tag:www.annelyle.com,2009:/blog/1 2009-01-01T09:51:08Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.annelyle.com,2009:/blog//1.366 2009-01-01T09:41:38Z 2009-01-01T09:51:08Z

I just made the mistake of dipping into the archives of this blog to see what last year's New Year Resolution was. Oh dear... "I really only have one writing resolution for 2008 - to finish the second draft of...

Anne I just made the mistake of dipping into the archives of this blog to see what last year's New Year Resolution was. Oh dear... "I really only have one writing resolution for 2008 - to finish the second draft of "The Guiser". OK, so that was my resolution last year as well... The prospect of posting the same resolution for 2009 ought to be enough to motivate me :)" Apparently I was wrong! Well, I once again resolve to finish the second draft of this blasted novel. I only have another 80,000 or so words to write, which is less than 7000 a month, barely 220 a day - how hard can that be? *lol* tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.365 2008-12-31T13:41:55Z 2008-12-31T14:20:55Z

I've been thinking for some time that I might write some "serious" historical crime, seeing as I love the genre. Elizabethan would seem to be the obvious period: I have already done a lot of research on it, and it's...

Anne I've been thinking for some time that I might write some "serious" historical crime, seeing as I love the genre. Elizabethan would seem to be the obvious period: I have already done a lot of research on it, and it's popular with readers but (I hope) not too overcrowded. Naturally I want to avoid replicating an existing series, however, so I've been doing some reseearch online. Crime Thru Time, a website dedicated to the genre. The library there is an excellent resource for researching other authors' books - within an hour or so I had an extensive list of Elizabethan mystery series covering the past twenty-five years, with names and professions of the sleuths and in some cases the dates featured in the books (some required a bit more research on Amazon for plot details). What I have discovered so far is that the era I am writing about at the moment (1590s) is pretty well covered, perhaps because stories involving Shakespeare and the theatre are also popular. So, if I do write something, I will probably avoid this period. Quite what I will write and when, I haven't yet decided. Whatever it is, it will require a lot more research. I'm not terribly keen on writing cozy rural mysteries along the lines of Emerson's "Face Down" series. Something a tad grittier, bit more soft-boiled is more my style - which probably means London, politics and at least the occasional brush with historical figures. Hence I'm not going to start writing it any time soon. But by getting the ball rolling, I have something I can turn to when my work-in-progress starts getting me down...]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.362 2008-12-20T18:19:44Z 2008-12-20T19:04:02Z

I have a couple of freelance web development jobs coming up in the New Year, as well as needing to extend my own NaNoWriMo scoreboard system, so I've been investigating possible rapid application development software to get me up and...

Anne I have a couple of freelance web development jobs coming up in the New Year, as well as needing to extend my own NaNoWriMo scoreboard system, so I've been investigating possible rapid application development software to get me up and running with the least amount of effort. As you can perhaps guess from the corny title of this post, I've chosen CakePHP, a clone of Ruby on Rails in the language I already use for this site. My new project is called Merlin, because my husband reckons it's black magic that would have had me burned at the stake in earlier times... test.annelyle.com/merlin - the public version is likely to lag behind the latest code, because it's easier to develop on my laptop, at least at weekends.]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.361 2008-12-16T17:27:03Z 2008-12-16T17:33:19Z

Today I finally achieved browsing Nirvana - a way to get Opera 9 for Mac to use Speed Dial as your home page so you can jump straight to it from the current page, instead of having to open a...

Anne http://www.xs4all.nl/~vangeijt/opera/dndbuttons.html A silly little thing, but it makes life so much easier!]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.360 2008-12-13T10:35:37Z 2008-12-13T10:42:23Z

I finally got Leopard installed at about 7.30 this morning, after a four-hour struggle (yes, I was up at 3am fixing my computer!). It was only when I found I couldn't install anything - Leopard, Tiger, Kubuntu - that I...

Anne anything - Leopard, Tiger, Kubuntu - that I began to suspect a hardware problem... To cut a very long story short, I managed to get the MacBook to boot from an external drive (a DVD-RW that I bought a while back) and install Tiger, then I repeated the process with Leopard. Now (fingers crossed!) I have a happy laptop again, and am reinstalling my mail, favourite apps, etc. Fortunately nearly all the software I use can be downloaded from the internet, so if it is my optical drive that's the problem, it's one I can live with until I can afford repairs. I am soo-ooo relieved - the prospect of having to visit the Genius Bar at our local Apple store, on the penultimate Saturday before Christmas, no less, was not an appealing one!]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.359 2008-12-12T17:23:55Z 2008-12-12T17:46:44Z

I've been having a very frustrating day trying to get Leopard installed on my MacBook - or rather, trying to get it set up the way I want it. See, I used the beta of Bootcamp on Tiger to install...

Anne I've been having a very frustrating day trying to get Leopard installed on my MacBook - or rather, trying to get it set up the way I want it. See, I used the beta of Bootcamp on Tiger to install Kubuntu on a separate partition, but now I have an old desktop set up with Kubuntu for working-from-home use, I decided to reclaim my hard drive. Turned out that Bootcamp, even on Leopard, can't cope with anything more complicated than a straight OSX-only-to-dual-booting-Windows scenario, but I discovered that the drive could be repartitioned using Disk Utility. Or not. First, DU refused to remove either of my two Linux partitions. On the advice of a Linux forum, I used my Kubuntu install disk to delete the two partitions, then went back into OSX. Now there was only one partition, but DU was still complaining that it couldn't do it. After more Googling I discovered that the Disk Utility program in Leopard is in fact borked, at least the partitioning stuff is. Yet more Googling revealed that the best thing to do was to use a Tiger install disk to do the repartitioning. OK - but that left me with a wiped drive and a Tiger disk stuck in my MacBook's optical drive! Eventually I found a solution to that one too (hold down the trackpad button when rebooting), and I was finally able to attempt an installation. That should have been an end to it. Except that now my MacBook has decided that it isn't going to read the slightly scratchy secondhand copy of Leopard that I had bought. Talk about frustrating! As a result I have spent my entire Friday afternoon pissing about with installation disks, and I'm still not done. This is going to require a curry and a big glass of wine. Or several... (Written on my EeePC whilst I waited for yet another installation attempt to work!) tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.358 2008-12-08T19:19:51Z 2008-12-08T19:25:43Z

To be honest, I was never into Thundercats - I preferred He-Man (Skeletor was so camp, and Prince Adam's disguise was about as thin as Clark Kent's!). However I needed a title for my Mac OSX upgrade, and since I...

Anne To be honest, I was never into Thundercats - I preferred He-Man (Skeletor was so camp, and Prince Adam's disguise was about as thin as Clark Kent's!). However I needed a title for my Mac OSX upgrade, and since I didn't sleep well last night, I fell back on cliché. Bite me. Anyways... I've decided to bring forward my IT-fest by a couple of weeks, because if anything goes wrong, I'd rather be able to take my MacBook into work and pick the brains of my colleagues, rather than sitting at home for a week with a poorly laptop. So, starting this week, I'm going to be backing up everything in sight ready for the Big Brain Transplant... tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.357 2008-12-06T17:26:56Z 2008-12-07T21:31:37Z

Yes, I know NaNoWriMo is over - but my personal deadline is this weekend, and I have had a lot more editing to do. I finally got the last bits of Act One of "The Guiser" finished this afternoon, and...

Anne Final word count: 44,410 words! I have to confess to being very pleased with the way the story has worked out - having a bunch of good people to push me into improving my work makes a big difference. I don't know how often they visit this blog, but thanks guys! ]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.355 2008-11-30T06:42:08Z 2008-12-07T21:26:24Z

With the big project over (or at least, on to the bug-fixing stage), I managed a big push on the writing front and passed my target comfortably :D Goal: 30,000 Done: 32,740!! I still have a couple of chapters to...

Anne Goal: 30,000 Done: 32,740!! I still have a couple of chapters to revise, but I'm on schedule to hand the new stuff over next weekend. Now I feel fully justified in going to my friend Rebecca's birthday party this evening :)]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.356 2008-11-26T19:45:20Z 2008-12-07T19:58:52Z

The big development project at work finally went live last week, and the end of NaNoWriMo is in sight, so I felt in need of a reward to keep my spirits up. Lately I've taken to using my ordinary fountain...

Anne Vintage Fountain Pens, Inc selling refurbished pens at rather more affordable prices (despite the American-sounding name, the company is based in Buckinghamshire!). The downside of a vintage pen is that you are stuck with the nib that it comes with, but luckily I found a very nice one with a fine/medium nib, so I snapped it up immediately! It's a Conway Stewart 75, circa 1952, with a blue marble finish and 14ct gold nib. Here are the photos from the seller's website: Is that gorgeous or what?]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.354 2008-11-23T20:36:41Z 2008-12-07T19:40:48Z

Distracted by this week's ISP disaster, I have been completely failing to keep track of my exact word count from day to day. So this week's total is only a near estimate... Goal: 23,000 Done: ~22, 750 So, almost back...

Anne Goal: 23,000 Done: ~22, 750 So, almost back on track!]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.349 2008-11-21T14:00:55Z 2008-11-22T09:18:03Z

Well, I'm up and running again after the sudden disappearance! Turns out that I was paying for hosting on a debit card that expired at the end of October, and I didn't get any notices from my ISP. Although they...

Anne Well, I'm up and running again after the sudden disappearance! Turns out that I was paying for hosting on a debit card that expired at the end of October, and I didn't get any notices from my ISP. Although they are generally very good, there's no way on their site to check your contact details, so I suspect they had an old email address for me. On the plus side, their support service was very prompt in answering my enquiry and getting me back online. A huge relief, especially as all my personal email comes via that account! tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.353 2008-11-15T17:09:57Z 2008-11-22T09:17:25Z

This week has been a little better. I'm still behind, but no further than I was last week. My working pattern hasn't been as linear as I had planned, either; as the new opening has developed, I have gone back...

Anne Goal: 15,000 Done: 13,630]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.352 2008-11-08T18:48:48Z 2008-11-22T09:07:56Z

Things got off to a slow start, predictably, not helped by our elderly cat dying mid-week (something I'd been expecting for a long time, but still a bit of a shock when it happened). However I've been plodding away, writing...

Anne Goal for the week so far: 8000 Done: 6409]]> tag:www.annelyle.com,2008:/blog//1.350 2008-11-02T18:38:47Z 2008-11-22T08:50:18Z

I've been having a little difficulty in keeping track of the action in my multiple-PoV story, so I was very pleased to discover a new piece of software called Aeon Timeline. In fact it's so new that I'm trying out...

Anne Aeon Timeline. In fact it's so new that I'm trying out the very first beta release! The aim of the software is to fill a gap in the market. Existing timeline software is mainly aimed at people who have a known, usually historical, timeline that they want to illustrate with pretty graphics. Aeon, on the other hand, is aimed squarely at writers and worldbuilders, who need to be able to adjust the timeline as their plot ideas develop. So, key features include the ability to slide an event along the timeline and see the characters' ages change in relation to it. Later versions will support user-defined calendars - ideal for fantasy and SF, but also useful for historical novels and those set in non-Western cultures - and hopefully "fuzzy" dates, since we writers often only need vague definitions like "a summer evening in 1815". Most of those features aren't in place yet - this really is a very early beta release - but it's already stable enough for basic use. I'm finding it very useful in logging my alternate history events and making sure that characters are plausible ages at key moments, and I look forward to the finished product with keen anticipation.]]>