WebKit Problems, Part 2

[Note: The issue I was dealing with has been obsolete since expandable posts became an integral part of Blogger. For more information, read this post.]

You have a blog on Blogger. You modified your template(s) for expandable posts. You start in "Edit HTML" mode and then switch to the "Compose" tab; when you go back, the and tags disappear. You type them back in. When you post your entry, it works just fine in IE, Firefox, Opera, and the like. Unless your browser is based on WebKit: that means, for example, Chrome, Safari, or Konqueror. (WebKit is a superset of Konqueror's KHTML developed by Apple for Safari.) Then the entry you just posted is expanded on your blog's homepage. Which, of course, you don't want. It's as if those <span> tags never existed for WebKit browsers.

(If this post is expanded on the front page, then you won't see this line.) [Note: this no longer applies. Read the post linked at the top.]

The result: You see this text on the blog's front page! If you're using a non-WebKit browser, you won't see it till you click the link to the rest of this post (or any of its other permalinks on the front page). But if you're on the front page and you see this text, you're using a WebKit browser for sure.

But is the glitch in WebKit, or in Blogger? In any case, it shouldn't be happening.

Is this happening to your Blogger blog? Go to http://webkit.org and tell them.

St. PUID: @Adambuckled Wins The #stpuid Thread!

I like to think of myself as a spreader of memes (it's in my official bio blurb). But I don't really know if I've actually publicly mutated one into something truly wild and crazy. @StephenAmbrose and @Adambuckled did. And they did it to #stpuid.

Yesterday, @chrispirillo posted this on Twitter:

@abacusfinch and others thought the whole idea was #stpuid in itself (also see what @BacTalan thinks). However, a whole bunch of other tweeps decided to try to give him his wish, including @Outsanity, @QKnuckles, @theqwertyblog, @steezytrina, @BuzzEdition, @Garyx24, @FredGITXM, @primatage, @geeseloverr123, @AwesomeJay, @maryland157, @absolutelytrue, @ItStartsWithUs, @katalee02, and of course @dennis_jernberg, who is also blogging about this (case in point: this entry you're reading right now, and also this one).

Then @StephenAntoine started running away with the subject. He started tweeting about things like Secure Transport Protocol User ID and St. Pucchi, Inc. designs.

But the one who won this whole #stpuid thing? @Adambuckled, who tweeted this:

I should have figured something really weird would come out of this. *grins*

The attempt to trend #stpuid died down last night, and the hashtag isn't getting much use today. But there's a lot of tweeps out there who just love #stpuid ideas. #stpuid may rise again, and even reach the top of the Twitter top ten trends list. Who knows? It's worth another try...

Retweet This Blog Post!

You've probably noticed something to the right of the text of each entry: a "retweet" button which allows those with Twitter accounts to post the title and link to the entry. And it's on not just this blog, but my project and opinion blogs as well. TweetMeme provides the service.

Most people I know find Twitter useless, but I'm one of those select few who get a lot of use out of it. I myself retweet articles and posts quite often. For those like me, I've provided the button.

Turns out that Blogger does not provide an easy way to put the button in — no Google Gadgets exist for this. I found out about this on Twitter. @cheth posted a link to his tutorial, and in it he links to TweetMeme's instructions. Instead, I Googled up "add retweet button to Blogger" and found the instructions I actually used, on this page in @virtuosoblogger's blog. I followed the instructions and inserted the code into my blogs' templates.

So that's how I managed to add that retweet button you see to the right. Who knows? I might add another such service if I deem it useful enough...

Facebook Buys FriendFeed: A More Objective Look (with more links, too)

Two days ago, Facebook bought FriendFeed. I was far from the only one who was shocked; but I posted a harsh criticism in the opening to my first post on this subject. Then I followed it up with a whole bunch of relevant links. Having had two days to cool off, I'm now more able to look at it objectively. And, of course, the news is getting even more interesting.

Some of us FriendFeed users branched out to new services: in my case, these are Posterous, Streamy, and Amplifeeder (link is to the FriendFeed version rather than the ASP.NET version). There are those who believe that FriendFeed is already a dead letter. I am not one of them; I've already announced on FriendFeed that I'm sticking around for the long haul. But then, it just happens that I've got accounts with both FriendFeed and Facebook.

Most of us FriendFeed users are sticking with the service. It's not dead. Yet. The fate of Yahoo 360 (i.e., oblivion) may still be in its future, but for now it's still going strong, and both Facebook the FriendFeed founders intend to keep it going at least for the time being. Significantly, it's still being updated with new features.

Now for some of today's relevant articles (add your own in the comments):

News:
Ars Technica: Stream resistance is futile: Facebook assimilates FriendFeed
New York Daily News: So Facebook just bought FriendFeed... What is FriendFeed?
Entertainment Weekly: Facebook buys FriendFeed: Why this is a good thing
PC World: FriendFeed Buy Helps Facebook Compete With Google and Twitter
PC World: Facebook Buys FriendFeed: What Does It Mean?

Blogs:
Mark Krynsky: My Thoughts on the Current State of FriendFeed
Om Malik at GigaOm: Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
Franklin Pettit: The Rise and Fall of FriendFeed
Louis Gray: Hi Facebook, It's Me, FriendFeed. This Relationship? It's Complicated.
Know The Network: It's Not About FriendFeed, It's About Friends — A Requiem
Alexander van Elsas: My 2 cts on Facebook buying FriendFeed
Jesse Stay: Facebook to FriendFeed: You Complete Me

My Links:
Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Posterous (note: yet another blog!), deviantART (currently neglected), Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader (note: nothing shared yet),
I may make these permanent links in the "My Sites" section of the sidebar.

I am not going to mention Facebook Lite, or the new Facebook messaging API intended to take on MySpace Mail as well as webmail, or whatever. These aren't relevant to this post.

But Facebook Lite aside, what will Facebook actually do to FriendFeed? Right now, we can only wait and see...

Reading: Infected, by Scott Sigler

Something has gotten inside you. It entered through your eyes and has lodged itself into your brain. It torments your every waking moment and turns all your dreams into nightmares. It grows and grows, feeding on your mind like the ichneumon wasp larva feeds on its caterpillar host. And now it's squirming...

You've been infected — by Infected.

Horror writer Scott Sigler is a pioneering author of podcast novels. Infected was the first of his novels to make it into print.

The movie-friendly high concept: The Andromeda Strain meets Alien. Sure enough, there's a deal to make a movie out of it. Sigler says the script is already in the works.

Some kind of pathogen is turning ordinary people into blood-crazed mass murderers. While the CIA (agent on the case: hardened veteran Dew Phillips) and the Centers for Disease Control (point woman: epidemiologist Margaret Montoya) are hot on the case, one host in particular, former football star, finds that he's been infected by who knows what. Then the triangles appear. Which turn out to be a group of parasitic organisms, of extraterrestrial origin as it turns out. And then the voices begin. And the parasites have plans...

No, I'm not revealing any spoilers.

Big Social Media News of the Day: Facebook Assimilates FriendFeed

Damn. Just a few days after I followed Robert Scoble from Twitter to FriendFeed, here comes Facebook to take it over. Maybe it's a good thing I have an account on both networks. However, I'm far from alone in feeling betrayed by FriendFeed's eagerness in selling out to the Borg.

So here's what I've found on the Net searching Google and TechMeme:

News:
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (TechCrunch)
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Mashable)
Facebook Acquires Start-Up FriendFeed (Wall Street Journal)
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed in Play for Relevance (Fast Company)
The Facebook/FriendFeed Deal Signed Upder The Cover Of Night (TechCrunch)
Users Shocked by Facebook Acquisition (Mashable)
First Interview After Acquisition With FriendFeed and Facebook (TechCrunch)
FriendFeed Co-Founder: Facebook Acquisition Talks Began in 2007 (Mashable)
FriendFeed Office Deserted: Whole Team Already At Facebook (Mashable)
3 Key Reason Facebook Bought FriendFeed (Mashable)
Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter (TechCrunch)
Facebook Flips The Switch On Real-Time Search, Goes After Twitter Where It Really Hurts (TechCrunch)
Facebook in challenge to Google (BBC News)

Press Releases:
Facebook: Facebook Agrees To Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed
FriendFeed: FriendFeed Accepts Facebook Friend Request

Blogs:
TechGeist: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed? Ya, It's No Joke
SocializeMobilize: What Does Facebook's Latest Acquisition Mean for FriendFeed, Facebook & Social Media Enthusiasts?
CNET News: The Social: Facebook Buys FriendFeed: Is this a big deal?
Robert Scoble: Oh, FriendFeed is now Facebooks's "official" R&D department! (Says Facebook's real target is Google, not Twitter.)
Ouriel Aharon: 10 random thoughts on FriendFeed acquisition by Facebook
Shawn Farner: Stabbed in the back by FriendFeed
Soap Box Included: So Much For My FriendFeed Book!
Steve Rubel: FriendFeed Should Be Facebook Labs
Michelle's Blog: Why Facebook's Acquisition of FriendFeed Is Culturally Significant
And, of course, a lot more blog entries than I can list, including this one.

It's not often that I join a social network service only to find it snatched out from under me just a few days later. It took a couple years from the time I discovered Yahoo 360° for Yahoo to shut it down. But here you go. I wasn't using Facebook much anyway, mainly to keep track of some relatives and a few friends and such. I guess I'll have to find at least one replacement for FriendFeed, like some others there are. Oh well...

Heat Wave in the Great Northwest

I like to joke that every year the Seattle area has to suffer one 100°F day (about 38°C) every year. This year, it's no joke. Around here, we're going through an entire week above 90°, and there could be more than one 100° day ahead of us.

My problem is that I don't have, and never had, air conditioning. I could go swimming or sunbathing or find someplace indoors where it's cool. But then I have to come home to the heat. It's disrupting my sleep. I'm getting tired of it. I find myself longing for the weekend, when the weather forecasters have promised temperature dropping back to a mere 80°. As it is, the nighttime lows have risen to above 70°, and it's getting extremely uncomfortable when I can't cool down my overheated apartment.

This really shouldn't interrupt my writing, though. The heat can serve me as a convenient excuse, sure. But I've written nonstop through heat waves before, and in longhand.

Update: Seattle Times article on the heat wave: Seattle Hits 97 Today; Is 100 On The Way? If you think it's bad enough around here, it's getting even worse tomorrow — that's our 100° day! And, if the KING 5 weather forecast is correct, this heat wave ain't ending any time soon...

Blog Search 2: Following

Tonight's blog search isn't for the blogroll of this or any other of my blogs. Instead, I decided to use Blogger's "Follow" feature to follow other people's blogs. This puts them on my Blogger dashboard, where they're immediately accessible. This is more convenient than viewing one of my blogs, waiting for it to load, scrolling down, and clicking on the blogroll. Of course, I can always add some of the blogs I follow onto one of my blogrolls if I want people to read them alongside mine.

"Following" is a social-network feature that Google added to its blogging platform. Click "Follow Blog", and then you can follow a blog (at least a Blogger/BlogSpot one, or one that takes part in the "Google Friend Connect" program) just like you follow someone on, say, Twitter. This allows you to easily build up a collection of blogs that you can access from the Blogger dashboard. You won't have to bookmark every blog you come across (just the WordPress, TypePad, etc. ones ;) ), and you won't have to go on wild goose chases all over the Web.

Of course, as with my blogrolls, I'll have to take the time (several days or longer) to build up the number of blogs I follow. I've only started just now.

You might notice that I've started posting a series of cyberpunk short stories related to my proposed webmanga Spanner to my project blog. I just realized: this blog here would be the perfect place for me to post short stories unrelated to Spanner, or anything else science-fictional. I could also post poems once I start writing them again. I should also post weekly updates for Project 365 and 50 Songs in 90 Days.

And now, back to writing 2,000 words for JulNoWriMo while waiting for my apartment to cool off from the day's extreme heat...

A WebKit Glitch in My Blogs

[Note: The issue I was dealing with has been obsolete since expandable posts became an integral part of Blogger. For more information, read this post.]

Here's an annoying bug. On the main page of my project blog, one of the entries (one of my wilder short stories) does not collapse when you view it in Chrome or Safari (or presumably Konqueror). Instead, you see the full entry, right there on the main page. You don't see that happen in either IE8 (which has its own special problems, but that's not one of 'em) or Mozilla/Gecko. When I saw it happen in Safari, I knew the problem was a glitch in WebKit.

So I made a Google search of WebKit Blogger bug. Turns out WebKit still has many bugs specifically connected to Blogger (and WordPress as well). As the bug affects both Chrome and Safari, I know neither Google nor Apple is to blame. The fault lies strictly at the WebKit project's proverbial feet. Let's home the WebKit people can squash this bug soon. I don't like having a single entry dominating the blog's entire main page.

Update 7/28/09: I checked the main page of this blog and found the same WebKit glitch doing the same thing to this post.

The Blog Search Finally Begins

#Bloggers
At last I have begun the long-delayed search for other people's blogs, or at least the ones I think are appropriate for my project blog. I knew it would be a long search, so I put it off for several days, which became weeks and then months, and threatened to turn into years. Then the random thought came to me that now would be the time to start it. And so I did.

It did not go perfectly, of course. Somewhere in the middle of my initial search, Windows gave me a Blue Screen Of Death and crashed randomly on one of its many bugs. (Good thing I don't use Vista!) But I rebooted and resumed the search until I found enough blogs for one day.

It isn't the end of this, of course. I still have many more blogs to find and put in the blogrolls of all my blogs. I still haven't found enough cyberpunks and cartoonists to fill my growing Spanner's World blogroll, I haven't gotten to my other blogs yet. But it's finally begun...

Back to The Space Helmet Show...

After a Busy Week...

#JulNo #5090 #songwriting #writers #Bloggers The second week of July '09 was surprisingly busy for me. At the end of it, though, I got my most important Internet-related business out of the way (getting rid of that archaic and extremely slow dialup connection and joining the modern world), so I can now get back to the proper business of writing. (As for those hash terms I'm now putting at the beginning of my posts: those are Twitter search terms for my Twibes. The Twibes in question are the JulNoWriMo, 50 Songs in 90 Days, Songwriting, Writers, and Bloggers Twibes respectively. That's because TwitterFeed tweets my blog posts.)

Most of my business had nothing to do with writing (novels, songs, blogs). However, I did get one short story written, added to my JulNoWriMo word count, and posted to my project blog (warning: some people may not be able to handle it, hence the many disclaimers). Now that I've finally upgraded my internet connection and immediately upgraded all the software that needed upgrading, I'll be able to return to my 50 Songs in 90 Days songs and my JulNo novel writing.

I'll be a lot more productive in the next week. First, though, I need to get some good rest. Waiting for that dialup connection kept me up at nights...

Back to The Space Helmet Show...

Project 365 Returns! Or, at least I started mine again...

Plaza Fountain
Originally uploaded by Dennis Jernberg

On July 1, I restarted my Project 365. That's where you take and upload at least one photo a day for a year. I carried my camera around with me, went downtown, and took this picture. Now all I need to do is keep my camera with me (and not forgetfully leave it in the house), take one picture at minimum, and upload it — every single day for the next year.

Should be easy. Actually harder than you think. In January, I stopped after only 15 days.

I used to have a blog at Photoblog as well. However, that was a bit too much when I already have my Flickr account and this here general-purpose blog, so I pretty much abandoned it. (If it's still around, it's here.) The Flickr photostream can be treated as if it were its own blog, so that's how I'm treating it. All my Project 365 photos uploaded to Flickr, from both attempts at it, are in their own photo set.

And so once again I've decided I want to do this again. I even think I'll be able to pull this off. However, back in January I wasn't able to continue Project 365 and write 65,000 words for JanNoWriMo at the same time. Can I pull it off this time while simultaneously doing not just JulNoWriMo and 50 Songs in 90 Days? We'll see. All I need to do is take one picture a day...

Back to The Space Helmet Show...

Preparation for 50 Songs In 90 Days

On July 4, 50 Songs in 90 Days begins. I already have some songs ready for it — they're incomplete, but they're trying to jump the gun on me. As a warmup, I'm writing two songs for the pre-50/90 "song in key of D minor that contains the word 'earth'" challenge. I'll link to the MP3s so my fellow "5090ers" can hear the results, and I'll also post the lyrics and the song links to the Yahoo 50/90 mailing list.

The history behind this: After NaNoWriMo '07 (when I started writing my novel Bad Company), I found out in a Chris Baty email about February Album Writing Month, or FAWM. I signed up, but did nothing last year in either FAWM or 50/90. I had the software, mostly in Linux (Audacity, LMMS, plus various others that came with Ubuntu Studio). I realized I couldn't use them. But by the time FAWM '09 came around, I found myself in possession of a Casio WK-200 keyboard and two guitars, one acoustic and one acoustic-electric. I downloaded the open source tablature editor TuxGuitar, the windows version of LMMS, and the digital audio workstation Reaper. I already had Audacity for Windows. In mid-February I started taking guitar lessons. And the proverbial dam broke: in FAWM, you win if you write 14 songs, but I wrote 38 and recorded 24 of them, leaving a whole FAWM's worth of songs unrecorded. It wasn't until last week that I realized what it did to me: before, I was what I called a "frustrated guitarist" with manic-depressive tendencies. It was when FAWM '09 unleashed my musical creativity that my depression disappeared. Completely. I no longer even have a tendency to get depressed. The "guitar therapy" worked! (I'll explain this further in a future entry.)

I have a whole bunch of half-finished songs prepared for this year's 50/90. Some of them are fragments I programmed in TuxGuitar; others are notations on scratch paper from idly strumming one of my guitars (I now also have an electric) and coming up with chord progressions I like. Some are lyrics without music; others are music without lyrics. Why such a backlog of songs? Mainly because I've been putting my primary focus between FAWM and 50/90 on learning and practicing the guitar. I write my songs fragments and put them aside so I can return to them during 50/90. I want to make sure I play all the guitar parts when I record those songs, though the solos will probably have to come later (I'm having problems learning scales, arpeggios, etc.).

Consider this the official announcement (outside the FAWMer/5090er community) of my intent to participate in 50/90.

Back to The Space Helmet Show...

Increasing My Online Presence, Part 2

Thanks to the death of Yahoo! 360 (which is why I'm no longer providing a link to it), my art blog is gone! So I'm looking for a new place to put it. I'm considering using the still unused blog I got with a My Opera account (profile still more or less empty, so no link there yet either) for that purpose. If I do, I'll let you all know.

Meanwhile, something got me out of the 50 Songs in 90 Days forums. In one word: Twitter.

I had been waiting to set up a Twitter account until I got a broadband Internet connection, as my dialup link is, as you'd expect, way too slow. But then I was reading the Twitter thread on the 50/90 forums, and I started getting that familiar feeling of being left out. So I fired up my Flock browser, activated its Twitter function, and set up my account. Then, in the Twitter help, I discovered how to put my most recent tweets into the sidebar of my blogs. (If you want to actually follow me on Twitter, click "Follow Me On Twitter" in the sidebar.) That had an Unintended Consequence...

I decided to actually post new blog entries. This is the first. I'll also post to the project blog and update my music projects blog for 50/90.

Anyway, this entry and my first tweets are really about the online presence itself: tweeting about Twitter and blogging about...well, just look at this entry's title. No profound, important, or even very social or personal stuff, really.

So I made a big step toward increasing my online presence by signing up for Twitter, and I'm also reactivating my existing presence in the form of my blogs. Maybe I should get my Flickr, Picasa, and Photoblog accounts going again as well...

Yes, I Can!

Until today*, I couldn't. "I can't" was my motto and my life story. That's why I became a professional slacker in the first place. Then I realized for the first time where I got it: from the extreme difficulty I had in learning how to tie my shoes when I was three. Eventually I learned to tie my shoes, but "I can't" never left me. But then a magical thing occurred: my awareness cured my problem! I had just proved a psychological principle I was previously skeptical of: full awareness of your problem (such as my belief in my incompetence) leads to overcoming your problem. Sometimes this occurs spontaneously. This is what just happened to me: a 40-year brainlock suddenly released. Before, I couldn't because I believed I couldn't. Now, I can!

The catalyst was a book. The author is Debbie Ford, a self-help author of distinctly New Age leanings and a heavy Jungian influence. Her major subject is the psychological "shadow" as Jung described it; outside her books, she does "shadow work" in workshops. For the last several years, I'd been finding copies of The Dark Side of the Light Chasers practically every time I go to a thrift store. I picked up a copy, but I didn't really get all that much out of it. Then I found the sequel, The Secret of the Shadow, on one of my mother's living room tables, so I started reading. Then I borrowed it from her and took it home with me so I could read the whole thing. And something happened right as I was reading it. One of my "stories" — the "I can't" one — came into consciousness, origin and all. All of a sudden, it lost its power over me.

Increasing My Online Presence, Even Despite Myself

Sometimes you can increase your presence on the Internet even despite yourself, just doing a little thing that leads to another. In this case, I found myself with a new blog I had to figure out what to do with. Except that the figuring was already done for me, by a previous plan. So I stole from my own plan. The plan? It was for an art blog. Not one on my own Spanner-related stuff (like my existing project blog), but on art in general, and not just mine. And so here — this "Dennis Jernberg's _______" naming thing is starting to get a bit tedious — is my new art blog. [Note: there was a link to my Yahoo 360 blog, but Y!360 is now dead, alas...]

So what kind of stuff will I be writing about there? Any of my non-Spanner-related art, of course. (There's hardly any of it right now, but one can always hope.) Also, there's commentary on art news, and my hometown art scene. And I'll write about any art, period, as long as it interests me.

So there. I have yet another blog now. If this keeps up, I may end up needing something on the order of Blog-Zilla just to keep up with them all...

More Maintenance, and a New Photo Blog for Project 365

Tonight, my muse took her sweet time to give me new story ideas for my novel Bad Company, so I went back to the Net, sent my brother some photos, and proceeded to set up a Flickr account and a photo blog, both for Project 365 — and so I'm retiring the photo thread in this blog, just one day after I started it.

Why Flickr when I already have an account with Picasa Web Albums? Because Flickr has a Project 365 group, which I proceeded to join once I uploaded my first photos. This, of course, is the perfect excuse for me to actually use my camera...

Meanwhile, there's some kind of glitch in the template for my opinion blog that I'll have to take care of soon.

I've had an ambitious plan for increasing my Web presence for some time now. But all of a sudden, I find myself carrying it out almost without effort. In a single day, I set up my Flickr account and Photoblog blog. Then tonight I did some more maintenance work on my blogs, replacing the "Links to My Sites" section with a new, improved one. It looks like I'll be setting up my project webpage, and maybe even a LiveJournal account, by the time I post the next entry here. Who knows what else I might end up doing this month...

Blog Maintenance: January 2009

Finally, after, say, about 6 months and the creation of an entirely new blog, I decided to do some work maintaining the blogs themselves. I added various "Gadget" features to the sidebars. I also finished the task of switching the links and blogroll from this blog to my opinion blog. That was just the beginning.

To my project blog, notice that I've added a slideshow of the Spanner album at Picasa Web Albums, Google's counterpart to Flickr. Meanwhile, I've entered Project 365, in which you take a photograph a day for a year; the thread on this blog is here. While posting a comment to the NaNoWriMo forums, I realized that I can do the same thing with drawings, posting them to my project blog just like I'm posting my Project 365 photos to this blog.

Now comes the hard part. That means the long tedious task of searching for sites to add to my link lists and blogrolls. For one thing, I need to find the right webpages and blogs for each of my blogs to link to. Furthermore, there's a very annoying bug in the template of my opinion blog that makes some of the posts almost unreadable; I need to fix that bug soon.

With my websites and a few other sites in the future, I have my work cut out for me...

My Agenda for the First Week of January 2009

I have something of an ambitious agenda for the first week of 2009. First of all, I intend to write a whole lot. More information on that in the project blog (right here, to be exact). Once the first 30,000 words are out of the way, I intend to retool all three of my blogs, set up at least one new account (where, I'll say later), and start the initial work on my new homepage and project website.

What do I plan to do this New Year's weekend? Besides writing Bad Company, I want to get my blogs reorganized and properly customized. The political links that are still on this blog, I'll move to my opinion blog (which I also want to find the best name for), and I'll find other links I think better complement this particular blog. I'll make major changes in the blogrolls for each blog. I'll do the rest of the customization that got left behind when I abandoned my blogs back when I burned out on writing in August. I'll probably even change my template for this blog, and maybe even the project blog as well.

The other Web-related project I have in the works this weekend is my new project website. It will have the same name as my project blog — Spanner's World — and the project blog will be the associated blog. Eventually, I may even set up a "Spanner's World" forum for my projects, opening them up to public comment. The project page will be for my projects, of course, within the fictional universe that centers on my manga project Spanner and such side projects as Bad Company and its sequel Black Science.

So that's my plan for the first week of 2009. Now all I have to do is to keep myself to it...

Project 365 #1: A White New Year's

 

My first picture for Project 365: a snowy New Year's near Seattle.

I wanted to take part in the "Project 365" thing, in which you take a picture a day for a year. Then, around noon, when I started writing my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel Bad Company again, this time for JanNoWriMo, I looked outside the nearest window and found snow on the ground. It had snowed overnight! We not only had a white Christmas in the Seattle area this year, but a white New Year's. So I took this picture, and my Project 365 began!

And so it begins...