Standing On Boxes

She was Kendall Hart, a Pine Valley delinquent and home wrecker . And the daughter that Erica Kane put up for adoption.

(Yes, I know the character is very different in her current incarnation but we’re talking Sarah Michelle Gellar’s (SMG) version from the early-mid ’90s for which she got the Daytime Emmy)

The things you find. Going thru some old video tapes trying to decide if I want to digitize them, keep them, or throw them out. All of my Buffy tapes will go in the trash – I have the DVD’s. Not sure what to do with the rest. Probably replace the commercial ones with DVD’s where possible.

Among the tapes was a recording of an OTA transmission of an episode of “All My Children” from 1994. (I wasn’t the fan, it was my ex.) Not the best quality but I managed to scrape up 7 1/2 minutes out of it with SMG as Kendall Hart. She spends the entire episode in a jail cell. With visits from a prison guard (The UST just rolls off them), a boyfriend (I think), a lawyer, and her mother. She’s supposed to be in her early 20′s but she looks a young 16 (which I believe was her actual age.)

Now, what do I do with this huge clip? It’s more of historical interest than anything (Though I bet ABC could make a bunch of money by packaging character arcs (maybe they do that already?) for actors/actresses who moved on to bigger things.)

Randomness while my car gets a new power steering hose…

The new version of Safari ( Apple’s web browser ) is out. Other than Bing as an optional search engine, I don’t see much difference in the Mac version. Yet. Though it is supposedly faster…

But there is supposed to be a new SDK for those folks who want to develop extensions.

The new iPhone? Yes, I want one! But my current AT&T contract has a year to go so I don’t qualify for the cheap upgrade. Next year.When my current one is obsolete, and not just “less shiny”. And I want to keep my “unlimited” 3G service until then if possible (even though I don’t really use it much right now.)

Urgh! I turned on the 3G on my iPad a couple days ago to get at least 1 month of the $30/month unlimited that AT&T has decided to cancel. I only really need 3G while traveling. I spend most of my days within WiFi range.

Nothing exciting going on.

1. Haven’t been writing this week. Somehow, last weekend I got sucked into the world of Glee fan fiction ( The Horror!) – of which there are humongous amounts. And this is without ever watching a single episode.

2. Need to write up iPad app opinions still. There’s a new version of Stanza for the iPad – finally – so I can read my DRM’ed ereader ebooks in a font my eyes can handle.

3. Bought a good flatbed scanner and have been scanning things in.

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.

So, I’ve had my iPad for almost 24 hrs. What do I think so far?

The key board – haven’t quite gotten used to it. It might be the same, technically, as the iPhone or iPod touch keyboard but it doesn’t feel the same when using it. On the iPhone, my fingers are so big that I have to use it and just believe that I’ll hit the correct key.and I do but it feels a bit like magic. On the iPad? I have to pay a bit more attention to the keyboard.

And I really want some arrow keys. I’m having real problems moving the insertion point in text boxes. Mostly because the text is so small. That being another gripe. The text being small on an iPhone makes sense because the device is small. But a lot of these iPhone apps modified for the iPad don’t allow me to change the font size. Instead, I’m stuck with iPhone sized fonts. I don’t remember seeing a default font size setting for the iPad. Hopefully that will be in iOS 4.0 (no, I haven’t looked. I haven’t had a chance to really dig into it yet.)

Font size in Mobile Safari is another issue. I want it to work like it does in regular Safari or even Firefox — increase just the font size, not the whole viewport. (In grown-up Safari it’s “View-Zoom Text Only”) Some websites provide that on their pages but not all. In some cases I can do the double-tap to zoom in on a chunk of text but that only works if the page uses markup elements that make sense.

Pages – a similar problem – I want the text to be zoomable but not permanently but I can’t find a way to do it.

Looks like all of my problems would be solved by text being zoomable. My insertion point issue would also work better with larger display fonts. Now I just to tell Apple.

(more to say on actual apps and usage later…)

(Or attempting to anyway.)

A “Fixit” is a story, fan fiction, where the writer attempts to “fix” some event, often controversial, that occurs in a tv show, movie, novel, or etc. (I’m sure there are other names for it but that’s what I call them.)

Usually the fix involves changing some traumatic event – e.g. character A doesn’t die. Or character A comes back after dying. Fixing something that upsets a subset of fans.

Not every fandom with fans writing fan fiction has that kind of pivotal event but examples and some fixes include:

• BtVS – the death of Tara in the episode “Seeing Red”. Fixes include:
  • Having the bullet hit someone else.
  • Having her leave town before it happens
  • Someone else looking like Tara dying instead
  • Someone resurrecting Tara
• BtVS – Buffy dying in the episode “The Gift”. Possible fixes:
  • Buffy not jumping
  • Buffy not dying from the fall (Note: I don’t consider her ending up in a different dimension after falling thru Glory’s portal to be a fixit. That’s just a crossover excuse.)
  • Dawn jumping instead. Or someone changing things so Dawn never exists.
• BtVS – Rescuing season 3 Faith (from the Mayor, from herself, etc.) could be seen as a fixit
• SG-1 – Janet dying in the episode “Heroes” or the first time Daniel Jackson dies (Not sure which episode that was)

So –

As part of my BtVS/SG1 crossover Portal Girl and the Science Lady, I decided to do a Janet “Heroes” ‘fixit’ and save her.

The issues:

• How and when do I insert the BtVS characters into the episode? Realism goes out the window here.
  • “Heroes” is already a very packed episode. There isn’t a lot of room to add to it.
    • Idea so far – after SG-13 heads for P3X-666 General Hammond gets a phone call from the President.
    • Need to stretch out the timeline. It isn’t clear in the episode how much time there is between SG-3 being sent as backup and when they are attacked by the Goa’uld while exploring the Ancient city. So, hours can be added without seriously changing the story.
    • Need to deal with the camera/documentary crew running around.
• How is Janet rescued?
  • Need to get Buffy & co. thru the Gate with Janet. Serious suspension of disbelief will be required.
• What effect will this fix have on SG1 (BtVS is already post-canon)
  • Janet alive. Injured? Uninjured?
  • Woolsey? Still doing a secret report (the one the next president uses to put Weir in charge of Stargate Command?)
• Other questions:
  • In an SG1 episode prior to this one, Carter is missing. Did Dawn know? Why is Buffy rescuing Janet but they didn’t go after Sam? Or do we just ignore that it happened? Or it happened before they met.
  • How long after they meet in Vegas does this (Heroes) occur? Long enough for the twins (C&C) on Buffy’s team to go thru training (as mentioned in earlier chapter)?

I delete it anyway. It never makes it out of the moderation queue. Ever. And it’s obvious what it is.

It’s been getting rather heavy lately. But I’m still not letting it thru.

Tonight? Two Studio Ghibli films.

My Neighbor Totoro – another Miyazaki film. Two girls (Satsuki (10?) and Mei (4) and their father move out into the country (in Japan, of course) while the girl’s mother is in a hospital (a 3 hour walk away).

A “cute” enjoyable movie. A mild Miyazaki. The girls are the central characters but just barely. And none of them are particularly strong natured characters. I could see elements of characters in other Miyazaki films in the two girls. Satsuki ‘reads’ like a younger Kiki but she moves around like Chihiro from Spirited Away. Mei reminds me of Ponyo except not as manic.

Whisper of the Heart – written by Miyazaki, based on a manga, but he didn’t direct it.

A very crowded movie. Unlike a Miyazaki film where actions centers around the characters, this one has a lot of things happening in it around the characters. The main character, Shizuku, wants to do something with her life. The only problem being, when she finally becomes inspired it happens when she should be studying for her high school admittance tests.

A good movie, if you’re into that sort of thing. In fan fiction it would be categorized as ‘pre-ship’. And lets not forget the Japanese version of “Country Roads” at the end. The song is part of the plot.

Just bought a new vacuum (I didn’t pay that much $$ for it) to replace the “broom vacuum” (actually one of those hand vacs attched to a long handle with a brush attachment) I’ve been using in my apartment.

All I can say is “Wow!” — just one run through my apartment and the canister that holds the dirt (it’s a bagless vacuum) was full! And the filters? Choked with whiteish powder.

Scary! My poor lungs!

Welcome to the social. Again. All new, watch out for the wet paint.

Check your iPhones and Androids at the door.

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No, I’m not going to buy a new MS “Kin” “Social” phone. For me or any of my family.

I just thought the phrase was amusing in a cringe-worthy sort of way. And shows how out of touch the people running this marketing campaign probably are.

I’ve had the designs for several iPhone apps floating around in my head for the last year. Nothing fancy. And not things I could sell (ideas related to my day job). An internet/client/portal kind of thing. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any real time to get beyond the design stage – and no incentive to do more than tinker. Maybe someday. Anyway…

Apple changed the Developers Agreement for OS 4.0 yesterday. There’s been a mild uproar from the usual suspects — folks whom it would never affect anyway since they never plan on doing Apple/iPhone development – for whatever reason.

The basic idea appears to be that – if you (developer/software co.) want to sell your iPhone app thru the iTunes AppStore, you have to use Apple approved software dev. tools. Of which there appears to be only 1. XCode 3.2.3+. And Apple approved API’s and libraries. Which means – C, C++, and Objective-C (which is C with a twist of Smalltalk syntax). And none of the cross-platform tools ->

Some pundits claim it’s a shot across the bows of Adobe, since it basically kills off their CS5/Flash to iPhone app generator (that they are supposed to announce/release next week. Ouch.). (Another skirmish in the Apple/Adobe Flash-wars?)

Another possible victim is Novell’s MonoTouch (It lets you use Mono (Novell’s .NET clone) and C# to develop iPhone Apps.)

And then there’s iSqueak – a version of Squeak (Smalltalk) for the iPhone. Not sure where it fits in – it might survive since it IS built with XCode. (Not that you can get it from the App Store since it breaks at least one App Store rule. But the the person who ported it to the iPhone has used it to generate several iPhone Apps that are in the store.)

I believe there are a could other similar cross-platform development tools that violate the new rules but I don’t remember them.

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The point? IMO – Ordinary mortals (aka non-developers and non-tech-pundits and non-tech blog denizens) aren’t going to care, as long as developers keep writing new and interesting software for the iPod/iPhone/iPad platform.

Me? I couldn’t afford the Adobe tools anyway. Monotouch was $1000/year the last time I checked. iSqueak? I’ve been tinkering with Squeak for years but never written anything “real” (I just like the environment). So none of those really affect me.

Apple only charges $99/year for their iPhone Dev. program (aka access to the App Store) but XCode is free (It just requires a Mac to run it on. And a test device would be good when using beta versions of the iPhone SDK.)

So the rule change doesn’t affect me personally. I couldn’t afford the possible commercial non-Apple cross-dev tools anyway. And I’m not one of those people who thinks Apple is evil so it doesn’t really upset me.

But I really need to find the time to do something .

Any interest?

You can d/l them from TtH in ePub format.

They don’t seem to work in the desktop version of  Stanza (Which has been in permanent beta since Amazon bought them) so I can’t test them in the iPhone version.

Calibre seems to have no problems with them (I’m not thrilled with Calibre but it appears to work.).

I haven’t tested them on an iPad (yet), but on a Mac w/iTunes 9.1 you can drop a .epub file on it and they appear as books.

I’m thinking of being “lazy” — Download them from TtH in ePub and then tweak them so they look the way I want them to.