Well, maybe stating that the entire pile of books my father fished out of the attic is a treasure it certainly is a find. Most of the books are science fiction and fantasy novels I had picked up at yard sales and used book stores some ten years ago and it is likely that I’ll be flipping them on eBay shortly after reading them. However, the children’s books that were mixed in, such as the A.A. Milne and some of the young readers books on technology and engineering that I cherished as a child, definitely fall into the treasure category and will be added to my permant collection. If anything these books greatly expand my reading list and it looks as if my fiction-only project is going to stretch well into 2006–largely because I am forever ADD addled and am constantly jumping from one project to another without fully finishing anything.
- Roberta A. MacAvoy
- Meredith Ann Pierce
- The Darkangel: The Darkangel Trilogy, Volume I
- A Gathering of Gargoyles: The Darkangel Trilogy, Volume II
- Dennis L. McKiernan
- The Brega Path (Silver Call Duology)
- Lyndon Hardy
- Master of the Five Magics
- Ursula K. LeGuin
- The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2)
- Robert Silverberg
- Valentine Pontifex: Valentine Pontifex (Majipoor Cycle)
- Majipoor Chronicles: Majipoor Chronicles (Majipoor Cycle)
- Barry Hughart
- Bridge of Birds : A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was
- The Story of the Stone
- Bram Stoker
- The Jewel of Seven Stars (Tor Classics)
- Byron Reav Preiss
- Cordwainer Smith & James A. Mann
- James A. Houston
- Philip K. Dick
- Richard Cowper
- Shirley Jackson
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Philip Jose Farmer
- Robert Asprin
- Hit or Myth
- Another Fine Myth
- Myth Conceptions
- Myth Directions
- Myth-Ing Persons
- M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link
- Little Myth Marker
- Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections
Now, I just need to update my reading page…
Published by james on December 23, 2005
in Site.
…and that means an actual upgrade rather than just replacing files and directories with the new ones. I’m using two abandoned plugins at the moment, WP-CC and WP-Scrobbler with the latter being a real bitch to get working. Needless to say I’m not too excited about grabbing replacement plugins but I’m going to approach this like a good admin and make a mirror of the site that I can break without worry. The replacement plugins I am considering are Scrobbler and wpLicense. Never a dull day when it comes to my non-paying activities.
In terms of the Green Genes of my mother I sort of came up short, I have trouble keeping most plant life alive though I do a pretty good job with molds and fungi but that is another story. This year, though, is a bit of a triumph in that we have both of our Christmas Cacti blooming, which considering my track record is one hell of an accomplishment given all I do is occasionally water and let the Southern exposure do the rest.
The biggest cactus is a family heirloom that over the past six years my mother has had to take it in like a foster child and nurture back to health. I am truly grateful that there is not a DCF equivalent for plants. The little one was my own rescue of sorts, a former employee where I work abandoned it when she left and it was such a sad little thing sitting alone inside a cabinet so I took it home with me. It has remained that size for some five years but always puts out the most beautiful flowers; the first year I had it it bloomed every single month, apparently it really liked its new home. Needless to say I’m pretty happy that they are both in bloom, sort of lightens up an otherwise grim time of year.
Yet another quick update about Ruby on Rails; I managed to get it working with Apache2 and CGI, albiet it is a touch pokey but functional so I am another step closer to making it available. On my list of things to-do is rebuild the SRD database which was lost in the great database crash of November and flesh out the CSS. The hurdles that I forsee in the future center around the base URLS of the site as RoR likes to be the center of attention and that just is not how things run around here. Hopefully, I can iron that out, though it is more than likely that I’ll need to create a subdomain for the project.
On a related note there looks to be several books coming out this spring to join Agile Web Development with Rails; here’s the results over at Barnes & Noble. Safe to say you can skip the fourth one unless brass jingling is your thing. I’m thinking of grabbing a couple this spring to help give me a boost. I learn best while reading and doing; not so much Googling while doing.
Still strugglng with getting it to work with the way that I have Apache configured. Tested it with a clean build and had great success. Not so much here. Hopefully, I can figure it out as the whole webrick server thing just bites for production purposes.
