Lulu update, again

Genie: 2 hits, one download.
I bow before the mighty power of the word: FREE

eek

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4662280.stm

Now I'm a good girl, mostly; but the thought that governments might want to record what I search for on google et al is just plain terrifying!

I don't know if it's urban legend or not, but in my "scouting" days, I was told that there is a "blacklist" of books in public libraries, which are left as bait for prospective bombmakers etc etc. If you got out more than 2 of these books - so I was told - then you were automatically put on a list somewhere, trailed for a year or so and had your bank transactions monitored. Okay so the last bit *might* be an exagerration, but still...

Thing is, it *is* scary to be monitored - but it's also reassuring, and probably in a completely self-delusional way. I mean, ifI were really into bombs and stuff (and I'm not. Last bomb I made was an origami water bomb, when I was about 9. Now *that* was fun hehe), I'm fairly certain I'd buy all my books second hand, using an alias, and I sure as heck wouldn't use my personal internet connection *if* I went surfing. But, short of having James Bond types for every, I dunno, 100 in the population, I don't see what else the intelligence services are supposed to do. That's one James Bond *per* intelligence service, per 100. Which is probably about 80 James Bond types for every 20 Pussy Galores. Way-hey!

Oops, my brain just ran out of intelligent thought.

blogger template change

dunno why. anyway: tip for anyone trying to do the same and having line-up differences between preview and live: it's the html tag thingummy. Strictly speaking I should have found the "proper" solution, but I'm lazy, so I just stripped out the:

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >

line, and now it seems fine.

If some techy person wants to tell me what standard I should describe, feel free. Otherwise, it's just being added to the list of things I ought to do but probably never will.
:)

The lulu experiment continues...

(I'm not being self obsessed, I'm logging this incase anyone else is interested. ok,I might be obsessing slightly)

First off: I've changed my mind. I've made Genie free.

Second off:
Abacus Dreams has now had 7 hits in, like, 3 days
Genies has had none.

None!! I guess pink is the colour to go for. Okay, so the genie cover is a little hideous, but really who'd have thought pink fluffy clouds v. blue and orange.. er.. clouds... would make that much difference?

On the other hand, the numbers are quite low, so it might just be a weekend thing. LOL

Did you hear that?

I am a self-published author.

Did you hear the quality control just drop, there?

I've just uploaded two short stories to lulu. I haven't got the time nor inclination to push them with any publishers, but I don't think they're AWFUL so if anyone wants to read them, they're welcome.

I have put a price tag against them, albeit a tiny one.

Why?
1. Market support. That sounds pretentious, but it's true.
2. If (big "if") there are any downloads, I want to know it's because someone wanted to read them, rather than just saw the word "free!"

The price is tiny, and on my "storefront" I offer to send copies to anyone who makes a donation to the organisations listed in each book.

In the case of Genie, that's enchantedramblings (only fair)

In the case of Abacus Dreams, that's savewildelephants.com and enchantedramblings.

Now, going by my clients websites, I reckon on a sale every 20 to 40 views. So, I've had 4 views of abacus since I uploaded it. It's currently on the first page *if* you sort by date. Assuming, say, 7 views this week, before I move elsewhere in the listings, I reckon if I do absolutely nothing by way of promotion I'll get 20 views by the end of February, and 40 by the end of June. So by the end of June I expect either myself, enchanted ramblings or Peta to be 80cents richer.

Whooo-hoooo! By this time next year, we'll be milwionaires, Rodders!

Hmm... so I'd better up the odds a little and put the link here:
http://www.lulu.com/teebee
LOL

Now, one of the scary things that happened while doing this, is that the 2 extracts I chose to post against each story ~BOTH~ had typos in. Now whether this is because some subconscious part of me just wanted to draw that to my attention, or whether I littered both stories with typos, or whether I have a strange desire to ruin the "best bits" of everything I do, I don't know. But there they were heh


Oooh! and the other thing that happened was I played with the rating thing, only to discover that 1. it did accept my vote, even tho I'm the author and 2. I couldn't get rid of it. So the rating you see is my own. How sad is that???? (See how honest I am?? LOL)

... And having posted techy stuff once, I must now resist the urge to talk work. Urge? More like cathartic impulse LOL Particularly since my last lil tekno-rant prompted an actual comment - (panic stations! someone's reading this drivel!! ;-)) So no: I will not talk in SQL, nor vb, javascript, php, perl, nor even poor old HTML... Nope, not even a rant about sendmail... Unfortunately, at this moment in time, being wedged between deadlines with no destination in sight, this leaves me with little else to talk about. Bugger.

On an entirely unrelated matter, I'm playing with a new router/modem, and it's driving me bonkers.
It's a dynamode r-adsl-c4w-g and I have to say it's the most confusing, frustrating bit of kit I've encountered, recently.

It seems to have thought of all the right bits and just chosen not to implement them in anyway usable.

There's a remote logging facility. Which is fine. Except that it doesn't log, for instance, connection errors. Oh no, it logs what pages I call up when I use the html interface... which, like, Doh! I already *know*, plus useful information such as:

2006-01-21 18:55:48 Daemon.Debug 192.168.5.254 pppd[191]: rcvd [LCP EchoReq id=0xfd magic=0xfaaaf71 3e 79 0a 02]

Riiiiiggght. So you're not going to tell me who made the request or to what port, then?

So I have no idea whether the problem I have logging into yahoo, for example, is due to my pc, the yahoo service or the stupid router. How crap.

Furthermore there's a telnet log in. Great, thought I; This web interface might be noddy but I can just change the syslog settings in the config files.
Oh no. The system is based on:
Linux version 2.4.17_mvl21-malta-mips_fp_le
and

BusyBox v0.61.pre (2005.04.08-11:36+0000) Built-in shell (ash)


it has, like, 20 commands to play with, total. The only way to edit the config files is through cat, which is a complete mare; and since I'm afraid of buggering the whole thing up I'm stuck here with no firewall whatsoever while I work out where the confangled setting is that will block everything apart from what I allow.

Last but not least, there is nowhere I can find that tells me what Clients are connected through the thing. I mean, it did something when I had DHCP enabled, but I want fixed IPs because I'm running 2 servers and frankly I'm happier knowing which computer is what number. Add to that a couple of temperamental wireless connections and frankly: Arghghghghghghghghhghgh I'm going back to my billion *grump*

hmmm ... just playing with some meters...
For the record, here's a copy of what's going on the side....




Vampire



New Hunt Story



Old Hunt Story



Kai



Stacey



Fantasy 001



Poppy




"Done"

Abacus



Vino

hmmm... See, I knew I'd be no good at updating this darned thing.

Since last posting I have, in no particular order:
1. got within 98% of finishing the myth
2. decided the myth H is dire and the whole thing needs to be re-done. Not only is the H not sexy, the premise is daft.
3. survived Christmas
4. created Abacus Dreams. *laugh*
5. subbed Heulyn to AQ. *manic laugh*
and some other stuff, that I can't remember.

Oh well