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April 27, 2005

internet explorer? an important question

UPDATED TO ADD: Okay, is the column STILL missing for some of you? Because I took away the images I thought might be causing the problem. Please advise.

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Do you see a column to the right? It starts with the header "confused?", and continues with a list of my books, statistics for this site, archive links, etc etc.

Just today I heard from somebody who uses IE on a windows machine that she does not see the right hand column at all. I'm curious if this is a more general problem (in which case I wonder why I haven't heard about it before) or specific to her case. So please do let me know what you see, and what you don't, and which browser you use, and whether on a pc/windows or a mac.

01:10 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

oh, and: syndication stuff

to carry on in the same technobabble vein:

I have had quite a few people ask me why this weblog isn't available as an RSS feed. If you don't know what that is, and you don't care, please carry on without me.

I have tried, at various times, to make the rss feed work. I just spent another highly frustrating half hour, without success. I have tried just using the built in movable type syndication feature; I have tried Feed Burner. Without success. I have looked at the great tutorials at Learning Movable Type, and I now have the url of an extended entry at Feed Burner explaining (maybe) what has gone wrong and what I need to do. But really what I need to do is write, so I'm going to forget all about rss feeds and syndication and all that other great stuff, and go write. When I have some words down, I may feel strong enough to take another run at this. Or maybe not.

I am pretty good at technology, for the most part, but I declare myself officially cowed in this particular matter.

02:05 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

from the smart bitches: the definitive word on sex scenes

You have to understand, first and foremost, that the Smart Bitches pull no punches. At their place you can read posts with titles like: I like big dicks and I cannot lie. You get links like this one (Sex in the Romance: A Review of Romantic Encounters of the Close Kind), where you'll find a blow-by-blow analysis of sex scenes as read by a man.

I love the Smart Bitches weblog. I love it as much as I love gettupgrrl and Robyn Bender's fanfic and all things Farscape. Here's what I believe: if anybody can bring the romance genre into the light of day (and by that I mean, get people to admit that (a) there is some great writing in the genre and (b) it's worth reading), it's this group of women. It may take a couple more years, but I think they could pull it off.

So here's the (maybe not absolutely final) word on sex scenes from a post titled Too Much Sex is Bad, MMMKay?

Now sit down and brace yourself, because this may come as a BIG FUCKING SHOCK (whoops, sorry, BIG MMM-KAYING SHOCK), but I generally don’t judge the merits of a book solely on sex scenes or whether naughty language is used. If the characters engage me, if the craft is solid, if the plot is entertaining, I’ll enjoy the book whether it had 20 sex scenes or none at all. What a revolutionary concept!

07:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack