And we can't have sugary treats without hot caffeinated bevvies so ...

I've got some nice Jamaican Blue Mountain in the coffee pot. And Red Rose and Lemon Orange Pekoe in the teapots. Iced tea is refreshed since it's getting might steamy around here (not sure about the rest of our world).

And I'll give a salute to the Americans celebrating Memorial Day today. Our day to commemorate our troops isn't for a few months yet, but we've been on the receiving end of your troops help more than a few times.

Quote by Mendalla
In the other hand, the new fantasy story I am working on has its own world and I am just introducing enough in it to support what is happening. There was a dark lord, he had an army of the undead with which to terrorize the world, an alliance was formed against him, his daughter murdered him and destroyed his palace while the alliance fought his army outside (not a spoiler, happens right in the prologue). And that's about it. No mention of who was in the alliance, or what nation the events take place in, or how magic actually works (in depth, there's a general sense of it being about pacts with spirits). Even the daughter's mother is only hinted at in the daughter's desire for revenge on her father. Not to say I couldn't expand on the world, or even merge it with my other world, but for now it remains just a few key points of backstory for the plot and characters of the present work. So definitely soft.

So as I bring this saga to a close, I find myself realizing how little I thought through the world beyond how sorcery works (and even that kind of got built ad hoc). Tech-wise, we have a blacksmith as a character so presumably sometime in the Iron Age or later in Earth terms. But then again, there must have been smiths making bronze items in the Bronze Age. However, I think Iron Age is about right. The society is fairly decentralized. Tana and her friends live in villages in a river valley. There's mention of a larger community upstream but it never comes into play. There's no sign of governors or other officials, just a reference or two to Lond the smith being a village "headman", which could just mean an elder member of the community who takes leadership when needed. An alliance defeated The Night Lord but who were the allies is unmentioned.

So it is all pretty vague and what I do introduce is purely in the service of the story. For instance, we know there was some kind of ancient history that produced Pras Tola in The Healer's Power but that's about all there is as far as history.

If I was to expand this into a novel or more, then I would have to spend some time to develop these ideas more. But this is likely staying as is (three short stories that I might eventually combine into a novella) so I am not inclined to spend more time on this world for now. But there is a revelation at the end of the final story that could turn into a hook for a sequel (you'll know it when you read it) so who knows?

Fete - Feta (Greek salad anyone?)

Beautiful places can bring pleasure.

For others who may be wondering about the meteor storm/shower:

https://starwalk.space/en/news/meteor-storms

Apparently though, it is not a sure thing. It depends on some suppositions about a how a comet broke up in 1995.

Quote by DenimAngel

Oh wow thank you for the link Ape... a dozen pecan divines have your name on them!

Ooo, pecan divines. Yum. Yeah, you and your little buddy Scamp came immediately to mind when I saw this one in my inbox.

Quote by verbal
And remember - Monday night could bring a HUGE meteor shower. Maybe a meteor storm! Go out! Look up!

Which shower is it? Need to go look it up I guess. I know it's too early for the Perseids (they are in August IIRC). Weather looks nice, if a bit steamy, here so might be able to see something depending on time.

Good afternoon. Sorry I am kind of neglecting this place. Too much going on. I've got some coffee on and there's Irish Breakfast and Duke of Earl in the teapots. Iced tea is refreshed and I've made sure we've got lemon for it stocked up. Soda supply looked good. Adding some Lime Bubly, an Irish flavoured soda water that is carried internationally by Pepsico.

Writing has slowed but not stopped the last couple days. Might squeeze some in over this weekend.

Later, alligators!

Malt - Galt (one-time town in Southern Ontario, now part of the city of Cambridge)

The Texas thing is just appalling. We are about to commemorate the first anniversary of the murder of four members of a family here (run down with a pickup, not shot) but that pales by comparison with the recent shootings in the US. Though the fact that ours was a clear hate crime, more like the Buffalo shootings in that way, kind of ups the ante (the family were Muslims from Pakistan, the driver was a white supremacist piece of ****).

Coffee is on, as are pots of Earl Grey and Red Rose tea. Fresh iced tea is in the fridge as well.

The final part of The Chronicles of Tana the Healer is mostly done. Just wrestling with the denouement (which happened with part 2 as well). Next step is to put them all together and see if I can make a coherent novelette or novella out of it. I formatted things differently between parts 1 and 2. Part 3 hews closer to part 1. So there's some serious work to be done at least on that front. Will be too long to go here in that form (probably 15-20K) but I might use it to try self-publishing.

Lost - Last (where I currently am in this thread 😊)

Them is about giant ants.

Kid lit we called in my library school days. We had a whole course on it plus another on children's services. I think we only have one person on SS that currently writes for children but in case there's interest in where to submit material for children and teens, here you go.

https://authorspublish.com/29-magazines-that-publish-writing-for-children-and-teens/

Ape is back in the saddle. Very rough first draft of part 3 of Tana the Healer is sitting on my Google Drive. Now to do some serious rewriting and refining. It has taken me a while to figure out all the moving parts and fit them together but it will resolve her desire to find her mother's grave and set up a final confrontation with her past. Magic will happen, but there will be some joy and tears, too. Or so I hope.

Thanks for opening today, Sara. I've refreshed the coffee and tea for the evening and overseas crowd.

scarfs some random cookies

Remember those who went before

Posh - Post (what I just did in this thread)

Someone has a cool Grandma😉. Though my Grandmother made cookies to die for. Mom got the recipe, too.😊

Hey ball fans, I had the Blue Jays taking on the Cardinals in my backyard today. Jays won when the Cardinals flew off.😂

This is from a new Finnish prog band called EGRES. I discovered them courtesy of the lead singer's sister (she's also friends with the composer), who I know on another website. I am quite impressed. Sadly, the singer had to leave for various reasons and a new lead singer debuted recently at a concert. Album is due out in June.

Cure my disease, oh please.

I used to have a nice model of a B-25 Mitchell back in the day. That's the bomber that James Doolittle used in his famous raid on Tokyo long before they thought the Americans could actually bomb Japan. Might have had a B-17, too, but that might have been a friend.

Sunday and we are recovering from a derecho here in Ontario. It's a meteorological term I first learned when my son was into meteorology for a while. Basically a very compact, intense storm system with high winds. My neighbourhood came out fine but there's 4 dead, mostly from being hit by falling trees, and thousands without power across Southern Ontario and into Southern Quebec.

Storm's notwithstanding, we have coffee ready for drinking. Teas are a Black Currant black tea and Red Rose. Iced tea is refreshed but things cooled off here after that storm so I won't be the one drinking it.

Have a good one!

Painful injuries may require drugs.

Quote by AnnaMayZing

Thank you, Sara. I was at a 1940s weekend near my home. It is the Avro Lancaster of the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. One of only two still flying anywhere in the world, and the only wholly original one (the other is in Canada and was converted to carry passengers).

Actually, I've been in the one at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum and it has been restored back to original condition. I lived in Hamilton for a decade (and I have a brother and sister-in-law there) and the sound of those Merlin engines is something that all Hamiltonians know and look up with pride when they hear it. They have some other functional period aircraft as well and fly around to airshows to show them off.

The day my son and I went to the museum, the Lanc and another plane were just leaving for an airshow down the road in Brantford, Ontario. We had to pass Brantford on the way back anyhow so we went to the airport and took in the show. The Lanc was on ground display and then flew in the show.

Quote by verbal
so today they are playing A DOUBLE HEADER IN THE SNOW

The Grey Cup, our national football championship, has been played in all sorts of wonderful weather (got to love Fall in Canada) including a blizzard or two.

Quote by DenimAngel
I'm hiding from everyone

Ape peeks under and behind the furniture, puzzled as to where Sara went. 😋

Nasty storm went through around lunchtime here but it's settled down now. Well, for us. There's still parts of the city without power and with fallen tree limbs to clean up.

Pulls out the tins of day old cookies to replace what the cookie bandit took.

I probably need to see a therapist about my back and neck. Lots of stiff and achy days anymore.

Saturday!

Ape sets about wiping the counter and all the tables. Washes the coffee and tea pots, cups, and other bits of pottery. Cookie jars are still full and fresh so I will leaves those for another time. Sweeps the floor, rearranges the furniture, and generally pretties up the place.

There, clean and ready.

There's fresh coffee brewing and the teapots have Scottish Breakfast and Black Currant. Fresh iced tea is in the fridge, too.

Faster planes mean shorter trips.

Quote by TomEccleston
Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize.

Which is why I use commercial. Xenforo is US$160 upfront and annual maintenance is just US$55 if you self-host. There's an active community of developers, stylists, etc. who can help with add-ons, styling, etc. and a massive library of prebuilt add-ons, including many useful free and cheap ones. Open source is free but you tend to get what you pay for and you can make up for it in hiring developers and such fairly quickly (as happened here when you had it running an OS base and Gav keeping things together). And hosting is required either way so the only difference are the licensing and maintenance fees.

Hosted (ie. in Xenforo's cloud hosting) is a monthly or annual sub of course but for a board the size of (redacted), probably worth the money. You just worry about configuring the board and software, they maintain the servers, databases, backups, etc.

Quote by TomEccleston
And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

.

Xenforo kind of split the difference. They license Froala, a third party editor that has pseudo-WYSIWYG but uses BBCode in the background. Hard core BBCode types or admins doing troubleshooting can switch to a mode that turns off the WYSIWYG and lets you edit BBCode directly. I kind of like it because every now and then I hit a formatting glitch that can only be fixed by editing the raw BBCode but my day-to-day users, who are mostly used to email editors, can use it without worrying about that stuff.

I run Wondercafe2 for under US$300 per year and most of that is hosting. The support on XF is only about 1/4 or so of my costs. On a larger board using more expensive hosting, it would be even less on a percentage basis (the support is flat, not tied to site size or anything).

You know things are bad when you spend half a day troubleshooting a problem, only to realize that it was a simple mistake you made that you probably could have found in minutes IF YOUR (expletive deleted) BRAIN WAS WORKING!

(yes, that's me at work yesterday)

Gambling is easier when online.

From Jon & Vangelis, his collaboration with English vocalist Jon Anderson (best known as the co-founder and longtime lead singer for Yes). They did four albums together and there's a couple "Best of" collections out, too.

For frightened cats, cozy chairs, libraries and COOKIES!!!!, we are thankful.

Coffee is brewed. There's some Red Rose and Earl Grey tea in the teapots. Fresh iced tea is in the fridge and there's sugar and lemon to add as needed.

Have a good one!!

Quote by TomEccleston
It'll probably get fixed in time.

My lingering concern is precisely this "get fixed in time". Why did they not use something like the Xenforo software I use (and that I proposed to use for a new version of SS when Nic was looking at dumping it instead of upgrading it) that works right out of the box. They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years and that's why we keep waiting for stuff to get fixed. I know they wanted to get away from managing the servers and other infrastructure but XF has a cloud offering that was in beta at the time they did the migration and is now live. So does IPS as I understand it.

This software still feels like a forum from about 20 years ago in terms of functionality (I have been using forums for about that long, maybe a bit longer), even if it is modern-looking. I stay because I love the site and community, but if I was someone new here, the software might just put me off.

(PS. This applies to both sites.)