The Comic-Con was great but after six hours there, I started having back pains from all the walking, so I took some time to take pain pills, relax and then I drove home. People really liked the Quillian color pages I handed out to a few friends and pros and I touched base with almost everyone I know in the industry. I even got a half-hour to talk to Bob Burden! (Flaming Carrot, Mystery Men).
One person did not believe me that I would take action. They have been banned for forging someone else's name on a post. This is more egregious than simply making snarky comments. I'm debating as to whether the ban is permanent.
The posts this morning about Stan and the comments on those posts have been moved off of the front page but they were not deleted nor unpubbed. They can be found by anyone who looks for them but I'd prefer that the matter be dropped since it seems to have blown out with a few appropriate apologies.
I'm actually impressed that such a hot topic came up and got openly discussed and no one lost their temper.
Daniel pulled an intercostal muscle (between the ribs) or something and he's kind of in pain which sapped his energy for doing art. Instead, we put up another page from his sketchbook, some of the more minor characters from Sam Valentine.
Daniel had a busy three days and then a sick one, so no Quillian tonight. Instead, I put up a sketch he did for another TG character we are trying to develop into a strip.
She's Sam Valentine, the Woman in Black (Pinstripes). She solves mysteries and intimidates bad guys with nothing but a heavy automatic, an impeccable sense of style and an eyebrow pencil. :)
Daniel and I will be at the Rock'n Comic Con in Pasadena tomorrow, May 29, 2010. We'll have an ashcan edition of the first 16 Quillian pages with us and Daniel will autograph them, all you have to do is ask.
About 430 PM PDT we hit 10,000,000 visitors here on BCTS. It took us almost exactly 4 years and 11 months to do that. Other versions of BigCloset, before and during the time of TopShelf, have clocked about 1 million additional visits.
Congratulations are in order, I suppose, if for nothing else than that we survived. :)
Bob has added a new capability to BC. Near the bottom of each story, in the mass of links down there, you should find one labelled, |PDF Version|
This will produce a PDF file saved on your hard drive of most of the stories on BC. Some stories with poor or wrong HTML will not be properly converted, but if you need a PDF version for some reason, this may be handy.
Danielle J. after getting upset at what she regarded as offensive comments on one of her stories wrote a blog that was unpubbed by volunteer editors for TOS violations. After some discussion, the editors unpubbed Danielle's stories at her request. They were not deleted by Danielle J as I at first thought when I woke up and got involved and saw the stories were not listed under her name.
Her blogs and stories have been restored to BC, except only the blogs that were part of the problems.
Update - Apr 7 4:51 PM PDT - The site is back, in most of it's glory. The problem turned out to be the voting module not being compatible with the latest release of the database software. So, no voting on stories until I figure out a replacement module or they update their code. And no reporting on old votes, either. Sorry.
Most everything else has been turned back on (or will be) except: reporting comments to moderator (flag for administrator) - that module conflicted with the one that makes Random 5olos possible so it had to be taken up into the mountains and sacrificed to an angry god, sorry. Also, the little clock at the top of the right column that showed what time the server thought it was had a problem when the updates to the search index was run, don't ask me how but the clock interfered and until someone writes better code than my own jackleg module (I wrote that one) we'll have to do without the clock. Isaac says hi.
Many thanks to Bob who did the major work on this debug. We should buy him a bag of chocolate or something, he likes chocolate. :)
While 80 stories were posted during the last week here on BCTS, another 94 older stories were edited and reposted by the authors or one of our volunteer editors or commented one by some reader. Now in some cases, that was just us opening up the story to file it into one of the new author pages but still, I don't think any other TG fiction site has so much activity going on with older stories. :)
Two months ago, I estimated that we would have 10,000 stories and or chapters in the BCTS archives by April 15. It looks like that will happen on or before April 7th, probably in the afternoon of April 6th.
There's a new feature here at BC, at the end of all stories entered as Fiction or Wysiwyg that are rated General or Mature, there are a row of buttons for passing a link to that story on to various social media sites. It's been there since Monday. :)
I don't know if anyone has used it yet but no one has commented on it, so I thought I ought to blog about it to draw some attention.
Tell me what you think.
If you want to post a story Without the Social Media Buttons, rate it Restricted or higher or use the Story input type instead of Fiction.
Dick Francis, author of dozens of popular mystery novels has died. He was 89. Most of his stories were set in the world of racing, where he had once been a champion jockey.
I have on the table beside my computer, two Dick Francis novels I found in a used bookstore that I have never read. His latest book, co-cuthored by his son, Felix, (I think it is called Silks), I also have not read. I may have missed a few more, here and there over the years but will doubless find, read and enjoy them as I have all of his work.
Asthma and bronchitis brought on from my usual sinusitis. May have to go to the doctor today or tomorrow. Will try to keep an eye out on site but I'm short of air. Sorry.
There's been a rash lately of people moralizing about other people's stories. If a story offends you morally, you're probably not the target audience. It's probably a fantasy story based on a concept that makes no sense to you. Getting on a moral high horse about it makes you look prejudiced and clueless. Better to just say the story did not appeal to you if you comment at all.
On December 15, 2009, Fictionmania author Tommy Davis died as a result of a heart attack. His name has been added to the Memoriam board here at BigCloset. Let us all spare a moment to think of his friends and family in this holiday season.
Tomorrow is Christmas, the day in which a large portion of Christianity has chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth more than 2000 years ago, despite the fact that from the best evidence, He was likely born in early March. :) But it is a celebration, not an anniversary, and the date was chosen to coincide with other celebrations of renewal and new hope.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
