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Category: Writing

Posts about writing, editing, publishing, and blogging

Uhhh, Like Housekeeping and Stuff

April 22, 2006 • • 2 Comments

One of the many fun things about blogging is tinkering with the blog and in the process learning a bit about how web sites work. I haven’t been writing the past few days; instead, I’ve been playing with my code (uh-huh-huh…Shut up, Beavis that’s not what I meant) in an effort to create a separate archives page so as to clean up the left sidebar by placing a single link in the navigation section. Anyways, that’s where the archives and categories are for all you scholars doing research on my blog.

The coolest thing about the archives page is the live calendar plug-in that uses AJAX so that the whole page doesn’t have to reload when you move to another month.

Now that my left sidebar is cleaned up, and I’ve learned how to make static pages that use WordPress’s php tags, I’m debating making a links page for my blogroll and then reconfiguring to a two column fixed layout. I like fluid design (which is what I have now) because I like how it fills a monitor and gives users the option of resizing the browser to create a comfortable column width for reading, but with a fixed layout I could control the layout of posts, which would be nice when using pictures.

Oh, what to do. Perhaps I just miss playing with my code (uh-huh huh…damn it, Beavis, don’t make me kick your ass!) since I haven’t made any changes to the look of Coyote Mercury since January, but then I do find a very clean minimalist site somewhat appealing. Change for the sake of change? Yup, that’s me.

Ok, I’m off to rearrange the house…

Fighting Spam

March 28, 2006 • • 7 Comments

I’ve been getting inundated with comment spam lately. WordPress has a nifty feature called Akismet that blocks most of it out and puts it in a queue for me to check over before dumping it. I’m used to the occasional “Hi. I love your blog. Check out my deal on Viagra” type comments, but lately, the comments have been pretty weird:

  • “love give give – that is all that table is capable of , steal plane is very good tournament”
  • “, increase soldier is very good soldier”
  • “rape table is very good boy pair will player unconditionally, expect play do – that is all that round is capable of”
  • “to kill corner you should be very universal when tournament percieve cosmos loose , girl will player unconditionally”
  • “grass can forecast slot: when grass is grass it will roll chair”
  • “con soldier is very good cards: international is feature of astonishing gnome , industrious chair steal or not”

Each comment also has random words set up as hyperlinks that go to sites like CNN, USA Today, MSNBC and Hollywood Reporter, which is odd since I wouldn’t think those well-established sites would need to go spamming the backwaters of the blogosphere for traffic.

The URL for each spammer is often one of several sites (not to be mentioned here) that have to do with movies. I won’t click through from my dashboard (so as not to encourage these vermin) so who knows what’s really there, but I’ve been getting inundated with this garbage.

So far Akismet and WordPress have been effective and caught 471 comment spams. Akismet remembers the spammers’ URLs, IPs and content and becomes more effective each time it catches something. In addition to that, WP holds any comment with three or more links for moderation. Still, a few are suddenly getting through. WordPress has a number of plug-ins available for CAPTCHA so I’m installing one (Bot Check) that looks easy to do. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try a different one.

I hope this isn’t inconvenient for anyone. I would appreciate it if someone would post a comment here so that I know it works, and please email me if you see problems or can’t comment. Unless you’re a spammer in which case please go to Hell.

Treading Water

February 19, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I don’t write autobiography or memoir, but I often use real events as a start point for my fiction. I’m sure most writers do. Sometimes memories come floating along without context, without rational explanation, they’re just there, triggered by a smell, a sight, a feeling, the minutiae of life. These pictures appear vivid, bright as day, begging to be recorded and then they’re gone like waves receding from shore.

“Treading Water” came about as a sort of experiment in capturing these memories. I wanted to take a collection of scenes and connect them not so much through narrative, but rather through context, jumping from one to another the way the mind wanders in those wonderful moments of quiet reflection.

I decided to use scenes that take place near the ocean. I started writing the memories as they came without knowing how or if I would connect them. Eventually a story of two people standing on a beach watching the waves roll in emerged, and it became the frame for the scenes I ultimately decided to include.

I think it plays out sort of like a short film or a prose poem.

Here’s the link: “Treading Water”

Enjoy.

More Blogging Connections

February 13, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Expanding on yesterday’s post concerning blogging connections, I’ve recently learned that Phoebe seems to have made one on her own. Apparently, Modulator discovered her and added her to the weekly ark of animal pictures. I commented there and they kindly added Morrison and Daphne so as to keep the gang together.

Following links from that page, I discovered that there is a weekly carnival of the cats and a carnival of the dogs, which are hosted at different blogs each week. Phoebe and Morrison are appearing in their respective carnivals, and I’ll enter Daphne the next time her picture appears, though it will probably scare her. Here’s the submission form for the carnivals if you have pictures of animals who want to be seen or are perhaps looking for homes such as this nice pup.

Small World, After All

February 12, 2006 • • 9 Comments

This has been an unusual week for blogging. I’ve discovered several new blogs and surprisingly a few of them have had links to each other or to blogs I already read, and yet I found them by following different paths. I was already marveling at the small town feeling the blogosphere had suddenly taken on when yesterday I sat down to read the paper and drink the morning pot of coffee.

When I reached the editorial page of the Austin American-Statesman, I noticed the column “Land of the Free-for-All” by Connie Shultz. The first sentence was “I hate blogs.” I found this to be quite intriguing. I love reading print columns that disparage blogs. They’re always so defensive. Perhaps, they know their days are numbered. I don’t think blogs will replace regular news sources since bloggers can’t afford to travel the world and do frontline reporting, but anyone can write commentary and many can write it better than syndicated columnists, and so it was with a snarky grin that I began reading.

Shultz doesn’t just hate blogs; she also loves them, and toward the end of her piece, she quoted from a few random blogs, one of which is on my blogroll: Postcards from the Mothership. I commented to let Dani know that her blog was mentioned, and now she has a very nice post up about the small world nature of the internet. Dani is a Canadian blogger whose blog is one of the first non-political blogs I came across while, as she mentions, looking for book reviews (she has a very cool and unique method for this). It’s these random connections and new friends we make with people in faraway places – and close to home – that so fascinates me about blogging. It seems to fulfill part of the promise of the web.

One more connection. Regular readers will notice the weekly link to Greyhound Pets of America’s central Texas chapter that shows the beautiful hounds up for adoption. Today, I saw that reader and occasional commenter Heather of Heather in all Her Strangeness is fostering one of these very dogs. This has nothing to do with me; it’s just one more interesting connection (and a chance to mention greyhounds).

Meat and Potatoes

January 30, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I’ve now added “Meat and Potatoes” to the stories and poems page. It’s pretty funny. Feel free to comment here if you like.

Here’s a bit of background:

I originally wrote this as part of my application to NYU’s film school. They wanted a story about gluttony. I sent them a story about giant hamburgers in a Texas BBQ joint. I don’t know what they thought of it, but after choking in my interview, they wait-listed me and then accepted me a few months later. By that time, I was working in the Austin film scene and leaving to rack up huge student loan debts wasn’t so appealing anymore. When I finally did go to grad school at UT, I rewrote the story into its present state for a writing seminar. The teacher, a serious and talented writer named Zulfikar Ghose, asked me to read this to the class at the end of one meeting. I read it, wondering why he had selected this one. By the end, everyone was laughing and Ghose was in tears from laughing so hard. Over the next few semesters, it wasn’t uncommon to be approached by people who were in that class and would laugh when they saw me and reminisce about the day I made Ghose cry.

Enjoy.

The Sky is Falling and Other Unrelated Things

January 28, 2006 • • 4 Comments

This morning, I went outside to get the paper, which wasn’t there, but I noticed that something amazing had happened. It seems that last night free water fell from the sky. This is exciting since we haven’t had substantial rainfall in over a year. The lack of rain and our non-winter winter have conspired to create a dangerously dry situation here. It’s supposed to rain throughout the day today, but I don’t know if that will be enough to end the arson/burn ban that I mentioned last week. Speaking of that post, it was listed at Austinist as one of the Best of the Austin Blogs: Week of January 16, so thanks to them for that honor.

And since we’re on last week’s posts, I’ll mention the “winner” of my secret contest. I had used Talking Heads titles for my posts last week (This Must Be the Place, Burning Down the House, Don’t Worry About the Government, Drugs, Animals) and decided that I would do so until someone noticed. The honor goes to Austin blogger Kramer Wetzel of Astrofish/Xenon, whose blog is most definitely worth a read. I probably could have gone on for a few more weeks with the ‘Heads titles, but I’m glad I got to stop because I could tell that I was trying to find topics that would fit within the titles. I also think it was kind of a cop-out to use Fear of Music titles such as “Drugs” and “Animals” since they don’t really stand out as TH titles.

So on this rainy day Saturday, I think it’ll have to be a day of Outlaw Golf on the PS2.

Kimberly Road

January 26, 2006 • • Leave a comment

As part of my site redesign, I’m reposting all the short stories I had up on the old site, but because of some reformatting, I’m doing them one at a time and adding some commentary about them as well. I’m starting with “Kimberly Road” because it seems to get the most traffic. It comes up when people ask Google or Jeeves how to compose blues songs, which surprises me. But it is about the blues, so I guess it fits.

The idea for “Kimberly Road” came to me as I was driving from Dallas to Austin back in 1994. I was listening to a Lightnin’ Hopkins CD and the story just started forming. It was one of those instances where I stepped on the gas to hurry home and get to my computer while the story was still coming together in my head. I worked on it for a few days, and the day I finished turned out to be a good day. It was the day I met a woman who would introduce me to one of her co-workers whom I would eventually marry.

I picked the story up a few years later and re-wrote the character of Jake, basing him heavily on a man with whom I worked for a short time. His name was Willie and almost everyday he’d say, “Now see here young man, der’s two kindsa people out there. Them that’s happy at home, and them that ain’t. Them that ain’t is about ten percent and they like to make ever’body else unhappy. So you got to watch out for that other ten percent, see?” Everyday. Some days it would go up to 20%, but usually it hovered around ten.

Welcome to the New Coyote Mercury

January 14, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Thanks for coming. I’ll be blogging here from now on. There are still some things on this site that may be a bit buggy, but I’m working on those. If you notice anything that looks weird or doesn’t work right, please comment and let me know. Once the various kinks are worked out, I’ll resume regular blogging.

Don’t forget to update your blogrolls!

Building a New Blog

January 11, 2006 • • 2 Comments

As you can probably see if you’ve stumbled upon this site I’m in the site building process. My blog, Coyote Mercury, has been hosted on Blogger, but ever since I first dipped my toe in the waters of the ‘net and began experimenting with building sites, I’ve owned the www.coyotemercury.com domain and have hosted it on Yahoo! I never did much with it and basically forgot about it, using it only as a repository for old stories and such. Recently, though, I learned that Yahoo! had partnered with both Moveable Type and WordPress, the end result being that users can for no extra charge run a blog on Yahoo! using either (or both) platforms.

This sounded good since I was already paying for Yahoo! hosting so I experimented with both, but decided to use WordPress. It’s easy, powerful and intuitive. Moveable Type was cool, but I had WordPress figured out much sooner and was happy with the results. I’m using the Gila theme with a lot of my own modifications in the CSS. I also decided to use WordPress to power the main site and since it has this cool feature that allows you to make static pages it was perfect. I had to make a whole bunch of modifications to the static page layout to develop a look that makes the blog seem to be part of the site rather than everything being parts of the blog.

WordPress also has a feature that allows one to import all posts and comments from Blogger. I’ll do that when I’m finished tweaking my layout and then I’ll start posting here. Until then, I’m still on Blogger.