You can E-mail me now
or slog through these somewhat useful, if not amusing topics.
Before you download, create, and name folders you will
easily recognize for different kinds of files. Downloading can
be complicated with Speakeasy server. Usually, you normally-click
a link, and direct it to a file folder on your hard drive. Try
holding down the other mouse button (the one you don't normally
use) on the link you want until a SAVE AS... box appears. BROWSE
to a handy pre-labeled non-cryptic download folder you always
forget to make. If you don't have a mouse, hit ENTER when you're
atop a highlighted word, and if that doesn't work, check for a
system menu at the top, or bottom of your screen. Try GO, or PRINT
TO FILE if you find anything suspicious. If menus pop up, look
down their lists till you see SAVE AS... Sometimes, the file you
plan to download will receive an obtuse default name you're sure
to immediately forget, complete with odd characters word-processing
programs hate. Make sure the file receives the right extension
(.doc, .mw-whatever apple is, or .txt if it's a text file). If
you click your normal mouse button, you may receive a text-only
copy of a manuscript, or be dispensed a FILTER OPTIONS box to
ponder. It is entirely possible your computer is set up to display
MS Word files directly, so try the normal-click first, or check
with Netscape for word processing browser
plug ins . Complete novels take a while to transfer to a hard
drive, especially for peak-time phreaking or sub-28.8 kbs cruisers.
Open another window and turbotax, or play Russian roulette, if
you can multi-task and your computer can't. Downloads are often
get interrupted by network traffic, or countless other web screw-ups.
When all else fails, Confucius say: All my friends are dead, and
computer illiterate. Try new day tomorrow.
Open your download gems with a minimum of Microsoft WORD
3.1 for Windows 2.0 or filter equivalent, word-processing program.
The early Microsoft files are automatically updated by later MS
versions--- however, you may need to open them through FILE, instead
of clicking the shortcut icon. (Huh?) If that doesn't work, make
sure all early-version Microsoft filters check-boxes are Xed in
OPTIONS, or were specified during your word processor's SETUP.
If not, you may have to run setup again to add them. Relax, this
will be good for you. Mac users with or without M.S WORD
may need to specify WinWord 2.X filters when opening Novel Ink.
files.
You probably lack the proper fonts
to display the file as it's intended to be seen. Substitute fonts
are unreadable at worst, and a compromise at best. Usually, they
totally nix the page and paragraph formatting even when similar
fonts are substituted. You may also have annoying errors converting
from WORD to Word Perfect, Mac, Lotus, or any number of other
software applications. Early conversion filters are especially
prone to errors, but even my fully-blown Office 95 garbled a few
Word for DOS, and Word for Windows files. Note that web interference
may also destroy your download, and another go at the file may
spiff the cryptic to readable.
Try setting GENERAL PREFERENCES (under OPTIONS) with your
e-mail address wherever SERVER is specified. Early versions of
Netscape (especially on networks) won't download without this
USER ID reference. Most likely, you can add free PLUG INS to the
browser you're using, which will signal a streamlined word processor
to engage when you click an applicable link. This will let you
read the novels without downloading them, or suffering through
dreary, unformatted text files. Netscape's,
or Microsoft's home page
would be a good place to search for these goodies. And the bad
news : A few (probably networked) Netscape versions demand GUEST
protocols for file transfers that my cybercafe stubbornly refuses
to issue. (It does have microbeer on tap though, to ease computer-related
neurosis.) If you get the "GUEST ACCESS DENIED" message,
assume I'm working on it (downing suds), and refer to generally.
When I borrowed a Mac, I couldn't figure out how to get
the %$*#@!! floppy disk out. Worse than that, it took me over
an hour just to turn the quote : "Macs are way easier
to use!." thing on! When I found the unintuitive power-arrow
(cleverly hidden) on the keyboard, I quickly realized the operating
system was better than Windows 95 computers I could easily turn
on, but couldn't do anything else with. The disappearing
WIN95 icon, IBM's Rosetta Stone of launching, is a truly great
idea-- once you know where it is. This is a long story. I'm wandering
around looking for an excuse why there aren't more Apple files
on line. So I pushed what was obviously (WRONG!) the disk eject
button intuitively located under the MacDrive slot, and guess
what happened? Mac-Crash. "Save your work every ten minutes!"
I always tell myself and never do. Patience. I am slowly adding
early MS Word for Apple conversions files. Tell me what you want,
and I'll post it. In the meantime, I suggest you snag a IBM-to
Mac and vice-versa freeware deal for your www.life. Theoretically,
you should be able to unZIP and .zip compressed files you download,
but self-extracting .exe versions will need a late-model operating
system capable of handling IBM, or an aftermarket cross-platforming
program (also available for free). I think you can see how much
Mac-help I am. Bear with me. I'm working (draining suds) over it.
Windows users with WORD or WordPerfect (theoretically)
shouldn't worry about anything. (That's what they want you to
believe, anyway.) If you've got the latest browser, your difficulties
may be network, or traffic related. Save this novelink address
under PERSONAL FAVORITES, sign off, eat a twinkie, lay down, and
take a good long nap. In other words, try again later. (Patience?)
If you don't have Netscape,
score it, but Make Sure you correctly specify the version your
spiffy little computer supports before downloading a massive zipped
file (i.e. don't select 32 bit, if you have a 16 bit machine,
etc.). Many of the later works are in WORD 7.0 files with the
font formatting built right in. If the file you want is zipped,
it's to save space on the server, and time downloading it, for
files with TrueType, or postscript fonts and hi-res graphics sewn
in, are arrestingly large.
Congratulations. Arriving anywhere is the journey these
days. On a link you want to download, hit ENTER, or check the
top and bottom of your screen for options. If you're not using
the LYNX browser, I suggest you log out, and get on it, if downloadin'
ain't workin' out fer ya. Basically, DOS is dead; and computing
has such an illusion of user-friendliness these days, it can be
hell on us folks used to the hard way. To decompress downloaded
.zip, or .exe files, try the -d command, or run for .exe.
Pretty easy, really. Once the file has
downloaded, go into your file manager and find the .exe file extension
in the folder you directed your download to. Double-click it,
and the file(s) will de-compress all by themselves. ZIP extension
files will need a program like PKunZIP, if you double-click the
file and no resident application takes over to decompress it, you need to
ASSOCIATE your file to the Unzip program you hopefully have, cuz most
stuff on the web comes zipped these days. If nothing is working, try
downloading the file again. Dos users see the previous paragraph.
If an .exe file won't execute, try changing the file extension to .zip
and doubleclick. Sometimes the browser default rewrites the
extensions. Open all expanded files with your word processing program.
These documents were hand-coded, character by painfully-typed
character, on a slew of cantankerously primitive beg-borrowed
or nearly-stolen computers. The site's inspiration was a drinking
binge, and a nearly-unintelligible next-morning scrawl on a crumpled
greasy restaurant napkin. It was torn in the shaky hand of a half-mad
self-proclaimed Internet expert, in a coarse late-night blather
of entheogenically good-idea'd, five-martini light-bulbs. I snagged
it from the washer, afraid it would ruin my socks. "Web site.
Oh yea. Cooool. Tech-killya. (No, it was gin.) Internet."
Uh-huh. "Now I remember." Which was a bit of a lie,
but web pages sounded so great smashed, I decided to make
one anyway. In reality, I didn't have a modem, a server, a home
phone, a foggiest-headed idea what a web site meant, nor, to top
it off, a working computer. So cyberheads, don't source-code for
anything but pure amusement. This site's the nuts and bailing
wire binary equivalent of that pasta-stained, pocket-stuffed,
martini-bib the "expert"'s tomato-sauced hints made
into a gastric ton of grief. Moral Is: Don't trust good ideas
to glorified bog paper. E-mail me your SNAFU, and I'll see what
large wooden levers and dull bronze chisels triage from the difficulty.
Whatever you get, will be better than a hangover, I promise.
(More?) Since then, I got a working computer and slunk around
Photoshopping some of my pictures, and miscellaneous objects scattered
around the floor, into the graphics you've been getting old and
gray, downloading. Don't worry, the web will get faster soon. But I still
code it all by hand. It's stupid,
I know.
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