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April 27, 2005
Now, Where Was I?
Blog repaired, all systems go, life can return to normal. I'm very sorry indeed for the tedious, seemingly endless hassle of the past several days. I did learn a great deal, though. I can now install and correctly configure perl scripts and have them work first time, for instance. I'd always looked very warily at that whole side of web development as something just too arcane for the bumbling likes of your humble correspondent even to contemplate. Now, though, well, who knows? Perhaps my first project will be to install MT-Blacklist to deal with the inevitable tide of comment spam.
The only sad part here is that my posts from the last three years can't be accessed--unless I put in a truly spectacular and incredibly tedious amount of work manually coding new links for each one of hundreds of posts. Before I embarked on this little jaunt I should really have exported all those posts in the official MT format, so that they could readily be reincorporated once all the faffing about was over. This is not what I did. I just downloaded the whole archives/ directory (and a big sucker it was, too, at 13 MB).
So this could be a good time to think about where I go next, blogwise. The immediate task before me is to get back to Author Boy adventures, and that means getting back to the scribble caper, where I belong. In this vein it turns out I have to come up with blurbs for ECLIPSE, my next book. One of these blurbs is for the back cover or jacket flap or whatever, but the other, more worrying one, is for booksellers' catalogues. I've asked Publisher Brian what the difference is between these two assignments. I mean, surely you could just make two copies of the one blurb and leave it at that, right? I'm guessing this is not the case. I'm also hoping for more guidance on this assignment than Brian simply and gnomically telling me, "sell the book," like he did a couple of years ago when he had me doing the miserable "story pitch" assignment. Interestingly, at that time, I did a whole bunch of these "story pitches" for ECLIPSE. I'm wondering if they can be recycled.
I'm also still waiting for my homework on HYDROGEN STEEL to show up. I was meant to have completed these last edits before the end of April. Hmm. [glances at calendar] Hmm. This is the aggravating thing about the publishing biz: it's all very "hurry up and wait". Not good for those of us inclined to stress and anxiety. I imagine this homework will turn up in due course. Stuff happens. Plans don't work out.
Which leaves me with the task of applying for the Australia Council Literature Board's New Work Grant. I've got the forms. I've got the (free) book explaining everything. Tonight I'll print out the forms and get busy filling things in. The application is due May 15. If last year is any guide, it will take but a few minutes to fill the thing in. They'll also want a resume, a sample of my work (a copy of ORBITAL BURN), and a synopsis for a book I propose to write with the money they front, if they front it. Publisher Brian tells me that the Oz Council has already fronted money to help pay for the publishing of ECLIPSE. Very decent of them! Now if they'd also front money to send us back to Canada and the US to promote the book, that'd be brilliant (but, he added in very small type, not likely).
Now. Time for a bite of lunch, then some staring at a blank page and a blinking insertion point. Mmmmm, my favourite thing.
Posted by adrian at April 27, 2005 05:02 AM
Comments
Wahey! You're back! Good to see you in the saddle again. Apologies for the ineffectiveness of my efforts at rescuing the old blog - my server-side skills are clearly not up to tackling the PHP behemoth that is Moveable Type just yet!
Posted by: pastamasta ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.kabedford.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 29, 2005 11:59 PM
Howzah! I felt like the little kid on the outside looking in! Actually, even worse -- I couldn't even get to see any of the existing comments, just that there were some. How frustrating!
Good work getting it all squared away, Adrian. Take a well deserved break from scripting and go scribble!
Posted by: Charlie at April 27, 2005 11:03 PM
Excellent news about the blog old bean, and now you have a second career as a Perl script jockey and MT consultant all mapped out too!
On your OB (Other Blog) you mentioned reading Bester recently, The Stars My Destination, as I recall. I read that and The Demolished Man about a year ago now (somehow I'd never got around to them previously). I liked them both but I think Demolished is better. Not sure either is really up to all the hype and mythology that surround them but they're both good.
About the same time I also read the other really hyped "classic" book of that era -- The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth. That was a disappointment. I love Pohl's work normally but although most of the book is good the ending lost it for me, it seemed confused and I found it rather less than wonderful.
Posted by: dshan at April 27, 2005 10:23 PM
Yay for blog resurrection!!
The image for "TypeKey Profile Page" in the comemnts area is showing up broken for me, BTW.
Good luck with the applications!
Posted by: Cheyenne at April 27, 2005 10:22 PM
And yes, you can leave comments here now. The fix for the blog turned out to be the simplest damn thing, too. Literally the case that all I had to do was change
http://www.kabedford.com/httpdocs/
to
http://www.kabedford.com/cgi-bin/
on one line of a configuration script. This is the kind of thing from which madness springs, believe me.
Posted by: Adrian at April 27, 2005 12:39 PM
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