ianmcorvidae.net http://www.ianmcorvidae.net Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:30:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en Now available on identi.ca! http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/08/02/now-available-on-identica/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/08/02/now-available-on-identica/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:30:23 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/?p=21 Much like my previous post, this is to announce my recent appearance on a microblogging service. This one, however, isn’t the often failure-ridden twitter, but a new contender called identi.ca. The main differences: Jabber posting ACTUALLY WORKS, although SMS is not yet an option; more importantly, identi.ca is completely open-source; the source code of their backend software (called Laconica) is released under the terms of the GNU Affero Public License, version 3.0. For those that might not have understood that: that’s good.

Anyway: find me at identi.ca/ianmcorvidae, and I’d love if you’d join me! Send me a message there or here if you do!

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/08/02/now-available-on-identica/feed/ twitter! http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/05/10/twitter/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/05/10/twitter/#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 20:35:41 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/05/10/twitter/ Now available on twitter:

http://twitter.com/ianmcorvidae

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/05/10/twitter/feed/ January 1, 2008 [1010|1010/20000] http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/01/01/01-01-2008/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/01/01/01-01-2008/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:40:01 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/01/01/01-01-2008/ As some of you may have read on my Writing page or a few posts ago, this year I’m intending to write 20,000 words per month as part of a group of several writers in my area, 5,000 a month each to novels and to short stories.

I will be making these daily posts every day I actually get around to writing, to update my word count and talk about what I’ve been writing.

So, my word count today, as you can see from the title, was 1010 words; out of a needed 666.6, I’m already ahead. This, methinks, is a good sign; I very well may do better than the goal — but for today, I decided to not get too far ahead of myself.

I did all thousand in a new story in the music magic world I first visualized in a short story in the months before NaNoWriMo 2006 and then continued during NaNoWriMo itself. I’ve decided to put the novel I did during 2006 onto the back burner for now; I may rewrite it sometime later this year, but within that world I’d rather do new stories for the time being. The new story is about a time seven years after the initial story, when my biggest character in the world has been learning music magic for seven years. It starts with her first travel out of the School of Music Magic since she arrived, hastily organized by her tutor late one night. So far, she is wondering at her first view of the larger world in years and wondering about their purposes in traveling on such short notice to so far a destination. As of yet, I’m not sure if this story will be a shorter story or a novel; I suspect I will find out as I write more!

Day summary:
Music Magic: 1010 words
Caribbean Fantasy: 0 words
Musical, Magical Sabotage: 0 words

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2008/01/01/01-01-2008/feed/ WebUrbanist » Shopdropping aka Droplifting: Beginner’s Guide to the Subversive Art of Reverse Shoplifting http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/27/weburbanist-%c2%bb-shopdropping-aka-droplifting-beginner%e2%80%99s-guide-to-the-subversive-art-of-reverse-shoplifting/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/27/weburbanist-%c2%bb-shopdropping-aka-droplifting-beginner%e2%80%99s-guide-to-the-subversive-art-of-reverse-shoplifting/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:19:29 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/27/weburbanist-%c2%bb-shopdropping-aka-droplifting-beginner%e2%80%99s-guide-to-the-subversive-art-of-reverse-shoplifting/ As the title may indicate, the article below is about an interesting new form of social commentary, or marketing, or annoyance, or all manner of other things. “Shopdropping” (also known as “Droplifting”) is the act of putting new stuff into a store (as opposed to shoplifting, which is taking things out). Documented uses include marketing one’s own product, social commentary, blunt illegality, and so forth (the article has lots of cool images and videos).

My own take on this would probably be technological; I’d very likely drop something like Ubuntu CDs in pretty packaging, for the sake of spreading usage of the OS; or even something like The Open CD (even though it’s no longer in active development), for incurable Windows users. In any case, enjoy (and include me on any good ideas… the Contact page is a great place for this)!

WebUrbanist » Shopdropping aka Droplifting: Beginner’s Guide to the Subversive Art of Reverse Shoplifting

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/27/weburbanist-%c2%bb-shopdropping-aka-droplifting-beginner%e2%80%99s-guide-to-the-subversive-art-of-reverse-shoplifting/feed/ Works in (or not in) progress, and goals http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/works-in-or-not-in-progress-and-goals/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/works-in-or-not-in-progress-and-goals/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:55:42 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/blog/2007/12/23/works-in-or-not-in-progress-and-goals/ As part of my plan to get back to actually writing something, it seemed it might be appropriate to clear up (for me, at least, and possibly for others) what exactly that entails. Therefore:


Works in progress, or works that should or could be in progress:

  • Magic Conspiracy story - Tried this one first during a 25,000 word competition I did one summer with a group of folks; it was/is about a girl who discovers her mother is a magician when the mother becomes jealous of her competence at playing piano and turns to magical sabotage. This leads to the daughter working her way through and around a corrupt national (and world) structure of magicians as part of her own learning process as a magician (and ultimately to clear up the mess).
  • NaNoWriMo 2006 - Otherwise known as “The Music Magic Story” - this one was a fairly standard fantasy story (quest, coming of age, magical prodigy, so forth) in a world including several varieties of magic, the most interesting being music-based magic taught at a small, secluded school in the mountains.
  • NaNoWriMo 2007 - The Island Fantasy story - On a whim, I decided to attempt to write fantasy in a Caribbean-island sort of setting; plot-wise the story is a generic clearing-up of some particularly nasty magical corruption in the world. Other interesting ideas (at least within my own writing) include some romantic elements and more evenly important major characters.

Other than the obvious generalities of “Write more!” and “Work on the above Works in progress!,” here are some more specific goals:

  • 20,000 words of fiction or other non-school-related writing per month (along with several other writerly folks) - this comes out to a bit under 700 per day, which is quite doable. During NaNoWriMo, of course, I’ll do the usual 50,000 or more (tradition must be followed!)
  • Besides just working on the novel ideas above, I’d like to write a few short stories per month. Therefore, I will allocate at least 5,000 words per month (of the 20,000 mentioned above) to short stories, but no more than 15,000 (unless, of course, I go over 20,000 - the point is, at least 5,000 words in each area each month)
  • Since I should be writing one or two short stories a month, I’d like to set a goal of submitting at least one story per two months (acceptance, naturally, I won’t worry about)
  • Critique: 2 week turnaround time. This should not be any sort of issue, so I’m declaring it no longer is. If any of you writers want something critiqued, pass it this way. In the same vein, I’ll hopefully be asking for more critique of my own pretty soon - the same sort of turnaround would be appreciated when I do!

I’ll try to post at least once a month about my progress; if I don’t, somebody bother me about it. I can use bothering!

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/works-in-or-not-in-progress-and-goals/feed/ Now with more wordiness! http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/now-with-more-wordiness/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/now-with-more-wordiness/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2007 02:58:49 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/blog/2007/12/23/now-with-more-wordiness/ Just in case the above title was a bit cryptic, this post is here to announce my new site and blog at http://www.ianmcorvidae.net and http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/blog/. For those of you reading this from LiveJournal, I’ll still be cross-posting everything for a good while yet (if not indefinitely), so don’t worry about that; then again, considering how much I tend to post on that blog, you probably weren’t worrying anyway.

So. As to why I’m doing this at all, I’m intending within the next year (and don’t lecture me on New Year’s Resolutions and all that) to pick up a bit with the writing, and possibly with a variety of other things, and I thought it would be good to develop a web presence. So, here I am; don’t run away screaming too fast, if you don’t mind.

Neither the site nor the blog are particularly well-developed yet, but during my winter break I’m hoping to work on that, and hopefully this will be a full-fledged and working (as much as it can be) website very soon! (Wish me luck)

]]> http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/now-with-more-wordiness/feed/ Hello world! http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/hello-world/ http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/2007/12/23/hello-world/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:52:17 +0000 Ian McEwen http://www.ianmcorvidae.net/blog/?p=1 Ah, the old standby:

“Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!”

… I just didn’t have the heart to delete it, so here it is. Hopefully I have posted or will post more here, but as of right now, that (see above) is all I’ve got.

Enjoy!

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