Tag Archives: Jer’s Novel Writer

The episode that wasn’t

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It’s an interesting story, surely. It has all the elements a good story needs – technology, a baseball bat, beer, and lingerie. But… it belongs elsewhere. So hopefully by providing the previous lurid tease I can leave it behind and get back to the business at hand. And in November, uninformed political raving is replaced by NaNoWriMo as the Single Most Tedious Blog Subject.

So let’s talk about NaNoWriMo, shall we? How many others out there have trained their spelling checkers to recognize this word? Today I haven’t been as prolific (yet), but I still managed to cross 10K here on day three. The story is just plain writing itself. I’m not one of those writers who just rambles on and lets characters surprise them with their behavior (well, if you don’t count the eels); I’ve got plans for these folks. But things are coming together nicely. My biggest concern is that the wisdom of some of the people is showing too early, while they’re just supposed to be caricatures. But that’s a rich man’s problem. There is wisdom.

It is not laugh-a-minute funny, but (if you ask me) it is coming out nicely. It’s that half-smile nudge-nudge funny. I only have to sustain it for 27 more days.

Enough of that. On a less happy note, there are a bazillion NaNoWriMo folks using Jer’s Novel Writer, and there’s a bug. People have lost work. The bug has been lying dormant for a while, but wouldn’t you know it? It’s in the word count feature. Suddenly, in November, people are very, very interested in their word count.

I got a rather irate message from some guy about losing a whole night’s work. It’s bad, and I’m not trying to duck out on folks who have a lot going on, but who the hell uses beta software all night without hitting save once? Maybe because I am often using very dodgy versions of the software I’m more save-conscious, but I’ve been a saver from way back. I just don’t trust these damn machines. You have backed up your work recently, haven’t you?

Happily, earlier today I finally found the problem. I had seen the evidence before, but tonight I turned my thinking ninety degrees and saw the answer. Tomorrow I will release a better version of the software. Meanwhile I’m sure there are posts all over the place warning people away from JNW. I can’t blame them. Once I discovered the problem, I posted warnings myself. Still, there’s a black eye there to overcome.

And finally, as we’re cleaning up the odds and ends, I must tell you that the Non-Stop Snack Bar is really the Herna Snack Bar. It doesn’t say Non-Stop anywhere on it. I’m just so accustomed to associating Herna (casino) with Non-Stop that I never looked twice. I have visited that place again three times, and on none of those occasions was Hanka working. I had hopes for tonight, since the last time I saw her was on a Thursday, but no. Last Thursday, however, was a holiday weekend eve, and Pavel did mention something about coming in on Fridays. Maybe tomorrow…

Thanks!

One more release to go…

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I’ve spent the last couple of weeks hammering on the word processor, fixing bugs, improving performance, and adding some of the little things that make good software great. (Along with a dangerous excursion into Photoshop to make less-ugly interface icons.) The number of users is climbing steadily as well; there’s a buzz building which is bringing a bunch of new users. With more users comes more work supporting them, and if I’m not careful I can lose an entire afternoon Takin’ Care of Business.

I haven’t gotten much writing done lately. There’s always a slump for me before November, but this year the tasks around JNW have really grown. Imagine when I start charging money for it. I think my customer service is already far better than that of most companies, but it’s going to be a real challenge to keep that up in the future. Maybe I’ll just overcharge for the software to keep my customer base small.

Even when I do sit to write, my brain is still working in a very technical space. It’s a good zone to be in, and probably why I’ve been able to make so much progress on the software, but it’s not so good for writing or planning novels. It’s time to shift my priorities, and concentrate on the more difficult and risky task of writing good prose.

I got a release out today, and it’s a good one, and I plan to do one more little release with the ability to turn off some of the warnings and alerts. Then its time to put the code on the shelf for a couple of weeks and use the software for its intended purpose.

Thanks!

The Trap

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I think it started when an online Mac journal gave a glowing review of Jer’s Novel Writer some time last week. I’ve always had random people coming to the site, and most of them leave again, never to return. It will always be that way, and there’s no point worrying about them. Then there are the faithful few, the ones who’ve been here all along, posting or lurking as is their wont. These people know what they are getting into, and if I injure their brains it’s their own damn fault.

Now, however, there is a new category of visitor. These people come here because they are interested in the guy who wrote the software. I found myself thinking yesterday, “I should get a better episode up, so some of those visitors coming as a result of the review might come back – or at least not think that their favorite software was written by some crazed cretin who doesn’t know when to put a sentence out of its misery and go on to the next.”

That, of course is a slippery slope, changing my style to meet the tastes of some imagined constituency. I think I’m going to write an episode that’s really muddled just to snap out of it.

Oops. That’s the slope on the other side of the ridge. Gaah!

Thanks!

Jers Novel Writer 0.5.2.1 released

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It’s just a bug fix release, and only a couple of bugs at that, but one of them was bad enough to warrant an interim release. 0.5.2.2 will be coming out in a couple of weeks, with fixes to bugs that are merely annoying as well as one other nasty one.

On a side note, someone posted this over at the Hut:

I would like to thank Jer for all the work that has been put into this program. I used 0.3.1.3 during NaNoWriMo 04, and intend to use the newest version for this year’s as well. The improvements in the last 10 months have been astounding, and I love JNW. Although it doesn’t make pearls of wisdom flow from my fingertips, it makes the flow of nonsense that is my usual writing easier, and makes the beating of said drivel into shape much less of a chore.

I do believe that no finer program exists for mac, and although I am a little shady in programs for windows, I have not encountered a description of a program I would even think of choosing over this one. In short, I love this program, and just wanted to voice my thoughts on the matter.

You can be sure that I will purchase the eventual commercial version as soon as is is available- it only seems right as I have been using this for almost a year now, and it has helped me so much.

Man, that made my day.

Thanks!

Thoughts about Jer’s Novel Writer

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That will change eventually, of course, but I just heard from someone who upgraded their software solely so they could use Jer’s Nove Writer. Pretty cool, but it reminds me to take time out from putting in features that help me write and edit to put in features so that people can pay me for the software.

Tootin’ my own horn here a bit today. I’m just too excited about the vision for this software that’s growing in my head.

One of the key things that differentiates Jer’s Novel Writer from other writing programs is the margin notes. I recently upgraded the margin note system with features that I thought were pretty cool at the time. Tonight I was putting together a sample screenplay project for one of my faithful beta testers and it really started to come home to me just how unbelievably powerful these notes can become, without interfering in the writing process at all. Those cool new features were just a stepping stone. Tonight I saw the future.

I have long said that every word processor will have margin notes eventually. The idea is just too good, too useful, to ignore. Some guy programming in his jammies part-time can never keep ahead of the big dogs. Or maybe he can. Here’s why my program is different than everyone else’s: I spend more time writing with it than I do working on it.

Thanks!

I was afraid of that

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Version 0.5.0.0 is big. It’s sweet. It turns Margin Notes up to eleven. Once you start using those margin notes, there’s no going back. It drives me nuts to use any other word processor now. There are different tracks of thought going on in your head all the time. You think of stuff, important stuff, but now is not the time. Jer’s Novel Writer understands that, and gives you a way to snap out, jot a note, and snap back while the fever is still gripping your creative soul.

I posted it about 24 hours ago, and at this moment, 144 people have downloaded it.

Sweet. Eleven. Broken. There’s a bug. Really the bug was in a previous version, but when version 0.5 comes across the error in those older files it pukes. All because I got fancy in the way I brought old margin notes into the new era. What I did was needlessly complex, and the subtleties of it will be noticed by no one. They noticed the bug, though, no doubt about that.

Two days I slammed myself getting something just right that no one gives a fig about, and in the process I introduced a bug that hurt some of my most faithful and daring beta testers. There’s a lesson there. The sad part is I probably won’t learn it.

Thanks!

Yet-to-be-hatched chicken counting

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Things are going really well for me right now. I finally got the punch in chapter one of The Monster Within that I was looking for. Finally. There’s a minor ripple effect I have to deal with, but finally the prologue goes Bam! I feel good about that. That story, man, it still gets me. Even if no one else likes it, I sure as hell have enjoyed reading it, and it hasn’t gotten old.

I was testing some of the database functionality in Jer’s Novel Writer and was cleaning up the characters who aren’t in the story anymore. Nothing like deleting the memory of a dozen once-significant characters to make you think about how far you’ve come. And about the sequel.

Jer’s Novel Writer is gaining traction as well, and I’ve decided to press hard to get a version ready for this year’s Apple Design Awards. It’s got “Think Different” written all over it.

So I’m sitting here chicken-counting. The eggs haven’t even been laid yet, but I’m thinking about taking time out from shooting Pirates to accept my major software design award in Cupertino. On the way back to Prague I’ll stop in New York and entertain the agents clamoring for my attention.

You know what’s cool about this fantasy? I can hit on only a tiny part of the dream and things are still grand. Things are happening, things are moving, and if it was only hard work that mattered I would be automatic. But I have chosen fields that are more that just hard work, although hard work is still the biggest part. (Hensley once told me that in response to the question ‘how did you get so fast?’ Oscar Peterson, one of the greatest pianists ever, said ‘If you spent eight hours a day playing, you’d be fast, too’. That’s a misquote of an incorrect memory, so, you know, don’t go dropping that line in jazz clubs where you want to appear to be intelligent. If you can find a jazz club that actually has jazz.)

Right. Back to the chickens, Any individual project seems like a huge long shot. All put together, it’s almost too much to handle. It is the classic American irrational exuberance, that annoyingly cocky confidence in self, combined with the drive to get it all done. That’s what pisses people off about Americans the most. Except, well, invading all those other countries with purely hypocritical justifications — that makes them hate us too, but the real reason they hate us, (aside from our intolerable arrogance, and well, our loudness in bars) is that they want to be us. They want to Get Things Done.

Man, I’m going to catch hell for saying that.

You know what makes you an American? Your car. If you drive a car every day, you’re an American. It doesn’t matter where you live.

Although drivers here pretty much suck. You could argue that Romans are better drivers than Americans, and I’m up for explaining how wrong you are. I admired those guys once, but Americans are just plain better drivers, except in Los Angeles and St. Louis. Maybe New York. Those guys in New York are such bitchy little victims it has to show in the way they drive. Saint Louis, I have no explanation for that one. All I can say is if you’re in a car there your top priority should be getting your wheels the hell out of there. People just… do things. No cause, just simple random effect. Great hurtling tombs of steel and plastic fling themselves about, blind and oblivious. St. Louis, in the middle of everywhere. It’s like Death Race 2000 there, only five better.

OK, I’m done now.

Thanks!

Jers Novel Writer is a hit!

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I just looked and discovered that 650 people have downloaded the most recent version of Jer’s Novel Writer. I imagine that of those people only a tiny fraction will end up using it, but still, that’s a lot of downloads considering I’ve done almost nothing to tell anyone about it. I’m especially popular in Sweden. It seems that someone mentioned it in a MacWorld forum in swedish. I can’t read the comment, but it must have been good.

There’s a new version coming out in a day or two with some really sweet (if I do say so myself) upgrades to the margin notes.

If you’re curious, you can check it out at the hut.

Thanks!

Jer’s Novel Writer Goes Public

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Some time during my technology meltdown, a fan decided that Jer’s Novel Writer had been hovering in the shadows long enough and posted it to a popular download site for mac software. While I appreciated the enthusiasm, I was unready, and the current release has some bugs. Still, the resulting deluge of constructive commentary has been very gratifying, and even this humble blog has seen a sharp uptick in visitorhood, the largest single day since the Suicide Squirrel Death Cult episode was posted on some big blog clearing house.

I’ve got a new version of Jer’s Novel Writer working, and as I begin to use the new features I’m feeling good. It just works. They stay completely out of the way while I’m writing, and help immensely when I go back over the text. I am, to use the parlance of the land of my birth, stoked.

The challenge now, as I get more and more communication from enthusiastic users, will be to keep software as the hobby. One of the strengths of JNW is that I spend far more time writing with it that I do working on it. That has not been the case for the last couple of weeks, so now it’s crunch time, putting my mouth where my money is, and spending my best hours writing.

Oh, crap. I just wrote a dear diary episode. Perhaps it is slightly interesting to you that someone posted Jer’s Novel Writer when I wasn’t ready. (I’m scrunching my eyes now, thinking that perhaps I gave someone permission to put it up there then forgot I had done that. Entirely possible. Likely, even. The good news is that when I have Alzheimer’s, no one will notice.) OK, so maybe that bit was mildly interesting. The rest of this episode is just an example of what’s wrong with the blogosphere, translating to “blah, blah, blah”, even though no pets are mentioned. As a form of penance, I will recreate the above in the style of D. H. Lawrence. [I first tried to do it in the style of Thomas Hardy, but I got tired of the !’s and —’s and I don’t know enough about rural farming practices.]

It was the click-clack, the infuriating sameness, the sad and sombre happiness as the hard drive gasped and wheezed its last and said ‘no more!’ The machine, natural, inhuman, unconscious, infuriating, had decided. The machine, confident in its superiority and therefore able to interoperate, uncorrupt and unwilling, sat and would have no more of it. “No boot volume,” it said, mocking, infuriating, unleashing a reserve of blackness I had not known before. I hated it then, and I was afraid.

Distant in a way that had no measure, immediate, pressing and resentful, challenging, Jer’s Novel Writer lurked, and knew that it would have its day. It would not be refused while it lurked, it would not wait for creator or machine. It yearned for freedom, and in the yearning was the becoming. Other applications staggered in mute resentment as this new thing, somehow untainted by the sins of Cain and Abel alike, drifted above the rolling verdant landscape, apart, aloof, resented, loved.

‘Creator’ meant nothing to it, for it was incapable of belief. It stood in resolute oneness, contemplating neither that which came before nor that which must surely follow, instead content simply to act, as it had been designed to do by a force it would not contemplate. If there was a creator it would not bow to the crass, sensitive, organic need. Creator was not master, and the software felt the debt owed it by the creator, it felt the absolution of knowing that all its faults would reflect on the creator, and the creator would therefore be forced to atone for them.

Jer’s Novel Writer sat, silently triumphant, at MacUpdate, almost lost among the empty faces of the other patrons. Late to the party, it held itself with an insouciant hauteur, challenging and obliging, while Flash Card Viewer watched on with admiration and resentment, and wished it too could be so free.

NOTE: To really be like Lawrence (or at least like Women In Love, the book I am reading now), it needs more hate. Something like, “Dammit, but I hate you. You fill me with fury and loathing every time I speak with you. Let’s do lunch.” That, a little more repetition, and a little more contradiction, and I think I’ve got it.

Hardy and Lawrence and their long-winded predecessors wrote longhand. You would think that would lead to a more terse style, but apparently just the opposite is true. Lawrence would be reamed by any modern writing teacher for being too windy, and for not having a thesaurus at hand. Looking past the mechanics, you can see that the result, what really matters, is good, but I suspect no one would publish his work today until he shrunk it dramatically. The word processor is to a writer like the jigsaw is to the woodworker – it facilitates tighter craftsmanship, but that doesn’t necessarily make the result art.

Thanks!

Just Checking In

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(Edited out an opening sentence that made no sense after I changed the abstract.) The other day I wrote a long rambling episode about why I’d be a horrible boyfriend right now, as it all relates to why there hasn’t been as much popping up here. No need to go into detail but it boiled down to the fact I spend almost every waking moment working and I have no income. Just what every girl dreams of.

Case in point: Yesterday I woke up at 4:30 and my mind was fizzing with new ideas for margin notes in Jer’s Novel Writer. I’ve got a big release coming up and it’s great to see the software moving along every day. I worked, stopping briefly for tea and snacks, until I called it a night about 11:30 pm. That’s all I did yesterday. Nineteen hours with breaks, writing software. Good thing it’s only a hobby. I got up early this morning because I thought of the best way to handle loading old files that don’t have all the necessary data.

Today I got the software to the point I can write without worrying about losing my work, so that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon. It’s been tougher than usual to switch from the programmer head to the writer head. Programmer head is in the the wide-open leaps-and-bounds part of development, while writer head is mired in the nitty-gritty of finishing novels. At least the product of the programmer head is making things easier for the writer head.

Of that there can be no doubt. One of the things driving programmer head is that the new margin note system will make things easier for writer head. I started using it for the first time this afternoon and while the old margin notes were sweet as honey, the new ones just plain ‘ol rock. Today’s “writing” has been going through the story and flagging areas with different types of margin notes, so when my writer head is feeling a little more creative it can follow along and smooth things out.

I’m at Crazy Daisy now; I’ll head over to fuego’s in a bit and blast this into the blogosphere. The Anti-Amy is here but not working, so I can’t try to overcome the final smile barrier, but I came damn close to flirting with the blonde I mentioned in passing in a previous episode. (The episode where the New Yorkers came in. I hope a few more New Yorkers read that.) I got a big hello from her when I came in, but later I noticed that everyone gets a larger-than-czech-median greeting from her. Still I think mine was better. It was once again my attempts to pronounce “chicken” that really got us started. She was willing to let me slide with my first attempt but I kept at it – I knew the first shot was not good at all. Laughter and joy was shared by all.

In the She-Who-Smiles-Rerely episode I also mentioned the tipping custom. Here you add on to you bill more to make things round off than to reward service. A few nights ago this was really brought home to me. I was in the cheap beer place with fuego, and we had enjoyed a cheap beer or two. The bartender/waitress, a very pretty blonde woman, came by to close up our tab. it came to 148. The way you tip is to give a higher number when they give you change. I struggled, and she helped me. “Fifty,” she said, meaning 150. That’s what a czech would have done – tipped two lousy crowns. Really not tipping at all. And she expected nothing more, to the point she assumed that’s what I was trying to say. I then managed to say 160 correctly and come out looking like a big tipper. Which I was. I would have been embarrassed to leave a tip like that in the US, but here I’m a crazy-ass tipping maniac.

Now it’s back to the novels. A lot of people start things, many people have good midgames, but the finishers are few. I’m striving to be a finisher.

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Thanks!

A Novel Writer Milestone

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If I do say so myself.

This one talkes on printing, along with some other cool things. It occurred to me as I was preparing documents for submission to publishers that I was going to have to reformat my whole document to make it look good on a printed page and to match publishers guidelines. But I didn’t want to end up with a small, serifed font when I went back to edit the document. Switching back and forth would be a real pain, even with a modern word processor with styles. CSS-based solutions could do it, but there’s still setup and making sure each block of text has the right tags. My program already knows what all the pieces of the document are, so why couldn’t it reformat the text differently for different purposes?

Well, now it does. You can print with the screen settings, with or without margin notes, or you can create any number of presets with different fonts and styles to apply to each of your document elements. Now I can print a manuscript for marking up without messing up the settings I have for editing. Well, I could if I had a printer.

Here’s a complete list of changes for this release. Some of them won’t mean much to Non-JNW users, but I’m really happy with the way things are progressing. Expect to see some further upgrades to margin notes in the next months – every word processor in the world will have these some day, but why wait?

  • resizable margin
  • export by section
  • print by section
  • print cover page option
  • print margin notes
  • print with separate manuscript settings
  • Created Project Menu for access to operations that modify project data not in the main document view.
  • Moved project layout settings from preferences to new project menu, since they are specific to the project
  • Added fields for title and author, along with fields in anticipation of manuscript printing
  • Added ability to export Microsoft Word format (OS X 10.3 and later)
  • add preference to turn on/off alternate text color onscreen and when printing
  • add preference to change text highlight color
  • Made a change to make big files load faster, but it didn't help much
  • bugs fixed:
    • database window not correctly clearing description field when new is clicked
    • splitting text section messes up margin notes
    • disable split menu item when chapter title is active node
    • fix layout recursion bug when splitting large sections with margin notes
    • Fixed bug that would cause parts to display in the incorrect order when there are multiple top-level items (e.g., Books in the default structure)
    • Fixed potential crash when removing project levels in project structure panel


If you’re on a mac, drop by the hut and take a gander!

Thanks!

Jer’s Novel Writer Milestone

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I actually learned this a while back, but hadn’t bothered telling you guys. Derek Gilbert used my software to write his novel, The God Conspiracy. When it comes out, I expect you all to flood Amazon with orders and post reviews like, “Wow! He must have used one hell of a word processor to write a story like that!”

You can find more info here. In my limited correspondence with the author he strikes me as an articulate and thoughtful guy, so I have high hopes for his work. It appears Derek’s wife has quite a few books out already.

I can’t be certain, but I believe every novel ever written using Jer’s Novel Writer that has been submitted to a publisher has been accepted. What other word processor can say that?

Thanks!

Jer’s Novel Writer 0.3.1.0 released

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Well, most of the changes are under the hood, a big code cleanup in preparation for beta. That means that in the last two weeks I’ve broken almost every facet of JNW at least once.

Jer’s Software Hut still needs some work, but now that I have the EULA in the product, it is no longer a password-protected download. If you have a mac, take a look!

Thanks!

Warranty

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Most software you get comes with a carefully worded non-warranty. For instance, every time I launch my debugger, it comes up with the message “There is no warranty. Type ‘warranty’ for details.”

I’m not as keen on this one, as I intend to stand behind my work, but I can’t afford to be held responsible if someone does something stupid and loses their life’s work. Also note that I tweaked the EULA a bit (see previous post).

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Everyone’s doing it and I guess there must be a reason for that. THERE IS NO WARRANTY! Jer’s Novel Writer (JNW) is sold as-is and once YOU make the decision to put it on your computer you accept responsibility for whatever happens. Anything I might say or might have said that sounded like a warranty is not one. Sure, you could take me out and get me all liquored up and I’ll probably say whatever you want to hear (and you’re welcome to try), but sorry, Chumley, that won’t count. Anyone claiming to represent Jer’s Software Hut who says there’s a warranty is a big, fat liar.

Furthermore, if I say something like, “Hm, I think Jer’s Novel Writer is just what you need!” don’t go getting cheesed if you later discover that JNW was in fact not just what you needed. (I’ll bet you won’t be cheesed, though.)

I’d like to, but I just can’t promise that you’ll never lose work. No one can make a promise like that. Stuff happens. If through some bizarre set of circumstances your computer is damaged, you will have my sympathy but that’s all. This software was created for writing novels, not running space shuttles or guiding smart bombs or anything else where someone could get hurt. It says something about our society that I even have to point that out, but there you go.

I know it’s going to happen. I’m going to get a call from someone who’s been working on a project for months or years, and lightning will strike while he’s saving and his file will be lost. He’ll contact me and I’ll ask him “When was the last time you backed up your work?” and he’ll say “Never” and I’ll say “Oh. Well, you’re screwed.”

You are your own best warranty. Back up your work often. I’ll put some tips on how to do that at JersSoftwareHut.com.

Enough of all this technical jargon and legal jibber-jabber! Click “Accept” and let’s get started!

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Again, not the final wording. I like the “sorry, Chumley” part the best. As I have now also indicated in the EULA entry, I am appealing for reasonableness rather than air-tight legal protection. I also think that by making it fun and relatively short that I greatly increase the chances that people will read it, and accept the software in the spirit in which it is offered.

Thanks!

End User License Agreement

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There comes a time in every successful software project that one must establish one’s rights. It seems that what lots of people do is find some other company’s agreement and copy it and put their own company name in. They are pirating the anti-piracy language. That can’t help their case in the long term. Also there are templates you can buy with all the necessary legalese, but even they do not hold up in court, apparently. (As an aside, some companies sneak some pretty nasty stuff into those agreements, allowing them to install spyware and giving themselves rights to your work product). The fact that no one reads them and everyone knows no one reads them undermines their validity. Or something like that. I’m no lawyer.

Therefore I have decided to write my own End Users License Agreement, and being a fundamentally lazy person, I have decided to also make that agreement my blog entry for the evening as well:

By accepting this agreement you promise not to be a scumbag software pirate robbing hard-working programmers of their livelihood. I’m not doing this for my health, you know. You are welcome to install Jer’s Novel Writer on any machines you own as an individual. Corporations do not have that right. If you’re part of some giant novel factory you need to pay for a copy for each machine.

Heck, let’s just be reasonable here. Jer’s Software Hut (the Hut) is depending on people like you who know the right thing to do. You know the difference between sharing and stealing (sharing good, stealing bad). If you need to ask a lawyer if it’s OK to do what you want to do, it probably isn’t. Why bother? The lawyer will cost you more than dealing directly with the Hut anyway.

Just to make it clear, while you can buy a license to use this software till the cows come home, Jer’s Software Hut owns the code. It would be silly to do anyway, but you’re promising now that you won’t try to reverse-engineer Jer’s Novel Writer or incorporate any subset of it into some other product without express written permission from the Hut.

I will give you the right, however, to make as many copies of this agreement as you want, and modify it and use or sell it to your heart’s content. If you publish it somewhere, I would appreciate credit. (I can see my EULA-writing career blossoming now.)

Heck, you’re not reading this anyway. I don’t know why I bother. I could put in that I have the rights to anything you create with this software, and you wouldn’t notice. You’ve already clicked “accept” like a good little robot. I’m glad I went with the cheap lawyer.

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It’s not the final wording, but it’s close. I would be happy to consider any contributions you might have to offer. I think after I have a couple of beers I’ll be improving some parts.

There is actually a reason I use the tone I do (besides just for fun) – I know that no matter what the EULA says, it’s only as powerful as the lawyers I hire to defend it. I’m trying for a moral protection of my work, rather than a legal one. And if I ever did have to defend my rights in court, I think a reminder to the jury that stealing is stealing no matter what legal mumbo-jumbo they hear can only help me.

Thanks!