I decided to share them for two reasons: to see what you want to see and to possibly inspire a reader. I want to know what you want to see because I’m not the most motivated person in the world. But, if I see that someone wants to see a certain idea written by me, I would certainly find motivation to write. By writing this post, I am sharing my ideas with the world. If any of these ideas inspire you, go ahead and write about them. I want to contribute to the writing community in any way. I’m happy with a contribution that is just a small idea.

Developing Planets

The setting for this idea is the far future when many planets of our solar system–and maybe other solar systems–have been colonized. Politics can now be seen on a larger scale. The terms 1st world and 3rd world are quite literal. A planet can be a developing world or a developed world.

Earth is now a developing world. How has politics changed on the planet itself? Is America still in charge? Is their only one government? How have nuclear arms or climate change affected Earth’s development? All those questions set up the status quo of Earth. It could go many directions. Maybe Earth is ruled by one government because a global catastrophe created a need for that. Maybe a nuclear war has somehow made Australia the superpower. Maybe none of that happened and the Earthlings simply haven’t come up with space travel yet. The lack of space travel is impeding our development. The point here is there are many reasons why Earth is a developing world in this setting.

The point of view can be from that of a federation of planets deciding whether or not to aid Earth in its development. Maybe Earth has been trying to get into contact with this federation for a while.

If I were to write a story about that, it would be to highlight how power changes when scope changes or to highlight how power changes through time. Humanity may have started on Earth, but will it leave it behind? When will Earth become a foreign land?

7 Days Gang

This idea is about a group of assassins that give their targets seven days to live. This gang is powerful and has access to many resources. The story can be about how the gang got its name. Many of its targets have tested it in various ways. One of them flew to another country and disguised himself as somebody else. Another thought he could buy his way out. One thought joining the gang would prevent it. Yet another thought the threat of mutual destruction would prevent it.

There could be a character in the gang who decides to kill people because of simple offenses. One day while eating at a cafe a waiter spills soup on him. The character then wipes himself off and tells the waiter, “You have seven days to live.”. The waiter doesn’t know whether to believe him. The waiter thinks it may be an idle threat. “Maybe he’s not from the gang? Even if he were, he wouldn’t kill me for this. Would he?”, he thinks. In seven days, the waiter is killed.

A story can also be about a target and what he or she does for the seven days. There can be several responses to being outright told, “You have seven days to live.”. The target can try to run and hide. The target can go into depression or denial. The target may even accept it and have the best time of his or her life.

For some reason, I imagine the setting to be in Japan with samurai. The limited technology of the time makes the idea more interesting, but it could work with a modern setting.

Evil Brother

This idea is definitely a dark one. A brother sees that his younger brother is crazy. He hides that fact from his parents somehow and uses his brother’s lunacy to his advantage. The evil brother manipulates his younger brother into murdering people.

Maybe the evil brother stumbled upon a way to hypnotize the younger brother in their childhood. It’s a weird idea. The evil brother is able to get away with murder that way. The younger brother is just a pawn.

Dreaming

This is really just a scene my mind thought up.

A person awakes from sleep. This person has fallen asleep while watching a movie with two others in his room. Something feels wrong though. The person can’t see the faces of the two others although their bodies look familiar. That’s when he notices a sound, but it’s not coming from the TV. In fact, no sound is coming from the TV. The sound becomes clearer. Something is being said in an alien tongue. The person assumes he is still dreaming. He goes back to sleep with a strange feeling.

That’s all I got. Maybe he’s been abducted by aliens. Maybe he wakes up in a dream that he cannot get out of. The reasons for this situation can be pretty complicated. One just has to think of them.

Importing Work

This idea is about a nation that has gotten rid of retirement and vacations so that its workforce can have more time to work. The nation actually imports work from other nations. What does that mean? If you are a citizen of the importing nation, your life is one of work. If you are of the other nation, you don’t have to work.

Maybe the importing country has made its workforce this way because it gets more tax revenue to pay off debts or to pay for war. Maybe it is actually a colony of the other nation. In this case, the resource the colonizing nation is after is time. Time for its citizens to relax. This story can focus on the politics and economics of this situation. How is this system viable? What kind of taxing is done so that both nation’s governments profit from the situation? I imagine the colonizing nation saying, “All this work is good for the colony. Before they had no economy whatsoever, now it is booming!”.

The story can be about how other nations view this situation or about how the working nation’s citizens react to the situation. Is the nation’s control over the people so strong that they support it? Or, is their civil unrest?

One Day

This is a story of two men who hate each other so much they fight to the death. With his last breath, the dying man says, “One day I will kill you.” This can go two ways.

One way, the dead man comes back to life and eventually kills his killer. Maybe it’s for supernatural reasons. For example, maybe their hate was so strong that it brought him back to life. Maybe some deity brought him back to life to exact his revenge. Maybe he was turned into a zombie because of a military experiment.

The other way is more symbollic. Maybe a person with the same name as the murdered man kills the other guy. Maybe someone who looks very similar to the murdered man kills the other guy. Maybe the guy had a twin!

Space Trucking

This story is about a space trucker reflecting on his job. It suits him well because he is a loner. He cannot imagine life in the past stuck on one planet surrounded by people. His home is literally his driver’s seat. His cargo ship is the cheapest model and the cockpit is the only living space. He eats where he drives. He sleeps where he drives. He pees where he drives. The rest of the ship is dedicated to carrying cargo.

The setting is in the future and in space. The trucker’s special kind of ship makes for a strange living situation, but it is one he enjoys. His small living area is completely decorated with things that make him happy.

Armed Treaties

This is an idea about treaty organizations getting some muscle. Treaty organizations have their own armies or hired mercenaries that they use to ensure their treaties are followed. The changed dynamics this creates are pretty interesting. Treaties are more effective, but now nations have more to worry about. Pressure from other nations or the treaty organization itself can be a reason why nations still take part in treaties.

If a treaty organization has its own army, maybe it gets soldiers for that army from the nations participating in the treaty. In this case, maybe a fake war is started by the participating nations so that they can legally withdraw soldiers from the treaty organization’s army. The participating nations then break the rules of the treaty to their hearts’ content.

Non-fiction

I’ve also got some ideas for non-fiction posts. I’ll write a post about that later though.

Let me know your thoughts on these ideas! And again, feel free to use them as your own.

jQuery Impromptu provides a nice way of implementing a pop-up feature.
Flag of course flags a node.

<?php
  // Load necessary to avoid error
  module_load_include('pages.inc','privatemsg');

  // Adds javascript to header
  jquery_impromptu_add();

  // Gets rid of whitespaces that break javascript code
  // drupal_get_form retrieves the privatemsg form
  // $uid is the author of the node
  // $title is the title of the node
  $form = str_replace("\r", '', str_replace("\n", '', drupal_get_form('privatemsg_new', $uid, $title)));

  // javascript that runs jquery_impromptu on flag event
  print '<script language="javascript">';
  print "
  $(document).bind('flagGlobalAfterLinkUpdate', function(event, data) {
    if(data.flagStatus == 'flagged'){
      $.prompt('$form');
    }
  });
  ";
  print '</script>';

  // Necessary because previous module_load_include changes title
  drupal_set_title(check_plain($node->title));
?>

For more information on how you can customize the privatemsg form, look here http://drupal.org/node/624528

I didn’t question his wisdom because he didn’t question my ID. I’m 18 and Checho’s bar was the only bar that let me in. Why ruin a good thing?

Beer had flowed into me faster than my hard-earned money going back into the socioeconomic system which I thought repressed me. That’s why I drank. The Man could have my money, but he’d never have my mind. No. My mind I saved for philosophy, drugs, and alcohol.

That’s how I spent my time. I gave my money to Checho. Checho would use that money to buy his wife a bracelet. The jeweler who sold Checho the bracelet would take his money and buy whatever it is jewelers buy. I essentially traded in my time at my job for beer. From that, a jeweler was capable of satisfying his material needs. The world kept turning.

“Hey man. What’s good?”

I turned to the speaker. I didn’t know what to say. I have trouble with slang. Would “Not much.” be an appropriate response? I have no idea. It was only then that I took in my surroundings and the look of the speaker.

I had taken a shortcut home as always. The alley was not well lit. The only light was the moon’s. The speaker addressing me was under a broken lamppost. His face was obscured by the shadow from his hood. Our clothes weren’t so different. What is it about baggy jeans and a hoodie? I could’ve been him had things gone differently in life.

“Not much. How are you?”, I said.

“I’m good man. I got the chron. 25 a g.”

So many things pass through your mind when confronted with such a sales pitch. Why does he assume I smoke weed? Is he gonna rob me? Do I have enough money for this? Do I need more weed? Is he a cop? What drives a man to selling weed to strangers in a dark alley?

A strange feeling comes over me. Its a mix of confusion, terror, and glee. This man at this hour at this alley and here I am. Questions are zooming through my mind, but I already have my answer.

I say, “Sounds good.” And, we step into the shadows. Three things are true: he’s not a cop, he’s not going to rob me, and I want to be high. We both reach into our backpockets. Its a beautiful ballet. I reach for my wallet and he reaches for a gram of chronic. The chronic comes out in a plastic bag shaped nicely into a ball. The money is crumpled lettuce. We exchange our goods in a mock handshake of goodbyes.

I get to get high and he gets to pay his bills. Some guy at the electric company will be able to put his kid through college. This lettuce is powerful.

The hardest part about smoking is the preparation. You need to clean
the weed, put it in some kind of smoking apparatus, and light it.
Thankfully, good chron stems can be smoked. So, I didn’t need to clean
it. I have a pipe. No need to roll a joint. Lighting is easy. A lighter always seems to appear
in my hands at the exact time I need one.

I was already on my way down the alley. If you know me, then you know that I carry a bag wherever I go. My dad always told me, “Just like the Boy Scouts, always be prepared.”

From my bag, comes the pipe. The pipe is in my left hand as I search for my smoking tool with my right. This tool is perfect. It cleans, it scoops, it packs! I feel it in my bag and grasp it. The tool is now poking a hole in my bag of chron. It scoops up a good amount for the walk home. I pour the chron into the pipe.

Chk! Chk! The lighter in my hand clicks into the night and finally comes alive. Fire meet chron. Chron meet fire. You two are a wonderful match.

I inhale deeply.

The walk home is much more comfortable. A day of working and yet it is now that I feel I have contributed most to society. I have finally gained happiness from a purchase of material goods. I have joined my brethren in sweet bliss.

But, tomorrow I will still see Checho. His wife wants more jewelry and I will need more beer.

With curses or laughter
A time will come
When now and hereafter
You shall be numb

For a couple of years now, I’ve been developing a game in my head. I’ve created some goals that I want that game accomplish:

• It has to be open-ended
• It should be realistic
• The interface should be text-based with natural language
• It should have different types of gameplay
• It should be free

The open-ended feel, realism, and natural language interface goals are there to make the game immersive. I don’t want the player to feel like they’re playing a game. I want them to invest more time, thought, and emotion in this game than the usual game. The game should almost feel like an extension of life. A sort of alternate universe where the player gets to live out different life scenarios. It’s not just a game. It’s a way of living a different life.

That means the point of this game isn’t pretty graphics. You’re going to be able to shoot somebody–and maybe even headshot somebody–but you’re not going to see it on the screen. You’re going to read it. The imagination has a much better visualization engine than anything I could write or any open source alternative out there. And, that is why I want the game to be text-based. I’m hoping the immersiveness of it aids the player in imagining everything while reading how the game is playing out.

The game should have different types of gameplay so that its hard to be bored by the game and so that it can broaden its audience. That does mean that two players should be able to get a similar experience from the game even if the part of the game each player takes part in has different gameplay. For example, some players can have a purely business/logisitcs/tycoon kinda game, others can have a stock market kinda game, others can have a kingdom/mafia kinda game, and others can have a third-person(in the literary sense) shooter.

It has to be free because I remember being bored as fuck as a kid. I remember wishing a game like this existed and that it was free so I could play it. So, yea its gonna be free.

I’ve of course thought about how all of this will be coded. Creating a realistic feel and a an open-ended feel will be complicated. I need to make walking, driving, bus routes, non-player characters(NPCs), and a whole lotta other complicated crap work smoothly. We’re not even talking about natural language yet. If a PHP library, jQuery plugin, or Drupal module don’t already exist for natural language interpretation, it’s probably gonna be a bitch to code. Maybe some crazy Python programmer out there made something I could use. We’ll see. Since it’s text based, I’m going to need to output everything properly. Everything includes: location description, actions taking place by neighboring players & NPCs, actions you’ve done, possible error messages. Creating functionality for different types of gameplay and making sure each interacts with the other gameplays in a realistic and meaningufl way will also be difficult. The stock market player’s decisions should affect the kingdom players decions. To make it free, the coding has to be done well as to not waste calls to the server.

This is going to be a very complex game. The decision tree will be huge. The possibilities will be hopefully endless.

<?php
function chkuri($link){
//$link is the website which i am checking
// If file_get_contents failed to retrieve
// the page, it's not up
  if(!file_get_contents($link)){
    return 'I\'m sorry, but the Ampache server is down. :(';
// It is up
  }else{
    return 'It\'s up! <a href="'.$link.'">Click here to go!</a>';
  }
}
print '<h2>'.chkuri('http://martinez.homelinux.org/ampache').'</h2>';
?>

Content Construction Kit

The Content Construction Kit (CCK) allows you to add custom fields to nodes. CCK is basically what lets you create great custom content-types for your Drupal instance.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/cck-6.x-2.6.tar.gz
tar xfvz cck-6.x-2.6.tar.gz

Date

The Date module comes with an API that allows other modules to use newer PHP date functions. It also adds a nice Date field for use with CCK. The Date module also comes with a pop-up date picker.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/date-6.x-2.4.tar.gz
tar xfvz date-6.x-2.4.tar.gz

Views

Views is an amazing module. A view can be a collection of nodes of a certain type. The view can be displayed as a table, grid, teaser list, full node list, and a RSS feed. There are a number of arguments and variables you an change to make dynamic views.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/views-6.x-2.7.tar.gz
tar xfvz views-6.x-2.7.tar.gz

WYSIWYG, IMCE, & The Bridge

These three modules combine to form a near perfect WYSIWYG editor. The WYSIWYG module is an API that enables multiple editors to work with Drupal. IMCE is an image/file uploader. The IMCE WYSIWYG Bridge module brings the two together. The Bridge is only compatible with the FCKeditor and TinyMCE WYSIWYG editors, but those two are probably the best ones out there.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/wysiwyg-6.x-2.0.tar.gz; wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/imce_wysiwyg-6.x-1.0.tar.gz; wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/imce-6.x-1.3.tar.gz
tar xfvz wysiwyg-6.x-2.0.tar.gz; tar xfvz imce_wysiwyg-6.x-1.0.tar.gz; tar xfvz imce-6.x-1.3.tar.gz

CAPTCHA & reCAPTCHA

These two modules enable a simple anti-spam measure. You could use CAPTCHA on its own, but I prefer reCAPTCHA simply because it helps digitize books while also preventing spam. You could also use the Mollom module or the Spam module.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/captcha-6.x-2.0.tar.gz; wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/recaptcha-6.x-1.3.tar.gz
tar xfvz captcha-6.x-2.0.tar.gz; tar xfvz recaptcha-6.x-1.3.tar.gz

Tonight, I came home sleepy, but hungry. I opened the fridge and, to my surprise, found egg nog. I poured myself a glass and drank it gleefully. Egg nog is delicious!

Today is going to be a good day.

I can’t wait to wake up!

What a horrible thing that would be! The person would have to model in a cold place right? How long does it take to make an ice sculpture anyway? Imagine this scenario:

“Hey! For being such a great person, I’ve commissioned an ice sculpture in your image.”

“Um, ok. When can I see it?”

“Well, you have to model for it on Tuesday. It’ll take about 3 hours and you have to stand in a room that’s freezing, but it’ll be great!”

“Can you just take me to lunch or something?”

In the end, there’d be a great big beautiful ice sculpture of this honorable person. This person would get to admire it for a while. Then, the frozen doppelganger melts away unless that person keep it somewhere cold.

“Here’s your ice sculpture! Um, I hope you have a walk-in freezer.”

Or, worse:

“We’re going to put your ice sculpture in an avant-garde art museum. It’ll melt on the floor and liberal arts student will write their thesis on how amazing that is.”

Art & beauty are ephemeral, but ice sculpture takes that to a whole new level. You can’t create it in the comfort of your own home. You can’t do it comfortably! I’m sure an ice sculptor looks as though he or she is going to have a snowball fight when working. Instead of a fun snowball fight, they’re carving ice.

I just thought of one positive side of ice sculpting. If I were an ice sculptor, I’d save the ice shavings and make snowcones. I’d model for an ice sculptor if I got at least five snowcones in the process.

I guess this wouldn’t be the worst honor then. That is if you get the snowcones. Now a shit sculpture, that cannot have any redeeming qualities.

Download the Advanced Taxonomy Blocks module & install it.

In your terminal enter:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/taxonomyblocks-6.x-1.8.tar.gz
tar xfvz taxonomyblocks-6.x-1.8.tar.gz

Repeat for its dependencies.

Configure your block

Once installed, you can configure Taxonomy blocks. You can do so by going to your administration page and selecting ‘Advanced Taxonomy Blocks configuration’ under the ‘Site Configuration’ section.

Set visibilty settings with PHP

Now, enable the block you just configured in the Blocks page. For the ‘Page specific visibility settings’, select the PHP-mode. Remember to substitute the vocabulary IDs for the taxonomy_get_tree function.

Enter the following PHP code:

<?php
// If node->type == blog
if(arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1))){
  $node = node_load((1));
    if($node->type == 'blog'){
      return TRUE;
    }
    // Main blog page
    }else if(arg(0) == 'blog'){
      return TRUE;
    // On tag page that is a blog tag
    }else if(arg(0) == 'taxonomy' && is_numeric(arg(2))){
      $tid = arg(2);
      $tree1 = taxonomy_get_tree(1);
      $tree2 = taxonomy_get_tree(2);
      foreach($tree1 as $term){
        if($term->tid == $tid){
          return TRUE;
        }
      }
      foreach($tree2 as $term){
        if($term->tid == $tid){
         return TRUE;
        }
      }
    }else{
      return FALSE;
    }
  return FALSE;
}
?>

If everything’s working, you should be able to see the taxonomy of the blog page, term pages associated with the blog, and on every blog entry.