You see, despite the fact that I’m running a blog and downloading and tweaking pictures and modifying snippets of PHP code in my blog theme, things are really very low tech in this here domicile.

As of two days ago, the setup was: A ten-year old HP Pavilion desktop system in the den where I work, a seven-year old Acer desktop system in the dining room where my wife works, a LexMark Scanner/printer connected to my machine, and an HP inkjet printer connected to the other machine.

The HP Pavilion was recently upgraded to a real, whole Gigabyte of RAM, and the Acer was grinding along with a painful 256 Megabytes of RAM. The Acer was becoming nearly unusable. Like I said, seriously low tech. We might just as well have using smoke signals and stone tablets.

Now, this guy knows how to fix a computer.

Yesterday, I called around to see if I could obtain some more SDRAM for the Acer machine. I figured it would be expensive, being older memory, but I was prepared to bite the bullet just to get that machine up to some sort of reasonable functioning. One of the places I called said that, while they didn’t have any SDRAM, they did have some old IBM systems that had two gigs of RAM in them, plus a faster processor than either of the machines here in the old household. Plus, they were on special: Down from $199.99 to $99.99

I veritably zoomed over there to have a look. I figured that if these machines were any good at all, I could pick one up for myself and replace the chugging Acer with my HP. It would just be a matter of swapping the disks around.

Well, it’s at this point that I cease going into detail. Suffice it to say that what started out as a two or three hour proposition at most turned into an all day affair that ran well into the evening. Disks were removed and reinstalled numerous times. Windows XP was repaired, reinstalled, and re-reinstalled several times. A 120-gigabyte disk with video projects on it was lost in the process. I still don’t know what happened to cause it to fail, but thankfully there was nothing on it that we’d accessed recently.

As of hitting the wall last night and heading for bed, things were in a disastrous state. Neither computer had Windows XP fully installed and configured, there was no internet access, and I was furious. Profanities were uttered. Teeth were gnashed. Large corporations were ritually cursed.

Today, I managed to start putting pieces of Humpty back together again. As of this writing, both computers have all their video, audio, and network drivers installed and operational, the internet is working, Google Chrome and AVG Anti-Virus are installed, and the world is starting to look like a friendly place again. There are still many software applications to install, and our documents still need to be retrieved from their backup locations, but the machines are working, and there is much improved speed on all fronts.

Despite the techno-disaster of yesterday, I managed to get in a blog post before the day was out. It was fearful close to midnight when I published the entry last night, but I managed it. And I cheated a bit: I published the text before tweaking it and adding the image and video.

Tonight is a lost cause. It’s already after midnight as I write this (well, four minutes after midnight), and I’m typing as fast as I can. I’m going to cheat again and backdate this entry on my blog so it shows up in the right day. Extenuating circumstances permit me to feel no guilt whatsoever about this.

So, yes, I’m looking forward to a glimpse of slick, futuristic, Stark-style technology when I plant my tired bum in a movie theatre seat and let the images of Iron Man 2 wash over me. It will be a welcome reprieve from the seriously out-of-date techno-world in which I exist daily.

When I finally get a netbook, I’m naming him Jarvis.

Don’t forget to leave the light on. But turn off those noisy old computers, okay?

(And here’s a glimpse of the high-tech future that’s happening today. The Iron Man suit is not as far fetched as we might have thought.)

This is no mean feat for me. It’s forever been a challenge, and I’m one of those people who always seems to have six zillion things bouncing around in my brain and never enough time to focus on any of them.

I’ve often thought there was something wrong with me, because I never seemed to be able to focus on any one thing. My interests are many and varied, and I’ve just never managed to narrow things down to my One True Passion™. Writing has always been there, but so have music, videography, web design/programming, and a whole host of other stuff, mostly creative, partly creative with a technical bent. Again with the “both sides of the brain” thing.

Annoying.

But lately, I’ve been rethinking things. I’ve begun to wonder why on earth I can’t do all the things I want to do. Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too?

It’s just a matter of getting organized.

If I can break projects down into bite-sized chunks, manage my time better, and keep track of what I’m doing, there’s no reason I can’t have half-a-dozen projects on the go at once. It still sounds kind of daunting, and maybe I’ve got a streak of the crazy bouncing around with the creative juices, but if I really stop and think about it, it seems doable.

But back to this “organized” notion. It’s always been a bit of a sticky point for me. I can’t keep track of things in my head, and the software tools I’ve tried have either lacked in some important area or simply imposed too many restrictions.

I need a to-do list, but it has to be more than a to-do list. Sort of a to-do list with a mind-map attached and a bunch of links to documents and websites.

Yeah. I hear you. Where on earth am I going to find something like that?

Well, it’s funny. The tool I’ve been looking for has been right here, right under my nose, for months now.

It’s called Google Wave.

And no, it’s not exactly like what I described above, but it’s pretty damn close. (Actually, now that I think about it, it does have a mind-map extension. Haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds cool.) I already check it every day, just to see if any of the waves I follow have new items in them, and even though my project list is not a collaboration, the structure of a wave is pretty close to what I need.

In case you haven’t tried Google Wave yet, I’ll give you a brief description of how one of these puppies is set up. Inside a wave, you create things called “blips”. A blip is really just a block of text with a green rounded rectangle around it. A top-level blip is called a “wavelet”, and wavelets can have blips added to them, either as replies tacked on the end and indented, or as in-line replies embedded inside them.

Blips can also have links, images, YouTube videos, and all manner of other strange and exotic beasties embedded inside them. And the text inside a blip can be formatted in a myriad of ways. This makes the tool incredibly versatile.

The thing that got me hooked on trying this approach was the fact that, if you add your replies to a blip by embedding them in-line, you get the option of collapsing the in-line replies by clicking on a little minus-sign inside a tiny speech balloon icon. This allows me to use Google Wave as a sort of rudimentary outliner, collapsing the “to-do list” inside each project so that I don’t have to scroll through the entire wave to find what I’m looking for (although there is a search feature, if push comes to shove).

So this is what I’ve been doing the last couple of days. I’ve created a wavelet for each project I want to work on, and then added the “to-do list” for each project as in-line blips inside the wavelets. And because each blip is like a tiny word processing document unto itself, the whole thing lends itself to being really free-form and unstructured, even though there is an underlying structure (a method to my madness, as it were).

This appeals to me enormously. I love writing, and I love expressing myself, so even though I’m the only one who will see this wave (at least for now), I will still let myself be verbose, humorous, clever, or silly, even though I’m only laying out a series of tasks that I intend to perform. Traditional to-do lists are as dry as dust, and I find them deathly dull and boring. They don’t inspire me in the least. I need a bit of elbow room, space to expand and expound, if the mood so strikes me.

Google Wave allows me to play.

And playing is what unleashes my creative mind.

Now that I’ve got the initial structure nearly complete, I’ve started adding some depth to the wave. I’ve put in some links to websites I need to reference for particular projects, I’ve inserted a link to a Google Documents file that contains further notes related to one project in particular, and I’ve even inserted a Google Map (thanks to the maps extension) to plot the locations where I want to shoot footage for that documentary I’ve been saying I’m going make for several years now.

You already knew I loved Google’s stuff. I wrote about it at length in a previous post. Now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and make some really good use of some of the stuff I’ve just dabbled with so far. If I use Google Docs to store important information related to each project, then I can access my entire project “library” from any computer, anywhere I happen to be.

And that’s just plain cool.

(But I still use WriteMonkey to type the first draft of my blog posts. Because it’s cool, too.)

Organization, here I come!

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(This clip has nothing to do with getting organized, but it’s one of the best uses of Google Wave I’ve ever seen. Not for the faint of heart, to be sure, but full of the awesome.)

Just over a month ago, my friend Asheyna sent me an invite to the preview of Google Wave. Since then, I've been going to the site nearly every day, playing with features, catching up on some of the public waves I'm following, and generally just checking things out.

First off, Google Wave is cool.

No doubt about it. It's like a discussion groups forum with document editing and formatting features and bit of instant messaging.

But it's much more than that.

I see tremendous potential for this platform. There are huge numbers of programmers out there already creating plugins and bots for it, and the number of purposes for which one could create a wave seem near endless.

I'm not an expert, I'm not a developer, and I don't know exactly where this new technology is going to take us, but I'm glad I'm getting a sneak preview of it. As users kick its tires and report back to Google, it will just keep getting better and better.

One thing's for sure, though. It had better get a lot faster. Because, at the moment, Google Wave is sloooooow. I mean dreadfully slow. I know it's early days, and I'm willing to be patient, but the speed factor, especially on large waves that have a lot of users and a couple of plugins or bots, is nearly unbearable.

So, I live in hope that this will be addressed soon.

In the meantime, I have some invites for the Google Wave preview to give away. So, I thought I'd set up my first contest. Websites have contests all the time. So why not faltarego.com?

If you would like one of my invites to the preview of Google Wave, then I would like you to communicate with me. Add a comment to one the posts here on my blog, and make it a good one. The more creative or insightful or meaningful, the better.

I have sixteen invites to give away. I only had eight a couple of days ago. Today I have eight more. They're up for grabs.

So, chances are, if you read this, and you want one, you'll probably get it. Because, let's face it, this is a relatively new blog, and I don't tend to get a lot of comments. If I get more than sixteen comments from this post, I'll be pleasantly surprised. But not too pleasantly, because then I'll have to disappoint someone.

So, put your thinking caps on, find a post on this site that you like, and give me a whopper of a comment. And please note, the comment you leave must be in some way related to the content of the post upon which you are commenting. Randomness will get you nowhere.

So, thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Did you read this entire post? If not, go back and read the whole thing. There are rules to this contest, pilgrim…

Mind the gap. And catch the wave.

I'm actually using Write or Die right now, and because I haven't seen or heard the "consequences" of pausing since my first experiment with the site, I decided to pause for a bit after I typed the first sentence of this post. Well, after the gradually intensifying red background, there came from my speakers such a horrible sound that there was no way I was going to listen to it for more than two seconds.

Yes, folks, Write or Die works.

So, my novel is begun, and I am blogging again. The word output today is going to be truly phenomenal. I'm even considering writing a post for my personal blog, which I've sorely neglected for a couple of months now.

I've also tweaked this website a little bit today. I've added a NaNoWriMo "ribbon" to my logo on the page background (I've added one to my logos on Twitter and Protagonize as well), and I've added a drop-down menu to the navigation bar. Now, instead of having three separate "About" links on the bar, there's an "About" menu with three menu items on it. It will save space, and it will allow me to put extra menus and links on the navbar if I so desire.

Which I do.

To accomplish this wondrous task, I downloaded the PixoPoint Menu plugin for WordPress and customized it to fit my delicate aesthetic sensibilities. It's really quite a flexible little plugin, and it allows me to set up my WordPress pages (not to be confused with posts) into a hierarchy and have that hierarchy appear on a menu in the navbar.

It's trés cool.

And having room for more menus has definitely been a consideration for me the last day or so. You see, I'm thinking about joining the ranks of a few of my online friends who are posting their NaNoWriMo output to their blogs or websites. I know it's probably sheer insanity for me to consider putting my raw, unedited novel bits out there on the web for all to see, but for some reason I find the notion strangely compelling, partly because one wonders what eyes might peruse it, but also because it gives me a chance to tweak the website.

I was considering setting up a separate blog for the NaNoWriMo output, but that seemed like a lot of extra work for something that's just raw first-draft text. So I decided it might be neat to put each day's chunk on a "page" instead of a "post" and make the pages available through a menu.

And that got me hunting around for drop-down menu mechanisms for WordPress, which led me to the PixoPoint site. The menu bar is all set up now; I just need to add a main NaNoWriMo page and start putting each day's output on a page subordinate to it.

So… I'm still thinking about it. I've been cautioned against doing this by some folks and encouraged to join in by others. What to do… what to do… what to do…

Well, it will certainly be an interesting experiment if I decide to do it. It's fun to tweak the website, and it's even more fun to put my words out there for people to see. We'll see if the fun wins out over the common sense (which I've noticed is none too common in this day and age).

I'm excited to be participating in NaNoWriMo. There are nearly 120,000 authors signed up, and it promises to be one helluva month. I have a pretty good idea of the direction I'm going to take my novel, but I have no outline, and no real notes except for a few character names and brief descriptions. So, I'm basically flying by the seat of my pants.

Which is the way I usually roll when it comes to writing.

So, here's to adventure, creativity, and challenge.

Wisdom, not so much.

Mind the gap.

I did something like this three years ago, when I purchased a book entitled No Plot? No Problem!, written by Chris Baty, the originator of NaNoWriMo. The book goes into great detail about how the thirty-day novel works and gives some excellent advice and suggestions. So, although I haven't "officially" done NaNoWriMo before now, I did write an "unofficial" thirty-day novel in the middle of the summer.

The damn thing still isn't finished, though. I wrote the requisite number of words, but I didn't finish the story. And there it sits. I've read through it a number of times in the past three years, and I really like most of it, but I haven't added anything new to it. I know where it's going, and I know some of the scenes I want to write, but I haven't written them yet.

This is typical of  me. I write a bunch of stuff, and then I let it sit unfinished for eons.

I don't know why I think this time is going to be any different, but I'm going to do it anyway. Because I need to write, and because it's a challenge, and because of lot of people I know are doing it.

Have I mentioned Protagonize? Yes, I believe I have. Many times, in fact. Well, a lot of the people I know on Protagonize are doing NaNoWriMo this year. I'd been waffling about it, because there are so many other things going on in my life right now, but let's face it, how many people do you know who don't have a million things going on in their lives right now? So, that was really no excuse. And although Protagonize is not about peer pressure, there is a certain community feeling to the place (I mean website), so this put the kibosh on my waffling and shoved it in the direction of signing up.

So, I'm all signed up. I've added a bunch of Protagonize folks to my NaNoWriMo buddy list, and now it's just a matter of watching the days count down to November 1st.

I'm getting a little concerned, though. You see, a lot of the folks I know who have signed up are setting about researching, outlining, note-taking, and otherwise preparing for this thirty-day write-fest. I've done nothing of the sort. I know my premise, I know my main character, and I know my setting, but beyond that I was planning on just sort of winging it. That's what I did with the "unofficial" thirty day novel of three years ago, and I don't see any reason why the same strategy shouldn't work for me now.

I've even decided that this thirty-day novel is going to be a "prequel" to the other one. Same main character, different (though related) situation. And I'm going to inject more of my real life into it. Not a lot, but some. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but with the help of Dr. Wicked's Write or Die website (into which I am typing these very words you are now reading), I think I will be able to commit the required wordage to the screen.

I just better make damn sure that I copy and paste on a regular basis, as there is no way to save the text in Write or Die's text field to a file on your computer. Dr. Wicked does have a desktop version of Write or Die, however, which goes for the measly sum of $10.00. It runs on your computer without the need to connect to his site, and it will save your text. That will be a cool toy to try out when I finally get around to purchasing it. In the meantime, the website is free.

So, there you have it. I'm a writer, therefore it goes without saying that I am somewhat crazy. So my signing on for this thirty-day, 1600-words-a-day thing should come as no surprise. It's planned craziness, and I'm going to set out to have a helluva lot of fun with it. After all, writing should not be torture. It should the blissful venting of ideas from the back of the brain to the tips of the fingers.

Or something like that.

And I've just managed to write seven-hundred words in under fifteen minutes.

This NaNoWriMo thing should be a piece of cake.

Yeah. Right. Well, I'm thinking positively anyway.

Mind the gap.

(Yes, there are videos on YouTube about NaNoWriMo, but they're all utter crap. Every last one of them. I couldn't find anything official. Just a bunch of people with webcams in dimly lit rooms going on and on and on about not much of anything. I was sorely disappointed. So instead, here's a Monty Python skit about novel writing. It's audio only, unfortunately, but there's a lovely picture of the Matching Tie and Handkerchief album, on which the sketch appears, for you to look at while you're listening and thanking your lucky stars that I didn't embed a NaNoWriMo video here.)

Iron Man: Thanks for coming, fellas. The reason I asked you all to meet me here—

Hulk: Meetings! Tin-Head always calling meetings. Business brain can't think for self. Tin-Head can't take piss without calling meeting first.

Captain America: Now, Hulk, let's be fair here. We don't even know what Tony wants to talk about.

Hulk: No. But good bet it something Hulk not interested in.

Namor: I'd give that good odds. Because the list of things you are interested in could be rattled off in about three seconds.

Hulk: Short list, but making fish-meal from Namor's face on it.

Iron Man: Guys, could we—

Namor: That's your answer to everything, isn't it? If you don't like it, pound the living crap out of it.

Iron Man: Guys! Could we get back on track here?

Hulk: Like Namor's answer to everything: Get snotty and leave.

Thor: Silence!!

Iron Man: Thank you, Thor.

Hulk: Let Thor run meeting. Got gavel.

Thor: It is not a gavel, you miscreant. It is mighty Mjölnir, the most fearsome weapon in the universe.

Hulk: Blah, blah, blah. Thor need new material.

Namor: Very smart, Hulk. Piss off the God of Thunder.

Iron Man: Namor, will you stop baiting him?

Hulk: Good one, Tin-Head. Namor best used for bait.

Iron Man: Oh, God.

Captain America: You did kind of set yourself up for that one, Tony.

Hulk: Hulk like fish jokes. Hulk listen now.

Iron Man: Oh, is that all it took? Next time, I'll bring my joke book along.

Thor: Proceed, Iron Man, before I lose my patience.

Hulk: Thor have patience? That funny. Thor's patience any thinner, Hulk could use to blow nose.

Iron Man: Hulk not listening.

Hulk: Errngh. Okay.

Namor: Oh, we're actually going to get to the point now, are we?

Iron Man: I certainly hope so. The reason I asked you all to come here today was to discuss a rather alarming trend I've noticed the last few weeks.

Captain America: You're talking about that Kanye West thing, aren't you?

Iron Man: What? No! I'm not talking about… What on earth would make you think that?

Captain America: Sorry. I should have let you finish.

Hulk: Even Hulk know Kanye meme getting old.

Captain America: Okay. I said I was sorry.

Iron Man: What I'm talking about is the reappearance of our old theme songs. The ones from the sixties.

Namor: What are you fussing about? Those things have been on YouTube for ages now. No one watches them.

Iron Man: Actually, people are mentioning them in blogs all of a sudden.

Namor: Well, I don't know why you're complaining. Your theme is cool again, now that they've jazzed it up and put it in that movie.

Iron Man: My theme was never cool. Not even in the sixties.

Captain America: "The cool exec with a heart of steel." That sounds pretty cool to me.

Iron Man: Shut up, Steve.

Captain America: Geez. Try to give a guy a break.

Hulk: Hulk have stupid theme. Hulk not "ever lovin'". Hulk not even pleasant.

Namor: Are you talking about the personality or the body odor? Because, frankly, for me it's a toss-up.

Thor: You are all fools. This is a trivial matter, and one that need not concern beings such as ourselves.

Hulk: Thor just mad 'cause theme song let people know Thor gay.

Iron Man: What?

Thor: Gay? I am not gay!

Hulk: Long blowy blond hair. Take rainbow bridge to get home. What else Hulk need for clues?

Iron Man: Oh, geez, Hulk. Can we be any more insensitive here?

Hulk: Just not understand one thing. If Thor gay, why Thor need ass-guard?

Captain America: God, Tony, this is worse than the rampaging.

Thor: It is Asgard, you monstrosity! It is the name of my home! Do not dare defile it with your assinine innuendo.

Hulk: Heh. Assinine. Hulk like that one.

Thor: I will smite thee with mighty Mjölnir, thou foul beast!

Hulk: Yeah, yeah. Same talk. Different day.

Iron Man: Will you two… Shut… Up!?!?

Hulk: Whatever.

Thor: Fine. Continue with your frivolous prattle.

Namor: I still don't see why you're so worked up about it.

Iron Man: I just think it's time the world moved on from those images of us, that's all.

Captain America: Actually, they're very heroic images.

Namor: They're lame images. Yours in particular.

Captain America: At least my theme's patriotic.

Namor: Oh, dear God. Are those rose-colored glasses permanently attached?

Captain America: Well, forgive me if I try to put a positive spin on things.

Namor: That 1940s worldview will get you nowhere fast around here, Captain.

Iron Man: We haven't even talked about your theme, Namor.

Namor: And we're not going to.

Hulk: Right. 'Cause Fish-Face theme lamest of all.

Namor: Are we done here?

Hulk: This part where Fish-Face get snooty and leave?

Iron Man: Hulk. You're not helping.

Hulk: How that different from other days?

Captain America: Tony, maybe this subject is just too touchy. Maybe we'd better leave it alone.

Thor: Or perhaps the topic is simply too insignificant for even this much discussion.

Namor: Or perhaps this whole conversation is a waste of time.

Hulk: Make good blog post, though. Funny stuff.

Namor: Oh, yes. I can see it now. "Hulk blog." I'll stick with the smashing, if it's all the same to you.

Hulk: Work for me.

Iron Man: So, is this whole theme song thing really a non-issue for the rest of you?

Thor: It is beyond irrelevant.

Captain America: I don't really have a problem with it.

Namor: The less said the better.

Hulk: Tin-Head stop talking now.

Iron Man: Geez. Tough room… Okay, I'll let it go.

Hulk: Good. 'Nuff talk. Play video.

Iron Man: Fine… Roll it, Faltarego.

(And here, at long last, is the theme you've all been waiting for. The main theme from the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes animated TV show. Hope you're all sitting down.)

Iron Man: Dear God…

Namor: I'm going to have to break my eardrums now.

Thor: I am made to look a fool!

Captain America: I feel kind of dirty after that.

Hulk: Hulk smash Faltarego!

I think this has happened to me exactly once, and that was because for some reason, the person's comment had been posted twice. I've gotten quite a few spam comments over the month-and-a-half that I've been doing this blog, and that's the only glitch I've had. The rest of the time, Akismet has happily and handily shoved the spam comments out of the way. I don't know how it does its magic, but it does it well. I'm impressed.

And yes, Akismet is free. If you have a WordPress blog, you already know about Akismet, because it comes bundled with the WordPress software. You do need a WordPress.com account in order to activate it, but that's not a big deal. It takes about a minute to create an account for yourself on the WordPress.com site, and once you've done that, you'll have an API key that you can enter into the Akismet configuration on your hosted blog.

Spam = bad.

Akismet = good.

Simple as that.

Gesundheit.

(Here's Weird Al Yankovic's song "Spam", which is a parody of R.E.M.'s "Stand". With some wonderful spam images to whet your appetite. I couldn't find an "official" Weird Al video of this song, so this will have to do. Spammity-Spam…)

Today, I'm going to talk about the mother of all free packages for writers: WordPress.

In the miniscule-to-nonexistent likelihood that you are a reader of this blog and somehow don't know what WordPress is, let me tell you. WordPress is a large and elaborate set of PHP scripts that allows a person to very quickly and easily set up a blog website.

If you have your domain name and web hosting service set up, all you need to do is download WordPress to your computer, unpack it, and then upload the uncompressed files to the root directory of your website. After a quick run of an installation script, you can go straight to logging in, tweaking your settings, and writing a blog post.

It's simple, it's powerful, it's bloody amazing, and it's free!

WordPress has so many options that there's no way I could even scratch the surface in a single post like this. I've been trying to keep these things to a readable length, and, well, I could go on for fifty pages about the features of WordPress.

Entire books have been written about WordPress, one of which, WordPress for Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, is an excellent introduction to the software and what you can do with it. I read it shortly before I set up this website; it's very readable and accessible, as most Dummies books are, and it's filled with useful tips and tricks.

The basic operations of WordPress are pretty simple and intuitive. You can write, update and manage posts and pages, and you can also manage a media library of images or videos or sound files you want to include in your posts and pages. You access all the administrative functions of your site through the WordPress dashboard when you are logged in as a valid user.

You can stick with the standard admin login, or you can create a different userid for yourself. You can even create userids for other writers, as I did when Ganga and Asheyna wrote guest posts for me here.

Probably the biggest draw of WordPress is its customizability and extensibility, which comes in three basic forms: Themes, plugins, and widgets.

Themes allow you to change the appearance of your blog without having to know any HTML, CSS, or PHP. You simply download a theme, unpack it, and upload the files to the appropriate directory on your site (usually wp-content/themes). And the number of themes out there is absolutely staggering. There's a huge collection on WordPress.org itself, but that's just the beginning. A Google search will reveal untold riches.

I'm currently using a theme called Tarksi, by Ben Eastaugh and Chris Sternal-Johnson. I like this theme a lot, primarily because it has many customization options of its own, and it allows me to do my own customizations without modifying its core files. I just upgraded to Tarski 2.5, and only one of my many customizations was affected by the upgrade. And that one customization was one I should have found a different way to do.

Plugins are not as flashy as themes, but they add functionality to your site. On this site, I have a few installed, the most useful of which are probably Akismet and WordPress.com Stats. Akismet comes packaged with WordPress, and is the blog's best friend. It magically detects spam in comments on your posts, and puts them in queue for you to review, just in case it flags something legitimate as spam. So far, it's worked like a charm for me. No false-positives, and no spam accidentally getting through.

WordPress.com Stats is a plugin that allows me to see how many visits my site has gotten on a given day, week, or month. It also shows me what sites people came from to get to my site, what searches people used to find my site, and what links on my site people have clicked on. It's really pretty amazing, and I don't really think I've tapped into all its options yet.

Finally, we come to widgets, which are like plugins, except that they show information on the sidebar of your blog pages. For example, on this site, I'm using the Calendar widget, which puts the current month's calendar in the sidebar and highlights the dates that have blog posts. I'm also using the Categories widget, which shows all the categories I've used on the site and how many posts are in each, and the Blogroll widget, which shows a list of links that I think might interest readers.

As with themes, there is a vast number of plugins and widgets available out there, and one can easily get carried away with customization. Personally, I find the best thing to do is to try out a few, see if they work for your site, and then tweak. Going whole hog and installing everything that tickles your fancy is a surefire way to overwhelm your blog readers and potentially slow down your website.

I've become a huge fan of WordPress. Its ease of use and customizability are exceptional, and the fact that it's free to download is nothing short of remarkable. It has evolved, over the years, from a simple blogging package to a tool that can be used for running just about any kind of website.

I've barely scratched the surface of WordPress's features in my month-or-so of blogging, but I have no doubt I'll be delving more deeply as time goes on, tweaking and experimenting. That's half the fun, really. Finding out what you can do and then trying to do it.

I just hope I don't break anything in the process. I still want people to be able to read my posts.

I'll be careful, I guess.

Gesundheit.

(I was searching YouTube for a fun WordPress-related video to include here, but I had to stop in my tracks when I came across this clip posted by Glenda Watson Hyatt. No way I could pass it by. You might have to dab the corners of your eyes with a tissue by the time it's done. Glenda's blog is called "Do It Myself Blog".)

I downloaded yWriter a couple of days ago and started playing around with it, importing some scenes from one of my half-finished novels (seems like they’ve been half-finished for a long time now). The sheer number of features and tools in yWriter is nothing short of astonishing. I can’t believe this thing is free software.

Basically, you create chapters, and within those chapters you create scenes. You can add as much or as little information for each chapter and scene as you want. You can write a summary (or description) for each chapter, and also for each scene within each chapter.

The scene-editing window has a number of tabs, one of which is called "Details". On this page, you can flag a scene as an "Action" or "Reaction" scene, assign your own tags to it, and specify the day and time it begins (using one of two possible time / date formats) and how long it lasts.

There are also four customizable ratings you can give each scene. The default labels for the ratings are "Relevance", "Tension", "Humor", and "Quality", and the ratings go from one to ten. It’s all pretty subjective, but, as the software author says in the documentation, if you’re writing a thriller, and you’ve given three-quarters of your scenes a low tension rating, you’ve got some work to do.

Need more? You got it.

Each scene has three additional fields. If you’ve flagged it as an "Action" scene, you’ll see "Goal", "Conflict", and "Outcome". If you flagged it as a "Reaction" scene, you’ll see "Reaction", "Dilemma", and "Choice". Each of the fields is long enough for you to type a succinct but descriptive phrase or sentence.

And that’s just the scene details.

You can also set up a list of all the characters in your project, set a point-of-view character for each scene, and specify which characters appear in each scene. There is also a locations list, which allows you to list all the places your novel goes and specify where each scene takes place. There’s even a list of items, which allows you to keep track of important objects and indicate the scenes in which they appear.

This just scratches the surface. There are reports you can print, a work schedule, a storyboard feature, and word count targets. It’s a full-featured package, remarkably so for a piece of free software (he does ask for donations, though).

The only issue I have with yWriter is that when I save one of my existing chapters as an RTF file and import it into yWriter, the line spacing of the paragraphs is inconsistent. My files are double-spaced, and when they come into yWriter, any paragraphs that are one or two lines long are double-spaced, and anything longer is single-spaced. I haven’t found a line-spacing option in yWriter, so I may have to change my files to single-spacing and re-import them. Not a big deal for me at the moment, as I’ve only imported one chapter so far.

Other than that one cosmetic anomaly, I’m impressed with yWriter, and I’m going to use it for one of my novels to see how it pans out in the long run.

I’m thinking it will be a big help.

Check it out, writers.

Gesundheit.

yWriter is published by Spacejock Software.

So here I am. Writing a post about Protagonize. I guess it's about time.

Why all the fuss? you might ask. Why are people like Faltarego and Asheyna so crazy about this Protagonize thing? And what is it, exactly?

I shall endeavour to provide answers.

Protagonize.com is a collaborative writing site. It's a place where writers can go to write stories, start stories, add to other people's stories, comment on other people's stories, discuss stories, and basically do all sorts of other story-related things.

It's also a community.

It works like this: I come up with an idea and write the first chapter of it on the site. Then, if someone else reads it and likes it, they can write the next chapter. If I like the direction they're going, I can follow that up with a third chapter. Or maybe someone else will come along and write the third chapter before I even get back to it.

And so on, and so on…

Of course, people have to know that your chapter is there, waiting for an addition. That's where the community aspect of Protagonize comes in. You can, naturally, read other people's work. But you can also rate it and comment on it. And commenting (in a helpful way) is how you meet people on Protagonize. If you comment on someone's work, they might be inclined to check out your profile and maybe read some of the stuff you've written. And maybe they'll comment on it. Maybe they'll even add to it.

That's how it works, in a nutshell.

Protagonize was started back in December of 2007 by a creative guy named Nick Bouton, who is both a writer and web developer. Nick has set the tone for Protagonize by being friendly, helpful, responsive, and dedicated. He pours a lot of himself into the site, and as a result, he has grown a loyal, friendly, helpful, creative community. Most of the folks I've met on Protagonize are incredibly supportive and welcoming, and I've established a tremendous rapport with quite a few of them.

Nick is always thinking ahead and always tweaking the site and adding new features. Recently, he added a "discussion groups" feature to the site, and this has been eagerly embraced by the Protagonize community. Soon, members will be able to create their own groups and add stories to them. The evolution is ongoing.

There are many more features on the site. You can choose whether your new story is linear or an "add-venture" (wherein each chapter can have multiple branches coming from it), you can mark stories as "favorites" and even add a placemark if you have to stop reading and want to come back later. You can become a "fan" of other authors, and you can leave comments on other authors' profiles.

And that just scratches the surface.

Anyone who loves writing and finds the pursuit rather solitary will have a great time on Protagonize. It's incredibly interactive, and the boost of energy you get from other people's creativity is something not to be dismissed. It can change the whole way you look at writing.

I've learned a lot from my time on Protagonize, and I've met some incredibly talented and generous people. It really is the people that make a website. I'm not trying to discount all the tremendous work Nick has put into the look and feel of Protagonize. Not at all. But let's be honest here. You can have the coolest site in the world, but if you don't attract the right people to it, the experience is going to be… um… shall we say… sub-optimal.

I encourage any of you writers out there who haven't given Protagonize a try yet to check it out. In the words of one of our late-night talk-show hosts, "It's more fun than humans should legally be allowed to have."

Oh, and by the way… membership is free.

Gesundheit.