I claimed my purple bar last night. I’d passed the 50k mark on the 20th, and last night noticed the validation had gone live. I passed, though OpenOffice still proved to be slightly more generous than the validator – 65,056 in OpenOffice, 65,015 in the NaNoWriMo validator (17 words of it explained by the headers and footers I have in OO).

I still plan to write more this month, indeed I hope to reach 75k by Friday, but whether I make it or not (and given how busy recent weeks have been, I may not) I now have the all important purple bar. And the PDF certificate, and the the winner icon rather than the participant icon on the front page of this site.

That winner icon, unfortunately, offers little improvement over the participant icon. I don’t mind any of the text, or quaint antique typing device, but the putrid yellow colour – no doubt meant to, and failing to, simulate gold – just doesn’t work with any of my screen settings. In fact, looking at my own front page now makes me feel uncomfortably like one item in my sidebar has been puked onto it.

The icon may still grow on me. But if it doesn’t I guess I’ll have to pull it apart in the GIMP and do an unofficial, but better looking, version. It shouldn’t be too hard to replace the yellow with the one of the shades of blue that featured in the last three icons, or even the deep red/purple from the 2003 icon.