Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
March 1, 2015
I know I've been away a while...
Category: Miscellany … Technical Stuff

...but long enough to have accumulated 1900 spam comments?! JC on a pogo stick.

Anyway, I wanted to post briefly about writing and common phrases/expressions. I was reading a story by a member of a writing group I recently joined, and she wrote that the character's knuckles had turned white from performing a particular repetitive action. And of course I knew what she meant, and the phrasing wouldn't at all have given me pause if I hadn't been in a mood to ponder such things (which I generally am when I'm reading a piece in order to critique it) -- and I got to wondering about "clichés" and how we can (sometimes) end up confusing the reader when we make an effort to avoid them. For instance, I knew what the author of this story was talking about because the expression is common enough. But I could step up to bat thirty thousand times and endure sixteen million close calls on the freeway and strangle a billion fat-necked babies and my knuckles wouldn't even remotely whiten unless my skin were really dry and I needed to put on some lotion. So if the author had tried to describe the character's knuckles becoming white in some novel, creative way -- without using the well worn phrase -- I might not have had any idea what she meant. (more...)

-posted by Wes | 11:24 pm | Comments (0)
March 2, 2013
Just added: Rotating Tweets widget!
Category: Technical Stuff

So now you can read my most recent tweets and maybe follow me on Twitter (@WesCrayon) and stuff! I don't tweet very much, though, and I almost never say anything remotely important. 😛

-posted by Wes | 4:56 am | Comments (0)
February 22, 2013
It's been ages...
Category: Miscellany … Technical Stuff

I guess I'd kinda forgotten about Wesoteric, huh? This site's kinda gotten lost in the shuffle with all the Facebook/Twitter/tumblr experiments I've been doing lately, but I'm totally keeping my domain and hope to resume posting here soon. I also need to grab the appropriate plugins to synch all of these things up, but in the meantime feel free to follow me on Twitter at @WesCrayon. Scary-Crayon also has a separate Twitter feed at @ScaaaryCrayon; I'm trying to keep things separate to some extent, or at least to keep my personal stuff off of SC. (more...)

-posted by Wes | 6:50 pm | Comments (0)
February 1, 2012
Spambots are working overtime today.
Category: Technical Stuff

It's really bad when I actually have to delete multiple spam comments manually because the anti-spam plugins aren't catching them. I just cleared the spam folder two days ago and it was just up to 151!

-posted by Wes | 5:02 pm | Comments (0)
January 20, 2012
Facebook status messages!
Category: Miscellany … Technical Stuff

I totally need to figure out how to get them crossposted here, because some of my status messages are awesome. EXAMPLES:

Wes... is eating triple chocolate oat cereal with habanero chipotle sauce.

So Uncle Ben's is running a commercial about how a grain of rice can "fly" -- a reference to how quickly it can go from the microwave to the table. Neat idea, Uncle Ben's, but now I associate your rice with maggots.

Wes... just saw a vampire policewoman on the news -- with extremely prominent fangs and the last name "Innocenti," no less. If vampires want to remain hidden, they should try harder.

Yep! Google searches keep leading me to some outdated plugin -- I need something more recent! Or maybe I should just give in to Twitter ( 😥 ), since it seems like people have an easier time getting it to post to WP and Facebook.

-posted by Wes | 4:28 am | Comments (0)