ellenmillion | Entries tagged with coding

Feeling woooorn out right now.

Sketch Fest is off to a great start for the month. As is to be expected with changes this extensive, there were Problems of Various Kinds, and I think I have fixed most of them as they've popped up. There are still a few pages to catch up to the current features (like the inspired page, and artist pages, and the finished works page, plus building product editing tools), but for something so major, the hiccups were relatively little. The error tracking did JUST what it was supposed to. (For example, there were three purchases of a single piece in the same literal second, and it allowed the first one and logged as errors the next two! Horrah! It worked!) I got all my admin approval tools finished up in time, and instant buying via credits, so major pats on the back to me... I was really pretty sure I wouldn't finish those up!

Between all that troubleshooting and a teething baby, I haven't gotten any actual sketching in, though I have tagged a bunch of prompts. I would do some now, but uuuuugggggh. Can't get out of my chair to go downstairs and get my sketchbook. It's way too far. I think I will go to bed, instead. My eyes feel gritty. Tomorrow, perhaps?

I hope people are liking the new features!

A reminder that I have cards for sale! I also have prints and originals available at my site, for you holiday shoppers.

Getting to within spitting distance of being done with the barebones of products at Sketch Fest. Uploading and setting them up works. Uploading in general is much improved. Products show on the (reorganized) art pages. Ordering by credit card works. It correctly removes quantities as they are bought. It correctly recognizes when products sell out and removes them. It notes when an artist puts in conflicting info and pulls those items offline. It logs errors. What doesn't work: Showing the artist their purchases (critical - works now!). Editing products (less critical). EMG Credit purchases (optional). Purchase approvals need automated (REALLY need this to save my sanity - done!). UGH! So much to do! This system will be awesome, but SO complex. Really straining to get it all done by Friday. This is a MONSTER update, guys. I'm sweating.

I have three Kickstarter campaigns you should see (all 3 are fully funded, but worth jumping in on, if you can!):

3 Jaguars Web Comic - a web comic about the business of fantasy art. I love the "3 Micahs" articles that

haikujaguar has been doing, and this is her expansion of that.

Larry Elmore's 30 year artbook - An icon of fantasy art. This project has made some major stretch goals, and each package is now a SWEET, SWEET deal. (Take a tour of Larry's studio, if you live nearby, and go on a motorcycle ride with him!) Larry is an awesome guy - I was lucky enough to have dinner with him once (on my birthday!).

Dice rings! - Wear your D20! These just look like fun.

Guppy, practicing to be a superhero.

New story up! Railfashions Part 3 - Ressa and Bai play a duet...

Back to the coding mines.

Guppy is not yet convinced it's time to sleep; there is periodic outraged babbling from the monitor.

Thinking a lot about boundaries, politics, and social media.

Lots of programming in my in-between time - bits of genius are going into the Sketch Fest improvements, and I think it's going to be awesomely useful for artists and buyers both. I think I'm done with the upload/product adding pages now. (For real this time.) Now I just need to make the pages where you buy them, and write the checks to make sure that something isn't sold twice if it's a limited item.

Debating several things, not limited to: restricting product sales to using EMG credits (SO, SO much easier to deal with! But maybe too restrictive!), how to cope with reactivating prompts (I have some Ideas) and how to track the data from auctions... (hmm.)

For now, though, I'm going to brush my teeth and hope that the latest bit of complaint from the nursery was the last for the night...

(I wrote this last night, but apparently did not post it. Hmm!)

Oh, Ellen, you rookie.

**fixes things**

Dear Self:

You may find it useful to check your spam folder if you think that the coding you're doing for email alerts is not working... preferably before you spend an hour trying to correct what's already working perfectly.

Love,

Your Other Self.

Today so far is a great improvement on yesterday. The tide of drool has receded, though I expect it to come back, and Happy Baby is back to Happy for now. Photo-of-the-day to follow when she wakes up. I should probably be sleeping now, too - this is usually one of her best blocks of sleep - but am Too Awake. ~~I am opting for a shower instead.~~ (Missed my chance!)

It has been a tremendously productive weekend.

We got the bedroom walls all finished, taped, mudded and even primed. Our drywall seams were, in all humility, really outstanding. You can't even tell where they were, and we haven't even textured yet. I've seen professional work that was shoddier. We're going to apply texture this evening, and then will be ready for paint - which we haven't picked out yet, because we haven't chosen carpet. We were actually going to go into town between coats today and pick out said carpet, but were thwarted by the fact that the major carpet stores were closed for labor day. No carpet for us, today! Tomorrow we will go look at our options. We went for a loooooong walk in the woods with the dog, instead. I'm a little wiped out, to be honest; it was quite the death march. Oh, and I made bread!

Yesterday was more of the same, of course, to get to this point. Plus vacuuming a billion times because sanding the drywall mud makes a LOT of dust. (Also, I need a fresh dust mask; this one is pretty old by now, and apparently, I ate onions at one point before using it, because it smells like stale onions every time I put it on....)

I also did some programming last night, and fixed up the art pages at Torn World to link to related articles and to the artist's page. If I have any energy left tonight after texture and dinner, I may link them to fiction, and also link articles back to related artwork and stories to artwork... I also want to work on some EMG-Zine thingies, and general EMG credit thingies, while I've got the overall credit database structure still all fresh in my head. (I may also just sit in my comfortable chair and drool on myself, after the weekend I've had... It's been utterly lovely, but oh, so much work.)

Tomorrow, I've got a hair appointment and will be getting several inches chopped off, and did I mention we'll be picking carpet?!? Very excited about that. I'd also like to get some coloring book orders and all my paintings off. I also have to send perks from the last two Muse Fusions. I am deeply suspicious I will be working a nap into tomorrow's schedule, and we may get a coat of paint up in the evening.

I am queen of the code!

I've done all but the finishing touches on my elance project. I cannot believe the hash the programmer before made of this set-up; they hacked oscommerce (which was WAY overkill for the client needs) in such a way that it didn't save anything useful, didn't allow multiple items in a shopping cart, and worst of all, accepted credit card information over a non-secure server. No, maybe it was worse the way it saved a gazillion entries of bogus customer information everytime someone visited a page (literally, a database FILLED with Jane Does and no useful information). So, where WAS the real customer information being saved? As products. Each INDIVIDUAL field of data (email, address, zipcode, etc) was being inserted as a purchased product option (where such things as color and size are expected). THE HELL?

It took longer than I thought and hoped, but it might not have if I'd gone with my instincts and not tried to resurrect the framework of Oscommerce from this farce. I built them a new form that calculated all the billionty complicated things they really wanted, and hacked the resulting information directly into the database so they can still use all their administrative tools (at least, to the same level they were before). It's less graceful than it could be, but it does what they need, and short of completely reinstalling Oscommerce to erase the travesties inflicted upon it and then figuring out how to re-modify it to do the rather complicated calculating they'd like done... it's the best solution.

So, that ate my time for a couple of days, and now I'm looking at my to-do list in bogglement. I need to get invoices out, send some payments to artists, pack up a coloring book sale (off of Amazon!), send Sketch Fest sales thingies, do Torn World anthology page counts, and mail some artwork, then line up some more work, clean the house, walk the dog and... um, probably something else I'm forgetting. I have chicken legs marinating in tandoori, and I've done a load of laundry already. *ponders* Hopefully, it will come to me...

Got many little coding things done today, including a start on the wishlists at EMG. A very, very bare start, but still, something. I also fixed a little bug at FP, and a calendar bug at EMG-Zine. I'm trying to get Something done code-wise everyday, no matter how small, because my coding list for the year is so very overwhelming.

Had very odd dreams last night - largely centered around becoming a surgeon for the vampire mob. By mob, I mean Chicago-style, in suits with Italian accents and 1920s hats. My offices were in the back of an ice-cream shop, in the 'dental section.' (It made perfect sense, in my dream, that there were dental offices behind the ice-cream shop.)

These vampires were not hollywood super-healers - although they did not die from wounds, and they did not bleed. When they go sliced, the skin would flap off of them until someone (me, apparently) sewed them back up. They were not very bright - very large and blustery, but not smart or suave. While surgeoning one of them up, I discovered that if any wood got trapped beneath their skin, however miniscule, it would send them into a coma. Gosh, I found myself thinking. Hope they don't get splinters often. They shouldn't go into carpentry as a profession.

Strange vampires, but better than sparkly.

Well, it took both less and more work than I expected... coding always leads me down blind alleys where I least expect it, but I managed to beat the bits into pieces and make them do what I wanted.

Which leads me to the new subscriber model I'm putting into place at EMG-Zine!

Now, when you buy a subscription to the 'zine, not only do you get access to all of the archives, all of the extra desktops and get the ability to turn off advertising, you also get a free ad for yourself in the banner rotation (subject to approval), you get a discount on the anthology, and you get credits equal to most of the value of your subscription.

Credits are actual cold, hard cash. (Okay, fine, usually it's digital pixels through paypal that are never actually cash, but they are equivalent to cash...) Every credit is $1 - the WHOLE dollar - in the author's pocket.

If you like a particular author, or a particular article or piece of fiction, from anywhere in the current issue or the archives (provided we've got current contact with the author - we won't accept credits for authors we can no longer pay!), you can make sure that your subscription fee is going to THEM. Spread it out however you like - a credit here, a credit there, 10 credits over there. You can save your credits for up to one year after your last subscription expires, at which time they will be lost and all remaining credits applied to the site upkeep and administrative costs.

While not streamlined yet, the credits script is fully in place now and perfectly functional.

By January, the archives will be buttoned back up, so if you've been meaning to catch up on back issues and don't plan to subscribe, catch up soon!

....

My own list of things to do on the zine page (because that was an effort, and it's Sunday, and I'm DONE for now):

Subscribers perks page (move ad disabling to that page, add banner ad upload form, I'll have to re-write the banner ad footer script)
Block subscribers from applying credits to themselves.
Add ability to give credits to artists in the gallery (this will be tricky!)
Add ability to give non-writing staff credits.
Finish backend manipulation of credits. (Done through database now)

....

They aren't even in yet, and I'm already a third sold through the handbags. Woah!

....

Iron Man!!!! We got it from Netflix this week, and watched it twice. A delightful movie - I really loved it to pieces.

jemstone, now that I've seen the movie, your costume makes much more sense and gets many thumbs up! I want the fire extinguisher robot. *grins*

....

I owe you photos - I have dyed my hair midnight black, and it is very shocking and gothic and fun, but probably not something I will do again, so I should get evidence of it while it's here.

....

I haven't added to my nanowrimo count in days now, but honestly, I'm not feeling bad. I got what I wanted, which is a whole lotta words to work with, and I'm to the point where other things are seriously priority, like the anthology, and TMAS (done! done!) and fixing up EMG-Zine and working on the EMG wishlist script and stuff. Probably won't win this year, either, but it was a fun time, and I'll keep working with what I generated this round. I'm still aiming for 25k. 25k is a nice number.

All for now!