The primary dismay has been the last two weeks, where I spent most of my time either sick or recovering from being sick. The first week of March was spent dealing with a nasty norovirus that gave me terrible flu symptoms. The second week bronchitis decided to come back. Even now I am still recovering from the bronchitis and through it all I missed something like four and a half days of my day job, with only one day of that being sick time covered. I’m just happy to be near healthy again. If only I can clear my lungs long enough to go for a walk and get back to exercising. The con’s only six months away and I’m still only able to be on my feet fifteen minutes. This half a month repast on sickness is not helping.

But hey, we’re done now right? Time to just climb back on the horse as if we never fell off. Excuse or not, we’ve got some catching up to do. Expect a return to the normal schedule here with the typical Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. Well, maybe not Friday, but Monday and Wednesday will be common.

Also, regarding jsamueldiehl.com, I have been behind on my flash as well. To be exact, we are missing the following dates: 1/5, 1/7, 1/12, 2/18, 3/2, 3/4, 3/9, and 3/11. That’s eight stories I owe you, not to mention the fact I haven’t started the Saturday series yet. Well, look for them, they will be coming. For now, expect a new piece to show up tomorrow as expected, and then we’ll start filling out that back log.

Plans are still in motion, and things are getting back on schedule. Just taking some time.

nulloperations

Last week there was a lot of work done on the blog. In terms of content, design, and usability, hiddennode.com has undergone a great deal of change. The new theme and plug-ins I’ve selected have turned this from a project that looked like I did care about it into something that has a little push behind it. The new content I’ve managed to post on a fairly reliable schedule has also increased traffic and hey, we had a few comments show up (hi folks and thanks!).

With all this effort put in it is time to continue my activity here. I’m going to attempt something of a schedule for posting here and on jsamueldiehl.com. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be the days you’re going to see posts here on hiddennode.com. Tuesday, Thursday, and occasionally Saturday will be the days that you’ll see new flash fiction on jsamueldiehl.com. Sundays I’m taking off.

The occasional Saturday posts lie on the fact I’d like for Saturdays to become days I post longer pieces of fiction, not just flash fiction. Because of that, I might just post every other week on Saturday so the content quality will be better. That is until I’m a better writer and know I can do more in a shorter time than I can now.

There’s no perfection to this system. I will miss days. I might even miss a week if things are tight. It’ll happen but once whatever is keeping me from posting is resolved I’ll be back and ready to go.

Going out on a note on the future; in the coming weeks you can expect a review of Star Trek Online (it goes live next week), might actually get to hear a podcast I take part of (if we ever record), and hear about my plans for Dragon*Con (bought my ticket yesterday). I’m looking forward to sharing these with you and hearing your comments.

nulloperations

That said, I’m going to start separating the two entities going forward; at least here on the site. I’m setting up jsamueldiehl.com and justindiehl.com (same site, different URL’s). Hiddennode.com will not be going away. In fact, it will pretty much remain the same (although expect a visual change sometime in the future). Jsamueldiehl.com will just become where my writing home is located. You’ll find information about my current projects, past projects, links to where you can find my writing, and any part of that which is my brand. Hiddennode.com will remain home to my personal blog, with maybe a few tidbits of my writing ending up here.

I’m promising myself that I will have the other site at least functional as a blog with some plug-ins within the next 30 days. The graphical upgrade should arrive later this year. Jsamueldiehl.com won’t be fully functional for several months as I’m not where I need to be to take full advantage of the site. This time next year that will be a different story.

nulloperations

Hey this site is for my writing business after all and as such I do have to take the time to make it efficient for me.

That said, something else is coming soon as well. I’ve signed up for Amazon and Google Ads. As the theme I make use of is right widget bar only, that’s where things are going to show up. Not sure what Google will show but Amazon will show links to things I talk about in the blog. Yes, that means once I talk about something, it’ll be easier for you to buy it. Makes sense right? A little “pimpage” when talking about something and getting a kickback if you readers buy it. And no, this blog isn’t going to become a big product review site. I’m going to talk about what I use, not what others want me to use. Expect mostly book links and other similar items. There will be no pressure to buy or click links. For one, that’s shady. For two, it’s against the Terms of Service I signed up for with Amazon and Google.

And personally, I don’t want Amazon and Google not liking me.

Jdiehl

Well, it’s time to bring back that good old spirit of writing about the things I enjoy; Only this time, I’m not going to be so heavy handed in getting posts out daily. I’ll just create them as they come to me, and as they come to exist, I’ll also add them to the Interests Page at the top of this blog. Even better, I’ll have the interests page link the brief descriptions I post there back to the big descriptions that appear in the blog.

Good idea right?

Okay, I admit, it’ll take some extra work and that might put me off, but hear me out. I think it’ll actually work for keeping me doing that sharing the love thing for things I enjoy. Trust me. It’ll come to pass. You’ll see.

jdiehl

Changes made for now:

• Removed Podcasts Page
• Added Interests Page Placeholder
• Removed Content of About Page

Changes coming soon:

• New About Page Content – To reflect subject matter of the blog
• New Author Page – To reflect the old content of the about page, basically information about me
• New Interests Page Content – To reflect links and posts I make about things I enjoy

Detail about the changes:

The changes I’m making reflect a desire to give a more in depth look at who I am and what I do here for this blog. For one thing, the old podcasts page was very vanilla in how it approached my enjoyable of a podcast. I’m changing it now that whenever I post about a given podcast, I’ll add it to the interests section. This will also reflect other things I’ve been enjoying, such as apps on my iPod touch, books I’m reading, and games I’m playing. The last three will probably fluctuate a bit as I move through different books, games, and etc. Ideally, I’ll update this once a week with new content and removal of old content.

The about section will also get a revision shortly. It will contain a breif detail on the various things I post about here, as well as link to things I use on the blog (namely what plug-ins I have tied into wordpress, and where else you can get the blog feed).

The Author page will become a static bio page. I doubt I’ll change it much except when a project receives fruition. Eventually, this will contain a list of everything project I have out there that folks can get their hands on to see.

So that is what is coming. I’ll be doing most of the changes this evening. Maybe even might get a new theme and new plug-ins to make the site strong. Maybe even *gasp* sign up for google analytics that I’ve been asked to do a few times for Raven’s site. If I can get a handle on them here, might have an easier time working on them there.

Okay, enough babble for now,

jdiehl

Oh, PS, www.cylys.com is no longer part of the hiddennode.com network. Dakota finally got off his ass and got his webspace. Congrats man! Now I don’t have to fix your site anymore! (forks is gonna love that).

Well, we’ve had this website for over a month now. In that time we’ve had a few new folks show up and sign up, but sadly, there isn’t a great deal of development within the site itself. This is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. Sadly, the $20.00 a month going into keeping this forum alive isn’t looking to be as worth the price. Frankly, with my pay cut and other finical needs, I could use that $20.00 for other important matters. With that in mind, www.dipsg.com  running IBP is going goodbye.

This is not the end of the website or the forums though. My primary website has the ability to host a forum for free and we will be able to handle our needs. I don’t like losing the great tools from Invision Power Boards but frankly as I’ve said, it’s not worth it with the activity.

That said and done, here’s what’s going to happen. The IBP board is going poof. I will be setting up a new board under the hiddennode web server that will still be accessible via www.dipsg.com. This should happen this weekend. Please take the time to setup your account on the other server. I’ll be setting up the board soon. The Layout will be different, by the way. The site will no longer be focused specifically on the dynamic ip super group. Instead, I’m going to focus the site on being a general gaming community site. There will be a section for CoH and the SG specifically.

If you have any questions, please contact me on ventrilo or send me an email at admin(at)hiddennode.com.

Thanks,

jdiehl

So the writing is going on strong. I haven’t reached to target of 10 000 total words that’s required by the end of this week, but I’m pretty close. I just put the final touch on the rough draft of Chapter four, and I know where I’m going with Chapters five and six. After that the first quarter of the book will start to reach a very climatic point soon, before settling down into the middle plot line. A few people have gotten to see the first three chapters but that’s it as far as sharing the work before it’s done. Once I’m complete with the rough draft, I’ll share it with a few pre-readers. Then, after I leave it down for a month or so, I’ll come back to it and start the first series of edits. Target goal right now? Have the rough draft ready by the fall (two weeks in already, at least 20 total weeks to write at 5 000 words a week), then have the edits complete by the New Year.

Beyond writing, things are going slow in other areas of production. Expansion of the Dynamic IP SG is going slow, which I should have come to of expected considering the fact we don’t have too many high level characters that are on often. For that matter, none of the leaders are over level 30 yet. I think I’m going to try to push to have Nathan and Dakota each get a 50 on Victory. After that, whatever alts they want to play is their business, but if we’re going to have the group keep growing, the leadership needs to appear more like leadership. It shouldn’t take either of them beyond a month or two to get characters to 50 anyway, since both are out of work, although Nathan does have that whole school thing.

For now though, I’m happy that I’m writing. This is the furthest I’ve been when it comes to writing a real novel. Granted, I did and won NaNoWriMo last year, I hated every minute of it and mostly wrote horrible gibberish. This time, I’m at least 7000 words in and I’m loving the story. There are things that I need to adjust, that I know I need to edit, but I’m getting it done.

I wonder though, if I’m ever going to get back to working on the game project I had started. I’d like to, but I have a feeling if I start on that, I’m going to lose time with the writing. In fact, I’m certain I will because I have that habit of losing interest in the old if I start something new. Maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with City Of Heroes for so long. Because I’m not letting myself be too distracted by other games.

For those you who are interested, I’d like to invite you to come to the community website I’m hosting. www.dipsg.com is the main website of the super group, but it’s able to be much more than that. To speak the truth, I’ve been considering retooling it better to support a community outside of City of Heroes We’ll still be hosting the super group, especially while I’m still in charge, but I’d like to provide for it to be so much more in terms of gaming, interactions, and gathering. I’d like to also use it as the launching board for my writing too, to get people interested in my works involved with me and mine.

We’ll see.

jdiehl

EDIT 1: Yup, it’s the last post breaking the theme. I look at this post by itself, it works fine. Time to see about fixing.

As I posted last night, I went ahead and locked all the old topics before my quick update in christmas. I also deleted all the twitter posts. Today I’m going to be trying to smooth out what I have on the site and on the site’s arms (Facebook, Twitter, and Livejournal as well). Interesting note about the LJ side, with closing all those old posts here, they suddenly vanished on the LJ side. Pretty interesting actually.

Of to work.

jdiehl