Myr

I'm glad that people are appreciating this. We're going to continue to work more to highlight stuff on the site.

Before we get started with this week's flashback, I wanted to remind all of our authors that there are two anthology topics and a novella coming up. You can find more details and weigh in on your progress here in the Writing Club: If you aren't a member, join up! There is a lot going on in there for authors. Now, on with the show! Would you be so kind as to take a few moments to review the stories you read here? You never know when you might inspire an author or even a new author with a review

Yes. We'll update those where we are aware. We were looking to put some logic in the software to have the system do it automatically, but that has been another victim of the programming delays. Anyway... I'll post a topic in Announcements for collecting updates soon.

When we upgraded to the new software, we picked up a very powerful tool called the Activity Stream. The cool thing here is that it has not only built-in options, but you can create your own as well. We'll start with the most important two, right up front. First. All Activity. You can find it by going to the Activity option on the Main Menu and Selection the top option on the Sub-Menu, All Activity. This immediately shows you all the latest new content on the site. You can view this in 2 different ways. Expanded and Condensed. The system remembers your preference. Expanded: Condensed: (You can see that for the forums, the Forum name is in the colored bubble, just like in Fluid View, which we highlighted here last week. And you get a rare glimpse into the Site Moderator forum... We're discussing a blog Renee is posting tomorrow (Wed) on improving the quality of the tags, descriptions etc on Stories) There are icons next to the content to tell you what the content is: A forum comment, two story comments and a blog comment. Story related items are little books. Forum items are little chat bubbles. That covers All Activities, so the next important item is Activity Streams. These are customizable. The default Activity Stream is "Latest Stories" You can set this to anything you like. You can find all the default stream under your name: (That little triangle is the Moderator Report function, for those that are curious) If you have changed your default stream, that'll be different. There is a LOT going on in the Activity Stream. First, like the All Activity we covered first, you can view story updates as Condensed or Expanded. It works the same way. The icons for content are the same, this time, since we are looking at only stories, they are all the story icon. The big change here is there is now the large white "filter box". The filter box is how you set options. It has the following items: Show me - This sets what get's shown. You can choose between Content (like a chapter) or Content and Comments/Reviews. You can also filter items using tags. If you type a tag in that box, it'll show you only things with that tag. Content Types. This is how you pick what get's shown. The Story Updates Activity Stream shown above, it shows you Stories and Story Chapters. That means it shows new stories that are posted and new chapters are posted. There is a blog post all it's own on just how you can play with that. Read Status - Default is everything. you can set up a stream to show you only story updates you haven't read. Important! "Read" is forum software for "Clicked on". It is like your notification pop up window. "read" is really loosely defined. Ownership - Default is everything. I could have it show only things I've posted. Or I can specify an author. Example: Following - Default is everything. You can choose to show updates for only stories you follow, for example. Time period - Default is Any, which also displays as Last 365 Days. You can filter items during the last year. It does seem pretty quirky on how successful that works. Sorting - Newest First is the default. You can reverse that. If you make changes to an existing stream, it asks if you want to save. If you say yes, it'll keep your stream settings and you can go back to it whenever you like. There are also a ton of existing Activity Streams availible already. You can use them or you can modify them. Example, you can change the Latest Blog updates to Latest Blog Updates of just this blog. I hope this helps everyone understand the power of the system just a bit more. Let me know if you want to know more.

This launches tomorrow. I pre-ordered. *crosses fingers*

So I finally got around to watching this. I shouldn't have waited so long. Oh... mmmm. Tom Holland. What an adorable Spider-Man he makes. What a great selling feature too, showing him in boxers. More than once. lol. Eye candy aside, both male and special effects, I also enjoyed the movie in general. It's really good to see Micheal Keaton back to acting again. He did a good job with a complex character. I'd definitely say this is worth having in your library. The 4k version is also worth it if you've got the hardware to rock it.

I guess sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Good advice... but I'd apply to everyone. And thanks @Comicality for another great article We as a site do a lot of this ourselves. That's why I'm constantly posting stuff to Facebook, Twitter, Google+... it's why we do the blogs, the newsletter...

I don't think I've really played a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy 2 or 3? It's been a long time. I'm not sure why I don't play, except that they aren't really that visible (if at all) on the Xbox platform, where I spend the vast majority of my gaming time.

Stalking Darkness is the conclusion of most of the threads set up in Luck in the Shadows. It picks up where the last book left off. Traitor's Moon moves in time a bit and covers the consequences of the first two books. If you liked the first book, you'll definitely want to complete these two books. Both of these books are good and have a nice emotional connection to them. (And the slow burn on the romance final pays off). There are further books in this series, but I found my interest in them dropping a bit and I have not read the last two released books yet. I'll post them on this blog when I go get to them.

This week's Anthology Flashback brings back to the Summer of 2009: Deceptions As always, we thank all these authors once again for participating. If it is not too much trouble, would you be willing to write a review for these authors? Even if some of them are no longer around, I'm sure other readers will appreciate the effort. The authors that are still with us surely will. For Authors! We'd also like to remind all authors that we have 4 Anthology themes for 2018 and a Novella Contest: Contests 2018 Summer Novella Anthology - Due April 15th, 2018 Anthologies 2018 Spring Anthology: Now or Never - Due May 15th 2018 Spring Anthology: Encounters - Due May 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Fight Back - Due Nov 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Good Intentions - Due Nov 15th

and landing 2 boosters at the same time. Damn...

So, I have to admit, I'm fascinated by SpaceX. And I have to say, they are really persistent. They tried recruiting me for the Mars program. I had to tell the recruiter no 3 different times. He ended up hiring away my coworker. Seriously. I wasn't interested in going to California. But damn! Very cool to see this stuff going on: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/elon-musks-spacex-rocket-heading-towards-asteroid-belt-overshooting/

Well, now you can choose which way you like better.

So, when Forum 4.2 was released, they added a new feature called "Fluid View". This is a whole new way of looking at the forums. It basically lists all new topics based on when they were posted and gives you a color-based tag on which forum it belongs to. The forum company is recommending now that new forums start with it. This ties into me taking the time to colorize the forum icons awhile back. You can check out the different options here: The Standard forum view is the button the left. The Middle button is "Grid View" which is frankly pretty odd. The Fluid view is the option on the right. Give it a click and check out the options. It really shows active posts a lot easier. When in the Fluid view, you get filter boxes on the left-hand side of the page. This allows you to show topics only from selected forums. If you don't select any, it shows you all topics from the forums you have access to. Each topic has a color-coded tag indicating which forum it is from. As soon as you select a few forums, you'll show only the posts from those forums. For example, Announcements and The Lounge: This view is an option if you're not a fan of scrolling through all our different forums looking for updates. It might surface content easier and it more likely you'll see something. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Coming soon, I'll go over the Activity Streams as another way to view new content.

Well yeah, I said that in my post

Me too... but I like Batman... and new Robin is looking yummy... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043813/?ref_=nv_sr_1

This is the best DC movie I've seen in awhile. Probably the best since the Dark Knight. It is way better than the Superman movie, and Batman V. Superman. I also enjoyed Chris Pine in this movie. Though, to be truthful, I seem to like the job Chris Pine does in all the movies I see him in. For the movie itself, it has a good solid plot. It explains the picture from Batman Vs. Superman very well. The movie has action and character. It's good to see a kick-ass woman kicking ass because she's supposed to be versus some Hollywood virtue signaling deal. They did a great job with this movie.

Yes. Please try posting the next chapter live instead of post-dating it.

They sure are. for games like @BHopper2, you can print your own miniatures. In fact, there is a company out there that specializes in selling you 3d models to print for gaming. Just one of many: http://www.fatdragongames.com/fdgfiles/?page_id=2567

I'm an engineer and I tend to keep current on technology. I've been watching 3D printing for the last few years. I can tell you that we have 3 massive 3d printers at work that are basically running 24/7. The amount of stuff we can do with them would blow your mind. But the interesting thing is that there is a company out there that brings the power of this stuff right to your home. https://www.prusaprinters.org/ The guy in charge of our industrial grade machines has one of these at home. As do 3 others that also use work's 3d printers. That's a pretty big ringing endorsement for me. Of course, the fact that the demo picture is printing a dragon helps I plan on picking up a Prusa printer when I have completed stage 2 of my mancave project. I need a nice temperature regulated place to keep my new printer before I go and buy it. I figure putting it in the new workshop I'm designing and building would be the best bet. Is anyone here playing with 3d printing yet?

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The more we learn about the Mayans, the more interesting everything is becoming... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261

Good Lord... which pile Tim? I can see 10 different bookpiles from just where I'm sitting.

@CassieQ yeah... I've found that to be the case from the ones I've read.