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Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 61
September 8, 2011
Mac Tip - Renaming Files
Here's something for the "how did I not know this?" category.
On Leopard/Snow Leopard, if you want to rename a file, you click on it, pause, and click again. However, somehow lately my machine interprets that as "double click" and opens it, no matter how slowly I click. (Possibly a mouse preference got changed somehow, who knows?)
I was trying to re-name some files to meet the listing requirement of "no spaces" at ARe, and it was driving me nuts. Click-pause-click, and Calibre would launch. No, that's not what I want. Rinse. Repeat. I opened the same file five...damn...times.
In my frustration I decided to try and find a better way, and lo and behold, click-return did EXACTLY what I needed it to.
Fiendishly simple.
Here's the post where I found the four-year-old info:
Better late to the party than never.
On Leopard/Snow Leopard, if you want to rename a file, you click on it, pause, and click again. However, somehow lately my machine interprets that as "double click" and opens it, no matter how slowly I click. (Possibly a mouse preference got changed somehow, who knows?)
I was trying to re-name some files to meet the listing requirement of "no spaces" at ARe, and it was driving me nuts. Click-pause-click, and Calibre would launch. No, that's not what I want. Rinse. Repeat. I opened the same file five...damn...times.
In my frustration I decided to try and find a better way, and lo and behold, click-return did EXACTLY what I needed it to.
Fiendishly simple.
Here's the post where I found the four-year-old info:
Better late to the party than never.
August 22, 2011
Magic Mansion voting is closed
Voting is now closed for Magic Mansion. Participation was high--thank you all for reading and voting! And remember, if you really want your vote to happen--get all your friends to read and vote for your character too!Tune in next month to find out who made it into the mansion, pathetic Francis West or slimy Kevin Kazan!
And you can still catch up on the story without voting - the first five chapters are here.
August 20, 2011
Did you vote?
Just a quick reminder that voting for Magic Mansion closes Monday!What is Magic Mansion? Each month, I run a serialized story in my newsletter, JCP News. Magic Mansion is the latest big project. Hollywood. Stage magicians. Reality shows. Clandestine liaisons. What more could you ask for?
How about...voting?
In keeping with the reality show theme, I'm going to let you, the readers, vote characters on or off the show. The first installment determines who gets into the mansion to begin with. So if you've always thought it would be fun to have a say in the way a story goes, now's your chance!
Voting for part one closes on Monday, so don't delay!
http://jordancastilloprice.com/magic (not worksafe)
August 15, 2011
Step Into Magic Mansion - JCP News August 2011
Don't miss this issue of JCP News -- it's a whopping huge installment! FIVE chapters of Magic Mansion.• Cruelty to characters
• Zero Hour paperback
• Manikin Re-Launch
• Step into Magic Mansion
Early voting on Magic Mansion is very close...it's anyone's guess who will be voted into the mansion.
Read JCP News here!
August 12, 2011
Manikin Second Edition
**Second electronic edition - originally released as Channeling Morpehus: Manikin by Changeling Press in 2008**Marushka loves pretty things: lace and velvet, porcelain and pearls. She sews elaborate costumes for all of her dolls, and she spends hours arranging their hair just so. Her collection is growing; she’s added a very pretty trinket, and his name is Michael. She can’t wait to dress him up.
Michael always suspected mentally ill vampires grew worse and worse as the years went by. He’d never realized how unhinged they could get.
Now Michael is in way over his head. Will Wild Bill save him? Or was it only wishful thinking on Michael’s part that their connection ran deeper than sex… or blood?
Available now in PDF, Mobi, Lit and ePub at JCPBooks.com
At Amazon for the Kindle
At B&N for the Nook
I'd love it if you could click the category tags on Manikin's Amazon Page. Here's what tags look like. Clicking the tags helps the ebook place better in searches. I'd especially love it if you left a review! The poor thing doesn't have any :(
August 6, 2011
Shallow me
My ex asked me if I wanted to go see the Damned in Chicago...and here's where I reveal how shallow I actually am. Not only did he and I have the world's worst time the last time The Damned came to Chicago (god knows what his attitude was about then but I was about to leave with a couple of guys I ran into who I used to "hang around" with rather than go back to Wisconsin with my ex...)
But now, Dave Vanian has a mustache.
Color me shallow...but I just can't deal with a mustache.
I know I'm not alone. My friend's husband had a goatee for a while, and he shaved it into a mustache just to see what it would look like, and she completely lost it and ran away and cried.
I apologize it the man in your life has a mustache and you dig it. If that's the case...OWN IT!
For me, though...Dave Vanian with a mustache looks scarily like my dad.
Mustache Dave
The way I WANT to think of him, Vampire Dave
ETA- a pic of my dad
But now, Dave Vanian has a mustache.
Color me shallow...but I just can't deal with a mustache.
I know I'm not alone. My friend's husband had a goatee for a while, and he shaved it into a mustache just to see what it would look like, and she completely lost it and ran away and cried.
I apologize it the man in your life has a mustache and you dig it. If that's the case...OWN IT!
For me, though...Dave Vanian with a mustache looks scarily like my dad.
Mustache Dave
The way I WANT to think of him, Vampire Dave
ETA- a pic of my dad
August 5, 2011
Achoo
The midwest is just HELL on allergies. I haven't slept a night through in days since I've been waking up coughing and sneezing, despite taking double-Claritin plus Benadryl.
Today I took Zyrtec and I think that will help. (Only one since I still had 12 hours left on that double-Claritin, and was spewing snot and tears like there's no tomorrow.) I had figured it as being "pretty much the same" as Claritin but I read a post by an allergist that cited Zyrtec testing significantly better. I was down to my last two Zyrtec so I went to get more, and this is just baffling, at Walgreens the cost including sale prices was staggered like this (for generic):
5 pills - $5
30 pills - $15
90 pills - $20
300 pills - $45
And never mind comparing them to the brand-name. It was just all so confusing. I wasn't ready to drop $40 on meds so I went for the 90 pills. I figure in three months we'll be over the most brutal allergy season. I did also see some antihistamine eye drops there that looked promising. I've been pretty pissed off about that $120 eye drop these past few days, considering the tax burden that's on me, and how little I get back for it >:-(
I often think about applying to be Canadian. I disagree with so much here on so many levels. I'd rather give my money to Canada.
Today I took Zyrtec and I think that will help. (Only one since I still had 12 hours left on that double-Claritin, and was spewing snot and tears like there's no tomorrow.) I had figured it as being "pretty much the same" as Claritin but I read a post by an allergist that cited Zyrtec testing significantly better. I was down to my last two Zyrtec so I went to get more, and this is just baffling, at Walgreens the cost including sale prices was staggered like this (for generic):
5 pills - $5
30 pills - $15
90 pills - $20
300 pills - $45
And never mind comparing them to the brand-name. It was just all so confusing. I wasn't ready to drop $40 on meds so I went for the 90 pills. I figure in three months we'll be over the most brutal allergy season. I did also see some antihistamine eye drops there that looked promising. I've been pretty pissed off about that $120 eye drop these past few days, considering the tax burden that's on me, and how little I get back for it >:-(
I often think about applying to be Canadian. I disagree with so much here on so many levels. I'd rather give my money to Canada.
August 3, 2011
More sticker shock...
I'm sure I had a "sticker shock" post somewhere in the past.
Anyway, I was at the eye surgeon's today and I said my eye allergies were quite bad at the moment, and he gave me a bottle of Pataday to try and a prescription to go fill if I thought it worked well, and he said it stopped the eye from producing the enzymes that made them itchy. So when I got home I looked it up online and the stuff is as much as $120 per bottle.
*faints dead*
I guess I'll use this little trial sample to get over the "gonna gouge my eye out" hump of this hideous allergy season and go back to over-the-counter stuff that doesn't particularly work once it's done. Or I could order generic from a foreign country for about $20. I dunno.
My eyes REALLY itch. Nearly year-round.
Anyway, I was at the eye surgeon's today and I said my eye allergies were quite bad at the moment, and he gave me a bottle of Pataday to try and a prescription to go fill if I thought it worked well, and he said it stopped the eye from producing the enzymes that made them itchy. So when I got home I looked it up online and the stuff is as much as $120 per bottle.
*faints dead*
I guess I'll use this little trial sample to get over the "gonna gouge my eye out" hump of this hideous allergy season and go back to over-the-counter stuff that doesn't particularly work once it's done. Or I could order generic from a foreign country for about $20. I dunno.
My eyes REALLY itch. Nearly year-round.
July 19, 2011
Wallbanger Nonfiction
I was reading a book called How to Write Fast Under Pressure and it lost me at page 3. It's not geared toward a fiction writer, it's geared toward an office worker who has to put together emails and reports and procedures while their boss sits on all the relevant information til the last minute and some customers are giving them the stink eye. I get that. It sounds like my job at the library, in fact.
However, I thought I might still find some techniques.
But I won't, because the thing is so offputting (aside from the page three insult) that I think I can only use it as a "How not to write non-fiction" reference for a nonfiction book I was thinking about putting out next year.
Let's get the insult out of the way. The setup is geared toward telling the average worker, You may not be a poet or playwright or novelist, but given the amount of written communication you need to do, you're basically a writer. Sure, fine, I agree. Then it says, "In fact, you might have far greater demands on your time than the so-called professionals."
WTF? In what world is being called a "so-called professional" not an insult?
So yes, he lost me there, but I was willing to think of it as just an ill-considered phrase, until he introduced two fictitious characters into the work. His example of a poor on-the-job writer named Mopey Moe and his good on-the-job writer named Speedy Didi.
I am not making this up.
Then he goes into some anagram technique you're supposed to use where the letters begin with D-A-S-H. Direction, acceleration, strength and health.
Let's see. Here's the checklist I have so far for writing non-fiction:
-Don't insult my audience
-Don't come up with some ridiculous characters to illustrate my point
-Do not under any circumstances advocate an anagram approach to anything. Ever.
Now I'll throw it at the wall.
However, I thought I might still find some techniques.
But I won't, because the thing is so offputting (aside from the page three insult) that I think I can only use it as a "How not to write non-fiction" reference for a nonfiction book I was thinking about putting out next year.
Let's get the insult out of the way. The setup is geared toward telling the average worker, You may not be a poet or playwright or novelist, but given the amount of written communication you need to do, you're basically a writer. Sure, fine, I agree. Then it says, "In fact, you might have far greater demands on your time than the so-called professionals."
WTF? In what world is being called a "so-called professional" not an insult?
So yes, he lost me there, but I was willing to think of it as just an ill-considered phrase, until he introduced two fictitious characters into the work. His example of a poor on-the-job writer named Mopey Moe and his good on-the-job writer named Speedy Didi.
I am not making this up.
Then he goes into some anagram technique you're supposed to use where the letters begin with D-A-S-H. Direction, acceleration, strength and health.
Let's see. Here's the checklist I have so far for writing non-fiction:
-Don't insult my audience
-Don't come up with some ridiculous characters to illustrate my point
-Do not under any circumstances advocate an anagram approach to anything. Ever.
Now I'll throw it at the wall.
July 15, 2011
Come see my etchings...JCP News July 2011
OMG I'm such a doofus, I just unsubbed from my own damn newsletter.Anyhoo....
The latest issue of JCP News is here in all its glory.
-Come See My Etchings
-Manikin Re-Launch coming
-The Magic Begins
-Blog post, updates and recs
Click here to view the July issue.
