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Quick affiliate update

July 07, 2011 • Posted in Updates and tagged

Got a new affiliate a while ago, Absol's Moonlit Cave. Some of you may remember when the site was around a few years ago—it's making a comeback now, and it's still just as awesome a site as it was before.

Speaking of affiliates, I realize that there were several affiliation requests that I hadn't gotten around to replying to yet. Unfortunately I can't find those emails again, so if you sent one before and are still waiting for a response then send it again and nag me to look at it sooner this time. Sorry about that!

I've been busy with several projects that are not directly related to AO, which is why nothing particularly interesting has happened here aside from that brief spate of downtime. It may be a little while until those settle down, but I'd like to get back to some of that to-do list when they do. I'm also probably going to redo the ASB reffing calculators in something other than Flash (probably just JavaScript) so that it's hopefully a little easier for people to use. If nothing else that should fix some of the strange problems people have been having with it. If you check the Insubstantiality update a little below this one you'll also notice that I'm going to begin work on a new fanfic soon, and that fic will be posted here when it's finished.

Pokémon Big Bang Brainstorming

June 30, 2011 • Posted in Blog and tagged

I was reading through stuff on someone's LJ when I came across this: the first-ever Pokémon Big Bang. To summarize for those who don't know what a big bang is (which more or less includes me, lol), it's basically a call out to creative people in a fandom to create "multimedia works" over a period of a few months, multimedia here defined as "a fanfic of at least 10,000 words and some drawings/music/fanvids/bluh/art to go along with it". Interested people work in teams consisting of a writer, a few artists and a beta reader and collaborate to put out the fic and its accompanying pretty stuff before the big bang is over. I'd never heard of these things before seeing that little mention, but it seems like a fun idea.

...a fun idea that I was going to let pass me by this time, or at least only join as a beta reader, until I realized that 10,000 words is equivalent to six days of writing at a NaNoWriMo pace, and that if I could come up with a completed outline and think of the writing that way then it's actually feasible for me do. Pretty up the outline, spend a week typing until my keyboard catches fire, have the better part of two months and three weeks to edit it/show it to a potential beta/let the artists get started on their respective artings. Realistically it'll probably take me a bit longer than that due to crippling self-esteem issues, but as long as I keep telling myself I can have it done in ~1 week I think I might be okay. Sure would be nice to get some actual writing completed, at least. Point is, I'm almost 100% sure I'm going to join as a writer, and the next step is figuring out what to write about.

Downtime

June 22, 2011 • Posted in Updates and tagged

Sorry about the downtime that hit AO and the rest of the sites on my server for about a day. The short version is that I had some software uploaded on a different domain for testing purposes that I intentionally left outdated at first; after a while I no longer needed it and just forgot about it. Apparently that version of the software was vulnerable to some file inclusion attacks, and someone hacked into it and started sending tons of spam emails via my server. My host shut the server down for a while so they could resolve the problem. As you can see, everything is back up now and should be back to normal.

The domain/site/etc. that was affected didn't have anything of importance on it, and everything else appears to be untouched. Altered Origin, 649, the Phoenixdex and anything else important I had hosted on this server are currently fine; they were just inaccessible for a while. Nothing that happened should have affected you in any way, and you should be able to continue using the AO network sites as normal.

I know several of you were trying to access the site while it was down and were unable to; again, sorry about that. Lesson learned, and it shouldn't happen again.

Ficbits the First

May 21, 2011 • Posted in Blog and tagged

The writing for... well, everything is still going slow, but I find I'm in the mood to share some stuff from some of my more recent projects. Just little snippets, primarily out of context, and there's some stuff I'm leaving out due to spoilers or attempts to keep things a surprise, but hopefully these are still sort of entertaining! Maybe if I can keep myself motivated and working I'll do a few more of these ficbit posts down the line.

There's some strong language in some of these, just fyi.

the cutest bunny

May 01, 2011 • Posted in Blog and tagged

Bugsy tells some of the other gym leaders that he still believes in Santa Claus.

He also tells them, more specifically, that he believes that Wattson is said Santa Claus.

He may or may not be incorrect about this.

needs more in the way of actual plot but WRITE IT Y/Y

...in other news, in case you haven't noticed, I have a Tumblr now. I still think WordPress is superior when it comes to longer stuff like the beautiful and intelligent specimen above, so it's not a replacement or anything; it will probably contain more art (or fakemon)-related stuff that is slightly less substantial and more frequently updated.