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0 comments on "Me and Twitter; Yoono, Why You No Work?"

I’m sorry I get so chatty scattered on Twitter. I use it to mark pages I want to revisit and things I want to remember. It’s kind of like my roving notepad while I’m doing whatever.

I have whole conversations in my head, reams of dialogue and theme designs, so I write out the thought key that opens all those ideas up for me. I have concepts I want to develop, but not right now. And since everything gets sent to my tweet log, I have my notes neatly collated for me. It’s very helpful and I can expand the ideas on LJ.

I have a Pinboard account, but even with the little bookmarklet, it’s still easier for me to see everything on the clean plains of my Twitter dash and later on my tweet log. I bookmark things, but I rarely go back to them if the bookmark display page feels weird. (Delicious has a better GUI.)

I think there’s something strange with my brain. I don’t think I think the same way that other people do (sic). My thought processes come together in a different way than other peoples’. It makes me feel wicked exposed to talk about it, but yeah, I think I might be weird. /irony

I like the Yoono sidebar because it lets me minimize Firefox and have Scrivener and VLC over most of the screen. When Firefox is fully open, I get easily distracted by the Internet.

I need the Yoono sidebar to be fixed so I can get back to work. I’m desperate without it.

My writing process:

  • Scrivener — writing, compiling.
  • OpenOffice — editing, submitting. (Used to be LibreOffice, but OpenOffice just did something cool that I can’t remember off the top of my head. I do all my font choosing in Scrivener, because Multiple Languages and Sections happen in OO and LO when I mess around with fonts too much. It’s pretty lame.)
  • Yoono Sidebar — tweeting, chatting, noting ideas.
  • VLC Player — distraction, inspiration. (My brain is made for multitasking. I need the sound of voices around me and some kind of running storyline. I prefer short episodes to story heavy movies when I’m writing.)
  • Semagic — blogging, WordPress, LiveJournal, Dreamwidth. (I love Semagic. It’s simple to use and it can do a lot. I wish there were a few upgrades, but in all, it’s the awesomest blogging program for what I do. Does more than a lot of paid programs, yet it’s free. LJ-cuts are awesome, though I wish the WP More tag was a one-click option, because I can never remember how to make it.)

I write in Scrivener with the Yoono Sidebar to the left and VLC player to the right. When an idea developes in my head, I have Semagic open beneath the VLC player so I can journal and write myself fanfic notes.

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I’m kind of an island by Internet terms. I put out a lot of fic (between 39 and 100 fanfics depending on splitting collections into separate pieces), meta considerations, original content, and kudos. I tweet and blog, but most times I feel like I’m talking to myself, voicing my reactions to the various things I come across. Which probably makes me sound kind of weird and scattered. (There’s a whole side being left out of the story.)

It’s just that most of my Internet interactions are related to fanfic. It makes it hard for me to figure out what all the hullabaloos in Writer Land are about.

I’m either writing my shit (mostly original fic at the mo, sorry fans), or reading other peoples’ shit. So when I go on Facebook or Twitter or Goodreads or wherever the supposed social meccas exist, I’m way behind on anything going on. Even Tumblr makes me feel like I’m not doing it right.

So, TL;DR, follow me on Twitter if you don’t mind that I’m weird.

  • Lots of links to Cracked articles, Buzzfeed, social injustices, people I’m trying to impress, and Triberr posts.
  • Scatalogical thought streams, movie and TV babble, wank, and music videos.
  • Fandom shit for no apparent reason.
  • Random moments of neurosis.

I’m terrible about starting a conversation, but if you @ me, I’ll respond. If you send me links and stuff, I’m happy to share or have a thought about whatever. I do not respond to DMs from people I don’t know, sorry. (There are way too many “Now that you’ve followed me, here’s a link to my book/movie/crap” automated DMs. Seriously, if our first interaction is you direct spamming me, ugh. That’s a bad impression, dude. I’ll give you a chance, but I’m not going to respond to it.)

If you’ve got a cool fic, send me a link. I post recs to my fandom blog, so I’d love to hear about good stories. I read other fandoms, but my faves are: Avengers (mostly Stony), BtVS (I love a good hardcore Buffy story), Chronicles of Riddick (Riddick/Vaako), Dark City, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda (Harper!), Hannibal (Hannigram), Harry Potter (crossovers), Highlander (Methos), Hikaru no Go (Hikaru/Akira but not all depressing, Hikaru/Sai), My Boss My Hero (Japanese, Maki/Jun), Naruto (Kakashi/Iruka, time travel, Naruto is grown up), Ranma 1/2, Smallville (CLex), Superman Returns (Kal-El/Richard), Teen Wolf (Sterek), Torchwood (Ianto-centric), Vorkosigan Saga (Miles/Gregor, Ivan/Byerly), X-Men. I’m mostly into slash, though I can get behind a good genhet piece. Choosy character pieces, bad assery, lots of action. Plot over porn, please.

You can tweet me links, but unless you say you’re the author, I’ll Pinboard rather than retweet. I try to keep specific fandom stuff to my fandom accounts. But I only have one Twitter (and Tumblr) that I actually use.

Twitter: HarperKingsley0.

NOTE: Yoono sidebar has been down for weeks now :/ Without it, I miss seeing a lot of stuff on Twitter because I don’t check my email as much as I should, or I’m checking from my Kindle. (One of my weird things is that I don’t respond to things from the email on my Kindle. It’s like how I can’t use a toilet for 30 minutes after I know someone else has used it.)

Also, I’ve recently discovered the “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” Charlie/Scientist fandom. I don’t watch the show and I find most of it distasteful, but Charlie/Scientist goes hand-in-hand with the whole Newt/Hermann thing I’m developing. So if you want to write me something … I reciprocate (and I’m a fandom whore, so your dreams could come true).

Heroes & Villains at Amazon
2 comments on "How do I make my comments have line breaks? (Infinitano theme)"

I really like the look of the Infinitano theme and I’ve used it for my beta site, but it displays comments without any line breaks. Which makes me really sad 🙁

comment

If I add some stuff to the CSS editor page, I should be able to effect the look of the comments. But I’m not sure what to put to have it add line breaks. I don’t like seeing the big wall of text. Especially since I’m really babbly, so a wall of text from me could be miles deep.

Panoply at Amazon
0 comments on "The evils of guest blogging?"

I am so confused! I got sent this link = http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-stick-a-fork-in-it-guest-blogging-is-done-182147 = and now I’m just like “Huh?” Because obviously I have no idea what I’m doing.

I turned off Trackbacks and Pingbacks because of all the spam I was getting, but I guess I should be using the “nofollow” code on links? I thought my site did that automagically! I thought that’s what the no trackbacks/pingbacks was 🙁

I like the idea of giving people props where it’s due, but it was getting a bit ridiculous when I was finding my comment inbox filled with “Interesting site. Many great things to talk about. You haf affected my life in many great and wonderful ways. I have a good article …” and blah blah, bunch of spam. One look at the comment title and the site link “Buy awesome bags (dot) totally spam (dot) com” (but as a real, horrifying URL) and I can tell that people are trying to spam me. I never click the links I’m sent, and definitely not from some stranger off the Internet.

The worst thing? I don’t even use the WordPress comment system on my blog! I have Disqus installed, yet still those spammer people manage to cram their garbage into the built-in comment box and I have no idea how it happens. So I go through once and a while and delete everything, because any real comment would be in my Disqus, and not through some wily backdoor knocking system.

I thought I was the Master of My Own Life!
Beatrice the Biologist: Who's In Charge?

http://www.beatricebiologist.com.

But I guess when it comes down to it, we’re all just tools in the great machine. And there’s always someone trying to use us for their own purposes. Sad, but true.

So if you get an email from some random person on the Internet offering to write posts for your blog or site at no cost to you “… as long as I can include several links …” it might be a good idea to give them a side-eye and a “No candy” if they’re not someone you know. At the very least, you should be able to type their site into your browser yourself (don’t click their links!) and take a look around. If you’re running PeerBlock, WOT, and you’ve got an up-to-date antivirus you should be okay (there’s always a risk on the Internet).

And if you do offer guest blogging, they should be added as a “Contributor” and you can totally “Editor” their asses. What does that mean? Well, you have the power of veto over what they post before it goes live, and you can edit their links to remove any breadcrumbs or garbage they’ve added on the end.

Just because someone is guesting on your blog, that doesn’t give them the power in the relationship. It’s your blog. They have to play by your rules, including not linking to a bunch of awfulness and ruining what you’ve built up.

Be the master of your own life. Tell the wo phage to “Suck it. It’s my way or no way!”

Links of relevance:

Matt Cutts: “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO” – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/. The post in question. He had to clarify some points after hundreds of comments, but basically boils down to: “Watch out who you let guest blog on your site, because the links they want to add in their post can make you look like a spammer.”

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Wikipedia: “Nofollow” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow. “nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML a element to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.”

Basically, you add a “nofollow” to a link to keep whatever you’re linking to from gaining influence because of you. So if you link to some horrible site on the Internet featuring puppy torture, you can vent your outrage and call public attention to the atrocities committed, without giving them your tacit approval. You know, so puppy torture people don’t end up as the top result on Google for some kid looking for “cute puppies.”

nofollow jpg

You don’t need to add it to all your links, just the ones you don’t want to give a page rank boost. The sites still receive their hits, you still remain awesome, and spammy sites don’t end up at the top of search results. Otherwise, it’s not a big deal to leave links normal, but be aware that if you’ve got a lot of guest bloggers, you’re responsible for the actions they take on your blog.

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Wikipedia: “Trackback” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback. “A trackback is one of four types of linkback methods for website authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to their articles.”

Basically, you write something about someone else’s blog, and when you post it, their blog receives a message saying “Hey, this dude wrote about you.” Then they can approve the trackback and have it show up in their comments “[… so and so talked about blah blah …]” and you get that warm glowy feeling of knowing that your site is mentioned on the site you talked about.

You have to have your trackbacks enabled and so does the site you write about to have this system work. Unfortuantely, spammers have figured out that if they mention your blog on their spam site — usually surrounded with a bunch of info and other links scraped off the Internet — then when they post their garbage, your site receives a trackback saying you were mentioned. And if you don’t know what you’re doing or you accidentally click Approve, all of a sudden there’s a link to their awful site on your blog, giving them a nice hit, and making you look bad as you send your guests to visit the dangerous depths of the Internet or some random porn ring. Unless you hit “Approve,” they shouldn’t appear, though they will clog up your comments page like nobody’s business.

I’ve shut off trackbacks because scrapers and spammers were hitting me so hard I just couldn’t take it anymore. They’re why we can’t have nice things …

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Wikipedia: “Pingback” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback. “A pingback is one of four types of linkback methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles.”

You want to know who’s mentioning your blog online? Well, a pingback is when one site writes about your site and sends out a signal saying “Hey, I wrote about you.” Your site sends back a ping to check if there’s a link in place, then gives you the message “Site name says: Hey, I wrote about you.” And now you know. You’re famous!