What's this? An update early on Sunday night? That's what you get with a day off and a head full of things to say...
May 11 - Opportunity Missed
today did not start out so well. I was up very early in order to head into the city for an opportunity I've been thinking about for a while. I left the house at a quarter after seven and turned onto the highway... only to find a traffic jam stretching as far as the eye could see to the south. Seeing as I had an 8 AM appointment this was not a good thing, so I made good use of my local knowledge and took the first side road I could off the parking lot that had formerly been a highway. This was the first time I had ever seen traffic backed up as far as that highway exit, or as early as that in the morning. Through a minor miracle, I managed to arrive at my appointment exactly on time, only to be told that the group had already been taken inside and there is nothing to be done. Needless to say, I was devastated, but by this point in my life I have learned to take the big sucker-punches in stride, along with the little things we shouldn't worry about.
After spending a shaky half-hour in a nearby Starbuck's calming myself over a chai tea, I headed home for the rest of my day off... cursing the clear open lanes of the highway not even 2 hours gone as I traveled in the opposite direction homewards. The rest of the day was a wash, as I distracted myself from my disappointment by working on my NWN project, among other things. I soaked my cares away in the hottub twice in the evening, and went to bed early to dreams I cannot recall.
May 12 - Community Creation
I'm considering installing a method to track the various origins of visitors to my blog, which have more than tripled in number since I installed Google's AdSense last month. C|Net, that wonderful old standby of the internet, recently published a list of a dozen or so candidates, which I am reviewing right now. If anyone out there has actually used one of these programs, or can recommend another one to me, please do so - I'd really like to know where all the extra visitors are coming from!
Online communities are great, and are extensions of the old play-by-mail / penpal snail-mail groups that have existed for decades, long before BBS's and the internet came along. One such neat place is SciFi-Meshes.com, where thousands of dedicated souls design spaceships. Almost every ship that has ever existed in SciFi, be it film, book or other media, has a mesh somewhere on this site, including quite a few from my own beloved Babylon 5 series. As well as this one - a ship from one of my favourite books when I was a kid, called Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, which had tons of cool-looking futuristic spaceships... combat ships, mostly, which were even cooler. As the author on the mesh site says, the book was very influential, with games like Homeworld( also one of my fave video games ever )and many other projects showing inspiration sourced in this book. There is even a history of the book series here, which I was fascinated to find - I learned that there were more books beyond the one I had managed to get!
Similarly, people can band together for various projects from across the globe, sometimes for profit. GetAFreelancer.com is such a place, where professionals( and amateurs too )from every country can buy or sell their skills to various projects covering almost every topic you can think of. My own NWN project is a tiny fish by comparison, but the group I am working with are all doing it for free, from our love of the game and our bond as gaming comrades... plus a little bit of performance ego too, I will bet.
May 13 - Write, Write, Write!
A friend told me today about an amazing story that he had just read called "The Old House Under the Snow" by author Rhys Huges, whose website you can check out to see his massive story list. He plans to write at least 1000 stories, and is up to 483 so far, most of which are published or in the stages of being so - nice!
There is also a nice little article about the Four Myths of writing that i found this week. While not an in-depth commentary on the craft, it does touch on four of the most common misconceptions about the writing life. I also loved a short piece called Freelance Writing Tips, which gives some excellent advice for those who are new to the field - in my case, still totally untried... so far. I think I will be browsing more often over at FreelanceFactor.com, which as you may guess is home for a large community of freelance writers - my kind of folk, in lieu of hanging around with published authors and garnering useful advice. An especially gritty site with insight( heh )on becoming an author is... Ten blindingly obvious things I've learned in my first year as an author at FreelanceWritingTips.com, another great site.
I will also be checking out the Top 10 Blogs on Writing, whose 2008 listing you can find here - tons of great info there, which I am slowly perusing for inspiration and direction in taking my own writing career out of the Stalled Bin. I would love to pursue voice acting as well, but for now I think writing is the better ticket in a down economy... from my research, voice acting is not for the faint of heart, though Steve Saylor has bravely ventured forth into that field. Mind you, he has a LOT more experience than I with media of most types, having spent time on Call for Help among other shows and generally being a very talented guy. I wish him well - make sure you take a look at his work over at The Voice-Over Chronicles.
May 14 - Wild Cards in the works
Me and my post-apocalyptic junkie-ism: I've just discovered a new show coming to TV called Day One, from the creator of Heroes. The show is set in California, and follows the adventures of a group of apartment residents who are trying to find out what happened to cause the cataclysm that ended their world. There is a preview of the action over at io9.com, which is a good place to peruse for SciFi news and other related media tidbits.
Some more SciFi goodness this week: one of my favourite shared-world series is getting a facelift. The Wild Cards universe is set in an alternate timeline starting back in the Fifties, when an alien virus causes millions of humans on earth to... change. Most die, some are horribly mutated and a very few develop super powers - the mutated are called Jokers, the supers called Aces... you can extrapolate the rest from there. I just love the fact that these stories are set in the modern age, and deal with topics and issues relevant to each decade that the stories cover. Numerous top-notch writers have contributed to the series, which was started in 1987 and I happily manage to have every single book of, despite most being long out of print and hard to find. The series creator / editor George R.R. Martin of Song of Ice and Fire fame talks about the relaunch here - I can hardly wait!
After work I came home... and worked some more, outside. The landlord had delivered a load of topsoil as promised, and I spent a happy few hours getting good exercise shovelling it all onto the front lawn. Yes, that's right: the lawn. When this place was hooked up to the municipal sewer system a few years ago, they ran the pipe under the front lawn... leaving a large speedbump most of the way across it, despite some settling. Not being one who enjoys looking out on( or cutting )a patchy, ugly lawn, I was more than happy to provide muscle power if the landlord would provide the fill. She's great, and has loved the fact that we as tenants are willing to improve the place in various ways to make it more enjoyable to live in. Very different from living in a condo or apartment - I like the exercise, the feeling that I am doing something to make my living space more comfortable, and that I am outside enjoying the lovely climate.
May 15 - Plane Ticket News!
I received some AMAZING news today, from a phone call after work. A good friend of mine, whom I have known most of my life( and will remain nameless until I get his OK to mention his generosity here )has offered to use his Airmiles to get me a ticket back to Niagara this summer, in time for Shawna & Nigel's wedding. I was floored - such generosity is so rare, especially since I have not said much at ALL along the lines of trying to afford the plane ticket on my own... I had a silly grin on my face for the rest of the night, and I still smile like a fool now whenever I think about it - things like that make me marvel again at my luck in having such fantastic people to call friends, and so darn many of them too. Makes it all the more important to live up to their examples!
For those of you who own DVR's( digital video recorders ), you may already be familiar with the one thing that can drive you crazy by owning one: running out of space. Much like computer hard drives, you may think that you have a ton of room, but all too soon though saved shows begin crowding each other and you have to decide which ones go and which ones stay. Though this is not as hard a choice in the age of DVDs, sometimes you just don't want to spend the money on buying a TV series or movie.
Happily, there is now a solution: cousins of the external hard drive, the PVR Expander has arrived. While not cheap, it means that for certain brands of PVR's, you can just plug in the external drive and breathe a sigh of relief as you can now keep far more shows... until it fills up again. unfortunately, my own PVR is not compatible with any of the current solutions on the market, which means I have been trying out various ways of recording the shows onto other media. So far, nothing has worked satisfactorily, as last week's blog entry about the Dazzle video capture device illustrates quite well. Still, it does point out that we are moving towards a point where we could choose where and how we will store our media, which more than likely means it will be on a hard drive home media server, which can be accessed by various types of devices around the house. Which also means that it won't be cheap either, at least until everybody starts wanting one like plasma TV's and netbooks.
May 16 - Invariably...
Following up on my mentioned last week about fraudulent e-mails, I bring you this week the topic of: identity fraud and theft. Again, C|net has written a great primer article on the subject, which I highly recommend everyone have a look through - knowledge is power, and protecting one's good name in economically troubled times is vitally important.
In case you hadn't heard, there's a new animated show coming out: Stoked. From the creators of 6teen and Total Drama Island, this is another flash-based animated series from incredibly talented people, including my good friend Mike Hogue who has placed a trailer for the new show on his own website - go have a look!
What really takes the cake this week though is... a cake. Not just any cake though: one made in the shape of the Millennium Falcon! This is one incredibly detailed - it looks more like a model than a cake. Too bad all that remains today are the pictures.
Work was slow today, nothing unusual there... sad to say, things do not look to be looking up anytime soon. Which makes me sad, as everything else about work has been, er, working out, of late. I am a fifteen minute bike ride from home, located in a plaza well away from any downtown weirdness, and I no longer have a glass barrier between myself and people, leading to a more relaxed attitude. Not to mention less fear of making a mistake in cash handling; the HAL 9000 cash dispenser does away with that worry, as it sits brooding like a black panther in the middle of the floor. Scary, sometimes, these machines...
Which brings me to Terminator: Salvation. Yep, it's the fourth film in the franchise, and to date I've been enjoying the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, though I have yet to get to the second season( there will never be a third: it was cancelled last month! No! ). Salvation looks amazing though, as it is designed as a war film - the previous films have given us a few fleeting glimpses into the future Skynet war, but the fourth installment is all about the apocalypse, baby! If it is good enough, I may put it on my Blue-Ray list... not that I have a Blue-Ray player yet, mind you, but eventually it looks like I will have to switch, market forces be damned.
May 17 - Sun_day at last!
Today was spent almost entirely outdoors from mid morning until dinnertime. It was a stunningly gorgeous day, with a clear blue sky and no wind to speak of save a gentle occasional breeze, for most of the day. I dug dirt, pulled weeds and hauled rocks around the property, focusing on the entrance drive - I will take a few pics of it to show the massive amount of work that I have done so far, mostly on my own with some help from my dad. I took breaks on and off until late afternoon, when I washed up and then spent the remainder of the beautiful day simply relaxing in my portable hammock. The lake area was serene for most of the day, even with the odd Victoria Day Weekend celebration getting a little loud here and there a few doors down.
What I wish I had was one of these - kids these days, so lucky.... all I had was a pool and a garden hose. And bugs.
And what would be a blog without bacon? Actually, it's... duck bacon. Qwack?
I spoke to Rene tonight, who caught me up on happenings in Niagara... well no, actually, we talked about most everything else but. I was most impressed by his reading lists; he manages to come up with the most interesting books, whereas I have no talent at finding anything that's not already in a list somewhere. What I should really do is compile a list of my fave authors and dig through their books at the local library - saves spending money at a time when it is tight all around. I used to visit the library a lot years ago, but as it became less convenient I stopped going... the Port Dalhousie branch was the last one I really frequented, as it was fairly close to home while I was living down that way in the late eighties. I hope it's still there!
All for now - going to go soak away my aches and head to bed, working the holiday tomorrow and all next week.
May 11 - Opportunity Missed
today did not start out so well. I was up very early in order to head into the city for an opportunity I've been thinking about for a while. I left the house at a quarter after seven and turned onto the highway... only to find a traffic jam stretching as far as the eye could see to the south. Seeing as I had an 8 AM appointment this was not a good thing, so I made good use of my local knowledge and took the first side road I could off the parking lot that had formerly been a highway. This was the first time I had ever seen traffic backed up as far as that highway exit, or as early as that in the morning. Through a minor miracle, I managed to arrive at my appointment exactly on time, only to be told that the group had already been taken inside and there is nothing to be done. Needless to say, I was devastated, but by this point in my life I have learned to take the big sucker-punches in stride, along with the little things we shouldn't worry about.
After spending a shaky half-hour in a nearby Starbuck's calming myself over a chai tea, I headed home for the rest of my day off... cursing the clear open lanes of the highway not even 2 hours gone as I traveled in the opposite direction homewards. The rest of the day was a wash, as I distracted myself from my disappointment by working on my NWN project, among other things. I soaked my cares away in the hottub twice in the evening, and went to bed early to dreams I cannot recall.
May 12 - Community Creation
I'm considering installing a method to track the various origins of visitors to my blog, which have more than tripled in number since I installed Google's AdSense last month. C|Net, that wonderful old standby of the internet, recently published a list of a dozen or so candidates, which I am reviewing right now. If anyone out there has actually used one of these programs, or can recommend another one to me, please do so - I'd really like to know where all the extra visitors are coming from!
Online communities are great, and are extensions of the old play-by-mail / penpal snail-mail groups that have existed for decades, long before BBS's and the internet came along. One such neat place is SciFi-Meshes.com, where thousands of dedicated souls design spaceships. Almost every ship that has ever existed in SciFi, be it film, book or other media, has a mesh somewhere on this site, including quite a few from my own beloved Babylon 5 series. As well as this one - a ship from one of my favourite books when I was a kid, called Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, which had tons of cool-looking futuristic spaceships... combat ships, mostly, which were even cooler. As the author on the mesh site says, the book was very influential, with games like Homeworld( also one of my fave video games ever )and many other projects showing inspiration sourced in this book. There is even a history of the book series here, which I was fascinated to find - I learned that there were more books beyond the one I had managed to get!
Similarly, people can band together for various projects from across the globe, sometimes for profit. GetAFreelancer.com is such a place, where professionals( and amateurs too )from every country can buy or sell their skills to various projects covering almost every topic you can think of. My own NWN project is a tiny fish by comparison, but the group I am working with are all doing it for free, from our love of the game and our bond as gaming comrades... plus a little bit of performance ego too, I will bet.
May 13 - Write, Write, Write!
A friend told me today about an amazing story that he had just read called "The Old House Under the Snow" by author Rhys Huges, whose website you can check out to see his massive story list. He plans to write at least 1000 stories, and is up to 483 so far, most of which are published or in the stages of being so - nice!
There is also a nice little article about the Four Myths of writing that i found this week. While not an in-depth commentary on the craft, it does touch on four of the most common misconceptions about the writing life. I also loved a short piece called Freelance Writing Tips, which gives some excellent advice for those who are new to the field - in my case, still totally untried... so far. I think I will be browsing more often over at FreelanceFactor.com, which as you may guess is home for a large community of freelance writers - my kind of folk, in lieu of hanging around with published authors and garnering useful advice. An especially gritty site with insight( heh )on becoming an author is... Ten blindingly obvious things I've learned in my first year as an author at FreelanceWritingTips.com, another great site.
I will also be checking out the Top 10 Blogs on Writing, whose 2008 listing you can find here - tons of great info there, which I am slowly perusing for inspiration and direction in taking my own writing career out of the Stalled Bin. I would love to pursue voice acting as well, but for now I think writing is the better ticket in a down economy... from my research, voice acting is not for the faint of heart, though Steve Saylor has bravely ventured forth into that field. Mind you, he has a LOT more experience than I with media of most types, having spent time on Call for Help among other shows and generally being a very talented guy. I wish him well - make sure you take a look at his work over at The Voice-Over Chronicles.
May 14 - Wild Cards in the works
Me and my post-apocalyptic junkie-ism: I've just discovered a new show coming to TV called Day One, from the creator of Heroes. The show is set in California, and follows the adventures of a group of apartment residents who are trying to find out what happened to cause the cataclysm that ended their world. There is a preview of the action over at io9.com, which is a good place to peruse for SciFi news and other related media tidbits.
Some more SciFi goodness this week: one of my favourite shared-world series is getting a facelift. The Wild Cards universe is set in an alternate timeline starting back in the Fifties, when an alien virus causes millions of humans on earth to... change. Most die, some are horribly mutated and a very few develop super powers - the mutated are called Jokers, the supers called Aces... you can extrapolate the rest from there. I just love the fact that these stories are set in the modern age, and deal with topics and issues relevant to each decade that the stories cover. Numerous top-notch writers have contributed to the series, which was started in 1987 and I happily manage to have every single book of, despite most being long out of print and hard to find. The series creator / editor George R.R. Martin of Song of Ice and Fire fame talks about the relaunch here - I can hardly wait!
After work I came home... and worked some more, outside. The landlord had delivered a load of topsoil as promised, and I spent a happy few hours getting good exercise shovelling it all onto the front lawn. Yes, that's right: the lawn. When this place was hooked up to the municipal sewer system a few years ago, they ran the pipe under the front lawn... leaving a large speedbump most of the way across it, despite some settling. Not being one who enjoys looking out on( or cutting )a patchy, ugly lawn, I was more than happy to provide muscle power if the landlord would provide the fill. She's great, and has loved the fact that we as tenants are willing to improve the place in various ways to make it more enjoyable to live in. Very different from living in a condo or apartment - I like the exercise, the feeling that I am doing something to make my living space more comfortable, and that I am outside enjoying the lovely climate.
May 15 - Plane Ticket News!
I received some AMAZING news today, from a phone call after work. A good friend of mine, whom I have known most of my life( and will remain nameless until I get his OK to mention his generosity here )has offered to use his Airmiles to get me a ticket back to Niagara this summer, in time for Shawna & Nigel's wedding. I was floored - such generosity is so rare, especially since I have not said much at ALL along the lines of trying to afford the plane ticket on my own... I had a silly grin on my face for the rest of the night, and I still smile like a fool now whenever I think about it - things like that make me marvel again at my luck in having such fantastic people to call friends, and so darn many of them too. Makes it all the more important to live up to their examples!
For those of you who own DVR's( digital video recorders ), you may already be familiar with the one thing that can drive you crazy by owning one: running out of space. Much like computer hard drives, you may think that you have a ton of room, but all too soon though saved shows begin crowding each other and you have to decide which ones go and which ones stay. Though this is not as hard a choice in the age of DVDs, sometimes you just don't want to spend the money on buying a TV series or movie.
Happily, there is now a solution: cousins of the external hard drive, the PVR Expander has arrived. While not cheap, it means that for certain brands of PVR's, you can just plug in the external drive and breathe a sigh of relief as you can now keep far more shows... until it fills up again. unfortunately, my own PVR is not compatible with any of the current solutions on the market, which means I have been trying out various ways of recording the shows onto other media. So far, nothing has worked satisfactorily, as last week's blog entry about the Dazzle video capture device illustrates quite well. Still, it does point out that we are moving towards a point where we could choose where and how we will store our media, which more than likely means it will be on a hard drive home media server, which can be accessed by various types of devices around the house. Which also means that it won't be cheap either, at least until everybody starts wanting one like plasma TV's and netbooks.
May 16 - Invariably...
Following up on my mentioned last week about fraudulent e-mails, I bring you this week the topic of: identity fraud and theft. Again, C|net has written a great primer article on the subject, which I highly recommend everyone have a look through - knowledge is power, and protecting one's good name in economically troubled times is vitally important.
In case you hadn't heard, there's a new animated show coming out: Stoked. From the creators of 6teen and Total Drama Island, this is another flash-based animated series from incredibly talented people, including my good friend Mike Hogue who has placed a trailer for the new show on his own website - go have a look!
What really takes the cake this week though is... a cake. Not just any cake though: one made in the shape of the Millennium Falcon! This is one incredibly detailed - it looks more like a model than a cake. Too bad all that remains today are the pictures.
Work was slow today, nothing unusual there... sad to say, things do not look to be looking up anytime soon. Which makes me sad, as everything else about work has been, er, working out, of late. I am a fifteen minute bike ride from home, located in a plaza well away from any downtown weirdness, and I no longer have a glass barrier between myself and people, leading to a more relaxed attitude. Not to mention less fear of making a mistake in cash handling; the HAL 9000 cash dispenser does away with that worry, as it sits brooding like a black panther in the middle of the floor. Scary, sometimes, these machines...
Which brings me to Terminator: Salvation. Yep, it's the fourth film in the franchise, and to date I've been enjoying the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, though I have yet to get to the second season( there will never be a third: it was cancelled last month! No! ). Salvation looks amazing though, as it is designed as a war film - the previous films have given us a few fleeting glimpses into the future Skynet war, but the fourth installment is all about the apocalypse, baby! If it is good enough, I may put it on my Blue-Ray list... not that I have a Blue-Ray player yet, mind you, but eventually it looks like I will have to switch, market forces be damned.
May 17 - Sun_day at last!
Today was spent almost entirely outdoors from mid morning until dinnertime. It was a stunningly gorgeous day, with a clear blue sky and no wind to speak of save a gentle occasional breeze, for most of the day. I dug dirt, pulled weeds and hauled rocks around the property, focusing on the entrance drive - I will take a few pics of it to show the massive amount of work that I have done so far, mostly on my own with some help from my dad. I took breaks on and off until late afternoon, when I washed up and then spent the remainder of the beautiful day simply relaxing in my portable hammock. The lake area was serene for most of the day, even with the odd Victoria Day Weekend celebration getting a little loud here and there a few doors down.
What I wish I had was one of these - kids these days, so lucky.... all I had was a pool and a garden hose. And bugs.
And what would be a blog without bacon? Actually, it's... duck bacon. Qwack?
I spoke to Rene tonight, who caught me up on happenings in Niagara... well no, actually, we talked about most everything else but. I was most impressed by his reading lists; he manages to come up with the most interesting books, whereas I have no talent at finding anything that's not already in a list somewhere. What I should really do is compile a list of my fave authors and dig through their books at the local library - saves spending money at a time when it is tight all around. I used to visit the library a lot years ago, but as it became less convenient I stopped going... the Port Dalhousie branch was the last one I really frequented, as it was fairly close to home while I was living down that way in the late eighties. I hope it's still there!
All for now - going to go soak away my aches and head to bed, working the holiday tomorrow and all next week.
