Othaglot and Cane - Story Thread

[Baron Munchausen]

No change here. Still no graphics on the left-hand side. I am using Mozilla 1.5 but I don't think there would be that much difference between two minor Versions. But... I clicked the Quote-o-matic a few times to get an O&C quote and then clicked the story link in the top frame. It worked! I can enter the O&C story reader from the Quote-o-matic but not from the normal menu on the left frame.

The links that you posted to the js files don't work if I click them. I get 'not found' again. And yet those same files work in the Quote-o-matic. It really does seem to be a file access problem. Let's try using the same double ../ on the left frame as you use in the quote-o-matic?

Edit: Oops, forgot I was running in 'high security' mode. Just checked the 'allow scripts to change images' box in Mozilla and now I can report that I've got the same situation as SJ. The graphics appear now, but clicking the story button just changes the Quote-o-matic.

The chapter is numbered 31, not 30. Did you skip something? Or is that just a typo?

[ May 28, 2004, 21:53: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[dogscoff]

Unbelievable... It works fine in 1.7, really it does. As for not working in IE... what Version?

I really can't get my head around this, it works!

EDIT: S_J, it was typo. fixed now.

Is *anyone* seeing it properly? Anyone?? Please?
I think I'll give the javascripting a rest for a while and concetrate on the stories.

[ May 28, 2004, 23:41: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Still no change. It says the JS files cannot be found (404 error) in the left hand frame, but still finds them in the top frame.

I'll be upgrading to Moz 1.7 when the 'real' release is announced. That will be a few weeks, though.

[dogscoff]

It was quite a night. We started, as always, in the garden of the Swan- a quaint, quiet little pub at one end of our road. It was an ideal place for catching up, and with sunny decorations and cheap booze for the summer festival it was impossible not to relax. There I told my friends all about my adventures in Outlier and on the Marilyn, although I left out some of the more sensitive parts, not wanting to jeopardise Othaglot's undercover mission with gossip. Faust in particular was fascinated by our investigations on the mining colony, and Grett expressed a keen loathing of Sloo. However I found myself spending longest describing my time on the Worthwhile Endeavour- the mental disciplines I had learned from Loorl, the combat training I had undertaken on board and the decisions I had come to about making changes to my life. The topic of conversation quickly changed, and as the sun drew closer to the horizon we drank up and moved on to the Bug Factory, an old grasshopper tinning plant just around the corner that had recently been converted into a nightclub and cabaret review. The nightclub wasn't particularly good, but we went for there for the entertainments, which were superbly kitsch- especially for Grett and Degg who were giggling uncontrollably after crunching down a 'trope bug each - and we enjoyed about a drink and a half before being politely asked to keep the noise down or leave.

There was some dispute over our next destination- Grett wanted to go dancing at Colonyz, a huge, garish club back on the other side of the park, and Faust wanted to go to all the way across the city to Mossy Molasses' to soak up some zuzz-jazz, look cool and introduce himself to a waitress he had spotted there the previous week. In the end we compromised, paying way too much to get into the White Eye, a seedy little mosh pit just up the road specialising in loud, dirty ska-zuzz that Grett could dance to, while attracting enough single women to fulfil Faust's predatory instincts. It was on the way to the Eye that we bumped into a crowd of Degg's friends who joined us. I also tried to call Loorl to find out what he had been up to while I was visiting my family.

It must have been about two when we all fell out of the Eye, Faust with his arm around one of Degg's female acquaintances and Grett insisting that Degg carry her because- or so she said- she had danced her feet dead. Loorl returned my call just as they all were arguing about what to do next, and it was decided that we should all head down to the beach and light a fire. Loorl met us all there, and after rambling introductions we all settled down on the sand. Degg produced a bottle of grappa- filched from my room by the look of it- and Faust wanted me to tell my story again for the benefit of those who had only recently joined us. Reluctantly I did so, with Loorl contributing all kinds of details I had forgotten or left out.

At the end of the tale, I once again talked about the training I had undergone and the taste of self-discipline I had had aboard the Endeavour, and that I intended to find some direction. This was met with jeering and mockery, and before long I found that no-one awas even listening. Instead they were all challenging one of Degg's friends, who claimed to be able to tell the star-sign of any of the humans present- No mean feat given the massive complexity of astrology in an interstellar civilisation, but he correctly recognised Degg as an Earth Virgo (despite his accent) and myself as a Plentian Lupus. It soon became clear that the only reason he was doing all this was to make a clumsy pass at Grett, and as the group splintered into twos and threes I found myself strolling through the surf with Loorl, who was discovering with delight that that suitable foodstuffs had been introduced into Primavera's coastal waters to accomodate Plenty's small minority of Cue Cappan immigrants.

He had had a fairly good time since arriving, tracking down a few Viking haunts in the west of the city and buying rounds for the locals. I commented that he wasn't wearing his helmet, in reply to which he displayed a painful looking tattoo and told me that he was experimenting with paganism, since the pagans didn't spend quite so much of his money on mead. He had pretty much run out of cash and clearly wasn't sure what to do next. Part of his deal with Othaglot was an open ticket to get him back home so he could just go back at any time, but he said he wanted to stay here for as long as he could. I could see what he was fishing for but I didn't want to invite him to stay at the flat without consulting the others first. Looking back on it I don't know why, because inviting relative strangers back to stay was just the kind of thing we all did all the time anyway. At that moment though, it just didn't feel right.

By four or five the fire was dying and we were cold and hungry, so we decamped for the Sandbar, a strange little shack of a beachside cafe that catered primarily to the city's community of water-taxi drivers. It was open around the clock and served nothing but hearty all-day breakfasts and an array of strong liquors. Degg's other friends had drifted off at some point, and only the five of us remained. We all ate our fill- including Loorl- and Faust and Degg sipped vodka. Grett somehow persuaded the gruff barman to mix her a sugarstorm, while I was jeered and mocked again for ordering a fruit juice. However the ridicule soon dried up when I offered to pay the bill- I had been well paid for my visit to Outlier and I knew that tonight's activities would have completely bankrupted the others.

I awoke about midday the next day to find Loorl glugging quietly in his sleep on the kitchen floor (at Faust's invitation) and Grett, pale and bleary, wrpping her senses around a steaming mug of fragrant tea from Mr Yin's while trying in vain to absorb a particularly dull-looking psychology textbook. All in all it had been a fairly typical night out for us, and thoroughly enjoyable at that. However I was troubled by a subtle change in the atmosphere. Whether their attitudes toward me had changed, or mine toward them I couldn't tell, but something wasn't quite right. I wanted to get to the bottom of it, but I didn't feel too well and Grett was clearly not in an approachable mood, so I got dressed and went out to clear my head and plan my future.

I turned right out of Marjorie Street onto West Ostel Road, which headed towards one of the city's more exclusive islands. I had a hangover. West Ostellers were notioriously pretentious and the further West along the road I travelled the more chic and idiotic the architecture became. I didn't particularly like this area, but I realised my feet were guiding me toward the docks. I used to keep a small boat moored there, and found myself wondering why exactly I had sold it and what I had spent the money on. The docks were a long way away though, so I turned back towards Overidge Park, approaching it now from the South-West as I used to when I lived in one of the Institute's residential buildings. That block had been knocked down three years ago, and now a gleaming hotel built in some poorly-imitated antique Sallegan architectural style stood in its place. It had been a ugly old building, and I had hated it when I had lived there, but I missed it all the same.

I skirted up the western fringe of the park, barefoot again, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach by paying close attention to the crumbling residential buildings on the far side of the road. This was one of the city's older districts, and most of the construction here dated back to the first wave of colonisation. The squat, two-storey buildings were dwarfed by the line of trees that seperated the road from the park. The buildings might have stood there for almost a century, but not one of those trees was more than fifty years old. Anyone who knew the history of Plenty's famine should have realised that, but the fact had never really sunk in before. My stomach was definitely not right, and I for a while I thought I might throw up. The whole area was marked for redevelopment.

Just before I reached the Institute's main campus I decided that what I really needed was food. I stopped at a corner-cafe to buy myself something to eat. It was in this cafe that my brief romance with Grett had both begun and ended. Given her temper, it suddenly occured to me that the whole two-week flirtation and subsequent breakup had been surprisingly smooth, and it was quite amazing that she should have agreed to come and live with us afterwards. Just up the road was the Institute's main campus, an assembly of relatively uninteresting halls and classrooms that nonetheless held a thousand memories safe for me: The lecture hall where I had presented my thesis on non-verbal xenolinguistics; the adjoining lobby where I had thrown up four times from nerves while waiting to the present my thesis on non-verbal xenolinguistics; the library where I had met the guy (whose name I can't even remember) who offered me a shot of mind-blowing redflower rum and eventually introduced me to Degg. The breakfast had settled my stomach but left me in a maudlin kind of a mood with old memories running rampant in my head. I tried in vain to herd them into some kind of useful order, but it seemed hopeless. I suddenly wondered what Othaglot might think if he were to pass by and eavesdrop on these thoughts, and at once I felt my defenses going up. The mental techniques Loorl had taught me came to the front of my mind and at once I found my runaway memories re-ordering themselves, each one lining up and waiting its turn. The mental discipline I had tasted aboard the Endeavour came into play and those memories now seemed to stand to attention. I had come out here to plan my future. I needed to figure out what to do next, and the only way to do that was understand the present. How had I come to be in my current situation?

I had met Degg, as I have already stated, through a mutual acquaintence who recommended Degg's home-brew to me. We became good friends very quickly, and before long a room became available and I was in a position to take it. This had been almost five years ago, the first three of those my final years at the institute. Faust's predecessor moved out shortly after I arrived- possible as a result of my arrival, I was never quite sure- and the room didn't stay empty for long. Faust was introduced my Norbul, The man in occupation of Grett's room at that time. The four of us had a lot of fun; me, Faust, Degg and Norbul, although there were some fierce arguments, but Degg was the glue that held us all together- a kind og benevolent, vaguely paternal ringmaster. He was something of a role-model to me, I suppose- certainly a massive influence- and I learned a lot from him about meeting people, reading them and interacting with them. I graduated, despite the many distractions life at Degg's provided, and not quite knowing what to do with myself after graduation I stayed on, running odd-jobs and errands for my uncle, occasional cash-in-hand work, touting the family's wine and grappa in local markets and scrounging cash off the others when things got tight. Soon I discovered that I could survive fairly comfortably like this, and the pressure to do anything more soon dropped away. Norbul packed up and moved in with a lover about three years after my arrival and after a few incompatible room-mates we- or rather I- finally stumbled on Grett, who seemed to fit in perfectly. Perhaps we had all been getting too comfortable with one-another, because Grett's fireworks and dramatics had seemed like a breath of fresh air at the time. She was totally different to the rest of us in one way, but in another she was the same. Like me, Degg, Faust and Norbul she had almost no ambition, no long-term plans, no real job and no particular commitments to anything. Degg's place was a kind of ever-shifting mutual support community, a self-justifying, self-perpetuating haven of semi-bohemian slovenliness in the industrious heart of the galatic community's most driven and motivated city.

That's when I realised what the change in attitude was all about, and why I no longer felt entirely comfortable in my own home. They were holding me back. That realisation hurt more than anything inflicted on me by Sloo, but I was determined to do what needed to be done. I just had to find a way to tell them.

[Suicide Junkie]

Even with a format and fresh install of everything, IE 6 only gets as far as the Title, but there, all the purple chapter links are broken.

I'd be happy to type in URLs manually if it meant...

Aha!
http://dogscoff.co.uk/fiction/stories/story_O&C<insert-chapter-number>.htm
Yay, now I can read the story

[TerranC]

A new chapter! A new chapter! Look, everyone, a new chapter!

*TerranC goes crazy from the excitement of seeing a new OnC chapter*

[Baron Munchausen]

Now, when do Cane's new plans collide with Othaglot's under-cover operation?

The site works fine with Mozilla 1.7.x btw...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

TerranC said:
A new chapter! A new chapter! Look, everyone, a new chapter!

*TerranC goes crazy from the excitement of seeing a new OnC chapter*

/me watches TC move over one inch.

[dogscoff]

Even with a format and fresh install of everything, IE 6 only gets as far as the Title, but there, all the purple chapter links are broken.

I developped the site in IE6. It works fine. Remember you have to have javascript switched on to view the site. go to tools/options/advanced and make sure the JIT compiler is switched on. If it's switched on already, go to the site and look in the bottom right corner. There will be an icon to tell you what "internet zone" IE has put my site into. Then go to tools/options/security and move my site out of that zone and into a friendlier one. If that still doesn't fix it, install firefox and stop using IE. IE do suck.

Now, when do Cane's new plans collide with Othaglot's under-cover operation?

Ohhh, give it about 3 chapters...

The site works fine with Mozilla 1.7.x btw...

Yes it does. Firefox too, and Opera, and IE6.

A new chapter! A new chapter! Look, everyone, a new chapter!

*TerranC goes crazy from the excitement of seeing a new OnC chapter*

:-D Thought I'd try to sneak it out there, thanks for noticing...

/me watches TC move over one inch.

LOL! I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about Narf. </sarcasm>

[Unknown_Enemy]

--> Jumping on Dogscoff
--> pointing a phased beam on Dogscof's head
--> firing the beam 6-7 times
--> starting asking questions :
"where's my text ?"
"what are we waiting for ?"
--> threaten to use violence if Dogscof deosn't answer immediately