End of year reflection

In a personal sense, 2016 was a fine year. I meet a new group of fellow writers. We traveled. I became a little more serious about becoming a published writer. This included redeveloping http://www.pibweb.com and getting stories published by Artgaze Magazine (http://artgazemagazine.com/2016/10/10/short-story-the-dungeon-competition-by-lynn-alford/ and in the magazine http://artgazemagazine.com/2016/10/15/artgaze-magazine-rebirth-is-here/)

In another sense, it was a less than stellar year. While every year sees the death of celebrities, this year seemed to take a few more that I cared about than some do. Plus the US election was the cause of a lot of angst. So glad that I live in Australia where election campaigns have short time frames.

The Weird World of Web Stats

Web site stats have always been problematic. For pretty much the entire time that web sites/servers started keeping statistics, there have been those trying to exploit them.

This blog, as an example, doesn't have that many real people per day visit it. And yet the blogger stats page says it gets 200+ hits a day. Most of this would be various spammer hits, bots that visit the page hoping that either a) you are silly enough to publish your referrers or b) that you will use the links left behind by the referrers. Bad news people, I am not EVER following those links.

Now for the actual sites, it gets interestingly really weird. My current host offers AW Stats. I also have my site set to use Google analytics. The two of them paint very different pictures. Some of that is to be expected. AW Stats has access to the log - the real hits to my site. While it tries hard, it does have a difficult time separating all the spiders/bots that visit the site from the real visitors. So it over estimates the number of people who visit.

Analytics, on the other hand, under counts. It relies on javascript to send information to google, so every hit without javascript is not counted. The true number of visitors would be a bit higher than analytics says but not as high as AW stats.

But where the story gets really wild are the referral spam. There are basically two sets, those who target normal logs/stats and those who target your analytics.

I do understand why there are those who target normal logs. Some web sites publish their stats, you can find AW stats out there. So any referral spammer in those logs might get their links published with the stats. Since my stat page is private, it makes little difference to me. I wish that they'd stop but that's not likely to happen this decade.

I do not understand why anyone specially targets analytics. I've had sites with fake languages show up in the language area. I've had sites that I know don't link to mine show up as referrers. I've even had to block some sites that used my tracking code on their page and showed up as one of my "most hit" pages. To me, that's just weird.

In particular though, the referrers that show up in the AW stats are mostly different to those that show up in the analytic stats. There are a few that are in both and a few that are ACTUAL referrers to my site. For the most part, they are different.

As November comes to a close

I have won NaNoWriMo 2016. Not by a lot of words, though I can add a bit to my count by the end of the day.

It's an interesting process, trying to make yourself write 50,000 words in 30 days. I usually have a few really good days where progress is easy and a few really bad ones where each word is a struggle. The average day has good and bad moments.

I may or may not participate in 2017. At this point, I have 6 novels written. Only one of them is truly publisher ready. So my real goal for 2017 is to get at least two more novels to the point where I can let others read them.

I may also start a search for an agent. While I have a list of publishers who

1. Accept fantasy novels
2. Take unsolicited manuscripts
3. Have an entirely online process for them

It would be nice to have an agent. Granted, they take a cut but they should be able to find markets for manuscripts.

Reading your novel to an audience

Having read some articles on how to read your work to an audience, here are my favourite tips.

1. Practice the piece before hand. Get a feel for your reading. 
2. Remember to smile at your audience and look at them from time to time.
3. Speak slowly. You want to give the audience time to process your words. It's not a race. 
4. Don't mumble either. Your audience wants to hear your words, speaking too fast or mumbling isn't making it easy for them.
5. Give meaning to your words as you read. Emphasis some points, give characters their own voices.
6. Pause as you read and don't forget to breath.
7. Use body language to help emphasis points.
8. Respect any time limits imposed at the venue.

As a personal note, one of the reasons that you may read too quickly or forget to breath is that you have a fear of public readings. I had this problem at one stage. I could practice my talk and have it take 8 minutes when I was alone and 6 minutes when I had an audience. Since talking in front of an audience was part of the assessment of the course I was doing, I had to keep doing it.

One day, the fear was gone. The fact that I was standing in front of an audience didn't bother me in the least and it's never bothered me since. So if you find that you are really nervous when talking in front of a group, you do have to remember that they want to hear what you have to say. Plus the practice may well help you get over the fear at some point.

From Cindy Reed - 10 tips for author readings, Justine Graykin - Tips on reading your work aloud,  Writer's Relief blog post

For more, search for "reading your work to an audience"

Why I want to use a traditional publisher

When I first started writing and looking into publishing, a couple of decades ago, you either went with a traditional publisher or you went to a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers had a bad reputation and if you were serious about your work, you just didn't consider it.

That was some years ago and these days, self publishing is much more respectable. There's many places to go as well; Amazon has CreateSpace, there's Smashwords, and much much more.

But I would still like to go with a traditional publisher. Why?

Mostly, so I can work on writing and let someone else worry about

1. Covers
2. Layout
3. Editing
4. Distribution
5. Promotion

I'm certainly willing to do my share when it comes to editing and book promotion. I'd like input in the cover art however good covers are for graphic artists/designers. But I just don't really have the network in place to self-promote effectively. Nor do I have the confidence required to promote.

There are downsides to traditional publishing. It's simply going to take longer for the book to be available. I will see rejection letters on a regular basis. 

I may seek an agent, just because they are professionals that know the publishing market. They get a share which they will have earned.

It is a long road though. No matter what, I will try.

The novel is going well

Right now, it could easily be mistaken for a historical novel based on ancient Rome. There are gladiators, temples and a pantheon of gods/goddesses.

Soon it should switch to being fantasy. Namely, a goddess is about to make an appearance in the novel and after that, nothing else will quite be the same.

---

In other news, this blog is suffering from severe referral spam that makes it look like it's getting a lot of hits. Annoying (and never ever hit referral spam urls in your blogger reports. It could get ugly.)

And the US is officially insane after the election results. I just don't know how that was allowed to happen.

New November - New novel

NaNoWriMo is once again upon us.

I have spent my usual amount of prep time which is nearly none. I'm taking an idea that was a short story and expanding on the basic idea.

Hoping to keep my calendar green - and write the minimum words per day at least.

Why oh why?

After I moved my web site to a new host, one of the things I set up was for one email address to be a catch all.

Once that was set, I found that someone has been using the domain when setting up facebook accounts. Lots and lots of facebook accounts with a female first names.

I'm not sure what the point is. As far as I can tell, the accounts can't be used, you need to confirm the email address with facebook before the account can be used.

So, the domain will now bounce any such messages back to facebook. They aren't valid and they aren't useful.

No web site today

So, my host had the ultimate nightmare scenario happen. A script to update a service ran overnight and deleted some key files. Now some of their shared services are down and my site is one of the victims.

Of course, everybody knows that you should be careful about running updates. But things slip through and the company will be much more cautious about automatic scripts running over night.

In the meantime, I have a dead site. Not that pibweb.com was being terribly active of late but this is not going to improve things at all.

My Mac is back

My poor Mac stopped working a week ago. Given that the Mac is my primary writing computer, this is a worry just before NaNoWriMo.

The local repair shop found that the hard drive had died. So they replaced the drive and installed the base IOS.

Fortunately, I was using Time Machine to back up the Mac. So it's nearly back to normal.

Without the Mac, NaNo would be much harder. This is not an excuse now.

Download the magazine

The Rebirth issue of ArtGaze magazine is now available via GumRoad.

It is worth noting that I know 2 of the other 3 authors with short stories in this issue. Also that they have set this issue to pay as you like. So you can download it for free, or throw in a few dollars to keep the magazine going.

The last story in the issue is mine - The Gladiator. If you haven't gotten around to reading it before, now might be a good time.

ArtGaze publishes two of my stories

It is a local art magazine. One of the stories is due out in the next few days as part of the rebirth issue.

The other story is out now on the ArtGaze blog.

Nice to see that a story is appreciated and published somewhere outside of my web site pibweb.com/story/

Now, for my next trick, getting someone to buy a story.

How to annoy a web site owner

It was very simple. Someone embedded an 100 k image from on old game on a forum post.

Because it was embedded, the image was being served from my site.  In two days, it had about 4,000 to 5,000 downloads. While my site does have the bandwidth to serve it for a while, I'm not inclined to be nice when there are no visitors from the forum to my site. I can see that all the hits were just the image - absolutely no one visited my site from that. Not even the review the image is linked to.

So the image has been renamed. When things settle back down, I'll change the name back.

The trick is definitely that I just don't want to find my site runs out of bandwidth for a month because someone embeds a game image. I would not care if they made a copy of it. It's an old game, it's an old review and there's nothing particularly tricky about the screenshot.

More NaNo thoughts

One of the things that I consider important for my NaNo success is my NaNo writing buddy - Cami.

We both use Skype and send each other quick texts throughout the NaNo season.

We encourage each other, try to shame each other, and generally motivate each other to write enough words to stay on track. We've done word wars against each other. We ask each other random questions about plots.

We also complain about characters going off on tangents, how much we don't want to write today, why on earth do we do this to ourselves every year.

None of this may sound like much but it is part of my NaNoWriMo process and part of the reason that I've actually succeeded every year. The novels are never completed in that month, and they'll certainly need much editing at some point but they are 50,000 + words along by the end of the month.

November approaches

So does the annual event National Novel Writing Month.

It turns out that I'm addicted to this challenge. You would think have several novels that need editing would be enough for me. But no, I can't resist the call of NaNoWriMo.

Some years, I do little prep at all. I go into the challenge with one or more main characters in my head. A basic idea of what the story should be but little more than that.

In 2012, I had a story line that I'd been posting to tumblr that I decided was part of a much bigger story. So that year, I had some of the world worked out and a clearer picture of the main character than usual.

This year is similar. Earlier in the year, I wrote a short story "The Gladiator". A couple of people remarked that they were interested in what happens next. Expanding this to a novel gives me the opportunity to better develop the back stories of the characters and then send them off to change the world. So, I have characters and I know how the first part of the story goes.

Local writing group

While everyone thinks that writers seal themselves away and rarely come out of their office, the reality can be more complicated. You need time to recharge and contact with people

Though they have been around for some time, it was only earlier this year that I discovered a local writing group. Better, they are a speculative fiction writing group which means they write similar content to mine.

It's good because there are fortnightly meetings, writing prompts, discussions and feedback on projects.

So, I can recommend finding a local writing group. If you can't find a specific one that covers the sort of writing you do, there should be a general writing group somewhere in the area.

This story is proving tricky

It's based on a dream. By the time I woke up, all that I could recall of the dream was a magic cauldron producing thousands of maggots, melting symbols off the cauldron which also caused the sorceress who was using it to be sealed into a golden helmet.

It makes for an interesting story premise and I'm sure I'll sort it out at some point. But so far, I'm on the second attempt at writing it and I'm not happy with the result yet. So I will probably finish this version and then try again.

Weird for me, usually by this point, I should have at least some story that I can work with. Not this time.

Late Night Encounter - a short story

Jen glanced at her phone as the train pulled into her station. “I have got to stop agreeing to impossible timelines,” she thought to herself as she realised that the time was 10 minutes to midnight. No matter what bonuses the boss promised, it just wasn’t worth the late nights spent in the office. A hastily eaten meal at her desk wasn’t helping her mood.


There was no one in the station when Jen descended from the train. She found the lack of sound to be far more disturbing than the usual bustle of activity. With a light shiver, she rubbed her hands over her arms. The thin business jacket she had on wasn’t enough to keep the chill from her bones. Why did places insist on keeping the AC at arctic temperatures all year round?


Jen heard the clatter as the train doors automatically closed. She could hear the noise of the train pulling away from the station and for a moment, the noise of the wheels scrapping along the track was all she could hear. The rumble of the train grew louder as it picked up speed and then started to fade as it sped away from the station.


“Is there anyplace sadder than a station with no one around?” Jen pondered. She pulled her bag to a more comfortable position as she walked through the deserted station. Heels were seldom the most subtle sounding footwear but sharp click of her heels echoed strangely as she walked. She crossed her arms and hunched over. It seemed even colder than it had been a minute ago. Jen walked faster to warm up, her heels making even more noise against the tile floor.


“Home. If it weren’t so late, I’d take a bath before bed. As it is, I’ll have to be up again in 5 hours to start another day,” thought Jen. “At least home is close. I don’t know how long I’d have to wait for a taxi.” The clatter of her heels seemed to be even noisier than before, it echoed all around her. Jen frowned in exasperation. She wished her job didn’t require heels but her boss had made it clear that they were.


Her stride slowed when the station lights behind her suddenly went off. “Annoying,” she thought. “Hey! Can’t you wait for me to get out, please?” she called. How annoying was it that she said please to an unseen janitor? Worse, there was no acknowledgement of her request but at least the lights stopped going out.


She resumed walking to the exit. The combination of having no lights left on at the platform and the weird echoing of her footsteps was beginning to spook Jen. She could swear that each click was echoed dozens of times. Jen looked from left to right. The shadows of all the equipment seemed normal but there was something that Jen didn’t like about it. “It’s late. There’s no one here. That’s all. There’s nothing to be worried about,” Jen told herself. Her mind darted toward stories of women being abducted from lonely places at night and a shiver went up and down her spine. She looked around again to reassure herself that there was no one else around.


Jen instinctively held her bag tighter. She breathed a small sigh of relief as her hand touched the door handle. “I didn’t think I’d ever reach the exit tonight. It’s never seemed to be quite so far.”


She was surprised to find she was still cold. It had been a balmy evening when she left the city. “I wish I’d worn the heavier jacket. Though my feet would still be frozen,” she muttered to herself. She was so engrossed in that thought that she failed to notice the car behind her until the driver honked the horn when he was just a few meters away.


The young men laughed when Jen noticeably jumped at the sound of the horn. Then the driver put his foot down and the car roared off into the distance.


Jen halted, her heart pounding hard in her chest. “Bastards,” she said. She waited for a moment, wondering what she could do if the car went around the block. She was still two blocks from home, there was no way to get there quickly enough. Jen breathed in deeply, if the car came back, there were a few trees that she could duck behind. Her heart rate slowed and she exhaled.


With a bang, the street light closed to her went out. Her heart rate resumed its frantic pace. “If I click my heels together, will I get home Auntie Em?” With a small sigh, Jen resumed the walk home.


A few steps later, Jen looked around, frowning. It sounded as though she was still in the station, the echoes of her clicking heels resounding through the empty building. But she was outside now, there was no way that sounds should still be echoing.


Jen looked all around. She didn’t see anyone nearby but something was off. It was like somewhere under the trees, something weird was there. But with the dim lights, she couldn’t make anything out. She set off again, this time at the fastest walk that she could maintain in her heels. Her heart was thudding painfully in her chest, her breath was in short puffs.


Jen kept looking behind her, trying to see what was making all the clicking noise. She was rewarded this time with a glimpse of a head. “A dog? That head would be almost even with my knee.” The dog had strange ears though, so long and thin.


She took another look and then Jen began to run instead of walk. That was no dog, dogs had ears and whatever the hell was following her had antennae. Also it had a lot of legs. She didn’t count but what she had seen was definitely more than four legs.


Jen cursed her high heels as she ran. They were awkward as all hell and yet she dared not pause to take them off. Not when that thing was racing along behind her. She stumbled for an instant and sprang up again. She was gasping for breath, her heart pounding in her chest. It seemed loud enough to Jen that she was surprised no one opened a door to find out what was wrong.


Jen would have sighed with relief when she was only two houses away from home, if only she had any breath to spare. As it was, there was a painful stitch in her side making it harder to inhale. Only the thought of the horror behind her kept her running at all. “Just a little further,” Jen encouraged herself. “Keep running just a little further and I’ll be safe at home.”


Jen started digging through her bag as she ran, searching frantically for the keys. Would she have time enough to unlock the door? A quick glance behind showed that the creature was closer than ever. Could she hurt it with the keys, at least a little? Jen shuddered at the thought of being close enough to hit it with keys. All those legs! The body of the beast looked scaly and not soft.


Jen had nearly reached the path leading to her door when another car drove down the street. The creature made a hideous shriek at the sudden light and vanished into the hedge next door. Jen dashed up the stairs and unlocked her door with a feeling of relief. Home at last.

My new endeavour - Inkshares

I've been thinking about how to promote some of my novels that aren't likely to be accepted by a traditional publisher.

Then one of our local writing group started talking about inkshares.com. Think of a kickstarter for novels. If your novel can gain enough interest, Inkshares will act as a traditional publisher.

For my first Inkshares project, I decided to put up the first of my NaNoWriMo novels, currently titled "The Weather Maker".

When I first was thinking about the story I wanted to write, I was thinking along the lines of the classic fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" in which the heroine has to travel to the four corners of the globe. By the time that I had written the first part of the story, it had transformed into something different.

Check out "The Weather Maker" on inkshares. Please follow the novel or follow my profile if all my writing interests you.

The problem with a long holiday

Is simply trying to get back into the rhythm of things. We were gone for over a month. Now back for several days and my brain still refuses to concentrate on things properly.

I should be writing.
I should be editing.
I should be sketching.

I should not be spending all my time mucking about with mobile games and reading web stuff.

Sheesh.

Committing to writing a novel - some thoughts

I'm a veteran of NaNoWriMo - I've participated every year since 2011. I have also 'won' the challenge every time.

1. Commit to writing every day. Set a minimum word goal per day and do your best to exceed it. To write 50,000 words in 30 days requires 1,666 words a day.
2. A first draft is really just getting the basic story out of your head. There will be mistakes. Ignore them for now.
3. It's all right to jump in your timeline to scenes that are more complete in your head. Just be sure to mark areas that you want to come back to.
      In Scrivener, I mark sections that I'm skipping or are really rough with a bright pink background.
      I mark sections that are okay but need to be moved at a later date with a blue background.
4. Keep writing every day until you have completed the first draft.
     A well known phenomena is that at some point, you'll be convinced that your novel is the most pointless one to ever exist. KEEP WRITING. Stephen King threw Carrie in the trash at one point - his wife convinced him to keep with it.
5. Set the novel to the side when the first draft is done. You need to let the first frenzy of writing calm down.
6. Now, you have to commit to editing the novel. Remember, it was a first draft. There will be problems; those scenes that you skipped, things that need to move, things that need to change. Word counts are no longer as important - promise yourself to spend at least some amount of time per day editing.
7. You need to remember to edit the entire novel. Don't just polish the first chapter and call the job done. 
8. Once you have done a basic edit, you can let others read your work. Get feedback and do the changes.
9. Once you have done all of this, congratulations - you have achieved novel. :D

Writing is easy

But editing is hard.

Well, that's how it seems at the moment. Editing a novel takes far longer for me than the first draft did. I should really concentrate on making the critical changes and then ship one novel off to a publisher. Just so I don't have to see it.

Been trying to write a short story but it needs polish before publish.

Why I don't use outlines - a reflection

I just noticed the page of "outline" for my novel "The Hunt for the GinGunGyn".

By the time I wrote the novel, the down and out thief had become a street orphan with a stutter.

The female detective character had a far worse time than originally anticipated.

And this

Section 3Here is where the three characters start intersecting

Is the outline version of a major novel section.

Me and trying to outline the action in a novel before writing - it just doesn't work for me.

Restrooms and the law

Apparently in the US, a lot of states have decided that it's necessary to dictate what restroom you should be using according to the genitals you happen to be born with.

Maybe this is because many of those representatives/senators are male and they fear a trans seeing their genitals when they pee.

However, females don't have that problem. Stalls solve it. There is nothing to see, women go into a stall fully dressed. They come out, fully dressed.

In fact, once many years ago, I shared a public toilet on a University campus with a guy. Definitely male, I saw him dash in. However, he was there because he needed a toilet. From the almost immediate noise/smell, he needed that quite quite badly.

As long as everyone in the restroom is in there to take care of business, I see no problem. Legislation isn't needed. Acceptance is. And more unisex restrooms.

The Muse

Some artists rave on about their Muse. You can tell it’s meant to be with a capital M. 

Their Muse helps them soar to new heights. Without their Muse present, they can’t work.

Let me tell you, my Muse is a damned bitch. 

She never shows up when I’m hoping she will. I sit at the keyboard, slowly typing away. The daily word count struggle as ten words become twenty and twenty reach 100.

It’s about the time that the word count loses importance that the bitch Muse shows up. She wants to take credit for all the words. 

But I won’t give her the satisfaction. I worked hard on those first words of the day. They took real effort. 

And no bitch Muse is going to claim credit for them.

The next time she shows up, I am chaining her to the desk.

Still writing

The Fallen is getting closer and closer to needing a new round of comments from other readers.

But I'm not doing the sensible thing of concentrating on finishing one book at a time. My brain is determined to also try to get NaNoWriMo 2011, The Weather Maker, into shape for a first round of readers.

Why, brain, why?

When writing becomes fun

Well, this is in my view. Other writers may disagree.

But for me, it's when the characters come to life and there are suddenly scenes in the novel that you never anticipated. They can spring out of nowhere and they DEMAND to be left in the novel.

My first NaNo waited until 12 chapters in before one character suddenly told another that he loved them. It was supposed to just be a "Magic User Off to Find His Skills" quest type novel. Romance had never crossed my mind. But no, one of them had to fall in love. Over time, the other responds.

I think what I like about this is just that it keeps the characters from feeling flat. If they suddenly show desires or motives of their own, then they are much more realistic.

Who would I expect to disagree? Well, I tend to only have the vaguest plot outline in mind. A lot of my writing is filling in the blanks between distance plot points. I know a lot of writers like to outline everything. They like to have a solid working structure. They probably don't like characters that jump out of line because it's going to ruin their structure.

Huzzah for new projects

So the other day, I finally came up with a new project for my web site.

I decided to create a little insult generator, based of the works of Shakespeare.

First decision, how to do it. There were several possible options including hard coding all the quotes (bad!) and making a database for the quotes. The database idea seemed more complex than necessary.

So, the quotes are in a small xml file. Easy to edit, portable content, no problems there.

The page uses PHP to read in the xml file, pick out a few lines via random numbers and spit them out to the page. So in less than a day, I had the new project coded up and some insults added. The main delay has been reading a couple of plays looking for the insults.

Creativity is hard work

An essay

It’s really something that you want to do for yourself. Or sometimes, it something that you need to do for yourself.

I’ve gotten a bit behind in the sketch-a-day project. The last date is 1 March and that was after a couple of days of catching up with 4 sketches in one day instead of a sketch a day. But it is hard for me to come up with a subject to do each day. I’ll try to do some today though and start catching up.

Writing is also hard work. I’m currently editing The Fallen. I still intend to submit it to a publisher by the end of the year. It needs to be a bit longer - 100,000 words for a first fantasy book seems to be expected.

While working on this, I’ve realised that I can’t worry about if anyone will ever publish it. I can’t worry if anyone else will ever read it (though some people have read first draft versions, unlike ALL the rest of my novels). 

I need to write this novel (and all the others) to the best of my ability. I need to tell this story as best as I can. I need to be able to take pride in my own work, because there’s never any guarantee that others will appreciate it.

Web site drivel

I've put a couple of new stories on my web site.

Little Blue Riding Hood
The Comics and the Theft

I've also noticed that the number of hits related to the hacked version of my site is finally starting to drop away.

Also, if you have a normal web site, beware of installing WordPress. I see regular probes on my site for WordPress directories. The only reason for those hits would be to attempt to hack WordPress once it's found.

On this new service, it's easy to install WordPress. But it wasn't high on my list to add to start with and now...no. Just no.

Decided health check week this week

I've been putting it off for far too long.

Today - it's off to the Breast Cancer screening clinic. A free service for women of a certain age.

Later this week - the doctor's turn. Get anything checked out that she wants to check as well as a couple of things that I want to talk about.

Since I was recently at the dentist - this will mean I've done all the normal checkups and will have nothing to worry about.

Or so I hope. We'll have to see about that.

Web site revamp is complete

I decided that all the game review pages were going to have to be updated. That was 133 game reviews plus about 4 to 6 general game pages. No, I didn't count. The reviews are in an unordered list, I just made it ordered for a couple of minutes so I'd know.

The game reviews - well, some of those games are still around. Maybe via ebay, a friend ditching old games, GOG.com or on a new device. So it's actually possible for people to look for reviews of them.

The current fight is to discourage the spiders from looking for content that was put on my site by the hackers. It took me ages to notice because I hadn't really been paying attention to the site for a couple of years. It wasn't until google webmaster tools sent me a "Your site has serious problems" type email before I found out. The extent to which the site had been compromised was serious.

Fortunately, I had been thinking of moving to a new host and had a site backup from when I was actively maintaining it. The crap was left behind. The good stuff was moved.

So, I'm giving myself a day or two off and then going to try writing new short stories for the site. It's time to be known as a writer of fiction, not a reviewer of games.

Ah - checking the stats

The site build provided by Digital Pacific for the new pibweb.com includes two stat programs.

They give different results. One strictly gives stats by the page. The other can show hits for individual images as well as pages.  So I discovered that my most downloaded item is actually a Sims 2 screenshot. Hmm.

The other thing I am spending far too much time on is the error log. My previous site had been hacked into :( and some of the errors are references to hacker scripts that had been on the site at some time. But there are pages that I've moved and an entire section that I've simply not uploaded to this new site.

The unmoved section was software reviews. Given the software reviews are a decade or more old, those reviews are invalid since you wouldn't want the versions reviewed.

Game reviews are still on the site. The games would not have had newer versions and much patching like the normal software would have. I have no idea how hard they'd be to get on ebay or something. And some have since been ported to new systems - like Monkey Island is on IoS now. Still the same game!

On acting and drawing

We went to the Doctor Who festival held in Sydney last year. It was a lot of fun and I'd certainly do it again if it comes back.

One of the sessions we attended had audience Q&A time. An audience member asked Peter Capaldi if he thought acting was an innate talent or something that you could learn.

He compared acting to drawing. A lot of people think they can't draw so they don't try.

But if you want to learn it, you can do so by drawing every day. You may not end up as a great artist but you will be able to draw. His conclusion, acting is also something that you can do by practicing.

I don't know about acting, but the drawing thing is dead on. I find that many people insist they can't draw and so they don't draw. I actually didn't think I could draw either. But after doing a round of 30 days of sketching, I went from pathetic to all right. More practice and I've gotten better. Much better in fact.

Right now, I'm filling in a sketch a day journal. Each day is a small sketch. I spend maybe 5-10 minutes on them. By the end of a year, I expect that I'll be that much better. And even more so when I take my time drawing on a larger surface than those small sketches.

Finally - web site revamp is live

It took a bit longer than I hoped it might but the new version of pibweb.com is live.

There is a lot of old content that doesn't have the new look, but it's also not linked to the current site. I'll keep an eye on usage for a bit, if it seems to attract too much attention, it has to either get an update or be deleted.

It is nice to finally have a clean modern looking site again. Also, the links are all in date since all pages with old links are part of the 'ignore it unless too popular' category.

I've been on the web a long time

I've just been trying to reconstruct my web site history a little. According to one version of the home page - it was started in late 1994.  That's old. Not quite the absolute start of the web but the web was still new.

The first versions were personal pages attached to the university web site I worked for. The wayback machine doesn't actually find any pages prior to 2001 but I'd actually long since moved the site to the second home it would have.

The second home was on a system called ultranet. The earliest pages that the wayback machine finds for those is 1999.

Eventually, my husband bought a domain name for me. Thus was born pibweb.com. The earliest references the wayback machine can find for the domain is 2001 - which is probably close to correct. That makes my domain 15 this year.

Just imagine, my sites pre-date google. In fact, somewhere in this house is a check from google for participating in their initial campaign to raise awareness of Google.  I can't remember why it wasn't put in the bank at the time but it's now historical and would not be valid to cash.

Web Site revamp

Well, the new look version of my ancient domain is complete.

The old version looks like

Which is very dated. I really hadn't felt like dealing with it since I was also dealing with a corporate web site. I no longer have other people's sites to maintain so updating my own seems like a great idea.

This is the new look. It's using Bootstrap - which has easy to use code for many features. Bootstrap is responsive by design - the pages will work well on phones to desktops.

I am thinking that I should add a background image just for a bit of visual interest but I don't need to worry about it yet.  It's one of those things that can be done later.

I'm ditching most of the old content. It's going to be on the new server (mostly) but not referenced by my pages or updated to the new look. That way links to those pages don't break but I don't have to update reference pages that might have nearly all broken links.

Perhaps this will inspire change

I'm in the process of moving my web site to a new host with lots of new modern facilities.

I hope that this will inspire me to think about what I want to do with the site and basically redo the entire thing. It's all horribly out of date.

I can see perhaps a section on writing and play areas for html 5/css3.