Green Sky Press

December

December 31, 2007

• Released chapter 14 of Thrice Ended and released update of Dramatis Personae appendix.

December 16, 2007

• Released chapters 12 and 13 of Thrice Ended.
• Added cover image of new Titan collection "Death Trap" to my Modesty Blaise concordance.

December 4, 2007

• Re-checked chapters 1-11 of Thrice Ended against XHTML Strict validator.  Inserted two missing tags in chapter 6.  Replaced "Vîda" with "Vîđa" and made other corrections.  Re-released chapters 1-11 and Dramatis.

December 3, 2007

• Finished writing new Chapter 9 of Thrice Ended.  Released Contents, Chapter 6, and Dramatis Personae with updates and corrections.  Released new chapters 9-11.
• Re-released Calendar Appendix with corrections, including names of the old calendar's months.
• Brought Modesty Blaise concordance up to date.

November

November 25, 2007

• Added David Banoff's information about the Eagle 1600 series and current status of ECUG to my Eagle Computer pages.

November 24, 2007

• Finished rewriting Chapter 6 of Thrice Ended, and adding new material to it.  Released new chapters 6-8.

November 23, 2007

• Revised Thrice Ended: Broke it up into smaller chapters, changed the chapter order, stripped out all of the structural straitjacket that was getting in the way.  Mapped out rest of book.  Began going through from the beginning, making corrections and adding material that should have been there all along, but got left out because I was in a hurry.  Re-released new chapters 1-5.  Others in progress!

October

October 29, 2007

• Brought Modesty Blaise concordance up to date.

September

September 10, 2007

• Brought Modesty Blaise concordance up to date.
• Changed title of SGU novel Romulus and Julianna to Both Your Houses in Stories page and blurb page.  Added entries to Stories page for "Boy and the Shinyfaces", Queen of Hearts (Inerrant), and When First I Saw You (title subject to change).
• Replaced character symbols for Oldest Man stories, SGU stories, and Martin Mackie stories with appropriate icons throughout Stories page.
• Added dates to the titles of stories and books in the Sleep of Reason section of the Stories page, and rearranged them in order by date.

September 3, 2007

• Finished complete backup of everything on my computer to spare hard disks.

August

August 23, 2007

• Diagnosed the problem that's been slowing down my computer, and causing it to hang whenever the hard disks are busy (and sometimes on startup), as being due to a power supply that's gone weak.  Replaced the power supply and solved the problem.  Reinstalled my operating system.

July

July 10, 2007

• Rewrote Chapter 3 of "Managing Your Collections on Your Computer", modified Table of Contents and other chapters, added programs, validated HTML files, and released it all.

July 9, 2007

• Revised first two chapters of "Managing Your Collections on Your Computer", created a table of contents, validated them, and released them.

June

June 20, 2007

• Correction: If reader is using Internet Explorer, "font-size:large" looks fine.  It's only "font-size:larger" that results in huge letter sizes.  Used grep to search for that style throughout site, found no more instances.  Browsing site with IE found no more format problems, but I noted a few typos in "Odin", "Real People", and "Thrice Ended."  Released corrected versions of the first two.  Corrections in "Thrice Ended" will be included when chapters 6 and 7 are typed and released.

June 19, 2007

• Reviewed Essays section under Internet Explorer and found that "font-size:large" and "font-size:larger" results in huge letter sizes in that browser.  Removed these styles from all HTML files in this section and re-released them.

June 17, 2007

• Finished converting and validating all of The Last-Minute Queen, including complete song book and all song links within the chapters.  Checked it all against Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer, then released it.

June 10, 2007

• Finished writing Chapter 7 of Thrice Ended.  Still have to type it and Chapter 6.

June 5, 2007

• Brought Modesty Blaise concordance up to date.

May

May 29, 2007

• Finished writing Chapter 6 of Thrice Ended.
• Bill Colson found a typo in Odin; I typed "clock" instead of "cloak".  Fixed typo and re-released story.  Thanks, Bill!

May 17, 2007

• Finished typing Chapter 5 of Thrice Ended; also brought appendixes and glossary up to date.  Validated them and uploaded them to my web site.

May 7, 2007

• Finished writing Chapter 5 of Thrice Ended.  Now to type it!

May 1, 2007

• Finished typing Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended and updated Dramatis Personae appendix.  Validated them and uploaded them to my web site.

April

April 16, 2007

• Finished writing Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended.  Still have to type it ...

April 11, 2007

• Finished typing Odin.  Validated it and released it!  This story took five years to write!

April 4, 2007

• Finished writing Odin.

March

March 21, 2007

• Converted and validated October Lists files, Song Book main page, and "Three Ravens" page of The Last-Minute Queen.

March 18, 2007

• Created directory for large emblazons of heraldic fields and charges.  Made emblazons of Argent, Azure, Ermine, Gules, Or, Purpure, Sable, Scaly, and Vert.  Created emblazons of arms of SGU, Patria, Suomainen, Pertti, Marketta, Taawi, Kristiina, and Aune, 200 pixels high.

March 17, 2007

• Converted and validated Chapters 24 and 25 of The Last-Minute Queen.

March 16, 2007

• Converted and validated Chapters 20-23 of The Last-Minute Queen.

March 15, 2007

• Converted and validated Chapters 14-19 of The Last-Minute Queen, and the lists of rounds at June Crown.

March 14, 2007

• Converted and validated Chapter 13 of The Last-Minute Queen. 

March 13, 2007

• Still upgrading The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted and validated Chapter 12 and list of reigns.

March 12, 2007

• Still upgrading The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted and validated Chapter 11 and list of characters.
• Wrote more of Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended.

March 11, 2007

• Still upgrading The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted and validated Chapters 9-10, Arts Championship winners, and NATT listing.
• Brought Modesty Blaise concordance up to date with latest issue of Comics Revue.

March 10, 2007

• Still upgrading The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted and validated its glossary.

March 9, 2007

• Still working on The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted and validated chapters 6-8, 2731 event calendar, and the two appendices showing all the fights during March Crown (one for each day).

March 8, 2007

• Set up new directory for The Last-Minute Queen.  Converted cover, contents, and about page by hand.  Threw together a header file, footer file, and fix program to do most of the work of converting files to Strict.  Ran program to produce Chapter 1.  Went through Chapter 1, fixing things by hand and inserting links to new color illustrations of SGU arms.  Replaced tentative header and footer files with corrected ones from doing Chapter 1.  Validated cover, contents, about, and chapter 1.  Converted and validated chapters 2-5.

March 7, 2007

• Finished the Ŧuliňgrai verse at the top of Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended.  Finished writing the Second History part of the chapter.

March 6, 2007

• Prepared half the Ŧuliňgrai verse for the top of Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended.  Wrote two more pages of the chapter.

March 5, 2007

• "White Event" stories have started writing themselves in my head lately, especially since I was handed "Real People" out of the blue.  Set up buttons for five more stories, and created blurbs for them.  I think all of them except the novel will be written soon.
• "Hired Gun" is a "White Event" story, not a "Sleep of Reason" story!  No wonder I've never been able to get a proper handle on it!  Moved it to the right section of the Stories page, and added button and blurb for "An Old-Fashioned Girl", too.  (It's amazing what your muse serves up when all you're trying to do is sleep and get well.  Maybe there's something to this "fevered genius" notion.)
• Did a "White Event" Time Line, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and uploaded it.  Now I'm going back to bed until time to go to work.
• Wrote 10 pages of "Hired Gun".

March 4, 2007

• Typed and improved "Real People", validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it to my web site.
• Translated the verse for the top of Chapter 4 of Thrice Ended, arranged it in proper form for the kind of poem it is, added words as needed to the Dictionary, changed the transliteration to reflect the six lines of the verse instead of the four lines of the translation.  Changed navigation table at the bottom to include all four chapters.  Made same changes to Chapters 1, 2, and 3.  Added Chapter 4 to the Contents page.  Typed the part of Chapter 4 that I wrote back in October 2005.

March 3, 2007

• Finished new verse for Chapter 3 of Thrice Ended and posted the whole thing to my site again.  This completes all of my plan from February 12th except for items 4, 5, and 8.
• Did my monthly backup for March.
• Had a story dream this morning, and wrote it up as "Real People" while the backup was going on.  Now I just have to type it and post it.

March 2, 2007

• Consonant forms finished.  New alphabet page, letters, and Glossary/Dictionary uploaded.
• Finished new verses for Chapter 1 and 2 of Thrice.

March 1, 2007

• 24 of the 46 consonant forms done.  Blank verse template made so that verses at the start of Thrice chapters can be made quickly and easily.

February

February 28, 2007

• 17 of the 46 consonant forms done.

February 27, 2007

• Made improved versions of all the vowels, diphthongs, punctuation marks, and numerals.

February 25, 2007

• Finished gleaning all the glossary terms and dictionary entries from Thrice Ended.

February 22, 2007

• Went through all the rest of the stories except The Last-Minute Queen and Thrice Ended, and added words and terms from them to the Glossary/Dictionary.
• Deleted lmq-online photos (after making sure they were duplicates), old Glossary directory, and put Thrice Ended four-novels-in-one experiment in a directory inside thrice_ended directory.  Picked new chapter background for Thrice, created new cover background and rosette for cover and chapter dividers.  Ran Fix to convert all the files in Thrice to XHTML Strict and new transliteration, then finished by hand, also correcting inconsistencies of fact and format caused by the three chapters being written over such a long period of time.  Brought Personae file up to date with all three chapters.  Fixed Contents and individual chapters so that clicking on the name of a section will take you directly to that section.  Validated all the files.  Now I just have to replace the Ŧuliňgrai writing at the beginning of each chapter, and glean all the glossary and dictionary entries, and I can post Thrice Ended again.

February 21, 2007

• Created the map of Kantos described in Chapter 1 of Crown of Starsuns, and inserted it into the chapter.
• Converted Chapters 2-5 of Crown of Starsuns to XHTML Strict and new transliteration, validated them, and added words and terms to the Glossary/Dictionary.
• Ran program to create pages of the Glossary/Dictionary with all the new entries, stepped through them, and corrected errors.
• Released all of the above: Crown of Starsuns and new version of the Glossary and Dictionary.

February 20, 2007

• Typed the rest of "Odin" that I wrote the day before yesterday.

February 19, 2007

• Converted Organization page of Crown of Starsuns to XHTML Strict and new transliteration, validated it, and added words and terms to the Glossary/Dictionary.
• Typed most of "Odin" that I wrote yesterday.  Found some ancient pictures of Odin on the web to use at the top of the story, and as a divider between sections.

February 18, 2007

• Wrote another big chunk of "Odin".

February 17, 2007

• Added the header and footer from Chapter 1 to all the other files in Crown of Starsuns.  Converted About file to XHTML and new transliteration by hand, validated it, made sure there were no glossary additions hiding in it.  Put the other files in a text directory preparatory to running the Fix program on them to do all the transliteration replacements automagically.
• Copied the Fix program from Reborn and took out a lot of what it did, since I'd already replaced the headers and footers, and there were no glossary links to replace.  Ran it to convert Army and Dramatis files to XHTML and new transliteration, fixed the rest of the formatting by hand, and validated them.

February 16, 2007

• Finished adding words and information in Chapter 1 of Crown of Starsuns to the glossary/dictionary, plus old words I remembered, plus new words.  Ran MCP to make new glossary and uploaded it to my site.

February 15, 2007

• Working on item 3 of my sinister plan.  Added words and information in Battle of the Kings to the Glossary and dictionary.  Converted contents and Chapter 1 of Crown of Starsuns to XHTML Strict and new transliteration, and reduced size of Horiel examples and gave them transparent backgrounds, so they look better.  Began adding words in that chapter to glossary/dictionary, plus old words as they come back to me, plus new words as I make them up.

February 14, 2007

• Wrote a program to copy all the chapters of The Reborn Princess Caper, correcting the old kind of links to the new kind in the process.  Tested it and fixed a few mistakes I'd made in assigning links to text.  Released all the Appendices except the Grammar section, and the whole novel too!  Items 1 and 2 of my current evil scheme are now complete!

February 13, 2007

• Used GREP to copy all the lines that contain links to the Glossary, from all the chapters of The Reborn Princess Caper, to a text file — with one command!  Took out everything between the beginning of the line and the HTML link tag, in every line in the file, with one search-and-replace command in KWrite, using regular expressions.  One more command took out everything between the link and the end of the line, in every line in the file.  Used CAT and SORT in combination to copy the lines (now containing nothing but the actual links) to a second file, in order!  Then all I had to do is go through the file from top to bottom, deleting blocks of duplicate lines so that there was only one example of each link, each in its own line.  (275 unique lines, if anyone's interested.)  UNIX IS GREAT!  Can you imagine doing all that by hand?!!
• Next, copied links1.txt (made above) to directory where chapters will be when converted; converted all upper-case letters to lower-case; removed "of" and "the" from links; and generally changed each line, not by hand but by judicious search-and-replace, to the form it should have in the chapters to redirect a reader to the new glossary pages.  The resulting file is links2.txt.  LINKS1 is before; LINKS2 is after.  We want to change every occurrence in LINKS1 to what appears in the corresponding line of LINKS2.
• Wrote short, quick Perl program to test every link in links2.txt.  If the file doesn't exist, it prints the name of the file to an output file.  Only 20 files reported, out of 275.  Comparison of error list with pages shows what's wrong with each of them.  Corrected those entries in links2.txt.

February 12, 2007

• Made home page for Glossary by merging saved text into a copy of one of the glossary pages and correcting the links.
• Started going through my whole site, noting words used but not entered in dictionary yet.  Began adding them, plus others that I'd somehow forgotten to put in the dictionary earlier.  Realized what a big job that is, and decided that I should release the "second edition" of The Reborn Princess Caper first, since it's almost done.
• Plan for the next few weeks (months?):
  1. Freeze the Glossary, and fix the links in Reborn so that every one of them works correctly.
  2. Release Reborn, the Glossary, and all other appendices, except Grammar.
  3. Go through all my writing and add all the words therein to the Glossary, plus any others I remember or invent along the way.
  4. Finish the Grammar, adding all the words from the examples to the Glossary, plus any others I remember or invent while doing that.
  5. Release the Grammar and the expanded Glossary.
  6. Convert all of Crown of Starsuns that I've written so far to XHTML Strict, new transliteration, additional illustrations, etc. and re-release it.
  7. Do the same to Thrice Ended, plus better calligraphy on chapters, and release it again.
  8. Then redo and upgrade The Last-Minute Queen, adding illustrations of people's arms on top of everything else.  Maybe I can find an artist to do portraits, too?  Then post the whole thing all over again.
• This file is way too big!  And so is the "What's Old" file!  Put everything from 2004, 2005, and 2006 in their own files, and everything before the Kalends of February in the "What's Old" file.  Created buttons to link the files and put them in the bottom of all five of them.

February 11, 2007

• Ran MAKENTRY program on the rest of the glossary sections to create individual entry files, and finished checking entries.  This brings me back to where I was on Feb. 7, except that now the entries are in the correct order, and I've added a lot of new entries as I went along.
• Finished converting Grammar section to XHTML strict and converting it to new transcription.  Added more new material.
• Added a feature to MCP so that it creates an index table so that you can jump directly to the first file in each subdirectory.  At present it requires two passes; one to generate the file, with the toggle turned on; then you make any necessary changes to the table file, in case all the buttons won't fit across the bottom of the page; then you run the program again, with the toggle off, and it uses the table in each page.  This is less than perfectly elegant, but it'll do for now.

February 10, 2007

• Converted "Werewolves Are Bunk" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it to my site.
• Ran MAKENTRY program on sections B-J and Q-R of the glossary to create individual entry files, checking entries afterwards.
• Began converting Grammar section to XHTML strict, converting it to new transcription, and adding the parts I didn't get to before.

February 7, 2007

• Yesterday I had a raging headache, maybe the fourth headache I've had in my whole life.  Nevertheless, I managed to get some stuff done.  Today I had no headache, but felt stupid, and everything took way too long and had way too many mistakes.  Finally, to top it all, I made a one-character mistake in a simple program and erased the contents of all the entry files!  That's it, I'm done!
• Slept for four hours and feel better.  Converted "Taddeusz and the Magic Fish" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it to my site.
• Upgraded fix program in directory with old section files so that it strips out a lot more junk than it did before, including the HTML head and foot and all blank lines.  Ran it.  Wrote MAKENTRY program to (1) go through one of these files, (2) find each dictionary entry in it, (3) put quotes around links and correct "../" to "../../../", (4) fix the occasional backslash that I noticed when I did them by hand, and (5) write the entries under their proper names to the proper places in the ENTRIES directory.  Did Y, Z, and A, checking the results and improving the program as needed.

February 6, 2007

• Converted "Something" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and put it on my web site.
• Changed MCP so that when DISPLAYIMAGE.DAT is "entry", it prints a <div class="entry"> tag, then indents every line of the entry file two spaces, then follows the text from the files with a </div> tag.  Might be useful to make that standard extensible behavior, so that any value other than "yes" or "no" does the same, with the value taken for the name of the class.  "No" would still mean "don't display an image, copy all the lines in the file and trust that they're all correct XHTML code," and "yes" would still mean "yes, display an image", and would remain the default value.
• Used GREP to find all the entries that (1) had backslashes instead of slashes in path names, and (2) had HTML links not quoted (html=../etc. instead of html="../etc.").  Fixed all those, and corrected all links to calendar, gender, alphabet, and grammar sections.

February 5, 2007

• Converted "Odin" to XHTML Strict (but still haven't finished writing it).  Validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it.
• Ran MCP program against entries, fiddled with DAT files and fixed bugs until it produced correct output files from correct input.  Broke up all the remaining sections of the Glossary into separate entries files.  Rewrote main page of Glossary and set it up to be updated automatically whenever MCP updates the entries.

February 4, 2007

• Converted "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and uploaded it to my web site.
• Broke up sections L-P of the Glossary into separate entry files.
• Cleaned up MCP program, made it more readable, and made it more flexible as well, so it can serve as a general-purpose FIX program while still keeping its original function as a comic-strip pages generator and its new function as a photo-page generator.

February 3, 2007

• Converted "Ham Lett by Wm. Shakespeare" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it.
• Broke down sections G-K of the Glossary into individual entry files.  Stripped the non-entry stuff at the top and bottom of all the other sections: 1, L-Z.  Then broke down Q, Y, and Z because there were only a few entries in each section.

February 2, 2007

• Moved everything older than January to What's Old page.
• Made some corrections to "The Gostak Distims the Doshes" and uploaded the whole thing again.
• Converted "The Last Governor of Eden" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and posted it.
• Broke down sections C-F of the Glossary, making individual entry files.
• Created a Windows partition on a previously-unused hard disk and installed Windows XP Pro on it to make it easier to check how files look to Internet Explorer.  Re-installed Linux with all of Apache, Perl, PHP, etc. so I can start MySQL-Apache-PHP server-pages development.

February 1, 2007

• Added features to my MCP (Make Comics Pages) program so that (1) the pages it generates are XHTML Strict, (2) captions are added below each image, (3) copyright text is added to the bottom of each page, and (4) height and width are read from data files; if the data files don't exist, the program reads and uses the height and width from the image, and then creates the data files for future use.  Used program to create new Comic-Con 2006 pictures pages, and updated main page manually.  Validated them, checked them against Opera and Firefox, and uploaded them to San Diego Comics site.

January

January 31, 2007

• Converted "The Gostak Distims the Doshes" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and released it.
• Corrected pages of February San Diego Comics site to point to the right place when a user clicks on the "Comic-Con 2006" link, and uploaded corrected pages.

January 30, 2007

• Converted "Dry Spell" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and released it.
• Converted Chapter 18 and 19 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated them, and checked them against Opera and Firefox.  That finishes the novel!  Now I just have to do the Glossary, and I can release the whole thing.
• The divider I was using in the chapters was too obtrusive.  I designed a new one, and replaced the old one in chapters 14-19.
• Adapted Fix program in the Glossary directory to remove some clutter from the sections files (a.html, b.html, etc.) and convert the old transcription in those files to the new transcription, and nothing else.  Ran the program.  Ripped the A and B sections into individual entry files (aatu.txt, aatuan.txt, etc.).

January 29, 2007

• Converted "Cramming" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and released it.
• Converted Chapters 14-17 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated them, and checked them against Opera and Firefox.
• Converted section A/Â of the Glossary to XHTML Strict and new transcription, using Reborn fix program and then continuing by hand.  Glossary/dictionary will be converted to individual entries by a program; another program will assemble the entries into an up-to-date, in-order set of pages whenever it's run, doing away with the problems caused in the past by manual entry.  Glossary entries will also be labeled by what novel(s) they're for, to avoid spoilers.

January 28, 2007

• Converted "Blerchies" to XHTML Strict, validated it, checked it against Opera and Firefox, and released it.
• Broke up one-page San Diego Comics web site into six smaller, single-topic pages.  Converted them to XHTML Strict, validated them, checked them against Opera and Firefox, and released them.  This replaces the February site in the old style which was already in place.  Still need to convert pages of pictures from Comic-Con 2006.
• Converted Chapter 13 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated it, and checked it against Opera and Firefox.

January 27, 2007

• Scanned the covers of the ten volumes of the new Titan Books Modesty Blaise books.
• Converted Chapters 8-12 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated them, and checked them against Opera and Firefox.
• Did the same for Gender and Calendar appendices, and corrected an error I made in the Alphabet appendix.  Then I posted all three of them.

January 26, 2007

• Converted Chapters 6 and 7 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated them, and checked them against Opera and Firefox.
• Rewrote the Modesty Blaise concordance and collector's guide, brought it up to date, converted it to XHTML Strict, validated it, and checked it against Opera and Firefox.  Added thumbnails and cover pictures for Comics Revue issues with original covers (i.e., not panels from the story enlarged), First American Edition reprint books, and Titan Books collections (old and new series).  Still need rescan covers of Titan Books new series, create small covers and thumbsnails, put non-breaking spaces in episodes table so lines will break gracefully, and make new pages for the first three strips of each episode.  Released what I've got now anyway.

January 25, 2007

• Converted Chapters 4 and 5 of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription, validated them, and checked them against Opera and Firefox.
• Scanned the Aeneid illustrations of the late, great American artist Gordon Laite.

January 24, 2007

• Converted The Ŧulańē to XHTML Strict and new transcription.  Checked all files against Opera and Firefox, validated them, and released them.
• Converted Chapter 2, About page, Time Line and Dramatis Personae of The Reborn Princess Caper to XHTML Strict and new transcription.  Created a Fix program in Perl to do most of that automatically, ran it against the old Chapter 3 until it was working right, then did the last few things by hand.  Chapter 3 is now done, and the other 16 chapters should go much faster.

January 23, 2007

• Converted appendix on The Ŧuliňgrai Alphabet to new transcription and XHTML Strict, and added more material.  Checked it against Opera and Firefox, validated it and uploaded it.

January 22, 2007

• Converted Battle of the Kings to XHTML Strict and converted old transcription to new model.  Checked all files against Opera and Firefox, validated them, and released them.
• Made a cover for The Reborn Princess Caper, also a picture of Marisa as a young girl and a custom divider for the chapters, from some files I collected while I was writing the book.  Went looking for some new paper-like backgrounds on the Web, found a bunch, and chose one to replace the old one.  Changed the chapter tabs in the table of contents and the chapters to echo the main color of the cover.  Converted table of contents and first chapter to XHTML Strict, checked them against Opera and Firefox, and validated them.  Didn't post them; the book will be updated on the web site when I've finished the conversion.

January 21, 2007

• Converted a few of the blurbs for unwritten stories and novels to XHTML Strict, messed around with them until I got them the way I wanted them.  Wrote a Perl program to do all 47 of them, ran the program.  Validated all the files.  Checked them against Opera and Firefox.
• Copied all the images from a Dover CD of Celtic designs to a new images directory of the blurbs directory.  Scaled about 22 of them down to 100 pixels high (width in original proportion) using GIMP.  Then I came to my senses and did the other 74 with a 5-line command-line macro that used the ImageMagick CONVERT command.  Work smart!  Not hard!  Idiot!
• Went through the Stories file, clicking on the name of each story or novel, finding and fixing transliteration errors and typos in stories.html and in the blurb files.
• Posted all the blurb files, all the new images, stories.html, and this file too: 96 files total.

January 20, 2007

• Finished Eagle section, including image manipulation.  Checked all eight files against Opera and Firefox, validated them, released them and all the images.

January 19, 2007

• Finished monthly backup (other two hard disks).  Installed other two spare hard disks in my computer.  Set up directory for Gaps in Essays.

January 18, 2007

• Began my monthly backup.  Filled first of three hard disks.

January 17, 2007

• Put each section of the Eagle article in its own file with only its own text.  Created a bottom section with links to all the files, correct copyright date, and correct href to display the validation banner.  Added that section to the end of every file.  Wrote in and edited some of the files.

January 16, 2007

• Corrected an error in the Table of Contents of Kirjasto, issue 5.  The lions used as a divider were tagged as sejant, instead of couchant.
• Found a mistake I'd made in the image tag of the validation banner I'm using on pages that have passed the XHTML Strict validation.  Used GREP to find all the pages that had the error.  Wrote and ran a short Perl program to fix all 110 files that had the bug and had been released already, and the 16 poems that have the tag in them but haven't been released yet.
• A few times I've noticed myself typing "weight" instead of "width" in HTML.  Ran GREP recursively on the whole site to see whether there were any instances of "weight" that should be "width".  No errors found.
• The CSS absolute positioning I used to make "Shining Like Crystal" display properly (see 11/28/2006, below) was making weird things happen when combined with the XHTML Strict template I'm using to convert poems.  Back to square one!  Used Google to search the web for tips on page borders.  Found a site with a tool for creating bordered pages as nested tables.  Ran the tool, copied the code, modified it heavily, and got "Shining Like Crystal" displaying properly without absolute positioning, and validated for XHTML Strict as well.
• Converted the last 16 poems to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, and validated them.
• Released all of the above — 126 files!
• Started new Eagle article.  Set up directory.  Wrote title page and "Me and My Eagle."

January 15, 2007

• Pared "A Life in the SCA" down to a mere "Curriculum Vitae" by removing photos and autobiographical ramblings.  Converted remaining pages to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, validated them, and published them.
• Converted 30 more poems ("Last Totality" through "The Shield", plus "Unhappy Ending" and "Villelmus et Donna Iterum Regent") to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, validated them, and posted them.

January 14, 2007

• Converted 15 more poems ("Fable" through "The Kiss") to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, validated them, and uploaded them.  That makes about half the poems done.

January 13, 2007

• Converted 18 more poems ("As Thou Sleepest" to "Elvira", in order by title) to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, and validated them.  Created new background for "Cloudburst."  Made a picture for "Cranes" from a photo I took.  Chose a background for "Dorogoy Dlinnoyu" from the internet.  Uploaded the lot.

January 12, 2007

• Converted the poems "30 Years Ago Today," "All of Our Days," "Along the Way," "Amica Amata," "Amor Eterno II," "Antaios," and "Arthur's Vow" to XHTML Strict, checked them against all four browsers, validated them, and uploaded them.

January 11, 2007

• Converted "Intelligent Life in the Milky Way Galaxy" to XHTML Strict, checked it against all four browsers, validated it, and posted it.

January 10, 2007

• Wrote an "About This Book" page for the Aeneid (in English), checked it against all four browsers, validated it, and uploaded it.
• Converted "Cultural Desert: The Ongoing Mass Extinction of Ideas" to XHTML Strict, checked it against all four browsers, validated it, and posted it.

January 9, 2007

• Back in May of 2006 I downloaded the Aeneid from the Gutenberg Project, stripped off the header and divided it into chapters, wrote a Perl program to copy the chapters into properly formatted HTML files, and wrote a Table of Contents file.
• Yesterday I converted the Contents file to XHTML Strict, checked it against all four browsers, and validated it.
• Today I did the same for the first Book.
• Changed the Perl FIX program so that it produced the new code, same as the first Book.  Ran the program to produce the first Book again, checked it against the browsers, and validated it.
• Ran the FIX program for the other 11 Books, checked them, and validated them.  Updated Essays page to point to new directory.  Released the whole thing to the internet!

January 8, 2007

• Converted the page that lists poems and songs by title, and the one that lists them by date.  Made sure they looked OK in all four browsers, validated them, and uploaded them.  This completes the conversion to XHTML Strict of all the top-level pages on my site!

January 7, 2007

• Converted Essays page, made sure it looked OK in all four browsers, validated it, and added the "validated" banner.
• Uploaded all the pages that reside in the root directory of the web site: Essays, Index, Introduction, Links, Sample Links, Sorry, Stories, What's New, and What's Old.
• DISPLAY:BLOCK —
• • The clickable areas on my web pages were "DIV"s nested inside of "A"s.  Why?  Because if you nest them the other way around, only the text inside the A is clickable.  The rest of the space does nothing when you click on it!  I see this a lot on web pages.
  • Unfortunately, it's against the rules to put a block-level element like DIV inside an inline element like A.  To pass validation, therefore, I replaced the DIV-A pairs with BUTTON tags that use JavaScript to redirect the user where he wants to go.
  • This looks fine and works fine on my own computer.  Out on the Internet, however, pop-up blockers see that JavaScript code and stop the redirection from occurring, unless the user goes to the trouble of adding my site to his list of trusted sites.  Most people are afraid to do something that complicated, and won't want to open up their security.  They'll just say, "Oh, well," and go on to another site.
  • I tried various complicated hacks, none of which worked quite right, most of which didn't work the same in all browsers, and all of which greatly decreased the readability of my code.  Then I discovered the CSS DISPLAY property.  DISPLAY:BLOCK turns an A tag into a block element!  Now I don't need a DIV at all!  A simple "A" tag, all by itself, can act like a button and send people where they want to go without using JavaScript and setting off pop-up blockers.
  • Changed all the buttons on all the pages that had them.  Changed main page to be simpler and friendlier.  Changed the logo and title blocks on all the pages except the main page to be perfectly consistent.  Re-validated all 9 files in the root directory.  Posted all of them again.
• Converted the page that lists poems and songs by category and by title, and the one that lists them by category and date.  Made sure they looked OK in all four browsers, validated them, and uploaded them.

January 6, 2007

• Woke up after 4 hours sleep bothered in my geekiness by the fact that the nested DIVs work, but semantically they're just blocks nested inside blocks; whereas OLs and ULs with their LI items are semantically lists.  That is, while nested DIVs can be made to look like a list, the semantic information of the structure is nil; but OLs and ULs, by definition, are lists.  Changed the 1/5/2007 item back to an elementary UL and decided that my only real objection was the empty line between date and the LI items.  Converted date to H2 and made MARGIN-TOP of UL -1EM!  This eliminates the empty line and makes dates stand out more than ever, which is good.
• Added H1 tags at the top of the 2007 items and the top of the 2006 items.  Not so important for this file; everything in What's New should be the current year, generally.  But the stuff in What's Old goes back quite a few years, and I transfer items from one to the other by moving blocks of text.  If these divisions are already present in the correct pages, I won't have to remember to add them later.
• Discovered that Opera makes the top-level bullets of a nested list solid discs, whereas Konqueror and Firefox correctly realize that it's a second-level item, because it's nested, and uses circles.  Fixed it by specifying circles for those items, even though only Opera needs to be told to get it right.
• Discovered that XHTML Strict requires a nested list to be inside an LI item of the outer list.  But when you do that, you get two bullets; one for the LI of the outer list, and one for the LI of the nested list.  Fixed it by specifying NONE for the outer bullets.
• Finished converting What's New page, made sure it looked OK in all four browsers, and validated it.
• Moved items older than July 2006 from What's New to What's Old.
• Converted What's Old, Sorry, Links, Sample Links, and Stories pages.  Made sure they looked OK in all four browsers, validated them, and added the "validated" banner to them.

January 5, 2007

• Finished conversion of What's New page, made sure it looked OK in all four browsers, validated it with online W3C tool, and added "validated" image.

January 4, 2007

• Wrote new Introduction page and made sure it looked OK in all four browsers.  Created small logo 2/3 the size of the one on the main page and used it in the Introduction.  Validated page as XHTML Strict using W3C tool and added "validated" image.
• Began converting What's New page.  Discovered that higher standard doesn't allow anything inside a UL tag except a LI tag; not even another UL!  Tried paragraphs, blockquotes, etc.; all insist on putting in blank lines where I don't want them to (between two block elements) or won't indent (inline elements).  Found a way to get things looking the way I like them, and the validator to pass them, using tables; but it's godawful complicated: hard to make, hard to read the source, and even more complicated if you want some list items to be indented further in.  However, that inspired a way to do it with nested DIVs that works nicely.

January 3, 2007

• Finished first stab at Stories page with new logo, XHTML strict, transcription, OK in all four browsers.  Not uploaded yet.
• Ran main page through W3C validation tool.  Found all sorts of things it wouldn't allow under XHTML Strict! 
• • For one thing, a block element like DIV can't appear inside an inline element like A.  But if I reverse them so that A is inside DIV, the whole plaque defined by the DIV won't send you where I want you to go when you click on it; only the actual words in the center of the plaque!  I ended up replacing the DIV and the A both with a BUTTON that uses JavaScript to redirect you.  Hopefully that will work on everyone's computer.  It does on mine, but I don't have JavaScript turned off or hobbled.  We'll see.
  • The buttons looked fine in Konqueror and Firefox, but in Opera they disappear off the edge of the screen when the width = 100%.  Adjusting the size down, I discovered that the text was centering on the right-hand edge of the button!  Ended up centering the text and making the buttons a fixed width, as if they were images, to appease Opera.
• Rewrote text on main page and ended up making it a separate Introduction page.  Main page is very short now.
• Downloaded banner showing that main page passed validation test, and added it to the page.

January 2, 2007

• Posted new What's Old page and new Sample Links page (new logo, XHTML strict, transcription, OK in all four browsers).

January 1, 2007

• Created new logo with GIMP, very large size (5000 x 1784) with transparent background, saved it as PNG file scaled down to 325 x 116.  Copied file to Windows box and checked it with Internet Explorer.  All fine except that transparent background shows up as white.  This turns out to be a well-known and long-standing bug in IE; the Windows version replaces transparency in PNG files with an opaque color.  Created a GIF file, but it was very ragged compared to the PNG file.  So I'm going to leave well enough alone; it looks fine under every other browser.  Uploaded new logo.
• Posted new What's New page with new logo.  OK in all 4 browsers except as noted above.
• Posted new main page (new logo, XHTML strict, transcription, OK in all four browsers).
• Same for the default page that comes up when a reader clicks on something that isn't done.
• Same for the Links page.

January 1, 2007 A.D. — Kalends of January, 2760 A.U.C.

My New Year's resolutions:

• 1. Convert whole site to (X)HTML strict.
  2. Convert whole site to new improved Ŧuliňgrai transcription.
  3. Make sure whole site looks the same whether viewed with Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, or even (shudder) Internet Explorer.
  4. Finish Crown of Starsuns.
  5. Get at least one chapter of Thrice Ended done.
  6. Add diagrams from my notes to both of the above.
  7. Fix the diagrams and Ŧuliňgrai quotes already in Thrice.

This site and its contents are Copyright © 2000-2008 by Green Sky Press.  All rights reserved.  Backgrounds and images are copyright by their respective authors, who retain all rights.

This page has been validated against XHTML Strict and viewed under Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer at a screen resolution of 1024 × 768.  If you find any bugs, please contact me at the e-mail address on the home page.