You know, once upon a time I used to work in IT support. I’m not saying this so you can ask me silly questions about computers. I haven’t worked there in years and by now I know nothing of such things. This little detail might explain my obsession with progress bars though. If you grow up with computers and end up spending a lot of time installing software, like you tend to do in IT support, you come to hate these little bastards. They get stuck at 99% and, although it says 1 minute to go, they don’t move forward at all. Somehow they still give you the impression they’re moving, because they want to torture you and drive you mad. Progress bars are crazy little things. You come to stare at them for hours, especially if you install whole operating systems. Looking at progress bars is just silly though. Just as silly as looking at every new recombination and mutation step in an evolutionary algorithm, something I’ve done too many times as well. It tells you absolutely nothing and instead you should go and have a cup of coffee, somewhere without the screen in sight.
I hate them little progress bar bastards, I really do.
So, why am I putting progress bars on my blog and why am I happy about the progress bars in Scrivener? Simple: I’m in control there! You are free to imagine a maniacal laugh at this point. In Scrivener the progress bar is a direct result of my actions. I write and it changes. It doesn’t just sit there while I wait for magic to happen. No, I’m in control! It’s really quite a power trip!! Same goes for my little progress bars in the side bar of my blog. I can make them say whatever I want!!! Look here:
Of course I’m not that far in my struggle with all these words, but I’m still in control of the progress bar. What a joy!
Now, if you want to add one of those little progress bars to your wordpress.com blog as well, I suggest you run over to this little site, which I’ve come to cherish: honorless.net
There you can create the progress bar and it gives you the HTML code once you click ‘Refresh Code’. The code it gives me for the progress bar I created up there is this one:
<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; width: 30%;" title="114.22%">
<div style="text-align: left; margin: 2px auto; font-size: 0px; line-height: 0px;
border: solid 1px #FF0000; background: #DDDDDD; "><div style="font-size: 0px;
line-height: 0px; height: 3px; min-width: 114.22%; max-width: 114.22%; width: 100%;
background: #0000FF; "></div></div><div style="font-size: 8pt;
font-family: monospace; ">91372 / 80000 (114.22%)</div></div>
You can then insert this code into a text widget in your sidebar or into a post. Up to this step it’s easy and doesn’t need any knowledge of HTML or CSS. Here comes the trick though:
Right now, and this might change back to normal one of these days, wordpress started stripping the div style width from the code. So instead of the correct first line it will save the code without the width: 30%;" part. This will make you lose control over the width of the progress bar in relation to your sidebar or to your space for postings.
To resolve this little problem, just change width to max-width before saving and all is fine again. You can play with the percentage to make the progress bar longer or shorter now. The last step is to also start laughing maniacally about having defeated those nasty little bastard progress bars! MUAHUAHUA!!!!1!!001!2
Have fun!
March 24, 2012 | Categories: meta | Tags: CSS, HTML, IT, maniacal laugh, progress bar, Scrivener, support, technology, wordpress, writing | 1 Comment
Did I mention that I’m using Scrivener to write my novel? So far I’m not using many of its functions, since I’m just writing scene after scene at the moment. However, I think the label functions and the cork board view are going to be very good to keep track of the editing, which I will start in April.
One nice function of Scrivener, which I’m already using every day is the project target functionality. You can set yourself a word target for the whole project and also one for the day and then it will colour code on a progress bar where you stand with regards to your target. You can also set yourself a deadline and it will calculate how much you have to write each day to reach your goal. It’s really a rather nice feature that gives you a nice visual feedback of your progress. The progress bar floats on top of the writing window, so that it is also still visible even when you’re in composition mode, which is how they call their distraction free writing environment.
I have to say that I haven’t been using composition mode much, because by default it has a really weird scrolling behaviour. It keeps the cursor in the middle of the screen when you’re writing, even if you scrolled further down or up. Often this causes awkward jumping and especially if you write like me, all over the place, never continuously one sentence after the next, it can get pretty annoying. Only today I finally found out how to turn this behaviour off, thanks to Daniel Wessel’s blog post. They have hidden it pretty well. Who actually thinks of looking in the hidden menu bar? So, from tomorrow I will be writing distraction free again.
I think today the colour of the progress bar for my project target went from a very greenish yellow to a very yellowish green, so I think I’m actually getting there. 2/3 of the novel are written now, but the second part isn’t quite finished yet. That the word count doesn’t quite reflect the structure is mainly because I have written some scenes and dialogues for the third part already, although I’ve been mostly working linearly when it comes to the scenes. Now I actually still have a few scenes to go before I can embark on the part of the story that contains more dialogue and action.
Every part is supposed to reveal a slightly novel aspect of the story that makes the characters change a little bit. At this point the protagonist is probably the only one, who isn’t a flat character, although I’m still working on how to make the second lead develop to a certain extent as well, at least in the perception of the protagonist. It’s hard to see yet, whether that’s going to work out, because it has to mainly happen in the third part that isn’t written yet. However, I guess that’s how it still remains interesting for me, since I don’t know everything about the characters yet. Just today I had a nice idea for my protagonist that just somehow came about while I was writing. Just think, after I’ve been working with the same character for a month, he still is a riddle to me! At least when it comes to certain aspects that aren’t quite fleshed out yet.
I actually think that if I knew the whole story in all its details I probably would never bother writing it, because the process would be boring. This happened to me a lot with the technical reports I had to write for university. If you already know the whole thing by heart and know all the aspects of your results too well, it becomes really boring to write. However, this way, where I’m still developing the story as I go, it’s a kind of discovery for myself as well. It keeps things interesting.
March 16, 2012 | Categories: writing process | Tags: art, literature, nanowrimo, novel, process, progress bar, Scrivener, typewriter, writing | Leave a comment
Although I didn’t have brilliant ideas today that made me chuckle about my own sarcasm I surely had a good day writing. I managed to get 2300 words down and finish an entire scene that I was writing. I’ve also been putting off writing a specific scene that I have in mind, because I just wasn’t in the right mood. Obviously I had enough to write about anyway.
And then I also found this great feature in Scrivener that shows you how you’re doing with your project target. You can set the amount of words you’re generally aiming at, set a deadline and it will calculate for you how much you need to write every day to keep your deadline. It also shows you your progress in a neat colour-coded progress meter, a bit like the ones I’m posting here, just more fancy. It even lets you set a Growl notification that pops up when you reach your session target. Today I moved from a red project target bar to an orange one, so it actually gives me nice positive feedback on all the progress I’ve been making today. Certainly motivating. If I would manage to keep my target of 2000 words a day I would be finished with my goal of 80000 words by the 1st of April, which is so soon that it’s laughable. I doubt that I’ll be able to manage that, really, but aiming high sometimes helps with the motivation. As you might have noticed, my procrastination project has somehow amounted to something proper that I’m really eager to follow through. After working on it properly for a few days I’m happy to say that there can’t be any doubt now: It’s a great and promising project.
February 25, 2012 | Categories: writing process | Tags: art, books, literature, nanowrimo, novel project, novels, progress, Scrivener, writing | Leave a comment
bearable is barely enough 