I was trying to add Blog Chalking here and I've somehow screwed up the layout. Now, I'm too tired to keep my brain working on figuring out how to fix it. There is a 1% chance it will fix itself. While I'm sleeping the good fairies will come and in the morning it will be functional and just as good as ever.

Yeah, and the lottery ticket I bought on Thursday really is the big winner of $20 million.

I think someday someone is going to invent something, the ultimate writers tool, which will let you send your thoughts directly to the word processor. My brain goes a kilometre a second and before I can even make a quick note the next batch of thoughts are crowding out whatever was there a second ago. As I waited for the blog to load I lost track of three ideas I thought I would start out with.

Anyway, onto the news. I am cancelling the freebie AOL tomorrow. My Mom says she was charged for somethings during her free time with them and I should make sure they are not doing the same to me. Especially since I am not yet gainfully employed yet. I have put a new ISP on the same credit/ debit card and I don't want it sucked dry by AOL since that was the divorce settlement money. Oh how I love having money to spend though. I have tried not to go crazy and have a real shopping spree but I did buy a few mostly practical things. One being a book at Chapters, a guide to Canadian writers markets. Its actually called "The Canadian Writer's Market". See? Isn't that really practical of me? I would have bought the CGI/Perl book I found on Amazon but it wasn't on the shelf at the time. The Canadian Writers book isn't very up to date though, it still has InkSpot listed (more than once even) as a resource for writers. Sadly, InkSpot is no longer with us. From what I last heard it may yet arise from its ashes. That would be great. This time I would ignore all the voices and sign up as a writer for the site.

Anyway, back to my portion of reality. I love magazines. Is there a club for magazine addicts? I bought over half a dozen magazines in the past two weeks or less. True, I do want to aim for those markets but still seems like a lot of money spent on a few glossy pages. At least now I can take advantage of some of the graphics and what not with the new scanner.

I am signed up with Sympatico now, as my ISP. It bothers me slightly that they are joined with Bell Canada, a massive corporation, not well known for caring about the little guy. But, I personally have never had any trouble with Bell before. Sympatico looks interesting, better than iPrimus who swallowed up GlobalServe. I would have gone with GlobalServe again if they still existed. Once I wrote to one of the owners and heard back that he was a Pagan too. How nice was that! Made me really want to stick with GlobalServe as my ISP. I would have too if I hadn't moved to the US about 5 years ago.

I would like to put in time at Dmoz tonight. I am editing in Travelogues, Weblogs and Writers Resources - all of which need work. Writers Resources is doing ok but for the Contests category which has an active editor who seems to leave everything sitting in unreviewed for ages. Maybe he/ she has delete phobia? I don't know, but it bugs me to see over 50 unrevieweds when I have just updated the whole Writers Resources category, at least all the areas without active editors.

I want to get BackWash updated tonight too. A lot to do and not much time. Zack is sleeping over tonight and I can be sure he will be waking me up at 6:am. He loves his Auntie and I love him too. :) Stay tuned for pictures once I get time to load them on the site. Have scanner will scan. ;)

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. --Eden Phillpotts

There is more talk of HerBlogger at HerPlanet. Stay tuned for more. I think it's so exciting. I hope it can get the go ahead this time. I'd love to manage a really great blogging community for women. I wish we had taken advantage of the big exodus from Blogger several months ago. Now we have Movable Type to compete with too. Still, I'm not sure how they are going to arrange it all. Maybe we won't be in direct competition with Movable Type if we have more of a hosting service than a software package.

You don't have to be able to draw to be an artist. There are other ways and things to create with. For instance, clay, paper, thread, plants and text. Chances are you have seen art made with text. Its called ASCII art and it appears most often in email signatures. ASCII art is used to promote your website by attracting attention to the URL in your signature. But ASCII art is also a lot of fun and a challenging hobby. Of course, its not easy to get started, though you would think its pretty simple. All you need is a computer or typewriter. You supply all the creativity, ideas, skill and imagination.

To start try finding a very simple picture or just use your name. See if you can create a copy of it using the ASCII keyboard characters. If you are working on your name try using just one character and then selecting a second one to fill in more spaces. Work along that way, remove some characters when you find one that works better. That's really how I make my own ASCII art, just trying different characters to fill in spaces and taking out ones that didn't work as well. You can also look at other people's ASCII art for ideas, see how they used different characters to fill in spaces.

Don't forget to include your artist's initials. Your initials show the picture was made by you. Most people who appreciate ASCII art will keep your initials with your picture.

There are lots of places to share your ASCII art. You can have it on your personal website, make your own ASCII art gallery. People colour ASCII art and show it off in different IRC and chat channels too. There is also an ASCII art newsgroup: alt.ascii-art. The SigList is a wonderful email discussion list for ASCII art fans and artists. If you want some help making your ASCII art that's a good place to look.

Here is some basic information to help you through the usual problems people have when they start making ASCII art. Signatures, or any ASCII art you want to send through email, should be small. If you can keep it under 5 lines you're doing great. I've made some which are four lines, the acceptable standard. Also keep signatures less than 75 characters wide. Longer signatures can wrap and then they just look like a mess of text. NotePad is really the best place to make ASCII art, it doesn't open up very wide. As long as you keep your signature at a size that fits easily in NotePad you will have no trouble sending it in an email.

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, the keys you can see on your keyboard. One thing all ASCII art has in common is a monospace font. This keeps it looking the same for all computers. If you are seeing ASCII art all warped, jumbled looking, try changing your font to FixedSys or Courier New. If you make your ASCII art in Windows NotePad you have the FixedSys font automatically.

Once upon a time a signature wasn’t much more than a show of good penmanship. Now a signature can be plain, just links, maybe a quote. Signatures in HTML are colourful and fancy but too clunky for downloading with email. I like ASCII art signatures best of all. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, your basic everyday keyboard characters. Its become a tradition for ASCII art to only use the characters you can actually see on your keyboard. If you get into the alt key the art becomes ANSI art.

ASCII art has been used for more than just signatures. MUDs, IRC chat, ezines and of course newsgroup and email postings have used ASCII art and emoticons (smileys). Some people have printed out the bigger pictures for kids to colour. One thing all ASCII art has in common is a monospace font. This keeps it looking the same for all computers. If you are seeing ASCII art all warped, jumbled looking, try changing your font to FixedSys or Courier New. When ASCII art is included in a webpage it needs the HTML tag pre and /pre to keep the characters arranged with all the spaces in place.

Signatures should be short but not too cluttered. If you can keep it under 5 lines you’re doing great. I’ve made some which are four lines, the acceptable standard. I think the netiquette police aren’t so concerned with the length of ASCII signatures now that HTML is getting more popular. Still, you don’t want to annoy people with your signature, usually. Keep signatures less than 75 characters wide. Longer signatures can wrap and then they just look like a mess of text. Don’t forget to include your URL and if you use ASCII art, the artist’s initials.

In July 1996 while still a Net newbie, I thought the pictures made with keyboard characters were amazing. Making the pictures myself seemed so out of reach. I didn’t even know what they were called. I searched for keyboard art, typewriter art, anything and everything I could think of. I didn’t find what I was looking for. Finally, I found a site answering newbie questions and they emailed back and told me: ASCII Art! The mystery was solved!

I made my first keepable picture January 1998 (with the help of Albert and Joan on the Sig-List). ASCII Art became my special outlet for the drawing I have always wished I could do. Its been a few years and a lot of ASCII later. I have some signatures I especially like, some art I enjoy sharing on my personal site and a few really great ways of promoting my projects online. People notice ASCII art. Not everyone has my appreciation of it, but it does get noticed. Some people, like my husband, say it’s outdated, a throwback to the 70’s. Little does he know, ASCII Art is still evolving and it started on typewriters, not computers.

ASCII art isn’t using a program to turn a graphic into ASCII text. Anyone can open a program, that’s not art. ASCII art is created when someone uses a minimal amount of data to represent an object. Of course, its not always easy to see, the whole eye of the beholder thing… But its really impressive what some people can do with just a few keyboard characters and a lot of imagination and creativity.

This was originally posted to the BackWash site, October 12, 2001. I wrote there several years before the site closed.