CrystalTillman.comCrystal Tillman's home on the web.

On a whim I decided to switch from Microsoft Word XP To Open Office on my main computer.  I’ve been using open office on my MSI Wind since I got it. It loads quickly and runs smoothly even with Firefox running in the background.

So far I’ve been really enjoying it.  It loads documents noticeably faster than MS Word XP.  It will open MS word documents, so I haven’t lost anything. Another bonus is that it saves in Open Document Format, which a lot of programs can open.

My favorite part about it though, is it’s free. I could say the same about google docs but I prefer something on my hard drive for now. I’m still stuck with the mindset of  a dial up customer. That my internet is likely to go down at any time.  So, I’m not ready to go to cloud computing just yet.

I’m using open office for my NaNoWriMo writing this year, and so far no problems. I am going to make a back up every night of the file, as I’m not sure how well Open office will handle large files.  I doubt that it will have any problems, but better to make sure.

Writer is the only part of open office that I have used so far. I’ll try the other parts of it as I go along. PowerPoint is the only other part of office that I used on a regular basis. I use it as a make shift card file for my Petz 4 Game to keep track of the different pets, and what other pets they’re related too.

I took classes on Excel and Access when I was in vocational school,  and I’m interested to see how much of that translates over.  I’ll probably put up another post when I get a chance to try it.

NaNoWriMo News

I’m currently at 3,507 which is over the day two goal of 3,334 by 173 words.

It’s going a lot easier than last year because I have a better idea of what I’m doing.  The hardest part is not going back to edit the spelling when I make a typo. The point is to get a rough draft, not a polished piece. It is something I didn’t have as much trouble with last year.

Another problem, is that it’s dialog heavy, so far. I haven’t been putting in much information about the settings that you’re in.  I’m going to have to go back and add in some extra detail. Good for the word count, but bad for the time taken. I’ll have to be careful to put that in the first time through in the upcoming chapters.

I hope things go smoothly for those of y’all trying NaNoWriMo. If you’re looking for a nano buddy follow me on twitter, and add me to your NaNoWriMo.Org buddy list. My ID there is stancymckatt

Happy writing, I hope you have a great week!

I’m getting to the point that I want to grow my blog again. New theme, add a gallery, etc. Make it a shining new thing to play with. I even looked around at other sites, and got to tinkering with making a background texture…

Then tonight I realized the following things in quick succession.

1. I haven’t finished working on this layout yet. It needs:
A. the about page needs finishing
B. The 2009 NaNoWriMo Badge
C. A good description.
D. A new title.

2. I can just post a short post with links to my new photos, and artwork, in my DeviantArt gallery in a short blog entry (I only update it once or twice a week at the most). I would post a short entry to let y’all know about the gallery update even if it was hosted here, so it’s not that big of a difference when it comes to that. . (It’s at http://stancymckatt.deviantart.com if you want to check it out. .)

3. I have three other web projects that need my attention before my blog gets an overhaul.

4. Putting an art gallery in would require that I move from my current host, which I don’t have the money to do right now. (Many thanks to my very gracious host for letting me borrow a cup o bandwidth and space while I’m low on funds.)

5. The main reason I’m trying to talk myself into building a new layout is that this one isn’t purple. Which is one of the main reasons why I picked this theme out.

6. I need to focus on posting more than on the layout. It needs to be a habit, rather than something I do when I get tired of procrastinating about it.

…. And yes, this is a list post, even though I discussed how much I disliked them some months back. I’ve trimmed the blogs that subscribe to via RSS down considerably, and cut out the ones that were posting so many lists. I still avoid reading list posts in general; it’s the only format I could think of for this post… Ah well…

Hopefully I’ve talked myself out of building a new layout. A t least till sometime next year when I get the other three projects 75% done. After all it’s content that counts the most on a personal blog, eh?

Anyone else never quite happy with their blog’s layout?

Tetris the block dropping game. Hard to believe it’s two years older than me!…Well not really now that I’ve thought about it a minute, because the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is a few months older than me.

I’ve spent many an hour working on trying to get past 20,000 points on Tetris or a knock off of it.  It’s not just a matter hand eye coordination. I have to think carefully about just where to put each piece, otherwise I get a hole in the line. If I get a hole in the row by accident, I have to work around that row. Which is a puzzle hard to solve when pieces are dropping almost as fast as you can place them!

I hope that Tetris stays around, and doesn’t go away anytime soon. Maybe it’ll have the staying power of crossword puzzles, or some of the other classic games like monopoly, cards, and checkers.

What game do y’all want to become a classic with staying power?