Advancing

Nod.

Almost 4,000 more words to add to the counter, I'll let you know when I upload them, but the grand totale is approaching the 100,000! (around 95,000).

As this is a happy-happy joy-joy moment, I'll post the promised, fine-grained battle-plan of the Battle of Memphis, as I originally (re-)created it a little over one month ago, when I was celebrating Litha in Alicante.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Battle of Memphis!

Well, yes, it's drawn in the sand. What did you understand when I talked about "fine-grained"? There are millions of grains of sand in that battle! You can click on the image to get a bigger version and count them yourself!

Ahem. :-)

OK, I would post the battle, but then I would have to kill you (and Google, and...) or risk spoiling a lot of suspense on a novel I'm sure nobody will read :-p

Well, the point is that after a dashing, daring, gasping movement, Bagâbuxsha (i.e. Megabyzos) has managed to catch the rebels unprepared (not exactly "by surprise", but, anyway...) and both parties, led by Faraoh Ienheru (a.k.a. Inaros) and stratégos Kharitymides (rebel side) and generals Bagâbuxsha and Taxmaspâda (Persian side), are getting themselves ready to weep blood-red over the Nile waters with their respective enemies' guts.

Charming.

Not really, but it's lotsa fun writing it (like those videogames where your troops die but you know nobody's really suffering... let's discriminate between current reality and past or ficticious times, shan't we?) and I hope to get through it fairly easily and make a good battle. Then there's only the Prosopitis thingie and the walk through the desert till Cyrene, and back to Athens, and then finishing the Spartan mission (that we left, remember gentle reader, back in the middle of it during Nanowrimo 2005) and we will be left... Probably more than the planned 120,000 words for the draft, but not many more, I guess...

Anyway... Best regards and Blessed Lúnasa (or Lughnassadh) for all that Celebrate!

Bellissimae

Will Write For Chocolate

This is a funny web comic about the writing bussiness and stuff...

I also love chocolate too! :-)

Will Write For Chocolate

Enjoy and wait for some update in the following days, although I've been reading and thinking more than writing as of late...

KALLISTEE

Does Latin "train the brain"?

Interesting blog entry about a subject I wrote yesterday (BTW, that blog hasn't been updated in a year, which is a pity):

Weblog - A Don's Life - Times Online: Does Latin "train the brain"?

ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗ ΚΑΙ BELLISSIMAE

Writing Tools (modern?)

Writing tools? Mmm...

The blosphere has made lots of bells and whistles about a Mac application, WriteRoom... It's a full screen application and a simple text editor, to write without distractions.

The boardbox/laptop equivalent of the AlphaSmarts, only simpler. Other offers have quickly sprouted here and there. Dark Room is a .NET equivalent for the Windows OS (I don't think it may run on the Mono free software framework on UNIX). Followed suitely by JDarkRoom, the Java equivalent (which is not working on my GNU/Linux box with Sun Java 1.4.2).

It's cool to get better productivity. But we have had that for years. For lots of years.

Enter the GNU/Linux console (or the Free/Open/Net-BSD console!):

a) Full screen.

b) Multitasking nevertheless.

HOWTO: Fire up VI (or Emacs; I prefer ViM, but you can choose among 1,000 text editors) and you have all the power of UNIX at your command. A simple, dumb editor? It's nice to write, but why ask for less when you can have the full screen power of UNIX, easier and more reliably???

I think we are living the Mac fad, which is Mac/Apple (re-)inventing everything again... Well, yeah. Paraphrasing the Inmortal F. Mercury: I want to break free.

ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗ

Links:

* ViM rules, and if you use GNU Screen you'll have all the productivity you need.
* EMACS is loved by many.
* Write Room
* Dark Room
* JDark Room
* Open Office has a Full-Screen mode
* Abiword has one too.
* LyX is a favourite of mine, and you can get full screen as well.

PS- Actually, this Write Room offers nothing (and seriously less than what) you couldn't have 20 or 30 years ago with any UNIX, or even some 15 years ago with DOS on a small PC (and let's not start with the Amiga, etc...).

Lingua Latina est uiua et bene, gratiae

Salue,

I felt a little bit fluffy, a LJ friend arrived in full, Latin force, and I thought: why not?

This looks like a pretty interesting blog, I've added it to my links bar as well.

BlogLatin

No more news related to the novels, except that I have managed to get a Spanish, recent edition of Xenophon's Kyropaedia and that I got a really cheap, pocket-but-hard-cover edition of Valerio Massimo manfredi's Empire of Dragons, which was in my bestsellers-to-do list...

Now, until Oden's Memnon is released later in the Summer, (and risking an Alexander's indigestion) my hopes are in the two novels about Alex (Stefen Pressfield's and Gisbert Haefs's ones) and in the early release of Haefs's last novel (Pilate's Girlfriend, Die Geliebte des Pilatus) as pocket book (because the bound edition is expensive, and I've got lotsa books to get).

I may get it anyway, compulsive fan in here, and get my little depression off because most of Haefs's books are not translated to Spanish... I'll have to jump to the ENglish editions, if they can be recommended (the Spanish ones are, at least, excellent).

Well... ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗ aut Bellissimae

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