starseerdrgn: red Nidorino softlight ai (nidoai)
I've been staying mostly offline for the last few days. Between getting some rather disrespectful and outright hate-fueled content thrown my way by social media people (in my RSS feeds), and just a general mass of negativity from the web/net as a whole, I've been trying to keep my focus elsewhere. Even gopher hasn't exactly been a place for positivity lately.

As such, I've been once again trying to learn C a bit more. "Learn C on the Mac" by Dave Mark has been a great help, given that I'm trying to do all of this on my MacBook Pro in Snow Leopard. And despite what I keep hearing from people (especially in the Rust community), C hasn't been that difficult for me so far. Sure, I'm not even done with the basics, but that's why I said so far. We'll see how well it goes in the future.

I've also been trying to figure out a good alternative to Pages '09 for making ePUB versions of my writing. Just in case I have to leave the MacOS platform for something like Linux or Windows in the future.

I tried getting the writer2epub extension working, but alas, it just doesn't run on either OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or NeoOffice for Snow Leopard. And the developer has seemingly disappeared, with all development dropped...because LibreOffice added built-in ePub export, and that was probably enough to make others sort of bully the dev into not updating (because that community hasn't pissed off enough people yet). So, I gave that a whirl.

It works. I'm having to do the testing in my Windows 7 install, but it works. Just... I can't get the cover image thing working properly, and the documentation doesn't say too much about any sort of troubleshooting. It doesn't even give me a size or aspect guideline for the file, or say what file types are supported. I've been having to guess this entire time.

That said, I know Calibre can export files to ePUB as well, so I'll be giving that a shot later. Here's hoping it's a bit more customizable than LibreOffice's offering. If nothing else, I can use my legacy version of Scrivener for Windows to do the work, because I know it works well. I just don't have a working Scrivener for 10.6.8...and that may eventually be a good thing.

For now, I think some gaming is in order. Just not sure what to play.
starseerdrgn: a white dragon with azure crystal horns and snout scales (Default)

So, Dave Winer recently posted about how great it is that Facebook's Instant Articles system is built on open web standards, and I'll admit, reading through the docs makes me love this system a lot more than Google's AMP. It's based on simple HTML5, a custom XML namespace for some classes, and RSS. That's it.

If I had even one complaint about Instant Articles, it's that they're using the <small> tag for the legal text. It's ironic, but not in the funny way. Still, that's the only complaint I could find.

If you're interested in reading up on it, you should check out the documentation. While I have no plans on using it myself, I'm happy that, unlike Google, they're keeping it simple.

starseerdrgn: a white dragon with azure crystal horns and snout scales (Default)
As I lie here in bed, trying to sleep, it dawns on me that I have never once successfully collaborated with someone on a project. Every attempt has spiraled to the point of completely excluding my input, or has managed to completely destroy my desire to work on said project.

Admittedly, much of it is due to people wanting more and more say in said projects. Some were also due to partners completely disregarding my input to satisfy their own ideal situations, using assumptions based on real world ideals and information, rather than those of the world we were building in.

To be honest, attempts to collaborate have soured me of the idea completely. I never wish to actively collaborate on something again, aside from small pieces. Having ideas thrown at me is fine, but outright collaboration on a project is out of the question.

Perhaps this is also why I refuse to commission artwork...In my mind, it is the same as a collaborative project. I would rather do the work myself, than to risk someone attempting to change the course of work completely for their own desires.

July 2023

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9 101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 08:14 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios