In a mirror, dimly

One … two … three … four … We declare a thumb word war

I only discovered the concept of a thumb war a few years ago. (one consequence of growing up in another country) The concept of a word war is even newer on me. I’d heard about them 3 years ago. I’d shaken my head when people had participated … I thought myself above that sort of silly nonsense … and then I tried it last night. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I guess I need to eat my words (pun intended). They are fun!

The official definition goes something like this:

A word war is when two or more people decide on a time to start writing, write for a certain amount of time, then compare wordcounts.

Simple really. The official Nanowrimo forum has discussion threads for word wars of different durations. The 10-minute word war was my downfall.

My usual level of output during Nanorimo is (roughly) 1000 words an hour. Not huge. It means about 2 hours or so every day through the month of November and I’ll hit the 50,000 word goal. Ten minutes would be roughly 160 words at that pace. I had a measure, and I smoked it: 275 words in 10 minutes. It feels good to beat a personal goal. That said I knew exactly where my character would be and what she’d be doing.

So, yeah, I’ll be entering Nano this year with a more combative and competitive stance. One … two … three … four … I declare a word war! GO!

I was listening to a message, Is There Not A Cost? by Ravi Zacharias where he quoted:

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

— A.W. Tozer

and a poem

When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him:
By every act induces him
To try his splendor out -
God knows what He’s about.

— Author Unknown

As I scroll back through the various incarnations of my theme (and look at what I liked about interim themes such as “Vista”) I have to conclude that there are design decisions that remain constant:

• Rounded corners
• Purple shaded “brushed metal” texture and white content area
• Right-hand sidebar
• Fixed-width and floating
• Dark grey background
• Content-area fully enclosed, containing posts and sidebar

Version 8 added a few more details:

• Stronger emphasis on pages with “page navigation” at the head of the sidebar
• Stronger emphasis on pages with tabs at top of the template
• “Search” properly integrated into the template
• Categories finally in a decent place
• More emphasis on syndication - allowing for a “podcast” audio blog link in the future

Version 8 was far from perfect though. “Vista” is far more concise - combining navigation, syndication and search into a single menu bar - where version 8 of my own theme separated the tabs into their own space. I like the real-estate gains by combining things.

I am running 4 plugins:

• Akismet
  The standard anti-spam plugin. Never be seen without it!
• Celtx CSS
  I participated in Script Frenzy a while ago. The goal was to write an entire movie screenplay in a month. The formatting of a screenplay is really specific and the free Celtx tool handled everything. I created the Celtx CSS to maintain the formatting of the screenplay when it’s posted to a Wordpress blog.
• Dimly Archive Table
  Three columns, broken down by year and month. It’s a layout I’ve not seen anywhere else, and one I have used for years now. This plugin exposes a standard Wordpress widget that plays nice with modern Wordpress sidebars.
• WP-dTree
  I’ve played with about a dozen different page navigation widgets and WP-dTree is by far the best of them. The continued emphasis on pages on my site means that this will need to be a standard feature in themes to come.

The downfall of the current (interim) “Vista” theme is the dual right-hand sidebars. They don’t leave enough space for the blog content. I got rid of dual sidebars in version 3 of the site! Going to a single sidebar will give WP-dTree more space to expand the tree nodes too.

Version 8 didn’t give enough definition of where posts start and stop and while Vista is better, it suffers the same problem. Version 6 (on the other hand) was a little heavy-handed in that regard. What has remained constant is the title and timestamp of posts remains at the top of the post, with version 8’s emphasis on the title being a good design decision. The purple “smudge” doesn’t give enough definition to the top of a post.

I like the idea of conditional sidebars too. There’s no reason to have Archives and categories when you’re reading the various pieces of writing. A single “home” link on the navigation bar is enough to break back to the timed blog entries again.

A helpful [sic] comment from Sheila pointed me to do a little more research on the song that was going through my head. Wikipedia said:

When the song “Bitch” first hit the airwaves, most call-in listeners believed the song was by Alanis Morissette due to the similar sound and Morissette’s success in rock music at the time. To this day, people still think the song is one of Morissette’s 

So, yes, I stand corrected. The song in my head was by Meredith Brooks and released in 1997. It still doesn’t diminish my dislike of Alanis in any way, shape or form however!

What a genius:

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

— Albert Einstein

Apply it early and apply it often.

I feel somehow dirty. See, I really dislike Alanis Morissette and will leave the room if her music is playing. It was “hate at first sight” - she appeared on the Jools Holland show back in 1995 performing “You oughta know” - I remarked at the time that she sounded like an angst-ridden little harpy. I’ve not really changed my mind since. You can imagine the reaction, then, when I was writing the “about” tagline for the blog and I thought “Im a geek and believer …” and some song lyrics came to mind:

I’m a bitch I’m a lover
I’m a child I’m a mother
I’m a sinner I’m a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I’m your hell I’m your dream
I’m nothin’ in between
You know, you wouldn’t want it any other way

The song appeared, fully formed with full backing, and her voice attached. The words rearranged themselves

I’m a geek and believer
I’m a ‘limey’ I’m a husband
I’m a sinner, I’m a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I’m a writer and I’ll dream
I’m nothin’ in between
You know, you wouldn’t want it any other way

I filked an Alanis song? Ewww.