[Helpers] Stuff & things...

[Mystress Angelique Serpent]

   Heya:

   Sorry if it seems quiet around here... it is just that I am incredibly 
busy. March is half over already, and Europe draws near. Spring is making 
me hyperactive as usual and it is hard to sit still at my desk... but I 
still have a lot of website updates to do.
  I've been working on plans for Europe, proposals, content, wardrobe,
flights, advertising, luggage, passport, etc..

     Despite feeling overwhelmed, I am really happy at the turn my work is
taking. Excited about Europe but scared too. Lori getting back to me with a
schedule was comforting, I am getting more confident that I will at least
break even on the trip.

     The FST update is hard because I tend to read from memory and not 
actually see the content. I finally hauled out my old double-spaced 
hardcopy of the course, (a 5" thick binder!) and put it on a giant book 
holder on my desk, so I make notes there (sometimes in the jacuzzi!) and 
then paste the content into Word for editing, Canadian spellcheck and 
grammar... but then I end up adding more after I paste it into the web 
page, and then it becomes an issue of version control. I lose track of 
whether the word version or the web version is most up to date.
The lesson I accidentally posted to this list was a draft version that was 
later updated.


    It is very slow going, every time I decide an essay is "done" I later
get new inspiration, and with some of the essays I get a feeling that what
I am adding actually belongs in a different lesson. My new "introduction to
Kundalini" has a lot of stuff that might be better in the Serpents lesson.
Sigh.

  I'm thinking it is better for me to just focus on the content, so I am 
saving the word docs and when there are many I'll upload them to the fscnew 
site, and hopefully someone else can add paragraph breaks and paste them 
into the lesson.

   Some of the new essays are so much better than the old, I am wondering 
if the new ones should be pasted into the live site as they are completed. 
b0b's post made me think perhaps the live site should be updated 
concurrently with the new design. I'm impatient to have the new site up, 
but there is still so much to do!

    Dreamweaver is a learning curve I just don't have time for, right now. 
I tried to update a lesson, (tantra/01cintro) and when I uploaded it, it 
was messed up. Sachiko, can you fix it? That lesson is meant to be called 
01stdyguid.html and you will find a file by that name that has the correct 
content, but I messed it up too!

   How do I tell Dreamweaver the local directory is a mirror of the web, so 
it doesn't download all the images each time I want to look at a file? 
Something to do with projects?

   The good thing is that some essays look fine to me and don't need 
editing... but I still have to add homework and experiences, and 
experiences links to them! Ack. So much to do!

    Sandra C:  Adding experiences means searching the tea room archives for 
keywords of each topic, and deciding what posts have information that 
enhances understanding.  If you will select posts, then I will go through 
them and choose one to edit and add to the lesson... I'm open to 
suggestions for that... keeping in mind that the finished update will 
become a book, I really need to be emailing the members whose posts I use 
in the lesson and asking permission. Not for the links to the tea room, 
just for the experiences area.

  I'm also thinking of eliminating the "Experiences links" box from each
lesson and just adding the links to the bottom of the main experiences
section. Changing the form at this point feels like going backwards... but 
I feel it would be smoother.

    Getting experiences from the K-list archives is a whole other deal and I
have no idea when or how that will happen.

   Question: does it make more sense to have the homework box at the 
bottom, or below the experiences section instead of below the essay?

   With regards to the new right corner image... I sometimes get emails 
like this:

 >country = indonesia
 >body = Good Morning / afternoon / evening. Iam from Indonesia.
 >I followed rei ki tummo trainning. I don't feel kundalini energy as
 >perfectly yet. I want to my kundalini is growth without prolem. Someone
 >told me, your picture could help to kundalini growth. If this is right and
 >if you don't mind,please send me your picture.
 >Thank you very much to your attention.I am sorry, if my english rather bad.

   Been getting them for a few years now. It kind of blows my mind to know
people all over the world meditate on my photo to get Kundalini... just
weird, but I cannot think of a reason to discourage it. People all over the
world masturbate to my fetish pix, and I got used to that .. but it is
still odd to think of people looking at me to raise K. like they do with
Sai Baba or Grandma Devi.

Anyway, in light of this phenomena, I think I'll use a different pic of 
myself for the new right corner image for the lessons. The videos have some 
lovely images with mudras I use spontaneously.

   Gustaf please select a few stills from the vids, when you edit them, and 
then I can mess with one in photoshop to add a fun aura or something that 
will fit the site design.

    I am also concerned that your editing the vids will interfere with your 
progress of the course. The vids were not recorded in the lesson order, and 
are not even labeled as which vids go with which lessons! I'm trying to 
take notes as I go, but I am getting hyper and spaced out from my own 
Shakti coming back at me! Whoa! I hope it doesn't overwhelm you, too.

   I'm not sure whether the magnetic tape is degraded or whether the video 
quality was not good to begin with, but I am seeing colour bleed on the 
videos. The worst is when my teeth flash bright yellow, picking up the 
background colour of the gold cloth on the chair. Really bad! Distracting 
and unattractive. Can this be fixed?

    There are a few people who are on this list who are not actually doing 
anything, and have not done anything. I appreciate the good intentions that 
moved you to join, but this is not a list for lurkers or voyeurs so please 
either volunteer to do something or unsub yourself. Thanks.