The word of the week is depreciation.
June 4 - Why Buy New?
Buying used technology has been a mantra of mine for years, moreso because I balk at paying full price for products I know I can get for less elsewhere and else-when, for that matter. Used cars, older video games, computer hardware or cell phones that are a year old… all cost a LOT less than buying new and usually work just as well. I've felt the urge to have cutting-edge tech less and less as I usually don't have a full grasp of what I can DO with it right off the bat… or in the case of video games my current tech can't run it at full speed anyway. Why buy a game for $70 right at release when I can get a used copy for less than half that price in only a few months? I love to surf sites like Kijiji, UsedVictoria, Craigslist and RedFlagDeals.com to search for bargains and giveaways… heck, FreeCycle.org DOES have people giving things away that are perfectly usable! You can also head out to garage sales or swap meets locally… the possibilities are many and the costs low… why buy new, if depreciation costs so VERY much, I ask?
June 5 - Fan Pics from the desert
While I count myself a Star Wars fan( I've been one as long as I can remember )some people go FAR above the call of duty… without being slavering fanboys. Such is the case for a small group of fans who, back in the 1980's, traveled over TEN DAYS into the desert to find the secret set where Return Of The Jedi was being filmed. Incredibly, they FOUND it… AND were allowed to STAY! George Lucas told them they could film all they liked as long as they kept beyond the security fence and didn't interrupt the filming process - absolutely amazing compared to modern sets with private security forces and lawyers on standby. Here's a slideshow of what they found… and below is the video they took!
June 6 - Goodbye, Ray Bradbury
When I was a young boy in grade school, I devoured books; not literally, but I read everything I could find that was science fiction and later added fantasy once I discovered Tolkien. I remember finding a book called 'R is for Rocket' that was filled with SHORT stories… by Ray Bradbury. These were smaller flights of fancy more easily digested by a young reader, and I was hooked on the format. Ray( I feel that close to him )had a wondrous way with words, simple yet so powerful. His stories have stuck with me my whole life; 'A Sound of Thunder' introduced the consequences of time travel to my mind and it's never left. I think what I liked the most about Ray Bradbury though, was that he never lost the ability to just be a kid… and to a kid, this was a revelation: that a famous, successful author could STILL allow himself to just have fun. I've held on tight to that part of myself as well, and I have Ray to thank for it.
June 7 - Words…
This week has seen some positive gains in writing my novel. The backstory is really taking shape, with lots of ideas pouring in from my muse and creating a lovely balanced structure for the plot, characters, setting and more. I've re-worked Chapter 3 into a MUCH larger chapter and made inroads into Chapter 4, which should see our first look at the society of the invaders, from within. Putting it all together is very slow though, as I'm trying NOT to edit things as I go, just to GET them onto the page. Ideas keep percolating and turning into solid story bits, so getting those all down and shuffling them into a shape that supports itself is not easy. I am happy that the ideas are flowing so well, especially as they're not derivative or uninspiring… I just have to hammer the overall plot into place to know where I'm going and that's taking the most time.
June 8 - Out with the New, In With the Old
Over the years, I've sold, recycled or tossed a fair number of things. But I have held onto most of my favorite video games despite the problems they have running on modern systems. Even sites like GOG.com don't have some of my true favourites, like Klingon Academy, which came out in 2000. No amount of tweaking on my part could make it work once XP vanished from my PC's but I kept it still, hoping. It seems my yearning was shared by others, as a small group of folks over at KlingonAcademy.com have tweaked, patched and otherwise made the game perfectly playable on modern systems, under Windows7 even with multi-core CPU's( always an issue with old games ). Now Klingon Academy plays smoothly and has barely any hiccups whatsoever. It's better than it was when I first played it on my old Pentium system with barely 64 megs of RAM - sweet! I'll have to spend a little time in the next few months checking up on some of my other older games, to see if similar groups have managed to quietly make them work again with their coding magic.
June 9 - Writer's Conference and Meg Ryan
After spending the evening out last night at the local Beagle Pub, I was up early today to attend an all-day Writer's Conference hosted by my recently-made local friend Matthew. It was at the Ramada Inn here in town and went from 9:30 until dinnertime, with a break for lunch. I was one of a dozen people there, all of us writers( obviously )and we all got along quite well for the entire day. Matthew presented quite a few things to us, concepts that perhaps some of us hadn't thought of and on topics that we were all interested in, for becoming author's and successes. He answered questions as we went along and I found myself taking copious notes, as there was a lot to think about that I hadn't yet discovered in my own researches as well as spending time with the local Victoria Writer's Group. It was a day well-spent and apart from my shoe finding some fresh dogflop on my lunch break( it was a BIG dog too... *sigh* )the entire day was a total success in my eyes.
Too bad my wrists hurt enough by day's end from writing that I couldn't do much work on my novel in the evening, apart from picking at a few ideas as I could manage. I ended up watching a good portion of You've Got Mail, which is amusing for its 1998 tech as well as for the expressions on Meg Ryan's face… her OLD face, not the new post-surgery creation that bears little resemblance to the lovely one she had back then. As a quote from her 1994 movie When a Man Loves A Woman says, she has "600 different smiles" - so far, I've only seen 156, but I never get tired of trying to spot more in her movies.
June 10 - Cooking Success
There were a half-dozen back-to-back episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC Canada today, which I had going in a PiP window as I wrote. I find the UK episodes of the show FAR better and more honest than the sensationalized and dressy US series which plays up the drama far too much( like a reality show, in some ways ). One thing I was curious about was if ANY of the restaurants portrayed in the UK series were still open; it's been five or six years since the episodes aired and I wondered if some had survived or even prospered. I found this list of restaurants listed by season for the UK and the US and I was pleased to see some HAD survived: Momma Cherri's especially made me smile to see that they were still going. Sadly, most of the places had closed or been sold, though a little looking showed that some of the owners had re-opened new places to go on to better things. I find the UK series a refreshing look at the honesty that restaurant operators HAVE to have with themselves in order to be a success, which can apply to any walk of life, not just in a commercial kitchen. Take your lessons where you find them.
I worked on and off on my novel today, but the words weren't flowing nearly as they did on Friday; the few bits I did get down felt in no way related to the chapter as a whole, so it was a creative bust today. I did manage to get some computer gear going, but the one 'found' computer stubbornly refuses to give me a picture despite a new power supply. So I messed around with my home network today and managed to double the wireless speed, added in a secondary router and got my media server running - briefly, as I think a hard drive failed after an hour. Meaning it's back to the drawing board tomorrow - I'm done.
June 4 - Why Buy New?
Buying used technology has been a mantra of mine for years, moreso because I balk at paying full price for products I know I can get for less elsewhere and else-when, for that matter. Used cars, older video games, computer hardware or cell phones that are a year old… all cost a LOT less than buying new and usually work just as well. I've felt the urge to have cutting-edge tech less and less as I usually don't have a full grasp of what I can DO with it right off the bat… or in the case of video games my current tech can't run it at full speed anyway. Why buy a game for $70 right at release when I can get a used copy for less than half that price in only a few months? I love to surf sites like Kijiji, UsedVictoria, Craigslist and RedFlagDeals.com to search for bargains and giveaways… heck, FreeCycle.org DOES have people giving things away that are perfectly usable! You can also head out to garage sales or swap meets locally… the possibilities are many and the costs low… why buy new, if depreciation costs so VERY much, I ask?
June 5 - Fan Pics from the desert
While I count myself a Star Wars fan( I've been one as long as I can remember )some people go FAR above the call of duty… without being slavering fanboys. Such is the case for a small group of fans who, back in the 1980's, traveled over TEN DAYS into the desert to find the secret set where Return Of The Jedi was being filmed. Incredibly, they FOUND it… AND were allowed to STAY! George Lucas told them they could film all they liked as long as they kept beyond the security fence and didn't interrupt the filming process - absolutely amazing compared to modern sets with private security forces and lawyers on standby. Here's a slideshow of what they found… and below is the video they took!
June 6 - Goodbye, Ray Bradbury
When I was a young boy in grade school, I devoured books; not literally, but I read everything I could find that was science fiction and later added fantasy once I discovered Tolkien. I remember finding a book called 'R is for Rocket' that was filled with SHORT stories… by Ray Bradbury. These were smaller flights of fancy more easily digested by a young reader, and I was hooked on the format. Ray( I feel that close to him )had a wondrous way with words, simple yet so powerful. His stories have stuck with me my whole life; 'A Sound of Thunder' introduced the consequences of time travel to my mind and it's never left. I think what I liked the most about Ray Bradbury though, was that he never lost the ability to just be a kid… and to a kid, this was a revelation: that a famous, successful author could STILL allow himself to just have fun. I've held on tight to that part of myself as well, and I have Ray to thank for it.
June 7 - Words…
This week has seen some positive gains in writing my novel. The backstory is really taking shape, with lots of ideas pouring in from my muse and creating a lovely balanced structure for the plot, characters, setting and more. I've re-worked Chapter 3 into a MUCH larger chapter and made inroads into Chapter 4, which should see our first look at the society of the invaders, from within. Putting it all together is very slow though, as I'm trying NOT to edit things as I go, just to GET them onto the page. Ideas keep percolating and turning into solid story bits, so getting those all down and shuffling them into a shape that supports itself is not easy. I am happy that the ideas are flowing so well, especially as they're not derivative or uninspiring… I just have to hammer the overall plot into place to know where I'm going and that's taking the most time.
June 8 - Out with the New, In With the Old
Over the years, I've sold, recycled or tossed a fair number of things. But I have held onto most of my favorite video games despite the problems they have running on modern systems. Even sites like GOG.com don't have some of my true favourites, like Klingon Academy, which came out in 2000. No amount of tweaking on my part could make it work once XP vanished from my PC's but I kept it still, hoping. It seems my yearning was shared by others, as a small group of folks over at KlingonAcademy.com have tweaked, patched and otherwise made the game perfectly playable on modern systems, under Windows7 even with multi-core CPU's( always an issue with old games ). Now Klingon Academy plays smoothly and has barely any hiccups whatsoever. It's better than it was when I first played it on my old Pentium system with barely 64 megs of RAM - sweet! I'll have to spend a little time in the next few months checking up on some of my other older games, to see if similar groups have managed to quietly make them work again with their coding magic.
June 9 - Writer's Conference and Meg Ryan
After spending the evening out last night at the local Beagle Pub, I was up early today to attend an all-day Writer's Conference hosted by my recently-made local friend Matthew. It was at the Ramada Inn here in town and went from 9:30 until dinnertime, with a break for lunch. I was one of a dozen people there, all of us writers( obviously )and we all got along quite well for the entire day. Matthew presented quite a few things to us, concepts that perhaps some of us hadn't thought of and on topics that we were all interested in, for becoming author's and successes. He answered questions as we went along and I found myself taking copious notes, as there was a lot to think about that I hadn't yet discovered in my own researches as well as spending time with the local Victoria Writer's Group. It was a day well-spent and apart from my shoe finding some fresh dogflop on my lunch break( it was a BIG dog too... *sigh* )the entire day was a total success in my eyes.
Too bad my wrists hurt enough by day's end from writing that I couldn't do much work on my novel in the evening, apart from picking at a few ideas as I could manage. I ended up watching a good portion of You've Got Mail, which is amusing for its 1998 tech as well as for the expressions on Meg Ryan's face… her OLD face, not the new post-surgery creation that bears little resemblance to the lovely one she had back then. As a quote from her 1994 movie When a Man Loves A Woman says, she has "600 different smiles" - so far, I've only seen 156, but I never get tired of trying to spot more in her movies.
June 10 - Cooking Success
There were a half-dozen back-to-back episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC Canada today, which I had going in a PiP window as I wrote. I find the UK episodes of the show FAR better and more honest than the sensationalized and dressy US series which plays up the drama far too much( like a reality show, in some ways ). One thing I was curious about was if ANY of the restaurants portrayed in the UK series were still open; it's been five or six years since the episodes aired and I wondered if some had survived or even prospered. I found this list of restaurants listed by season for the UK and the US and I was pleased to see some HAD survived: Momma Cherri's especially made me smile to see that they were still going. Sadly, most of the places had closed or been sold, though a little looking showed that some of the owners had re-opened new places to go on to better things. I find the UK series a refreshing look at the honesty that restaurant operators HAVE to have with themselves in order to be a success, which can apply to any walk of life, not just in a commercial kitchen. Take your lessons where you find them.
I worked on and off on my novel today, but the words weren't flowing nearly as they did on Friday; the few bits I did get down felt in no way related to the chapter as a whole, so it was a creative bust today. I did manage to get some computer gear going, but the one 'found' computer stubbornly refuses to give me a picture despite a new power supply. So I messed around with my home network today and managed to double the wireless speed, added in a secondary router and got my media server running - briefly, as I think a hard drive failed after an hour. Meaning it's back to the drawing board tomorrow - I'm done.
