note that more folks are reading even as more becomes available.  Carolyn's one of the best writers I know and I'm excited to see her work being shared for all to enjoy.

Congratulations, C!

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Published!

WRITING: Lessons

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Susan

See the way
the sand makes way
to let me pass,
teaching me
to give
with need.
Gritty crystalline,
tiny stones,
you melt softly
into crowds.
Oceans weep
to see the way
sand
is so easily
moved.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Lessons

WRITING: Alliteration

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Susan
The years after that were just folders of days filed and forgotten.

Maybe it's an awareness, a product of reading both classic literature and poetry; maybe it's a natural skill born of an ear for sounds; maybe it's just overwriting and hokey, but I seem to use a lot of alliteration in my writing.

There is a softness to alliteration, even with hard sounds such as "the great green grass." I personally like this effect because it emphasizes while tying together a thought into a package. Words become a palpable image that remains in the mind–much in the manner (whoa–didn't plan that one!) of nursery rhymes.

It can get overdone though and I'm trying to make myself more aware of them so that they do not take away from story but rather enhance a natural rhythm that carries a reader along.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Alliteration

WRITING: When Will I Ever Learn?

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Susan

Somewhere in the vast universe of internetery yesterday was a post on "How Not to Write a Novel" or maybe it was geared toward short story, I don't remember. In any case, one of its first warnings was a red flag of amateurity (leave it be, it's only the second made-up word so far) when the opening paragraph presents a protagonist, the setting, then the other characters in heavy detailery of description (detailery's a word? no red underlining here?).

And of course, I rushed back to the two short stories I've been working on and thought were all set to go.

And of course, started rewriting them again.

As I read one of them for maybe the zillioneth time, I wonder what purpose there is to the story. In other words, while entertainment or time-filler has some value, what real reason is there for anyone to read this story? Yes, there's the abused woman angle and the messed-up child all growed up, but isn't that overdone? What new thing is anyone learning from this, even if it's just a bunch of nice words and how they're put together; what's the purpose of reading it?

What then, is the purpose of writing it?

Posted in WRITING | 2 Comments

LITERATURE: Neuromancer – Cybersex

Posted on January 23, 2009 by susan

Just as I was about to back out of this book as something that wasn't my type of read, Gibson comes up with an operation for Case and a sex scene that somehow grounds it back into the reality of human feeling. Did he realize that, aside from sci fi fans, this world was a bit too seemy, too alien for the reader?

And despite body parts that are for sale and the software that can fix them, sex appears to be fairly normal. Of course, until Case touches Molly's face and gets too near her embedded glasses that serve as eyes:

"Don't," she said, "finger prints."  (p. 33)
Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Neuromancer – Cybersex

EDUCATION: Where Have All The Artists Gone?

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Susan

As another semester starts I sink back down into the comfort of my couch and sigh. Every semester I scan the local community college course offerings with an eye on the New Media, English Lit and Writing, and one that I really find calling to me named 3D Digital Animation. Unfortunately, it's been consistently canceled for lack of student interest.

I don't understand this. This is in a school that regularly has student artwork of exceptional quality on display in the halls and an outstanding art faculty. What are these students striving toward? A sidewalk spot on the Champs de Elysees? The same situation that always affected the artist affects the writers–and there are many in the multitude of English classes available–that of having the unlikelihood of your talent and desire of a one-man show at a New York gallery or a 3-book publishing contract ever come to being. More likely, like the photographer who does weddings to keep him in film for Sunday tramps through the woods, the artist and writer up to now had few choices to make a living with his artistic talent. Up to now.

On tonight's local news I happened to catch a story on Blue Sky, an animation company that moved from New York into Connecticut lured by tax breaks and which has become a growing company looking to hire more workers in the future.  They do movies, but I've always felt that the best time was now for both artists and writers to fulfill their dreams and to put their talent to work with the number and manner of animation films both on the big screen and produced for internet viewing together with the growing need for expanded narrative video gaming.

Right now, in a bad economy, it appears that a check of the job listing on the Blue Sky site indicates a need for 17 positions. Yet right here in a Connecticut college, where an opportunity awaits young artists to develop their talents in a growing and exciting field, classes are canceled for lack of interest.

Posted in EDUCATION | 1 Comment

LITERATURE: Neruda’s Ode to an Aged Poet – Line breaks

Posted on January 22, 2009 by susan

Loved this passage from this poem:

and hand in hand
they would make
their way to
a decaying resting place
where they would sleep
as every man
of us
will sleep:
with
a dry
rose
in
a
hand
that will also
crumble into dust.
   (p. 365)

Part of the problem with Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem for me was in the delivery (though I have read a copy of it online with the proper breaks and not liked it much better).  As I see from Neruda's style, line breaks are vital in the impact and meaning of a poem. The emphasis and the pacing of a poem as well as the tone are borne of the breaks almost as much as of the words themselves. What Neruda is speaking of here is death and the image of a man and woman laying down to sleep, the hand and rose crumbling into dust all serve to soften the trauma of death, yet the lines made up of one or two words help just as much by their insistence on a slow beat of reading.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Neruda’s Ode to an Aged Poet – Line breaks

WRITING: Setting Tone

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Susan

The mood was set by eight a.m. The kind of morning where all you want to do is curl up on the couch with a good book and a warm cup of hemlock.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Setting Tone

LITERATURE: Neuromancer – Opening Thoughts

Posted on January 21, 2009 by susan

Nothing particularly striking with the writing, and though I may be surprised by the language, for any regular sci fi reader it's nothing unusual. The story plot, written in third person pov, has immediately established the protagonist as Case, a man who makes his living as a middleman in the black market in an area of Japan and evidently has crossed someone named Wage who is rumored to want him dead.

So there's an establishment of environment, including setting and a time period that we guess to be somewhere in the future; an introduction to the main character and some of his acquaintances; and conflict in both the danger of his job and the immediate threat from Wage, who may or may not turn out to be the antagonist.

For me, having not read this genre for quite a number of years, the strange words and names were as halting of the reading as Burgess' Clockwork Orange. I have read student short stories in the fantasy and science fiction stream and I'm sure now that my comments about the language of an alien world were not appreciated as well as off the mark. There is a particular way that strange words, such as kirnen for beer in Gibson's novel that needs to indicate by how it's used in the sentence exactly what it is since there's no place to look up the meaning if the author has made it up. One of the flaws I see in this genre when produced by new writers is the tendency to overexplain rather than by using a word in a sentence that allows the reader to come pretty close to an accurate guess. Gibson weaves his world in a highly skilled manner that gives the information the reader needs without resorting to infodump.

Little by little, I'm getting used to the mood and rhythm of the narrative–the rhythm being somewhat like a detective story, another genre I haven't read lately–and I'm looking forward to reading on.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged , | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Neuromancer – Opening Thoughts

REALITY?: Welcoming an Era of Change

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Susan

Many things will fall into place as a normal economic cycle regenerates itself and from the depths of near despair a new prosperity emerges based on rational and necessary changes. Religion and science can co-exist beyond their basic conflicts. Time and mood conspire to offer chance; that mix of elements has come.

On this Inauguration Day may the fragile substance of hope become the grounding of reality, may dreams shed their transparent nature to metamorphose into an equality of opportunity that America was born to represent. May whatever means of thought process that brought us to this point become secondary to the momentum that it offers to move in different paths towards a common goal of liberty, justice and security. May those both who voted against, and for, President Obama look beyond the color to see the man.

May our new president, Barack H. Obama continue to display the intelligence, caring, knowledge and willingness to not only represent but listen to and support the American people to the best of his ability.

Posted in REALITY | 1 Comment

LITERATURE: Recall

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Susan

I'm worried about my short term memory, trying to remember books and authors and plots I've read within the last few years, few months. And yet I can easily recall story from the first book I ever read: See Dick run.

Posted in LITERATURE | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Recall