DRAM and Dialog are hard.

I've been tinkering with some projects for a technical book proposal (oh, don't get me started, I'll foam at the mouth) and I've discovered something the old-school geeks all knew: interfacing DRAM is hard. Precision timing isn't quite in my grasp yet. Looks like I'll be saving that project for another book, or something.

Anyway, all is well. I've not abandoned my fiction career, just put it on hold for a while. In doing so, I've had the chance to sit back and really think about my work and what bugs me about the recent stuff. Dialog, in particular, has been a problem. People just *whoosh* spill their guts. So what's left to talk about? While indirect communication frequently annoys me in real life, it's fundamental to fiction, as Connie Willis pointed out in her recent panel at Mile High Con. I need to revisit Brass and Steel and see if I can't tighten the dialog (especially the narration) with that in mind. Season's greetings to all three of you. :)

-JRS

Web 1.0, Revisited

The last time I edited the index file of my personal webpage, it was 2006. Seriously. Eight freakin' years ago. But it still has a doll section, and as I just got a Lammily doll (my bit toward helping girls grow up with healthier body images), so I figured I'd put the update there. It's all hand-spun manual HTML4 strict. No problem, I figured. I wrote the damn thing, I figured, how hard could it be?
Hard, as it turns out. First, the page was done by hand, with absolutely no validation. So the section I copied to add my new entry? Broke the entire page. The good news is I now remember how to do tables, and I kind of miss the simplicity of them, now that I remember. But good grief. I added 4 photos and a paragraph and it took me all evening.
It validates now. Still in 4.01 strict, still HTML, no style sheet. But this is the last time. Next time I have the time and inclination to do some web code, all that stuff is getting replaced.
In case you wondered, it's at http://www.netfossil.com/jim/dolls.