h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Guess who rigged the polls and got to Polish "After Flixborough"?



Ben

And there was me thinking we were doing Seal Sex together...
Pin

Been there, done that, it was great!



B

...does that mean I can borrow the T-shirt?

OK, seriously, what are you going to do with Flixboro?
You're not going to reduce the fonts, are you?

I want to talk to you about that. You have presumably written it as you want it presented, and I need to find out what the Official UG view is on that.

Can I get back to you?

(*why* dont you have any IM accounts?)

Ben

...what's an IM account?

Instant Messenger - realtime one-2-one chat.

http://messenger.msn.com/

I am discussing After Flixborough and Fonts and things right now Ben-2-Sheep!

B

I'll remember that if I ever get up to 10wpm

About the fonts, the piece, etc...I really don't know whether the way it reads now is the way I want it or not.
You improved it before. Your comments on that first version made it better. You'd probably make it better again.
I wouldn't say this to many people, but I think I'm more interested in what you might make of this than I am in keeping it just so. I don't mean just 'polishing'. I mean seriously contributing to it, and sharing it.
Then again, this is maybe not the piece

There, I've said it anyway. One of these days, we really ought to write something together. Seal Sex with progeny, if you like.

Pin

Well, the NSS is pretty collaborative. I wonder what we would write, if we wrote together.... It is tempting, isn't it?

Regarding AF - the mood of the meeting among the miners seems to be to present it fonts and all, with a couple of nods towards standard GML, (the tag is not standard, and may not be supported in future versions of the site). The debate is still in progress, but the majority view is in favour of taking it as-is.

However, since you have given me a fairly free rein, I will take a look at it and see what I want to change about it, if anything. I'll let you know when it's ready to look at.

Incidentally, they are all terrified you would not let us run the piece if I changed so much as a pixel of it. You have a reputation, young Pin.

On another subject: did you know that the NSS is running at well over 40,000 words? It is a spendid and scary thing.

And while I am being indiscrete, I might as well tell you that Seal Sex has not been forgotten. It is being saved for a specific date. I had nothing to do with the suggestion about which date. Of course I didn't!

Take care.

B

The NSS is certainly collaborative, though not all that many of the 40,000 words are ours!

But the thing makes me happy, because it seems to have become what I hoped for but didn't expect. Lots of people writing unselfconsciously, feeding off each others ideas, playing with each other's characters. And you're back in it, of course (whether or not the story has anything to do with that)

Let's just think about a joint project, then. One or the other suggest it when an idea seems right. We'll be pretty congruent. We always are, yeah?

Reputation? In fact there's not much I'd be protective about, because not much turns out just as intended. It's only really the obvious stuff, that no-one would think of changing anyway.

In fact my motivation doesn't run all that deep. Remember what I said about yours and Boots' catharsis the other day? Think about it; I don't normally go there (just once, in fact). And I don't have Jodan's obsessive productivity, or Speckly's angst, or Trout's penchant for verbally exposing himself.

Just at the moment, I'm coasting. Lurking a lot, looking for ideas, refining a few things that will never see hootoo. Now and again I wonder if I'm finished here as an Entry contributor, and then I realise that this is still the place to try things. The flow will start up again; I'm not too worried about when.

I did try a bit of Ben-homage, but you weren't watching. You were going on a bit, and you got me thinking about dead things and frozen time in a Scandinavian setting. But it was rubbish anyway. No matter...

Stay Ben. You're the best of the best.
Pin

I have copied and pasted the gml into a new entry, A2213407.

There aren't any changes as such yet, other than adding the UG logo, and I am not entirely happy with that as it is. I will try to have it riding abve the body of the entry, I think, but not centred which would be overly twee.

I have printed it out in order to work out what rationale there is to the different fonts.

Jodan and Tube haven't set me a deadline on this one, and the thing which will take the time is reading the GML guidelines, and working out how I am going to implement them or break them.

All the best.

B

Oh, and !

B

There isn't a deliberate pattern to the fonts.
There's one that seems to have been used to mark the 'official' stuff, but mainly it was just to convey the idea of different voices.

What are you planning to do with the invitation to extend it? I guess it still stands (surprising and poignant that almost nobody remembered so far)

Dunno.

*scratches head*

I'll get back to you on that.

B

"monumental"...?

The shallot and the arctic wonder e-wol'd at the same time and returned at the same time. That's a coincidence ain't it?

Trout

Shallot?

You reckon Fishboy's jealous?
Still, don't suppose he evers get to e-lope with class Pre-Raphaelite totty...
Pin