Milestones, Maybe and Memories

The word of the week is content.

This is my 250th blog entry, quite a milestone for me. I've written an entry a week since late 2007 and if the average entry is around 2,500 words then I've put over 625,000 words in total into this blog. Amazing.

July 9 - Still searching for a job ...

After the last few months of fruitless job searching, I headed down to WorkBC today to see if I could get a different perspective on things. I've only had a few contacts with employers in the last few months and my EI is at the halfway point this month.

It's been especially frustrating with my arm issues; call it tendonitis or CTS or whatever the specialist in August finds it to be, it severely limits my job searches. I can't lift objects heavier than a glass of water with my left arm or type at any decent speed for long with either, so even the most basic of jobs is out for me at the moment. Not having any disability insurance irks me, but I want to get BETTER, not live with my arms the way they are for the REST OF MY LIFE. I have to believe things will improve.

The same way I have to believe I'll find a job that will be a good fit. I've started on that today with WorkBC and it's my hope that they can help me search in ways I've not thought of yet. They're rather experienced in this sort of thing and though I know they won't hand me things on a silver platter, I have to use every resource available to me. Before I end up just looking for a wage and stop seeing a future for myself in any form of employment. 

At least I can hope that my novel will open a few new doors to me when it's done…

July 10 - Simple pleasures

Before video games, kids had to find other ways to spend their time indoors instead of playing outside. I had a good selection of games as a kid, not all of them of the board-and-easily-lost-pieces variety. Apart from the rather fatal lawn darts, one of my favorite types of games( toys? )were water challenges like the Waterful Ring Toss. It could fascinate me for hours( a LONG time for a kid! )trying to get ALL the rings onto the pegs. I had a half-dozen of these things over the years and I don't think I managed to beat any of them more than once… by then my attention span had waned and I tried my luck with one of the other Waterfuls. Incredible how the addition of water to some simple plastic parts could amuse me.

July 11 - "Met You?"

Catchy pop tunes are nothing new… some get old fast, others bring a smile to your face when you hear them every now and then on the radio long after their debut. Carly Rae Jepson's hit tune 'Call Me Maybe' is one of those tunes, which has spawned many variants as people tweak the melody and lyrics. It was only a matter of time before a Star Wars mix came out, so enjoy:

July 12 - Castle Book!

Back in grade school, I loved our library. It was a big open-plan space that was defined by the bookshelves and tended by the well-bearded Mr. Edwards. I spent a lot of time in there, jockeying for a spot on one of the huge beanbag chairs or a rare turn on one of the monochrome IBM PC's that ran on floppy disks. I devoured books, as many as I could read in a day and I wanted more. Fantastic tales of faraway places were there at my fingertips and I adored every story I read, which conjured pictures in my mind far more real than the pre-CGI shows on television at the time could.

My most vivid memory of that library is when I found the book Castle, by David Macaulay. It is the simple story about the construction of a medieval castle detailed with beautiful illustrations that brought it to life. That book hooked me on all things medieval for life and I was tickled to find a lightly-loved softcover copy of the book this week at nearby Russel Books! The 1983 TV adaptation of the book is below as well, to give you an idea of the magic that Castle awakened in me:

July 13 – THUNDER! LIGHTNING! STORMS!

A view from Esquimalt towards Victoria's Downtown

I was woken today long before 7am by what I thought was CrazyLady upstairs, but turned out to be thunder! Storms here in Victoria are RARE and the clouds wandered around all day. Until late in the evening, when they RUSHED RIGHT AT MY WINDOW! I was watching the stormclouds to the south over Victoria, thrilling to the lightning that lit the dark masses every minute or so, when a bank of clouds starting moving. FAST. It streaked right towards us and then started to… roil. And turn. It must have hit the steady winds that blow around Mt. Finlayson because all of a sudden the clouds were rolling and the winds were churning around… just like when a TORNADO FORMS! Check out the video I managed to get with my so-so smartphone camera; it's in HD and you can see some of the details really clearly especially in the first two minutes:

July 14 - That Novel Feeling

Every day this week has seen a full chapter of my novel produced. It's been incredible to reach the 'teens' in terms of chapter numbers; I feel like the ball is REALLY rolling and I'm trying to stay ahead of it. I'm producing GOOD work; nowhere near what the final quality product will be but enough to keep at it day after day. I want to finish the summer with a finished first draft and what's been appearing on the page has been wonderful: I can feel the world I'm creating coming alive in my mind.

Which is great, because it's a BIG, complicated place. I have a lot of work to do on it still!

It's like building  a house, or filling just a room. Each thing has it's place and while it may appear to be a chaotic jumble at first, if you work at it things begin to get sorted out. Again, like a room full of stuff: you can rearrange things however you like until you're satisfied, even taking large parts of 'stuff' out until everything is balanced and it just feels… right.

I'm getting that feeling already with the 'mud' that I've been producing these last few weeks.

I like it.

July 15 -  BLOG MILESTONES x 2 !!

I've been writing this blog for close to five years now. It's been a journal, a place to express myself and a way for people to keep up with the things I'm up to. 

10,000 pageviews THIS WEEK! W00T!

Today marks the 250th Soronos blog entry. And tomorrow, my birthday, should see my 10,000th pageview. Amazing that BOTH of those milestones should arrive in the SAME WEEK! :-)

Years ago, I wrote a LOT about a LOT of things in my blog; I have a lot of interests and I like to share. I've seen my blog mature as time went on, becoming more focused and less wordy, if that's possible for a writer. These days I feel the need less to document every day, as I realize some days will be better than others. Other days will slip by unnoticed for various reasons, but some days, like today, are worth marking.

Here's to another 250 entries, that will see me go places and do things I'd never thought I'd write about. That's a heady feeling and I want to be able to go back to read my journey many years from now… which is why I'm writing things down NOW.

I've had a long, stretchy day, meaning that I've felt all over the place today. It's my last day before I turn 39 and that silly song '38 Years Old' is stuck in my head. I know I'm young, I know I have an uncertain future ahead of me... who doesn't? I'll be a year older tomorrow and looking back, I know how I got here but when I turn around, I can't see much of a clear path in the near future. The far future where I'm relaxing on a beach with a pair of bionic arms like Luke Skywalker, well... that's not for a while yet. Back to writing...

Particles, Possibilities and Progress

The word of the week is chapter.

July 2 - Novel progress

It's a new month and a new focus for me: my novel, naturally. The clock is ticking and I have all the pieces in place, now I have to assemble it into a working whole. With tons of backstory, a visual guide and a four-page synopsis, I am all set to turn everything into a series of linked chapters that will become the novel itself. I'm aiming to get as MANY chapters as I can done in the next 30-60 days, as I feel I should strike while the iron's hot, so to speak. Focusing ONLY on the writing will ensure that I get as close as possible to the core of the story and set it out in sequence as I see it in my head. Once I have most of a rough draft in place, I can finish it up this fall and then start the revision process.

 

By then, I'll most likely have run out of TIME to write, as I'll have been forced to find a day job. But I'll happily work during the day knowing that I can spend my evenings revising my novel, making it the best piece of work I can without obsessing over it. I hope that 2013 will see my novel make it out into the world in one form or another… but that's a subject for WELL after the first draft's completed.

July 3 - WE FOUND IT ???

I like science, moreso than most people think, despite my lack of skill beyond the simplest of mathematics. I used to collect Popular Science magazines years before the internet made pursuing science news much more interesting and efficient, though I know that PopSci barely scratched the surface of many discoveries. From my earliest days of reading, science fiction has been right at the top of my reading lists, so when today's news about the Higgs Boson leaked, I was quite excited - another of the building blocks of our universe may have been found! Well past midnight, I was hanging on the news from several sites… until the one chestnut showed up stating that the press conference had 'reduced' the news to 'just' 175 slides. At that point, I gave up and went to bed, to find THIS animated gem in the morning that neatly explained how important the Higgs Boson is to our understanding of Everything:

The Higgs Boson Explained from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

July 4 - Weird Waking Dream!!!

Whoa! I was bounced out of bed( mentally )by the kids above today, so I walked over to A&W at the Bay Center to calm myself with a coupon-cheap breakfast; ahhh, the taste of savings. I was still tired, so later in the day as I was up in the SkyLounge reading Stephen King's ON WRITING, I decided to take a nap.

Boy, did THAT take an unexpected turn!

 

I dreamt a waking dream, that I was napping on the couch, there in the SkyLounge in the sunshine. Everything LOOKED like it should: bright and sunlit and retro-60's grandparent furniture… AND I COULDN'T WAKE UP! Every time I swung my feet to the left to 'get up' off the couch, they reset, like one of those many time-loop scenes in movies where people repeat their actions. It was unbelievable - I vividly recall trying DOZENS of times to GET OFF THAT COUCH. I WANTED to wake up, to stand up and go downstairs and make some tea. I just couldn't do it. Maybe I was too tired( 5.5 hrs sleep )and my subconscious wouldn't let go easily, I'm not sure. Eventually my internal timer went off and I woke in time( for real )to groggily make my way downstairs to see Kung Fu Panda, feeling a slight touch of doubt  that maybe I hadn't woken and made it off that floral-print couch after all…

Thanks, Stephen King - now even my nap-times have a touch of horror to them.

July 5 - Time Traveling The Web

Having been using the internet since it's earliest consumer days of slow modems and small monitors, I recall seeing many websites blossom and grow. While many more vanished into the digital ether. While I enjoy the current crop of millions of complicated websites, I also find myself from time to time yearning for the simpler days when websites were all hand-coded and simpler to navigate. Thanks to The Wayback Machine and Screenshots.com, I can still take a visual time-travel tour of what many websites looked like almost back to their very beginnings. It's a nostalgic tour, to be sure, but it's also important to remember where all this digital congestion CAME from, how we went from simple to overload, from Celeron to cell phone and soon beyond. Go take a trip back; you'll be surprised at what you dig up!

July 6 - Robots are people too?

When will the Age Of Robots arrive, I wonder, and in what form? Most predictions had them cleaning our homes by now… yet all we really have are Roombas. Where are the tireless helpers and companions to ease our daily burdens so we can focus more on improving the world for everyone? And what are the implications of trying to create such a world? Filmmaker Spike Jonze took a unique look at this in his short film "I'm Here" released on YouTube, which is most emphatically worth it's 30-minute length:

July 7 - Perfect Dictation

Today was a productive day for my novel: with my mother's help typing, I was able to produce an entire chapter in a single day. Being able to visualize the scenes in my mind's eye and just dictate the words as they flowed from observing the scene is a marvelous method of writing . It's how using voice recognition SHOULD be, instead of having to pause every two or three sentences to correct incredibly bad grammatical errors, which takes you right OUT of the mental visualizations. 'Producing Mud' as it is called, should happen when you're in the FLOW( as I mentioned in last week's blog ). When various distractions keep poking at you, your mind can't focus on the task of writing and it becomes a grind that's nowhere near the potential you can reach while writing distraction-free. It was very freeing today to be able to write like that while sparing my arms, to simple have the words appear as I spoke them from the order that I set them in first in my mind. At this rate, I should be able to produce almost a chapter a day, following the outline that I've been revising for the last few months and adding to it as I go along. Having twenty or so chapters of my novel by month's end will be enormously freeing!

July 8 - Who or What is Mr. Breakfast?

If it's breakfast, it has bacon - at least in my eyes. I like unique breakfasts too… and what's more unique than an animated film short where breakfast comes to life? Or at least, a man's soul takes on the form of breakfast… or something. Watch it and decide for yourself - thanks to Mike for sharing this one!

Dr Breakfast from pizzaforeveryone on Vimeo.

After coming back to my apartment Sunday night, I was pleased to find it a cool 72F degrees even with the windows closed - boding well for the warmer days of summer to come with no A/C!Too bad there's still excessive noise above; combine that with my wonky arms and I'm still better off working at my parent's place for the majority of this month. Creative productivity has been happening in spades!

Storyboards, Space and Degrees of Stubborness

The word of the week is degree.

June 25 - I'm now a Graduate!

It's been a long road, but as of today I'm officially a university graduate!

Over a decade ago, I gave up on completing my degree for a variety of reasons, in the main time and money - I'd tried several times to finish a stubborn language requirement( in both Italian and French )but life kept poking me hard in the eye. And the wallet. Years passed and things didn't change much, so it was shelved 'for sometime in the future' as I saw it - it's been a nagging shame of mine all these years that I'd never graduated. This spring, I spoke to several people, both at UVic and Brock, about completing my degree. Imagine my surprise when the Brock contact advised me that she thought 'I already had the requirements' to have a Bachelor's Degree issued to me! As it turns out, the university eliminated the language requirement for many degrees in 2011, so it turns out that my waiting was not in vain after all. Heck, I've waited so long that Brock completely changed their logo:

 

The call today confirmed that the Dean has authorized my degree to be granted according to the credits I've earned, which satisfy all current degree requirements. All that I had to do was apply for Graduation( which I did a few weeks ago! )and now with the Dean's approval, I'll have my degree issued for the Fall 2012 convocation. I'm extremely happy, moreso than I've been in years, as I'd never thought I'd complete my degree. Turns out I already had; I just had to wait longer than most!

June 26 - AT LAST! THE ZONE!

FINALLY, I've found a solution to enable me to write creatively and ignore distractions from the noises that constantly batter at the fragile bubble of my writing Zone! While earplugs or headphones have not been enough to date on their own to block out the thunder of feet above my head nor the noise of the street thirty feet from my window, combining BOTH has proved successful! With the blissful tunes of Enya playing at non-migraine levels inside my audio cocoon, I dived HEADLONG into my writing today and didn't come up for air for close to eight hours to give my wrists a rest. I also spoke to a good friend on the phone today to explain my ENTIRE novel, which they kindly listened to for close to an hour non-stop! After that, I was inspired AGAIN to revise and expand my Novel Synopsis, as so MANY points clarified in my head after that call… that saw the rest of the evening vanish as I wrote again almost non-stop. My arms were a pair of burning sticks attached to my elbows and I went to bed utterly spent… but with such a wide grin that I thought my dimples would fall out. That, my friends, is what the Zone is all about!

June 27 - Bookshelf chairs?

Yes, I do tend to go on about small / tiny home design sometimes, but with good reason: design and architecture only advance through innovation, and what's innovative about bloated homes that are all cut from the same mold? Small spaces require creative solutions; this is where designers have to think outside the box, though in this case it's INSIDE the box. Putting functional chairs and a table inside a set of bookshelves speaks to many space problems in a unique form of answer - plus it just LOOKS cool:

June 28 - Storyboard Day!

Two days ago, I put into words the totally summary of my novel… over five pages of densely-packed ideas that spell out the story from start to finish, sparing no major plot detail. Though my arms were not rested fully, I dove in again today to complete my 'Visual Guide' which has been languishing half-finished for three months now. What I've done to aid my muse for the novel is to gather images that come close to matching the pictures in my mind's eye of what many scenes or characters look like, then put them into a 'storyboard' in an Excel file. Today I totally nailed the story from start to finish, adding in many more pictures and making the novel into a visual storyboard with many specific details noted for each picture, just like they do with movies. It was an entire day of fantastic mental puzzle-fitting hour after hour, as solutions I've been musing over came together like magic hour after hour. Nauseatingly happy at the end of the day, that was me!

Ironically, there IS a writing program out there that uses this exact storyboard concept called Scrivener, but it IS a pay program. So I saved money by doing it for 'free' … but after checking out Scrivener, I may end up shelling out the bucks and copy / pasting my info into it to take advantage of the many useful novel-building features. For the price, it looks reasonable and comes recommended by several author friends.

June 29 - Space Nostalgia

I'm not sure where this fits into this week's blog, but it made me smile all the same. I've spoken a few times over the years about an old game called Earth and Beyond which was one of the first space MMO's. It had several firsts, including the ability to customize( some aspects )of your character AND your spaceship! The graphics at the time seem crude by today's standards, but I loved it. I also loved the community that was present for most of the game: there were a LOT of roleplayers, who could spin amazing tales when on a space station or the few other social hubs in the rather cozy universe. I was sad to see it go, as it was the first place I developed the character basics that would later become Nichneven - a futuristic warrior / monk with crimson hair and a deadly electronic bo-staff. I was in heaven… for a few short months playing the free beta. By the time the game went live I now had NWN to enjoy and I never went back - sadly the EaB game was cancelled in 2004 after only two brief years.

June30 - Wiped Out Brain And Body Day

The week's writing exercises took their toll on me: today I felt completely exhausted, as well as nauseous, possibly from something I'd eaten yesterday disagreeing with my twitchy digestion. Though it was a gorgeous day, I didn't have a speck of energy and took several shorter naps as the day wore on, getting out only for a short walk around the block before coming back home all too soon.

Since it was a day in, I ended up checking out the new MMO Dungeons and Dragons Online which is free-to-play. It looked gorgeous on my PC( and large HDTV )thanks to my new video card, running smoothly with no glitches. I played for a good part of the afternoon, with minimal use of my arms as it's a PC game not dependent on twitch-reflexes, for the most part. I found the game to be interesting but not overly so, as it's obviously designed for multiple players and to take up a LOT of time, along the lines of Worlds Of Warcraft… which is not my thing. Also, the chat system seems to be disabled at low levels, as I saw nobody speaking to each other; again, not my thing as that makes roleplaying a lost cause. All in all, it was a good way to pass a day when I was feeling like crap apart from sleeping, reading or watching movies… I always like to check out new things and DnD has always had a soft place in my heart. But I'll still stick to NWN.

July 1 - HAPPY CANADA DAY!

I thought today as part of the celebrations for our nation's 145th anniversary, I'd talk about tolerance. Not to put it in the form of complaints, but to illustrate a uniquely Canadian trait: to abide others poor behaviour( to a point )without getting in their face, which perhaps makes us the well-known diplomats we are to the world. I'll pull out the example of motorcycles: I dislike them for their noise. I think many are works of art, they're amazing mechanical marvels and a great mode of transportation. Yet the noise they generate is imposed on everyone within earshot… and that's a LOT of people for some of these ear-blowing street-rattlers. I know the noise is purely cosmetic; motorcycles can( and some do )run just fine without announcing their arrival minutes ahead of time. What it comes down to is rights: everyone has the right to enjoy a relatively  peaceful day, hence the term 'disturbing the peace' in the law books. I'll also argue that people have the right to enjoy fresh air in their home… but when the prevailing wind blows in the smoke from a neighbour's balcony constantly, who is infringing on whose rights, I ask? Do I not have the right to have my windows open on a nice day to enjoy the fresh air, as much as other people have the right to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day out on their balcony?

It comes down to tolerance, in some ways. How much intolerance will you tolerate, before something is done? As much as I'd like to wish otherwise, I doubt very much that if the balcony-goers were aware they were forcing their downwind neighbours to keep their windows closed, they would change their ways. On a related note, the partiers upstairs managed to shatter the doorway to the stairs here not long after dinnertime, prompting a mass exodus from the apartment before blame could be brought to bear. Idiots; no way to spend a Canada Day, dropping in on friends only to cause them trouble through ignorance and making a spectacle of things on the front lawn of the building as people urge others to jump from the second-storey balcony. Yet we're all Canadians and it's all 'in good fun' as long as nobody's hurt.

Right?

I went out Canada Day evening with a couple of neighbours( the friendly ones )to see the fireworks down at the Inner Harbour. It was a big but fun crowd, with quite a few people not dressed for the chillier night( down to 13C degrees ). The fireworks were wonderful, with a finale of brilliant red flares set off against white sparks that made the gigantic crowd go wild with applause. Afterwards, we went up( literally )to Vista18, a restaurant I didn't know existed until tonight. We caught the end of a jazz solo and enjoyed the night views of the city from the 18th floor over a few drinks; I'll be back to see what the city will look like from the day. All in all a good way to start July and to celebrate the country I love to live in; Happy Birthday, Canada!