Beckism.com

That’s right! After what seems like far more work than it should have been, I have finished my senior thesis and turned it in!

What is it? It’s a fantasy novel that I started writing in September, finished mid-March, and have finally finalized (although without anywhere near as much revision as I wanted to give it; it’s pretty first-draft stuff). Because the library is an asshat, the printed copy for them was a whopping 400 sheets of paper (plus the second copy, of course, for an even 800). Probably about 390 of that was solid type (the rest being table of contents, references, titles, etc.). Yowza! How the hell did I write this much?

When I delivered it, the librarian said that she thinks it’s the largest she’s seen yet in her career. I don’t doubt it. I beat out the last thesis-cum-novel by at least 100 pages, if memory serves. Good luck binding it, suckas.

Entitled Tantalus Chine, the novel takes place in the fantasy land of Lakuna where humans are rebelling against their slavemasters, the elves. This is not standard fantasy. The elves are neither nice, nor do they live forever. They do, however, have pointy ears, so thank goodness for that. If anyone is interested in reading the novel, you are welcome to, but I warn you that it isn’t worth it. It’s first draft quality, and not a particularly good first draft at that. Should I try to publish it (as if any publishing house would want it; it wouldn’t sell well given how many molds it intentionally sets out to break), I would first want to do some pretty serious revisions.

In any case, I am really, really happy to finally be done with it. I still have to do the oral defense, but I’m not too worried. I think it might actually end up being fun; I have a great thesis committee, and as long as I get enough sleep before-hand and do a little reviewing of my past three years of Soc, I should be able to show off my ability to pull crap out of my ass quite nicely.

Now on to other projects! I can’t decide what to do first. I’m definitely going to start trying to get some web work with One Crayon, but beyond that I’m not sure. I’ve been wanting to try and get into Cocoa programming for a while (the native Mac OS X stuff), and I’ve got an idea for a program that would be 1) relatively simple and 2) something that I would find useful that nothing else can do, so maybe I’ll try that. Then again, getting a little more into Flash is always good, and I’ve got a couple ideas for browser-based games that could be really sweet. And there’s always the novel that might actually have a chance of getting published that I need to write, now that I know that I can write a novel.

It is still kind of crazy to think that my big project is over. All I have left now is Creative Writing and a paper for my independent study (which will hopefully be low stress). And dance and percussion ensemble, of course, but whatever. I’m still reveling in the sense of freedom before reality asserts itself and I realize that I’m way too good at keeping myself busy.

And in my final exciting news, I have decided to order Adobe CS3, web edition (Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and some other stuff). I have the credit available, and I discovered something amazing: student versions of Adobe software can be used for commercial work during and after school, and can be upgraded as if they were the full price commercial version! That means that I can buy a suite of software that will be central to web work at $1100 less than the standard price, but I have to do it within the next month and a half. Legitimate version of Photoshop, here I come! I’m really excited; I hope that it ships before I head to France.

And now, I should probably go to bed. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get through the story for Creative Writing that I need read by tomorrow, so perhaps I should plan on waking up during the morning sometime.

I’ve always wanted Beckism.com to be something more than “that site I never update.” As I’m nearing the end of my largest college commitment, I think I might actually be nearing the stage where I’ll be more interested in updating this site. With that in mind, I’ve added a couple posts to the Commentary, and will hopefully get a new Dirt Man up soon (although I’m not making any promises, of course).

Also, it looks like one of the newer versions of WordPress might have broken the forum; I’ll be looking into that soon-ish.

I also may do some minor site redesign work; let me know if there’s anything about Beckism.com that could work better, or if you have any ideas for improvements.

Beckist Productions is no more! It was a klunky name, and that globe at the top of the page was getting tired (I’m pretty sure I didn’t even make it originally; it was an example project for a long-defunct free 3D modeling program).

Instead, Beckism.com is now published and designed by One Crayon. The little logo is a Blurburger original, the site is running an all-new custom CMS, and I’ll be trying to do web design full time for the near future. Check it out!

Although this isn’t really news, I’ve added a new badge to the site sidebar when you’re viewing Dirt Man to link to the fabulous program Avenir. Avenir is a piece of software for writing fiction, and it’s pretty amazing. I’ve been writing Dirt Man using it since the beginning, and the series is much tighter and better plotted because of it. I strongly recommend checking out Avenir.

In other news, I’m hoping to get Dirt Man up and running a bit more in the near-ish future. I’ve got a good idea where the story is going, and I’ve been doing incremental work on it. We’re very close to the end of Season 1, too! My goal is to finish Season 1 before the end of this school year, and then to start Season 2 off with an episode published every month (since after I graduate I will presumably be able to handle that).

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to let Beckism.com lie pretty much fallow for this semester. If I’m lucky I’ll get around to updating some stuff come Thanksgiving or Christmas, but there’s no guarantees. Thanks to school, life is just really, really busy right now.

I am going to try to keep the Idol Bat up to date, but since it is currently running late it seems I can’t make any promises there, either. Major apologies to anyone who is disappointed by this. I truly wish I had more time in my life, but school has finally utterly hijacked me.

Wow, so I haven’t updated this thing in a while. This school year has turned out to be majorly busy for me; I’m really looking forward to second semester when I’ll only be taking twelve credits and six of those will be thesis related.

Speaking of thesis, that’s really what’s keeping me trapped in the library and busy as all get out. I somehow was able to convince the Sociology Department that it would be a good idea for them to let me write a novel instead of doing the standard research-based thesis thing. Thing is, novels are a ridiculous amount of work, I’ve never written a novel before, and it has to tie into sociological stuff. Grah! So I’ve been working on it like a fiend. Luckily, I was able to convince my Creative Writing prof to let me turn in segments of novel instead of the short stories that are due for the rest of the class. Definitely caught a break there.

Sadly, I’ve had to step down as IMG’s editor-in-chief, though. There’s just far too much going on for me to be able to handle editing a bunch of articles as well.

I’m still working for Valley Residential Services, too, which is interesting. On the one hand, I have to stay up for eleven hours every weekend. On the other, it’s prime time to do homework or other work. So it really isn’t that bad. Plus I’m getting a modest paycheck, which is certainly nothing I’m going to argue with.

Other than the freaking novel (that I’m currently procrastinating on by writing this post, actually) I don’t have much else going down. Dance is back to the old choreographer, so it’s a lot slower and more weird. Percussion Ensemble is utterly rocking despite the fact that there’s very few percussionists in it.

And I really should be working on chapter one. It’s due tomorrow, and I think that I’m probably close to done with it, but I have no idea how long it’s actually going to end up being. Plus I’m getting the feeling that it sucks utterly, which is only heightened by the fact that I wasn’t expecting anyone except the professor to read it, but suddenly we’re doing workshops because the prof was so impressed by our journals that we turned in. Damn it. What I’ve got is total first draft nastiness, that I’ve been working on at the same time as I really started understanding what the world was all about, so it’s totally blech.

On the plus side, working on this thesis/novel/Frankenstein monster has given me the chance to find some more really kick-arse software. I just recently discovered a program called VoodooPad which is basically just a wiki for your computer (not as in a bunch of people edit it, but as in you create links out of words and so topics kind of flow together tangentially). It’s surprising how such a simple sounding thing can really help with brainstorming and just getting thoughts together. I also got a chance to download the beta version of the upcoming Avenir 2.3, which is sweet. I’ve had a chance to give the software designer a lot of feedback, thanks to the fact that I’m using the program just about daily. I dearly love Avenir.

And I think that’s probably all I should put down here, because this entry is hellishly long already, I’ve got a chapter needing finishing, and I’m running out of life to talk about (at least in general; there’s of course all sorts of specifics that I’ve had to avoid thanks to having forgotten to update this silly blog for a month).

Sadly, it’s not looking like I’m going to be able to keep on top of Beckism.com, which includes Dirt Man. I’m having a tough enough time with the Idol Bat. This officially sucks; I was hoping at the end of the summer that I’d be able to keep Dirt Man up to date, as well as get the Commentary turned into a regular thing. Ah well. Maybe these things will happen once I graduate. That would be nice.

After months of being down, the Idol Bat is finally back online! Our first issue of the year was published Sept. 3rd, and although it is only comprised of three articles, they’re three darn good articles. Check it out at www.idolbat.com.

In sadder news, I probably won’t have much time to update Dirt Man this semester. I’ll see if I can’t whip out an episode or two, but I can’t promise anything. Hopefully I’ll be able to start doing commentary more often, though. I keep having things I want to throw up there, but forgetting to do it. Grah!

Wow; who’d have thought this could happen twice in one summer? Turns out my host once again died on me, and I’ve had to seek yet another new host for my website. However, I am now back online (mostly; still getting email working again), and hopefully this will be the last extended outage for Beckism.com for a while.

Other than that, there isn’t much news. Check back!

Well, who’d have thought this would ever happen? Turns out Beckism.com once more has a forum, currently entitled BeckTalk in a nostalgic nod to the past. Will anyone use it? Beats me. But it’s there if you feel the need.

The new forum is based off of a very slimmed-down piece of forum software called Phorum. No flashy graphics with this one; just a simple text-based interface that integrates seamlessly (assuming that I indeed quashed all the bugs) with the Beckism.com template.

Anyone can view the forum, but if you want to post you’ll need to register via the link in the sidebar. User accounts are handled primarily through the WordPress interface, although you’ll have to define your signature (if you want one) through the forum itself.

There are some things that aren’t as user-friendly as other forums (such as no easy way to insert BB code if you don’t know it), but I’m working on the functionality as best I can. Let me know via the contact page or the forum itself if you run into any bugs or things that just don’t make much sense!

Man, I am not at all happy with my domain name registrar for Beckism.net. My websites have all been down for the last few days (or longer, my memory is fuzzy) thanks to the fact that the damn host didn’t give me any way to update my custom DNS entry (for those of you who might understand that). Since Beckism.net is the host for all of my other websites it meant they were all down. Granted, Beckism.com is the only one that I’ve set up properly since the last outage, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.

Since I wasn’t able to post this before (stupid freaking website outages!) I am currently on the West side of the state, at the moment of this entry sitting in my mom’s house. Thanks to the terribly spotty wireless internet (and the fact that I got wrapped up in a book) I’ve not been doing much computer work the past few days; a fact that is very, very bad, since I’m woefully behind on a couple things. Looks like I’ll be spending tomorrow working on website stuff.

On the positive side, my orientation for my new job got pushed back a couple days, so I don’t have to leave as quickly as I thought I did. Mainly this will be nice for Dad, since he was hoping to do something with all of his kids Father’s Day and was sad I was going to be out of town driving across the state.

The reason that I’m over here is all thanks to Valerie, wonderful person that she is, who let me hitch a ride with her and her mom back across the state and is graciously taking me back to Walla Walla when the time comes. Hopefully she will stick around (she has something to do in Walla Walla the next weekend), although I am granted not all that exciting a host. I mostly sit and stare at things all day (be those things books, computers, walls, or whatever else I can find).

I haven’t done much the last few days. I’d been hanging around in Seattle with Dad, and he’s one of those people who needs to be doing something (Mom is much more of the welcome-home-I’m-fine-if-you-sit-on-the-couch-all-day types, although she would probably be happier if I did something with her, too; might have to try and convince her to go to Borders with me, she mentioned she had a gift card). In Seattle I did various fun things like eat fry bread (I don’t know if it was being born in a place with fry bread in the air, or what, but I live for fry bread, and you just can’t get it most places in the Pacific Northwest), watch X-Men 3 (Valerie came and saw it, too!), watch Thank You For Smoking (hilarious, but I’m still not sure what the message was, and if I approve of how light it made of serious issues or not), go to Half-Price Books (where I bought an absolutely fantastic book on a whim–can’t argue with a $6 hardback), and so forth.

So far at Mom’s I’ve set up my eMac for Kristin–which she was very happy about since while it is slow like molasses it’s still faster than the laptop she was using–sneezed a lot (I think I may be allergic to the rabbit in a big way), and read Wizard’s First Rule again. I might need to obtain a copy of the second book in the series and reread it, too. I’d forgotten how good they are. Maybe I’ll try to reach the later books again. I’ve given it a shot once or twice, and given up both times around book four. However, if I remember correctly the first time I gave up it was because I got disgusted with the explicit sex and violence (of which there is sometimes quite a lot; it’s hard for me to get through some portions even in the first book) and while my tolerance for violence is possibly lower than it has been in the past, I’m less put off by sex. I was such an uptight little kid. I probably owe most of my integrity to the damned Disciples of Christ church, but the repressive sexual legacy the church left me royally pisses me off in retrospect. Can’t recall why I stopped the second time through. It might just be that the series gets old by then (the books are huge, 600+ pages). Perchance I will have to try and see.

Then again, I should probably just forget it and work on my way-backed-up web work. Bah. Responsibility is annoying.

Speaking of responsibility, my dad asked me what my plans were after college, and was pretty disapproving when he found out I don’t have any. While I like to think of it as “keeping my options open” he seemed to think it was more like “denial.” Just watch; I’ll graduate, have some percussion gig drop into my lap, and that’ll show him.

And worst case scenario, I can always move in with Mom and start actually writing for a change. That would be nice, too. I just wish that I could find a way to make money with the writing that I do online without selling my soul in advertising to do it. I love Beckism.com and Idol Bat and all, but they just aren’t money-makers.

On the other hand, it is possible that I will be getting a very sizable check from CafePress soon. I’m not holding too much hope for it, because it seems a little too good to be true, but somehow I got over $120 in affiliate earnings. The reason I’m thinking there has to be some sort of mistake and fate is playing a cruel joke on me is because it’s the result of one phenomenally big order (over $600!), the order was placed on my birthday, of all days, and as far as I know I don’t have any affiliate ads out that people would click through, anyway. Plus even if I did, I’m pretty sure that my website was down during that time. I can’t figure it out.

Of course, if CafePress sends me a check that large, I won’t turn it down. It would mean that, against all of my expectations, the shop had paid for itself for the first time since ever. And during the year that I received free. How rich is that?

I just realized that this post is ludicrously long. Many apologies to anyone on LJ whose friend page got cluttered up by it. I would put things behind a cut, but thanks to the cross-posting nature of this thing, I don’t know if I can. So many apologies. Hopefully in future my damned website won’t be down and I will be able to post smaller incremental posts.

Because I do that normally. Right. Oh well; it’s a nice thought.

Ian out.