Anonymous Lawyer Back!

It appears that Anonymous Lawyer is back from a year long hiatus. Looks like he's been back since mid-April. Based on looking at his posts, it looks like the current world wide recession provided the writer with some inspiration. Almost all of his posts since April make reference to cutbacks and layoffs. It's another example of Blog Fiction giving Instant Literary reaction.

Interacting with a blog fiction

Okay, I think it's time to discuss the concept of "suspension of belief", and, how it relates to Blog Fiction. If you've never heard of the term, I'll direct you to this media glossary article.

In the world of fiction you are often required to believe a premise which you would never accept in the real world. Especially in genres such as fantasy and science fiction, things happen in the story which you would not believe if they were presented in a newspaper as fact. Even in more real-world genres such as action movies, the action routinely goes beyond the boundaries of what you think could really happen.

In order to enjoy such stories, the audience engages in a phenomenon known as "suspension of disbelief". This is a semi-conscious decision in which you put aside your disbelief and accept the premise as being real for the duration of the story.

When it comes to Blog Fiction, the reader must also suspend their disbelief and accept that they are reading the blog of a fictional person. If the writer of a blog fiction wants the reader to believe that they are reading a blog of a fictional person, that illusion needs to be maintained as much as is practical.

So why do I see so many blog fiction sites where the *Author* is the one responding to comments? When this happens it completely breaks the illusion of reading a blog. It is a reminder that you are reading a blog written by a writer not a character. It jars the reader out of the illusion - and that is not good if you want to keep your readers interested. Evangeline's ride is a good example of how jarring it is. Almost every entry I am thrown out of the illusion when I read about how the Author has been busy, or how she's improving her writer, etc...

Some sites, like Fate's Acquittal, started out leaving comments as the Author, but transition to responding "in character" as the story unfolds. I think it got better when this happened as it allowed the writer a second tool to reveal what the character was thinking. It also gave some foreshadowing for the thorough reader.

To those who are reading blog fiction, this article is for you too. If you're reading a blog, be sure that your comments are left for the character as well. If you want to talk to the author directly try looking for an email somewhere on the site. Please don't be like Ian over at Flyover City. In this case you, the reader, are ruining the illusion for other readers.

10 reasons SG-1 more badass than Star Trek crew

Some of you may be wondering why I haven't been posting much. Well, I'll be honest with you. I've been watching too much T.V. My wife and I recently splurged and got a duo-deca-super-mega-kamehameha cable package and ended up with a DVR. I've been taping and watching a whole bunch of scifi shows that I only used to watch occasionally. I've been watching old and new(er) star trek and also stargate. I've just about finished watching the last season of stargate and I have to say, I think I like stargate better. The characters on SG-1 are just so much more badass than those wimps on Star Trek and I'll tell you why. So here it is, my top 10 reasons the SG-1 crew is more badass than the Star Trek crew.

1. More seasons.
10 freaking seasons. Do I really need to say more? The original series only lasted 3 seasons. The next generation, deep space nine, and voyager all only lasted 7 seasons. Star Trek Enterprise only managed to last 4 seasons("Way to kill the franchise, Bakula!").

2. Commited More Deicide than the Klingons
Star Trek crew fought a Greek God and won. Also, they traveled through The Great Barrier, met God, and wasn't impressed. However...

SG-1 killed dozens of gods. Seriously, they would wake up and just say, "I think I'll kill a god today." Apophis, Anubus, Ba'al, Hathor, Ra, Sokar, Yu... the list just goes on and on. Oh and after they killed all of the gods in their own galaxy, the SG-1 team got pissed and decided they weren't done commiting Deicide. SG-1 then traveled to another galaxy, found a bunch of gods, gave 'em all the middle finger, and killed all of them too. Damn! that's badass.

3. Better Resurrection
Spock died and came back to life. Daniel Jackson died and came back to life... twice! Bonus point, Daniel Jackson didn't make his friends spend an entire terrible movie uniting his mind and body. Advantage: SG-1.

4. Medicine
When you're off fighting the badguys, eventually you're going to get hurt. If you're hurt, which would you rather do? Go see a Doctor with a bad attitude or take a nap in Sarcophagus? yeah... I'm going with SG-1 again.

5. Engineering Skills
What's a good scifi show without some good far-fetched technology. The coolest thing Star Trek ever did was create a planet. Pretty badass. But on the other hand, SG-1 would frequently find, escape and manipulate BLACK HOLES. You know, those things that crush and pull everything into them, and here's SG-1 playing around in them like they're a jungle-gym.

6. Enemies
The enemies SG-1 faced were always scary and formidable. Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, they all had about the same level of skill and technology. SG-1 however, always faces vastly superior numbers and technology, and they still blew them the 'F' up. Badass!

7. Alternate Realities
If alternate universis in Stargate are better. Star Trek only had one alternate universe. Granted, that one was pretty badass, but star trek crew ruined it. SG-1 dealt with millions of alternate universes. They even repaired a "rift" between them. They also never convinced their alternate selves to quite fighting which lead them to their eventually downfall.

8. Stress Level
Like any good action show, the people in Star Trek and SG-1 are always fighting for their lives. However, every once in a while the stakes are raised a bit. The most stressful thing for Star Trek was that they had to save Earth. Now don't get me wrong. The fate of an entire planet is one hell of a burden to carry, but, once again, SG-1 was worse off. SG-1 was constantly trying to keep the entire galaxy from being destroyed by, mechanical spiders, power crazy go'uld, and power crazy ascended beings. Yeah, I think being in SG-1 was a little more stressful.

9. Best "Macgyver"moment
When you're off saving the day, every once in a while you have to be channel your inner Macgyver and be resourceful to get yourself out of a sticky situation. Now, Kirk once made a cannon out of bamboo, sulphur, potassium nitrate, charcoal and then fired diamonds into the heart of his enemy. I have to admit that's pretty badass. However, SG-1 HAS Macgyver on their team.

10. Most Cold Blooded Act
Part of being a badass means that once in a while you got to do something cold blooded to let people know what a badass you are. Keeping this in mind, Spock once tried to kill his Best Friend over a women. So much for Bros before Hos. While that's cold, SG-1 wins this category too. How? you might ask. I watched an episode where Daniel Jackson did the most cold-blooded thing I'd ever seen from any character in movies or tv. Goodguy, or badguy. What did he do? Brace yourself.

Daniel Jackson tried to shoot and kill an 8 year old girl.

This really needs repeating. Daniel Jackson, the "HERO" character of the show, tried to shoot and kill... an 8 year old little girl. The only reason he didn't succeed was because his friend stopped him. And the stopping him wasn't one of those cheesy, "don't do it, you're better than that" scenes either. I mean he pointed the gun at the girl's head and was about to pull the trigger when his friend pushed and ruined his aim at the last minute... as the gun went off. Yes, he pulled the trigger without hesitation. Cold! Blooded!

I will say this, Jackson did know that the little girl in question was going to grow up to be like Hitler on the galactic scale... but still. There's that old ethics question, "If given the chance, should we kill Hitler before he killed anyone". Well, if you're Daniel Jackson, not only is your answer "yes", you'll ask for the nearest gun and aim for the face.

Dr. Daniel Jackson... Archeologist and BADASS!
(who shoots little girls)

Who is protecting your content?

I have a question to all authors who write online. Who is protecting your content? If you can't answer that question with a simple, "I am", then chances are, the answer is "no one". It's amazing how much time someone would put into a blog, but never take the time to do a backup.
Whether you host your blog on a shared server or a managed blog host like blogger or wordpress, you are the one that needs to take responsibility to make sure your content isn't lost.

If you don't believe me, just look at some of the terms of service for blog sites. First, let's look at a section of Google's Terms of use:

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

15.1 SUBJECT TO OVERALL PROVISION IN PARAGRAPH 14.1 ABOVE, YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE, ITS SUBSIDIARIES AND AFFILIATES, AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR:

(A) ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY.. THIS SHALL INCLUDE, BUT NOT BE LIMITED TO, ANY LOSS OF PROFIT (WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY), ANY LOSS OF GOODWILL OR BUSINESS REPUTATION, ANY LOSS OF DATA SUFFERED, COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSS;

(B) ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OR DAMAGE AS A RESULT OF:

(I) ANY RELIANCE PLACED BY YOU ON THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY OR EXISTENCE OF ANY ADVERTISING, OR AS A RESULT OF ANY RELATIONSHIP OR TRANSACTION BETWEEN YOU AND ANY ADVERTISER OR SPONSOR WHOSE ADVERTISING APPEARS ON THE SERVICES;

(II) ANY CHANGES WHICH GOOGLE MAY MAKE TO THE SERVICES, OR FOR ANY PERMANENT OR TEMPORARY CESSATION IN THE PROVISION OF THE SERVICES (OR ANY FEATURES WITHIN THE SERVICES);

(III) THE DELETION OF, CORRUPTION OF, OR FAILURE TO STORE, ANY CONTENT AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS DATA MAINTAINED OR TRANSMITTED BY OR THROUGH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES;

(III) YOUR FAILURE TO PROVIDE GOOGLE WITH ACCURATE ACCOUNT INFORMATION;

(IV) YOUR FAILURE TO KEEP YOUR PASSWORD OR ACCOUNT DETAILS SECURE AND CONFIDENTIAL;

15.2 THE LIMITATIONS ON GOOGLE’S LIABILITY TO YOU IN PARAGRAPH 15.1 ABOVE SHALL APPLY WHETHER OR NOT GOOGLE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF ANY SUCH LOSSES ARISING.

(emphasis mine)

I highlighted the important part. If blogger goes down and your blog is accidentally deleted. Too bad. Google is under no legal authority to restore your content or replenish your loses do to the loss of your blog. Google is not alone. Wordpress offers no such warrenties either. From sections 11 and 12 of their terms of service.

Disclaimer of Warranties. The Website is provided “as is”. Automattic and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Automattic nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. If you’re actually reading this, here’s a treat. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website at your own discretion and risk.

Limitation of Liability. In no event will Automattic, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement or substitute products or services; (iii) for interuption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that exceed the fees paid by you to Automattic under this agreement during the twelve (12) month period prior to the cause of action. Automattic shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond their reasonable control. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law.

Even if you did find a service that took responsibility that they would never lose your content, there's still alway id10t error. You may accidentally hit delete or your account gets hacked.

So what should you do to protect your story? Backup, Backup, and Backup. For my blogger account, about once a month I like to download a copy of both my layout and also an export of all of my posts. I do something similiar for the blog fiction forum. Whenever I change or upgrade, I copy all of the files from my webserver to my desktop and then also export the a copy of the databases.

Granted, my content isn't 100% protected on my computer either. However, I find the chances that my computer's harddrive crashing at the same time as either Google's or my ISPs to be remote. So that's what I'm doing to protect my content. What are you doing? or should I say, what SHOULD you be doing?

I've been interviewed

Check it out...
http://queensjournal.ca/story/2009-03-13/supplement/exploring-world-e-fiction/

It may only be a college newspaper, but definitely making progress in promoting this niche.

Lord Likely Redesign

Looks like Lord Likely spruced up his site. I'm digging the new look.

He's got a new url to go along with his new look too: http://lordlikely.co.uk/

U-Verse is popular

Holy Crap. Not having internet at home sucks. You may have noted my extended absence for going on 2 weeks. Well, I was moving and waited way too long to order my new internet service. For cable, after I call to sign up it only takes about a day or two to have the technician to come up and hook me up. With AT&T U-verse it actually takes more than 2 weeks. So after moving I ended up without internet longer than expected. Combine that with all the hassle of packing and moving I either haven't had time or haven't had the ability to read and post.

Anyhoo, I am back with a warning to readers. If you're getting U-verse for your internet connection, leave a lot of time between sign up and when you cancel your old service.

How to Save Your Spot When Reading Online Fiction

I've mentioned before the problem with using bookmarks when reading blog fiction. The term "bookmark" is the terminology we use to refer to the concept of "saving" a webpage for later. I believe the Netscape coined the term for their original web browser - and it is something I may never forgive them for doing.

Even though we use the same word to describe saving our spots in books and on the internet, we use those "bookmarks" very differently. When I use a bookmark in the physical world, I am saving my place only until I get back. When I return to the book, I remove my bookmark, read and continue reading from where I was. The old "bookmarked" spot no longer exists. In cyberspace when we "bookmark" something we are usually saving it either permanently or at least "until further notice". We use our bookmark to jump back to a spot, but we do not remove the bookmark.

So why is this a problem? It's a problem because now I don't have the vocabulary to describe a "real" cyber bookmark. That is, a temporary bookmark that is erased when I open it. Well, for now I'm just going to refer to it as "temporary bookmarks". Now that my mini rant is done I come to the point of my article. I have found 2 bookmarking services that work like temporary bookmarks instead of permanent bookmarks.

The first service is a firefox add-on called "taboo". The idea behind "taboo" is that not only does it bookmark a page, but it saves any text you've entered into the page as well as how far down the screen your scrollbar is. It also takes a visual snapshot so that when you look at all of your "taboos" you see a nice preview of the page you saved. The service add 2 buttons to your browser. One is a button that will bookmark or "taboo" your spot. If you click it on a webpage that already has a saved taboo a little box pops up that allows to either change the name or description of the taboo and to move the taboo to the current spot on the webpage or you can just remove it. This makes removing a taboo very simple. Load a page, click taboo, click "remove". All of this without using any menu options.

The second button, as you may have guessed shows you all of your "taboos". If you click the button it will open up a firefox tab that shows all the thumbnails of the taboos you've saved. It lists them in the order that they were saved so you can see your latest bookmark -err... taboo- of each website you've visited if you have more than one taboo. Another quicker option is a little arrow next to the "show taboo" button will show a little popup of your latest taboos so you can quickly go back to a page you were reading.

Another bookmarking option I found was called dogear. This service is a little harder to describe. It places less emphasis on the time you saved a page than taboo does. However, the service works with all web browsers because all the information is saved on their webserver.

Here's how it works, when you want to start using it, you click a bookmark called "dogearit". What that does is create a frame at the top of your browser and the rest of the webpage in a frame below it. Then, when you want to "dog-ear" a page, you highlight the text you want to come back to and then left click it. That create's your dog ear. If you highlight other text on the page and then left-click it, it will move the dogear to that text.

To retrieve your dogears you have another bookmark. That takes you to a webpage(assuming you're logged in) that lists all of your "dog-eared" web pages. Then you can click them like any other hyperlink and you'll goto that webpage, scroll to where you left it, and the dogear frame will be at the top of the page.

So, which of these services works best? Hands down "taboo" is a lot better. I use it to read the archives of blog fiction and it works out great. The dogearit service is too slow. When the frame is on the page, it seems to almost quintuple my page load times. Unlike taboo, it is not as easy to remove a dogear you no longer want. Plus it seems I'm always getting logged out of the service so I waste time trying to log back in.

There are a couple things that dogear does better than taboo. First of all, any browser can use it. So if you use Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome dogear is pretty much your only option. The second thing is how the services handles saving your spot in a page. Taboo only remembers how far down the page you scrolled. That means if the page changes by adding content to the top, your scrollbar will not be in the same place. Dogear remembers by keeping track of the text you highlighted. Dogear will take you to that portion of the page regardless of where it is. So, if dogear ever solves the speed issue, it might become as good, if not better, than the taboo firefox add-on. Until the speed issue is resolved, however, I would recommend using firefox and taboo if you're looking to use temporary in-page bookmarks.

While taboo and dogearit solves a couple of the problems with reading online fiction it does not resolve them all. For instance, if you're not reading in a chronological order (which is definately a possiblity with blog or any online fiction) you can't keep track of what you have and haven't read. It does however, solve 2 big problems. It allows you to do an in-page save - this is especially helpful if you're reading multiple blog posts on a single archive page(i.e. all August posts). Also you can remove a temporary bookmark easily so you don't have 3 dozen bookmarks on the same webpage.