Involuntary laptop exchange at the office. Saved passwords and unhealthy curiosity. Suzy was after some gossip, but ended up with way more than she could handle. She paid it with her life, but not before doing her country a great service and finally finding a meaning to her life.
Author: Stephanie Booth
He was preoccupied. Twenty miles later [en]
He was preoccupied. Twenty miles later, he realized that the car he was driving wasn’t his. There was an unconscious girl on the back seat.
They fled through the country, narrowly escaping death more than once. They never found her daughter, but many years later, had one of their own.
50 Words [en]
[fr] Ce soir, j'ai eu pas moins de 13 idées d'histoires courtes (50 mots). J'en ai écrites 5 dans le train en rentrant, et 8 attendent d'être développées. Du coup, j'ai décidé de les reposter ici, au lieu de squatter les commentaires de Vince systématiquement. Va aussi falloir que je m'y mette en français, pardi!
Tonight was almost magical. On the train home, I wrote no less than five 50 word short stories. Then on the way home from the station (bus and walking), thought up starting-points for eight more.
I started out feeling a little shy about posting them here, so have been parasiting Vince’s comments in the post above. I feel like I want to have these stories here, too, so I’m going to be back-posting them to CTTS. I’ll use the tag “50words” to keep track of them, so you can see them all on one page by clicking on that link.
One thing I understood tonight is that I don’t have to feel capable of writing a novel based on the idea I develop in 50 words. I can make up a 50 word story about a serial killer, even if I know I wouldn’t have the beginning of a clue how to portray one.
It’s liberating.
I'm going away for the week-end [en]
“I’m going away for the week-end. When I come back, I want you and your stuff out of here!”
Sobbing and frantic, she started packing up her nearly four years of life with him.
Lived 3 months on Sarah’s couch. Fell madly in love with Josh. Forgot all about Mike.
I took my shoes off and put them [en]
I took my shoes off and put them carefully beside the bed. My ruby red slippers.
I crawled under the bed and curled up next to the cat. I couldn’t remember when I’d abandoned the top of the bed. It just seemed safer with something above my head.
She grabs her gun, hops on her horse [en]
She grabs her gun, hops on her horse, and makes for the village where her lover is living. She charges into the house, killing everybody in the way. Reaches the room where he is sleeping, picks up the cat curled up on the bed, and blows his brains out.
Love.
She pulled the curtains and slipped between [en]
She pulled the curtains and slipped between the sheets. The neighbours’ bed upstairs was creaking rhythmically.
“Not again!” she thought.
Sally remembered that time in the restaurant with Harry. She still had it in her.
Tomorrow morning, they would be the ones looking at her enviously in the entrance hallway.
The little old lady had spent her evening [en]
The little old lady had spent her evening looking through faded photographs. Her children, their children — and theirs.
She remembered one photograph that appeared to be missing.
She made for the loft and reached for the big staggering box of her husband’s memorabilia.
It knocked her down dead.
Linking Flickr Images in Thesis' Multimedia Box [en]
[fr] Instructions pour faire en sorte que les photos de la boîte multimédia du thème WordPress Thesis renvoient vers leur page Flickr.
I haven’t had Thesis on my blog for 24 hours that I’m already messing with it. Oh well. So, one thing I’ve done and will explain in some detail is added tons of photos from my Flickr account to the Thesis multimedia box up right, with links to the original Flickr pages.
- I have shell access to my server, which makes life so much simpler. Once inside the
rotatorfolder, all I have to do is grab the URL of the middle-sized photograph I want (All sizes > Medium) andwgetit. For example:wget http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3252/2725414522_4a9b2887df.jpg - On the Thesis Options page, I insert the Flickr photo page URL in the “alt” field for that photo. It’s pretty easy to deduce it from the filename. For example:
2725414522_4a9b2887df.jpg=>http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/2725414522/. - Following these instructions, I replaced one line in the
multimedia_box_functions.phpfile so that the images would actually link to their Flickr page.
Voilà!
New Look for CTTS: Thesis [en]
[fr] Je viens d'installer (après avoir acheté la version "Dévelopeur") le thème Thesis, et j'en suis très contente. J'aime les réglages que permet facilement ce thème (nombre de colonnes et largeur, sans avoir à toucher le CSS) ainsi que la "boîte multimédia" en haut à droite, qui permet de montrer des photos aléatoires (et même, si on veut, de spécifier une photo en particulier pour une page en particulier).
A few weeks ago Suw mentioned that she was looking at the Thesis theme for her sites. I went to have a look, and it looked nice and clean. Only problem: it wasn’t free.
However, the theme author, Chris Pearson (not to be confused with Cris Pearson), was offering a lifetime subscription to the theme and support, as well as use on unlimited sites for the developer version ($164), which I bought.
The result is what you see now on the site. I haven’t modified it much yet. Here are a few things I liked.
First, you can control the top navigation menu bar completely (look at how much stuff I put in it — maybe a bit too much). It wraps nicely when you put more items than fit in one line. You can add links to pages in your site, or to outside pages. This also allows me to link to the page named About Me and This Site with the simple word “About”. Basically, this achieves the same thing as the “redirect to” page template that I’m using on the Going Solo site, for example.
Second, you can tweak the width of your columns. The default width for the main content column in Thesis is 480px. Given I insert many medium-sized Flickr photos (500px wide), I widened it. No need to fool with the CSS, Thesis does it all in the background.
Third, the image rotator. Up right, you can see one of my photographs, and when you click on it, it will take you to the Flickr page it lives on. I’ll explain how I did this in a separate post.
At one point, I added a header image, which I now removed because I think it doesn’t go well with the images in the multimedia box up right. Here is the code I used (in the custom.css stylesheet), if ever it comes in handy to anybody.
.custom #header {
background: url("/wp/wp-content/themes/thesis/images/ouchy-header.jpg")
repeat-x top left;height: 160px; }
.custom #header #tagline {color: black;}
.custom #header {paddint-top: 1.5em;}