TGIF

© The Weirding, 2014

Friday the 12th

© The Weirding, 2014

A Note on Changes

As I've mentioned a few hundred times lately, The Wording was hacked and all of the posts deleted. I am still working to get them back, even though they aren't all in the proper order in which they first appeared. And some I've just decided not to republish for one reason or another.

But this has brought about some changes which, while they may be uncomfortable to some, are absolutely necessary to minimize the possibility of this occurring again. Namely, all comments on all Weirding-related blogs will now be moderated. This means that you will not see your comment immediately after posting it; it will not show up until I have reviewed it. This has already caught one spam e-mail just since I turned it on yesterday. When I have more time, I will be going back through all of the blogs and deleting any and all spam comments I find.

Further, on blogs such as The Wording, you will be required to register in order to leave a comment and may have to type in those blurry letters thing I hate so much (I can never tell what the letters are!). This is obviously going to turn some readers off that would otherwise like to leave a comment and I'm very sorry about that, but this is just the way it has to be.

I've spent literally all weekend surfing through Google cache and copying the posts I lost, then pasting them back into the blog. Three months' worth of posts - somewhere in the neighborhood of 65+ posts, altogether. I don't plan on doing that again if I can help it, so these new measures are necessary.

Also, I've started a new blog on writing and blogging, called Weird Ink. I am still trying to get the right drivers for my new modem that keeps crashing my computer and once that's done, there will be a handy-dandy blog index on the site to help you find what you are looking for. The newest issue will also be out soon.

Don't forget to add us to your blog, website, site profile, favorite sites, etc. Drop me a line and let me know you've done so and I'll link back to your blog, site, or whatever.

Thank you for shopping.

Blogging Plans

Some have been wondering how we're going to handle The Rundown, since I'm dismantling most of Fear the Outside and opening The Weirding. While The Weirding covers all the same subjects, themes, and ideas, it's a bit more adult-oriented (not sexually, just in tone and atmosphere) and tends to appeal to the serious fan and insider; it has a lot to do with industries, styles and techniques, personalities, and the like -- things we sometimes touch upon here, but not as often.

The Oddblog will be The Weirding's siteblog and while it will cover much more than just goings-on around the site, most of the general entertainment discussion will continue here. The Oddblog will deal directly with the site, news, politics, current events, and stuff like that; The Rundown will remain unchanged.

It has taken on a flavor of its own that I enjoy and want to continue and I don't want to mess with that. I'm sure that over time, focuses may shift and things will settle into their own, so this is how everything stands for now.

The Days Flu By...

The 2006 Winter Edition of The Weirding has been somewhat postponed... YES, AGAIN!

Details can be found on the Oddblog, but the long and short of it is that I was stricken with the flu about 2-3 weeks back and I didn't take very good care of myself, so it only got worse and is still hanging around. Add to this the whole holiday bit and the fact that I must go and visit this year (some of my relatives simply won't be around next year -- at the very least, they won't be able to participate -- and I have to see them), and you have an idea of where we're at.

Basically, some of the features will be up by Christmas day (Monday) and the rest will be linked-up throughout the week and probably into the New Year. After that, only the Oddblog will be addended to on a continuing basis between editions; editing, web development, and small additions (particularly to the S.A.F.E. RPG System) will also be made in-between issues, but major updates and changes will follow a quarterly schedule.

Thanks so much for your support and understanding, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but we'd rather produce quality than push a half-assed product out the door in order to meet a deadline; that is, in fact, the difference between "product" and what we are doing.

If you simply must blame someone, I'm the guy; I am the sole contributor of original content this issue, as well as the only designer, and I got The Crud and didn't act intelligently or quickly enough to stave it off before it got to where I just couldn't perform my daily functions.

I would like to give out a particularly loud Thank You to our own IntricateGirl for help with edits and web development on this issue and hopefully more in the future. While I'm at it, let me also reiterate my eternal gratefulness to Mayren for her continued and very welcome contributions here, which have allowed me the time I needed to not finish the website. And let us not forget Sean Lovett... even though I have no idea where he's gotten off to as late...

Please don't forget their other blogs and efforts, which they are sometimes a bit reticent to inform you of (why, I do not know).

And yes, readers here will get the Submissions Guidelines before they are made available on the site -- probably later this weekend -- but be aware that the 2007 Spring Edition will not be available until March/April of next year, so there's no real need to rush and have your submission tied-up for that long if you want to submit it elsewhere. We will accept multiple submissions (you can submit the same content to us, as well as other publishing markets, concurrently), but once the piece is accepted, the contract will not allow you to publish it elsewhere and we don't pay until publication. For those of you who are not familiar with how the slicks and rags handle it, this is pretty standard. Details will follow soon.

The Con At What We Done Went Lobo

So we're at this convention one year, right? And there's this guy dressed up like Lobo.

Wait, let me back up:

For those of you what aren't sure, only some people show up at the con already dressed-up. I'm certainly not knocking those cats, mind you, I'm just saying. By the second day, they truly regret it and they smell... a lot. Real bad. Real, real bad. Like cheap costume make-up and sweat -- the funk of a thousand nerds, unleashed! Like KISS' bus.

But I digress... there's generally a costume contest at some point during the convention and that's when everyone who intends to stay for the entire con dresses up. Even we nerds have schedules.

So, we went to this con one year and this guy was dressed up like Lobo (on the right day, mind you), and we thought it was great! This was like, MAYBE a year since Lobo had hit the market, so we thought he was "one of us," and we were busting his balls every chance we got.

Now, had we been a little older, we might have gotten the subtle hints that I'm sure were there, but we didn't realize the guy had never actually read Lobo. Everytime we saw him, we were all like, "Hey! Ya fraggin bastich!" and "Don't stuff on me, Fanboy!" You know, shit like that.

And the guy was kind of a butthole about it. He started walking out of the room when he saw us and kind of sneering through his KISS-facepaint set make-up and shit, right? So, of course, that only made us redouble our efforts.

It never occurred to us that this cat was like 40+ and he had never read even one issue of Lobo until...

We're passing him on the last night (well, Saturday night -- we were going to sleep through whatever con-folk do on Sunday... I'm 32 and the only thing I can think of is awards and... well, I'm not here to claim any awards, should any be coming my way, and I still don't know what happens at cons on Sundays, so...), and we were all like, "Hey, ya bastich! Where ya been, ya frakkin Fanboy?" And he grabs me by the arm (because I was closest to him), and he goes, "You know, that's not very nice."

And I about pulled my effin' nine, y'all.

I was all like, "What the living MOTHERF@CK?! HUH?! Those are like Lobo's effing TAGLINES, you dumb, fragging jerk-off! DID YOU BOTHER TO READ THE COVER OR WERE YOU JUST PICKING IT UP BECAUSE WIZARD SAID IT WAS HOT, FANBOY?!"

So, the guy's completely shocked and really mad at me, but even my friend is all like, "Wow, why would you dress up like a comic book character you don't even know about?" And he's all like sniffing something from a plastic bottle and going, "Lobo was featured in Justice League #17###, and he is the ruler of a world where mercenaries..." And we're all like, "DIE, FANBOY!"

He had NO idea who Keith Giffen was, he had NO idea what the hell we were talking about, he had NO idea that Lobo even had his own title! We were stunned. STUNNED. AMAZED!

It was baffling! BAFFLING!

As was he...

I found out about two weeks ago that Wolverine is now a "professor" at The Xavier School for Mutants (or whatever it's called nowadays). I recoiled in terror! Not just that, but the virtual girl who told me that was all gushy and, "He's so dreamy, I'd love to go to that school, because I'd love for Wolverine to be my teacher" and stuff. And I think she's like 19. Hope. Hope she's like 19.

But I understand how these things happen, because of that Lobo Con.

So I politely typed back, "Really? So Wolvie's a professor now? That ol' Logan! Ol Logan-san! Heh. You know he's like 5'4 and 60, right? He's like hip-level to me and twice my age -- hell, we haven't even figured-in the slow collapsing of his vertebrae! Prolly about the size of Estelle Getty by now, I would think. Were it not for his unbreakable skeleton, I'd totally BEAT THAT CANUCK TO THE FLOOR, LITTLE MISS CHICKY! You know he's a murderer, right? Did you know that? He killed the living SHIT out of his fiancee -- yeah he did. DID YOU KNOW THAT? HUH?! DID YOU EVEN KNOW THAT?! I can show you panels where he literally kills literally flocks o women. How's Dazzler, huh?"

Ahem.

Well, I'm sure she just hasn't written back because she... because her Internet is down or something.

Long story short, don't dress up like a character you don't know.

Anymore...

RPG Resources @ The Weirding

Since everything is still getting into place and being tested, I wanted to get some content up so y'all have something to do in the meantime. Since I already have a lot of RPG resources available, I just needed to format it and hang it.
It's far from complete and it's not going to be pretty, but the first things up will be Cyberpunk, Dark Conspiracy, and The Weirding's own, free system. That's right, The Weirding is offering an original gaming system for development and use with future content. It is compatible with the d20 System and will have conversion charts, but I decided to release a separate system so everyone doesn't have to invest thousands of dollars in books and also because I began designing it online in an RPG group a while back.

Sadly, like most online group ventures, it went nowhere. I was the only one who actively did anything; the only ones who even paid attention to what was going on just argued and compared it to their own systems. I continued to develop it off and on for the past few years. It is a decent, very light and easy, but also fairly complete, system that can stand all sorts of modifications and upgrades. Not only will the system be available for free, readers are invited to submit changes and developments for consideration. If they work and make it better, they will be implemented.

Future additions to the site will supplement the system, adding rules for various genres and campaigns, amongst other details. At some point, designers will be invited to submit articles and adventures for the system for possible inclusion. Payments for original content will be made by PayPal, but all rights to the system will be retained by the site.

There is no ETA for any of this, but at least some of it will be up by the beginning of the year. The Weirding is not accepting submissions at this time and suggestions for the system should be made in the forums for now.

More to Come

I know it's been several days since anything was posted, but the holiday set me back a bit. I have also been very busy with the website. I hung several new pages and either finished or started several more that I have yet to publish. Actually, a whole lot of time was spent tweaking the pages already hung -- most things you can't really see just as a visitor (like tweaking keywords and links, testing links, changing pointers to pictures and so on).

One of the biggest things is that I haven't figured out exactly how to set the program I am using to point to the same images on every page. It keeps wanting to add another instance of the same images to every directory. For example, the title images on every page do not need to be in every page directory; instead, I put them in one directory and have to go in and change each page manually to point to the same directory. It is definitely a settings issue in the program I am using, I just have to find it and correct it and haven't been able to do so yet.

At any rate, there still isn't any actual content on the site, just navigational pages and temporary forums. The CGI has been down since Thanksgiving for "maintenance," which is a good thing, since it wasn't working. You'll notice that the site blog is offsite, for example...

I also finally broke down and made some serious changes to the paranormal and site blogs that I've been saying I was going to make for a long time and kept putting off. At any rate, there are some drafts to finish here and we will be back on our semi-regular schedule later this week.

The Weirding Is Up

Kinda, sorta. It's up and there, but not really functional. I've been having so many problems with everything that I'm afraid to get really into it until I know for sure what's going down.

Most of the problems have to do with things like FTP and the fact that the support team for my hosting service keeps telling me to use different programs. I understand that certain programs just don't work with certain sites the way they're supposed to. This is usually due to coding and/or server conflicts -- like when a program is coded and tested on a Unix server and refuses to work right on a Windows-based server -- and that, I can handle. But this idea that I need to use this or that specific program, but they can't offer me support for them, clearly tells me that they haven't tested their systems.

Basically, since I cannot securely upload via FTP, I am forced to do everything manually: create the directory on the site tree, upload each file individually through the interface, then go back and test everything. It takes longer to do everything because this is like 10 extra steps.

Still, over the next few weeks, I will get as much of the site up as I can and, hopefully by the new year, at least most of what I have ready will be available.

The Weirding truly sucks!

Full Coverage

Or Shameless Self-Promotion
Some of you might not know it, but The Rundown actually has two parts - the whole is contained in two, separate blogs. This one focuses mostly on animation, comics, and sequential art; pen and paper role-playing games (though I haven't done much on that since I started - keep reading); and sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fare in pretty much any medium. The other one focuses on the entertainment industry, in general, with a lot of TV and movie reviews (including many within these areas).

Originally, the point was to keep all the reviews and industry news separate from the hardcore nerd-stuff, but over the months, I've come to the conclusion that there's just too much crossover. I've had to spend far too long choosing between blogs when I had something to post more than a few times. For instance, Primer is definitely sci-fi, but also a movie. I would have put the review on the other half of the blog, but since I realized a lot of readers didn't realize that both halves refer to the same thing, I guessed that readers of this one would be more interested, and so I posted it here. I should have done the same for my review of Metalocalypse (but one of the sites was actually down when I posted that one, which wasn't originally posted even on the other half of the blog).

Also, as many of us are also into the paranormal and general weirdness and the Unexplained, The OddBlog has all of that. And I have been covering a lot of the goings-on on Ghost Hunters and Sci-Fi Investigates over there lately.

So, while this entire post reads like a completely shameless self-promotion (largely because it is), it's real goal (aside from shameless self-promotion) is to let everyone know where things are. I've been freewheeling it a lot lately, but I'm getting back into trying to keep the subjects, and thus the blogs, separate again. This has to do with how I am organizing the website... which will be up this month, though not all of it. I'll cover that in a separate post later today or tomorrow...

Times Are a-Changin'

I told you a while back that the old site is going down. Fear the Outside and Angry Skies Productions was a thing I did and had fun doing, but it was never all that serious for the main reason that I could not advertise or sell advertising on GeoCities. It was a business venture in the same sense that a treehouse is a social club.

I know the placeholder for the new site has been up for going on two months now, but there is a reason I did it this way -- a few, actually:

1. So I could talk about the site before it was ready to publish and go live (people see a customized page instead of a generic server host 404).
2. To give the search engines time to pick it up before it goes live.
3. To give the search engines time to purge the old material and URLs from their caches before I reformat and republish them on the new one. Otherwise, I will be penalized for duplicate content. And I might lose a lot of traffic due to people not finding what they are looking for and/or being redirected to the new site and seeing only another 404.
4. To give me time to put together the best site I can and make sure most of the bugs are squished (EW!) and holes are plugged (HOT!) before it goes live.

And it's going to be a kick-ass site -- don't let the hype fool you -- with words and pictures and a blog and little things to click and all that kind of stuff you find on other websites, but that's the whole reason I couldn't just start hanging it. This isn't an "out-of-the-box" site by any means. I'm not using someone else's template(s); old material is being tweaked and reformatted and new content is being developed from scratch; the underlying architecture is still being finalized (file structure, directory tree, hardcoding, etc.) due to careful consideration of future growth; there are forums and a blog, and even planned podcasts (though not all will be immediately available); and very nearly every page is unique in both content and design. And I'm the only one doing it, remember.

Which is the thing: I also run about five blogs right now. In fact, advertisement on these blogs is how I was finally able to afford the website I'd been talking about getting for going on five years now. Trying to keep up with these and develop the site at the same time has kept me under the gun these past few weeks, and when you add my Carpal Tunnel and Degenerative Disc Disease to the mix, there have been several "burn-out" days and many more where I literally just couldn't work, even though I sometimes really wanted to.

So I'm doing what all good micro-managers do when they get in over their heads: I'm quitting.

No, I'm calling in back-up. Over the next few weeks, you will start hearing from an entire team of bloggers here at The Rundown. You may have read some of their work if you've visited any of their blogs through the comments or Blogroll, or you may know them from another blog or online community; some you may not have heard of until now. They were all hand-picked by me to continue blathering about all things insubstantial in my absence, and they know from insubstantiality. And I'll still be chiming-in, too.

As of the moment I write this, this is all temporary; they will be more or less filling-in for me while I try to get The Weirding ready to go live this November (Before Christmas [B.C.] is the definitive deadline I'm working under). But if everything works out and everyone enjoys it, it could very well become a permanent feature. That'd be cool.

I have no idea what everyone will be babbling about, but change is good. I know there will be TV and movie reviews and discussion, but likely a lot more than that. Speaking of change, you should have set your clocks back an hour last night. Thank goodness for computers and cable boxes, huh?