Got down to #author stuff, now that I'm retired and can devote time to the #business of #writing#fiction. First order of business: catalog the unsold novels from after the burn out that need revision and rewrites.
Turns out that disconnecting my Mac from my work VPN messed up my folders. I had somehow mapped (don't know the Mac term) my work Windows computer folders to the Mac, and when I look in documents it tries to find it on the network and fails. If I reboot, so long as I go directly from my user's directory to documents directory, I'm good. If I click on Documents in Finder, it redirects and I'm screwed.
First thing I did was copy all my writing folders to the desktop. At least I've lost none of my old novels and short work.
I thought there were 7 completed books, and I said so online. There are actually 9, three that form a trilogy and one novel with a sequel in the mix. There are two incomplete novels.
Some works are older than others. Pages refuses to open one novel from 1996, a fun space opera that possibly has the highest chance of early sales. I haven't tried the others. Now I gotta install Word, of which I am not a fan, and investigate programs that'll open the really old files. If anyone wants to chime in with suggestions, please do! (I can always find someone with a Windows machine if need be.) Putting Google on TODO. I actually have original copies of chapters from my Apple ] days, but thankfully I updated those to the Mac and to a new millennium version of Word in what were my PowerPC days.
Incidentally, there really are three novellas in good shape.What surprises me though? There looks like about 15 short stories, many complete because I see multiple submissions in the various folders. I completely forgot about these, and was sure I never wrote short-form.
Every year or two, I see people cursing because the interface for Word has changed and become less useful & more confusing.
I've used #Word since the original Word on my original 512K Fat #mac I also used the original at work on an AT class IBM PC, maybe running the original Windows that was a DOS shell. I was as Word bigot. I bought every upgrade. As a novelist, I loved the feature called the Master Document. It allowed me to keep all my chapters organized and print them together.
Then Word got rid of it!
Since that time, I've never been happy with the changes. When Word started removing items from menus instead of greying things out, and then this ribbon craziness which messes with touch typing... Will the insanity end?
Unsupported ancient old #Mac word processor formats were a real issue. Fortunately, #LibreOffice, and their adventurous programmers, solved this for me. I thank them.
Outside of the Mac, you're stuck digging through a zip file with pictures, text, and... stuff..
Apple's thing is to ensure for the vast majority of their users that their software works all the time, every time. As a ex-programmer, I respect that. If that means controlling file integrity by being the only /writer/ of the file format, so be it. Keeping the format secret is a way to achieve that, which sadly means you can't write a program to read it. You REALLY don't want to debug what turns out to be a crap programmer's mistakes. Most users are as interested in the power user stuff we're interested in as they are in learning how to change the oil on their car.
Did you know there are 2 modes in #Pages that you can use? They're called Word Processing and Page Layout. But which one are you using and what should you be using for your #documents? It's Word Processing vs. Page Layout mode explained! #iWork
This article from @jsnell at @sixcolors is spot on! If you are getting started on a #Mac, especially if you are coming from #Microsoft#Windows, don’t install anything! Chances are it’s built in and you don’t need an app at all! The defaults are what I use for the majority of my workflow and they work exceptionally well! And I agree, the Mac needs a clipboard manager! https://apple.news/APFeqn2R-OfyGIxDw5qWu8A
@jsnell@sixcolors A couple of my favorite best kept #Mac secret defaults are:
-Don’t install #Adobe, just use #Preview
-No need to install #Microsoft#Office, just use iWork (#Pages, #Numbers, #Keynote)
-#FaceTime can do what most conferencing apps do, no need for #Zoom or #Teams, including scheduling meetings and sharing screens
-The built in #Dictionary app is crazy helpful and useful, especially if you can’t connect to the internet for a quick word lookup.
Wiedzieliście, że font #Calibri w ramach licencji od #Microsoft można wykorzystywać tylko i wyłącznie w ramach systemów #Windows (Server 2008, Vista i nowsze) oraz aplikacji #Office?
Jeśli mamy pakiet #Microsoft365 na #MacBook to nie znaczy, że możemy z niego korzystać w całym systemie - możemy to robić tylko w aplikacjach Office i nigdzie indziej, nawet w #Pages.
At some point #aspnetcore#razor#pages started supporting more than HTML methods (GET, POST) without additional configuration. Cool! This is a good change for #dotnet developers.
#Canadian#Legacy#Media: We remember that. The #nerds said they could tell where the #traffic was coming from. We said it always comes from the left, so look that way first.
Hier ist ein Totalausfall der Microsoft-Sicherheit beschrieben, ausgenutzt durch russische Hacker. Auch NGOs sollen angegriffen worden sein. Da könnte man ja eigentlich vorschlagen, die Datenkraken zu löschen und gut?
Hey #aspnetcore devs. If I wanted to write a result that could be used in #MVC, #Razor#Pages, and Minimal APIs, what interface/base type would I implement?
Is it IResult or IActionResult or is it not possible?
Hat jemand eine Ahnung, wie #Codeberg#Pages im Zusammenhang mit #Strato funktioniert? Irgendwie will Strato nicht richtig auf Codeberg umleiten. #CNAME kann ich nicht nehmen, weil sonst mein E-Mail Server nicht mehr funktioniert, aber die zwei anderen Optionen aus der Dokumentation wollen irgendwie auch nicht funktionieren.
Since many people are joining #Lemmy these days, I just created #LemmyMatrix, a tool allowing people to generate #uBlockOrigin and #uMatrix rules for Lemmy known instances.
I think this is my favourite yet 🐈⬛🐈🐩
I wrote a basic little python script to help with angles of the rotating landscape. Happy to share that if anyone else has a use for it.
@jovikowi@Kiko oh man this looks like interesting stuff! I’m working a conference this week but if it slows down toward the weekend I’m excited to dig in a little deeper. For now if you’re looking for a for loop…I have one in my drafts that I’ve been working on. It’s the ~~ part that’s the loop.
// Retrieve all pages for the current user #pages = Mk:api("i/pages" { limit: 40 }) #meta = Mk:api("meta" { })
The ratio of folks on #bsky using custom domains is really interesting and will get moreso when the 2M reportedly on the waitlist get released. So many wonderful influences of the #fediverse on #Bluesky and that software makes using domains as handles nice and easy. Who knew zany tlds could be so much fun? But of course such a nerdy proto web thing could unexpectedly monetize the great federation. #namespace
Alright, the #pages functionality on #CalcKey... needs work. (And maybe #MissKey too - haven't seen their version yet.)
Really - it boils down to the Markdown subset. Pages uses regular post-level MFM - which means no headings, no lists, and no ![]() embedded images.
Images and headings have to be added as blocks - and they don't even work right. Narrow images scale up to the entire width of the page, and headings, or "sections" have only one block.
There is no bulleted list support either - you have to do that manually by using unicode characters.
Also - blocks can't be moved, only added or deleted. There is a move button but it doesn't seem to work - or maybe its a menu button that doesn't work. Either way - doesn't work.
Not only does this make the editing experience a bit painful - making it so that you have to leave the text and add blocks separately - it also means that you can't just write something in an external markdown editor and simply copy into a page - you have to manually split up the text into blocks so you can insert images or sections in-between.
Also - it's very undocumented. I don't know what the variables or the scripting do - you have to figure those out on your own.
That's not to say that pages suck entirely, the interactivity that you can add with forms, variables and scripting is frankly excellent. But if you can't add the content you want, the way you want it - that interactivity is just useless.