"Dance of Shiva"

[Bob Schroeck]

So... like I said I would a few weeks back, I've assembled all the chapters of John Biles' Dance of Shiva and converted them to HTML, and that to MOBI format.  Right now I'm doing a double-purpose read-through and edit pass before a final MOBI conversion.  I've been fixing spelling errors, and I've been converting everything that's in ALL CAPS to italics (except SHIVA's speech) to improve the readability in HTML and on ebooks.  I'm two-thirds of the way through it as I write this.

Anyway, the reason I'm even mentioning it now is basically to ask itsune9tl to relay a query to Biles for me:  He's got a lot of mid-90s fansub-transliteration spellings of character names -- "Macky", "Celia", and "Wasyuu" in particular.  And he uses both "Macky" and "Mackie".  I would like to standardize the spellings -- which of the latter two would he rather see throughout the story?  And does he want Celia and Wasyuu converted to the modern accepted spellings?

Thanks.

[classicdrogn]

Celia is shown in English text on screen, if you mean Celia Stingray. Doesn't get more canon than that.

[itsune9tl]

So... like I said I would a few weeks back, I've assembled all the chapters of John Biles' Dance of Shiva and converted them to HTML, and that to MOBI format.  Right now I'm doing a double-purpose read-through and edit pass before a final MOBI conversion.  I've been fixing spelling errors, and I've been converting everything that's in ALL CAPS to italics (except SHIVA's speech) to improve the readability in HTML and on ebooks.  I'm two-thirds of the way through it as I write this.

Anyway, the reason I'm even mentioning it now is basically to ask itsune9tl to relay a query to Biles for me:  He's got a lot of mid-90s fansub-transliteration spellings of character names -- "Macky", "Celia", and "Wasyuu" in particular.  And he uses both "Macky" and "Mackie".  I would like to standardize the spellings -- which of the latter two would he rather see throughout the story?  And does he want Celia and Wasyuu converted to the modern accepted spellings?

Thanks.

He's on Space Battles.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/...les.30554/
Send him a PM.

[Labster]

Maybe he'll log in eventually, how reliable could that...

Last seen
57 minutes ago

Seems like a good bet.

I might read it again too, if I can give spelling feedback. Dance of Shiva always makes me happy, and I am really depressed right now.

[Norgarth]

well, yeah Labster, I've been linking to chapters of his current story (Fusionlance, a Dragonlance based mega-fusion) over in the updates thread. 

I even specificly noted the first few times that it was Mr Biles

[Bob Schroeck]

Guess it's time for me to get a SpaceBattles account, as I doubt it'll let me fire off a message to him without one.

[Bad Moon]

It's a wretched hive of scum and weebery.  You must be cautious.

[Rajvik]

It's a wretched hive of scum and weebery.  You must be cautious.

And if that doesn't work, be sure to purge the area with lots of fire, if possible, nuke the site from orbit.

(its the only way to be sure)

[Dartz]

Just........ I can't remember what the fiction section was like before Worm happened and Hiver wrote an SI fic - but I know that's when it changed.

It's always been a cynical sort of place that fanwanks fiction to death.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, I finished my proofread pass. If anyone wants to see the HTML version, it's here, at least for a few days. (It's about 1.2 Mb, so I don't want it cluttering up my website for too long.)

Next step is getting that SpaceBattles account.

[Star Ranger4]

*downloading... Review in progress*

[Labster]

OK, the weird thing I see so far is that the document is not valid HTML/XML.  What a "</br>" is doing there I don't know... there are also some paragraphs that begin with </p> for some reason.

Next, s/tatoo/tattoo/g.

Finally for today, I saw "Dr. Pepper", which after discussions at programming conferences, I have been convinced that such beverage contains caffeine but no period.  Wikipedia says they lost their punctuation in the 1950s.  Maybe not worth changing.

EDIT:

but most of the concert participants weren't exactly rolling in dough, yet anyway.

This either needs to be "dough (yet, anyway)." or "dough -- yet, anyway."  I can't read it without the pause between the two words, there must be some grammatical reason for that.

"three eyed" needs to become "three-eyed".  /me looks up grammar... because it's a compound modifier.

[Star Ranger4]

Seriously, Labster??? slash br, to an old fart like myself is a line break that is not the end of a paragraph. /p marks the end of a paragraph that is not, as I recall, (perhaps incorrectly) a /br class break? Ergo, I would posit that the HTML standard has changed and you might not have realised, where I have????

[Star Ranger4]

shite. There was additional sub context there that seems to have been lost in my posting... now where is that burro???

[Labster]

No, </br> is an invalid tag in HTML5, and in XHTML you probably meant to write <br /> or at least <br></br> which syntactic but why?? Look, I'm not going to start a SGML vs. XML argument at 3AM, I'm really not.

[Bob Schroeck]

No, the linebreak markup is definitely an error on my part. To my credit I was proofing the MOBI version, and apparently the converter treated it like <br/>, which is what it was supposed to be.

I haven't done a full spelling pass on it yet; this was the basic markup and render pass.

Oh, and I wasn't being a full copyeditor and catching grammar stuff like that "rolling in dough" thing, Brent. This was just supposed to be a simple HTML/MOBI conversion. Of course it's a bit more because of the changes I made for readability, but in general I was leaving it as-is.

[Labster]

I figured as much. I probably wouldn't even notice little things like that on a normal reading, but when I ask my brain to pay attention to parse errors rather than silently fixing them, I see all the errors.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, someone please clue me in on how/where to message Biles on SB?  I now have an account, but I don't see any messaging function, nor do I see author-specific areas.  What do I do, just lob a message into the open channel?

[classicdrogn]

Find his user page, and then hit the "start conversation" link in the collection right at the top by the avatar image. That's what PMs are called on SB.

[itsune9tl]

John Biles on SB.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/...les.30554/
Send him a PM.

from previous post.

[Bob Schroeck]

Thank you, CD. That's the advice I was looking for. For some reason I couldn't find that.

Itsune, thanks, but I was already there.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, now I'm getting annoyed.  There is no "start conversation" link anywhere that I've looked at or in on that page:

   

I don't have to make some minimum number of posts or buy a goddamned subscription before it'll let me speak privately to someone, do I?

I'm honestly getting to the point where I'm ready to throw this whole thing into the trash.  I got what I wanted out of it -- a copy for my Kindle so I could write an ATT page.  If it's this much goddamned work just to send the guy a message, the hell with it.

[robkelk]

Popping in to make a comment...

Would somebody here who does have a "Start Conversation" button be willing to act as an intermediary?

...popping back out.

[Bob Schroeck]

This is what I initially requested, specifically of Itsune since they'd done it once before already, but anyone's help would be welcome.

[itsune9tl]

Ok, you should have just gotten a Conversation message.