Standing On Boxes

over in the ‘fic’ section, I’m experimenting with the stylesheet I use to format the stories. This is part of the effort to turn all of the finished fics into ePub formatted ebooks.

I’m using the following method:

1. Download the story from TtH in ePub format (saves me a few minutes in creating the ePub file) (So only finished stories/chapters)
2. Make changes to the story txt (I don’t really have to, iBooks (on my iPad) seems to deal with the straight conversion okay. But I want it to look “better”. — Basically, replace the body of the story chapters with the formatted version here. Not instant since I have to make it all XHTML compliant (and it isn’t right now.)

I’m using Sigil for this. It lets you actually edit an epub file without having to ‘take it apart’ to get to things (an epub file is a zip file with contents in a specific format/organization.). It isn’t perfect but for a beta it does very well (and is available on Windows, OS X, and Linux)

One of my projects for the summer is to unpack/organize a bunch of boxes of junk from the last time I moved. an embarrassingly long time ago. A lot of old papers and CD’s and other things I can’t just throw in the trash. So I bought a small shredder.  Can’t shred a lot before it has to be emptied but once I get past this project I won’t be shredding a lot at any one time. And it’s noisy.

Evil iTunes! Making me spend money on music!

Anyway, something a little different on the playlist today.

Jennifer Knapp

Never heard of her before. But then I’m not a huge/ any fan of most religious music.

Not bad. Very personal sounding songs, given the backstory. And kind of sad.

And the Christian imagery? Mostly subtle.

The Cat Returns – in which the heroine, Haru, has a cat problem and gets some help from the Cat Bureau.

It’s an indirect sequel to Whisper of the Heart , based on the story that Shizuku, the main character in “Whisper of the Heart”, wrote – and several seconds of which appeared in that movie. The Wiki entry goes into detail of how that worked.

It’s a funny story. And well done. And a light hearted fantasy – mostly. The animation isn’t up to Miyazaki standards (but then, most modern animation isn’t). It is closer to general anime in quality. But that’s okay. And it is still a good movie. Even if it is only 75 minutes long.

(Note: Anne Hathaway voices Haru, Cary Elwes voices the Baron, and Peter Boyle is Muta in the Disney/English translation.)

So, out of 17 Studio Ghibli films, how many have I watched so far? 10. I still have one Miyazaki film to watch (Porco Rosso) and all four of Isao Takahata‘s films plus a couple other films by other directors.