inverarity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inverarity) wrote2010-01-16 02:54 pm
inverarity) wrote2010-01-16 02:54 pm
Movies, Fan Fiction, and Random Saturday Rambling
The latest from my Netflix queue: X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Meh. It was an okay superhero movie. Not great, like Spider-Man or Iron Man, but it didn't totally suck, like... well, most superhero movies. I'm glad I didn't bother going to see it in a theater, though.
I could go into everything that annoyed me about the movie, but I think the things that bother me are not the things that bother most people.
(Seriously? You're a cheap Nightcrawler knockoff -- you can teleport, but you've got nothing else -- and you think you're going to box Sabretooth to death? I knew the expandable black guy was a dead man walking the moment he was introduced -- oh please, that is not a spoiler -- but I hate when characters do unbelievably stupid things for no other reason than because the writers couldn't think of a better way to kill them off.)
Right. So large chunks of the three chapters I just wrote need to be rewritten, because I realized several characters need to be switched around and in different places, and that's set up a whole chain reaction of differing causality that needs to be fixed. If you thought 13,000 words in three days meant I was going to be done in a week, sorry -- that's how writing goes.
So, that Family Tree Builder I used to create the Thorn family tree has an option to automatically back up your data to its online site. I didn't turn off the default, silly me. Obviously, myheritage.com's real goal in providing free software is to sell services, so now I'm getting "reminders" like this:
Which is kind of amusing, but I think I will opt out now...
I've been dabbling with the idea of producing fan fiction ebooks. Not just for my own works -- I have this vague idea of writing an application that would turn an archived story into an epub document automatically. I've been playing with Calibre and Sigil, and turned a couple of my stories into epub documents, but the workflow is a pain, and the results are less than stellar. I've got a Perl script now that turns the badly-formatted HTML produced by Word or Open Office into something a bit cleaner and more conversion-ready, but getting the Table Of Contents right still requires hand-editing of the source XML, and images? Forget it. It will, no doubt, be easier once I finish the learning curve, and maybe I'll find an easier way to automate the process, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. Maybe I should just wait a year or two until the technology is more mature and there's more of an indication of what direction ereaders are going to go.
[Poll #1512463]
Someone asked me what my favorite fan fiction stories are, so I may post a list next. However, my tastes are all over the map. You can see a few of them by looking at my fanfiction.net profile, but I haven't updated my favorites list in forever, and half the time I don't remember to add a story to it even though I liked it.
Meh. It was an okay superhero movie. Not great, like Spider-Man or Iron Man, but it didn't totally suck, like... well, most superhero movies. I'm glad I didn't bother going to see it in a theater, though.
I could go into everything that annoyed me about the movie, but I think the things that bother me are not the things that bother most people.
(Seriously? You're a cheap Nightcrawler knockoff -- you can teleport, but you've got nothing else -- and you think you're going to box Sabretooth to death? I knew the expandable black guy was a dead man walking the moment he was introduced -- oh please, that is not a spoiler -- but I hate when characters do unbelievably stupid things for no other reason than because the writers couldn't think of a better way to kill them off.)
"And when I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind."
Right. So large chunks of the three chapters I just wrote need to be rewritten, because I realized several characters need to be switched around and in different places, and that's set up a whole chain reaction of differing causality that needs to be fixed. If you thought 13,000 words in three days meant I was going to be done in a week, sorry -- that's how writing goes.
Birthday and Anniversary Reminders from the Thorn Family
So, that Family Tree Builder I used to create the Thorn family tree has an option to automatically back up your data to its online site. I didn't turn off the default, silly me. Obviously, myheritage.com's real goal in providing free software is to sell services, so now I'm getting "reminders" like this:
Which is kind of amusing, but I think I will opt out now...
Fan Fiction Ebooks
I've been dabbling with the idea of producing fan fiction ebooks. Not just for my own works -- I have this vague idea of writing an application that would turn an archived story into an epub document automatically. I've been playing with Calibre and Sigil, and turned a couple of my stories into epub documents, but the workflow is a pain, and the results are less than stellar. I've got a Perl script now that turns the badly-formatted HTML produced by Word or Open Office into something a bit cleaner and more conversion-ready, but getting the Table Of Contents right still requires hand-editing of the source XML, and images? Forget it. It will, no doubt, be easier once I finish the learning curve, and maybe I'll find an easier way to automate the process, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. Maybe I should just wait a year or two until the technology is more mature and there's more of an indication of what direction ereaders are going to go.
[Poll #1512463]
Someone asked me what my favorite fan fiction stories are, so I may post a list next. However, my tastes are all over the map. You can see a few of them by looking at my fanfiction.net profile, but I haven't updated my favorites list in forever, and half the time I don't remember to add a story to it even though I liked it.
no subject
I was sorely disappointed.
LOL @ updates from My Heritage.
And I couldn't vote on your poll because I don't have an ebook reader. I do most of my fanfic reading online in a browser. Yes, lame.
Ebooks/ereaders are one of those things I haven't made a final decision on. On the one hand, I would love one, but then I change my mind. For me reading a book [not fanfic] is all about the experience of holding the book physically and being to smell the paper. On the other hand, it's probably better for trees and paper/recycling. >.>
Blergh!
no subject
I was one of those "Oh, I love the feel of books!" types as well. Trust me, you'll get over it quickly.
You can read ebooks on your computer too, though. Even without an ereader, an ebook lets you download the whole thing as one file. (Although on a full-size screen, an ebook has no real advantage over a PDF.)
Ebooks
(Anonymous) 2010-01-17 01:20 pm (UTC)(link)Also, since you do perl, you could easily code for perl to produce the pdf according to your specifications.
--Geneva
Re: Ebooks
The epub format, in theory (and so far in practice) flows equally well and can be scaled up or down on any size screen.
Btw, you know that I have made PDFs of HHD and the first two AQ books, right? The download link under "My Stories."