The word of the week is persistence.
January 7 - Homeless Stars
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a lot on my mind this
month.
It's always fallen to me to be the one who worries and plans
for the worst… and I've become rather good at it. But it's meant my mind is
ALWAYS chewing away at the gristle of doubt and as such I usually find myself
running in mental loops about What Might Happen.
What may happen in the next couple of months has my mind spinning
with doubt, despite my efforts.
So I have to KEEP reminding myself that things can change
for the better, as well as worse. That my attitude is what will bring my
perceptions around to the positive, in the end, no matter what happens. I can
only plan to a point with the resources I have and go with what ends up coming
my way - success or failure aren't permanent states, no matter what I think
right now.
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Just look at how some of the most famous people of our time
had to deal with adversity on their own journey towards success. Many Oscar winners were homeless at various points in their lives, facts which I was
totally unaware of. When J.K. Rowling was writing her stories, she was divorced
with a small child and living off welfare in a tiny apartment. She and so many
others refused to wallow in their situation, bad as it might be; instead, they
worked their way through to find success in their own way, on their own terms.
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| Success is a Journey.... *click for FULL size* |
My success is waiting for me. I just have to find a way to get
there this year.
January 8 - A Memory Of Light
Yes! The FINAL book of Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series
is out today, number fourteen! AMOL is something I've been wanting to read for
quite a few years, if only to see how it all gets wrapped up.
However, the digital age has not quite caught up with
publishers, even one as large as TOR: I can't purchase AMOL for my Kindle - at
least not yet. So I'll just have to wait, as I'm trying to cut down on
book-space being used in my place and the WOT books are monsters in size,
relatively; AMOL is nearly a thousand pages long! Parsing that will be a read
of a few weeks, even for me, when I get it. If you don't mind some spoilers,
there's a solid review of it HERE, from which I've pulled this quote:
The result is not The Wheel of Time you may be familiar with. A Memory of Light is a brutal, bruising, 900-page war novel that kicks off with all hell breaking loose and doesn't pause for breath until the ending.
January 9 - More Mech games?
Just as I'm digging into the meat of MechWarrior Online(
I found a MWO MechLab simulator! )this month, I've discovered another PC video game
based on the BattleTech world: MechWarrior Tactics. It looks incredible AND
it's as close to the old tabletop game as you can get, visually and in terms of
play!
The game is browser-based, meaning it's accessible from a
wide variety of computers and not as dependent on having the best video card
you can afford. But that's not the selling point. What's killer about MWT is
that it replicates the hex-based turn-by-turn combat of the old tabletop
BattleTech game, using virtual mechs moving around simulated battlefields
in a
quasi-real-time manner.
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| Click to see the AMAZING action detail! |
Put simply: you choose your mechs, give them orders and
watch the carnage erupt! Add tactics, damage, salvage, customization and many other
factors to the mix and you have an engrossing game, one I will definitely have
to check out. Where I'll find the time is another matter.
January 10 - Miss Iron Man?
Speaking of mechanical action, check out this lovely bit of
Photoshopping:
Sure, I know it's Iron MAN, but I'm quite happy to see a
woman step into the role. The fact is, heroes can be anyone and I'm certainly
pleased to see Sandra Bullock put into the role, as I'm a big fan of hers both
on and off the screen. Gender-switching roles for superheroes has long been a
staple of fandom, as you can see by the picture below.
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| The Justice League... gender-swapped! |
January 11 - Space Station Tour
Ever since I was a little kid, being an astronaut has stayed
in my head as one of the coolest things one can do with one's life. Of course,
I was a little disappointed to learn early that ships like the Enterprise
existed only in fiction, which I think sparked my imagination that's guided me
towards writing.
Sparking the imagination of today's kids is something the
video below will do in spades too: it's a guided tour of the International
Space Station! Almost 30 minutes long, it satisfies a hunger I've had to
actually SEE inside the wonder that's serenely orbiting our planet! Commander
Sunita Williams takes you on a high-def journey through our planet's orbiting
foothold in space, which is a lot noisier than you'd think… but that's MORE than
compensated for by the view out the windows:
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| Astronaut Karen Nyberg, STS-124 mission specialist, looks at Earth! |
January 12 - Paper Spaceships
One of my earliest memories of spaceships has to do with…
paper.
A student in one of my mom's classes had the incredible
skill of creating things with paper. Generously, he created several paper
spaceships and gave them to my mom to give to me, as he'd heard that I liked
Star Wars. I remember that they were fairly large, well-put-together and
colourful! He'd taped the edges to give the whole ship strength and spent what
was probably a ton of time colouring in parts of the ship, adding detail like
windows and ship numbers. They were incredible and to this day I've always had
a fascination with papercraft: it's like model building, but much easier, if
somewhat less permanent.
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| It may be made of paper, but it can still take out the Death Star! |
On a whim, I decided to have a look online and see what
paper spaceships were out there. Wouldn't you know I found a TON of incredible
projects? One of them really stood out: models from a game I'd played way back
in the 1990's, from Wing Commander III:
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| Click to see all the precision detail that's crafted from PAPER! |
If they'd taught THIS sort of arts and crafts in school, I'd
have a FLEET of ships by now I think!
January 13 - Waiting …
The job search has me frustrated right now.
I'm throwing applications into what seems like a giant black
hole; again, just what the folks at WorkBC said it would feel like. Still,
knowing it and LIVING it aren't the same.
It's really hard, sapping the enjoyment I try to find in my
'free time' while I'm 'funemployed' … every day. In effect, I have 'Life Block'
which is similar to Writer's Block: I can't find the joy in anything I'm doing
lately( I did mention that a few months ago in another blog entry ).
To cheer myself up, I'll need to find new ways of viewing
every day. On the cheap, mainly.
Getting out for walks, NOT thinking about money, writing a
bit every day, blocking OUT the Job Search Black Hole… all that and more, so I
can get into 2013 like a new pair of shoes to break it in and not clump around
in mud-caked brickboots weighing me down. I'll sing a little tune to keep my
spirits smiling…
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| A song - one of many from Reverbnation.com |
THIS is the week an employer will call me. All it will take
is one call to make me happy, as it means someone's noticed me and thinks I'm a
good candidate.
One call. It's not much to ask.
