Pretty cool story, I’d love to know if she decided to stay with it through her adult life too. Either way she’s pretty damn hardcore.

Notice something different around here lately? This blog recently underwent a change: the name went from Beginning (beginning.anitawirawan.com) to Anita’s Notebook (anitasnotebook.com).

Beginning.anitawirawan.com was fine when there weren’t that many people reading the blog but as more and more people came by it became increasingly obvious that a change was needed to keep things comfortable for everyone.

Not only was the url long and complicated it was just plain hard for people to remember. People who were wanting to do something as simple as checking to see what was posted here that week were having a hard time remembering what url to go to and/or how to spell anitawirawan (and who could blame them lol).

Even the name Beginning was a problem, seeming to slip people’s minds easily and in many cases when talking about this blog people just resorted to calling it things like The Anita Blog :D.


AT THE BEGINNING

So where did the name Beginning even come from? I had first started this blog in 2008 sort of out of desperation to try and get things together after my brother Jody died, to somehow wake up my mind from the shock of it all by doing some writing. The name Beginning was perfect for that time because I was starting at square one in many aspects of my life and had to re-learn how to do a lot of basic things that we all usually just take for granted.

But over the years this blog has evolved and now the name just doesn’t fit because, well, thankfully I’m not at the beginning anymore. I wanted to change the name and url to something that would be easy to remember yet reflected the core of what this blog is about, the love of interesting stories.

I racked my brain trying to think of something that would be good and came up with a few ideas, but nothing seemed to fit quite right. Then one night as Jennifer and I were chatting like we usually do as we drift off to sleep we got into a conversation about how it was really starting to bother me that I couldn’t think of a new name for the blog.

We started to brainstorm possible names on the off chance that something would turn up. And anyway it was a lot of fun. We rattled off possible blog names one after the other, some were ok and some just plain off the wall causing us to go into uncontrollable fits of giggling. After a little while of throwing random stuff out there I suddenly said ‘Notebook something …something notebook …um Anita’s Notebook?’


NOTEBOOK SNIPPETS

Jennifer froze for a sec and then said ‘I really like that!’. She felt very positively about it and thought it was a perfect name because my blog is based a lot on a little Moleskine notebook that I carry in my pocket with me everywhere. I love stories (have you noticed lol) and use this book to jot down snippets of all sorts of interesting or unusual ones that I come across during the day.

A couple snippets from my notebook:



This is the story that originally inspired me to start writing hint memoirs almost a year ago. I decided to challenge myself to write one hint memoir a day for a year.


Some quickly written notes on stories that happened one day while Jennifer and I were travelling, there was no need to write the whole story down because I knew I’d remember them all once I saw the notes (especially Bluetooth Escalade guy who was too busy concentrating on being a douche to notice he hadn’t taken the gas pump out of the car before driving off).

COMFY

The more I thought about it the more I realized that yes it was the perfect name for the blog (I only had one reservation about it, how would I refer to the blog when talking about it myself? As in it would be really odd to refer to myself in third person all the time).

It wasn’t long before we were both wide awake and had broken out a laptop to buy the domain name. It was obvious that neither of us would be able to sleep until the url was bought and I figured that was a good sign. Either that or we’d wake up the next morning and be the not-so proud owners of a random domain name chosen hastily while dozing off lol.

Turns out that we liked it even more the next day :).

The process of switching over the entire blog to the new url was a tad bit more difficult of a process than brainstorming for the actual name itself, but once everything was done it felt really good and much more comfortable.

Anyway I hope that you like the new name and that the url will make things easier. Already I’ve noticed a lot more people coming in on the direct url instead of having to search Google for some weird combination of terms just to get back here again. This is the start of many improvements to come, which as mentioned in the comfy couches post aim to make this a nicer home for people who love stories. And of course as always if you have any requests feel free to email me.

I love this :)

“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents’ window long ago. Be dandelion wine in the ketchup bottle capped and placed with an inked inscription:

June morn, first day of Summer, 1923. Summer 1926, Fireworks Night. 1927: Last Day of Summer. LAST OF THE DANDELIONS, Oct. 1st”

-Ray Bradbury Zen In The Art Of Writing

While roaming a bookstore a while back the peeping eyes of this book cover caught my attention and I just had to snap a couple pictures with my phone so that I could blog about it later.

This book was part of a display that proclaimed it as “A Great Gift Under $15″.

The cover reminded me of when I was seven and someone gave me several old baby dolls…creepy ones with eyelids that opened and closed on their own depending on what angle the doll was at.

Wtf man, I didn’t even play with baby dolls and definitely not creepy ones, so I just kept them in their own little corner on my bedroom floor (as far away from me as possible).

At night they always looked so eerie just sitting there staring with their very human yet at the same time otherworldly eyes. It always seemed like if I was brave enough to watch them for a while their eyeballs would eventually start looking around the room on their own, alive. /shudder

I just looked the Creepy Ass Dolls book up on Amazon and the description of it says:

This fun and kooky little book sheds light on the otherwise unknown lives of these creepy little playmates. Creepy-Ass Dolls reveals the inner yearnings, desires, and lifelong goals of dolls.

Remember, there’s a reason they were kept in a toy box. This book offers a glimpse into the secret life of dolls with a yearbook approach, not only based around portrait photos, but also what the dolls are “most likely” to do; personal mottos and quotes; clubs and activities; favorite memories; and even faculty and staff.

Holy crap lmao! That was a bit unexpected. And oh hell no if it was actually possible I definitely would not want to know the memories or thoughts of any of old dolls. What do you think, would this book make a great gift? Do you know someone you’d want to give it to (and don’t say me lol)?

Hey everyone! I know I haven’t put up a new blog post here in a few weeks but I’m back now ;).

I decided to take a short sabbatical from posting because I felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job with this blog and needed to step back to get some perspective on things.

I really do love stories…really really love them lol and I intended for this blog to be an environment where people who love stories can feel cozy and right at home. But I wasn’t achieving that in the way I had hoped and it started to really bother me.

In a lot of ways I felt that the blog was like a house without any really comfy furniture. Sure there might be interesting stories and conversations starting up but it’s hard to hang out for long in a place without any comfy couches, just sayin.

After taking some time off I know what I need to do now though and will be making these adjustments over the next month. Things will be kicking off soon with something simple but super important: an easier to remember url to get here. The Beginning url was right for the start of this blog back in 2008 but I know that these days it’s become a pain for a lot of people who are just trying to come by and see the latest posts.

Anyway, I think you’ll be really happy with all the new stuff coming up and will feel right at home :).

Thanks,
Anita

p.s. Do you have requests? Feel free to let me know about them.

It’s like we’re both in the same room but they can’t see me and I can only see their footprints and part of their shoes.

 

What is a hint memoir?

More hint memoirs.

Feel free to post your own hint memoirs in the comments too if you want I’d love to read em :).
 

 

(pic by Rennett Stowe)

“Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
- Gene Fowler

Ha I think anyone who’s tried their hand at writing can relate to this quote.

A while back my BBPress powered message board was having a major problem, every time a certain thread flipped over to a new page there were major delays in the new page and posts showing up.


CONVERSATION KILLER

If you manually entered the url of the new page and went there you could see the page and posts right away, but otherwise it took forever for things to show up.

And as time went on the delays got worse and worse until things came to a grinding halt and none of the new posts and pages were showing up at all. I could see the posts in my admin panel but try as I might I just couldn’t get the new posts to show up.

As you can imagine this was pretty alarming to me. The users of my message board were very nice and patient about it but I knew I had to get the problem solved fast or it would kill the flow of conversation in the community there.

I combed the BBPress help forums and some other related help forums but still couldn’t find anything that fixed the posting freeze on my particular board. In desperation I started to try random things and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t wreck the site somehow lol. Finally I came across the answer…


+1 MORE

When I was signed in as an admin at the top of the thread there was a number of posts count that said (1945 posts +1 more). It was that ‘+1 more’ that ended up being the source of my troubles.

A long time ago I had a second thought about one of my posts, hit the delete link, and then thought nothing more about it. BBPress then made a +1 for it.

I didn’t know it then but BBPress never really deletes posts. If you hit ‘delete post’ it’s still there, just hidden and is added to the ‘+’ count at the top.


[EDITED ON SECOND THOUGHT]

So fast forward to me desperately attempting anything in hopes of fixing the pagination problem…I clicked on the +1 link and scrolled through the pages of the thread until I came across the ‘deleted’ post, which was now highlighted because I’d hit the +1 link.

By this time I’d figured out that no you can’t ever really delete a post from BBPress. I edited the post to say ‘[edited on second thought]‘ and then undeleted it.

Halleluijah, this fixed the pagination problem that was causing me so much worry. I’m posting this in hopes that it will help others out there who are having the same problem. Let me know if you have any questions about how I went about this, I can try and explain any details you might need.

[edit: I just had the pagination problem again (it's several months later). I was pretty frustrated because I'd taken care not to have any deleted posts hanging around but here was the problem yet again and I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of trying to figure out yet another way to fix this annoying problem.

However my lovely wife stepped in and found what seems to be the only other solution at the moment which is to delete a random post and then undelete it. Apparently BBpress has a flaw in it that once a post is deleted on a particular thread it will periodically get confused as to the numeration of posts.

Looks like I'll have to delete and undelete every so often to keep things running smoothly on this thread...well at least it's an easy fix.]

Big shoutout to all the people that contribute to morguefile.com, the site where I get many of the pictures for Beginning.

Morguefile is a place where you can find lots of free pictures with practically no strings attached, you can use or modify them or whatever for pretty much any purpose you want.

The site was named after a term used by people in a wide variety of fields like criminal investigation, reporting, comic book illustrating, etc for folders that contained old pictures and notes which might be useful again in the future.

What I like a lot about the pictures at Morguefile is that they aren’t cookie cutter stock photos that have had all the soul sucked out of them. The pictures there are varied and have depth, which helps me tell the stories I want to here on this blog.

If you have a blog or do creative work with pictures then I definitely recommend checking it out:

http://www.morguefile.com/

Saw something cool via a link posted by @FestivalConteQC on Twitter, it’s a periodic table of storytelling put together by Computersherpa with inspiration gathered from Tvtropes (which is an awesome site btw if you love stories).

The Periodic Table Of Storytelling lays out many of the core elements of stories with a good amount of humor mixed in:

There’s even a few example story equations given using the elements to make several well-known stories, here’s a couple:

Really interesting stuff and apparently they’re working on getting poster versions of The Periodic Table Of Storytelling out at some point in the future which is nice.

Anyway, check it out in more detail at: http://computersherpa.deviantart.com/art/Periodic-Table-of-Storytelling-203548951