I have long held the belief that nothing admirable will happen in the world until the “nationalist culture” is turned into “world culture” - that is, until it becomes more important and more valuable to a or any particular country to be part of a world order rather than clinging slavishly to its own imperatives.
I’m more convinced every day. I doubt the powers that be care what I think….
but I have to say that the “instructor” leaves a fair amount to be desired in some ways. She’s off for five days in the middle of our paid-for workshop, to go to a convention. Now that’s fine - she’s pubbed, she’s got stuff on all burners. BUT if that’s the case, she shouldn’t have tried to “fit in” this workshop.
She’s also not real sympathetic to those of us in ’shop who are writing fantasy or aren’t writing romance specifically - which surprise surprise is well over half of us. Unlike the other workshops I’ve taken online, this one seems to be “maven’d” by a “nothing but romance” individual. Which is more than awkward….
However, even with the above-entered caveats, I’m managing to get some helpful information out of this - in spite of the instructor. Though her take on a marketing synop is MAGNITUDES different from others I’ve had in the past - mostly in number of pages….
A site I scan daily (busy forum, lots of members, lots of SEO dreck therein) occasionally pulls in one of the “even-seamier than gaming the SEs” sorts of folks, in this latest case a “gentleman” who wants to ditch the new Yahoo/Geocities ads on his “free site”. He was fairly snappish when told in a reasonably gentle manner that he couldn’t just decide to “go around” the ads - that that’s part of what makes Geocities etc. “free”. When it was pointed out to him that he’d agreed to this when he clicked “I agree” on the TOS page, he said basically - no one reads those - as if that abrogates the legalities and liabilities!
What part of “no, that’s illegal according to the agreement you made with Geocities” did he not understand?
Overall, I’m planning an “umbrella” for my other sites. “Vkaryl” has turned out to be an “identity” I identify with (hrm…. well, anyway…. it’s true!), and consolidating under that cognomen seems reasonable, and will save money (always a big thing for my husband - retirement isn’t cheap, you know!)
So I’m wondering what other functionality I might consider here. And I do NOT mean ads. Not under any circumstances. I don’t DO ads…. and I don’t do SITES that do ads. When I want something, I find it without ANY dependence on ads which people purportedly put up to “pay for their website”. Baloney…. most ads are put there simply to MAKE MONEY so the person with the site doesn’t have to work at a “real job”…..
I did mention that I’m opinionated, did I not? Well, if I failed to enter that caveat before, consider it done now.
I occasionally observe that I seem to be the only person most anywhere who really LIKES winter. Others complain about the gloom, the snow, the cold, the fact that they can’t go anywhere and do anything, the lack of sun.
I LIKE it this way. It can storm all it wants, can be cloudy forever. If I never saw the sun again, it would be too soon. Anything over 70 is FAR too warm for me, and Goddess forfend it gets into the 90s! I don’t care to “tan”, I don’t like to swim (well, the ocean’s different - they might as well not have invented swimming pools though!), and as far as longer days, who cares? I’m not essentially an outdoors-interested individual, the horses and hunting being the only outdoor-ish things I care about.
So send all your winters my way. I’m happy to return the favor with summer….
Long time member at WmW, a large, organized, well-known collection of fora about the world of search engines mostly, with a few nods to the “browser wars”, css from a mainstream perspective, etc. - I actually joined 4/19/2003 but had been lurking and reading there since about mid-2001. I’ve been a “supporter” since May of 2004.
One of the many attractions there was the active “sub-community” which posted in “Foo” - the place for the oddball, that didn’t have a home elsewhere, the place where you threw a fit if you had a bad day, or where you got to “glow” a little when a family member did something great…. and where we played silly word games among other things.
Well, the powers that be decided folks had too much fun there I guess - a simple post by a nice man in London, to which I replied in a couple of sentences, got locked as being “off topic” etc. - here’s a link to that one; and here’s a link to the “Foo hit the fan” thread posted by mivox, another long time member of WmW.
Community is important. We all live in the real world, where the off-topic oddball thread is what gets us through a dismal day with sanity retained. Seriously shortsighted…. to quote one of my favorite movies ever: BIG mistake. HUGE.
more than they can POSSIBLY juggle? Not that I mix metaphors or anything…. much.
Here’s what I’ve said “yes” to lately: taking an online synopsis class, to hopefully promulgate submitting a partial to DAW in the next couple of months; writing the Journal Entries for a module in production for NWN (Bioware’s CRPG); setting up a website and forum for same; developing a database for the town board’s secretary to use to track the monies paid in by homeowners…. and all of this on top of three OTHER non-profit (or is it FOUR?) websites I already am responsible for, one of which (the largest of course) needs MAJOR reworking to be standardized and accessible-ized (especially important for this one since it’s the national site for an association which does volunteer work for differently-abled children).
So I’m an idiot, right?
