The word of the week is focus !
April 23 - About the novel...
Looking ahead, as I often do, I find it exciting that I can't picture what I'll be doing close to the close of 2012. I'll be finishing off my novel, that's for certain, but what's still foggy is if I'll be working part( or full )time at a new job, or if I'll be pulling in enough from freelance work not to need that option. Heck, if things go well, I might even be doing some voice work by the end of the year! It all depends on me, of course: you are your own limiting factor and right now I need to focus on my novel, above all else. If I can get 75% of it finished in the next 3 months, then I'll be well on my way to revising it and getting all the other marketing aspects in place for a 2013 launch. Revisions are something I'm looking forward to, where I can shuffle bits around so that they make the most sense and tighten things up based on the advice and observations of critical proofreaders. I am well aware that as an author I am too close to my work and if something is out of place or doesn't make sense to a reader, I need to know about it pronto. The book won't write itself!
April 24 - Lego Zombies!
Well this is cool: Lego projects get votes to become actual sets! Over at Lego.Cuusso.com, talented Lego builders create amazing custom sets, which then get voted on by site users. If they tally more than 10,000 votes, then Lego will officially review the project to see if it merits production. Recently, the magnificent Shaun Of The Dead: The Winchester Arms was reviewed and sadly, found wanting. It didn't meet Lego's requirements to appeal to their core audience of 6-11 year olds, which I think is silly, but I guess they're going for overall sales and not just a few thousand g33ks snapping them up.
.
April 25 - Ponies...?
The internet is a strange place, full of wonders… and other things that should best remain undiscovered. For every gem there are a hundred husks of good ideas… such as this one: Star Wars reenacted by My Little Ponies. Avert your eyes, lest they melt!
Myself, I preferred the classic 'Star Dudes - Episode IV: A New Dude' from a few years back. The acting's not bad, either:
April 26 - Books and Budgets
For now I've stopped entering my book collection into my Android tablet's app, BooksApp, as a serious glitch has arisen: the scanner no longer works. I've emailed the author and waited a week for a response; nothing so far. I don't want to waste my time until I am sure of being able to import the rest of my collection, which stinks as I've already input almost 500 books, with pictures. I did pop over to GoodReads.com and try to import my data, but the dang thing keeps getting stuck at 42 books and won't budge past that. So I'm stuck, which stinks royally - I had hoped that I could put my entire collection into BooksApp and thus avoid re-buying books that I didn't realize I owned. To avoid that, I will simply not purchase any more books until I get a solution in place, which will be difficult but will also help my monthly budget.
The internet is a strange place, full of wonders… and other things that should best remain undiscovered. For every gem there are a hundred husks of good ideas… such as this one: Star Wars reenacted by My Little Ponies. Avert your eyes, lest they melt!
Myself, I preferred the classic 'Star Dudes - Episode IV: A New Dude' from a few years back. The acting's not bad, either:
April 26 - Books and Budgets
For now I've stopped entering my book collection into my Android tablet's app, BooksApp, as a serious glitch has arisen: the scanner no longer works. I've emailed the author and waited a week for a response; nothing so far. I don't want to waste my time until I am sure of being able to import the rest of my collection, which stinks as I've already input almost 500 books, with pictures. I did pop over to GoodReads.com and try to import my data, but the dang thing keeps getting stuck at 42 books and won't budge past that. So I'm stuck, which stinks royally - I had hoped that I could put my entire collection into BooksApp and thus avoid re-buying books that I didn't realize I owned. To avoid that, I will simply not purchase any more books until I get a solution in place, which will be difficult but will also help my monthly budget.
On the topic of budgets: being who I am, I've put a lot of thought into the costs of living on my own( well, rooming with my sister )in a month's time. I created a basic budget spreadsheet, similar to this one but a lot more streamlined. I input our combined income, add in expenses line by line and the spreadsheet tells us if we're cash-flow positive or negative for the year, month by month. This is very handy for planning ahead, allowing us to see what reducing expenses( or taking them on )will do to our long-term budget. The spreadsheet's helped me see problems coming a long time in advance and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in making their dollars count - you can download it directly from my DropBox folder, hope it helps!
April 27 - On my free time...
It struck me this week that I haven't said very much concerning my 'sabbatical' that I am currently on, of all the 'free time' while I'm on EI. So:
I don't like it.
It's FAR too easy to see a day slip away. Mornings vanish into lunchtime, which soon turns into afternoon and time for tea, then dinner and finally a longing for bed. Real accomplishment seems to be for the next day, not the day that just vanished. Setting goals and DOING things is all the harder when there's no time limit to them; they can always get done 'tomorrow' if need be. I do admit to being FAR more relaxed now than I was during the holidays, but I also admit that I have watched very little of my 'Must See' DVD's or done much towards crossing things off my 'Do When I Have Time' list. The one thing I would dread to see is to reach the end of 2012 and still have most of those things still undone. Which means each day now becomes a test: do, or do not. There is no postponement!
April 28 - FanExpo thoughts
A week ago I was knee-deep in g33k at the Vancouver 2012 FanExpo and loving it. I took a few pictures to put up on FBook, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the pictures my camera took indoors. Thankfully, I saw that many, many other people with better gear than I were taking pictures and would be posting them online. Some of them also took videos, of which some were eye-wateringly unwatchable and some were very well done. This is one of the latter and gives you an idea of what it was like to walk the floor there( see if you recognize the host ):
Now, if I can just find a picture of that cute girl wearing that customized set of N7 armour from Mass Effect 3…
April 29 - A day of medicated rest
Today being Sunday, I prescribed myself a day of rest as I'm still dozy and tired from the muscle relaxants and prone to involuntary hour-long naps that sap my energy further. Thankfully today is the last of them and I should start getting my energy back this coming week - a good thing too, as I am moving in less than 2 weeks time! The relaxants seem to have done their job though: the rigid cable-like stance of my wrist tendons has faded to normal levels and I no longer feel any discomfort day-to-day. I still have to be careful not to overdo things while lifting objects or typing for too long, but I believe I have turned a corner, so to speak, to get back on track to normal.
.
April 27 - On my free time...
It struck me this week that I haven't said very much concerning my 'sabbatical' that I am currently on, of all the 'free time' while I'm on EI. So:
I don't like it.
It's FAR too easy to see a day slip away. Mornings vanish into lunchtime, which soon turns into afternoon and time for tea, then dinner and finally a longing for bed. Real accomplishment seems to be for the next day, not the day that just vanished. Setting goals and DOING things is all the harder when there's no time limit to them; they can always get done 'tomorrow' if need be. I do admit to being FAR more relaxed now than I was during the holidays, but I also admit that I have watched very little of my 'Must See' DVD's or done much towards crossing things off my 'Do When I Have Time' list. The one thing I would dread to see is to reach the end of 2012 and still have most of those things still undone. Which means each day now becomes a test: do, or do not. There is no postponement!
April 28 - FanExpo thoughts
A week ago I was knee-deep in g33k at the Vancouver 2012 FanExpo and loving it. I took a few pictures to put up on FBook, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the pictures my camera took indoors. Thankfully, I saw that many, many other people with better gear than I were taking pictures and would be posting them online. Some of them also took videos, of which some were eye-wateringly unwatchable and some were very well done. This is one of the latter and gives you an idea of what it was like to walk the floor there( see if you recognize the host ):
Now, if I can just find a picture of that cute girl wearing that customized set of N7 armour from Mass Effect 3…
April 29 - A day of medicated rest
Today being Sunday, I prescribed myself a day of rest as I'm still dozy and tired from the muscle relaxants and prone to involuntary hour-long naps that sap my energy further. Thankfully today is the last of them and I should start getting my energy back this coming week - a good thing too, as I am moving in less than 2 weeks time! The relaxants seem to have done their job though: the rigid cable-like stance of my wrist tendons has faded to normal levels and I no longer feel any discomfort day-to-day. I still have to be careful not to overdo things while lifting objects or typing for too long, but I believe I have turned a corner, so to speak, to get back on track to normal.
.
In between sudden snoozes today, I again looked into playing some of my older games under Win7, including Planescape: Torment, which I've never got very far in. While researching bug fixes, I came across a page that blew my mind about this game: the Fully Modded version of Planescape! Seems that many fans over the years have put together software that ups the resolution of the game to current standards, fixed HUNDREDS of bugs and piled on all sorts of other goodness to bring Planescape up to modern specs. I've purchased the Gog.com version a while back but didn't install it when I upgraded to my Mushkin SSD - I took the time to do that tonight and after a few minute's work, I started up the game again. What a difference! High-res screens, readable fonts and smooth gameplay make it seem like a brand-new game. I can't wait to dive in later this week, as a reward once I finish off Chapter 3 of my book. According to my schedule, I need to turn in at LEAST a chapter a week if I want to hit my mark of completing the book's first draft by the end of September. That's five months and 30 chapters in total, so it's nose to the grindstone... or voice to the mic to dictate, we'll see how that goes
It's been a snoozy, dozy week for me; the medication combined with the excitement of FanExpo really socked it to me, so that I napped for hours overall each day this week. The weather hasn't helped either; grey skies and drizzle kept me from doing much outside the condo. Ironically, I will be making myself stay IN the condo this coming week in order to complete the required chapters of my novel. If I treat it like a hobby, then that's all it will ever be to me...
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