Sunday 23 November 2014

Digital Discoveries, Dinky Digs and Dolls

The word of the week is renewal.

Nov 17 - Back To Normal

Not much happened this week, surprisingly.

I was back to work today and got through it all right, feeling only a touch tired by day’s end. Seeing as a good portion of my job on phones is relating information to people and advising them in a general way about policies and procedures, there's not a lot of mental gymnastics going on, which I appreciate. I certainly don't leave for home feeling like I've been put through a wringer, even on the busier days and that really helps to preserve my creative energies.


My writing group has become a familiar fixture in terms of sociability, meeting every few weeks on Monday nights like tonight. However, this evening I actually had off, as my critique group has decided to take a break for November and December and regroup in January. I'll be sending them sequential chapters from the first draft of Book 2, which makes sense considering the feedback I've been receiving on the third draft of Book 1: I want to ensure that I am continuing the story in the same footsteps and not missing anything vital from the reader's perspective.

So far, the feedback on the third draft has come in only from a few folk; out of the 13 copies I had printed, I've received detailed notes from only three people. It’s my hope that sometime early in the new year that I will start to get feedback from the rest of the folks I sent the book out to this past August.

Until then, I'll just keep plugging away at my writing – Muse permitting.


Nov 18 – INTO THE FIRE, AT LAST!

I never thought I'd see this day!

Beyond hope, a lost treasure from the past has appeared on the Internet! The playable Alpha demo of Into The Fire, the unreleased Babylon 5 space combat simulator from 1998, was posted publicly for download today!

I have a treasured mousepad with this image on it!

This game was supposed to be the ultimate space combat simulator of its day, created by the then much-vaunted Sierra Studios… who for the most trivial of reasons cancelled the game mere months before it was released. They went into a long decline after some bad decisions and only recently came back to the industry. It’s a sad story, made more so because the studio refused to sell the rights to the game long after it was no longer worth anyone's time to try to pick up where the designers had left off more than a decade ago and so the game vanished into history.

Until today. Have a look at what could have been:


I’ve downloaded the demo and have yet to install it, as I'm working through the instructions to ensure that I don't mess anything up: it’s an Alpha build and as such there's a few things to get straight before I can play it. However, it doesn't look to be too difficult to pull off and I'm itching to play a game that, to be honest, I never thought would ever be loaded on my computer.

How's that for wishes coming true?


Nov 19 – That’s … small!

This is perhaps the tiniest apartment I've ever seen.

Located in Paris, this apartment is less than 100 ft.² in size but it packs everything that a single person can need for life in the City Of Lights. Considering how costly living in Paris is, minimizing one's living expenses is vital to actually being able to enjoy life there.


After watching the video, I did wonder why the apartment’s owner didn't have any shelves above head height on the bare walls, to make use of even that much spare space for storage. I would think that even with minimalist lifestyle, there would still be a need to have as much storage as possible, otherwise it would be more like living in a hotel room than one's own home. You can read more about the project from its designers here; I did pick up a few more tidbits, like the fact that if you live alone in a small apartment in Paris, the government will actually give you a not-inconsequential subsidy – not bad, for those who like their solitude and tiny apartments!

Too bad I don’t speak the language; to live in Paris, well… c’est tres bon, non?


Nov 20 – Fan Fest and Workshop Photos

Sorry about the delay.

I’ve finally put together two photo albums of my trip to New York last month and figured out what I wanted to do in order to share them. Here they are:



It's taken a little longer, because I wasn't sure what photo sharing service I wanted to use. I needed something that would allow me to easily upload pictures AND add descriptions to them, which you can't do with simple Dropbox links. I also couldn't link to the almost-identical FBook albums that I've created, as my privacy settings don't allow those to be viewed publicly.


In the end, I decided to go with Flickr, for several reasons: they offer 1 terabyte of free storage and the rights 12 pictures remain with me, the originator. For some time, I've been concerned that any photos I uploaded to photo sharing sites could possibly be used for commercial purposes without my consent, as that consent would be implied by the site’s Terms Of Use.

Flickr does make it quite clear about the photo rights remaining with their users by default and I was comfortable enough reading that to create the albums today. I might end up creating some more albums in the future, as the massive free space Flickr offers as well as the simple interface means I can share quite a few photos easily rather than trying to post them through Fbook or other, clunkier interfaces.

Enjoy the photos!


Nov 21 – Dollhouse, Phones and Clones

This was supposed to happen last week, as I was feeling rather unwell, I pushed things out until tonight. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself: I should mention that work today was rather slow. Our computer systems were being upgraded, meaning that save for myself and two other people answering phones, nobody else had access to the databases, so it was a skeleton crew in a mostly-empty office today. Our phone message indicated that we wouldn't be able to do much for callers, so we had a vastly reduced number of people actually ringing through and for the most part I dealt with mail today rather than people on the phone, which was a nice change of pace.

Heading home, I tidied up the place a little, as I was having company over tonight. A friend of mine wanted to introduce me to the underrated TV series Dollhouse, which as one of Joss Wheden’s works I'd of course heard of but not really had make it onto my radar.


Fortunately, my friend had noted this lack and as a fan of the series they insisted that I tried out for a few episodes while they sat nearby and tried not to explode with glee as they watch my reactions - positive ones, as it turned out. While I found that Dollhouse had some similarities to the earlier Alias series by J.J Abrams, these were only superficial and Dollhouse definitely has its own vibe. I'm quite excited to see what the rest of the season has in store and it looks like my Friday nights are going to be well-spent,as I also introduced my friend to The Clone Wars, much of which I haven't seen myself.

It's good to have friends like that, don't you think?


Nov 22 – Retail Workaday Redux

It was another day at my old job today - a really nice one, as it turned out.

Seeing as I missed last week’s Saturday shift due to my fun with sugar, today was my first full shift at Staples in over 2 months. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised when the day passed both easily and quickly, in large part due to the fact that I was extremely relaxed on the job compared to how I was in early 2014. The place was extremely busy for a few hours at a time, not unexpected for this time of year and as usual I managed to get all too little done apart from dealing with customers, but that was actually alright as I really enjoyed just interacting with people and garnered quite a few compliments today for my efforts.
 
This is probably having TOO much fun at work...

It really is strange in some ways to work in retail. Apart from my legs aching due to being on my feet for hours on end which I'm unaccustomed to now, not really giving a fwoof about meeting sales targets or goals set by others allows me to actually enjoy the job for all the positives that it can bring when one isn't stressing out about being let go for some silly reason. Not taking it seriously is one thing, but setting aside the inconsequential for the social is perhaps the best way I can describe how I feel about the position now. Working only a couple of times a month also has summoned to do with it: I am a little out of touch with things. While I'm an experienced employee, I am in no way pushing the envelope in terms of my job performance anymore - it's barely a second job that I'm keeping, for now.

I'm okay with that.

There was no gaming tonight with my Pathfinder group, so I spent a few hours visiting with my parents who came into town to help me run a few errands. It was great to catch up with some, reminding me of our early days here in Victoria when I'd spend a few hours with them every other day or so, having dinner or shopping for necessities or just being social. Now that I'm regularly employed and don't have to worry nearly as much about my family’s well-being, I hope that I'll be able to spend some more time with them on a regular basis, working around my busier schedule socially and professionally to make better use of my time to visit with them.

That's important to me; it always has been, really.


Nov 23 - A New Week Is Nigh

It's time to say goodbye - to my old phone, that is.


My sister has decided that she'd like to try out my old Samsung Galaxy S3, to see if it can meet her needs. I did warn her about its unusual hunger for batteries: with the main battery and a spare as well as a handy charger, she believed she can make it work for and it would be a substantial upgrade in hardware from her Samsung Galaxy S2 model, which is almost 4 years old by now. So for a little while this morning, I ‘scrubbed down’ my S3, removing almost 200 apps and resetting a lot of its functions; I didn't want to Factory Restore the phone, as that would have meant a lot of unnecessary updating as the unit still works just fine overall, apart from the known thirst for power - electrical, not political, thankfully.

I took the afternoon off to visit a friend on the other side of town, cycling into a rather brisk headwind and enjoying the exercise in the unexpected sunshine. We chatted on their patio, a pleasant spot off a secondary road, sharing our writing experiences and generally g33king out. Tea and low-sugar treats were enjoyed, laughs were exchanged and a good time was had by all, even after the sun dipped behind a building and things went all chilly fast-like.

It felt like this, really...
All in all, it was a good day off. I'm definitely feeling centered now, able to get through a workday without carrying anything with me into the evening or the weekends. I hope that any day now my Muse will stir, tapping me on the shoulder and tell me that it's time to seriously dig into writing again. It's been a very long dry spell these last few months, with little actual progress on my trilogy and once I hear my characters knocking at the doors inside my head, wanting to talk again.

That should be any day now.


 The week ahead looks to be a busy one, where I have something going on every evening after work - very unusual for me, especially as not a one of those things is writing-related. I should end up hitting the weekend at a run, hopefully to relax again!