The Evening Hoot

Hello everyone, and welcome to our website's official NaNoWriMo blog. NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, is a fun writing marathon where participants ages 13 and higher attempt to accomplish the incredible feat of writing a 175-page novel in a month. That's 50 000 words, and about 1667 words per day! Sounds like a piece of cake? Don't be so sure!

Here I will be documenting my first journey through NaNoLand and the challenges of writing a novel in one month. If you'd like to learn more about NaNoWriMo, please read the first blog entry. You'll find the latest blog entries here on this blog homepage. And to read all the blog posts from the first one until the latest, please visit the archives. Enjoy!

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Hello everyone!

How's NaNoWriMo coming along? Good? Not so good? Really, I can't believe anyone would actually want to quit after three weeks of hard work! Please don't do that to yourself; that'd be pretty harsh. :-) Actually, I got a pretty harsh surprise today - my recently bought domain name for The Evening Hoot appeared on Google! Without my consent of course...

Seriously, that is not cool. :D I never meant for it to go on Google! That message in the snapshot above was just put for fun, for those sneaky visitors trying to get a glimpse of the new layout before it's published - which trust me, I would never put up to public visitors before the launch date anyways. So I just wrote a little message for all those folks, and suddenly, surprise - it's on Google!

Oh well. At least I didn't include the word "ga'hoole" in it, so that I don't get embarrased much more. And few people access this website through googling "the evening hoot" - though there is one persistent person in my stats who refuses to bookmark this website and does it the hard way... You know who you are! :-)

At least I can finally see how my domain name looks in Google - and you know what? I'm not in the least regretful that I chose www.theeveninghoot.com rather than www.eveninghoot.com. Three letters, not much of a big difference - and not that annoying either, to those who would've prefered the shorter name. Plus, all of you were right when I was still choosing and you guys said it'd be better to stick with the original name. What's a title without proper grammar? :-) Yeah, I know, only Bookie would make such a lame joke!

I've decided I won't blog about NaNoWriMo anymore, not when I'm really close to reaching 40k and still having inspiration for my novel. There's really... nothing to write about it, unless I post the whole novel here - which I won't of course! :-) Plus I've found some more free time that I can spend on getting ready the new layout for you guys, bit by bit - and it's really much more interesting to talk about that rather than NaNoWriMo, right?

Guess that Google search was the universe's way of telling me that I'm on the right track, right? ;D Though I still refuse to show you guys the layout I'm currently getting ready for the new domain name - not that's it's horrible, cause I think everybody will love it's simple yet homey look... but hey, a surprise's a surprise!

I was very sad that Warriors Wish, the amazing Warriors fansite by Blizz got booted out by Bluehost, her web server. :( I don't know how I have managed to survive these past two days without going crazy cause I can't go on my favorite forum! But apparently I did, cause I'm writing this blog post without shattering the computer... 

It's nice to see the traffic lower bit by bit - obviously I love getting more traffic for The Evening Hoot, but in this case it just means more peace. And I really don't mind less traffic, cause I know I haven't been updating regurarly, and plus, I'm too excited for the new launch of The Evening Hoot on the new domain, to worry about what happens to this one. :-)

December's not that far away, you know! And I promise you won't have to wait any longer than that...

~Bookie

P.S. I forgot to tell you, Warriors 20 Questions ended! I'll be able to post the results soon, so keep tuned, cause you'll soon find out just how many people barfed after reading the manga! ;-)

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Dear Reader,

First things first - Warriors 20 Questions. If you haven't yet, be sure to vote, since it closes Sunday and we desperately want to reach more than 400 participants before then. No idea what W20Q is? Then find out by taking it, or by reading the boring explanations! 

Back to business - I finally return to the land of NaNoWriMo! With close to twenty-three thousands words as well! I know many of you thought I had abandoned my novel - just like some of you thought I had abandoned The Evening Hoot this past summer - but that is not the case. Even with all the distractions, spamming incidents, shoutbox problems, fights, arguments, e-wars, etc. I managed to come close enough to being done half of 50k words.

What do you think I was doing this whole week, hardly updating this blog? To continue writing my novel of course! Why do you think I hardly signed into nanowrimo.org to update my word count? Because I was still writing! It's true, the spamming incident did take a big chunk out of last week - especially since I was also trying to keep up and update this blog daily. But I caught up this week; still behind a little bit, but at a good pace.

I've actually realized though how close I feel to this blog now. Those of you who visited The Evening Hoot since its beginning might remember that there was an attempt before this for me to start a blog - it failed miserably. But this new attempt at blogging not about Ga'Hoole but about NaNoWriMo made a wonderful success, don't you think?

Is it because I'm bored with Guardians of Ga'Hoole now, and that's why I find so much interesting things to write about as we moved away from that subject? Actually, no - you forget that I've only just returned to NaNoLand and that the past two weeks were a sort of haphazard blur, where I didn't just focus on NaNoWriMo or any one particular subject. From writing, to spamming, to Warriors and manga, to criticism - really, I had more than enough to write on!

And I like that. I think this blog would be somewhat  boring if all I focused was NaNoWrimo. "So people, 10 753 words today, doing good, see you tomorrow, bye." Not that interesting, is it now? Though of course my friend Ripplepelt does a fantastic job of blogging about NaNoWriMo with enthusiasm; and making those posts short too, so that people don't die of boredom halfway through! Like I suspect they do here. Still, I'm innocent till proven guilty! :-)

So I think I'll continue doing that till November ends - writing about NaNoWriMo and updating you in the first few paragraphs, then moving on to other interesting things. For example, today I'll be talking about Guardians of Ga'Hoole and how I finally read... can't you guess? The War of the Ember! I bought yesterday at last, and finished it this morning.

Epic failure, I know - especially for a person who runs a Ga'Hoole fansite to be so late getting it himself. But hey, I was busy! With NaNoWriMo, with blogging here, dealing with spam - oh, and let's not forget reading classics for reading responses and book talks at school! :( Plus, it's not my fault Chapters was so stubborn - twice before I went there, and they still didn't have it!

Third time's the lucky charm I guess! :D So what are my opinions, considering that many people thought the book was a disappointement? Actually, I quite liked it, since you also have to keep in mind that whatever faults the book has (and there are a few I'll discuss later on), it's the last novel of them all, so we should at least try to like it and kind of "pay our respects". xD Yes, there's Lost Tales of the Great Tree, but that's hardly the same as the novels, is it now?

So, firstly, yes, I did like The War of the Ember very much. It really reminded me of The Burning, which was a nice feeling for me, but might also be a negative aspect of the book  for someone else, if you think of it as "way too close to the sixth book". And secondly, I'm going to start handing out spoilers here, so if you'd rather not read them, them please run away now. :-) But only till tomorrow, when I resume my spoiler-free blog posts.

I found the story moved much too fast - this is a common negative aspect of Warriors as well, but that Ga'Hoole started having just recently. Owls seem to be able to travel from anywhere and everywhere in mere seconds. "Oh, let's go to the Northern Kingdoms shall we? It'll only take us a few hours after all! Or how about we just take a quick trip to the Middle Kingdom, you know, just to ask permission for a request?".

This is not the way its supposed to be! I understand that being the last book, Kathryn has to rush things a bit if she wants to do it under 300 pages - which I don't get, since most readers like it when a book from their favorite series is thicker. Old habits of the authors I guess! :-) But still - before, traveling somewhere or recruiting troops was a mission against time. We do see Coryn thinking about time here - but the traveling part seems to go fairly easy. Too easy.

Again, I understand that when there's hagsfiends to be born (and I'll get back to that part of the story later) then you really have no time to ramble on about how long it takes to travel from one place to another. But have some realism Kathryn! Make a sixteenth book if you must! Think for a few months before you simply decide to kill of Coryn!

Ah, we've reached the death part. Coryn dies, as most of us already know. I found this quite disappointing - not because I had a special fondness for Coryn or couldn't bear to stand and watch one of the main characters (need I say very main characters?) being killed - simply because it now seems a waste to the whole storyline. Everything was building up from as early as The Hatchling - a chick born at the eclipse, first owl to retrieve the ember again, a time of peace where learning flourishes, the first true king in what was it, millenia? And then, out of the blue, Kathryn says, "No, no, I think I'll just make Soren the king, okay everyone?".

No, not okay. If you thought if was a genius idea to begin the series with Soren and end the series with Soren, then I'm sorry to tell you that it wasn't a genius idea. Let's move on, since I don't want to make this blog post extremely long - Twilight's two brothers. Again, not the best of ideas. Kind of fun, kind of cute... meh. It was interesting to see more of Twilight's parentage in the Guide Book to the Great Tree - but to suddenly introduce two brothers of his?

If you wanted to end the story with Soren, then end it with the Band together as well - don't make them all go their own ways to find long-lost brothers. That would only have been acceptable if all four of the Band went out and found mates/long-lost brothers/long-lost sisters/long-lost parents. Otherwise, drop it. You already did poorly with Soren - firstly, we don't need to here "Pelli's sweet voice", and secondly, did Bash even say a word?

One word in the whole series? She might've, once, I don't remember. But if so, then compared to Bell and Blythe... let's just say that maybe Bash can't open her beak and Soren and Pelli are trying to hide it by trying to tell everyone how great Bell and Blythe is. And what about Braithe? If you're not going to have him find out his father was Ezylryb (this also refers to Twilight and his brothers), then don't tempt us and mention him at all!

Yeah... I fail to see how Bess' encounter with the mysterious owl who tried to steal the ember helped serve a purpose in the storyline at all. Yes, it got her out of the Palace and flying to the great tree to tell them all about it - but after that? I guess it did get the ember moved elsewhere, making it easy for Coryn to later deposit it in one of the volcanoes... bu still. I find the whole "mysterious owl" thing ineffective.

So what did I like about this book? It was a compelling story, I'll say that. And a pretty good conclusion to the series, despite its many flaws. I loved seeing Dumpy again, the wolves, the polar bears, and basically, every other favorite character in the series! :D The war wasn't boring - not just all fighting, but more interesting preparations and troupes than in The Burning.

Introduction of new characters such as Taya, the idea with the hagsfiend eggs and more dragon owls escaping - that was all cool, though as mentioned at OFF, there was no explanation as to the eggs that were hidden in the pellet piles back in the Middle Kingdom.  I guess Taya destroyed them? Oh, and of course, one phrase in the book which immediately became my favorite was of course: "By the time dawn broke, the first edition of THe Evening Hoot was completed."

That was epic! :-) After running this site for so long, I sometimes forget that the name "The Evening Hoot" is not my creation - so upon seeing it in a real book, and a Ga'Hoole one at that, always brings me a jolt of suprise and thrill of excitment! Though I don't think you'd guys appreciate "screaming headlines" as said on page 6 of The War of the Ember, right? But seriously owls, first edition only? You've been working on one edition all the way since Exile?! Oh well - I guess I shouldn't be talking, since we only have seven editions ourselves!

Until tomorrow my friends! Post your own comments of WoTE below and be sure to take that Warriors 20 Questions survey! Results will be posted on Sunday!

~Bookie

P.S. Good-bye Freewebs, hello Webs! :D A fresh new layout, new buttons, new interface - so much new things! I forgot to blog about it today, but be sure to read about it tomorrow!

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Dear Reader,

First things first - the cover of Sunrise, sixth book in the Warriors: Power of Three series has been released! Well actually, Amazon.com posted a "Search Inside" link for Long Shadows, and on the back cover, as usual, the cover of the next book! Behold this fantastic cover, which finally features Hollyleaf in the center! Or maybe it's Breezepaw... In any case, click and admire! :-)

Now, before we move on, I'd like to ask you, who said this phrase: "I refuse to call you Bookie"? In a way, it's a bit of a famous line, at least for me, since the person refused to call me Bookie but insisted on telling everybody about her refusal, every single time she typed "Bookwormreader"! If your answer was Edina, then you are correct. If you find this a bit ridiculous, then you are correct as well. :D

"Just because you type in paragraphs doesn't make you right." Ah, another famous line! And just when I mentioned above that you were correct. :-) This one was said by Mikey, a member of OFF, who, like Edina chooses to show her dislike of me in every imaginable way. If this is the best she can do, then I will certainly continue to type in paragraphs.

Point is, it's this kind of criticism that makes me want to barf and whack those people on the head with a frozen fish. People always say to me, "[Bookie], you always think you're right". I really don't see anything wrong with that and I don't get why others do. We're supposed to think we're right! If you went ahead and said something to someone and you didn't think you were right, you'd be basically lying to yourself, or being in denial.

Do you get what I mean? Yes, I agree, in the end we might be wrong, but initially, we have to think we're right, otherwise all we'd do is doubt ourselves all day long. When a teacher asks you a math question and you answer, most of the time you think your answer is right (unless you didn't do your homework and you make one up!). You might get the answer wrong, but hey, you tried, right?

Well, unfortunately, there's people who ignore all my tries and attempts to explain things. They like to criticize my every word, my every sentence, and yes, my every paragraph. Because you know Mikey, I'm the only person on this planet who types in paragraphs, right? I'm the only person in this world who thinks I'm right when I say something, write something, type something, etc. And I'm the only person in this universe who has had a spamming problem...

It turns out that Aaron wasn't the spammer like I accused him in my previous post. I already apologized to him and we are now again friends. As you see, I was wrong. But I thought I was right. Why? Because when I checked the IP address 68.95.199.102 in my stats, it said that the person spend 2 hours simply being on the Guestbook, Discussion, and Chatting. I then checked my guestbook to see if there was a similar IP address. There was. And beside it, the name Aaron.

I didn't want to believe it, and I didn't want to accuse Aaron - I merely posted the details I thought was proof on my blog, to see what you guys think about all this - and what Aaron thinks about it too. As for why I posted the location, IP address, and other details of the spammer, my explanation is simple - if Aaron really was the spammer, then I would have no pity on him or his personal info whatsoever.

Yes, nothing gives me the right to post personal info like that, but nothing gives anyone the right to spam somebody's website, email, etc. either. If someone punches you, there's a good chance that you'll punch them back unless they're twice your size. And while two wrongs don't make a right, the spammer brought it on themselves. It's like a murderer would say in court "nothing gives you the right to put me in prison, I'm a human being after all". Yeah, well you killed another human being, so end of discussion.

In any case, the spammer was using a proxy, not his real IP address. And Aaron wasn't the spammer anyways, since he was watching as the spam unfolded on my website, but decided not to comment in fear of starting an e-war with the spammer or something like that. Then he simply left his computer on for two hours, hence the two hours it showed in my statistics.

In the end, me and Aaron are friends again. But some people clearly think that they still need to prove to everyone what a "moron" I am. Just yesterday, Edina and Mikey spammed the shoutbox - yes spammed, because calling me a moron every second message is not my idea of a conversation. They blamed me for impersonating them in the chatbox, though I did nothing of the sort. They swore at me, called me silly names, etc.

Seriously people, grow up. I had to remove the Discussion, Guestbook, and Shoutbox just to clean up the whole mess and make my website free of spam, at least for a while. I'm not going to reply to all the pointless comments and criticisms that were posted on my previous blog post, at least not today, simply because I have no time for that. I mean, really now, I'm the only one who types in paragraphs? I refuse to reply to that! :-)

As for the comic above, I drew it on the day of the spamming, simply to cheer myself up after the pointless (but some of them still hurtful) comments made by Mikey and Edina. Aaaron already approved the comic and said that I could post it here, since it doesn't necessarily say anything about him - I simply illustrated what I thought was right at that current time.

If you don't like this website, don't visit it. I'm reinstalling the Discussion and the Guestbook, but seriously, keep your comments to yourself, if you have nothing good to say to anyone. If you think I'm that "arrogant", then you'll know that I won't even glance at your comments anymore.

As for the rest of you, ignore these people as well.  If you can even call them normal human beings. I think I'll take Noctus' idea and just call them "bad apples". :-) We're going back to NaNoLand soon, and leaving behind all these spammers and "morons". So until then!

~Bookie

P.S. I've also brought back the shoutbox, for those of you interested, but if it gets abused a second time, then it's going to be the final time as well. Even if it's not your fault. :-(

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Dear Reader,

Obama became the new president of the United States. And at the same time, Firestar won the Ultimate Leader Election at www.warriorcats.com, a Warriors election all by itself to choose the best leader to rule the forest. After four rounds, the election has ended, and all those pesky Warriors fans who only read the first original series, obviously voted for "their hero" Firestar. And you know what? This sucks.

Which is naturally why I made a comic about it! :D To cheer up a bit while the perfect Firestar takes his place as the leader of the whole forest. As though he doesn't already act like it in the books! Did we really need to have an election only to have Firestar win? Vicky promised the fans to write a short unique story about the leader that wins, and frankly, I've heard enough of Firestar's perfectness for a lifetime. If this is another one of those "Tigerstar was a villain, but still a great warrior", then spare me.

But yes, I did draw that comic for those of you wondering. :-) Took me two hours and the expensive but incredible program called Illustrator - no pixely blurry pixels, only smooth vectors there! Besides that, I've been busy installing a new feature for The Evening Hoot - the shoutbox, where you can chat live with your friends, for those of you frustrated by the slow means of communication through the guestbook or discussion.

Unfortunately, someone wanted to ruin this enjoyment. Badly. And not only that - the guestbook and discussion suffered a considerable amount of spam as well. You can take a look right now, since I haven't deleted the messages yet. This is so that I have proof when sending the Freewebs team an "abuse ticket" and when I announce the culprit. For I have the name, yes indeed.

If you came here today expecting a pleasant time at The Evening Hoot only to find stupid red letters of spam barging into your way, with the IP address somehow cleverly removed from the guestbook as well, then I have to apologize, even though this is not entirely my fault. I use StatCounter as my website statistics tool and while that certainly gives me an ample amount of information, it cannot beat Clicky, which by coincidence I started using yesterday.

Why am I telling you about statistics, and why am I suddenly using two stat services? The reason is that with StatCounter, I have to install the tracking code manually - with Clicky, which works right with Freewebs, you don't have to install the code, since it's automatically works with every aspect of your website. This gives me an advantage, since I can see all sorts of things that StatCounter can't access without Freewebs permission.

Today for example, I saw a certain user with the IP address of 68.95.199.102, using a Windows XP computer and Internet Explorer 7. They were hosted by Sbc Internet Services. But the shocking this is not the fact where this person lives, but the fact that he/she spend 2 hours 9 mins 49 secs simply spamming the Guestbook, Discussion, and Chatting.

Originally, we blamed Hawkheart, who replied right after the spamming in the guestbook asking for me to please delete all these stupid spam messages. This of course might be what a real spammer would do - spam and then pretend that you're the one asking to remove this spam. Aaron said that "he has been known to spam Freewebs sites and he answered right after the spam happened"; while Gylfie took Aaron's words, saying "I just know that the spammer is Hawkheart, he is the most possible suspect".

But then I did the simplest thing, the thing I should've done right away - I went to the Guestbook and searched for the IP address 68.95.199.102. The IP address of the spammer, like I already mentioned, had somehow managed to be hidden from us. Then Hawkheart replied; then me; then Aaron, with the message "What happened here? Overlapping spam?". Beside it, the IP address 68.95.199.102.

Now, I understand, this is a very serious accusation not to be taken lightly. And the thought of Aaron actually spamming The Evening Hoot is not a pleasant thought for me. What's more, what would he gained of it? And that's when I remembered the email. Yesterday Aaron had send me a message asking if he could help with the website's maintenance, since I was so busy - in other words, share the Freewebs account. The message reads:

Bookie, since you're so pressed for time and stuff, maybe we could share the admin account. I'm not attempting a hostile takeover, but if you don't trust me that's fine. :P It just seems like it's too hard for any one person to finish the Evening Hoot editions every week or so. And with NaNoWriMo you'll need the help.

If I was trying to take over someone's site, I would definitely include the phrase "I'm not trying to hack into the account and delete it or anything", instead of not mentioning anything about it at all and making it seem suspicious. It's like when somebody openly jokes about someone, but there might be truth in that joke as well. I replied with a lengthy reply, stating that no, for the moment I cannot share the account and that I work faster when working alone, knowing what I edited and what I deleted. The last part of my email:

I might agree to your suggestion, but I need to see the efficiency of working together. I appreciate your help of course, but you need to tell me what exactly you'd help me with first! Articles for editions you already do. The blog posts I update at my own pace... Filtering the spam in discussion or guestbook? No spam really...

And right then and there, the next day, the spam began. To tell you the truth, as soon as I saw the spam I thought of the email and Aaron, since we only mentioned it yesterday. But feeling guilty of even suspecting Aaron, I removed the thought from my mind until I came upon his IP address. Then things started to get a bit ugly. Especially when I suddenly got another reply from Aaron:

Well, there actually is spam now... apparently because that immature person/people who did the overlapping spam crap. But that probably won't be happening very much. On the other hand, there are always a little bit of things that other people happen to notice when they aren't so busy. I'm observant so I'd be able to help with that. Also, I could help speed up the process with editions and then when we've both put our stuff in we can agree on the final draft? I don't know. It could just be till the end of NaNoWriMo if you want. Please reply soon, and tell me if you discover who that spammer was. :P

 "Well, there's actually spam now..." I kind of noticed Aaron, thanks, but don't you think its a bit of coincidence that after no spam whatsoever from the beginning of The Evening Hoot we suddenly start to get some? Oh and yes, I'll definitely make sure to tell you who the spammer was when I find out - you're quite curious now, aren't you?

The proof is there. I definitely don't want to believe it; and there's still a faint hope that somehow things might've gotten mixed around, confused - we'll have to see Aaron's side of the story. But the proof is still there all right, and no, I did not mix up the IP addresses in my stats. I made sure everything before coming here to write this blog post.

And I didn't even tell you about Robby and Timmy, a conversation on the shoutbox I believe to have been made by Aaron. Aaron chats with Robby, who says that he saw Timmy, his friend, spamming The Evening Hoot. Well, you know what, I'm not going to believe this. It's out of the blue. People take advantage of the fact that IP addresses are not shown publicly in the Discussion and shoutbox - and they even find a way to hide them in guestbooks - and they start spamming.

Well let me tell you something. Crime - no matter how tiny or how big - gets found. Somebody will see you drop your chip bag in the middle of the street as you "innocently" walk across it. Somebody will find those cookie bread crumbs. And somebody will take advantage of website statistics to get down to the bottom of spamming.

You can see the guestbook, discussion, and shoutbox all for yourself. I haven't deleted anything yet, except in the shoutbox where it automatically deletes beyond the first 25 messages. I've told you the facts, but there's still much more details, but those will come after you and I are perfectly sure that Aaron is indeed the spammer. I already have enough proof, but I'd still like for Aaron has yet to come forward and explain some things.

Maverick, Edina... Aaron? We'll see what the outcome is. One more slice out of my free time which I could've been using for NaNoWriMo, and I will seriously go crazy. Don't anger Bookie. Don't spam. Don't try to take over The Evening Hoot. Listen to Owlfeather instead, who was the first to tell me to never share the password of this website with anyone - the cause of the destruction of The Slipgizzle, the previous and wonderful Ga'Hoole newsletter.

I leave you to decide and share your opinions, whether it be through the comment link below, the Discussion or Guestbook. Not the shoutbox please though. Like I said, it deletes the history after 25 messages. And while you're commenting, think of this: do you really think now that it was Hawkheart who spammed this website?

I certainly don't right now; and I shall return tomorrow with my final decisions.

~Bookie

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Dear Reader,

The days slip by and before you know it, it's November 4th already! Actually, after launching this new fresh layout, I was surprised that it was only November 4th, since I managed to write so much on this blog, it seemed like a week had already passed! Nevertheless, this is better for me, since I have some NaNoWriMo catching up to do! The more days, the better!

And yes, The Evening Hoot just got a fresh new layout, unless you haven't noticed on your way coming here! :D No, this is not the new layout I was promising everybody once we launch The Evening Hoot on our new domain name, www.theeveninghoot.com. That will come later - patience my friend! This layout is just for fun, just for a fresher look!

Okay, I'll explain more clearly - even though we're getting a new layout in about a month anyways, I felt that I should take advantage of the Freewebs easy editing, since I didn't switch to HTML. We will be using HTML and CSS once the site gets hosted on our .com domain name, but for now, when I need to concentrate on simply writing and pressing submit, working with Freeweb's easy designer editor is much... well, easier! :-)

Therefore, I could change the layout any time I want, in a matter of mere seconds, choosing out of many good pre-made templates. We've had our last one for ages now - since the very beginning in fact. The idea of a fresh new layout seemed exciting to me. Especially now that the website has been getting far more visitors than before (due to this new blog), I felt welcoming them with the old layout was not very enticing.

So, after trying out a few, I chose this one! I liked the change from green to blue, and the theme of winter, November (and that includes NaNoWriMo) all in there! No owls, I'm afraid, but a cute snowman will do! Of course, things aren't always as easy as they look - and this NaNoBlog caused quite a bit of a problem.

Firstly, and this is entirely Freeweb's fault since I experimented with many blogs on Freewebs and they all turned out this way, some of my old blog posts keep reappearing at the very bottom of the blog. They're exactly the same, except that their titles don't have links like real ones do. And they totally mess up the order of things, because if someone scrolled down in search of the very first blog post, they would instead stumble on something completely different.

The other problem was that this white background you see in this layout, didn't show up on the blog. Whether it was because of all the posts, or the extra ones Freewebs added - I don't know, but point is, I couldn't go on like that, unless I wanted to switch back to the old layout. In the end, I simply created my own blog.

The blog you're looking at right now, isn't the blog that was before. I kept the blog posts - those are still the originals - but I created two whole new pages to organize things, the archives and the blog homepage. The blog homepage is where you're probably reading this now, and it contains the first three latest blog posts. The archive contains everything - from the oldest blog entry to the newest one.

No more missing white backgrounds and no more blog entries skipping around without supervision! :D Unfortunately, all the blog comments are now gone - not that there were many to start with, but still, I miss my comments! So if you have some free time to comment on some of the old blog entries in the archives, that'd be great. Or at least comment on this blog post, about this new layout!

We still have the RSS Feed - those of you with Firefox might find LiveClick a handy extension - but we also have an email subscription, for those of you who hate RSS or atom. You subscribe and then you get the blog posts delivered conveniently into your inbox! And then, there's the good old fashioned way of checking The Evening Hoot every day and gaining me extra page views, heh-he. :-)

We'll be back tomorrow in NaNoLand as I continue to type away my novel. I'll update the word count then and tell you a bit more about how I'm doing. I also have to get the rest of those manga pages up... oh well, next time friends!

~Bookie