Archive for December, 2001

Where am I?

Sunday, December 30th, 2001

Don’t panic - it may not be as yellow, but it’s still Jemima’s Trek. My previous homepage was too yellow and Trekky for my new, multifandom feng shui. This one isn’t sufficiently branded yet, but a chevron or two should fix that. Tomorrow.

The move almost went well. Blogspot is doing the secret redirect… mwhahahaha! I think I’ve ironed out all the technical difficulties at freeshell, but prohosting is another matter. Maybe a base href will clear up the problems there. And the archives keep disappearing, but that’s just blogger.

Moving Day

Sunday, December 30th, 2001

In my never-ending quest to be more like Liz, I’m moving the blog to my home page. If all goes well, you should be redirected there automatically. If all doesn’t go well, I must have backups around here somewhere…

She’s a rat…

Sunday, December 30th, 2001

Get your free Scooby Dolls from The Neopets VampireSlayerGuild!

“First she’s a perfectly normal girl, then POOF . . . she’s a rat.”

I made a membership button, even though I’m not really a clique:
Buffybot Memorial
If it doesn’t show up, you can see it on the Buffybot Memorial Fic Page.

Of Demons and Favicons

Saturday, December 29th, 2001

Anna has made another addition to the Demon Casablanca Blog.

I tried to make a favicon for the blog here, but it’s probably not working. I can’t test it because I use a mac, and favorites icons are an Evil Microserf extension. If you’re using IE 5+ for Windows, try bookmarking this page and see if you get the little yellow shirt.

The Twelve Moons of JuPiter contest is over and I lost. It turned out most of those hits weren’t from the contest - only twenty or so people read my two entries. The stories got many more hits for being linked in the JuPiter Station archive.

It goes without saying that no one sent feedback. One person, tops.

Your Guide to the Demon Casablanca Blog

Thursday, December 27th, 2001

(Note as of mid-January: the Guide has moved into the wiki. Check there for new additions.)

All due apologies to Anna if I shouldn’t be linking her this way, but my sister Veronica is clueless about blogs and I wouldn’t want her getting all confused reading Demon Casablanca Blog backwards. I’m tempted to suggest that Anna do the whole thing up as a Virtual Season - I’d even volunteer - but fortunately for me and the promises I made myself never to Season Virtually again, I don’t know Anna from Adam. Whew.

So here are the direct links (and some temporary ones) in chronological order:

There is some blog in the blog entries, too - you can skim it if it confuses you.

Surfing the blogs

Tuesday, December 25th, 2001

So many interesting bloggets have come up lately, and now is my first chance to reblog them all here. First of all, I was bowled over by the Demon Casablanca Blog (scattered through Anna’s blog) that I found via Jintian. (Via is one of those words you should never use - there’s always a better preposition, in theory. One of the joys of fanfic is breaking all those rules - so you’ll get my said-bookisms when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers!)

Jintian was also kind enough to say nice things about my fic, even though betaing it relieves her of all minion duties. Ever vigilant, she also informed me that I was recced on a page I’d never heard of, Polyamorous Recommendations. (I’m under What’s New? It took me a while to find myself.)

Liz complained about her Buffy the Musical CD going bad. I was all excited about my Buffy the Musical CD, which my lovely sister Veronica made for me to cement this Buffy.obsession for which she’s singlehandedly responsible. (I guess she wants more Buffyfic, though she’s not at all happy that the Legion of Doom is starring in my next story.) Where was I? Oh, yes, all excited, until I found out that neither of my CD players will play Buffy the Musical. Sigh. I guess crime doesn’t pay after all. At least my mac will play it, and it plays audio CD’s in a whole other mode, so they don’t eat processor time like the clunky old free mpeg player (MPEGLayer3Player) I’d been using.

Liz isn’t the only one getting units of reviews on fanfiction.net while others get hundreds. It’s a strange, strange place. I think I may give it up again, since it was just a play for feedback.

Hey, Christine is actually blogging! Did I miss something? Am I yesterday’s news? Am I a pile of the morning’s Metro left on the Red Line despite the conductor’s plea, “Please remove all personal belongings, newspapers and Metros“? (If you live in one of the many cities around the world afflicted by the Metro, you’ll appreciate the implication that it’s not a newspaper.) I don’t even know who Lilla is, and everyone’s linking her now. I don’t remember her from jetc. How much have I blocked out?

Linked by the mysterious Lilla, a bloggily-transmitted disease:

Speaking of jetc, Seema was talking about on-line friends in her blog. I have, of course, a rather jaded view of virtual people, so I found the following line far more descriptive of on-line relations than ten blogs full of analysis:

In the end, Che found out that her friend had actually faked her death (how horrible is that??), but what Che was going through those first few days were very real emotions, not at all “virtual.” Seema, 22-XII-2001

Real emotions about fake people…eventually, it bites you in the behind. The last time I got into a philosophical discussion of friendship, my beta reader got very nervous. It’s no use preaching Aristotle these days, so I’ll just let Sans Ailes stand as my obscure statement on friendships, near and far.

Yes, Lori, I have heard of making the cat dance, though I’d heard masking tape was the way to go. You know how easy I am to talk up onto that soapbox - Fic Taxes it is. Do you want that before or after Taking Things Too Seriously?

The last blog of the evening is zendom, the magazine. The Vinegar of the Biweek is an essay by a hobbit about the seamy side of fandom. I did promise freedom of speech…but if it were up to me, everyone would be obliged to write good stories without ever inserting Part A in Part B. Somehow English literature limped along for eight hundred years with nothing racier than the occasional cuckold joke or mad-Hamlet innuendo - and yet it was all so good (except The Mill on the Floss).

Maybe I’m just taking things too seriously.

Well, that concludes this evening’s tour of the local blogs. One last bit of non-news: I’ve joined the Guild. I’m a big fan of guilds; in fact, I’m practically medieval - but that’s a whole other blog, in which all fanfic writers, rejecting the modern cult of originality, are medieval. And it’s a good thing.

Call for Minions

Sunday, December 23rd, 2001

What I need is a few good minions - people to do all that posting-to-lists fandom footwork for me. I’ve seen it done on the Buffy/Spike lists, so apparently there are minions out there to be had. Of course, it may be gauche to keep minions; I don’t know enough about Buffydom to know that. I do know enough about posting over and over to lists, indices and newsgroups not to want to know whether minioning is frowned upon.

So, anyone wanna be my minion?

<crickets chirping>

Darn…

Feedback watch

Sunday, December 23rd, 2001

Feedback watch

I finally got around to posting 148 to the Buffy/Spike lists, and I got three pieces of feedback in one hour for my efforts. Now that’s what I call instant gratification. If fandom were all Buffy fans, feedback would be easier to come by.

The zendom backup site has the zen feedback page mirrored. Feedback - its time has come!

News from Limbo

Saturday, December 22nd, 2001

Freeshell is still in DNS limbo (207.202.214.130, if you’re looking for it) so I can’t POP my email and my spy cameras are down.

On the bright side, I now have all 400 megabytes of space, ftp and so forth. If only I wrote fast enough to fill it all up… I moved my little zendom backup site there, though not much is backed up yet.

And now for some appropriate blog content: Shatner Rocks - click if you dare! Also, the new Opera for Macintosh is out.

Pardon the ads…

Friday, December 21st, 2001

Freeshell is moving this weekend, so I’ve redirected the site to the new mirror at prohosting until everything sorts itself out.

You know, the yellow is starting to get to me. I may take it off the main page. Someday. It’s not nearly so garish on a laptop - at first I thought it was the Mac/Windows color shift that was causing the eyeball vinegar, but now I’ve seen it on Windows laptops, and it’s definitely the TFT screen.