#worldglass — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #worldglass, aggregated by home.social.
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#PennedPossibilities 1109: What question does your MC long to find an answer for? What answer do they hope for, and which one would they fear?
Having trekked to the edge of the world and seen with their own eyes the 60 mile thick, 25'000 mile long glass wall that makes up the #worldglass -- the hourglass they live within -- our protagonist's conviction of their beliefs is absolute.
They resolve there and then to make the one-way journey to the centre of the worldglass to see the 200 mile wide sandfall where it is said all departed souls gather.
When they barely survive crossing the impassable desert that has cut off their clan from the rest of civilisation for centuries, what they find is uncertainty.
Unlike the oral histories and fables of their clan that have been passed down from generation to generation for centuries, the protagonist discovers that history here is muddy and uncertain; layered and confused. They had come assuming that anybody could point them in the direction of the great sinkhole, that everybody would instinctively know of it; but they don't.
People have different views of the world here -- nobody has ever attempted to reach the edge of the world and returned alive, so who knows what is even out there? Many think the world is a bowl that rests on the back of a tortoise. Other crazy theories include the world being a sphere (surely everybody would just fall off the bottom!?)
The centre of the world cannot be approached due to sand-quakes and the resulting liquefaction. Ancient legends tell of the Tower of Balal, when all of mankind lived at the centre-point of the world before the tower was sucked under by a sand-quake -- retribution from the divine. Now humanity lives in the habitable ring that surrounds the centre.
Our protagonist's views are seen as primitive, outdated, ignorant. Now they fear that everything they were so certain about might not be so certain. What if the centre isn't a sinkhole? What if it's nothing, and they really are in a bowl? A glass one, sure, but were the fables their clan had held so dearly just echoes of a lie two thousand years old?
https://camendesign.com/nomad (ePub, PDF)
https://camendesign.com/writing/nomad/online.html (browser, HTML) -
Good news, everyone! I hope you like text. I started with a single toot about an uncontacted tribe in a world inside an hourglass, I've now passed 75'000 words on my book. Over 260 pages in standard 8x5 in. I've been #writing for seven months.
Download a 60-page taster PDF/ePub https://camendesign.com/nomad or read online (HTML) https://camendesign.com/writing/nomad/online.html
Get the full manuscript, behind the scenes blog etc etc on the Patreon, you know the drill: https://patreon.com/KrocCamen
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> "Merchants do not deal with the common rabble, amiko, we specialise in the fruitful exchange between two mutually invested individuals."
Ifran, the merchant, is using the "Royal we" which our protagonist is not aware of, to 1. raise himself above the station of commoner, but also 2. suggest that our protagonist is merchant material, born superior to the commoner, because though naive and clueless, they have the intelligence and sharp foresight that all merchants require to survive in a dog-eat-dog profession.
The use of "fruitful exchange between two mutually invested individuals" is merchant double-speak; flattering and boastfully humble whilst being the opposite of the truth. Being a merchant is a zero-sum game where in order for you to win others must lose, and as Ifran has already said before; there's only one thing a merchant hates more than losing, and that is seeing someone else win. It should be noted he is not attempting to mislead our protagonist here, but rather to suggest that they are "mutually invested", i.e. tied by fate to help one another.
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#PennedPossibilities 1089, MC POV: Write a diary entry that’s dated 10 years in the past.
The planning and preparation had taken a year. It was 10 years to the day since I had returned from the edge of the #worldglass. Everybody had said I was a changed person since that day. I was relentless in my pursuit of knowledge; I focused on my studies, I threw myself against the most difficult and dangerous challenges like hunting, and protecting the herds at night from wild animals. I was stubborn and belligerent and single-minded and I pushed back against anything I thought was irrelevant or would take me away from my goal. Granted, I had to learn that all knowledge was useful even if not immediately apparent, and part of that was if I was ever to leave the clan I would have to learn to do as I was told, even if I didn't like it. But, once my parents and the clan could see that this wasn't just a phase or momentary obsession, that my mind was really set on going to Journey's End -- that I was the immovable lizard on the rock -- they eventually, finally, relented.
I made my official plea before the wise-woman, related everything I had done to prepare myself. She listened patiently and I waited on my hands and knees prostrate before her, my heart pounding. She asked, conincidedly, "What will be your last words before you die?". I hadn't expected this question; I had expected her to question my sincerity, my determination, my resolve -- ask me to go kill a wildcat with my bare hands or something. I couldn't even formulate a response and just spluttered incoherent noises trying to think of what to say. Was I going to be killed and this was the Wayfarer's dark secret passed down from wise-woman to wise-woman to make sure that nobody ever left the clan!?
The wise-woman spoke for me, her voice was calm and the words came easy. "When you leave, you will be dead to us. You might survive the journey, but we won't be able to know that, ever. That fate is not ours to decide. The clan cannot continue worrying about what may be and what may have been. After 28 days your funeral will be held and your parents will enter mourning. You will never be spoken of as living again. Your story will enter the oral histories but your name will not be remembered, just as with those few who never returned before you and the Wayfarer before them who chose to have her name buried by the shifting sands of history."
I was choking on a mixture of emotions and tears. The full weight of what I had been pursuing had come to rest on my back and I had to fight, fight with my bare hands, for myself. Did I really want this? Was it necessary? The thought of my parents mourning my death. Not some uncertainty fate had yet to decide, but a certainty I had to choose. Like a wildcat the thoughts scratched at me. I had to wrestle them into my control. This fate was mine. The seed had been planted there at the edge of the worldglass, yes, but it was I that watered it, that nurtured it, that let it grow rather than weeding it out as my parents had tried to do for so many years. Others had spoken of wanting to join me when they saw how determined I was to go to Journey's End, but their resolve was as a succulent and uprooted easily. Mine was a tree with deep roots and it burned with a fire and the flames could not be put out by mere wind or water. No animal could climb it and no man could chop it down. I had already made my decision that day I turned thirteen -- understanding the cost of that decision and coming to terms with it was what truly made me an adult, now.
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Aggressively productive today. Wrote about 2'000 words. Not the best words, but words nevertheless. After a month off it's always scary going back to it
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I haven't done small-screen (smartphone) support yet, but here you go: check out my ebook HTML reader interface -- all #HTML + #CSS, no #JavaScript! (and definitely no Ai) https://camendesign.com/writing/nomad/online.html
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I am cooking.
#HTML + #CSS. No JS. No images (the icons are text, including the line-spacing icons which are three em-dashes with different line-spacing)
Yes, you can select the font-face, font-size and line-spacing with the buttons, without #javascript.
Every paragraph is numbered so you can easily remember where you were. Just need to add theme selection.
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Staring down the barrel of "nobody knows how to do anything without #JavaScript any more". All I want to do is make my #ebook readable in a web-browser. Do I have to make _everything_ myself!?
No fancy UI-styling yet but there's nothing stopping me providing widgets for changing light/dark theme, colours, fonts, line-spacing -- you name it -- no JavaScript needed. Nothing to install, no Python script, no build system; it's just an #HTML + #CSS file. WHY IS THIS A LOST ART!??
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Major depression setting in like a grey cloud because I'm only just realising now that it doesn't matter if my book is good or bad, excellently written or shat out by an AI -- people just don't read any more
I'm killing myself trying to put out something original but the harder I push myself the quieter the response seems and the heavier the depression. Fool that I am! Increasing the quality doesn't improve the chances of feedback, everybody is too hooked on social media to read to a book! I'm barking up the wrong tree in the first place. This endeavour isn't going to save me from poverty, I'd literally be better off producing tiktok reels from stolen videos if I wanted to survive.
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Another major #HTML / #CSS discovery:
You limit the height of the image so that it fits within the screen; the width of it will automatically scale, e.g. `width: auto; max-height: 75vh;`
However, the text element below will stretch the container out automatically because it's technically 'wider' than the image (see img1). You want the image to set the container width, but you don't know its width!
(The text is wrapped in a DIV so that it can scroll if it overflows without scrolling the entire popover)
Setting the width to `min-content` so that it doesn't maximise its width unfortunately doesn't fill the space. (see img2)
In Chrome this can be solved by also setting `min-width` to `stretch` (img3), however this doesn't work in Firefox / iOS / Android. Firefox will however work if you use `fit-content` instead (img4) -- but that then breaks Chrome!
Including Webkit (iOS / Android), the correct solution for making the element as wide as the container without extending the container is:
```css
min-width: -webkit-fill-available; min-width: fit-content; min-width: stretch; width: min-content;
```
(NB: The order of the three `min-width` properties is critical!)(aside: the site is an Encarta-like encyclopedia for my book about a world inside a sandglass the size of Earth: https://camendesign.com/nomad #worldglass)
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I always wanted to use a #Psion for real, meaningful work — even started writing a book on it ( #worldglass ) — but today I use it to write my statement to a judge to be read in a court of law to determine the future of my disabled child. It does not get more real and meaningful than this.
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Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
Yes, I absolutely am going to plunder the public domain, yarr.
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I'm not certain about the background watermark. It _is_ on brand though.
Where did I get it? It's Clipart.
No, not "I googled 'clipart'" Clipart,
_actual Clipart_. -
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RE: https://mastodon.radio/@M0CUV/116868398635265326
OMFG -- SIX MONTHS. *Six months* it took for someone, anyone, anywhere, to say anything about my novel D: The hashtag #worldglass has been around for three months but I had been putting my story out there toot-by-toot since January (https://oldbytes.space/@Kroc/115895172569381595), then as a free PDF/epub (https://camendesign.com/nomad). I've been writing full time for six months -- 66'000 words -- promoting it as much as I am able and yet Matt here is the first person other than me to use the hashtag, ever.
This is not a complaint at Matt at all -- he's a saint for actually trying to promote the book at all but it's been utterly brutal for me to put so much hard work into this labour of love and not have another soul in the world speak of it for months on end.
I have a small number of Patreons (https://patreon.com/c/KrocCamen) and I'm not being disrespectful here because in the world of publishing, somebody willing to actually part with money is the only metric that matters and it is a vote of confidence that cannot be beaten but they must be busy reading the book atm because despite putting out three months of manuscript updates and another 17'000 words in behind-the-scenes blogs, there's been no comments yet.
Yes, people may very well be enjoying the book, but if the advice I pass on to new aspiring authors is that you won't receive a word of feedback until after six months of breaking yourself, I think they wouldn't even bother starting -- I wouldn't have. This is what you get for actually _trying_ rather than slopping it out??
Like, I'm overjoyed someone praised the book, yes, but I think a small part of me just died having waited for the first time anybody would ever use the hashtag. I've felt like a total failure for so long. It's only because of reading the book to my wife that I know that it's even worth writing. Without her, it would have died three months ago.
I didn't think there could be a profession more isolating than programming.
#writing #writingcommunity #writersofmastodon #reading #books #bookstodon #fiction #fantasy
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Re: LB
Hi folks, if you’re into fantasy novels & world-building in a fascinating setting, do yourself a favour and check out the preview of Kroc Camen’s “Nomad: Wanderer in the Worldglass” at https://camendesign.com/nomad
It’s quite the page-turner (button-clicker for ebook readers)!Written on Psion handheld, with absolutely no AI, it’s great to see more human writing at a time when we’re drowning in slop.
Looking forward to seeing the universe of the #worldglass expand.
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Help, my inbox! It's not SoundCloud, but I do have a book about an uncontacted tribe in a desert world within an hour-glass the size of Earth: https://camendesign.com/nomad
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Where do you want to go today?
https://camendesign.com/nomad#worldglass #retrocomputing #microsoft #encarta #webdev #html #css
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The time period the story is set in is only 2'000 years after the first civilisations had formed, but given that they live in a desert world inside an hour-glass the size of Earth, it's fair to assume they'll have computers in the distant future (plenty of silicon available), and when they do, there will be #Encarta!
Just a quick mockup of a website for my book based on Encarta 96 since making an encyclopedia of the story world is something I'm considering.
5KB of HTML+#CSS, no JS, noAI
Get the book free as a PDF/epub here:
https://camendesign.com/nomad -
Nomad: Wanderer in the #Worldglass is my #book (#noAI!) about a desert world in a planet-sized sand-glass -- download a free PDF/ePub @ https://camendesign.com/nomad
The third manuscript update is now out for Patreons, join for £1 to get the full 66'000 word, 237 page manuscript and monthly writing diary: https://www.patreon.com/KrocCamen/posts/june-2026-162330921
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And here’s that exact same code running on the device. It’s nothing to look at, it is a minimal viable text-editor so far, but the fact that it _can_ be changed is what matters. There hasn’t been an open-source plain text editor for this platform, ever.
#psion #writerdeck #worldglass #programming #retrocomputing #opensource
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I'm probably only 1 of maybe 3 people in the world writing software for this platform at the moment
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Is anybody reading the book?? Any thoughts, questions? Did you put it down -- if so, where and what put you off?
Nomad: Wanderer in the #Worldglass, is a story set in a planet-sized sand-glass: https://camendesign.com/nomad
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What the hell is this AI #scam shit? Any other #writers getting e-mail like this? Domain name doesn't exist, no search results for it, at all, vague name I can't find much about. No email signature. Dodgy as all f*. This is the first I've seen of scam mails with added context (mention of my book #worldglass)
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I _know_ you’re not supposed to expect anything or be ungrateful but pushing hard all month, in isolation, to create a world in detail, adding another 12’000 words and a 10’000 word behind-the-scene blog, and all you get is two views and not even a like on your toot is soul destroying.
The harder you push for excellence, the louder the crickets seem to be at the end.
Imagine spending five months working full time on a project, tooting about it along the way, sharing your work, and nobody — not even a single other human being — is interested enough to say anything about it* or use the hashtag.
*= The actual content, rather than the fact I’m writing a book
I have to somehow face the next month of writing with that as the learned experience. I have Patreons, I have a responsibility to them and I will continue to write, but dear God, I am begging for some kind of acknowledgement, feedback, *anything*, right now. I chose to switch to a hobby somehow more isolating than programming
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The second manuscript update has been released:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/may-2026-159709132
Another 43 pages; 150 pages over the free preview
Plus another 10'000 word developer diary(download the free PDF/ePub here! https://camendesign.com/nomad)
#worldglass #writing #books #ebook #writingcommunity #fiction #fantasy
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As they say, "Aww Sh!t". The unfortunate side of these 25-30 year old machines is that the plastics are failing. With me using mine so much, the door to the Compact Flash slot cracked. I used some epoxy resin to repair it, but whilst trying to wriggle the door free from being glued in the open position, the whole thing tore apart :(
Thankfully, it doesn't prevent the device from working as the sense switch for the door is in the corner where it pivots, and the stylus is on a spring-lock.
I've put close to 60 hours of writing into this device since starting the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) and I'm pushing to get the new chapter finished for the end of the month.
I wish we had replacement cases for these, but the community is so incredibly small we can't afford to have these re-manufactured, if we could even get the design recreated correctly :/
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> "But in this particular case, you’re promoting your book. You’re promoting a thing that you wrestled with and won. You’re promoting a thing that dragged you to hell and you dragged back. You’re promoting a successful enterprise in human endeavor. And beyond that, you’re promoting the idea that this beautiful thing you made, these words you ordered, these ideas you successfully put to a page, will resonate with other human beings. You’re promoting your belief that you have made a thing that will fill others with joy, grief, and/or inspiration. You’re promoting the idea of human connection, which we need so badly right now."
https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-be-a-carnival-barker
I tossed away 25 years of habit pumping out programming projects on the daily so I could knuckle-down to writing Nomad: Wanderer in the #Worldglass because the world is so compelling, so full of detail, and so well suited to the medium that I know it will give you something that is so much more rich in texture and humanity than the endless stream of attention-sapping sound-bites that makes up the majority of reading we do online nowadays.
There is literally no ulterior motive to the content of this book, unlike a social media feed where often the content -- no matter how positive and uplifting -- is secondary to the farming of views/clicks/ads/data, etc.
_Please_ consider giving it a brief read, it's free. You will know if it's for you from the first page; the setup of a desert world in a sand-glass the size of Earth is such a ripe environment that I dropped everything I could be doing to flesh it out for you.
#writing #writingcommunity #fiction #fantasy #literature #books