What I've been doing
Mood:  spacey
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury

I've been trying to get the Writing Fairy to come over and play with me, but she's being difficult. But the Scrapbook Fairy and I have been having a good old time, and here's the result.

Meanwhile, I'm also beta-reading a story cycle that should prove postable, and coding the revised version of an old fic on the site. And hopefully one day I'll get Enemy's Choice and Starfire finished. If I can muster enough brain-cell cooperation to put two words together in a way that makes sense.

Direct-Linking is a Very Bad Thing. Don't Do It.
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Pictures of You (really long album version) - the Cure
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury

Yesterday morning I was reviewing my Angelfire traffic statistics and discovered that EIGHT fanarts from my gallery were being direct linked from several blogs. It was a Russian blog site, which doesn't really mean anything except that maybe the offenders can't read enough English to understand all the DO NOT DIRECT-LINK warnings all over the site. But still, it's basic web courtesy, don't direct-link to stuff on other people's sites. Plus there's the matter of using people's original fanart without permission. It was enough images, and big enough images, and enough people viewing them to cause a huge spike in my bandwidth usage. I don't know how much bandwidth I get before going over the limit and access to the site gets shut down until the start of the next 24-hour allotment, but this probably came close.

So I had to change the file names on the images that were being linked, and change the links on the index pages, and make a "wall of shame" of the offending blogs, and title warning banners with the direct-linked file names and upload them. Time-consuming and tedious, when I could have been working on fanfics. Or, whatever, cleaning my house or something.

So, for the theft of bandwidth, art, and time, these people got my worst, clashing neon, large banners saying "This image and this bandwidth are being stolen from www.angelfire.com/anime2/nephandnaru." If my traffic report from yesterday after the time I made the changes is any indication, the problem seems to be resolved - I found one more instance of the images being called up by those sites, then it stopped. Hopefully once they saw my warning banner, the person/s who were direct-linking learned the error of their ways and took down the links. Hopefully. We'll see.

Oh, and while I didn't actually see the direct-linked images, many or most of the posts on these blog threads were locked, "friends-only." Maybe they thought they wouldn't get caught if they locked their posts and I couldn't see them. But the file-request reports from the Angelfire servers don't lie, and they don't care about locked blog entries. If someone's direct-linking, I'll find out, no matter what they try to do to hide it.

If it continues to be a problem, I'll have to move the galleries to my free Angelfire space, which is locked against remote-loading. You know those little "this image hosted by Anglefire" banners? That's what you get when you try to remote-load from a free Angelfire site. I hate to do it because of the ads, but I have to protect my bandwidth, which I'm paying for, and also I feel an obligation to do my part to protect my fanart contributors from theft of their art.

It especially ticks me off because the only reason people can remote-load from my site in the first place is because I'm paying every month for the premium service. So they're catching a free ride on my $8.95 a month. What if I decided to quit paying the monthly subscription? (Not that I could; the site's too big now for the amount of free storage you get.) But then they'd HAVE to do it the right way, which is save the image to their own computer or online storage space. If nothing else, there's always Photobucket.

whew
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury

No updates in so long because I had a lot of stuff going on. Assorted family and church events, lots of stuff to plan and prepare for. My husband converted to my religion last year, and this past Saturday (the 11th) we sealed our 23-year marriage in a religious ceremony, something I'd been hoping would happen for a very long time. Not a social event, thank goodness (though my parents did their best) but still required a lot of planning and preparation. And paperwork. This required an out-of-town trip, and then on Thursday the 16th we packed up again and hauled Jesse off to college, 100 miles from here. Again, much planning, preparation, and paperwork. Phew. But now everything's settling down, kid #1 is living away at college now and kid #2 is off to junior high. So now that everything is settling into our new normality, I can start getting caught up on my writing and websites and scrapbooking. Oh, and the housework too

I've got a chapter each of Enemy's Choice and Starfire all written, just need a little editing and they're ready to go, and half of the next chapter of each written. Other projects have been taking shape in my head, but right now I'm so pooped out, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that I was feeling like all the stories have gone away. They'll come back once I start writing again. I hope.

Sheesh...
Mood:  down
Now Playing: The Adventure - Angels and Airwaves (on my computer)
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury

Feeling kind of tired and depressed. Had that kind of weird stomach-bug - cold thingie I had a month or so ago. Bad stomach cramps, headache, chills and shakes for a few days, followed by a sore throat and sniffly nose for a few days, and massive, draining fatigue the whole time. Starting to feel better, but still very tired. I'm also kind of depressed that no one hardly ever reads the fics on my site. So today in lieu of actually *writing* anything I fiddled with the fic descriptions on the library pages. Have to admit, the old ones were pretty non-compelling. haven't uploaded them yet; trying to decide if I'll wait until I do an update or just go ahead and upload the changed pages tonight. I also stuck a little bit of HTML on the gallery index pages to make the images open in a seperate window, so my StatCounter log doesn't get all filled up with each individual view of the gallery pages when someone goes through and looks at every single piece of fanart on the site.

 Speaking of fanart, I do want to update soon because Tanzanite sent me a FABULOUS drawing that I'm anxious to post. I hate to dump my 2-chapters-ahead rule, but maybe I'd better if I'm going to update anytime soon. I know what comes next in everything I'm working on, I've plotted it out word-for-word in my head, it's just a matter of actually writing it down. Also lots of thoughts about fanfiction I want to write about here, but my brain pretty much feels like jello right now.

I will go write one sentence in each fic I'm working on, then I'll feel like I've accomplished something.

I really ought to actually write something sometime...
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Going Under, Evanescence
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury

I spent a whole evening (till 1 in the morning) putting StatCounter on every single page of NNT (roughly 350 pages? something like that). My concern about StatCounter was that it would count every time I look at or edit my pages on my computer, but it's easy to block yourself with IP blocking and a blocking cookie. Anyway, it was totally worth the work, it's so awesome! I especially like the search word tracking, and finding out where my visitors are from - someone from Albania looked at my site today! (Just one page, but still, Albania!)

Then I spent all yesterday morning making quotes for the random quote display I put on the index page. Little teasers to hopefully get more people into the site, instead of just glancing at the index. That worked great, and is so cool I just sat there hitting the "refresh" button over and over and over to see what quotes came up. then I realized that I had logged out of StatCounter, thus destroying my blocking cookie, and it counted all zillion times I looked at my own index page

I also spent two days trying to get the Angelfire upgrade page to work properly. It kept wanting to give me a whole new user name and URL. I posted my woes on the Angelfire Club Blog, and they were finally able to fix the problem. So I am now upgraded to 3 Gb of storage and a domain name! www.nntreasury.com, if you're wondering. The old address should still work, too.

Then I got the idea that I should put "next chapter" links at the bottom of every chapter of every novel, so that readers will be more likely to keep reading instead of wandering away. So I'm mostly done with that now, four more novels to go, I think.

But I haven't actually written any fic. Am I procrastinating, or just easily distracted? I have a notoriously short attention span, but I think I might also be procrastinating. I'm not really into the fics I'm posting right now. The one I'm drafting I'm somewhat happier with, but not entirely. I want to do something... different. Big. I'm tired of writing passive Naru, I want to give her some sort of power, some sort of primary role to play without making her a Senshi. That's been done. And done. And done. I'd like to put her in a role that is slightly contrary to Sailor Moon's role, without making them out and out enemies. I'm sort of doing that with Starfire, but that isn't quite what I want. I want to write something where Nephrite has died, and Naru remembers him (tired of doing the recovered-memory thing) and she discovers she has some sort of powers. I'm feeling inspired right now by the Alternate Fate picture by Zox and the Reflections: Osaka Naru poem by R. TenEyck, both of which I posted last month. It's interesting that they're both older fanworks by guys.

What I really want is to write another Lyra's Children with Naru in a more active role. I think Lyra's Children is pretty much the best thing I've ever written, fanfic or original, and I don't know if I have another one in me.

Maybe the thing to do is experiment and explore different ideas while I plug away at the things I'm already working on. Then when I'm done with those, hopefully I'll have lots of ideas ready to go.

Or maybe I just have a short attention span and I get bored with my ideas easily.

Update
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: U2 - Joshua Tree
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury
Well, there's another update done to the site. time to go nurse my carpal tunnel syndrome. I always check and re-check all the links, plus typing in all my code by hand. Ouch. Sometimes I worry about running out of stuff to post, but as long as I can keep churning out the fics (working on two, a third is underway, ideas for at least one or two more) that won't happen.

The stat counter I was looking at won't work with the way I do my site. I keep everything on my computer, which is where I do all the updating and everything, then I upload the new and changed pages onto angelfire. Also when I re-read my fics I read them on my computer (so I can easily make edits if I need to). The thing I was looking at (probably any counter that involves pasting code onto your pages, as opposed to the one run by my web server) counts every time I look at my pages on my computer, not just online. Which is a problem because it would artificially inflate my stats, plus my browser REALLY DOESN'T like the little bits of code and flashed warnings at me every time I brought up a page. Which was annoying. I'm testing it out with my smaller site,Worlds Apart, but I probably won't keep it. For NNT, I think I'll upgrade to the next level subscription in a month or so, which will give me more space and more detailed traffic stats. Plus a domain name, big whoop. I've gotten along this long without one, I don't feel any pressing need for one now.

Accomplishment
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication (on my computer)
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury
All right, now I'm where I want to be fic-wise, a chapter ahead of the next posting. The idea is if I can keep a chapter ahead of myself with Starfire and Enemy's Choice I won't get in the situation again where I've posted the last of my ideas and can't think of what comes next. Just finished drafting chapter 10 of Starfire, so now I can edit and post chapter9 of Starfire and Enemy's Choice. I'm still not sure about the Fiji thing (coming up in ch. 11 of Starfire) but Nephrite's kind of insisting on it, and I guess they could use a vacation. Besides, it looks really awesome there. I was just looking at a bunch of Fiji travel and hotel sites. (THAT should confuse my tracking cookies :b) So I should be able to update soon, and add the three pieces of fanart I found on deviantArt and my new stats counter. It looks great - it's all the same level of service, you only pay according to the number of page loads you have a day, and under 9000 page loads a day is free. Can't beat that. I love site traffic statistics, especially finding out places where my site is linked from (especially if it's a nice link and not "look at this $*%&# essay this %*#&@ wrote"). It's also amusing to see what search terms bring up pages from my site. I imagine that the person who searched "Naru's breast" was probably disappointed to get a page where she's nursing her baby. Ha ha ha.

Well, here I am...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: DI.fm vocal trance channel (cool but kinda skippy)
Topic: Nephrite Naru Treasury
For some reason, I got really annoyed with LJ and decided to strike out on my own, journaling-wise. This is so great, that Angelfire gives me 1 GB of space and I can add a blog without messing up my site that's already here. Maybe I'll even move my scrapbook blog over here. Seriously thinking about upgrading to the next level, with 3 GB of space, when I'm done paying back what I had to take out of the savings account a few years ago. *sweatdrop*

I don't know, I just don't like the community thing. Maybe it's because I'm very introverted. Or maybe because I'm anti-social. Or maybe it's because I always end up getting ignored, which seems kind of contradictory - I'm shy and anti-social, but being ignored, left on the fringes, feels bad, whether in real life or online. That's why I quit posting at the Creating Keepsakes message board. I felt like I was always either being ignored or getting put down.

I was wondering a few weeks ago, when I was reading a bunch of stuff about the hoo-hah about Fanlib.com, why I don't like to post my fanfiction in communities and large archives. I'd rather post on my own website (though I've got a few things here and there, on friends' websites). It might be because I like the control of doing my own thing my own way - I tend to be stubborn that way. Plus I don't like being associated with all the crap that gets dumped into those kinds of places.

So whatever the reason, I'm happier being on my own. Maybe no one will ever read this (if you do, please leave a comment at least saying "hi" so I'll know you were here ^.^). But at least it's a place where I can expound on stuff I'm thinking about without feeling like I'm bumping up against everyone else.

One of the things I've been thinking about is why after 6 1/2 years I'm still doing the N&N website when pretty much everyone else who was doing DK sites when I started has either taken down their site or just stopped updating. (Except for Stayka, who still adds to hers every once in a while.) Basically, it's still fun, and I'm past the age where I'm re-inventing myself every few years. I guess when you're younger you can pick up and drop interests every few years but at my age I feel more of a long-term commitment to things. It may also be that some of them have grown up and gotten serious. At 44, I think I'm as grown up and serious as I'm going to get. :D

Mainly, though, I feel like this is the story I'm compelled to tell. There are a lot of other anime I like, and while Sailor Moon is still a favorite, it isn't very close to the top of the list. But no other story has grabbed me the way Nephrite and Naru did. I spent two hours one night crying over the episode where Nephrite dies, which I haven't done with any other series. Then when I saw how under-represented their story was on the Web, I felt almost like N&N were asking me to make sure they weren't forgotten. [/weird] There are other coulda-been shoulda-been couples that interest me, but the worlds of the shows they're in don't allow for people to return from the dead. Sailor Moon allows for this, amply. And it's a rule for me that fanfiction needs to follow the rules of the universe it takes place in.

Anyway, that's why I'm still here doing this when pretty much everyone else has moved on. And every once in a while, someone still pops up to tell me that they like what I'm doing. Which is nice. Very nice ^___^