All posts by Mark

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.5.72 – Emergency Bug Fix

Turns out one of the “fixes” in 0.5.71 still had a small problem with it that could be damaging to some data when using the single document mode. When creating a new document while the parent document was selected (ie – creating a scene in a chapter via the file drawer right click menu) or by double clicking a scene in the outline view, the parent document (chapter) would have it’s title replaced by the title of the scene. It would also replace notes, synopsis, and potentially tags.

Update to 0.5.72 immediately, especially if you use single document mode.

http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm

Incidentally, I found this while writing in the car while Wendy drove us to a wedding on Saturday. Beautiful wedding – annoying bug that I couldn’t fix until this morning.

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.5.71

As I’ve said before, the writing is going great. I don’t know if I’m writing great, but there are far more words than there were three weeks ago, and that’s a good sign.
 
But a man only has so much time, and with the recent addition of two to three hours of writing, StoryBox progress is a bit slower. Of course, I’ve made some changes lately that I thought were easy changes, and when I go try to use StoryBox, I find I screwed something up. Like the other day when I made a change when using the single document mode so that it would remember where in the document you were when you switch between documents. That worked great. Unfortunately, when I went to write that evening, it wouldn’t allow me to type into any of the documents.
 
So, here’s the general plan regarding StoryBox updates, though I reserve the right to deviate from this plan at any time. For the foreseeable future, StoryBox will be on a weekly release schedule, most likely on Saturdays, though sometimes it may slip to Sundays. I’ll break from this, of course, if someone has a problem that can’t wait a week.
 
The writing is good news for StoryBox in other ways. I’ve got new features I want to add that were never on my initial list. And I’m working out kinks in new features before you’re seeing them.
 
As for today’s release, you’ll notice that the build number has jumped a bit. You didn’t miss anything. Since I’m making builds for myself during the week, I have to increment that build number. This build was focused on making certain things smoother, and easier to use. There aren’t any really huge features added, just bug fixes and some streamlining.
 
 
Writing

50,000 Words in 30 Days!

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I was too tired last night to write a post after finishing my daily 2k, but I thought yesterday was a pretty cool milestone for me. I finally won NaNo – sort of. I hit the 50k mark, and if I were to place the 18 days of writing I did in August immediately after the 12 days of writing I did back in November, I won!
 
Of course, I can’t really do that, so I didn’t win, but that 50k does mean something else important to me. I’m half way done with the first draft of WiW. 37.5k words in 18 days. At this rate, I’ll be done right around the 10th or 11th of September.
 
What have I learned the past 18 days? I’ve learned that I can sit my butt in the chair and write my 2000 words, even if I don’t know exactly what I’m going to write that day. And if I can do it while working an 8 hour a day job plus updating StoryBox once a week and getting hours in with my kids and WoW, as well as some reading every day – why can’t you?
 
Software, StoryBox

Unofficial StoryBox Test Build

There is a test build of StoryBox that I hope solves a crash issue for users of non-US keyboards. The crash happens when typing certain characters into some fields, like the synopsis and the notes. I don’t have one of these keyboards, so I can’t actually test my fix. If you are having this issue, could you please download this test build and let me know if it solves your problem?
 
 
And if you’re not experiencing that crash, could you please try it out anyway? The fix required updating the libraries I’m using for some of the UI, and I’d like to know of any bugs  that could have been introduced during the update before I call it “official”.
 
 
Website, Writing

Updates

Perhaps you can see that I’ve made a couple changes. The reading list got long enough, I decided to move it down the page a bit and move categories and links up so you can see them. I also added progress information for my current projects. They will mostly be writing projects since I’m bound not to talk about most of my game projects until after they’re released.
 
Anyway, for a quick update on my writing progress, last week was a good week with nearly 15,000 words written on Wizard in Waiting. I made my 2000 a day target every day. I’m sure it’ll require a rewrite when I’m done. When I started this WiW in November, I pretty much just threw ideas onto the paper, and was figuring out who the characters were as I wrote, and I’m still doing that, which leads me to believe that there will be many ‘out of character’ behaviors from each of them.