Trying something out

My blog has been a bit of a dead zone for a while but I'm just trying something out that might help me to be a bit better blogger.

I'm not making any great promises though... ;)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Best laid plans and all that...

Well, so much for my post about goals. So far, this week, I'm failing magnificently at achieving anything! Have half written one blog post, but for the rest of it, am not getting very far...

Sadly it doesn't look as if I'll be publishing IN SEBASTIAN'S HANDS this week, due to a technical hitch. Basically, I forgot, when I got my all new all singing all dancing Win7 64 bit laptopamabob, that some older programs might not work on it. Most things are fine, but dear old Mobipocket Creator just won't play. It worked well on my old system, but because it's a fairly elderly program, it's just not compatible with 64 bit technology. So I've been faffing for hours on end, wrangling various workarounds using online converters and whatnot, but not finding anything completely satisfactory. However...

Just yesterday, I downloaded a program called Jutoh, which I think shows a good deal of promise. I'm still in the early stages with it and cocking things up a lot, but I can see that once I've learned it, it could be a much better way of creating Kindle ebooks and epubs, and lead to me producing a slicker, more aesthetically pleasing job. I'm pretty proud of the books I did with Mobipocket and various online converters, but I think I can do even better with Jutoh. But, I need to put in the hours learning how to get the best from it.

Hence the delay with SEBASTIAN.

So, looks like I need to get my finger out and get on with my goal tasks. The freebie I mentioned will probably be next week now too, but hopefully worth the wait, for those who didn't pick it up before...

My new toy!

It's my new mobile phone. Chosen, after exhaustive research, for these key reasons:

1. It's on the O2 network and that's advertised on the telly by the delicious Sean Bean
2. Apparently this special edition stainless steel handset is used for several seconds in the Casino Royale movie by James Bond himself!

How's that for logical and rational technology shopping! LOL

I've been feeling...

... a little bit foggy these last few days.

I think it's a viral thing, because I'm a bit sinussy too, and with a tendency towards headaches etc, as well as a cough. I think I feel a tad sharper this morning, but I'm not crystal clear. Not that I ever am...

I haven't really done much of anything since I turned IN TOO DEEP in on Monday. A lot of time has been spent grappling with stupid technology. Basically trying to get my old Psion 5MX to talk to my laptop... when my laptop doesn't have a serial port and the Psion only connected via a serial port. After trying two previous USB/serial adaptors, I was ready to chuck in the towel, then I read a blog post somewhere, recommending yet another brand... and lo and behold, it arrived this morning and it actually works. Hurrah! My idea is to take the Psion with me to RWA, so that if I have any brilliant ideas, I can type them up on it, and then load them onto the laptop when I get home. :)

Needless to say, wrangling with recalcitrant comms software and drivers isn't the best thing to do when you're fuzzy headed, but me being me ie. a complete twit, I've wrangled, and probably made myself feel worse into the bargain.

I've been drivin' in my Porsche

No, not the sleek beast above... but the sleek beast below... My LaCie External Hard Drive - which is actually designed by the same folk who do the Porsche supercars!

I bought this little beauty a few weeks ago... mainly because I've heard some sad stories recently about friends losing data and more importantly WIPs when hard drives have crashed and they haven't backed up... Today, himself was out, so I could spread out over the dining table and hook up my lappie and my LaCie and get stuck in... Bit of a hiccup at first, the naughty thing seemed to go into some kind of loop thing, and freeze... 5% took 40 minutes! But second attempt went smoothly and didn't take long at all!

I always save whatever I'm working on to a USB flash drive, and also externally to Omnidrive, but I don't think you can ever have too many backups where technology is concerned. :)

In other news, I've been working on Gothic Heat, and have done a handy 1.3K, which is reassuring. Need to keep up this pace for the rest of the month, in order to meet my target of 40K by the end of June. It's gonna be close, because I've got behind schedule, so I'm going to have to really focus and not get too involved with 'other stuff' for the next couple of weeks.

I've also been working on that short I mentioned... the one that needed extending... and with the sage advice of my crit partner, I've managed to bump it up to 7K, which is the wordcount required by the editor. Need to get it lobbed off to my agent tomorrow, and hopefully soon I'll get a response - and a positive one - from the editor... Watch this space for news of this!

ps. it's called Object of Desire... take a million guesses as to who inpired the 'object'.

--
Telly: Nile
Choc/Yummy: Bendincks Milk
Mood: good
Writing: Gothic Heat
Reading: draft of a buddy's novella... very good stuff
RSI/FMS: bit sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

now I know...

why I was in such a godawful mood yesterday. I had a migraine building, didn't I? It's arrived today, and I feel pretty crappy. Have taken my medication, but while that's brill at squelching the headache, it makes me feel generally weird, and I'm currently working my way through that weirdness...

In other news, well, no writing done again today, but at least I feel as if I might like to do some when I normalise again. So that's progress of sorts, at least. I've also been installing a few new bits and bobs of software, and I'm currently trialling a clipboard extender program called Clipmate, which looks as if it might be v. useful. I'm always wanting to save bits here and there, and past them into things, but it does my head in that I can only save one thing at once. Clipmate allows you to save a whole bunch of different things of different types, so that you can choose from amongst them to paste into your document or whatever. If it continues to be as useful as I'm hoping, I'll definitely be buying the full version...

Take a look here at Clipmate