Steve’s Update 9/9/2013

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Had a busy weekend – experimenting with building a HTPC.  Pretty educational and fun, and it reminds me of a lot of things I’d forgotten.  I’m still tweaking it, but definitely worth it – and I can see why people would move from cable boxes and consoles.  I’ll probably be writing about that some more.

As you’ve seen I’m trying to do more postings here, to reach out to people, to share things, and just to get ideas out of my head (and perhaps seed future books).  I know the cooking may seem odd, but people ask me advice about that too (in fact, part of “Epic Resume Go” and “Quest For Employment” coming into being was writing down stuff people asked me).

The next book (and yeah, no naming yet) is now in my first round of editing.  However as I want to do it right (and get a few other projects done) it’s probably not going out until January or even February.  I might also do some work later this year or next year on smaller books expanding on other themes.

I’m considering my next big “fan book” and probably need to run a poll.  I’m considering doing something on larger geek social involvement.

With a new design and a cool new logo, the Seventh Sanctum rewrite is now to the coding phase.  It’s going pretty well so far, but I’m coding the generators last because that’s going to be complex, so I can’t predict how tough that’ll be.  The back end code is solid, but we’ve got some formatting changes and those can get time-consuming and surprising – a few pixels here or there, a font size, a background, can all make shocking differences.

Still seeing if we’ll revive the community, there is interest but still figuring the form it’ll take.

I’ll be taking my MuseHack work in a bit of a different direction, looking to focus on culture issues and broaden my interviews.  Stay tuned, I’ll hopefully have some surprises.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Seventh Sanctum – Working Code

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Since I finalized the design, I’ve now started moving it into code.  Here’s a demo of the front page.

You’ll notice that I chose the 3rd logo because that one was overwhelmingly popular – and I have to say I dig it’s mixture of complexity, simplicity, and class.  Thanks for the feedback.  The first logo is also going to appear in a modified form for other things, perhaps buttons or something.

I have to alter the ad space (and color) and I’m having a devil of a time getting the blogfeed to format properly.  On the other hand the new components are really smooth to redesign in Bootstrap, and very easy to alter.

I removed the social media buttons as extraneous for now but I might put them back.  If there’s any suggestions on how to make it easier to sync up with the Sanctum, fee free to share.

Of course the real test is plugging in live generator code because, well, that’s the critical part of the site.  The big issue is getting the nicely formatted forms to work and then getting the output properly and prettily formatted – which sounds easy, but there’s some variable data and presentation in here that may be a pain.  I could jam it in unformatted, but it’d be pretty boring and not have the greatest layout.

I’m trying a very non-standard linkroll/siteroll/blogroll – smaller chicklets showing associated sites.  I think it actually works.

SanctumScreencap7

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Books You Want: Trust Me

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OK gang – MuseHackers, Seventh Sanctum, regular readers, here’s two books you want.

First, my friend Serdar has gotten his novel Flight of the Vajra out.  I’ve known him for years and watched him evolve this novel, and I was an editor – and I can say that very quickly the editing stopped being a job and started being a pleasure because finally I was having the kind of fun in SF I haven’t had in ages.  This is the kind of Space Opera I’ve missed for a decade, and it’s well worth your time to get it and read it because it’s both far-flung high-tech space adventure, and a character-driven story with a memorable cast.

What’s it about?  It’s the story of Henré Sim, a talented engineer who lost his family and best friend in a horrible accident aboard a starship of his own design.  With a destroyed career, a large legal settlement, a cache of legally questionable technology, and a vague hope of finding out what happened, he ends up traveling around the galaxy in a personal investigation that soon turns to wandering and drinking.  However, when a few events thrust him back into the spotlight, he quickly ends up entangled in the agendas of multiple people and organizations, and soon finds that the event that ruined his life may now lead to far larger problems.  Henré’s got a lot more on his hands than he ever expected, and he’s got to count on his ever-growing and half-accidental crew to save the day; a circus acrobat, a religious leader, an experienced cop and his not-quite-human partner, a gender-shifting singer, and more.  You’re going to keep guessing what’s up until the very end as Henré and company try to stay one step ahead of everyone else . . .

But there’s more than Space Opera.  My friend Rob Barba’s Kickstarting his own project, Razorblade Angel.  Rob’s ambition is to create an anime/mecha-themed military sci-fi adventure in a persistent universe he’s been evolving.  Rob’s been in the military himself, so he’s bringing a realistic and human take to mecha and military adventure – but Rob’s also a fan of anime and mecha, so he’s combining that with a loving homage to “real robot” anime and stories.  You can even read the first two chapters here.

I know these guys.  They’re great.  They’re talented.  They deserve your support – and they’ll entertain the hell out of you.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.