Minor site news: I just got done fixing up the What I’m Reading review pages. There have been some broken links on those pages for awhile now. Those have now been cleaned up and I’ve also taken the opportunity to add blatant commercialization, as well.
That’s right, ads are coming to the Alexandrian. (Try to contain your horror.) I promise to keep them integrated tastefully into the lay-out. There will be no pop-ups, pop-overs, or pop-tarts mucking up your computers.
Well, it looks like Comcast is behaving itself now. My internet service is still intermittently disappearing, but it appears to be limited to only a few minutes at a time now. And I’m able to make FTP connections again.
However, I’m leaving town this weekend and there will be a brief break from the Diplomacy essays for awhile. When they resume (probably sometime next week) there should be two more installments: The optional rules mentioned in yesterday’s post and then a fourth set of design notes where I talk about the design decisions I made and why I made them.
In other news: My mother is the award-winning historical mystery author Margaret Frazer. I have just finished designing her brand new website. You should check it out.
We get our internet through Comcast Cable. It’s been intermittently out of service all weekend. (You may have noticed how late the May 12th entry was posted.) At the moment I am completely unable to get a stable FTP connection to this site in order to upload the next installment of the Diplomacy rules. (I’m posting this through a bit of a hack.)
As soon as I can browbeat Comcast into admitting that there’s something seriously wrong with their service (and, then, get the problem fixed), the site will be on a brief hiatus. I don’t anticipate this lasting more than another day or so. (And even if it does, I’ll figure out some other way of getting the next installment.)
Thank you for your patience.
Spent a few hours trying to get HaloScan to work as a comment option for the website. I can get it to work just fine on small test pages, but the minute I try pasting the Javascript onto this page I start getting scripting errors.
UPDATE: Well, I opened up the HTML again and repasted the exact same text into it. And now it works just fine. Go figure…
UPDATE REDUX: Weirdness abounds. When I double-checked the HTML code again, I discovered I had entered one line of the Javascript twice. I removed the superfluous line… and for reasons beyond comprehending this caused my background color to turn white. So I tried resetting that. And, after much experimentation, I have discovered that in order to keep my current layout I either need to duplicate the Javascript line or I need to duplicate the “<body bgcolor=”#000000″ text=”#FFFFFF”>” code. This, of course, makes no bloody sense.
And I’ve discovered that the exact same thing happens on the Archive page when I add the HaloScan Javascript there. Whacky.
Ah well. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about tinkering with computers: If you’ve figured out how to make something work, even if you’ve got no idea why it’s working, it’s probably easier to accept the success you’ve already got.
HaloScan does seem to be slowing down the loading of the page. So we’ll have to see how that goes before making a judgment on whether or not this will be a final solution.
Sorry for the long absence from updating. This was not my intention. Unfortunately, life got a bit chaotic. Back in January, shortly after posting my essay “The Stakes”, I gave my boss notice that I would be quitting at the end of February. I had it calculated out so that, with three more paychecks, my credit card debt would be paid off. My intention was to go back to freelance writing and theater. I gave the earlier-than-necessary warning so that my boss would have a chance to find a replacement and we could handle the transition smoothly. I don’t see any reason to be a jackass about these things.
Unfortunately, my boss has a different philosophy. He countered my generous offer of ample notice by firing me effective immediately. Since I was working as a resident property manager, this also mean that I had three days to move out.
Fortunately, I had already started packing things up. In addition to paying off my credit cards, I figured that I would have an entire month to gradually pack and prep things. In the past I’ve always been able to arrange things so that I move gradually from one place to another, and I figured I could manage that again. It tends to de-stress and relax the entire process.
But stress had, of course, come to find me this time.
Anyway, to cut a long story short: The move is done now. I’ve simplified my life to help me stay focused. I didn’t manage to pay off my credit cards (obviously), so I’m probably going to have to do some temping in the not-too-distant future.
But for the moment, I’m starting to find the groove for the freelance writing again. And I’ve also officially thrown my hat back into the theatrical ring: Last night my play John and Abigail, based on the letters written between John Adams and his wife Abigail during the American Revolution, was selected in the lottery for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I’ll be posting more information about this as I have it.
In other news, you can expect some meaningful updates to the site over the next couple of weeks.
Also, effective as of today, I’m taking the forums down. They have become completely infested with spam and no one was using them in any case. I’m going to be investigating other options for instituting community feedback on the site, but have no firm timeline for that. Until then, you can always click on Contact and then send me an e-mail.
