Bizzy Gneech Iz Bizzy

Spent the past several days doing thinking and meta-writing on the new novel idea; it's fun to be flexing some of those old mental muscles again, even if it hasn't pushed the ol' wordcount up any. It's pretty typical for me to write 500 - 5,000 words theorizing on an item for my own use, before I actually start writing much of the prose ... but then once I seriously get into the prose part I often compose straight to the page and do little revision. If anything, I tend to go back and expand on parts that seem thin in the first draft, because once I get caught up in the plot I often hurry through it because I'm just as excited to see the end, even knowing what it is, as I would be if somebody else was writing the thing.

Only problem is, in the case of the new book, I don't actually have a plot yet, just a premise; and in this case it's a premise that needs some working out before I can really come up with a plot that fits. It's entirely possible that for this novel I might even — gasp! — write an outline before I start the writing proper!

What are things coming to? Is this the same by-the-seat-of-the-pants wunderkind who spun the entirety of Suburban Jungle out of an offhand comment by hantamouse about a tiger walking along the beach?

Well, yes, but it's ten years later and that wunderkind is more of a seasoned campaigner now. ;)

So anyway, if you don't hear much from me, it's because I'm up to my elbows in word processor ... or at work, but that's another story all together. Of course, I'm not sure how much traction this journal is getting these days; LiveJournal's gone rather quiet over the past year or so, as everyone's wandered off to the next social medium du jour. But y'know, LJ works and works well, so I'm sticking with it until I have a reason not to.

-The Gneech

Lovecraftian Tales From the Table

I'm enjoying the listen, but wow, paulofcthulhu, you can be an infuriating Keeper! 0.o

-The Gneech

Embarassing Web Designer Admission

It's odd ... I design webpages for the gumminit all day, and yet I haven't the foggiest idea what the best technologies and options are for the re-do of SuburbanJungle.com and gneech.com.

I'd like some sort of LJ-like content updater -- right now I have to manually edit the HTML files for both sites and then FTP the files up to the server. I'd like something that allowed for comments and other bloggy sorts of features, but I also want to be able to use my own CSS files and put in various bits of programmability.

I'm hoping that for gneech.com I'll have access to Railo, which is an open-source ColdFusion server, but little or no database to speak of (and I'm useless at database programming anyway beyond quasi-DB XML files and the like). That will enable me to dump the javascript that's on the page now, at least. kevinjdog also mentioned Disqus, which is worth a look.

See, the problem is that this is the kind of website I build — which has none of this stuff. They occasionally make noises about wanting that kind of thing, but in practice "interesting technology" and "government website" don't usually occupy the same sentence comfortably. In fact, the preceding sentence is just such an example.

Do I resort to WordPress? Is it any good? Can I integrate it into an already-existing site? So much I don't know!

-The Gneech