Fantasist’s Scroll

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

You know, when I first started using the Internet, pretty much everything was free.  Once you got used to searching, you could find just about anything on the ‘net, all the way up to and including source code for all kinds of things.  So, in that spirit, I took some basic source code for some Perl language generation and manipulation scripts and modified them to run on the web.  Then I offered them for free, just for the simple fun of having them and letting people use them.  But, things have changed.  Now, times are tough and hosting a website costs money.   That in and of itself isn’t a problem, except the use and abuse of those simple, fun, free scripts have caused so many server usage issues that my webhost is insisting that I either disable them or pay for a higher grade of service that’s more than three times what I’m paying now.  So, guess what?  Yep, the scripts are going away.  Maybe I’ll figure out how to do them with PHP instead of Perl one day, but until then, I have to disable them.  Either that, or come up with over $200 a month for a dedicated server.

So, I’m afraid that it comes down to dollars and sense.  I don’t have the dollars, so I have to exercise a little sense and take the freebies off-line.

I wish I had a better solution, but I just don’t.  I hope you all enjoyed them while they were here, but, now, due to forces beyond my control, I have to shut them down.

UPDATE: For people looking for other free language generation software, you can check out the programs that I either adapted for the web, or that inspired me.  Chris Pound’s Language Machines pages held the first Perl code I worked with for many of the scripts and Jeffrey Henning’s amazing LangMaker was instrumental in much of my design.  (LangMaker is also available for free at Softpedia.)  So, please, don’t give up on your languages!  Check out what these guys offer and keep working on your fantasy!

By all rights, this blog should be dead.

Frankly, the entire website is so old and out of date and willfully not maintained that I’m surprised there’s any traffic to it.  But, there is.  And with any large volume of people, there are always those who take advantage and push free resources beyond their intended use.  Well, that’s just what happened here.

One of the many things I originally did with this site was dabble in conlangs, or CONstructed LANGuages.  Toward that end, I created or modified several Perl scripts to help me generate words that sounded authentic and consistent according to some linguistic rules.  When I was doing this, very few people were yet.  Now, there are many, many more people who offer language generation programs and scripts, but I think I was one of the first people to have free, interactive web pages that would let the neophyte conlanger generate or manipulate their language.  In fact, I’m not sure how many there are even today.  Hopefully, there are a lot more who can take the burden of people ramming quite literally gigabytes worth of data through their free resource.  I hope they have their own server, though, since when people did that here, it crashed the server I was on.  Yeah, that’s right, people ran so much data through my little programs that it crashed the server.  In spite of me asking them not to do it, then building in some fairly significant limitations on how much data could be sent to the script at once, a small percentage of the users, who I have come to think of as abusers, still managed to crash my webhost’s server.

So, sadly, my conlang scripts are starting to go off-line.  One bye one, like fading stars, they’re being pummeled off the internet by people who never appreciated them, apparently.
But, what really makes me sad is that so many people who did NOT abuse them, but used my little scripts to enhance and improve their writing or leasure time won’t be able to use them all any more.  Those innocent bystanders will simply have to do without because of the greed of a few pushy, obnoxious people who had to test the limits of the system.

So, to those of you who played nice and were friendly and enjoyed my little conlang scripts, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, but now when they start to cause problems for my provider, I’ll have to take them off-line, one by one.
I hope you enjoyed them half as much as I did while they were here.

Well, it seems my antiquated Perl code is just a little too much for my new webhost’s servers to handle.

My web implementation of the Zompist Sound Change Applier almost killed their server this past weekend.  It uses a CPAN library that someone created, based on the Zompist code, and it’s getting a little “long in the tooth”, as Perl libraries go, so I suspect that has something to do with it.  So, in any case, the end result is that I had to take it off-line.  And, I don’t think it will ever be back.  I suppose, if I can find a way to port it to PHP, which is doubtful, it might make a return.  But, honestly, I wouldn’t count on it.

What I will do, in the next week or so, is post my code here, slightly cleaned, for you all to use and enjoy.  I won’t have time to support it, but I will make it available to anyone who wants to use it.  Also, if I can find it, I’ll make available the original Perl code that is NOT designed to run on the web, but on a local machine.  That way, if there’s some brave soul who’s willing to take that code and make it available to run from their website, they won’t have to do too much work to get a minimally functional system.
So, watch this space for forthcoming code!

Well, just weeks after announcing that all my conlang language machines are back on-line, I’ve had to take one down.  My Dialect Maker seems to be a CPU hog on the server.  Also, in spite of coding it so that it should only run one instance at a time, it somehow got two loaded on my ISP’s server.

So, I’ve tweaked the code an I’m waiting for my ISP to approve it before I load it up.  But, I have to tell you, if the sound changer is the only thing that has problems, I may just let it go.  It uses an old library for Perl that’s probably out of date.  Then, I hope, it would be easier to convert everything else to a PHP script/page/whatever and not have to rely on Perl.  I love using Perl, but it can be a resource hog.

Anyway, stay tuned for more news.

It’s almost New Year’s Eve, so I thought a link to a New Year’s Resolution Generator would be appropriate.
Yes, I coded it and popped it onto my other site. Originally, I did it to try and cheer up two special ladies who were having a rough holiday season. Honestly, I don’t know that it helped, but at least it kept my PERL CGI skills sharp and, I think, it’s a little bit of fun. And, yeah, the probabilities are weighted toward tequila drinking and kissing strangers. Hey, I’m single, it’s almost New Year’s Eve and if I can’t slant things in my favor, what’s the point of knowing a programming language at all?
Anyway, don’t take it too seriously and have a happy and safe New Year’s celebration!

I haven’t been a total slacker.
I have worked on other neato tools for the site, honest! In fact, I whipped together a fun, little PERL script that generates funny sounding full and proper names. Oddly enough, I call it the “Funny” Proper Name Generator. Originally, I made it for participants in the Ghyll Encyclopedia Game, but it seemed worthy enough for public consumption.
So, if you’re writting a funny fantasy piece set in vaguely Edwardian or Victorian times, this is a great tool for you. Or, you could just use it to make names to fill in on web forms…. Use your imagination.

Aw, go ahead, it’s Friday! Have fun!

The title says it all!
Okay, so what I finally decided on was simply reducing the datasets for the troublesome WordGenerator apps. It doesn’t seem to have reduced their functionality at all and, so far, has not resulted in the same server-crashing error. Of course, some of the problem may stem from the immense popularity of the applications. You conlang nuts really hammer those apps!
I suppose I should really figure out how to do it all in a more “modern” language, like PHP, but PERL is still my first web programmging love. And, I can use the same scripts locally on my machine without the restrictions. But, no, I won’t make them available to the general public because I don’t really want to support PERL on your local machine.

One final word on this. Remember, these are free resources, so sometimes they go off-line without much warning. If my ISP has issues, I kill the app first and and questions later. My webhost, Amzia.net, is really patient with me, because he’s a cousin of a friend of mine, but I’d rather not push it. And, if your really, really like the apps, buy something from the Ye Olde Shoppe or at least click on an ad. Anything to show your support. Thanks!

I got a request to share my sourcecode yesterday.
First off, I generally don’t do that because a lot of my stuff is derived from work found elsewhere anyway. Also, my code is crappy looking! I mean, I’m not a real programmer, so sometimes I do strange, circuitous things to make my code work and I’d be embrassed to let that out into the world.
Secondly, I don’t want to support that ugly code when it gets out into the world. Half the time, I can’t remember what I’ve done in the first place, much less why. And, frankly, I don’t have time to properly maintain my own website, so I certainly don’t have time to properly support someone else’s coding efforts.
Thirdly, all my stuff is coded specifically for the web. More precisely, for this website. So, certian “look-and-feel” things are done to force a match here. Also, some of my code contains things that I’d rather not make too publicly available. After all, it is what makes my site unique.

I tried to send this person a note with all that in it, but it bounced back. So, even if I’d wanted to send him my source, I couldn’t! For those of you who really, really want to make your own PERL-based language scripts, do what I did, go to Chris Pound’s Name Generator page and start with his code. That’s really all I’ve done is mangle his code for the web.
So just start with that and play around with PERL. And, of course, go read a couple of PERL books. (One good one, after you’ve gotten your feet wet, is the PERL Cookbook, but any of the O’Reilly books are great.)
Good luck!