Today's content release comes from Astrodragon. Enjoy Part 1 of "A Dragon Abroad"! You can find that in the Second Generation section of the stories collections. And don't forget to comment!
For today's release, we've got something special.
From Elrod, we have a story about the Headmistress, herself, Mrs Carson aka Lady Astarte: "Blast from the Past"
And from our newest canon author, Phoenix Spiritus, we have a new student for the Fall 2007 class in a story called "Soaring"
Enjoy! And don't forget to comment or drop by the forums for feedback and discussion!
Today marks the 'middle' point in a somewhat challenging performance week for me... nine shows, five days. Today is the only day from Weds to Sunday this week that I have only one show. That gives me just a little time this afternoon to make sure there's some new reading material up on the site for everyone. What shall it be? What shall it be...
Ah, here's something that has been waiting some time to be seen. It's only been a couple weeks since Part 3... but I'm sure there's plenty of readers eager to get this next installment of "The Final Trump" from Bek, so here is Part 4! Enjoy! Comment! Dance a silly jig!
Ok... you can skip that last part... just working on my Jedi mind tricks...
In the past week or so, I've been trying to work through alternate means of handling some issues of publishing workflow caused by a recent Joomla patch. From what I can tell, they've done something (unintentional or perhaps intentionally to support something I don't know about) that prevents us from doing category changes to articles from the front end editor. This makes it impossible for us to use the "In Progress" "Review" "etc" categories as a tracking process before final publication visibly to the public. Not that such a system is 'required' but it does make it easier for two things: one, it makes it possible for a us to do all of this in the front end instead of giving a lot of authors access to the back end of the site. That's important because it means I don't have to go through a huge vetting process to make sure authors are trusted before giving them access. And second, because it allows almost all of the process to operate without my personal intervention, keeping the maintenance of the site as low impact as possible.
Obviously, I'll keep working on things... it may be that it'll reverse itself in a Joomla patch because I settle on an alternative method. In the meantime, I've taken a look at the access levels system and made some adjustments based on my current understanding of them, which is far better than when I originally set up the site. Most users won't experience any changes... but authors, both WhatIFeers and canon authors, might experience some restructuring changes... and obviously, at the moment, we won't be using the whole tracking system... to minimize the need for category changes. Continue to create new articles in the appropriate "In Progress" category for that class of story... and then just leave it in "In Progress" until you are ready for it to move to official published status. If you need to prompt people to give you feedback, feel free to PM me or post in the appropriate forum thread which story you want moved and where you want it moved to and I'll get to it as soon as I can... but don't feel you HAVE to move things just because that's what the system demands. We'll get back to using things as intended when we can make it work right.
In the meantime... please let me know if you don't have access to something you think you should. Or if you DO have access to something you think is supposed to be hidden for you. Don't assume its no big deal or leave it as is so you can snoop around... just remember, if you have access to something that you shouldn't, its entirely possible that someone with far less concern for the integrity of the site also has access. And where you might do a little snooping, they might break things permanently.
Ok... site problems aside... we have some new content lined up today. First from E.E. Nalley, we have the 4th Part of "The Bear, the Bitch, and Everything" ... and then, if that isn't sufficient to satisfy your reading urges for the evening; we also have Part 2 of "Head over Tail" from Morpheus. My Impression of this combination is that it should leave everyone happy for the week. But don't leave us hanging, let the authors know what you think. Comment or join a Feedback discussion in the forums!
So.. ya. I tried to fix something last night and, in working while tired, almost crashed the whole place and spent most of the night figuring out how to fix it. Not good and certainly not an ideal reason for not publishing this afternoons story, but it is what happened. As a result, I ended up grabbing some sleep during the day today before heading to the theatre to work and completely forgot that releasing stories on Friday was now a thing. Sorry about that. I'll try to avoid breaking everything in the future :P
What WOULD have been released if I had been here and taken care of it properly... was Part 2 of MageOhki's backstory piece for Hikaru and Japan for the Second Generation. Enjoy "Rises the Sun" ! Remember, its a Gen 2 story, so it'll be at the top of the SECOND sidebar well (each of those square panels in the sidebar is a 'well') below the advertisement on the right. And if you go looking in the Stories menu zone, you actually have to select Gen 2 from the left sidebar menu, because only the Original Timeline stories display in the main panel by default.
What's that? What WOULD I consider a good reason for not publishing the story? Hmm... finding the woman of my dreams and discovering that she's filthy rich and wants to help me become the woman of HER dreams and we're on a plane starting our world wide trip of places we want to consider for our wedding... I think that would be a justified reason to miss a release and still have everyone completely happy for me to have done so. :)
I managed to survive the opening of this musical. I ended my work day filling out my time sheet ... only 112.5 hrs for the two week period of set-up/tech rehearsals and preview week. While my boss is going to have a bit of a fit... its actually about twenty hours fewer than I had expected in planning for the opening. And could have been far worse than that, given how outdated and low end our sound equipment happens to be. The only downside is that my pay is so much lower than industry average for sound engineers, that even overtime rates are below it... But, I got a good night's sleep and while I don't have the day off tomorrow; there isn't a show, so I'll get another night's sleep before having to mix things again. And the run itself shouldn't be too rough, because we're mostly limited by Equity (actor's union) restrictions on number of performances.
Here at the Whateley site, it's another two story Monday. Both of today's stories fall in the original timeline. First, from Elrod, we have Part 5 of the latest Kayda story "There's No Place Like Poe." Elrod has been working closely with E.E. Nalley on this one and has shared the by-line on the piece. The second story is one many people have been eagerly awaiting. Originally released in fan fic format, Morpheus' "Absinthe" has been reworked and is now officially part of the year 2 story.
Enjoy! Comment! Go crazy (if you spend too much time on Absinthe, you may not have a choice)!
Every now and then I jokingly tell people that Sound Engineering is more difficult work than running a nuclear reactor. Considering I spent a number of years as a Reactor Plant Operator for the Navy and am currently the Live Mix Engineer on a world premiere musical with 16 wireless microphones on actors and an orchestra of two keyboards, violin, cello, french horn, and percussion (also all mic'd and/or direct inputs)... I can safely make the comparison. In all honesty, running a reactor may require memorization of a lot of operating procedures; but even in casualty and high power testing conditions (both of which I have first hand experience on); the mixing I'm doing now is easily more taxing/demanding mentally.
Being able to break down all those complexities of sound into distinguishable (improvable) components with an awareness of what the current state means, what active manipulation can do, and how the end result can be put back together for better musicallity...in real time... makes the most complicated gaming boss fight or even a nuclear power plant fast recovery start up procedure following a scram... seem like child's play. Ok, admittedly, if I mess up a show mix, there's no risk that I'll irradiate half the west coast. But still!
Or... in simpler terms... my brain may have been fried Monday... but that was just the searing to lock in the flavor. It's spent the rest of the week roasting in the smoker.
However... even my toasty brain can get a little relief long enough to announce this week's content: we continue with Part 3 of "The Final Trump" from Bek D. Corbin! Enjoy!
So, as anticipated my weekend was long and I still haven't filed my taxes. BUT, two stories are up. One, from E.E. Nalley, is a continuation (Part 3) of an ongoing story "The Bear, The Bitch, and Everything." Just when you think E.E. and Elrod can't push things any further... they get creative. :) The second piece for this evening is from Morpheus. It's the beginning of a new Imp based piece, the fifth in her arc, called "Head over Tail." Part 1 of this new Imp story is also up. Both of tonights offerings can be found in the Original Timeline collection.
Enjoy! Write comments and feedback! Think kindly of me as I work on filing my taxes...
Not much to say today, but hopefully this release goes off smoothly. I'll be about 4.5-5 hours into a day that runs about seven hours past the release time (I'll start at 9:30 and will probably finish up around 22:00... with an hour off for dinner around 3 or 4 in the afternoon). The rest of the weekend will be roughly the same, so if I'm wandering around here drooling and nibbling on brain matter Monday to try to get the release posted, be thankful to Dan and Phoenix for doing most of the cleanup/code editing these days.
If you're curious what I'm working on at the moment, check out the show's site at http://thedonnerpartymusical.com ... besides some history and details about the writer and lyricist, there's some rehearsal footage and other interesting tidbits.
Here in the Whateley Universe, we have Part 2 of Wasamon's "Summer of My German Heritage", which is the introductory story in the Eisenmadel arc. It's in the 2nd Gen story collection. Enjoy and remember to comment or join the feedback conversation in the forums!
A few little changes on the site this week. The secondary menu is over in the left hand sidebar. That opens up some more options for menu use... so I might be tweaking what buttons are up at the top and which options are at the left. The goal is going to be to be a simpler more intuitive set up options for new and less frequent users. I know changes like that aren't always welcomed by our veteran users who are here all the time, but we need to be easier for new folks to get involved with... or eventually it will only be a handful of veteran readers and the authors. And while we like you veteran readers... we want more hits than that. :P
Speaking of hits... you're definitely going to want to check out today's new content. First off, we've got the long awaited Part 3 of E.E. Nalley and Bek D. Corbin's "Road to Whateley" introducing their 2nd Gen characters with the crazy counterpoint tale to Calmari. For those of you who missed out on the confusion, "Road to Whateley" and "'Calimari'" were the integrated stories designed to introduce the 2nd Generation to the readers. Unfortunately, mid-way into the process of releasing the stories, E.E.'s health issues prevented him from being able to successfully work on his parts of the story and Part 2 and 3 were stalled. They managed to push Part 2 through... but finally, with his rapidly improving health, E.E. has dug in and finished this one to get it off the checklist so he can have more fun working with the very active currently planning and writing that is going on. So here it is: Part 3 of "Road to Whateley" now available in the 2nd Generation Stories collection.
And from Elrod, the continuation of Kayda's story, Part 4 of "There's No Place Like Poe" ... which you can find in the Original Timeline section.
Enjoy! And Please remember to comment!
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