Towse: views from the hill

One of the sites I mention in the June column is Zen Garden: the beauty of CSS Design. http://www.csszengarden.com Zen Garden provides loads of links to CSS information and an interesting experiment with CSS. The visitor can choose from a variety of CSS designs and watch the site layout and theme change through the magic of CSS. This is a great site for those interested in CSS. The links take you hither and yon in the CSS world.

Moved in the new GIF file that was allegedly just-as-good as the GIF file I’d been using for my divider lines — just a wee bit smaller soze to optimize throughput. Only trouble was the slimmed-down version no longer looked like 3D-rects but more like 2D-rects with nibbles out of the edges. Um. No. Saving 70b per use isn’t worth it.

Finished the June column yesterday and sent it off. The focus is all on StumbleUpon, an addictive time-waster for degenerate Web surfers, a site that has brought the ol’ thrill back into my affair with the Web.

Wrote 2500 words today and finished the first draft. Yippee!

Judy Greber said something that struck me a month or two ago. She was talking about people who endlessly polish their work and told the tale of a student who has been working on her crime novel for ten years. The student keeps “polishing” what she’s already written instead of carrying on with the story and finishing the book. So as a result, Judy pointed out, the writer not only doesn’t have a polished book, she doesn’t have any book at all!

You talking to me, Judy? I wanted to ask. I took her words to heart and decided the new rule was no more polishing the already written stuff. I really needed to finish the first draft and have something concrete to work on, to shape into something I wouldn’t be embarassed to show to my crime writing “Where’s the book, Sal” buddies.

I needed to get on with it and have a finished first draft, maybe not a masterpiece, but at least a book with a start, middle and finish. Nora Roberts once said, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one.” I needed a first draft to fix, not an unfinished story.

I gave myself a deadline a couple weeks ago. First draft finished by April 30th. Ready, set, now!

Deciding not to polish up as I wrote threw a big spanner in the works, though. My polishing turned out to be a type of writing exercise, a warm up, albeit one that was counterproductive because it delayed the ultimate wrapup of the work.

Diving in cold where I’d left off wasn’t working. As a result, I wasn’t working on the book at all, just thinking about it, puzzling about it, wondering how to wrap up the ends, so I could finish the first draft.

What to do. What to do.

I tried this and that and writing of other sorts. Slowly, I weaned myself of the need to polish what went before before I could begin something fresh.

Today, his nibs is recuperating and eating salmon and asparagus for lunch instead of soup and crackers but he’s still tired and in pain and not feeling much like walking hither and yon, so I settled in for the weekend and focused on finishing the never-finished, always “in process” first draft. Now.

After much up and down and snip some basil for the salmon and sweep the floor or maybe I should finish the column that’s due or e-mail my dad, I sat down in my favorite corner of the sofa with the laptop, away from the lure of the ‘net, and wrote 2500 crappy words to finally finish the first draft.

75K words with a beginning, middle, end, a mystery, a crime, a denouement.

Crappy words, mind you. The words need work, so now on to the next step — phixing the draft — but first, to write the column.

… and on a more factual basis, the UMich “Statistical Resources on the Web” site. Loads of links to statistics, but if you’re looking for a link to some site that will let you know what the average single-family house price was for ZIPcode 95127 (or whatever), couldn’t find it here.

Love those trivia sites. www.coolquiz.com (CoolQuiz) is another.

Got an e-note from one of the neighbors I’d sent the El Raigón menu (with a “try this!” note) to. She’d just been in the restaurant getting a gift certificate to use at the Tel-Hi dinner/auction in a few weeks and was glad to get a positive report on the restaurant.

This will be our first time at the annual fundraiser and I have no clue what all will be up for auction — for sure a dinner at El Raigón, but probably not any weekend stays in San Francisco. The invite says, “Silent and Live Auctions, featuring a week-long getaway at a secluded beachfront retreat in the Abaco Islands, Bahamas.”

Fond memories of an Abaco wedding week five years back. His nibs wasn’t able to go and stayed home with the guys, who were in high school at the time. We’ve always talked of going back and spending some time, but I imagine the winning bid for the week-long getaway will be way beyond us.

Bless GS and all others points of light out there, volunteering for good causes and/or donating “stuff” for charity auctions.

Found cognitivedistortion.com this afternoon. Some beautiful images, some strange, some fractals, some ‘shop’d.

Membership gives you added bennies, but loads of freebie stuff makes a visit worthwhile.

A link to UglyZoo, a Russian collection of amazing chimaeras, led me to Human Descent, one of the sites UglyZoo pilfered its images from.

Disturbing images. The baby with big big eyes and little fangs may breed nightmares.

Another site whose images UglyZoo snitched was www.worth1000.com, “the top creative competition and photoshop contest site on the web,” if they do say so themselves.

For Worth1000′s strange, disturbing animals, check out the Evil Animals 3 contest results. The rest of the site is full of marvels too.

Hey, I know that sign! The building that Trattoria Contadina is in is for sale for a mere $1,699,950. Two units PLUS the space that the restaurant leases. Apparently people were poking their heads in and bothering the restaurant, thinking it was included in the sale, but … “restaurant not for sale”

The photo came from www.nosauce.org, another photo log with shots of the back streets and glamour of the city.