New computer gizmo

Due to the immense generosity of someone who has far too much money and likes the Big Master Review List, I have bought myself a mobile hotspot to use with my writing laptop. Which means I will hopefully get more actual writing done in the near future! I use dropbox to sync my writing program between my desktop and laptop and the wireless connection in my corner of the house is terrible. My desktop has a physical connection to the house internet bandwidth. My laptop does not so whenever I turned it on it took forever to sync up with dropbox. Talking like 10+ minutes.

This post, in fact, is written on my laptop with the internet connection of the hotspot. Which took a good amount of fiddling and frustration to get working smoothly. Pretty sure nothing I actually did led to it working but oh well. That’s computer troubleshooting for you.

 

Titles you should not use

Since my last declaration about this over on FimFic apparently got people’s attention to a degree my previous commandments did not, I thought I’d put a full list up.

These are titles that you should not use for your pony fan fiction:

• Happily Ever After (5 stories exact, 2 other minor variations)
• Family Matters (4 stories)
• Silence (4 stories)

 

Pre-Bronycon Big Master Review List numbers

Got a surge of productivity this week. Not only went over the 15,000 review mark for the Big Master Review List, but updated the simple BMRL for those that have laggy experiences with the main list. Right now, more or less just waiting to head out for Bronycon tomorrow. Should be Thursday drive up there, Friday Saturday Sunday at the con, then drive back Monday. Easy as easy can be. Got the custom shirts I got for the con, with the BMRL image on it. Which hopefully will be a conversation starter since I’m *terrible* at starting conversations. Later today (the day this goes up) I should be getting the cool notebook I got for author autographs and I’m actually looking forward to that. We will see if I actually manage to judo my messed up brain chemistry into actually doing it. Either way, will be doing my best to check for messages here and on FimFiction if people want to contact me. Assuming my phone cooperates.

Anyway! Some numbers, which were accurate as of Monday evening but might have changed if I added more reviews to the list.

 

Pony Stories 756

If you like the Big Master Review List and would like to help motivate me to keep working on it, check out this post over on FimFiction. Most of you have probably already read it. It’s about replacing my missing internal motivation with external motivation. Now, for words about ponywords. Two short reviews below the break.

• Window Dressing by JapaneseTeeth
• Sunset’s Rarity. by JediWyrm

 

Rambles

I’ve actually gotten motivated enough to do a bit of writing related work! Woo! Nothing major, but did a bit of work collecting my notes and written scenes for the second chapter of my second pony fanfic. Ponyville Chess Club and Mail Swap, for those who might be interested. Very much slice of life with some amusing dialogue (or so I hope), but certainly not my best work. Was very much a ‘publish now or it sits forever at the bottom of a pile’ situation.

Anyway! That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about with this intro ramble. One of my brief margin notes was about pony chess sets. I figured that the setup would be two alicorns for the king/queen, with the three supporting pieces to each side would be Pegasus, Unicorn, Earth Pony. For the knight, bishop, and rook respectively. Each very much a noticeable ideal/example of each tribe of pony. While the pawns would be more generic ponies, often either a tribe the craftsman liked or didn’t like. Noble soldiers or expendable pawns sort of deal. Modern Equestrian boards would have royal guards for pawns.

Just did a update to the big master review list. I’ve been doing one or two review links in another spreadsheet for a while and after a whole bunch of them I decided it was time to copy them over and clean up all the duplicates. Which lead to me realizing that the numbers I got rid of for efficiency reasons were how I planned to handle all the upkeep. Whoops. So reverted back to them. Pretty sure the sheet was a bit faster without them all. So the other pages with all the fancy stats will stay away for now.

The ‘e’ key on my keyboard is sticking. Which makes typing presentperfect kind of annoying. Also, the story S̼̹̫̟͇̱͖͌ͩ̇̅͐̕h̸̬͚̗̿u͓͖̮͐̉̅ͧͪ͟b̰͡-̡̣̈́̈͂C̺̜ͥ̉ͮ̇͡a̱̾ͩ̒ͧ̚͠d͔͕̣̙͗͒̊̎̍ͬ̕u͙̻̪̤̰͖͗͆ͧͤ̕r̴̥̤̩̺̹͍̂͒ͩ̈̒̇̚ͅa̺̳̖̥̦̱͚͐t͍̻̼ͧ̀ͅh̬̭̪͍͙̞̜ͯ̈ͧ̋ͦ̀ looks like a screen glitch when there is a duplicate so the title appears twice on the list.