Beauty, Backstory and Beginnings

The word of the week is lifestyle !

April 30 - Iron Man Is Cool

Ever since my first brushes with science fiction, I've always wanted to put together a 'power suit' of some kind. From the flashy chrome of Captain Power to a fifty-foot-tall BattleMech, nothing says "I'm bad!" like power armour. Weirdly, I've never been a fan of Iron Man, as I've never thought past depictions of his armour were cool - clunky, in my opinion. Not until the recent designs of Adi Granov revitalized the character did I take notice; CTV did a great article on the character design for the original Iron Man movie. Lucky for me, since my crafting skills extend only to words and not the physical, other people have put together stunning examples of Iron Man costumes. The one below is simply the best on the planet; it has ACTUAL moving parts like flight stabilizers and the face shield:


May 1 - New Beginnings

It's a new month. By the END of THIS month, I will be happily ensconced in a NEW place in the BEST part of Victoria. By odd co-incidence, this is the SAME sort of arrangement as I had in my very early twenties: sharing a cool living space with my cool sister. THAT place was a half-house near Burgoyne Woods, down the road from Brock University and rather special in a few ways, the least of which being it was my first time Out On My Own. For various reasons it didn't work out, the main one being I was working full time AND trying to go to school full time; that's a story with only one unhappy ending. But the IDEA was great, though it ended in 1998 with my independence from then on, due to my need to support my family. I cherished that idea and that time, as it was something I KNEW I would get back to eventually. And make even better.

 

Now, I can SEE myself in a similar place in life - writing my novel. Searching for a GOOD job, one that won't complicate my life but instead, compliment it. To get ON with where I SHOULD have kept going from in 1998, to think about getting my writing life rolling, finishing school and then look for new beginnings. Again, what this blog's all about… finding the future, not dwelling on the past.

May 2 - Valve Is Coolness

Of the things that interest me in terms of Working For A Living, video games are right up there. Other than BioWare( now owned by EA, booo! )the other company whose roof I would give an arm and a leg portion to sit under would be Valve. They do things differently, VERY differently. So different from the norm of how a typical corporation works that it's hard to grasp. So I was tickled to find Valve's New Employee Handbook on the web; it's stunning to read through. For those of you who can't or won't bother, let me pick out a few key points: (1)Their management structure is FLAT; nobody is pressuring you to Complete Assignments (2)YOU choose WHICH projects YOUR skills can best assist and will GROW your own skills (3)Nobody EVER gets fired for making a mistake; these are encouraged as you LEARN and GROW (4)Each employee is paid what they are worth; the more your peers value you, the more you make and (5)Steam has kept PC gaming alive and healthy. Well, the last point is my own opinion, but it's shared by millions, which according to Valve is a snapshot of the way they work: give Customers What They Want!

May 3 - Star Trek Reunion!!!!!!!!

When it was on television, I watched every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation as soon as it hit the airwaves. I say this without hesitation, as I think it had some of the best characters in the genre at the time as the show progressed. Sure, it was episodic and didn't have the over-arching story arcs that came in later shows, but you could see from the first seasons that the cast had gelled and become family - it was right there on the screen. That kind of bond shone through and made the characters they played all the more captivating to watch as they grew, struggled and LIVED on the small screen over seven seasons.

Which made their reunion this past week in Calgary all the more poignant; it was the first time EVER since TNG went off the air that ALL the cast were together on stage at a convention. It was an event I WISH I had been able to go to to see, JUST for that reunion( apparently the Calgary FanExpo was mobbed for the same reason! )but luckily that magical hour-long even was ALL caught on tape. I was deeply moved by the emotions and caring expressed by each cast member towards the rest of their TNG 'family ' - watch it and see!

May 4 - May The Fourth Be With You!

Growing up, Star Wars and all it entails played a HUGE part in shaping my psyche… and would explain more than a few quirks too, at that. I've seen the movies often enough that I no longer NEED to see them; I can replay them almost scene for scene in my head, which also shows I may not be using the space up there for the best purpose… but I digress. Today is May The Fourth, Star Wars Day for the unenlightened and a day I like to quietly celebrate by adding to my collection of Funny Star Wars pictures. I do draw the line at cruel pictures or poorly drawn art; they have to make me smile AND be a little unique in their way. So for your edification today, I give you… Calvin and Hobbes Attack The Death Star:

( click to enlarge )

May 5 - The Avengers is SO COOL !

After a cartoonless Saturday morning( mourning? )I MORE than made up for it by going to see The Avengers( in 3D / UltraAVX! )in the afternoon. I was prepared for a good movie, given the limited hype I allowed myself before going to the theater. What I wasn't prepared for was a GREAT movie - Wow! Apart from a few slow spots, Marvel really knocked it out of the park this time! Superlatives aside, I was with the characters the whole way through the movie; even Loki, whom I thought somewhat uneven as a villain, had enough good moments to win me over in the end. Really, I could nitpick the film to death( as others have I'm sure )but it is the ONLY film I can think of since LOTR that I would go BACK and see AGAIN - something I almost never do! I'll be buying it for SURE on Blue-Ray in 3D( yay new TV! )and I hope, HOPE it is packed with special features like Iron Man. Wow… I spend the rest of my evening having cool parts of the movie bubble up and make me smile. :-) 9.5 out of 10, easy - even RottenTomatoes agrees!

May 6 - Lizzie Beautiful

Yesterday I saw a video that made me re-evaluate some of the things in my life, in a positive way. Most of you have probably not yet heard of Lizzie Velasquez, a 23-year old woman who years ago was voted the Ugliest Woman on YouTube. This was due to her having a rare condition, so rare that only 3 other people in the world share it; among other things, it keeps her at a weight of 60lbs, has made her blind in one eye and distorted her features. Yet she has NOT given in to despair and instead has fought against the handicaps life has given her: she has set herself real goals and accomplished them. Things like graduating college and doing motivational speaking that not every able-bodied person in this world has accomplished. I have to say that stories such as hers move me deeply, to KNOW that the ONLY thing holding YOU back is YOU. Success comes in many forms but it is never GIVEN to you - you have to want it, to work for it and earn it. Lizzie's goals are concrete, real and for her, part of making a future for herself in a world where looks are still the measure of a person, instead of the powerful beauty of self that we all can achieve.

It's been a fruitful week for me, writing-wise. After a slow start, the creativity started bubbling up and my muse got into full swing by Friday, with thousands of words pouring out. Most of them backstory, which meant that Chapter 2 has been re-written almost totally and looks to become my new Chapter 1, depending on reviews. May looks to be a VERY productive month!

Meds, Mediocrity and MLP

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.
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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.

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.
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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...

FanExpo 2012, Ferries and Lou Ferrigno

The word of the week is Fanexpo!

April 16 - Weathering my novel

Work on the novel is progressing slowly, as I can only type a few words an hour before my wrists force me to switch to the voice recognition software. That is also painful in its own way, as my creative methods do not include speaking a story in the form of a novel. I can TELL a story, sure, but that doesn't translate well to a printed version. So I'm spending my time thinking about plot development, characters, setting and the sundry other details while the story itself slowly flows out onto the glowing screen. It's slow going overall.
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The weather this week hasn't done much to get me outside, either. Fitful minutes of sun and many hours of gloomy overcast make for a trapped feeling sometimes. Which I do my best to alleviate with my sunlamp and doing other things( not video games though! )to help the hours flow by in a relaxing and productive way. One thing I am not doing though, is diving into my DVD collection; I'm setting myself some goals and one of those is not to trade off working on the novel for a few hours of entertainment. If I'm going to do this, I have to treat my available daily time as working hours and put in enough of them

April 17 - Tax Deadline? I'm done already!

A word on taxes: do them yourself with a little help and save a LOT! I've been doing my family's taxes for almost ten years now with ease, using TurboTax. It's an online service that allows you to work through your taxes step-by-step and review any part at any time, plus has a running total of your return amount… or amount owing. Best of all, with the link above you can file a single tax return for less than $15.00 with tax - an incredible bargain!!!!
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As I've mentioned before, you can find many good hints and tips for saving money each year on your taxes at sites like TaxTips.ca, Canadian Living (weird, I know) and the HUGELY useful 78 Tax Tips For Dummies all spell out strategies and overlooked ways to reduce the amount of money you have to pay to the government each year. My own simple advice is just this: do whatever it takes to balance to ZERO: you don't owe the government money AND you haven't given them an interest-free loan for most of the year before they give you back a 'refund' once you've filed. As the old adage goes: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Good advice, that.

April 18 - Passing Genius and Creativity

Fifty-six years ago today, one of the greatest minds of our age died: Albert Einstein. He was only 76 years old. Einstein was in the same class of genius as Leonardo DaVinci, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking: minds that truly helped to re-shape the world through their work. I hold minds like theirs in the highest regard, as examples far better for my life and beliefs than celebrities with passing fame or sports stars with fading accomplishments. Genius is the word I have heard all my life that truly resonates with me and reminds me with every utterance that I too, have great things within me that are waiting to be done.
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Hand-in-hand with genius is creativity, an elusive element that many artists possess but few can articulate the origins of. Creativity is the thing that enables one person to look at a formation of rocks to see the remains of an ancient kingdom of mysterious people, while another just sees a rock pile. Myself, I am creative most every day in small and large ways, as my mind is always working and observing. Ideas are easy to come by for me but the focus and execution of those concepts are where most people fall down. John Cleese gave an amazing speech on creativity a few decades ago; it appears below and I URGE anyone who wants to make better use of their creative side to watch it in full:




April 19 - It's WHEN?


Very last-minute, I discovered( told, actually )that FanExpo is happening next door in Vancouver in 2012... THIS weekend! After a quick calculation, I realized that I could travel there and back with a 1-night stay for a relative pittance, so I jumped online and bought tickets for myself and my sister. I used Hotwire.com to search and found a STEAL of a deal: for a mere $100 after taxes, I secured one night in a double-bed room in a 3-star hotel only 20 mins walk from FanExpo - wow! So then it was a matter of checking on the BC Ferries tickets and planning the weekend trip.

I've only been to 2 other conventions like it, Baltimore in 1998 and TorCon in 2003. Both were fabulous experiences and ones I am eagar to repeat more often in the future, once I get my novel off the ground. I'm not sure I would want to attend more than one a year, at most, as that might take the magical shine off these events, which are 25% g33k-celebrity-fest and 76% cool-stuff-for-sale-take-my-money-please vendors. Fortunately I am not impulse-buy driven and I have little desire to collect signatures from every celebrity that stars at a convention. I'm content to take it all in and be thankful for being there, among people who to various degrees share my love of many things g33k. Like finds like and at conventions like FanExpo it does so with a vengeance! I'll post my pictures on FBook later this week!


April 20 - Creative Comments! 

These days I don't put much stock in Yahoo's news stories, as they tend to recycle things from months or even years past and often have misleading titles on a piece - sure signs that their days online are numbered. Yet I still go there every few days to browse through story comments, which are often FAR more insightful and informative than the stories themselves. Case in point: a piece on a couple who 'accidentally' created a $10 million / year business, which as it turns out isn't the case. But apart from the so-so story, the comments on the piece are HILARIOUS as people banter back and forth about entrepreneurship, the economy and money in general. It's definitely worth a read and easy to see which are the best comments, as people will 'like' the better ones and 'thumbs down' the irrelevant or idiotic. Makes me smile to see how the 'hive mind' as it's called reacts to mediocre journalism with very funny results:

April 21 - FanExpo Vancouver, Day 1 !

Up WAY too early today for the trip to Vancouver; we were at the Ferry terminal for the 7am boarding, bleary-eyed but excited. Moreso for me, as my sister has only a passing interest in Things G33ky, but wanted to come along for the chance to spend time with me in Vancouver - what a sis! I did make a somewhat silly decision in purchasing round-trip bus tickets while on the ferry, but it turns out my worrying at the overall cost was unnecessary (more on that later on). We were in Vancouver and dropped off at our hotel a little before 10am and managed to check our bags into our room already (that was great!). I went to the Vancouver Conference Center and waited in long lines for about 30 mins to get in... and wait a little longer in more lines. But all went smoothly and by 11am I was on the floor, looking around. These sorts of events usually end up being mostly a vendor's show, seasoned with some cool events and celebrity guests. This weekend had people like Lou Ferrigno (he look barely at the end of his 40's!) as well as Adam West, Burt Ward and many, many comic / anime-related guests.

Spiderman, not Spider Robinson

But the highlight of my schedule was the chance to talk to Spider Robinson while he made a leisurely appearance signing books. I brought along old copies of his books, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and Time Travelers Strictly Cash and spent almost ten minutes chatting with him about things author-ly. It was great, but I left a little disappointed in that I couldn't ask him about what it was like to dive into being an author while shedding all other types of work. I also talked briefly with John DeLancie ('Q' from Star Trek: TNG) who was VERY low-key, almost standoffish yet still likable. I also briefly chatted with Gary Chalk, an actor / voice actor with over 30 years in the business, as well as Shirley Millner, both of whom worked on one of my all-time fave shows: ReBoot. Gary gave the impression of putting in time, but Shirley made up for that by being absolutely sweet and very thankful for her fans.

Spider Robinson

The other Big Thing for me today was meeting almost ALL the crew of Electric Playground: Victor Lucas, Scott Jones, Briana McIvor, Shawn Hatton and Marissa Roberto. I stood in line for most of an hour and was not disappointed; all were exceedingly nice and interested in what I had to ask and to say. Brianna was graciously interested in my questions on working in the game industry, Scott was intrigued by my choice to pursue writing and to try to translate that into games and Victor remarked that I had a great voice for doing voice-acting work. I even spent some time with Shawn, chatting him up about his experiences working with EP and how he liked working on the show. It was definitely worth the lineup and confirmed to me many reasons that keep me watching their show: they honestly love what they do and don't make a big deal about the show, only that it exists because of the fans. Exactly what FanExpo was all about.

Victor Lucas and most of Brianna McIvor from EP

I was out of the convention well before five, so I met up with my sister and we both went back to the hotel to drop off our bags and then went in search of dinner. We ended up searching via UrbanSpoon( Yelp! was offline? ) for inexpensive places downtown and wound up with Pacifico Ristorante, a nice little Italian place - the shared pizza was great! The rest of the later evening was capped by cold drinks on the patio at Milestone's by the beach at English Bay, where the view across the water was the best thing about the place.

April 22 - FanExpo Vancouver, Day 2 !

Another early morning had us checked out by 8am and walking downtown to beat the rush after 9am for the 10am convention opening. Vancouver on a Sunday morning downtown was surprisingly clean and quiet, with most folks just out for walks or jogging. The Tim Horton's we'd found yesterday was in no way crowded for breakfast and we easily made it to the Convention Center for 9am. The ticket lines moved rather quickly and we were on the floor by the 10am opening, amused to yet again see the throngs of people lined up to buy at-the-door tickets instead of the online ones which get you in faster. The place didn't really start to fill up until 11am, by which time we'd had a leisurely stroll around the place to check out all the vendors. At noon we split up to cover two different events: my sister went to the ReBoot reunion and I went to the Professional Voice Acting 101 Q&A, which was packed! There was a panel of five people, including a voice-acting agent and a young woman who had used VoiceRegistry.net to break into the business just recently to find success and a happy career path. Fascinating, useful information that I'll take to heart when considering my own voice-acting career path; one tip was to take as many acting and lesson classes as one can, as the ENTIRE worth of your performance comes from your voice. Being flexible and capable of taking direction are two of the keys to success - I'll be dipping my foot in the waters later this year once the bulk of my novel is complete.


After that, we had lunch and I attended another seminar on voice-acting with Christian Potenza, of 6teen and Total Drama Island fame. Who also happens to be a friend of someone I know, which is cool. After the seminar he was very busy on the convention floor with fans but took the time to let me introduce myself when he had a moment. I was happy to find that he a very cool laid-back guy; I'll be talking more with him again on FBook and hope I'll be able to run into him again soon.

The very classy Bus Terminal

My sister and I caught the Skytrain from downtown before 4pm and disembarked at the bus station early, which was no problem as there was a tiny Starbuck's tucked just under the station. We boarded the bus with no problem and a short while later we stepped off into the vehicle deck on-board the ferry and relaxed for the journey home. Thankfully the waters were very calm and we made it to the ferry terminal as darkness fell. I have to say that the weather in Vancouver was amazing this weekend; one fellow passenger remarked that it was the FIRST time he'd ever been in Vancouver in decades that it didn't rain two days in a row, so we lucked out with only cloudy skies for a few hours and a chilly wind once in a while.

That was it; an amazing weekend made possible last-minute thanks to a whole combination of factors and good company in the form of a sister who was willing to indulge her brother's g33k-out tendencies to head to the big city next door for a bit. It was my first time in Vancouver and the city was great: very tidy, very green, with lots of unique architecture, a wide variety of shops and restaurants and a transit system that was clean and efficient. I'm not sure I'd go back anytime soon just as a tourist, but it's definitely way above places like Calgary or Toronto on my Canadian destination list. Nice!


The tendons in my forearms are still too tight, but thanks to the muscle relaxants the doctor prescribed this week they're no longer achingly painful all day and night. I'm trying several techniques to relax them each day and I hope that by the time I have to move house in mid-May that I will be fully back to normal. Especially as I need to increase my daily typing quota ASAP!

Pebbles, Pots and Practice

The word of the week is archery!

April 9 - APPROVED!

Today was Easter Monday, when Good News traditionally arrives. A little before noon today my sister and I received news that our rental application in Victoria on Cook Street had been approved! We were ecstatic, as this is the place we really really want to live due to its proximity to the downtown core, the ocean, Beacon Hill Park and Cook Street Village. I'm especially happy as the building happens to have a rooftop lounge stunning views of both the mountains to the south and the city all around through floor-to-ceiling windows. As an added bonus, the building manager told me that few people ever go up there on a regular basis as it is accessible only by stairs and not the elevator. Can you say "personal writing lounge" for the next six months? I knew that you could! This is the best piece of news yet so far this year aside from my for EI and we're really looking forward to moving in mid-May!

April 10 - Archery... with your feet?

Years ago, when I belong to a medieval reenactment group, one of my hobbies while a member was to regularly participate in archery practice. That went by the wayside as school and work took priority over my recreational activities that it is been years since I shot a bow for recreation; it still hanging on my wall in pride of place for me to get to soon. Sometime later this year, I may search out and join The Victoria Bowman's Club. Though they still will have a yearly membership fee… hmmm. It is also inspiring to see how some people have taken archery to new levels, such as Lilia Steppenova, who can shoot a normal bow WITH HER FEET with perfect accuracy.
 

Oh, and my regular EI amount came in today: MORE than I thought it would be! Which means I should be VERY able to spend the next 6 months writing my novel. ONLY doing that, EVERY day; it's like a dream come true. Thanks, Government of Canada, for seeing that I worked many years paying my EI dues and sending it back to me now when I needed it!

April 11 - Musical Ballads

After going out for a walk this week and listening to some of my music, I discovered something new about my musical tastes. Apparently, the songs I like are ballads; they tell a story! Most of the music I have is not repetitive in a lyrical sense but tells a story of some kind throughout the song. Well I don't listen to balance like those from Johnny Cash all that often, I think it is telling that the songs I do like appeal to me from an author's point of view. The best songs will always have something new for you when you listen to them as the years pass by, very much like the best stories: you can always come back and reread them two more years experience under your belt. This insight was brought to you by the letter 'Z' which is rather underused in the English language - which starts with the most-used letter, 'E' … weird, that.

April 12 - Classic Video Games!

Crowd-sourcing is the new buzzword nowadays, especially in the videogame industry where many games do not get made because producers don't want to take the risk of creating a flop( similar to the movie industry ). Quite a few indie games and worthy sequels never get made because the funding simply isn't there and most people in the videogame industry want to make a living just like the rest of us. So I'm especially thrilled to see that a sequel to the amazing Wasteland game from the late 1980's has now been massively funded through Kickstarter.com! What's really amazing is that many of the original team members from the first game have come on board for this sequel. I remember playing this game with my friend on his Apple II and just being sucked into the post-apocalyptic game world; it was probably the major reason that I'm so fascinated with that particular genre! Set with a release date sometime in 2013, Wasteland2 promises to give a similar transcendental gaining experience, thanks to the enthusiasm of the indie team it has now! You can download the original game here, as it is long past it's due date...

April 13 - Starbase: Las Vegas??

Sometimes I really wonder about the stupidity of Hollywood executives; no, scratch that - I don't really need to wonder since they keep giving examples of how stupid they can be. Case in point: in 1992, Las Vegas ALMOST built a full-scale replica of the Starship Enterprise as an attraction to revitalize the downtown core. I'm not kidding; this was so close to happening that it came down to the decision of a Paramount executive to give the project a green light. As we now know, stupidity won out over the dreams of millions of g33ks the world over. Incredible, I know: instead of the graceful lines of a starship wreathed in lights and real to the touch, Las Vegas' downtown got giant overhead TV's showing ads and cute patterns. Paramount's top executive at the time, Stanley Jaffe, was solely responsible for killing this dream dead… so if you see him, give him a kick in the shins for me and every other g33k who dreamed of walking the decks of the Enterprise for the price of a day pass.

 

 
April 14 - Pebbles and pots?

All right, we're on a g33k theme here, so here's two things that caught my eye this week that I really think I'd like to own in the near future. Both went to Kickstarter.com to fund their creation and thankfully, BOTH have more than reached their goals, so we'll see them become available very soon!

 

 

First is the Pebble smartwatch. It's an eInk-based watch that connects to your smartphone via bluetooth and is totally programmable in terms of apps. Meaning that the watch can check emails, display SMS texts, FBook updates and almost anything else developers can dream of creating. It's a greyscale, low-power display that is highly readable in sunlight and makes always checking your phone a thing of the past. Available Sept 2012.. for $150.

The other gadget is one that I've never seen before. Called the PowerPot, it produces electricity via a thermocouple, which means you can use it anywhere that you have a concentrated source of heat such as a campfire or stove. Unlike solar chargers, this is an immediate source of electricity that can be used day or night and won't take most of the day to charge a single device. I think this is especially cool as a survival tool, as it means that you can go completely off the grid and still have access to devices without having to carry masses of batteries around with you. Just boil up some soup and you can charge both your GPS and satellite phone at the same time!

April 15 - Grrr....

Today was very, very frustrating for me in several areas, including the scanner on my tablet malfunctioning so that I can no longer scan any books into my database! In the main though, my WRISTS are STILL a problem: the tendons insiders still like cables, very tight despite the exercises I have been doing daily. It makes it hard to hold things for very long or type OR play video games with a mouse or controller - in effect, to do ANYTHING that I want and need to get done around here daily. So Monday I am making an appointment with the doctor to see about finding a therapist to help me with the physical exercises, as it's been a month and these symptoms are still lingering heavily.

On the bright side, I did manage to rig up my voice dictation software so that it works properly with all my programs and even some games. While using a mouse is still difficult, I can type and write fairly fluently without too many mistakes and my PC can handle it without strain, thankfully. Writing this blog today was somewhat time-consuming, but for the most part I got it done in one pass and then went back to fix things as needed. Some other people have used the same program to overcome difficulties they've had in typing with their hands; in fact, one person use the program to play video games way back in the day when text was King. this allowed me to enjoy the rest of my evening online, where I gamed with a few friends in NWN and left the typing mainly to my voice. It worked, needed a lot of corrections and left my wrists alone, which was good.

This week is going to be make or break for me in terms of my wrists; no, I don't intend to break my wrists, I just need to get them on the road to recovery. I'm trying very hard every day not let my frustrations boil and simmer as the clock ticks ever closer towards the end of 2012 and only a few words trickle onto the page of my novel.

Habits, Habitats and Hope

The word of the week is free!

April 2 - Deals!

I like 'free' - it's one of my favourite things in life and one that can pop up anywhere, at any time. A recent site I discovered is GiveawayOfTheDay.com, where the site hosts give away for FREE software that normally costs a fair penny - all for the sake of promotion! I also drop by BitsDeJour.com, where software also comes up on special for usually 50% off, things that almost NEVER come up for free at Giveaway. Both sites are great to drop by for 5 minutes each day… but I spend even more time sorting through RedFlagDeals.com for ALL things Dealicious( not affiliated with the site of the same name )where ALL SORTS of deals are pounced on and posted by the general public, 24/7. I have managed to score a few deals on various things over the years by being in the know BEFORE everyone else, thanks to RedFlagDeals. Check 'em all out!

April 3 - Brave

I have a weakness to confess: red hair. With the upcoming release of Disney's CGI film Brave, my weakness has been given life and hundreds of hours of work by artists to render each red strand in perfect detail… but that's not the focus of the movie. I also have a liking for strong female characters and the role of Merida is being pushed by Disney as a 'passionate and fiery' which obviously goes hand-in-hand with those of a more flame-haired inheritance. Given that my own novel depends in a large part in having a believable, likable female protagonist, I would consider Brave to be a good bit of research for comparison. Though writing a teenager would likely give me headaches…



April 4 - Vertical Forests?

Green roofs are nothing new: they're a way to take back some space in a city and put it towards better use making urban landscapes healthier. Yet for all that, the actual overall surface area of roofs in a city is rather small compared to that of concrete and asphalt which serve as roads, parking lots and the like.

So why not forget about the horizontal and go VERTICAL? That's the idea behind an initiative in Milan, Italy, where several buildings are in development that carry the green concept into the sky. Instead of walls of concrete, their exteriors are covered with trees… all the way up! It's an innovative way to put trees into a dense urban setting while sharing space needs with other uses; it's hard to turn a parking lot into a forest and still get cars in there. I applaud the out-of-the-box thinking in projects like this and hope that other similar new solutions to old urban space-usage problems come up soon for all cities!

April 5 - Habits

Habits can be good or bad; I've formed a fair deal of both over the years, though none were of levels requiring therapy… even my puns, if you can believe it. Routines are the cousins of habits and I am curious to see which new ones I will form once I have moved into a new place and settled into a new version of my life, one that I choose the pace of for the rest of 2012.

It's going to be interesting. Sometime this year I will finish my first novel and will have found a new job. Or managed to break into a new field of employment, such as freelance writing or voice acting. Each new day in 2012 will be one where I have to balance the needs of an emerging career with things like downtime and socializing, of playing games to relax and watching some of the MANY DVD's that sit gathering dust on my shelves. New habits and routines will form and I will be watching them as consciously as I can, as I want to form more of the positive-career type and fewer of the lazing-around-not-progressing kind. The last 2+ months have seen me progress little, other than moving my mental processes around to focus on ME and not my previous work habits; that's been hard and I STILL answer my phone in less than three rings. I may never cure myself of that habit, but as such things go I think I can live with that, if it means I can focus on more important things.

April 6 - Found a place, almost!

Over the last two weeks, my sister and I have looked through dozens of apartments in Victoria. For the most part, the places have been rather outdated or lacking in some major ways; the one had mouse holes in ALL the rooms and the balconies were off-limits as they were falling OFF the buildings. Many places simply hadn't been updated since they were built, just repairs and new paint and the occasional new carpet. Several buildings were under overall repair and several had new places ready to be built NEXT to them; in both situations, the noise would have been unbearable for years, so no thanks.

Today though, we settled on a place that ticked so many boxes that we felt it was a 9/10, and the building super hit it off with us right off the bat. We'd seen it earlier in the week and came back today to put in an application and put down a deposit. It's located VERY near Cook St. Village, has a decent amount of room, is in a solid quiet building… the list goes on. We'll be waiting the weekend to hear on Monday if we've been approved for the place; our fingers, toes and even eyes are crossed, hoping!

April 7 - Pillow Fight Day!

The weather today turned out to be simply GORGEOUS: temperatures in the mid-teens and barely a cloud in the calm sky. Which was PERFECT for a pillow fight! Yes, today was International Pillow Fight Day, held in cities all over the world; I found out about it earlier in the week thanks to my friend Kevin. We hustled out of Langford after lunch, picking up a few pillows on the way and arrived in Bastion Square in Victoria just as all the fun was starting! My sister recorded the action( using a nice FlipVideoCam that I'd picked up in Dec'11 )while Kevin and I wandered around the melee pummeling and whomping. We had a great time; there were over 100 people there and someone broke open a feather pillow right at the start, so those were swirling around the while time. I gave as good as I got and while the clip below doesn't show any of my ninja-like moves, I'll add a few of those clips to FBook soon enough:



It took me hours to put together the video though, as I don't own any video-editing software capable of inserting text and a soundtrack… so I improvised. I used a royalty-free tune from Incomptech.com, installed AVS VideoReMaker( NOT free! )and used several other bits of software to record FROM the AVS video window into other formats. I ended up with a 2.5gigabtye AVI file( HUGE! )which I converted into a 68 megabyte MP4 file( TINY! )which I then uploaded to YouTube. If I did this sort of thing on a regular basis, I would definitely save myself the 6 hours of work, trial and error and buy an all-in-one software suite like AVS4You. But for now, the results were worth it:

April 8 - Rainbow's End

This week, Google announced Project Glass, which in essence crams all the features and power of smartphones into a pair of wearable 'smartglasses' - which are still a ways from appearing on local store shelves. I love the idea and wonder how long it will be before people start walking into traffic with smartglasses just as they do now with handheld devices. I am reading a book right now called Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, which is a head-hurting but fascinating look into the end results of where Google and its tech-spawn will be in fifty years or so. As an author, I am staggered by the sheer vision of the concepts that Vinge puts out in his story; if only a part of what he envisions comes about, the world will be a VERY different place in a generation or so. To be honest, I tried to read the book when it came out in 2006 and the concepts were so 'out there' that I had to stop. Now, with far more experience with Google and FBook and all the sundry social apps, it’s a much more palatable read; I originally felt that it spoke about things that had no meaning in my life but now I can see how far ahead Vinge was peering. If you want to see a glimpse of a very possible future, I recommend his book highly… and I also recommend reading it slowly to digest in small bits as you go - today I spent more than a few hours reading while I rested my wrists. And watched Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs with my family as an Easter treat!

By this time tomorrow, I will know if my hoped-for application to live at a GREAT place in Victoria will have been approved. It will be quite a change and I am working on my mild CTS / wrist pains so that when I am settled in my new place, I will have PLENTY of time AND ability to devote to my novel, which right now is a hunt-and-peck typing affair to work on. Painful on many levels, that.

Movies, Memories and Mourning

The word of the week is memory.

March 26 - Time

Today was a very sad day for me: my grandmother passed away, aged 89.

She went peacefully, which is all any of us can ask for.

How big a part of your life is your family? What holes do they leave in your life when they are gone? These and many other questions ran through my mind today as I thought back on all the good memories I had of my grandmother, who was always unfailingly kind to me. Others may paint a different picture of her, but to me she will always be the one who dried my tears after a visit to the doctor's and whose calm British voice made every visit to her home one of relaxed enjoyment, especially around tea time.

Distance matters not,
Now that you've left us, to rest.
Be at peace; be loved.

Good-bye, Gran.

March 27 - My sister arrives!!!

Change is in the air; today, so was my sister! She landed here in Victoria this AM, having moved here to the Island permanently. She and I will be searching for a place to rent in the coming month, to continue my plan of total independence that I began so many years ago. It is our hope that we can find a unit in Victoria itself, as this time of year sees a LOT of places come up for rent as university students leave the city once the school year has ended in April. Having a place in the city itself is important for many reasons, some of which being transit and easy access to social venues such as Cook St. Village. Sadly, I had access to Cook St. Village when I first moved here, but I wasn't able to take advantage of the social aspect for several reasons: a busy job and a lack of contacts in Victoria meant I met few people my first year here. That has changed since and with the entirety of 2012 open to me to Be Social, I hope that I will be spending a lot of my time OUT of the house!

March 28 - Kindle and SciFi

THIS is the news I WANTED to hear as an author: that new methods of publishing stories is making it MUCH easier for NEW authors( such as me! )to get their work Out There and to find an audience! It's incredibly exciting to think that I don't necessarily have to languish on a slush pile somewhere for years; the New Media of today means I can actively PURSUE an audience. The harder I work, the better my chances of getting noticed and reviewed; building a brand is all part of the process of finding readers for one's stories. To be sure, I will still submit pieces to online magazines and try for other venues, but just to KNOW that I can break into eBooks( and do a better job than many of the current best-sellers on there )is a hugely liberating thought!



Sadly, my wrists STILL hurt this week after only a little effort, so I have been remiss in plugging at my novel, understandably. I'm investigating methods and exercises to get them back up to snuff while avoiding any future relapses - I'll also be using my voice recognition software to get basic draft work done.

March 29 - D&D no longer uncool?

Here I could write pages about how D&D was a huge part of my childhood, but others have done that far better than I can. Just recently I realized that it helped fuel my creative desire to tell stories, steering me towards finding my way as an author at this point in my life. While I wasn't the greatest D&D player ever, I know that when I was telling a story through the artifice of the game, I was in my element - and my audience, captive though they were, did experience the magic of being transported into the world I had created. That feeling is what I long to capture in my writing and is one that I always experience in the best stories: to leave yourself behind and enter the world that the author crafts through their words. Unlike any other form of storytelling, when you engage the mind's eye, real magic can happen. Believe.

March 30 - Wine?

Wine is one of those things that becomes common ground among many as we get older; like golf, perhaps, you can debate the fine points endlessly. Myself, I don't like red wine as the tannins give me headaches and in general I don't see myself as ending up with a wine cellar, cooler or collection of more than a couple of bottles for company. It's a BIG topic, for once you have the wine bug bite you then you can't really go back… and it's fashionable too, as you can spend an evening feeling sophisticated talking about wine, as opposed to debating the merits of beer. Hard liquor aficionados need not apply. All I want to know usually though, is how long that bottle of wine I've forgotten in my cupboard is good for. Thanks to the folks at CellarNotes.net, I can consult a handy chart to tell just that. Or, I could just ask a friend.

March 31 - Rentals and Gaming

After narrowing down the rental possibilities to about a dozen places( thus far )my sister and I went to see one today. Disappointing; it was only a few minutes' walk down the road, a newer( 2004 )basement suite on a quiet street with all utilities included in the rental price… and it stank of mildew. Sigh.

Tonight's NWN gaming session( a day earlier than usual )was fantastic! Five new characters were specifically created to game together as part of a new story arc, which incorporates each of their backgrounds into the overall plot. We had a blast, as there was a lot more roleplaying than usual with the group that gathers - planning ahead with new characters definitely paid off here! It was a big deal for me as well, as I am loathe to create new characters in NWN; odd for a writer to whom new characters should come as easily as changing socks. Perhaps I don’t like playing them as much as I do writing them, at least that's how I see it. In any case, my entire evening vanished in a happy twinkle as I gamed with my friends and let the world outside vanish.

Oh and today is possibly the world's most boring special day: World Backup Day. I've been doing this regularly for ten years and it's not exciting. But necessary.

April 1 - Not Foolish

Yes, it's April Fool's Day today. I didn't do anything or fool anyone, which I haven't for years now, not since my first year on the Island here. Not having had a fun workplace for the last few years might have had something to do with it. I do like browsing through the fun stuff that they come up with at ThinkGeek.com for April Fool's, like the Beta-to-HD-DVD convertor - fake, of course. I also liked the Inflatable Star Trek Captain's Chair, which just happens to be real and unfortunately sized for kids only; pity.

Click image for a full-size Coraline wallpaper!

No, today was very much a homebody day; I didn't end up going out to a party last night as it turns out I wasn't invited. Which happens and was honestly  expected, but it still tweaks a little Hurt Button inside me all the same. I myself have forgotten ALL SORTS of similar things over the years, so really this is just karmic payback - paying attention to the details is what I've learned from it. All in all, I've done fairly well in not unintentionally offending anyone in the last ten years or so - but if I have, would you tell me? There's the question… and finishing up the day by watching Coraline with my family really put the Weird But Wonderful badge on today. Next time: watching it in 3D!

My cold has lingered on all this week, moving from my throat to my nose and leaving me with very little energy until this very night, April 1st. Now that my system is recovering, I will be diving right into the rental search AND my novel work - there's lots to do and the clock is ticking for 2012!!!!!!!!!!!

CGI, Colds and Chrome

The word of the week is lassitude.

March 19 - Writing Cold

It's been difficult to write the last few weeks; physically it was painful last week and this week I simply have no energy as the cold has stuck full-force. Which stinks, but it's winter's last hurrah, I think. I won't be doing much this week save killing Kleenexes, resting and keeping myself as entertained as my fuzzy head can manage.

At times like these, I turn to some of my writing idols, such as Neil Gaiman, as they look at the writing process and how they face it some days when it's not as easy as it could be. Here's Neil's take on writing and the strange places it can take you, for good or bad.

Another thing that occurred to me today was to do something for the upcoming 250th blog post here in B.C. Beginnings. I've been debating what exactly to do… suggestions? It's a few months away, so there's plenty of time!

March 20 - A week to go for EI?

A week to go until my EI comes in; I've done all that I'm supposed to do and now it's up to the Red Tape dispensers in whatever office you care to name. It's still stressing me out, as I've of necessity had to become a person who believes things when I see them - too much in my life has gone haywire due to details large, or small, getting muddled. So until my EI shows up in my bank account next week, I'll still be on tenterhooks about it.

Once it's in though, I'll be all smiles, as it means I can go forward with my plans to write( and complete! )my novel in the next six months. Along with the accompanying IP( intellectual property )development, marketing plan and all the sundry things that are also a part of creating a work of fiction yourself. Not giving any thought to this beforehand would be foolish, for as I've already found out from my research many new authors just write and worry about these 'small details' later - wrongly so, I'm told. Being foresighted as I am, I will be juggling all these things as I go along, which will actually help with the writing process as I can 'step away' from the writing itself to work on other aspects of the whole. I can even deal with the 'distasteful' project of working on Personal Branding, something which I understand only a little of right now but that I KNOW is vital( almost key! )to promoting myself as an author. As well as getting practiced in public speaking, which I dread along with many.

March 21 - BSG: Blood And Chrome

Yes, I'm loathe to admit it: I never finished watching the last season of the recent Battlestar Galactica. I was totally turned off by the 'miraculous' arrival of Starbuck and the total left-turn the series took at that point, which I felt was an insult to the loyal fans who had followed the incredible potential the series had offered up until then. I likened it to a main character slapping everyone upside the head and stating "Everything up to this point has been a dream." Which stank, as I thought it was all incredible up until that point…

So seeing the trailer for the series pilot Blood and Chrome which would have followed the young Adama at the outbreak of the Cylon War brought back feelings of wistfulness for the same awesome feeling the first season of BSG engendered. It has all the things that made the first season mind-blowing and I'm not just talking about the FX - it looks to have story out the wazoo. Too bad SyFy decided to pass on the series and instead make it into 'webisodes' - I hope that these will manage to keep a level of production quality on a par with the trailer, as that's still better than nothing at all. There could have been so much more…!!!

March 22 - Armored

I'm considering a lot of things to include in my novel, one of which is powered armour. Which won't be explained AS powered armour, at least not at first. There's just something about strapping oneself into a suit that makes one as powerful as a tank on two legs that appeals to me; the original Starship Troopers was built around this concept, which vanished in the more recent movie. Powered armour stories such as the classic Armour have always had a special place in my imagination, so when I heard that there's a new short-story collection due out in a WEEK called Armoured, I was tickled! Even better, you can preview( in full! )several of the stories on the book's website, which I found to be VERY informative. Gives me a few ideas for promoting my own novel, as a matter of fact… but I won't give any of those away, yet. Not while I'm waiting for the free-to-play MechWarrior Online to launch later this year… huzzah to giant mech combat action!!

March 23 - RUIN CGI

What people can do with a relatively inexpensive home PC setup nowadays blows me away sometimes. What used to cost tens of thousands of dollars ten years ago can now be done with software costing hundreds of dollars, on regular hardware bought off-the-shelf. In the case of RUIN, OddBall Animation has put together a jaw-dropping eight minutes of CGI eye-candy set in a post-apocalyptic world. With flying robots, laser-shooting missiles and nanotech samurai swords, it's a treat to watch, especially for the small touches. Prepare your eyes for awesome( BEST VIEWED FULL SCREEN ):


RUIN from OddBall Animation on Vimeo.


March 24 - Preparing to Move Out / On

Today was all about one thing: moving boxes. Moving them from our condo locker downstairs to the storage locker I've rented for a month, or two. It's all of my Stuff: things useful and not so useful. Books and dishes and small appliances and all the other things that make a place a home, as well as somewhat cluttered. It's still puzzling to me that after moving a half-dozen times in the last 4+ years I can still have so much Stuff, but I've at least whittled it down to Essentials and Nostalgia. I think I've about reached the point in my life where THIS month, April, I can go down to the storage unit, haul out a box, take a bunch of pictures of Nostalgia Stuff, and get rid of it. I probably won't even bother to sell any of it on eBay, as Nostalgia usually doesn't command a worthwhile price unless it's extremely rare or still in its original box. For the most part, I think I can condense things with only a little effort and pain on my behalf, as today I spent almost 6 hours moving those boxes from one storage to another. As I don't want to just have things SIT in storage, wherever I end up, it's going to be a process of paring down to the point where it will all fit into whatever apartment I end up in.

Along with all my books. Those, I will never part with. Though I'm trying NOT to buy more paper ones and so save space with eBooks. We'll see how that goes.

March 25 - Check. Not Mate.

I slept in today, a bit, as I was up late last night - playing chess. In NWN, of all places - Samuel has added in a module that allows players to play with animated monstrous chess pieces, with all the correct rules. Given that it was the first game of chess I've played in over ten years, I did fairly well… and I love that I was able to play a game within a game, with friends. Too bad NWN's been giving me a video stuttering problem since I installed my new video card a month ago; I'm still working on finding a solution, but for now it means the game is a real pain to play and hard on the eyes to boot. Argh.

The weather today was spectacular, so after only a couple of hours of gaming online with my Xbox, I gave my wrists a rest and headed out to Starbuck's for the afternoon with a friend. It was deliciously sunny and I spent a fair few hours there, people watching and enjoying the fact that I could sit down at an outside table and not have the metal chair singe my legs with arctic frost. I suspect in a few weeks I will be out a LOT more, as I find my muse more active to match my own activities. That would be a most welcome change!

Although I never thought it would happen, I've found myself wondering what day it was more than once in the last couple of weeks. As someone who's VERY aware of the time, I find this funny AND disturbing - it means I have to get into my writing routine ASAP, or I might find myself losing days to lassitude and laxity too often. My time is free right now, but NOT infinitely so!