The Colony has just moved to a new server. Everything seems to have gone well, but if you notice any strangeness (apart from the normal strangeness, natch) please let me know 
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Just finished a pretty comprehensive Help Guide to the Author Platform – please take a look.
Last night...!
Apologies, the main litopia.com site is unexpectedly down due to, ahem, some code mismanagement. Working on it now.
I can tell you with great authority – norovirus is no fun
We’re playing Beat The Bot in today’s Huddle… Yes, it’s going to be a great game, but also… the future of writing itself may depend on… you…!
I had a subscription to Office 365, which I’ve just cancelled – thinking that although I wouldn’t receive updates, I’d still be able to use it. Turns out, you can’t. You don’t pay – Microsoft hobbles your software, i.e. makes it unusable. This is not going to drive me back into their arms! LibreOffice looks better every day.
Just saw "KPop Demon Hunters" - the singalong version. I will never be the same.I am new to Litopia and am having problems using the site: I would like to find the 17 publishers accepting submissions for Children's books. Can you help? Where do I find how to use the site?
charlotteswonderufstories@gmail.com
I have a ridiculously early meeting in town today so won't be able to post the Daily News Update until I'm back, late afternoon.
Following on from Mel’s post, this chap landed on my knee yesterday, a Common Darter dragonfly. However, I was horrified to later learn of their utterly lewd behavior, and I quote: “Eggs are not laid, but broadcast from the air: the male holds the female in tandem and swings her down and forward over water. At the furthest point of the arc the female releases some of her eggs to fall on the water.” This sort of grossly immoral public display must surely be banned? Why restrict it to just books?
So let me explain what’s going on here. You’re looking at two male Ancistrus fish, South American vegan (of course!). Part of a shoal of about 20, all of whom have been with me for thirty years. The things they’re clustered round are Ancistrus fish eggs, and they are guarding, not eating, them. The female lays them then leaves it to the male (just one, usually!) to look after them as they develop, involving a lot of fin fanning to keep the water flowing around them and thus prevent rot. Hopefully, these two males are good friends since the baby fish, when they emerge, will have two fathers!
The Author Platform is undergoing some design quirks at the moment and isn’t looking its best. This is temporary and we’re on it.
Quite an epic evening last night. A large male and a large female turned up. I was on my new viewing plinth, about five feet up. They had fun for 20 mins or so finding the peanut stashes I’d left. Then the (highly intelligent!) male worked out that the motionless creature draped in black, on the plinth, had a bowl of peanuts at his feet. It took him 5 more mins to work out how to get up onto the platform (he came in from the back, I was frozen still the whole time). Then, very deliberately, he came up, gave me a long stare, then proceeded to very carefully smell every inch of my trousers! So that’s what a human smells like... I’ve been entered into his smell-memory. It was, frankly, awesome
And after!
Before... (waiting for badgers)...(with sweetcorn...)
Will be inviting more folk to join the Author Platform very soon, get ready
So I read somewhere that “badgers love sweetcorn!” Seemed highly improbable to me, but to test, I left a cob out last night on the usual badger plinth. This was the result this morning – case closed! They sure had a good party last night...
Two nights ago, she's found my peanut stash. I suspect she may be pregnant...?
Don’t judge me, but I’m bunking off work now (3pm) to tidy up the badgers’ part of the wood...
Software updates have now finished.
First contact, about an hour ago
Freddie Forsyth is dead. Author of The Day of the Jackal and more of that ilk. As dodgy a character in real life as any in his books. Like Jeffrey Archer, wrote thrillers for the home county set. End of an era – end of a profitable genre too, perhaps.
Hastings this am...
Woke up to find a Chinese company who I’ve dealt with previously has successfully billed my credit card four times for goods not ordered. It’s a lot of money. Credit card company says – “wait for the good to arrive, then see if you can return them for a refund”. This is so wrong! All my morning will now be devoted to sorting this out
What people don’t understand about the London Book Fair is that, like other book fairs, it goes out of its way to prevent authors from “bothering” agents. I’ve never minded that at all, but let it pass. More seriously, it’s still very hard for new agents to just wander around and meet publishers. You would think that the whole point of a fair... wouldn’t you?
My life. For days. It really is coming together...
Was never able to successfully make sauerkraut in Baker St. Don’t know why, but each attempt came out mouldy However, first attempt in Hastings has just turned out wonderfully! Sea air…?
So I spent the evening toying around with DeepSeek, the Chinese ChatGPT-killer, running it locally on a machine here. Truthfully, it feels pretty much the same as ChatGPT, although the interface has been tuned to feel friendlier, to the extent of being somewhat conspiratorial – which an odd affectation for a program. It let’s you in on its “reasoning” process, which is interesting the first few times, then quickly pales. Main thing is… it’s free to run on your own machine! Hard to see how the others can compete against that. -
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