My Hosting agreement ended yesterday. Yet this site is still here. I would update your bookmarks to leostableford.blogspot.com as this could disappear at any time.

It’s an awesome thing to realise that moving website is becoming a bit like moving house. I’m having to set up all the new URLs and think about designs again and all that stuff. The leaner, meaner leostableford.com will be a site with ads (until I don’t need ad income) and a donate button. It will still be free in theory but I’m no longer going to be shy about asking people to get their wallets out.

Not that I needed to be particularly forthcoming in this little corner of the web. My books all have a royalty attached and the link is there and obvious to see. I just checked it, it works. I should possibly re-classify my adult content books as non-adult content books. Sure they have swearies in them and some violence and discussions of an adult nature but this doesn’t seem to bother anyone else on the web.

I was listening to Kevin Smith’s Smodcast last night for the first time, it does not proclaim itself through tagging to have adult content but I can tell you the air in my kitchen was pretty blue by the time I’d finished listening. This is what you get for trying to think of the children when your product isn’t a video game or a social networking website, obviously.

Anyway. The point is that this site grows from a time when I wanted to prove I knew how web applications ran and that I could run one. This is so much old news at this stage. Also, as previously mentioned, I am no good at pitching a novel. I just can’t. I like reading, if I had more time I certainly would read novels more often, but I don’t. If I am reading then I am reading an RPG manual or other sourcebook for my games.

For anyone who cares round here I’m totally excited about my RPG product but that will be launched on the new journal. All the content on this journal is… well, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I suppose I will try to archive what’s worth keeping but everything else is going to go. Sometime around mid-April wave bye bye to this monkey because he will be moving on.

If anyone has bookmarked this site your bookmark will continue to work (after a brief period of readustment) but it will now point to a blogspot redirect, not a dedicated piece of server space. I doubt I shall be here much more often except to tidy up so this is something of an au revoir to the old leostableford.com. Now it is going to sink slowly into decay and disuse until eventually it just dies.

Don’t be sad, the next gen leostableford.com is going to be a better place, I hope, if a little more commercialised. I’ll post up a direct link to the new journal as soon as it becomes a relevant thing.

Until that time… see you around everyone!

Well folks, the numbers are in the consideration has been given and the conclusion is inevitable.

The traffic leostableford.com gets does not justify paying for the hosting. Besides, I opened this site before it was wordpress some time in what, 2004? 2005? The web has moved on since then. I can host a free journal at blogger, I can link to my shopfront on lulu from there, nothing much changes. Managing functionality is easier. Also being on my own little island site is not a way to hook into the world wide community. So from this spring this place will cease to exist in its current form.

To be honest this is a good thing. Like I say I want my work to be more of a community effort. I am designing what may be the most social role playing game in the history of the world. I am a weird contradiction of a person, I hate crowds but I don’t mind people in small numbers. I need people for my work to be worth anything. Shutting myself away even online in a journal that’s so off the beaten track (electronically speaking) doesn’t help at all.

So I’m going to be working on that, and the role playing game and the novels over the next few months. Don’t expect many posts until then. But trust me, when the RPGs hit I expect I’ll be out pressing the virtual flesh, so to speak. I’m expecting a lot in 2009 time will tell how much a lot turns out to be.

Fresh updates soon. Probably later today in fact. I have two things to yammer about and just wanted to let everyone know that I was still breathing etc.

On family business.

I had a chance to finally finish reading a review book, the SF novel “Distant Cousin” by Al Past. I will post a review when I can spare the time. So one task down an undisclosed number left to do.

I optimistically brought my Matrix Ultimate Collection with me in the hope of reviewing the series and catching those few bits and pieces of extra that I missed. Chance would be a fine thing. The more level headed Mrs Monkey saw me packing the shiny green box and asked me why I was taking it. I explained that I thought I would have a few spare moments and she just nodded.

Actually I would have had time on the train and then some except that when they say “airline style” seats they really mean it these days. I seriously think that I was in some danger of deep vein thrombosis on that train journey.

So I got this the new laptop last week on Thursday and it’s taken about this long to even get it near to a usable state. I had to disable Norton and put a sensible anti-virus and firewall on the machine. Also I had to get rid of an annoying welcome screen, load up a bunch of software and verious other bits and bobs. All that and have a birthday party, sinusitis and various other things.

But now it’s all starting to come together.

Expect me to be around a bit more regularly.

See you all soon.

So it’s my birthday tomorrow and providence in the shape of the beautiful Mrs. Monkey has delivered unto me a laptop. I know these things are supposed to wait until the day but two factors came in to play. First, do you know how long it takes to make a new laptop useable? Not ten minutes that’s for sure. Second, I think everyone agreed that as the only one to have indepth knowledge of computers I should really select my own and the shopportunity was there to be grabbed.

Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that:

1) I can start reviewing properly from pdfs again. Being able to slap the PDF on the laptop and sit with it in a quiet corner is a necessity.
2) I will be able to blog more regularly.

The fact is if you can only do this from two locations all the time you’re not in those locations you, well, you can’t do it at all. I didn’t realise what an impact laptop computing would have on my site.

So thanks to anyone who has hung in with me over this lean period. Hopefully I can get some frickin’ serious work done now and then blog about it endlessly.

Go me! *is a stupendously happy monkey who is very lucky to have such a wonderful mrs*

You can’t really say you have not been neglecting something. Because if people have noticed you neglecting it then you probably have been. But you didn’t know you were because you were distracted. That’s how neglect happens.

Although I have been thinking about the site I have not actually ventured into it for a few weeks. It has come to that time of the year for domain and hosting renewal. The domain renewal was a modest £12 ($24 USD approx) and so that’s not a problem: leostableford.com belongs to Leo Stableford. All is well.

The hosting.

Ah, there’s the rub. We’re talking nearly £100 for that and I just don’t have it spare. The hosting is coming due in about three weeks.

I’m wondering, therefore, whether to beg, borrow and steal for it for my birthday or to take something a bit, er, freer and lose the dedicated hosting. That would mean redirecting my domain to a journal elsewhere. It would also mean redirecting my mail somewhere else where I could not guarantee my mail would go out as coming from leo@leostableford.com. This is a pretty hard choice as I use the e-mail for more than egotisitc frivolity. It’s actually my professional e-mail also.

So what to do?

I’m sure you can appreciate the mull time I’m taking.

Back soon.

Man, he was someone whose performances I always enjoyed. If I didn’t think I’d enjoy seeing a film he was in I knew he’d still be good in it; and if it was something I was looking forward to then his presence just elevated that project in my estimation see the new Batman flick for details.

And yet both Colin Farrell and Tom Cruise are still alive and working. (I mean alive is just about acceptable but why are they allowed to continue being in movies?)

What’s that all about?

Mr. Ledger, wherever you are, the lack of your presence in future movie production is a significant loss to the artform.

My e-mail isn’t working, hasn’t been for two weeks… so if I’m not replying or anything it’s because it never arrived. Sorry.