Diary of a Network Geek

Yes, free Christmas music.

Normally, I share this sort of thing well in advance of Christmas, but, well, time got away from me.  Still, I love Christmas music of almost any kind and everyone loves things that are free.  So, combining the two is my way of spreading some holiday cheer!
For a number of years, Stereogum would gather free MP3s from various indie bands that had a Christmas theme.  They stopped doing that in 2011, but the music is still up,…
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The new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, opens today, and, in honor of that, I thought I’d share some Star Wars related links.

The first, which I hope is fun for everyone with a website, and who remembers the original Star Wars, Episode IV, A New Hope, is the Star Wars Crawl Creator. Do you remember the giant, yellow text “crawling” through space at the start of that movie?  Well, it was the first time we’d seen anything quite like…
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Yeah, it’s my birthday again.

I’ve survived another lap around the Sun, mostly in spite of myself and due to the grace of God.  I almost didn’t bother with a birthday post, because I mostly think of my birthday as just another day, but, it’s sort of gotten to be a tradition with me to make this post every year, so, here I am.  Honestly, it seems kind of impossible to me that I’ve survived this long, but, according to the…
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Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The Constitution of America only guarantees pursuit of happiness; you have to catch up with it yourself."
   --Gill Robb Wilson

No, I’m not writing it, but I’m not knocking it, either!

I know a lot of people do look down on fan fiction, mostly because it traditionally hasn’t been the best quality.  In fact, back in the old days, when I first was trying my hand at writing, it was very much denigrated and no one really wanted to admit that they wrote “fan fic”.  It was, after all, problematic in a number of ways.  For one thing, it was never…
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If you finished your NaNoWriMo novel last month, you may want to submit it for publication.

Here are tools that can help, via the Bookbaby blog.
First of all, know that these aren’t all free and all require a bit of work!
The first tool is Submittable.  It is free for “submitters” (ie. writers), actually, and has tools for keeping track of not only what you’ve submitted and to whom, but any awards and accolades you may have achieved with your writing.  You do…
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