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The Last Deserver

It's that time again. Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™ Issue 2-6 is available now. A brand new issue, and new horrors. This is the last issue of Year Two. That means that you could instead buy all six issues at a discounted price. Either way it's a good day to be a horror fan. The first thing I want to tell you about is this issue's piece of the serial story PSY3007 Act 6. As I mentioned last time it could be the stunning conclusion to the story or a mind-blowing cliffhanger. The only way to find out it is to buy the issue and read for yourself. The other two stories in this issue are a little longer than previous ones have been making this issue more bang for your buck. The first is "Ghost of the Navigator" about a storeowner who picks up a ghost. The other is "No Fury", and is the last of the Deservers stories. Devils are afoot again, but they may have some competition.

The first article--after the "Letter From the Editor" detailing the creative process of the issue and other sundry thoughts--is titled "Horror Stars?" and is a veritable who's who of actors and actresses that you might never have imaged played roles in a horror movie. This issue also marks the final "Horror Movie Franchise Discussion" with #9 and it is the Scream Trilogy. It's a very interesting look back in light that there is soon to be a fourth movie, which is bound to change some of the dynamics described and come with it's own new rules of horror. Until then the last article, the final "Hangman's Noose", covers a lot of the rules of horror movies and especially horror movie franchises. The two reviews are for the movies "The Cell" and "The Mothman Prophesies" this time. The next issue will be coming out January 21, 2011, not in December. I hope you can wait.

• Tags: cliffhanger, Deserver, devils, ghosts, haunted, horror, Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™, movie franchise, revenge, rules.

Revisiting Tags and Notes

I've had discussions with different people before about tags and notes. As you would expect they have different opinions. Some think the tags should be kept to the most pertinent ideas. Some think the tags should be expressed directly within the text--this is important in keyword work to make search engines like you more because you look like you know what you're talking about and are worth being higher up in the rankings a.k.a. nearer to being listed first in the pages for that search. I am not that interested in doing that, least of all as artificially as the supposed search professionals seem to want content providers to do. I like to include tags for everything that is covered directly and indirectly in my blog entries. That means if I use a word like say conspiracy, then that will be a tag, but I might not say the word yet the meaning is there or something reminds me of it.

Why is this important? Why come back to this again? October's little holiday love-fest brought it back. All of those movies generated a lot of tags especially as connections arose and one thing evoked another or required a bit of explanation or a connection necessary to understand the point being made. There are only so many things that a person can be expected to remember. There is no need to work excessively hard on remember things that are trivial only until they are not. This is the other half of the equation. The tags are there to point you to more on a topic, or to allow you to return to something you read before. There is also the matter of not requiring the reader, or even yourself to have to go elsewhere to find a piece of information, especially if it wasn't something readily available i.e. had to dig around for it.

• Tags: blogging, connections, idea, information, memories, movies, notes, search engine, tags, topics.

Back to Tags and Coding

I had plans for October that just up and disappeared like ghosts exorcised by some overzealous paranormal hunting group. The annual movie nights went ahead. The E-Rag was released on time. Dozens of tags were added to the Knowledge Base. That was about it. Not that that wasn't enough. I also did a little bit of programming work that made the excessive tagging possible. I have to go back and expand those programs out later. Then I have to take the expanded bits and fold them into an existing framework of other coding that exists for a different but related purpose. In the end, tags will generate themselves in a much more automated manner than they do now. Again I ask myself why I am not using someone else's software. The answer is that I don't like how other software is handling it on the few pre-existing bits I use.

I have a blog hosted with Blogger--owned by Google--and it is really beginning to get on my nerves. I cannot move easily back through old blogs unless there are only a couple of them in a month. The amount of tags is limited to 200 characters, which I broke exceedingly every movie night. I haven not checked lately but the tags did not list all entries with that tag, if you wanted to use them to follow a topic--that is the worst offence, especially from a Google product. I haven't done much with WordPress since Windows Live Spaces pushed me onto it. I've had some piffling trouble getting around the site. LiveJournal hasn't grabbed me either, but I haven't done much with it. In fact I'm considering options for what to do with my LiveJournal. I have some ideas, and I've maybe even mentioned them before.

• Tags: blogging, Knowledge Base, plans, problem, research, software, tags, web coding.