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Snowed in (and I don’t mean the album!) :D

Snowed in (and I don’t mean the album!) :D

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I’ve spent the last four days watching the snow pile up here. It’s really gotten me in the Christmas spirit, but it’s also leading to some serious boredom. I haven’t left my house since Friday evening!

The good news for you guys, is that I’ve had tons of time to explore the internet and dig up more sites for the directory. I’ve added I’m-not-sure-how-many-but-a-lot of sites, bringing the total count up to 1738! If I keep this up, it could reach 2000 sites before the year is over. How amazing is that?

I’d also like to note that I’ve added the first Finnish site to the directory, as well as two Québécois sites. So don’t be confused if you see the Canadian flag on two of the sites and not on all the other Canadian ones; I just wasn’t sure how else to denote the language without having people assume that they were from France. Maybe using flags wasn’t such a great idea after all? But they look so cute…

All of this web surfing has me noticing just how few awards we have these days. Awards were handed out like candy back in the day! Now, of course, we are less active now. But I think we could still do with a few more awards. I won’t be running Thieves and Liars again until March/April, so someone else needs to pick up my slack before then! Who wants to do it? Anyone?

Now that I’ve given you guys a little update, I think some hot tea and the other sort of “Snowed In” is in order…

A very merry (and early!) Christmas

A very merry (and early!) Christmas

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You know what December means? It means I’ve had this website for a year. Well, in two weeks that will be true, at least. And what that means is that I want to do some really special stuff for you guys to celebrate both the holiday and the anniversary.

The first of those things is that in addition to updating the monthly spotlights, as I do every month, I’ve created a little award for everyone who has been spotlighted in the past. Right now those awards are just stuck in a directory that you can access here, but I may create a little page to hold them all at some point in the future.

December’s spotlights, in case you don’t feel like going directly to the page to check them out, are as follows:

  • Author: Veronica, whose fic you can read here on LiveJournal
  • Website: Christmas Time, the advent calendar run by Becca
  • Story: Breaktown Records by Renee P.

    • My second little holiday surprise for you guys is a huge overhaul to the directory. Or, to be more accurate, the completion of the overhaul that has been in progress for several weeks now. I’ve separated the alphabetical listings into four pages rather than three, so less scrolling. And I’ve recounted all the sites so that the totals are now accurate. And, as always, I’ve added several new sites. With that comes an updated count of foreign sites, because that little statistic just fascinates me.

    Out of a total of 1462 sites, the foreign language sites are as follows:

  • Brazil — 42
  • Chile — 9
  • Costa Rica — 1
  • Czech Republic — 1
  • France — 1
  • Germany — 4
  • Indonesia — 1
  • Italy — 1
  • Mexico – 6
  • Peru — 1
  • Poland — 1
  • Puerto Rico — 1
  • Spain — 2

    • Isn’t that cool? I’m always amazed to find more Hanson sites from around the world.

    More Christmas surprises, some of which I haven’t even though of yet, to come!

    What’s this? A post in the middle of the day?

    What’s this? A post in the middle of the day?

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    You’ve read the subject correctly. For once I am updating the site in the middle of the day, rather than the middle of the night. You see, I’ve been doing anything I can to avoid working on my NaNo novel because it’s just so obvious I’m not going to win now.

    What does this mean for all of you? It means a brand new look for the directory and a few little changes to how it’s viewed. You’ll notice that instead of using random symbols, I now have little pixels to label the sites for content and language. I really liked the blinkies I added to the “NEW” sites, so I decided to hunt down a few more little pixels I could use.

    The most labor intensive part of that was labeling all of the non-English language sites. Each is labeled, to the best of my knowledge, with it a flag for its country of origin. The problem with this, of course, is that I couldn’t always be certain so I had to make an educated plus. Plus, some countries use multiple languages and some sites have multiple countries of origin. But I’ve done my best. You’ll notice that other countries which use English primarily — Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc — have not been labeled. That was a choice I made to save myself work and because I felt it was really unnecessary.

    But all of this work made me realize that I haven’t had a hit tracker on the site since I switched it over to WordPress. I wanted to get some statistics on where my visitors were coming from, so I decided to add one of those with this update. Until I have some information from that, you can view this list below to see where all of the non-English language sites in the directory are from.

    Brazil — 40
    Chile — 4
    Costa Rica — 1
    Czech Republic — 1
    France — 1
    Germany — 1
    Mexico — 6
    Peru — 1
    Poland — 1
    Spain — 2

    Of course, these are just the sites that use a foreign language. I know of other Brazilian sites and sites from various European countries that are primarily in English. I will be double checking for those and labeling some of them, but for now, the directory updates are finished.

    Isn’t it fascinating, though, to see all the places where hanfic authors come from?

    I’d love to be that tambourine.

    I’d love to be that tambourine.

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    The title is random yet Hanson related. Don’t even ask.

    Just wanted to post a short blog to let everyone know that I’ve made some updates to the directory. I added around 35 new sites today and updated a few older links that didn’t work right. I also added a little pixel next to the new sites to let you guys see which ones are new. Obviously most of these are old sites that I’ve rediscovered, not actually new sites, but you know what I mean.

    Speaking of, I’ve often contemplated adding a notation beside the sites that are currently updated. I’d love some opinions on that. Do you guys think it will be helpful? Should it be a notation like I currently use for adult content etc, or a pixel like I’ve used for “new” sites? Should I change all of these notations to pixels or would that be too busy and cluttered?

    Let me know what you guys think.

    As for NaNoWriMo, I’m sitting just under 10k right now. Very behind, but slowly making progress. Next week I will make a big push to catch up. Also, I’ve plans to spend December editing the rest of last year’s NaNo (Love and Other Socially Acceptable Emotions) and getting more of that posted, if anyone was actually reading it.

    And that’s all for now. Please comment with your thoughts on the directory changes.

    It’s November!

    It’s November!

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    …aka the month when fic writers everywhere go even more insane than usual! That’s right, it’s time for NaNoWriMo and once again, I’m participating, along with many other hanfic writers.

    That means that other updates to the site will be basically nonexistent, although I did get the new spotlights up late last night and added a few sites to the directory today (bringing it up to a total of 1112). Everything else, if there is anything else to add, will have to wait until I have time in December.

    NaNo was a brand new experience last year that really brought me a lot closer to the fandom. I was still sort of a new kid on the block then, or, more accurately, an old kid returning to the block. Participating in NaNo and the word sprints during that month helped me to make friends and really feel like part of the crowd.

    It’s been a year now and I’m arguably even busier now than I was then — and that’s saying a lot, since I’m effectively unemployed now and no longer in college. But I’m still going to try. I would encourage anyone who writes to try it at least once. It teaches you a lot about writing; the focus is all on quantity, not quality, and it forces you to get outside of your comfort zone. It is definitely tough, but I can assure you that at the end of it, you’ll be a different — and better! — author.

    If you aren’t doing NaNo already, it’s time to get planning for next year! You’ll be a whole twelve months ahead of the idiots like me who threw out their plans on October 31 and started from scratch.

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