Travel, Theory and Tattoos

The word of the week is prosaic.

March 23 – That’s the way it Crumbles

Let’s start off the week right: with a cookie!

A friend of mine posted a wonderful article last week on his blog. Here's a snippet:

Cookie Philosophy 1: There is no such thing as a bad cookie.

As mentioned above, if we are given a cookie, regardless of it’s ingredients and our personal tastes, we should be thankful to receive that cookie (Unless it’s a peanut based cookie and you’re deathly allergic to peanuts, then the person who gave it to you might be trying to kill you). It’s a first world problem when we complain about the type of cookie we receive.

A great point: don’t complain, it’s a cookie! Even though I don't have a lot of cookies anymore compared to even a few short years ago, I enjoy each and every one that I do have to the fullest. Having cookies is analogous to enjoying life: it's not the quantity, but the quality of the thing.

I'll leave you with this parting thought of his, which I think is somewhat reminiscent of that nice old lady from The Matrix:

Remember that cookies represent all that is good in the world. So take some time to enjoy a nice cookie of your choice every now and then. I promise you’ll feel better.

March 24 – Revisiting Dragons

As a young lad, I loved the Dragonlance series.

Given that there are hundreds of books in said series, it says a lot that I’ve read most of them at least once. Heck, I used to own close to a hundred, at one point, when you counted gifts and assorted cheap finds at flea markets back in the day.

Now, though, I only have a dozen or so that I've kept; all the rest are gone, sold or given away.

Why is that?

To be honest, the world of Dragonlance had run its course with me. I've internalized all the stories that meant anything to my self personally and the rest have faded over time from my mind. While I liked the initial concept, the endless sub-genre exploration of minor characters, sub-plots and backstory became too bloated and I just had to step away. I considered a good lesson in making too much of a good thing.

Mist-terious... well, not really, once you've read it once.

Also, the writing just doesn't hold up to my current reading levels, which is sad in a way because I really do love Dragonlance - I just can't read it as simply anymore for enjoyment.

There are millions of others who also love Dragonlance and thanks to them, I stumbled across The Dragonlance Chronicles Re-Read! This serial blog aims to re-read the initial Dragonlance books with a modern, critical eye( but not too critical! )in order to deconstruct the stories and poke at all the writing holes in order to better understand how everything was put together.

As a writer, I love the idea. As a faded Dragonlance fan, I find it oddly appealing.

March 25 – Everything?

I have to think of everything when I am writing my novels – literally everything.

Did you know I have to think of everything when I write?

Really, it does boggle the mind. Readers assume that the author knows everything there is to know about the fictional universe that the author is creating and that's a mind-boggling task that gets very little credit, when it comes down to it.

It's rather unbalanced, in a way. The reader gets to see only a tiny fraction of what the author’s intention is when it comes to the world being created. Several sentences that appear in a book could have pages of related research and back story to them, but it's the job of the author to ensure that only the relevant points appear for the reader, carefully constructed so that they support the story while providing the intended verisimilitude of the world being created.

They'll add the colour later.

World-building is a huge topic all by itself, but it's simple enough to get a grasp on if you simply look around you: everything you see would have to be created in the author's mind, along with everything else you can't see. Absolutely everything on the planet, the other planets in the solar system, the local star group, the galaxy, the universe… you get my drift. 

We have to think of everything, and then pare it down to what’s important for the story at hand.

The reason that it's such a vital job to come up with as much detail as possible is, in my opinion, the difference between a gripping fictional world and one that seems to be a stage that's set with just enough dressing to tell a story and no more – once that’s done, it all fades from the mind of the audience far too quickly.

I am aiming to create a universe with such depth that I can tell as many tales as I like there and my readers will want to know more every time they finish a story. It may take me a little longer, but remember that if you're reading a story of mine, every sentence has a huge amount of hidden work behind, even before the editing phase.

There's no better way to do it, really.

March 26 – Hope and Planning?

It doesn't look like I'm going travelling anywhere this year, which is a good thing, actually.

Tying myself down — figuratively speaking — to where I am right now in BC only makes sense, if I want to get ahead for once in my life. Having achieved their relative stability at present, I am going to make the most of it this year by simply working in writing, which I may have mentioned once or twice already in this blog.

I think I'm trying to convince myself that there doesn't have to be anything else, no semblance of Being Busy that I have to achieve in order to think that my life is going better than before.

It's actually pretty good as it is right now, for reasons I've already outlined here before and so I won't bore you with them again.

Sure, I'd like to hop a train and travel across the country this summer, or take a trip to another continent, but those places will still be there in a few years. I'd much rather travel with a sense of balance and well-being inside, then stressing about things I'd be bringing with me on the trip.

It only makes sense. Having my book trilogy written and being able to work on some edits while traveling would be a nice bonus that would enhance any trip, I think.

I could scout locations for a book tour, come to think of it. Hmmm…

March 27 – Soulmate Science?

Believe it or not, I'm going to mention algebra for the first time in my blog – right now! It's going to be in the context of love, to make it all the more strange.

The idea of soulmates has always fascinated me, that peculiar quirk that many of us believe there is someone out there we are ‘meant’ to be with. Or at least are the most compatible with, above all others.

It's a nice thought, but what does this have to do with algebra?

Leave it to Randall Munroe to use algebraic equations to help answer the question: what are the chances of there actually being a soulmate out there for everyone? Here’s part of his work:

The number of strangers we make eye contact with each day is hard to estimate. It can vary from almost none (shut-ins or people in small towns) to many thousands (a police officer in Times Square). Let’s suppose you lock eyes with an average of a few dozen new strangers each day. (I’m pretty introverted, so for me that’s definitely a generous estimate.) If 10 percent of them are close to your age, that’s around 50,000 people in a lifetime. Given that you have 500,000,000 potential soul mates, it means you’ll only find true love in one lifetime out of 10,000.

Long story short: it's a nightmare equation that only mathematicians can appreciate, given that the odds are so extremely low. 

All in all, I'm going to leave it down to two thoughts: (1) Keep looking and (2) Don’t tell me the odds. The last bit is courtesy of Han Solo who, as you may recall, snagged himself a princess! The card-carrying variety, I might add.

Tasteful his-and-hers tattoos. Cute, I guess.

Also a wookie, but we’re not going to go there…
 

March 28 – Pop-ular Myth?

Do you crack your knuckles? 

I stopped cracking my knuckles about 20 years ago, as I was more and more worried that I was doing damage to my joints for the sake of making cool sound - and watching other people cringe sometimes. Given the joint problems I had back then, I decided not to take a chance.

The jury is still out on long-term damage:

One thing I did notice is that my knuckles are somewhat wider than I remember them as a teenager, enough so that it makes wearing rings difficult - I don't have enough body fat to have fingers that are the same general thickness all along their length, so rings that fit over my knuckles tend to wobble around on my fingers. Probably why I've never bothered to wear them.

So, do you still want to crack your knuckles?

March 29 – Frivolities Falling From Favour

Have you noticed your life changing lately? I have.

The small things are what really clue you in: changing the habits which used to be very important and which have suddenly become irrelevant.

Case in point: electronic shopping. I used to live for it, even if it was mostly just eyeballing.

Grabbing the latest flyers from Future Shop, Staples, Visions( a local BC chain ) and cruising a few regular online spots used to always brighten up my week. No matter how bad things were, I could always escape a little bit by imagining how some new bit of tech might improve my life; weird as that thought is, it rang true for me for a long time. But not anymore.

I just don't need more stuff and I don't need stuff to be happy. I always knew that, but I suppose I was distracting myself with shiny gadgets for so long that they became a means unto themselves, that a sort of self-fulfilling cycle perpetuated itself long after I had any use for it.

Now I browse through the occasional flyer once a month or so, just to see what's out there. I don't need to upgrade my computer or have a new tech toy to fiddle with; I no longer need to distract myself from the problematic daily things that were weighing me down but rather find more time to devote to my writing and enjoying life rather than thinking that such can come from any purchase I make. Whatever technical upgrades I do in the next few years, they'll be necessary once only, like my recent SSD fix for my laptop or replacing my wonky S3 phone with a OnePlusOne.

I certainly have enough PC games and unread books to occupy my free time as it is; there’s no sense in adding any more to my collection until I get some good use out of what I have now.

Not to mention writing a few books and/or games of my own in the near future.

I am pretty tired right now, finishing the blog, more so than I've been in many months. I've just finished working close to 60 hours this week, seven days straight and I've got one more long day to go tomorrow before I get Tuesday off. I probably won't be sleeping in but rather waking up around 6 AM as I have been blessed couple weeks; more time in the day to write, if you look at it that way.

Living, Locks and Lava Lamps

The word of the week is beamish.

March 16 – Generous Karma?

It’s funny how things can change for the better at the drop of a hat.

Last week, I had my bike stolen - bummer.

This week, I was loaned a bike by a friend to use - wow!

The generosity of such an act doesn’t cancel out the pain of the theft, but it does mitigate it somewhat. Obviously I will have to look at a fair price for the loaner, should I keep it, as it’s a fine machine and a lot less rustier than my sad-departed former ride. I also don’t have anywhere to KEEP the loaner safely; right now, it’s under my bedroom window, crowding my space with kind karma until I figure out where to put it.

I’m most certainly never locking up my bike outside again overnight, or with a cable lock of any kind. Speaking of which, I was searching through videos on bike locks this week to see what was recommended and what wasn’t in terms of demonstrated effectiveness. Wouldn't you know that I came across my failed lock in one of the first videos I watched? Apparently it’s considered ‘crap’ despite the great ratings it had at the time when I purchased it:

It just goes to show that you need to keep on top of these things and upgrade your equipment once your knowledge increases, especially if there's the risk of theft in your area rises over time.

March 17 - Green Lava?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

It's not really my thing anymore to go out for St. Patty’s Day, but I do still love the holiday, if only for the fact that the colour green is everywhere. It’s my favourite, I have to say.

Also my favourite: lava lamps.

You may not know it, but I've had a lava lamp for almost thirty years now. The same one has traveled with me from home to home, faithfully adding a unique ambiance to every place I’ve called home. It’s an unusual lamp, as I’ve never again found its particular combination of black outside and blue water. Most lava lamps are garish, but this one manages to be subtly cool:

That's ol' Faithful in the middle... and left.

That pattern, I tell you… it’s always something new and I find the wax movements calming. By now I can’t imagine calling any place I live in a home without a lava lamp; it’s a sort of mobile sculpture that flows in slow motion, never distracting but always entertaining.

Maybe I should get another one, with green colouring? Hmmm.

March 18 –It's a dumbphone, now...

Ah, the foibles of smartphones: sometimes they’re suicidal.

My dad called me yesterday using his home phone line to say that his ‘new’ HTC M7 was doing strange things: a red triangle had appeared on the screen and it was stuck on a boot loop.

Insert techie sigh of anticipated time wasted trying to fix it…

When I got home yesterday I have a look at the phone and consulted the Internet for both probable causes and fixes. For what I determined, an over-the-air update from HTC had gone horribly wrong and soft-bricked the phone – rather effectively, as I found out, after attempting to repair it for hours. 

Not wanting to lose my sanity in endless loops of repair efforts, I called it quits and resolved to bring it into Blackapple Cell, a local store downtown that specializes in cell phone repairs. They have a look at it today and think they can fix it for less than $100, depending on how soon I need it back( well, my dad needs it back )which is better than I’d hoped.

In the meantime, I activated my old LG 8700 flipphone on my dad’s account, which he's perfectly happy with:

In some ways, my old phone is just perfect: it makes calls, it texts and it looks darn good with a battery life on the order of a week of general use. What’s not to like? We’ll see if my dad’s M7 decides to step back from the edge of its self-immolation in a week or so – apparently that’s how long it’s going to take, with endless restarts.

But: there’s hope! And as a bonus, I'm not spending time trying to fix it myself!

March 19 – Too Helpful?

It's been a little rough for me here and there at work this week, despite mostly smooth sailing overall. Today I did invoices for the whole day, kicking back mentally with my headphones and letting the music soothe my creative side for around eight hours with epic non-vocal tracks.

These sorts of days almost always lead to creative breakthroughs and I had several today all at once – more on those later.

What I also had today was a gentle talking-to about being too helpful to callers.

Ummm, okay?

I pay close attention to how I do my current job, both interacting with people over the phone and with my coworkers. For the most part, both types of interaction have been smooth, but I've noticed this week that several co-workers have cut me short when I came to them with problems to solve and in both cases I realized I was giving too much information without offering any solutions.

This leads into today’s conversation, which centered around me helping a particular caller in their problem with one of our service providers. Long story short: the client ended up quoting me fairly verbatim in a letter she wrote to the service provider, which I was both amused and annoyed by, as I always phrase my assistance as my personal opinion or such when it’s not within our ministry’s purview. Being a smart fellow, I do what I can to make people’s lives easier, but sometimes it backfires through no fault of my own or the caller’s intent; that’s life.

So I’ll be less helpful, more succinct and try to avoid infodumps in the future, I guess.

It’s still the best job I’ve had, by far. 

March 20 – Trigun!

Today was a long but most fruitful day!

I was in to work early and left late, catching up on processing items and enjoying the day overall. We’re shifting the whole floor around to accommodate departmental mergers, so staff are moving around and there’s a lot of new faces. Thankfully, I don’t have to move out of my Corner Condo!

I spent the evening watching anime with a friend, starting in on a new series: Trigun! Have a gander at the first episode, entitled The Sixty Billion Dollar Man:

The protagonist of this very popular late-90’s anime series is a travelling warrior who, according to story in the first few episodes, gets confused with a legendary warrior who was said to have destroyed entire cities single-handedly. The plot antics that result from this confusion are quite amusing and cover a much deeper storyline which I quickly came to appreciate. More, please!

I also received more feedback from my friend tonight on the entirety of the first four chapters of Book 2… almost all of it extremely positive!

To date, that makes three different writer pals( whose opinions I trust )all of whom have read all of Book 1 as well as up to Chapter 4 of Book 2...  and all of whom enthusiastically want to see more along those same lines…

I can think of no better endorsement for getting down to writing Book 2 again!

March 21 – Gettin’ It Done!

Some days, it all just seem to flow, like today.

Waking up fairly early for the weekend, I met a friend for breakfast and then plowed through the morning’s tasks; before I knew it, it was already time for lunch.

As the weather was excellent( lots of sunshine and only few clouds )I packed up my lovely little laptop and headed down to Moka house, where I ensconced myself and my usual corner of the patio. Donning my Parrot headphones, I submerge myself in some inspiring music and got down to writing.

What a wonderful few hours it turned out to be!

Some days, when the conditions are right, my Muse grabs my hands and runs with it. Today was such a day and I made fantastic progress in plotting out the details of upcoming chapters which I've been having some difficulty focusing on the last few weeks. By the time a chill wind had blown up and it was time to head back, I was feeling drained but very happy with the day’s results.

Thinking about the kinda of ‘trance’ I went into today while writing, I recalled Stephen King saying something of the same a few years ago:

Days like today inspire me to keep at it on those other days when creative thought seems fleeting and far away. Getting to sit down when my mental ducks are in order and flow-writing without distractions - ‘in the zone’ as it’s sometimes called - is heavenly and most satisfying.

It certainly gets the job done!

March 22 - Making Dreams

It seems BC is in for a bit of an economic boom in the next five years.

Not where you’d think, though… it’s all in film and TV production, of the kind near and dear to my heart: scifi and fantasy! Many of the current popular crop of scifi and fantasy shows are being filmed right here in BC, along with production on their F/X and related work. It’s a regular boom-time for Hollywood North, which I’m glad to see!

Ah, Scully and Mulder... where does the time go?

Many of the shows I’ve loved over the years were filmed in BC, like X-Files and Stargate SG1, among others. One of the reasons I like being on this coast is, in part, holding onto the dream of one day writing something that will be filmed here in Canada, along the lines of a scifi epic.

One has to dream, but here in BC, it seems like you’re a little close to them some days…

That’s all for now, folks. Now that Spring has officially arrived as of the 21st, things are going to get pretty busy around here. See you next week!