Status of updates

Posted on 2005-07-28 by Stephan Sokolow

Ok, since posts have been a little sporadic lately, I think anyone who reads this deserves a proper explanation. Here you go.

I’ve been very busy lately so I’ve spent most of my time working on reducing wasted time. (mostly by switching to more efficient content management tools) As a side-effect, I can’t blog as much as I’d like (since blogging is my excuse for spending free time on non-productive activities like reading fanfiction, webcomics, etc.) However, I have done my best to keep the interesting stuff coming. As such, any interesting sites I want to share will be available through my del.icio.us bookmarks (recently created) so I can combine saving them and sharing them into a single action.

New webcomics will result in an update to my GoodWebcomics page and new gender-bending stuff will result in updates to my gender-bending fiction index. My site now uses MoinMoin for content management and I find it to be even easier to work with than a WordPress blog.

Also, I will continue the switchover from blog to website when I can find free time so I’m not yet sure whether I’ll post fanfiction reviews to my site or my blog. It all depends on whether I begin the conversion of existing entries before or after I resume reading and reviewing.

Hopefully, I’ll soon have some kind of plan for a less fragmented method of offering update notification. Anyway, now you know why things are the way they are.

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Site Problems

Posted on 2005-07-26 by Stephan Sokolow

Well, my site had to be taken down for a few hours due to some kind of script mess-up. I think I’ve solved the main problem but there are a few other cases where things can be difficult. I’m working on solving them and the site should hopefully be back to normal (and faster) within the next day or so.

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Article – Iran executes gay teenagers

Posted on 2005-07-21 by Stephan Sokolow

Iran executes gay teenagers

I was wandering through del.icio.us when I found this article. I highly recommend you share it.

Posted in Web Wandering & Opinion | Leave a comment

Added an “El Goonish Shive” review

Posted on 2005-07-09 by Stephan Sokolow

I’ve added a more detailed review/preview of El Goonish Shive to the GoodWebcomics page of my newly-renovated website.

You’ll also find that I moved (not copied) my “favorite webcomics” from the blog to that page in preparation for converting the list into review/preview segments. My goal is to stop the loss of relevant data to “blog expiry” (my term for posts becoming too old for people to notice them) by moving anything relevant to my main site (which now uses a wiki backend for easy editing).

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New Site Backend

Posted on 2005-07-08 by Stephan Sokolow

Well, as of now, my website will be getting no more updates. In case you hadn’t guessed, it’s one of those “The king is dead, long live the king” things.

I’m about to switch over to a new backend for my main site which will make it easier to edit the site than to post to the blog. I still have a little bug testing and customizing to do, but so far so good. If you don’t want to wait, the testing copy is at http://www.ssokolow.com/test.cgi.

UPDATE: The site is now switched over. Just use www.ssokolow.com like before.

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Simplifying Gentoo Updates

Posted on 2005-07-07 by Stephan Sokolow

In case anyone was wondering, no I’m not dead. I’ve just been really busy. (partly because I’ve been obsessed with streamlining my computer)

Anyway, if you use Gentoo Linux, you might be interested in these two files. The first one is a script to make keeping the system up to date as simple as typing “sudo emerge-update” every now and then. The second one is a patch for the revdep-rebuild tool from gentoolkit (which the first script relies on) to allow forced exemptions (useful for binary packages).

Here you go…
* emerge-update
* revdep-rebuild forced-ignore patch

I’ll probably bundle them into a single archive and edit this post later on so please don’t link to them directly. Either copy them to your own site (I hereby release them under a GPL license) or link to this post.

Thanks and enjoy.

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Fanfiction – “Comes The Cold Dragon”

Posted on 2005-06-14 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Comes The Cold Dragon
URL: @ IAmNotA.net
Author: Don Granberry
Source: Ranma 1/2
Rating: 6/6
Type: Continuation, Epic
Length: 18 Chapters in 33 files (roughly 120K per file)(Incomplete)

Very well written and I love the humor. Especially the parts which are written in a similar fashion to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. To put it bluntly, “chapter two is fricken hilarious!”. There are also bits of humor scattered throughout the storyline. For example, “You and your dad must have fit in around there like socks on a rooster.” …and later on in the story, there are some hilarious malapropisms. (I probably wouldn’t have remembered that word if the author hadn’t used it himself)

I also love the parts focusing on many of the secondary characters from China, especially prince Herb. They really add depth to the characters. I also have to compliment the author on the quality of the original characters.

Anyway, the basic plotline is “What if, shortly after the end of the Ranma manga, Ranma is showing all the classic symptoms of combat fatigue, and a strange new ability?” The story focuses on both Ranma (and a newfound ability of his) and all of the usual craziness surrounding him. This is my second time reading the story and I think it definitely deserves a 6/6.

The first time I read this, it had only been written up to the end of chapter 8 and I considered it very well written. Now that I’ve read it even further, I can honestly say that the author has infused the story with not only a great deal of humor, but a great deal of knowledge too. As with any good fanfic, there’s a gradual change so the beginning feels like a completely different story from the end but you never notice the actual change in progress.

Modifiers:
+1 Writing a story that has prince Herb as more than a minor character
+1 Providing an original (and quite nice) origin story for Jusenkyo
-0.5 Uses fanon Nabiki but does it well

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