I wrote a novel - w00t!

Woo hoo - much celebrating as I have successfully finished 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo! You can see my novel info here - though not the novel itself, that's still only a first draft!

Now to party for a while. :)

KioqKioqKioq OR fixing mutt's base64 problem

So I've occasionally been getting *really* useful email messages such as:
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Not having the slightest clue as to what was causing it - I'd simply return them to the sender and ask for help... sadly the senders generally didn't know what it was either.

It turns out that the sender's setup is incorrectly labelling these emails as 8bit... when it's actually been encoded in base64. To fix it:

1. Save the email to its own new folder (just so there's only one email in the file to edit).
2. Open it up in a plain text editor (eg vim)
3. Update the header line that reads:
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit to
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 - save and close
4. Navigate to the folder in mutt and read away happily.

National Novel Writing Month

It's November - and that means it's time to whip out a pen and start a frenzy of writing in the hopes of finishing up a new masterpiece... or at least 50K of whatever comes to mind during this month of madness.

It's National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short). The site was slashdotted for the first day and a half, but the servers seem to be taking the load now - which means we have a chance to actually update our wordcounts and read the forums.

NaNoWriMo is a personal challenge to start writing a novel on November 1st and aim to have 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th. Last year there were over 100,000 participants - of which 15,000 passed the 50K mark by month's-end. I was one of those 15K :)

Here's a link to my author page so you can see how much I've done so far this year. I'll also add a wordcount widget onto the blog for the duration of the month (should be there in the left-hand column).

It's heaps of fun and it's open to anyone. So, if you're up to a unique kind of personal challenge, join us in our month of writing. Or just come along and see what all the fuss is about!