If you tried to visit toward the end of last week or over the weekend you might have noticed a few problems. First the static content part of the site went down, although the blogs stayed up. Then the reverse happened as we worked on solving the former. In theory it’s all worked out now and shouldn’t happen again; we’ll keep an eye on it just to make sure.

Today’s review is of Jill O’Connor’s Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey. Yes, that’s a dessert cookbook, and a damn fine one too! I have two more semi-cookbooks I expect to review over the next couple of days, and I’m halfway through a novel (Ronald Cutler’s The Secret Scroll).

For today’s ubiquitous slideshow (yeah, still going crazy with the camera), it’s three pieces of new furniture we got:

This morning I was stunned to realize that Errant Dreams Reviews now contains 600 reviews. Six HUNDRED reviews. SIX hundred REVIEWS!

SIX HUNDRED REVIEWS!!!

*ahem* Sorry about that. Got carried away.

It took about 10 years, because I wasn’t always as focused on reviewing as I have been for the last year or so, but there you have it. Now that’s a milestone!

Edited to add: After all of that, you’d think I’d remember to post the link to today’s 600th review! Sheesh! Here it is: Susanna Carr’s upcoming Red-Hot and Royal!

I removed the ability for guests to submit new category suggestions to the links directory. This is easier (on both us and you) than setting up captcha verification of all submissions, and it’s gotten rid of about 95% of the directory spam. If it gets worse again I might get rid of the ability for guests to submit anything, but only if necessary.

I realize I never sent out anything over the announcement list about the site changeover, nor the Twilight Time list. Unfortunately so far we’ve been unable to work out why our mails are bouncing from both lists. Hopefully we’ll be able to work it out and at least get one message out on each, but ultimately we’re considering shutting down both lists anyway and focusing more on the blogs, shirts, and site.

Not much else today… I’m reading Michael Connelly’s A Darkness More than Night and hope to review it tomorrow, followed by Robert Masello’s Bestiary (both are library books due back on Tuesday, so I figure I’d better get a move on!).

“Old Books” by Ken Palk

I was doing a little bit of restructuring of the links directory. I was about to delete an empty subcategory of the “advice for writers” link category, and I’d swear that’s what I clicked on. Yet somehow I ended up deleting the entire advice category. Hopefully when my husband gets home he’ll know of a way to recover it. If not, well… if you know we linked to your site from that category, come back in a couple days and re-submit it, please, if we haven’t managed to recover the category.

*hangs head in shame*

I don’t even have the traditional excuse of not yet having had my morning cup of coffee.

Well, I’d better go write my “Deep Fathom” review instead of doing any further damage.

Update: WAHOO! Yes, my husband is awesome. We have the links back. It’s possible I may have undeleted some links that should have remained deleted (i.e., they were deleted previously), so I’ll go through later and check the sites. Huge, huge thanks to Jeffrey!

It seems it isn’t one foot Selene is having troubles with—it’s all four. I’m now wondering if she’s allergic to her pine litter (it’s the one thing I can think of that would routinely contact all of her feet and nothing else), so we’re going to try a new litter; the vet recommended the “Yesterday’s News” variety. The vet gave us some stuff to put on her paws, too, which should help the reaction.

I have a once-again-growing stack of books to read and review, which is good since I’ve been mowing through the things of late. I’m currently reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Coffee & Tea, and I have two yummy-looking books from Countryman Press as well: The Vermont Cheese Book and A World of Dumplings. (The latter is a cookbook.) Naturally I have plenty of other books to review, given time. I’ve added a bunch of James Rollins’s books to my Amazon wishlist, since I quite enjoyed his Black Order, and several people have graciously given me recommendations of further similar books to read.

I’m also still spending a couple of hours a day searching out links to the site and asking to have them updated; even with Google’s excellent web developer tool that gives me a straight-out listing of pages with links, it’s taking forever. I had no idea there were that many sites with links to us.

At any rate, time to go post on the Errant Epiphanies before I get back to link updating and review book-reading. Have a great weekend!

I’ve posted my review of Michael Michalko’s Thinkertoys, Second Edition, and I’m tentatively planning to review his “Thinkpak” later today or tomorrow. While these tools are aimed at businesspeople, they have a lot to offer nearly any type of creative. The thing that struck me as most useful was the combination of linear and intuitive exercises–most books present one or the other, depending on their audience.

I’ve also read a novel (gasp!)–my first in a couple of months–called “Recursion,” by Tony Ballantyne. It requires mulling over as it’s rather a complex book, but I do intend to review it as well.

I’m sure there was something else I was going to say, but it escapes me at the moment. Perhaps later I’ll edit and add it if I remember. Having a sore throat for a week really knocks me out. By the way, check out Errant Epiphanies if you haven’t lately–there’s a slew of new exercises there from the last week. Oh, and I must direct you to a lovely sentiment over at Dragon Writing Prompts while I’m at it.

Aha! I bought myself enough time to remember what else I was going to say (I think I need more sleep, glurgh). We’re getting closer and closer to having the new site completely ready for rollover. We’re still customizing the links directory and finishing up little things like that, but we’re almost done. Redirects from the old site to come soon!

“I went to Outland and all I got was this lousy–OMG look at the loot!”
Shirts, mugs, more

We’re in the process of importing the blogs over to the new site. We’ve imported the posts, but haven’t yet prettied everything up enough to put in the redirects. Thus we won’t be posting anything significant here until that’s ready. I expect it to be set probably sometime next week. Thanks for your patience!

UPDATE 5/29/07: We ran into a few technical glitches that’ll delay switching over for a little longer, so I’ll continue posting here for now.

UPDATE 6/13/07: All moved to the new blog now; all that remains is to put in redirects after we move over the reviews and link directory!

Whooo, I posted my review of The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People by Carol Eikleberry, PhD. It uses the Holland Codes as a guide to help you find a creative career that works for you–but it has plenty to work with beyond that as well.
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We’ve posted what I’d call the “draft” version of the new site: ErrantDreams.com. I call it a draft because we have yet to move several key things over: the links directory, the blogs, and a few such things. Also, while it looks great in Firefox and Safari as far as we can tell, and it’s certainly usable in MSIE, it doesn’t look quite right in MSIE yet.
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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was working on reviewing Heidi Swanson’s cookbook, “Super Natural Foods.” Unfortunately it took a little time, because I needed a good solid weekend free for shopping and cooking, and I didn’t get one of those until this past weekend. Now the reivew of “Super Natural Cooking” is finally up!

Technorati Tags: all-natural, health, Heidi Swanson, organic

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