Author: Doyce

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This is How I Get It Done: Making a quick ebook with Jutoh

This one’s going to be short, because I’ve kind of been looking at this screen all day.

A few days ago, I asked if anyone would be interested in getting all of my NaNoWriMo advice posts pulled together into some kind of epub format.

The answer was “yes.”

I kind of ignored that for a bit, because frankly I didn’t know where to start with creating something like that, beyond a PDF; all the stuff I used a few years ago is abandonware.

But today someone sent me an ebook they’d ‘just slapped together’ in eCub, so I went and looked at that.

It seemed fine, but I did notice this bit:

eCub does not do WYSIWYG or syntax-highlighted editing.

Hmm. I may be reading that wrong, but it sounds like it doesn’t do something like “highlight that word and hit ctrl-I for italics.” So… may a little simpler than I wanted.

But then I read:

You may like to consider the Jutoh ebook editor for easier, WYSIWYG editing, more sophisticated import, and greater configurability. Jutoh also handles footnotes, index entries and other aspects.

Well, that certainly seemed a lot closer to what I was looking for.

So I grabbed it, installed it, and got to work. First, I saved copies of all the individual posts as html files, then I pointed Jutoh at that directory full of a mess of html files, images, links, and… you know, stuff, and said “Do something with that, wouldja?”

Here is the result — This is How I Get It Done – Daily Kicks in the Ass for NaNoWriMo Authors, in:

It took me longer to get a decent picture of a composition notebook cover than it did to format the first chapter.

Now… it wasn’t THAT easy — I spent most of the afternoon cleaning out text I didn’t need, and dropping some (but not all — or even most) of the comments from the posts. And I had to recenter pictures and format the captions and…

Okay, yeah, it took awhile, but it was a piece of cake.

The end result (at least for the .mobi – I can’t check the others) is a document that Kate can read on her Kindle and I can read on my phone. The text formating is clean, the pictures are totally legible, the table of contents works perfectly, and all the links to other people’s websites (the commenters, for example) are live and do exactly what they should. I’d love to hear how it works for you guys on your readers of choice.

Unavoidable Snark: A whoooooole afternoon to format a clean, readable, twenty-three thousand word ebook with pictures and an extended reading list that reaches out to the rest of the internet. Yeah. Wow. I can totally see why publishers are charging as much for ebooks as hardbacks. Totally. Yeah.

Finally, for those folks who just want it in their browser, here’s the complete collection of the original posts.

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Transmedia: Dirty Commie Creativity

A few weeks ago, I finally caved in and picked up StarCraft 2, motivated in no way by the promised playability or fun of the game (which it delivers), but by a heartfelt desire to blow up some internet-friends (still an unrealized goal).

(Has anyone munged “internet friends” into some kind of cool portmanteau yet? Something like frenemies? Frienternets? Interiends? Podbudsters? Hmm.)

Anyway, playing Starcraft again (it feels a lot more like ‘again’, rather than ‘a whole new game’) produced an interesting effect about four or five evenings in.

It made both me and Kate start up Mass Effect 2.

Now, I was going to write about Mass Effect 2 a little bit, but I’ve done that before, more than a few times.

And anyway, I got distracted by some folks on twitter (Tweeps. Why isn’t there a generic-internet version of “tweeps”?) talking about transmedia.

This happens fairly regularly. Every few months, someone who is metallurgically balanced so as to ping my radar will throw out some thoughts on transmedia and stir that particular brain-turtle up. I’m going to take the opportunity to write about the subject while said turtle is still awake and munching on lettuce.

Trasmediwhat?

So: transmedia and transmedia storytelling. The idea is that the gestalt product of a creative project (hereafter, “the content”) grows into some kind of all-permeating thing that sort of wraps up, envelopes, soaks into, saturates, and generally penetrates the content audience’s lifestyle from multiple directions and via multiple media platforms. There are some pornography analogies I could draw, but that specific image isn’t really the goal of a transmedia product (unless a corporation gets hold of it); and I don’t think transmedia creators actually want to engender some kind of unhealthy obsession with their content beyond what one might see from the typical Whedonite or a Beiber fan.

Basically, a transmedia project (theoretically) develops its story across multiple media platforms in order to provide different entry points into the story. For example, one transmedia project might include books, blogs, ‘in-fiction’ twitter feeds, movies, youtube videos from fan-turned-creators, interactive text adventures, RPGs, and shared-author stuff like the Mongoliad or a storyball. Each one of these entry-points (and each piece of content within a particular platform) has a role in the big picture of the whole project, and a set ‘lifespan’ in which it is allowed to affect the big picture.

Did you pick up on the fact that some of those content-affecting inputs would be ‘fan’-created? I hoped you might — it’s an exciting and interesting concept, because if Twitter has taught us anything at all, it’s that all writers are also readers, and most readers are also writers, and everyone’s a fan/geek/nerd about something, so why not harness that awesome creative power and make it into something bigger than any one person? Coordinated storytelling across multiple platforms (even assuming that ninety percent of it is crap) cannot help but make the whole story more compelling.

The “coordinated” part is important, obviously; hence the need for set lifespans in which different elements can affect the core content.

Is this even a new thing?

It’s a fair question. When you talk about transmedia, you quickly start talking about activities that fall under the (shiny, new, plastic) umbrella of “transmedial play”, which. . . well, let’s just quote wikipedia on this one.

The viewer/user/player (VUP) transforms the story via his or her own abilities, and enables the Artwork to surpass the medium. It is in transmedial play that the ultimate story agency and decentralized authorship can be realized. Thus the VUP becomes the true producer of the Artwork. The Artist-authored transmedia elements act a story guide for the inherently narratological nature of the human mind to become thought, both conscious and subconscious, in the imagination of the VUP.

To which I respond “Oh. RPGs. But fancy.”

And what about Harry Potter?

It’s easy to look at a lot of the big-paycheck intellectual properties and think “but seriously: this is already being done.” Harry Potter is out there in books, movies, video games, slashfiction, web comics, youtube parodies, fan created vignettes, and hundreds of other things I’d probably rather not know about.

But that’s not really what this transmedia thing is aiming for.

To which you say: “What?”

See, an example like Harry Potter isn’t (as the jargon surrounding this discussion dictates) transmedia, it’s “crossmedia” — in crossmedia, the IP crosses over to new media platforms only to spread out the original content as far as it can — the stuff beyond the books isn’t delivering new content or growing the ‘canon content’, they’re just new delivery vectors for the original content, and as for the other stuff? The slashfic and youtube fanvids aren’t acknowledged at any point in the cycle as being a ‘real’ part of of the Harry Potter collective creative product in the first place. Conversely, transmedia is designed for multi-platform multi-author hacking.

And again, that’s some pretty heady stuff — there’s no more fertile ground for innovation than a diversity of experience.

But… no one’s really doing this yet?

Here’s the thing: I think it’s being done by accident right now, and largely by people who don’t realize they’re doing it.

To take Mass Effect 2 as a (bad) example, even as I play the game I’m making up stories about the characters or other background elements in my head, because as much as there is going on in that game already (dozens of stories above and beyond the main arc), there’s tons of stuff that only gets alluded to, and those are places my mind likes to go play. I’m also wearing an N7 sweatshirt when the house gets a little chilly in the evening, and I’ve read or at least considered reading the novels/comics/whatever set in the ME2 universe that have nothing at all to do with the storyline of the games, but which add more depth and meaning to the game by thier inclusion in the net product. I’m saturated. Permeated.

But as I said, that’s not a great example. None of my head-stories have an access point by which they can be incorporated into the creative whole. I’m saturated in this content only insofar as I want to become so (heck, even when I wear the sweatshirt, it’s at least somewhat ironically).

Dragon Age (also by Bioware) gets closer in this regard simply because you’ve got the game, the extra content for the game, the flash-based spin-offs, the expansions, novels and comics that provide some intertextual depth to the setting without rehashing anything from the game itself, AND a tabletop RPG (and supporting forum) that lets you play around in the setting sandbox and create your own stories and hacks and narrative, then share it with your fellow fans in that context.

No: that’s not a perfect realization of the ideal, but I believe it’s moving in the right direction; it has a lot of the ingredients in the bowl. And if it’s not right (not yet), that’s not the point — even the failure has value. I don’t think lightning is suddenly going to strike and someone will magically produce a perfect transmedia product/template. Most great ideas don’t come as flashes of insight following brilliant successes — they come after a series of epic fuck-ups and spectacularly useless failures.

(Like, say, Google Wave; the ultimate solution-in-search-of-a-problem. Ten years from now, someone will turn that “wasted” software development and make something pretty goddamn amazing out of it. You watch.)

Why do you keep using examples from gaming?

Lots of people who get excited about Transmedia seem to want to start from books and work out from there. Those same people ask things like “how can publishers take on the author’s work to help it become truly transmedia?”

I think that’s… adorable. Also? Woefully myopic. How is a publisher supposed to help someone writing books expand their creative content into an arena neither they nor (presumably) the author knows anything about? What the fuck does Knopf know about creating a flash-based game or ARG meant to share a linearly independent story spun off from the Book they just put out in hardback?

Jesus, most of them can’t even get their heads around ebooks with anything better than 1996 cognition, and those are kind of the same thing (for now).

No, if you want to jump platforms, you need people who get that OTHER platform as well as you get the platform you’re starting with.

(And there should also be people keeping an eye out for new platforms that don’t currently look like platforms. Some of the best ‘inventions’ come from people repurposing something in a smart way. (GPS technology was originally created to help us bomb the fuck out of other people, for example.))

My point: all the platforms need to be treated with equal care, and if all the platforms are equally important, than it doesn’t matter which one you start on. Gaming (in my opinion) has always done a lot more stuff related to multi-platform creative content and “audience as author” creation, so I tend to start there (but I can be wrong, too).

Again, there’s that chime: audience as author. Author as audience. Innovation via a diverse group of creators.

I’ve been reading Where Good Ideas Come From on my Droid, and there’s a lot in there about co-mutual creation that touches on the potential power of transmedia — the creative output of many people, provided that all those people have access to the “stuff” — the gears and parts that make up a transmedia product. Leave all that stuff lying around, mix in interested and excited people with different experience, give them a reliable means to share good ideas or good notions or even half-baked half-ideas, and let it all simmer someplace that doesn’t punish failed experiments or cockblock anyone messing with the Holy Writ of the Original Content Creator, and you might get something pretty damned special.

Someplace. Someplayce.

Play. Excited, energized creation-as-play.

Now ask again why I keep using gaming examples.

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Working Like a Rockstar (The October Forecast)

My short-term contract job came to an unhappy/happy end on Friday. And while you might assume ‘unhappy for me’, I’d have to say that the real unhappiness was felt by my now-ex-employers, who really wanted me to stay and really liked me; they just ran out of budget.

They liked me so much that my boss basically wrote the new update to my resume, bragging me up even more than I usually do myself. Contract jobs are actually pretty good in that way — you can come in like a superhero, smash the crap out of problems, gird yourself in accolades, and leave before office politics sully your fancy spandex costume.

The big trick is making sure you’ve got somewhere to land when you leap over the next tall building in a single bound. (Freelance writers will find this kind of thing very familiar; it’s a kind of rockstar lifestyle, assuming one reads that to mean “striving to see the difference between homelessness and living out of a tour van.”)

I may have a new gig lined up pretty soon — another -opolis that needs saving from an Atomic Menance — but to be perfectly honest I’ll be happy if there’s a bit of a lag before the next corporate thing.

I am ready to do some other things.

Let’s review what’s on the to-do list.

New cub.

There’s a new kid on the way to the Casa, so there are more than a few home projects going on. The kid’s room is actually pretty much ready to go, but in the meantime we’ve been working on other rooms in the house.

We’ve painted our bedroom and the front greatroom, and of course Kaylee’s new bedroom needs to be framed in and painted and carpeted and all that cool stuff, but we’re letting some professionals handle that, even though I’m pretty sure I could nail (heh) the framing part.

Then there’s painting the house itself. The outside. We must — absolutely must — paint the whole thing before winter, or we’ll need to replace all the siding next summer, and if I’ve got some time before the next gig, I’ll probably be doing that myself and saving us mumble-hundreds of dollars.

The main problem with this cunning plan is that there are three spots where the siding needs to be replaced, and of course the problem spots aren’t anywhere a mook like me could handle it — they’re complicated places like where the chimney meets the house, right under the eaves.

By the way: if you’re in the market for a house, or planning to build one? Fuck chimneys. I don’t care how much you want a fireplace; don’t do it. Embed a firepit in your deck or something. Chimneys are to houses what a bad smoking habit is to an otherwise healthy person.

Anyway. I am pretty much ready to go with the painting thing, but we’re going to have to wait until we can get these sections fixed by someone competent experienced.

Why isn't it ever simple?

NaNoWriMo is on the horizon, and the prepatory murmurs are audible even at this great distance. Some folks have asked if I’m ‘doing’ it again this year which… c’mon. Of course.

But I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do first. A publisher handed me some revision requests which — damn them — are actually really good, so I want to get those done and handed back to my awesome agent before October is dead and gone.

What will I be writing?

Actually, I have a story to finish that needs at least another 50k (well, two, actually, but I’m picking one over the other), so I’ll be getting it down. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to do that with NaNoWriMo, but at this point, I think I’ve done it legit often enough to pfff those kinds of restrictions.

But that’s just me; if you’re trying to finish NaNoWriMo for the first time, BY ALL MEANS OBSERVE THE RULES. Doing it my way (picking up an unfinished story) is actually making the whole thing harder; I’m just stupid self-challenging that way.

What would I write if I weren’t working on something extant? I dunno.

I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t suggest, though: steampunk.

I love the stuff currently lumped in under the heading of ‘steampunk’. Love it. But steampunk is kind of like vampires right now; something people mix in because it’s cool, not because the elements are being used in any kind of meaningful way. I’m getting sick of it.

You want to use the trappings? Fine. Call it whatever it really is, though — zeppelin fantasy, gogglerotica, or whatever.

Punk anything requires class struggle, the social effects of technological revolution, and people with no influence and power rebelling against a monolithic Authority.

Slapping goggles on your protagonist doesn’t make it steampunk.

Ahem. Anyway. Rant over. There’s my advice for NaNoWriMo. At least for today.

Hey, that reminds me.

Last year, I wrote a bunch of NaNoWriMo advice, broken down for day-by-day consumption. People seemed to dig it (and I’ll probably repost them to twitter as appropriate), but would there be any interest in seeing all those posts brought together into some kind of ebook-like thing prior to the start of the madness?

Not to buy, obviously — I’m not wondering if there’s money in it — I’m wondering if there’s enough interest to justify the work of putting it together before 11.01.10.

Is that it? I think that’s it. Damn but I’m out of practice writing these things — this post was all over the place — I’ve got blog-rust all over the keyboard now. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Nothing like being blocked from your own site during the day for the last two months to make you really pine to get some blogging done.

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Updates for the week of 2010-10-03

  • Oooh. It makes me angry when one of those twitter analysis things posts something 'for' me when I specifically tell it not to. #
  • Burning Wheel blue balls — yeah, there's an image. I remain frustrated with the failure ratio for Skype-based game sessions. #
  • Phone hunting soon. Anticipated getting an Incredible, but the Droid 2 has a lot to recommend it — I am a BIG fan of longer battery life. #
  • Roaming bookstores isn't as much fun anymore. #dontfindouthowtheymakethesausage #
  • As a newcomer to political giving-a-crapness, I'm unsure what I should feel in election years. Pretty sure "ever-increasing dread" isn't it. #
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Updates for the week of 2010-09-05

  • Question: has anyone ever (EVER) seen one of those 'pocket' sliding doors that actually lock? #
  • Damn, East Coast: what's up with this heat AND humidity thing? They kind of suck when you combine them. #goinghometomorrow #itsadryheat #
  • An explosion of unfollows. Mmmmaybe live-tweeting weddings won't be a Thing I continue to Do. #
  • Those of you voicing support for the live-tweeted weddings have been heard. #
  • RT @wilw: OMG today's Penny Arcade is fucking GENIUS. http://bit.ly/cawB8R Fuh-huh-king jee-nee-you-us. #
  • Annnnd I left the driver's side window of my car open in the airport parking lot for the last 10 days. #dustisthenewblack #
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Updates for the week of 2010-08-29

  • Fear of the majority, BY the majority (http://j.mp/9y5D5W) – Some good thinking by Dave, here. #
  • Too drizzly for beach; covered patio has turned into Uninformed Republican Echo Chamber; too loud to write. Hello internet/haven, I'm back. #
  • Sand castles are criminally overlooked as a valuable learning tool. Kaylee's first lesson: Water Always Wins. #
  • I Don't Want Directions (http://j.mp/cehG3V) – Yes. This. #
  • RT @apelad: Mtn Dew hasn't tasted the same since they took the oun ai out. #
  • Well. That was a pleasant dream. Since I'm awake now, I think I'll just stay up — perhaps for the next several days. Yes. Very pleasant. #
  • Kaylee, on our evening walk, holding hands: "I'm going to be wherever you are, Daddy. Forever." #toolucky #
  • Listened through about 50 #podgecast and #ktng episodes; am caught up on both that show and my yearly recommended homoerotic snark intake. #
  • Kaylee: "I'm going to write your name in Curses, Daddy." (She means cursive, but I find her version much more… compelling. Heh.) #
  • Dude, I thought those robot things were MADE UP. — RT @DenverPostBrk: Car crashes into Transformer in Broomfield http://dpo.st/bJyuDs #
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The Last Airbender (http://j.mp/aEs5sx) – Excellent. #
  • Adrift: They’ve been waiting for me for a month, give or take. It’s a shock, followed by rage; I’ll never find Kae… http://bit.ly/9Sdtx9 #
  • Sand Castling http://flic.kr/p/8vPKiR #
  • Man, my neighbors are acting a lot like people right now. I don't particularly like people. #
  • 8/27/2010 (http://j.mp/cfe9sj) – Best part about this is her smile. #
  • Great online happy hour conversation with @bg_meg, @bafadam, and a dozen other awesome folks. Skype just justified its existence to me. #
  • I'm at another wedding, Twitter. VERY much doubt it will be as awesome as the last one. #nevertellmetheodds #
  • OMG THE FAMILIES (almost) SAT ON THE WRONG SIDES OF THE AISLE. Crisis averted, and may I be the first to say "whew". #boringweddinglivetweet #
  • The processional is "Joy of Man's Desiring". #dirty #getdownwiththybadself #
  • Holy crap that's a lot of bridesmaids. Literally; a lot, such as for parking. #
  • Can't actually see the ceremony around the camera crew. Yeah. Crew. #yikes #
  • The next portion of the EVENT is labled "Giving of Bride". #grammar #cavemanwedding #
  • Good things: bride and groom both look lovely; the priest is VERY good at this wedding stuff, and has a positively charming accent. #
  • Priest: "Some people anjoy a good SNAFU during a wedding… such as *turns* when we find out the best man forgot the rings." #ilikethisguy #
  • Fir the record, the best man didn't forget the rings, and WE SERIOUSLY CAN'T SEE A FRAKKING THING AROUND THE CAMERA GUYS. #
  • Ceremony is over. I think. The camera crew is clapping. We all take our cues from them. #
  • Servers greet us with cold beers before we hit the receiving line. The camera guy needs to talk to the beer guy. #
  • The string quartet's making a game attempt at a Beatles cover. #
  • The quartet's set off on the the musical trail of tears that is "Hey Jude", so there's the next 20 minutes of our life spoken for. #
  • I really don't think they considered all their lyrical option when they selected "Yesterday" as an appropriate wedding reception number. #
  • Oh. My. God! Twitter: I have encountered appetizer genius — shrimp breaded in coconut shavings. SWEET MONKEY LORD that's good. #
  • Back to the camera crew, which is now YELLING at people to move to more 'natural' positions for candid shots. #
  • I am informed, Twitter, that I will have the opportunity to live tweet YET ANOTHER wedding in October. #giddy #cannotcontainmyGLEE #
  • Annnd now the quartet has leapt, headlong and heedless, into "Danny Boy". #bridesdadisirish #itstheonlyeiresongweknow #
  • We are sitting with a senior couple that wouldn't much mind BEING when I grow up. Kissing. Nuzzling. Playing pranks on each other. Adorable. #
  • Wedding has a Prince of Persia SavePoint http://flic.kr/p/8wcNyf #
  • Very touching, tearful toast from the bride's proud father. #slainte #039; #
  • INCREDIBLY British toast from the groom's father. If the humor were any more dry, we'd have to seal the toast with tap water. #
  • Reception band unleashes "The Fields of Athenry ". Let the free bird fly, indeed. #
  • Watching foine, foine Irish ladies on the dance floor give me excellent reasons to look forward to old age with me love @DaphneUn. #
  • Reception band has broken out the ABBA. #wheresMJ #
  • Guys, @DaphneUn can cut a rug. If you ever wanted to challenge her to a dance-off; don't. Unless you need to share the floor with awesome. #
  • Hey Twitter; was anyone else aware of @DaphneUn's previous life as a cabana-girl? I, for one, was not. #intrigued #highschoolwasboring #
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Updates for the week of 2010-08-22

  • Exposed @maureenjohnson to Wonderpets. She wandered out of the room afterwards, singing the themesong in Ming Ming's voice. #whathaveIdone #
  • "Look Despondent" (http://j.mp/92nDW2) – That was the command I gave MJ and Kate before snapping this shot. #
  • RT @maureenjohnson: Goodnight, Twitter. http://twitpic.com/2f7ec4 (that's mah puppy, right there) #
  • Want. DnD sports team tees. http://is.gd/ek2Hx #
  • Kaylee's 5th birthday today. http://bit.ly/bgGvBX She approaches this event with her normal reserve and composure. http://bit.ly/9uxcu5 #
  • RT @gamefiend: RT @myzt: The inescapable truth within "Inception": if you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM, everything will be very slow #
  • RT @theoriginaledi: That. Is a GIANT. DOG! :O http://twitpic.com/2f7ec4 (Jake isn't that big, @maureenjohnson is just jar-sized.) #
  • Best part of @GregStolze joining a comment-versation is his insight. 2nd best? My blog software: "Hey, welcome back – beer's in the fridge." #
  • This weekend (while all y'all slept off Saturday) I wrote about Nerd Stuff. It's here: http://bit.ly/93lsNw – Good comments. #
  • Bukowski's 90th birthday today. http://bit.ly/cvHr12 #
  • The thing I like about Bukowski is the disbelief in his own work. Not lack of /faith/, but head-shaking bemusement at its success. #
  • What I don't like about Bukowski is his advice to only write when struck by bolts of inspiration. I wasted years following that advice. #
  • Had a chance to examine @maureenjohnson's #jars this weekend. The occupied ones were nice, but the empties? All. had. labels. #
  • Via many RT people: “Hallowed Ground” — photos of stuff the same distance from the WTC as the “Ground Zero Mosque” http://bit.ly/b2oLW0 #
  • Tried to describe the Wedding of Awesome to work-related people. Gave up when the looks of horror became too pronounced. Kind of pity them. #
  • Adrift: I round the next corner. Jon and Deidre are waiting for me. Weird – they went the other way. De’s hair is … http://bit.ly/9MSxod #
  • RT @colleenlindsay: Eat prey. Love, with A1 sauce. #eatpraywhatever #
  • Anyone have a nice, stable space in which to get some work done? Yeah, my neither. #displaced #
  • Riled and grumpy. Trying to remember the road to Buddha is bumpy. This helps http://bit.ly/cF8UJz (http://bit.ly/absIuT) #
  • Random Average: A funny thing happened on the way to the Ruins http://bit.ly/9PEfAN #
  • So, that wedding I tweetcasted. Wanna hear the processional music? http://bit.ly/8X1xij(style%20c).mp3 – You're welcome. #
  • So, that wedding I tweetcasted. Wanna hear the @parrygripp processional music?http://bit.ly/cdvzeG (click on "Style C"). You're welcome. #
  • Adrift: When we split up, I ran straight into another time distortion. VITS found a place for Jon and Deirdre to w… http://bit.ly/bUfCDL #
  • Finally off to see Scott Pilgrim with @DaphneUn. But first, need to find the perfect soft drinks to bring, with complimentary power-ups. #
  • Scott Pilgrim, the Movie (review): what it lacks in depth of field (compared to the books) it totally makes up in clarity. Really enjoyed. #
  • Also: Scott Pilgrim's Toronto is the Dark City experiment, conducted on GenX – a time-detached place gleefully mixing tech eras. Loved that. #
  • LEVEL EIGHT: DoyceT vs. PubRevisions _ Round 3: Sudden Death! FIGHT!!! #
  • Car says the outside temp is 104f. #fallisintheair #
  • By the way: I love my Toyota Matrix. Love. My car. #
  • Hmm. Seem to have forgotten my phone at home. #Imnotpanicking #whywouldyousaythat #
  • Parasitic fungus controls ants (http://j.mp/aEBz1V) – The title along gives me the start (and finish) of a campaign-length game. #
  • Good Morning and welcome to DIA. (Or, as I like to call it when I have to get up at 4:30am, DIAF.) #mmohumor #zzz #
  • RT @robtrimarco: Look, Friday, don't give me any lip. Just shut your day-hole and hurry this shit up. #
  • How fun was the #dnd game with @cyface last night? I'm now really annoyed I deleted all my (legit) rulebook pdfs a few months back. #
  • (Also? Not entirely sure HOW I deleted the pdfs. Didn't think I had. I may not love the game, but I'd never willingly nuke old characters.) #
  • RT @parrygripp: I composed a wedding processional for @PaulaSimone and @herzwesten! You can listen to it here: http://bit.ly/ayTQxD #
  • RT @AntSteele: Eavesdrop and people watch in public places. One of the best ways to saturate your brain with realistic dialogue. #writingtip #
  • Oh goody. The in-laws have started the Obama-bashing. Time to queue up a podcast in the other room. #
  • I'm knackered, people – sleeping during the flight did not substantively counteract the 4am start this morning. #
  • Turned up to Eleven (http://j.mp/9jDIBt) – If this is the stuff that got cut, I can't wait for the actual episode. #