Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Being unable to leave well enough alone, I’ve added another stylesheet (Salmon Roe) and an improved version of styleswitcher.js which also handles the Netscape 4 issue.

The first change in mystyleswitcher.js is setting the cookie at the time a new stylesheet is chosen, rather than when leaving the page as the original script did. This fixes the odd instances where you switched styles, then opened a comment window which then appeared in the previous style. I thought this was important for checking out stylesheets and also cutting down on cookie (re)setting in general, though if the cookie gets corrupted the user will get no style at all. (Thanks to Jade for discovering the bug.) That situation can always be rectified by selecting a new stylesheet manually.

The Netscape 4 handling is just something that seems to work. I changed the javascript function that was used to look up the first stylesheet (that was, the one with a rel=”stylesheet” instead of a rel=”stylesheet”) so
that it would look up a stylesheet with “Default” in its title instead. [I’m not doing it this way anymore - I just hardcoded the name of my default stylesheet to save computing time. To see the code for finding a stylesheet with “Default” in the title, check out the broken switcher. (That wasn’t the broken part.) To see the original code for finding the primary stylesheet, see the original switcher. The function is called getPreferredStyleSheet() in both places.]

In effect,
this gives two default stylesheets, one for browsers that can’t do the javascript switching at all (that is, the rel=”stylesheet” one), and another for browsers that can (with title=”Default …”). I already had a default stylesheet for this blog (Classic Khaki, whose real title is Default Khaki) as well as a version of it I’d dumbed down for Netscape 4 (Netscape 4 Khaki, a.k.a. For Older Browsers), so I
just put those in the appropriate spots.

Next time, I’ll make that Ume Shiso Maki stylesheet, and perhaps spruce up Lavender’s Blue.

Take A List Apart’s article on style sheets, MoveableType’s set of default styles, one geek, and one holiday weekend, and you get…Switchable Type. Click on the various links under the Style header in the menu (probably directly to the right, unless you’ve strayed from the main page or have already changed styles).

How to do it yourself: (You may have to right-click on some of the following links and save them, if your browser won’t display them.) First, you need a set of CSS stylesheets to switch between. I used a couple that I had already made for MT, plus the full set of seven from the MT website. Each of the stylesheets must be listed in the header of the pages (that is, at the top of each page template in MT), in the usual place for LINK tags, and must have a title element:

If you’re using Mozilla, you can already switch between these styles from the View menu. Otherwise, you’ll need a javascript program to do the actual switching, styleswitcher.js. The javascript must be loaded by every page in the blog (or site) so it should be left in a separate file and loaded with a line in the header (near the LINK tags) thus:

Next, you need the links that will run the program when clicked. As an added bonus, the javascript program includes a cookie to keep track of which style has been selected, and remembers it from page to page. All pages must include the javascript itself, and the LINK tags, but the switching links can be put on just the main page. These HTML links call the function setActiveStyleSheet, according to the title listed in the LINK tag:

That’s all it takes. Feel free to grab my copies of the MoveableType style sheets as well as my own stylesheets for MT, or, if you’re working on a switcher for a website rather than a blog, take a look at the style section of my site for more generic style sheets.

The most irritating part of the process is editing each of your MoveableType templates to include the LINK tags and the SCRIPT line. For full style effect, you should do every template, including the ones you click to edit and the hidden search template. There’s a lot of clicking, pasting, and saving involved. I ended up linking all the templates to external files and making my own template modules to simplify matters, but even then it was the most time-consuming part of the process.

Templates are the peskiest part of blogging. MT is ahead of the pack, but it would help if all the templates were linked to files automatically the way the search template is. They could at least provide a power-editing mode for templates (indices, archives, and modules) so you could create them or link them to files in one fell swoop.

Another pesky MT problem I had was with the blog description, right under the blog title. The on-page blog title became an H1 header in the latest MT templates, which was all right and compliant and good, but the description beneath it was wrapped in SPAN tags, rather than DIV tags. I went through some trouble trying to figure out why I couldn’t reduce the H1 margins (at least in Chimera, my home browser), until I switched that SPAN to a DIV. My change doesn’t seem to do any harm to the MT stylesheets - I’m not sure whether those work properly without my change, or, if they do, why they do.

I’ve made a new stylesheet for the occasion: Lavender’s Blue. One other thing I should do is rewrite styleswitcher.js so that it forces Netscape 4.x to use the stylesheet that’s safe for old browsers. I’m not sure old browser-users can use the switcher at all - I’ll test that tomorrow. If they can, I may leave it up to them to click the link for paleo-browsers. Browser detection is not my cup of tea. I’d rather make more stylesheets.

I’d heard of David Weber as a pillar of space opera, but never read him until I picked up a promotional copy of On Basilisk Station, remaindered. I get the feeling he’s one of the people whom Jim Baen promised to make famous if they could write three novels a year. On Basilisk Station is the first Honor Harrington novel, of which the sequels are legion.

I am a fan of the pulp/serial approach to science fiction - despite his faults, Edgar Rice Burroughs holds a high (and wide) place of honor on my bookshelves. LMB has turned the series form from a pulp and media-fiction backwater into a literary genre on its own terms. I don’t know that she did it with any help from David Weber. On Basilisk Station did not leave me wanting more Honor Harrington, and not because of any the typical penny-a-word failings of the genre. On the contrary, the characterization was unusually good and the depiction of military life more authentic than, say, LMB’s or ERB’s.

I’ve reread ERB’s Mars books more times than they deserved, and not for John Carter’s sake. What holds up a sci-fi series (and for that matter a fantasy series) is the setting. The reader wants to return to Middle-Earth, to Narnia, to Mars, to Barrayar; I’m attracted by the places and cultures more than by Eustace or Carthoris or even (forgive me, Liz) Ivan Vorpatril.

On Basilisk Station is set in a nondescript galaxy, where almost indistinguishable sides battle for…Basilisk Station, and the good guys are not the Barrayarans or the Heliumites, but the crew of a particular starship. The technology is also uninteresting - the usual hyperdrives and wormholes - and the decisive weapon itself was notable not for its science but for its tactical disadvantages. The book might have been about a true naval battle, on a more watery sea, and the plot, theme and characters wouldn’t have suffered a bit. (In fact, the battle scenes might have been easier to follow in two dimensions.)

That, of course, put me in mind of Promised Land, the sci-fi romance that was mostly romance with residual sci-fi. Military sci-fi is not a genre I follow except accidentally, so I wonder if it’s all heavy on the military and light on the sci-fi. Perhaps David Weber’s galaxy improves with a few more Honor Harrington novels; if I gave Catherine Asaro a second and third chance, he deserves four or five just on the basis of On Basilisk Station.

The Charwoman’s Shadow, one of two Del reprints of Lord Dunsany I picked up at Buck-a-Book, was covered in blurbs praising the father of fantasists. I know when a book comes loaded with that much self-promotion that I’m headed for disappointment. Remaindered disappointment sets me back only a buck or two, so I keep trying. At least the let-down was of an opposite sort: the setting was worked up marvelously, the story was recognizably fantasy, and the plot depended essentially on the magical and the medieval. The book was worth reading for the descriptive language alone.

The trouble was in the characters. The old woman, the young, bumbling hero, the lovely sister engaged to an oaf, the loving but misguided parents, and the princely Duke were all such stock characters as even ERB might have been ashamed to roll out (and he was writing contemporaneously, for pennies). Lord Dunsany is, I must protest, not the father of medieval fantasists. Reading him makes Tolkien’s claim to the title that much clearer. (I’ll leave for another entry the fantastic fantasists as well as the precise distinction between fantastic and medieval fantasy.)

Go ahead, read any of the pre-Tolkien fantasists and tell me otherwise. Try some William Morris for a blast from the medieval past. Have you ever heard of, never mind read, The Worm Ouroborus? It makes the Eye of Argon look Shakespearean. That was the state of fantasy before Tolkien. Tolkien was the first to tell the old stories in the modern form, without turning the old characters into modern man. Some may cheat and write modern men into their fantasy worlds (Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Summer Tree comes immediately to mind) but no one writes in the Grendel mode anymore.

So if you want battle, read On Basilisk Station, and if you want description, read The Charwoman’s Shadow. If you’re looking for sf, well, I am too.

Believe it or not, fic: Beta Energy, a tribute to spelling, Mary Sues, and Voyager betas everywhere.
Thank you, Jade & company!

Otherwise, I’ve been working on my stylesheets, using a test blog on my mac,
but as soon as I’ve got the CSS spruced
up I’ll be back to writing those other fics I’ve been threatening,
along with a Buffy Dead Letter that hit me out of the blue yesterday.

So I’ve decided to handle my desire for infinte colors and designs by making stylesheets, a la the old Mozilla start page. Complete instructions for live stylesheet swapping can be found at
A List Apart. I also
found a cool and geeky blog, Dive into Mark.

It’s late, but I’ve been putting off my list update for too long now. If I don’t
do it this minute, I won’t get to it until Sunday and I’ll have BRAD business to attend to then.

Most of the recent additions have been for Jade, whose new J/C story
Idle Hands Make Opportunity tied for first
place in the Romance category of Mixed Doubles. Jade also has some pencil
drawings of Chakotay and Janeway up, with more coming, pencil
permitting.

I’ve upgraded my blog to MoveableType 2.5 and hope to make some
stylistic changes soon. Coming this weekend is a new story, “Beta Energy,”
written in honor of
Beta
Reader Appreciation Day. My other recent bits of fan writing have been a
parody chapter of Pride and Prejudice and a filk or two, which
can be found in the Ficlets category of the
blog.

The revisions to “Colony” have been preempted by several other fic ideas,
and next month will be further postponed by NaNoWriMo. Breath should not
be held.

Here are some questions that have been circulating around the C/7 list. I thought they’d make a good blog meme.

Firstly, how do you feel about feedback? Do you live for it, ignore
it, think it’s nice but not essential?

I like feedback, but I have to conclude it’s not essential. I keep
website stats, and I’ve found that feedback comes from only a tiny
percentage of readers. So it’s my hits that make me happiest - they’re
the real feedback, IMHO.

If 27 people tell me my story is great, but then it’s
beaten in a contest by a story I consider to be a total piece of
crap, does that mean the feedback has been meaningless?

You have to judge the feedback on its own terms. Is it just a note to
tell you “I read this”? There’s nothing wrong with that - it’s like a
personalized hit tracker - but it’s not very meaningful beyond that. On
the other hand, if the feedback is constructive and helps you out in
your writing, or is exceptional (”this is the best story I ever read!”)
or comes from someone whose opinion you trust, then it can’t be
meaningless.

Contests are the bane of the fan world. They frustrate good writers
when they see certain bad writers win, and they also frustrate those bad
writers who don’t win. I’ve seen a lot of contests where the best story
didn’t win, and that’s especially common in the contests run exclusively
for shipper communities. I don’t mean just J/C ones, either. You
should never let a contest result get you down. Fanfic isn’t any fairer
than real life.

The best contests are those that are run blind (where the voters don’t
know who the authors are until the contest is over) and the ASC awards
(in which all fic posted to the Star Trek newsgroup over the course of
the year is eligible and votes are tallied by lines of feedback). Also,
recommendations pages like The Best of Trek tend to give more reliable
results than the average contest.

How many of you writers *know* when you’ve written something good,
regardless of whether you get feedback on it?

I know, at least, I know if it’s good by my personal standards of good.
I don’t think I have a different standard for my own fic as opposed to
other people’s, or for fanfic vs. professional fiction.

How many of you try to do something different with each story you
write?

I don’t try, per se. I’m not interested in writing different genres,
for example - only PG sci-fi interests me. However, part of what
interests me in a particular plot is finding a new way to, say, get the
entire crew pregnant or to get a certain pairing together.

How many of you have a billion ideas and use only a fraction of them
in your stories?

No, I don’t have many ideas for fanfic. I think I triage them - if they
really interest me, I can’t help but write them. Otherwise, I forget
about them pretty quickly. I do have more ideas than I can ever use for
original fiction.

And how many of you sometimes think readers are a bunch of morons who
wouldn’t know a good story if they fell over it?

I’ve probably written about this somewhere before. I don’t think any
readers are morons, or that their preferences are entirely attributable
to bad taste. Here’s my favorite quote on the matter:

I agree with Mia that certain shippers are looking for Jane Austen in
Space. I can’t say I object to Jane Austen anywhere, at any time, but
I have a beta monkey in the back of my brain that keeps me from enjoying
the worst of the lot. Some people are missing the monkey, but that just
makes them less critical readers, not morons. Really.

In honor of my new version of MoveableType, I though new templates
might be in order. In fact, I thought I might even be wild and crazy
and use web-unsafe colors. I’m a rebel.

Familiar I am, in the web-Jedi way, with the 216 web-safe colors,
meant to guarantee consistency across different monitors, operating
systems, and color depths. I know where to find the websafe colors
listed by value, href="http://www.lynda.com/hexh.html">hue, or whatever. I
am intimately familiar with Visibone’s lovely href="http://html-color-codes.com/">color arrangements; I’ve done
my time in their color
lab.

Rumor has it, there are only href="http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/00/37/stuff2a/complete_websafe_216/reallysafe_palette.html">22
truly safe colors. Although three of those colors are my
favorite sunshine-yellow spectrum, I cannot advocate such
extraordinary abstinence in web design.

Yet there comes a time in a webmistress’s life when #ffff00 just
doesn’t cut it anymore. Where does she go for illicit colors, for
the #a4b217 her mother warned her against? After asking a
few unsavory characters, I came across a page devoted to using href="http://www.mlwebb.com/color_palette.htm">an unsafe
palette. Behold the href="http://www.childoflight.org/mcc/colorcodeAA.html">yellow!
Mix and match your
poisons. Read a href="http://www.morecrayons.com/weblog/">color blog.

Watch this space for a whiter shade of pale…

The minute, practically the second, I upgrade MoveableType, they come
out with a new version. Now I have to upgrade to 2.5, since I’m so
on top of things at the moment. Somehow, Bill of mt.el fame found my
post, despite it being only a day old, and freeshell being
down most of today. I haven’t even figured out this thready pinging
stuff yet, so that can’t be what led him here.

Anyway, for Bill’s information, I’m running Emacs for MacOS X, and I
built it from the CVS source just a few posts back. I assume that’s
why it didn’t have any packages installed. I’m not sure they’re all
that happy now that they are installed - emacs froze during my
“whoo-hoo” post last night. The post got through, but emacs never
returned to operation. Perhaps the problem was that I was re-editing
the post I’d just edited. Or perhaps the problem was the general
Carbon emacs problem with spawning subprocesses that I was hoping my
bleeding-edge emacs build would cure, but didn’t. Sigh.

That’s more geekiness than anyone wants to hear. I suppose I should
head over to the freeshell bulletin board and see what the downtime
was all about.

[P.S.] It was just a disk upgrade, and some good news: freeshell
is now tax-exempt.

[P.P.S] I almost forgot the Link of the Day: href="http://diveintoaccessibility.org/table_of_contents.html">Dive
into Accessibility, thirty days to HTML Correctness.

While surfing the blogs, I came across a
guy who wrote an Emacs interface for MoveableType. Just the thing for me, I thought; all my geekiness in one convenient elisp package…but it wasn’t exactly a convenient package. First I had to download SOAP for MT, so MT could communicate with metablogging tools. Then I had to download a laundry list of things that mt.el, the emacs mode, required: xml-rpc.el, the url package, the w3 package and the elib package. The author provided the first, but I had to check url and w3 directly out of source, and then it took me a while to figure out that yes, elib hasn’t been revised in seven years. (I was reluctant to download something from 1995.)

Nor was this post posted from emacs. When mt.el was finally working, I got an error back from MoveableType itself, saying it couldn’t find the metaWeblog perl module. I think that means that I can no longer put off upgrading to the latest version of MovableType. Wish me luck…

[P.S.] I upgraded to 2.21, though it looks the same as 2.0. There are new geeky things lurking beneath its placid blue exterior, though.

[P.P.S.] Testing from emacs…1..2..3…

[P.P.P.S.] Whoo-hoo! Now there’s an evening successfully
frittered away.