• Member Since 28th Sep, 2012
  • offline last seen 6 hours ago

Firesight


I'm an IT Brony who writes stories based on a show for 8-year old girls whose content is meant for anything but 8-year old girls.

More Blog Posts690

  • Friday
    Still working on Midnight Rising...

    At the rate of about 800-1000 words a day. That’s my key to getting stuff done that’s causing you issues; just be sure you put at least a little time in on it this day to have some forward momentum. The two chapters are now up to 24,100 words. I’ll work on it more this weekend, at least around continuing work around the maps and battle graphics I’m making for Feathered Hearts.

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    3 comments · 74 views
  • 1 week
    Did two things this past weekend...

    First, I ran 10k for the first time in two months after laying off that long to let my ankle bursitis subside, trying to allow the area to generally heal up. It appears that it worked. To my delight, there was no ankle pain after and I hadn’t even lost much stamina thanks to hitting an elliptical machine twice a week for an hour instead of jogging. My upper legs are another matter, though.

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    5 comments · 134 views
  • 1 week
    C&C chapter 40 entering prereads tonight + teaser

    Much as I didn’t want to, I made the decision to break it up since the full length of the War Council meeting had exceeded 20,000 words and will probably approach 25k for the now-two chapters before all is said and done. The breakpoint itself will be between learning about the general war situation both Aricia and the Griffon Kingdom face, and then discussing what in all the Crows they’re going

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    4 comments · 96 views
  • 2 weeks
    Midnight Rising/C&C update: April showers may bring May flowers...

    But of more interest is the emergence of 17-year cicadas in my area. Big, ugly, red-eyed insects that are the size of your thumb but basically harmless, as long as you can get past all the shed skins they leave behind on leaves and the everpresent and disconcertly loud background sound they produce as a mating call. Fortunately, the outbreak in my area seems pretty limited. There's a few around,

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    3 comments · 123 views
  • 3 weeks
    Midnight Rising update; Feathered Hearts C&C teaser...

    Hey, folks. Here’s my weekly writing update. I’m tagging this as C&C since that’s what the teaser below is about, but the blog is about both it and Unleash the Magic - Midnight Rising.

    Unleash the Magic - Midnight Rising

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    4 comments · 144 views
May
22nd
2021

It's a bit embarrassing... · 7:20pm May 22nd, 2021

But it turns out that all this time I was wrong about Memorial Day being May 24th. It's actually May 31st. I had it in my head for some reason that Memorial Day can't fall on the last day of May, but I was wrong. And it's a good thing I said something to my coworkers about it on Friday, or I would have stayed home on Monday without thinking and been essentially AWOL. :facehoof:

Embarrassing, but there you are. :twilightblush: So now, the question becomes--do I release on May 24th as promised even though that's not the actual holiday I was aiming for? Or do I delay a week to hit the real Memorial Day and hopefully have more content/get a bigger audience?

Having given it due consideration, I believe I will indeed delay. :ajsleepy: Work has picked up big time, as my manager—my day job is a software developer for anyone interested—is pushing us hard to get a major project done by the end of May, and as a result, it's been harder to get writing done.

Case in point, this latest chapter has been coming a lot slower than the ones before it, though I have been able to get 6000 words down on it in the space of the past week. It's still far from done, though, and I really do want to have at least one and preferably two more chapters finished before hitting the publish button, as well as be able to spend some time just cleaning up and editing the chapters by listening to them recited using the site's voice narration function.

Speaking of which, I just found out that the site's voice narration function has undergone a major upgrade sometime in the recent past. Especially on mobile devices, you can now choose the voice it recites with, as well as the speed with which it does so. Have to say, I rather enjoy hearing my Firefly chapters recited back to me in a male British voice over my iPhone when I'm jogging! Nothing like hearing the word Lieutenant pronounced "Lef-tenant", after all...

In any event, the goal of Memorial Day release remains intact, with hopefully eleven chapters loaded and ready by the time it launches--one for the main story, and ten for the side story, with five on the initial release and the rest released at the rate of one per day after. Guess we'll see if what more or less amounts to a griffon/human sex anthology interwoven with a lot of interesting character info sells on the site outside of old Gentlemanverse and Fearthered Heart fans.

Comments ( 10 )

Speaking of which, I just found out that the site's voice narration function has undergone a major upgrade sometime in the recent past. Especially on mobile devices, you can now choose the voice it recites with, as well as the speed with which it does so. Have to say, I rather enjoy hearing my Firefly chapters recited back to me in a male British voice over my iPhone when I'm jogging! Nothing like hearing the word Lieutenant pronounced "Lef-tenant", after all...

But can the narrator call me a fat, useless sack of fucking Yankee-Dankee Doodle shite?

I hear you on time slipping and stretching. The whole last year and change of Covid has done a number on the passage of time for me.

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But can the narrator call me a fat, useless sack of fucking Yankee-Dankee Doodle shite?

I will certainly admit that the voice choices really do need a Gordon Ramsay option! :rainbowlaugh:

5523286

I hear you on time slipping and stretching. The whole last year and change of Covid has done a number on the passage of time for me.

Heard that. I only started working in the office again after 15 months of working from home two weeks ago. It's rather surreal, especially when I'm close to the only person there. They say we're at 10% capacity. It's more like 2%. :ajbemused:

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especially when I'm close to the only person there.

So what you're saying is, nopony will question it if you take enlarged portions from the coffee machine :scootangel::duck:

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So what you're saying is, nopony will question it if you take enlarged portions from the coffee machine :scootangel::duck:

Oh, trust me, I abuse my coffee privileges all to hell! :rainbowlaugh: And they've got a nice machine, too, that can make anything from regular coffees to espressos, French Vanilla, and various mochas/other coffeehouse brews. You can even mix and match coffee types to tweak your caffeine level.

So, I apparently have only a single voice option for the reading voice. How do I get more?

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For my iPhone, at least, you hit the settings button at the far right of the bar that appears when you click Read. You'll get a settings menu with two sliders and a drop-down that contains the voice list, as shown:

lh6.googleusercontent.com/QaDzLEL-H07YqD0PSI8B67lC_iP-INojVHNe8FHHj5QAhE__VE2uutZ5-zDDmCkPiz116-jKY69CHrxw17Aq1PSHB_uDrsFKnC2sqPl0dl2uTcPLu7wQJJ9dUO9nmFg-AR5T-ns6

Strangely, you only seem to get two options when you use a desktop browser. At least, that's all I see for Firefox.

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Yeah, I ended up installing another voice package on Windows, and that opened up one more voice option. Unfortunately, none of the ones available are that good.

As for my Android (I'm not shelling out an extra $300 for an iPhone), I've tried tinkering with the text-to-speech voices, and it's gotten stuck on English (United Kingdom), and it's, again, not that good.

I think I'll just settle for reading the fics again the old-fashioned way.

Awww I was looking forward to the new chapter because I have the week off and could read them.
well next week then.

5524085

Yep, sorry about that. :ajsleepy: But it just means more time to write and put the proper level of polish on these things. By this time next week, it'll be live. One week to launch!

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