A.R. Van Halleorg

This is just a small post to help people out if they have an difficulty getting this particular plugin to work. After the time I wasted, trying to figure it out, I thought I’d go ahead and save you some time.

1. Make sure that wp_footer() is right before your end body tag. <?php wp_footer(); ?>
2. Make sure that there is a container that holds ONLY your posts. (usually #content)
3. Make sure that the posts have a class in common. (usually .post)
4. Make sure navigation has a class or id. (usually #navigation or .navigation)

Reload your homepage and you should see it adding more posts when you scroll down the page.

Machete

Well, I went to see Machete (Watch the trailer) with my uberly awesome coworker (the one that inspired the post: The Apartment Building That Sat Between L&A:SVU And A Horror Film) and it was hysterical.

Minor spoiler warning here. Skip to the bold text if you don’t wanna read it.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***
I hadn’t realized that it was a comedy. It kinda reminded me of the more talented style of Bitch Slap. Not an insult by the way, I liked that movie. It was so utterly stupid and ridiculous you had to cramp up in giggles. Anyways, so Machete was successful punchline after successful punchline, and when no one spoke…it was the actors who became the punchline. Steven Segal and Lindsay Lohan….seriously…hilarious. You can imagine the punchlines there; especially when Lindsay wakes up naked in a church and sees a nun’s outfit.

To Kill A Mockingbird

I was working on my article for writing fear in characters and came upon the stroke of brilliance that is my memory bank and remembered that Harper Lee did fantastic job in To Kill A Mockingbird at capturing curiosity/daring in children that escalate into a big fear and finally comes back down to earth in the form of understanding. I haven’t read it in a while, so my mind may be a little fuzzy on it, so I went and bought a copy.

Can I just say that I think it’s utterly brilliant that after 11 years, the book is still as captivating as it was the first time I read it? It’s among my favourite books of all time and I definitely would recommend reading it.

I’m far to tired to really make a review for either one of these tonight, so it’ll have to go for another day. Sorry guys!

Hope you all had a great day.

** Updated note : If you can’t get Infinite Scroll Plugin for WordPress to work in your blog, make sure that you have <?php wp_footer(); ?> right before the </body> tag in footer.php **

What started as a pretty typical Sunday, ended in intellectual mayhem. I had begun the journey by wanting to fix an issue on a theme I worked on, so that it functioned with Infinite Scroll. At the same time I wanted to fix another issue of links around images for another theme I had worked on, because it’s outright irritating when pictures link back to themselves instead of the main post.

So I thought…two birds, one stone; why not!?

Now, I had it set in my mind that WordPress had changed quite a few things in 3.0, but I didn’t realize how much had changed in actuality. Some of the ‘changes’ aren’t really changes, but just a shining light on something that already existed before. Next thing you know I’m using the functions.php file like plugin central and am making changes in there and am completely baffled as to why I hadn’t done it that way in the first place!

Suffice it to say that at 1:31 am, I have still not solved either problem, because I ended up going on 4 other tangents, which led me to 3 more in each…I don’t think I’m going to be done with this for another couple of days. Which sucks, but can be beneficial later on.

Now if only I could capture bloginfo with the added input. I got it to parse the html in the blogtitle easily enough…but getting the html out of the alt tag…oye. I guess that’s something I can figure out when I wake up.

Have a good day!

Productivity

I realize that my productivity on my own blog has decreased immensely, however, I have a good reason for that! I’ve been busy writing. I know; it’s terrible, but I have to get this story out of my head and onto paper (in a file), before I lose it all. I’m sure you all have encountered a similar situation!

Writing Tools

Once I get it out, I’ll be continuing my tool. Who knew it could be so hard to write those. I always scoffed and ridiculed the fact that some helpful articles were a mere 5-6 paragraphs long. Now I think I understand why. I believe that they encountered the same thing I did. Where is the limit? … I got into writing the article and next thing you know I’m off on 17 different tangents that all explain the concept, but are just TOO into detail. Unless that’s what people want. Personally, that’s what I want. At this rate, however, I’m going to end up having an entire category devoted to the different emotions to write into characters’ personalities. Oye. I’m dreading the maintenance on that already.

The Rant

Aside from that, I need to take a moment to rant about my local bookstore.

Dear Local Bookstore,

What the hell were you thinking, when you came upon the bombshell of brilliance that is your thought process, and decided to put all the books about the ancient world in a random place that no one can find. And then not only do you move it, but then you don’t let the employees know. I swear, nothing is more irritating than ‘helpful employees’ that stand exactly where I was standing for 10 minutes scanning the books and then scratch their head and say, ‘I guess they must have moved it.’. Clearly, Sherlock.

If you could…oh, I dunno, FIND THEM, that’d be great.

Ever devoted bookbuyer,
Me.

Sherlock

On a tremendously random note– Okay, perhaps not all that random, since I just mentioned Sherlock’s name in the above rant; I was told (threatened) to watch Sherlock (the BBC mini-series) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was indeed quite an interesting show. It’s full of wit and dark-humour. It’s like a dream come true for every sarcastic individual out there. The actors are brilliant. And as my coworker (the one who threatened me into watching it) has mentioned (about 10000 times a day), it’s ridiculously hilarious that Sherlock gets all ‘Awww *hearts*’ whenever Watson thinks something he did was brilliant. That’s not the hilarious part. It’s the crest-fallen look on his face when Watson turns it into an insult after. HAH. Maybe I’m just mean.

Anyways. Aside from that, it’s superb and delightful, both intellectually and aesthetically, for the mind to watch.

Have a great day!

I finally got to go see this apartment that my coworker has been going on and on about for … well, months. Apparently, it was in one of the most horrific states of being and needed a lot of labour and love to get into shape. It looks pretty darn good.

However.

I get to this place after walking three minutes from the nearest Metro station and upon entering the first set of doors, my journey began. The small entry has mailboxes and buzzers. It’s probably about the size of a small room and the only other exit is a locked door. I don’t know about you, but this pretty much was an awesome setup a la detective show / horror movie. Yeah, we’ve seen what happens in small rooms with two sets of doors. Dare we mention the Saw movies and what launched him into his mission to save people?…

Anyways, so after sending a text with my trusty cell, I managed to get past the second set of doors. Oh god, it’s one of THOSE entries. Ya know, with 4-5 doors, around a staircase, narrow area. The kind where someone gets murdered in apartment 3 and some child in apartment 1 was visiting his friend in apartment 4 and they both witnessed it on their little balcony out back. Yes, I realize I’m exaggerating, but that’s just the vibe I got.

So I head up the stairs and of course they’re a little creaky, or nearly just. It’s the kind of staircase that you don’t want to run into in a horror movie, because just when you thought you were cleverly getting away from the bad-guy, it decides to creak. You get the idea. So I reach the top of the stairs, and it’s pretty much like downstairs, 4-5 doors, narrow…except this floor now has an area where you can get thrown over a rail and land on the stairs effectively breaking your neck, spine, or various limbs. Higher death potential.

Somehow I felt like Det. Benson or Stabler should be coming up the stairs in a hot pursuit of the Saw guy.

I laughed to myself, because I have such an overactive writing imagination. It’s fun. I love coming up with 1001 ways something could be dramatic and gloomy. I actually giggle about it.

Then I meet, quite possibly, the most horrible thing ever. A light that turns on by itself. Yes, laugh it up. It’s creepy. This isn’t a normal light. It’s a hallway light, inside the apartment…another narrow room…I’m seeing a trend here. And this thing, because of some electrical issue, seems to flicker a lot when it activates. So I’m walking through, the rooms are dark, except this horror film hallway and it’s flickering. I felt like I should be in a warehouse somewhere trying to avoid the guy in the doll mask and listening to the irritating drip drip of a leaky pipe.

There’s just too many details to go into. This apartment was so weird. But at the same time it was really nice and I learned that not only is my coworker an uber nerd, but I think she ate 17 other uber nerds. I’ve never seen so many graphic novels and figurines in one room.

Welcome, to the most useless bit of text you’ll ever have to read on this blog. hehehe.

SHE was Xerox, a might warrior printer, forged in the heat of the furnace!
The power cord. The paper!
The caution label.
Her cartridge, will change the words.

Moral of the story? Don’t stay up for 36 hours after watching a Xena Marathon. You end up writing junk like that at 1:37 AM. (Found this snippet in a file dating back to March 3rd, 2008 1:37AM) Don’t ask.

I’ve been spending hours upon hours of my time working on articles that I’m hoping will be useful for writer’s to take information from and apply them to their characters. I’m not bothering with the general layouts of stories, because I think there are enough self-help books out there on how to be a writer. These tools are geared for rounding characters and situations based on real-life observations. I thought that all those years I spent listening to people and observing them should be shared with others. It would be even neater if others would also give their view on the topics as well. I won’t hold my breath for participation, but I can hope for it.

Having said all that, there was one thing in particular I’ve been working on lately; fear. The understanding of fear. Is it survival instinct? Is it a defense mechanism? Do you think that it’s a lack of understanding? Do you think that reckless necessarily means that one is unaware of the dangers? I have pages and pages in my blog post draft of this topic, I’m trying to hone it down to a few things instead of the mashup of everything I’ve accumulated.

Let me know what you think, if you’d like.

If not, then that’s fine and I still wish you a good day!

What do I do on my vacation?

Not a whole lot, to be honest. Right now I’m battling Big Fish Games to be able to even type this post. This game is bloody heavy to download for some reason.

So far, during the first half of my vacation, I’ve done some writing. Didn’t have the cash to get FinalDraft, so I’m using CeltX and glaring at it a lot. It’s pretty cool either way. I just wish I could get it to stop taking the character/dialog in one spot and making it 1 characters name…it’s really weird. And how do we fake the margins on purpose to save a line!?

I’ve got a little further in my reading materials. The last one I read, Your Screenplay SUCKS!: 100 Ways to Make it Great, mentioned that only a beginner would be reading the books…that’s a little bit lame to say. I’ve been writing scripts for ages, some things have changed, while others haven’t. So, for being politically correct, it’s for beginners and anyone wanting to brush up on their rusty unused scriptwriting skills.

Next up on my pile of books to read: Writing the TV Drama Series and Crafty Screenwriting (thank you Alex Epstein for referencing it 1,000 times in Crafty TV Writing so I had NO CHOICE to buy it. Pfft.)

I’ve learned how to play poker in the last 2 days. Now I’m on Full Tilt Poker and rocking it hardcore! Beginner’s luck, no doubt. Did a tournament earlier today, 501^th position out of 10,000 registered players.

All in all, my vacation has been nice and quiet. I’ll post more later, this was just a random update, cause I’m really bored at the moment. Next up…fixing the lag of these keystrokes.

Have a great day!

For those of you who don’t know who Janina Gavankar is…Papi from the L Word. And if you don’t know who that is…I’m sorry. I don’t have another reference for you

I’m posting this, because I really love this cover. Not to mention she’s beautiful to watch and she can sing.

I’ve been reading this excellent book, written by Alex Epstein, called Crafty TV Writing : Thinking Inside the Box. It’s a really fantastic book for screen-writing, and I’m sure most of you who do screen-writing probably already know of it, but on the off-chance that you don’t. You need to get it. I’ve never looked at television like I do now. I keep going back on all the shows I’ve watched, searching for the patterns described, the templates, the consistency in successful shows. The way they pull the stories through the acts and come up with that final scene. The way they frustrate the hell out of you, but you can’t help going back. I wonder if we’re gluttons for punishment or just overly curious.

Perhaps both.

One part of the book makes mention of a beatsheet.

“A beat is the smallest unit of storytelling. It is a piece of the story in which something happens.”

So basically, it’s beats of pauses, not like a rhythm or anything.

Rambling…anyways…so I thought I’d give it a go. I have this habit of wanting to obtain perfection on a first attempt, and like I’ve discovered, while reading this book, it’s just not obtainable on the first try unless you’re someone uber and even then most of the time isn’t the FIRST draft, only the official first draft. Rewrites are the way!

So keeping that in mind, I embarked on the mass short-cut scene writing, so that I would have something to work with and fine-tune.

And it’s working. I’ve never had a screenplay flow so easily on to the paper. Knowing that quite a few of these will probably be written out and others will be further pushed into additional scenes, doesn’t feel like such a daunting situation anymore.

Instead I look forward to seeing where the characters are taking me, which characters have decided that they want to be core cast and which want to be regulars, and others…that are just for fluff and character. It’s interesting.

What am I learning from this beatsheet? You quickly see how fast/slow the scenes are in your Episode. I’m also noticing the places where I used to add fluff and why it’s not important to have them in the Episode at all. What I thought was important, ended up being explained away in another scene without even needing to outright explain it to the viewers and that’s something I never had visible before.

It’s like it gives you a fresh perspective on the true timeline and a clear goal. My next challenge, will probably be finding the scenes that separate the acts in an interesting way so that viewers stay hooked through the commercial and don’t change the channel.

This is quite a liberating experience for me right now. I’ve been writing amateurish scripts since I was 11, so 14 years now and only now am I truly trying to work on a technique and come up with something to present to the world. If this works out really well, maybe I’ll attempt a spec script! *crosses fingers in hope*

That would be cool.

Have a good day!