AppleMail vs Eudora

Will Write For Chocolate strip and column have been updated. This week's column: "Finding Time To Write (Even If You Have Kids)."

Thanks so much to those who posted advice yesterday about my frustrating e-mail woes. Jeff did check to see whether the missing mail was hiding in some hidden folder but wasn't able to find anything. And no, I hadn't done a recent backup. :-(

Turns out I also lost ALL MY OUTGOING MAIL FOR 2005, but fortunately there -is- a backup since then.

Sigh.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've switched from Eudora to Apple Mail. So far, I love Apple Mail. Nice user interface, easy to use.

Things I like better about Eudora so far

I can associate specific .signatures with specific e-mail addresses.

Things I like better about Apple Mail so far

It hasn't eaten any of my e-mail yet.

Conversation threading option.

Nicer-looking interface.

The addresses are hooked up with my Mac Address Book.

In addition to regular mailboxes, you can have "Smart" mailboxes, which work similarly to Gmail's mailboxes but are much better because you can specify the filter rules.

You can tell by just looking at the mailboxes how many unread e-mails you have in that mailbox folder. I find this especially handy since I was very bad in Eudora about filtering messages into mailboxes...as a result, e-mails would pile up in my main Inbox.

The user pics. I mocked Jeff for liking this feature but now I'm totally into it, pasting my favourite photos of people into their Address Book entry. When their e-mails come in, I see their face (or whatever I choose to represent that person) in the header field. Sounds frivolous, I know, but I find it makes the e-mail experience a little more personal.

More on this in a future Blathering after I've had a chance to use AppleMail some more and have sorted out the chaos that is currently my e-mail.

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snailmail submissions and n'MC sketches

Sadly, Urban Tapestry practice had to be cancelled last night; freezing rain made road conditions pretty hairy. I worked on sketches of n'Early Music Consort instead (see below) and finished all sixteen cartoon portraits. Now I have to assemble them into a t-shirt design with other text.

I'm finding Flickr and Livejournal immensely useful for this kind of project. Not only have n'MC members been posting reference photos on Flickr, but I can post my sketches online for them to correct typos and point out any major feature problems ("Hey, I don't have a third eye in the middle of my forehead!"). I can't imagine the hassles involved in trying to do this without the Internet.

Speaking of offline stuff, I'm starting to send out queries and submissions to print publications again; I've been spoiled by pubs which accept e-mail submissions. Fortunately I remembered that U.S. postage rates had increased before putting together my SASEs. I still have a pile of U.S. stamps from previous visits (specifically for SASEs).

I don't blame some editors for preferring snailmail submissions, with the increase in e-mail spam as well as writers who think that the convenience of e-mail means they can get away with sloppier queries and e-mail letters. I'll be ranting more about this in an upcoming Will Write For Chocolate column.

Oh dear. Lights just flickered again...probably there's some hydro wire out there, heavy with ice from last night. I'd better get back to work in case we lose power later on.

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Cartoon sketches for the n'MC t-shirt

The drawings below are some of the cartoon sketches I've been doing of n'MC members for a fundraising t-shirt. n'MC = n'Early Music Consort, an a capella filk choir based in Britain. FilKONtario and Interfilk have combined efforts to raise the funds to get the choir to FilKONtario in 2007, and the t-shirt is part of the effort.













Please note that the sketches above are not meant to be realistic portraits but more the cartoony-type carticatures I've been doing for Livejournal icons in the past. I'll be doing 14 of them in total, then combining them into a t-shirt design, all within the next couple of weeks. The faces will end up as relatively small on the t-shirt. I'll be adding more to this Flickr set of n'MC sketches, and may replace some of them with better ones if I have time. My main goal is to have at least a vague resemblance of the cartoon to the real person. :-)

Eight finished, six more to go.

The t-shirts will be available at FilKONtario next month.

To n'MC members: If I've misspelled your name or gotten any major features wrong, please let me know.

Here's a button I designed as part of the fundraising effort:



Thanks to "Blind Lemming Chiffon" for printing these buttons.

Speaking of FilKONtario, don't forget about this year's convention! As I mentioned in a previous Blathering, the Guest of Honour is the Fantabulous CHRIS CONWAY, the Filk Waif is the Tantalizingly TANYA HUFF, and the Interfilk Guest is the Eloquent JUDI MILLER. We'll be doing a joint concert with Franklin on Saturday, and Ookla the Mok will be doing a concert on Friday.

You can find more info about the convention at the FilKONtario Web site. Please note that the weekend registration fee goes up after March 11th, so register soon!

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My Life In A Nutshell updated

Veryvery busy today, hence this short Blathering. Thanks to Allison for the heads-up about the cancelled LOTR Musical shows; what a bummer it must be for ticket-holders at those early performances. Jeff and I are going with our nieces in a couple of weeks.

Thanks to Beckett and Casey and Riley for the surprise package! Details and photos next week.

Have a great weekend, everyone. :-)

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Will Write For Chocolate updated

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated with a strip and accompanying blog entry: "Dealing With Rejection: Tips For Writers." Mimi, of course, is the cousin of Rosie from my Waiting For Frodo strip, though I'm not sure if this will ever be explicitly stated in the comic. Rosie was always my favourite character in WFF.

In yesterday's Blathering, I announced that Urban Tapestry and Franklin were doing a joint concert at FilKONtario and toyed with various joint group names like "Urban Franklin" and "Franklin Tapestry." I like other people's suggestions better:

From Merle: "Urban Gunkelmann"

From Eva Wiest: "Rural Tapestry" (since Franklin apparently lives in a rural area)

From Phillip: "FrankenTapestry" (Katy helpfully points out that "Franken" is also an area in Germany, and that Franklin does come from that area...)

From Judith: "Or the Erb Girls and a Guy: Angelica, Juniper, Dilly and... Frankincense? Fennel? Fenugreek?" (Debbie's note: In the past, Urban Tapestry has sometimes been nicknamed 'The Urb/Erb Girls' :-))

Recently read:

Artemis Fowl: I admit I wasn't expecting to like this; the blurb didn't make it sound like my kind of book. I was curious, however, and I liked the name. Anyway, I enjoyed this more than I expected. Some clever writing, and the premise is intriguing...Guess I'll have to pick up the second book. :-)

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