Rae Roy

Well, roller derby practice was cancelled tonight, so I finished the conversion of my novel into Scrivener. I had originally started doing this in an overly manual, as in cut-and-paste each chapter, way. I decided that was silly and I have too much computer background to be mucking about with that nonsense. I started using the import feature. The first attempt with the import just put it in one big file. At first glance, I thought this wasn't what I wanted, so I tried another one. The second import attempt, I tried the split feature using the # symbol. It didn't work. It went through the motions but didn't populate any information into my project. I started screwing around a bit and found an option that lets you select text and have it and everything that follows it split out into a new scene. This, I decided, would do the trick if combined with the first import attempt. I did a first pass of separating them out into the chapters. Next I created chapter folders and ...

I went to my first meeting with a writing group and it was neat. I think I was too nice? I didn't rip people's stories apart as much as others did. In truth, I only got everything yesterday and it being my first time, I wasn't entirely sure what to do. Some styles of writing are harder to wade through, also, so I occasionally had difficulty following what other writers had written. One story was thick with military acronyms. Other stories had such interesting styles that I was hooked on the first chapter. At some point over the summer, I will send them some of mine to read and see what they have to say. It will be great to have people that aren't afraid to read it, tear it apart, and tell me where they see holes. I may have also felt a little intimidated critiquing the work of published authors! It was fun talking about other's stories and helping each other generate ideas. I liked that I wasn't the only unpublished author in the group who is working t...

Social Media Challenges: I am still having issues with my social media platform. I basically want my Facebook author page and my personal Facebook profile to be completely separate. Currently, my Wordpress blogs are posting to my Facebook author page. I like this. It seems my Twitter and my personal Facebook profile became linked once again and all my public posts were being tweeted. Again. I unlinked the two and revoked the Facebook app's access to my Twitter account. I have set up Wordpress to publish to both my Facebook author page and my Twitter account. I'm hoping this resolves the issue and doesn't do something wonky like double tweet/post. I guess I'll know what it does after I post this. At some point, I will want to get more traffic going to my Facebook author page, but I think that is something to work on once these integration bugs are worked out. Other Fun Stuff: I took in a little piece of Doors Open Ottawa today. The   Canada Science & T...

Today I helped a new guy with his obi. It doesn't seem that long ago that Green Sensei was helping me with mine. I still have trouble with my hakama, but I know eventually I will conquer it. Today I was the most senior student in attendance and that felt odd. It doesn't seem that long ago to me that I was having trouble telling if my bokuto's blade edge was the right way. Now I use an Iaito and I work on more advanced things like saya-biki. The two newbies made me smile today as I remembered how I used to get embarrassed when Sensei told me I was holding my sword upside down. I remember how badly I wanted a saya for my bokuto, so I didn't have to hold it at my side and pretend. I remember wanting the outfit because it looks sweet. It was a year ago this month that I joined Iaido at Tateyama Kendo and Iaido Club . I actually started with jodo because I used to do bo and thought that it would be similar. It wasn't. I fell in love with Iaido because it has a mix of...

I am happy they caught the shooter in Moncton. It's unfortunate that anyone had to die. Like many, I followed social media to keep abreast of the situation, particularly Twitter. I'm generally disappointed in people over this situation. No one should have to be told that tweeting the locations of police during such a situation is a bad idea. No one should be trying to justify that it is okay for them to do so either. Please use your brains as they aren't grown simply to fill the space between your ears. Such actions help the person who is gunning people down rather than helping the people who are trying to restore safety to the area. It is not okay to suppose he couldn't possibly be watching Twitter for locations. Twitter allows people to follow a hashtag without being logged on and everything is public. Social networking is kind of a big thing in case you didn't notice and it's likely that he was following social media. You shouldn't even need the police ...