November is coming up, and you know what that means: warm up your word processors, refill your fountain pens, gnaw at your pencils, sharpen your quill nubs, and set the espresso machine to overdrive because it’s NaNoWriMo time!

It’s that magical time of year where writers from all over the world hunch down in their favorite writing corners to produce a 50,000 word novel. Some will succeed, some will fail, but most everyone should be able to get Chapter 1 done—and that brings us to this month’s contest!

Submit the first chapter of the NaNoWriMo novel you’re writing to enter our NaNoWriMo ‘09 writing contest. It won’t be your best work ever (after all, 50,000 words in 30 days is a lot to write), but that’s the point. We want to see your raw, unedited writing. Everyone will be on the same playing field, so don’t be shy—let’s see what you’ve got. Good luck!

That’s the gist of Sribophile’s National Novel Writing Month 2009 contest.  There are prizes as well.

1st Prize:	$50 Amazon.com gift card
2nd Prize:	$25 Amazon.com gift card

Read more about the contest, including contest rules and submission guidelines.

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Spore Islands on Facebook screenshot

Maxis and EA bring Spore Fun to Facebook

Love Spore? Love cute Facebook games? This is for you.

Spore Islands isn’t like the full blown Spore game available on PC and Mac.  In this version of Spore, you design a creature and let him loose on your own private island.

You pick from several types of islands to call home. Once you pick, that’s our creature’s home island for the rest of the game. On the island will be two ‘wild’ creatures.  These are game generated creatures. Additionally, you can invite up to two friends to join you on your island.

Evolution

Spore Islands has creature design and evolution. It retains some of the same elements, such as picking body parts, and choosing upgrades.  Evolution though is limited not based on your creature’s success but on an allotment of DNA points. DNA points regenerate over time, up to a maximum of 12 available.

Each change of your creature costs one or more DNA points. That includes changes to diet, speed, and attack power selections.

Check it out. You’ll see sliders to change. Your creature’s appearance changes as you adjust the sliders.

Spore Islands on Facebook evolution

Over time, you’ll find a combination that works well on your island type. At that point, you’ll not need to spend evolution points on a regular basis. DNA points can then be used for changing creature appearance and other visual changes. Also DNA points allow abilities to be purchased.

Facebook Gaming

Facebook brings along it’s own poisoning of anything good though. Like other applications, you can purchase points.  Maxis calls them DNA points, but like Zynga games, they can be purchased or through partner deals. In this game it’s going to be extra tempting.  Who doesn’t want special abilities and a cute hate for their creatures.

If you’ve had a chance to play this, please share your stories and thoughts with me.

Yours,

Todd

Find me on Facebook.

Spore Islands on Facebook

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This is one of the new messages you’ll see when you visit a friend’s restaurant. There are a variety of calls for help as well.

Here’s the leak.

So there you go, you’ve got a leak to fix. It’s a no brainer though as you simply click on any of the leak spouts in the restaurant.  A click activates a small timer over the top of the leak or other issue. Once the countdown is done, away it goes.

You’ll receive a message box like the one above.  Your friend rewards you with either 5 or 10 coins. This doesn’t replace clean up coins you earn for picking up pizza slices and discarded soda cans. It’s an additional way to get some coins.

The nicest thing about this feature? It’s redeemable in all of your friends’ restaurants.  I was able to claim over 100 coins today in this feature alone. Not a windfall but it pays for those cups of water.

My personal favorite is the penguins.

Yeah, cute little guy. Apparently he’s equally annoying to leaks, a sleeping bear, giant mushrooms, and skunks. Honestly PlayFish, picking on penguins.

This is a fun feature addition to a pleasing casual game.  PlayFish continues to add nice little features.  Upcoming are new themes as well.

You can find Restaurant City on Facebook.

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Taggart, my brother, is afflicted with ALS. It’s not a pretty disease. Just months ago Tag was a truck driver, working 60 hours a week driving. Today he is wheelchair bound.  The progress hasn’t slowed yet since they uncovered it.

This week we visited and Tag requires assistance full time. I arrived in time to help him out of bed into his wheelchair. During our visit, his wife had to help him onto the toilet. At the end of the visit, Tag was helped into bed.

It’s not pretty. Tag’s a fighter though.  He’s working to maintain his dignity. At every turn he did what he could by himself.  His one arm is still strong enough to allow him to push the wheel chair himself if the surface allows.

Tag is still making use of his good hand for more than just feeding himself. His current hobby is repairing, upgrading and customizing XBox 360 consoles. He’s got three he’s working on now.  Tag even tackles play testing them with just the one hand.

The mood could be dark but Tag isn’t settling for that.  It’s a bit tougher on everyone else though.  His wife has decided to go to work part time only so to be able to care for him.  Our mother has been his primary caretaker for a while now. It’s a lot of work for her.

Tag spends his waking moments working on the consoles, playing Xbox 360 games, and occasionally getting some sun. The family desperately needs some ramps though. Right now for him to leave the house, someone has to carry him over steps from one wheelchair to another.

We plan on visiting with him as often as possible. It really seems to lift his spirits. Though him and I talked a bunch on this visit, it is getting decidedly more difficult for him to carry on a conversation for more than a few minutes.

He’s opted to accept using a tracheotomy tube for breathing. That should give him several extra months of decent life.  Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any treatment to cure ALS. Only symptoms can be dealt with and those not well.

What do I want? Just your positive energy, prayers, and for you to give all the love you can to those in your life. Forgive any issues between you and the loved one and move on with the rest of your lives.  You won’t have them forever.

Thanks for your continued support.

Cheers,

Todd

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National Novel Writing Month Write-In NaNoWriMo

I’m writing on NaNoWriMo.

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Hot off the presses:

Don’t miss out on this great–and free–opportunity to increase your computer skills! Today, Governor Jay Nixon announced that thousands of Missourians will receive free access to innovative e-learning and certification programs through a public-private partnership with Microsoft’s Elevate America. These cutting-edge modules will build the technology skills that will help job seekers like you compete in today’s economy.

The process is easy: Log on to www.mo.gov and click on the “Elevate America” link to fill out the simple form. Missouri has a total of 24,750 e-learning vouchers to go around–and they must be activated by January 31, 2010. Be one of the first to claim a voucher and start building your technology skills right away!

Received this via Mo/Il IT Guys Group on Facebook.

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Seesmic sent the insiders and email today announcing the addition of Twitter Lists to the Seesmic client. The image above is an example of how the lists would be selected.  There are a few other screen shots and some explanations on the Seesmic Help Desk.

Seesmic is the first to add Lists to their client. Loic and his team continue to shine both in making a solid Twitter client but in keeping it cutting edge.

This might have me pitting Tweetdeck against Seesmic once again.

What’s your client? Are you using Lists? Will this be a game changer?

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Twitter gives us a new toy today, the List Widget. Shown above is the first widget I’ve put together. If you scroll down on the blog you’ll see it in action.

List widgets let you select the user first, then you can select from the user’s public lists. Customize the list widget appearance by choosing colors, size and even title and caption. The widget size can be auto-adjusting or a set size. Color choices allow you to select the hex code or eyeball it using your mouse.

A National Novel Writing Month widget is my example. I built a list, still growing of course, of Twitter users doing nanowrimo. The list is by no means near 500 yet, but it’s enough that there should be a fair amount of tweets coming in. I chose to have it poll, and display only 30 tweets. Those settings are adjustable as well.

Twitter included the option to copy and paste the HTML as well as a Blogger specific option.  No Facebook or MySpace option was available; you can however use the HTML for MySpace.

I agree with TechCrunch, these will be your chance to curate your lists.

What will you do with the Lists Widget?

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National Novel Writing Month doesn’t just take place on your computer; it is happening all across the world.  In my case that area of the world is the St. Louis metro. Today we held our first official write-in.

Hosted by the ML, Municipal Liaison, the official write-ins act as way to get a bunch of local are writers in the same place at the same time.  The idea isn’t to hold a big party, though you could have one.  Supporting each other is the goal.

Leading into my first write-in we held a little pre-party.  Folks showed up with food and beverages, and laptops.  Of course, they all showed up ready to get writing. In our case we mostly stayed away from the alcohol, but there was plenty of caffeine.

Music played a big part of our evening. The host provided some selections but a couple of the attendees brought their own as well. Quite a variety of tastes but a lot of fun.  Another cool party was a bit of Firefly flashback.

On the Halloween episode of Castle, the character, played by Nathan Fillion, is getting decked out in costume. The surprise? He’s getting decked out as a space cowboy, ala his character Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly.  It’s a hoot because not only does he recreate that look perfectly, he gives us a bit of the old swagger.  Producers managed to squeeze in a bit of the old Firefly music riffs as well. Needless to say in a room of fans it was riotous and required several rewinds and replays.

Midnight was brought in with another flashback, this time to Thunderbirds.  It was the countdown from the beginning of the episodes.  Again the group went wild with laughter. Talk about a great way to kick off the writing.

Writing commenced.  There were Macs, Dells, HPs.  Laptops and netbooks were involved. Music and chit-chat provided a continuous background for the writing. There was even a bit of a music battle going back and forth at one point.

In the middle of the 2 hours of writing, we had a word war. A word war is where two or more groups compete to have the highest word average for a given period of time.  We set the timer and went to town. Talk about a keying frenzy!!

This encouraging group lead me to about 1500 words in two hours. That’s with talking, laughing, and goofing around.  At the end of two hours, most of us packed up and headed out but this one event will stick with me the whole month.

Planning on making more of these this month.  If you’ve not been to one yet, I recommend you find one in your area and get involved.  Give one a try at least. You might find the writing much easier.

Do you have a NaNoWriMo experience to share?

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• Commented on “The Spicy Cauldron”

Definitely I’ll not overdue it. Likely I’ll under do my capacity today as I’m feeling the yawns striking. Ha.
Best wishes on your novel as well.

Originally posted as a comment
by tojosan
on The Spicy Cauldron using DISQUS.

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