Random wibblings of a semi-domesticated geek (Friday)

[ellarien]

New Computer at work runs RedHat Linux. For nearly ten years before that, I was working almost entirely on Solaris, so this a big transition. I don't like changes to the way my desktop looks and feels: the first thing I did with my WinXP laptop was to set the toolbars etc. to 'Classic' (ie, as much like Win98 as possible) mode. I started out using the KDE desktop, which is customizable to arbitrary levels of prettiness, and put together something I liked -- greenish, lightly textured background, red titlebar for the active window; Windows-style minimize/maximize/destroy buttons -- and was reasonably happy. Unfortunately, there were functional issues that got more and more annoying. On Friday I decided to try out the Gnome desktop instead. The functional problems went away, but the ugliness was bothersome, and the only available themes seem to have blue-grey or at best brownish titlebars. I Googled a bit in the evening, and it looks as though it may be possible to customize it a bit more, if I can find where the files are hiding. Will have to try that sometime.



I saw a copy of the AAS 2005 Calendar. On the off-chance anyone reading this ever sees one, my graphic is the big red-and-green thing on the July page. It doesn't have my name on, which is fine -- I did maybe the last 1% of the work that made it possible, and the concept of the artwork isn't original to me either. It's nice to see it in print, though, and exposed to a slightly wider audience than the attendees of a couple of mid-sized conferences and the people who walk down our hallway. It was one of those Friday-afternoon things -- could I plot it like this, and will my co-authors let me get away with it?



I finally gave in and spent some money at the bookstore. However, the books I bought were either on the February list anyway (Hammered, by Elizabeth Bear, and The Wizard Hunters by marthawells) or neutral in backlog terms (a nice illustrated Silmarillion as an upgrade to my early-edition UK mass-market paperback), so I don't feel too bad about it. Also purchased; a couple of lightweight cases for 3x5 index cards, and a teeny-tiny flash drive.



This one was prompted by a post of mrissa's. The thing that I hope will one day become a novel currently exists mostly as a small stack of 3x5 cards of various colours: white for plot events; pink for character background; blue for setting; green for interstitial bits-and-pieces; yellow for mythology. Every so often I scribble a few more and throw them into the box. Eventually, there may be enough to shuffle and deal out into an outline; it worked once before. Buying the cheerful yellow case was a cheap way of trying to bribe myself into looking at the cards more often.