The word of the week is tenacity.
May
4 – Riding With Ray
Putting animation and Bradbury
together? Count me in!
Mention anything to do
with the gifted writer and you’ve my full attention, especially if it has to do
with advice or wisdom falling from his own lips.
Such is the case with a
recently-discovered interview with Ray Bradbury: it was made by a journalism
student during a car ride in 1972 as he was being driven to a lecture at a
university – what a find! Here’s a taste:
You can’t think a story — you can’t think, “I shall do a story to improve mankind.” It’s nonsense! All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. And then your public reads you and it begins to gather around…
Enjoy the all-too-brief
thrill of hearing Mr. Bradbury’s eloquently blunt words on life and writing:
In terms of my own writing,
for me it’s a bit awkward: I don’t have a writing room, just the couch in the
main room by the front windows that’s constantly exposed to road noise( eight different sirens zooming by this past Saturday
alone! ). The Parrot Zik headphones help, sure, but it’s still nowhere near
the same as a house well-removed from the road. We’ve just added a work desk in
the main room for such occasions as my sister and I both needing to work, necessitating
the main PC and laptop both being in use.
While not perfect, it again beats
having to retreat to the cramped confines of my bedroom or leaving the
apartment altogether, neither of which is an ideal solution. Ideally, I’d have
my bedroom turned into an office, soundproofed as much as possible so that I could
work in the evenings or early morning in relative calm and quiet.
One day, somewhere, that
may just happen!
May
5 – Spock On Smoking
You can never stop smoking
early enough, or not start at all.
That’s the message that
Leonard Nimoy’s daughter is looking to spread far and wide, about the disease
that killed her father:
I’ve never understood how
people can continue to smoke nowadays, given the vast amounts of information
available over the internet from literally tens of thousands of sources, all
saying the same thing: smoking kills you.
Even thirty years after you quit, as Mr. Nimoy and his
family discovered.
Addiction is real, I know:
I’ve no experience with such things, though I do know that my mental willpower
is uniquely strong, perhaps a reason I’ve never felt the urge to hook myself on
anything. It’s hard to put into words, knowing that some people are doomed from
the first time they take a sip of alcohol or a puff of a cigarette; it sends a
shiver down my spine.
Which is why I write
scifi: there’s hope, that science will develop methods to make such addictions(
and so many other medical horrors still
with us )things of the past, to be studied and examined only in history
books. For science!
I think
Spock, and Mr. Nimoy, would like that vision.
May
6 – I Look Like What?
Offhand comments can hurt,
sometimes.
It’s rare for me to notice
such, though, as I’m not one to pay much attention to what people say about me.
I take a quiet pride in my appearance most days, anyway – except today,
apparently.
 |
| Sam Raimi perfectly captures the look here... |
An offhand comment made by one of my coworkers made me miss a step, which is unusual. I almost always think before I say anything personal to people, well aware that my comments might be misconstrued if they're not constructed with some forethought. In this case,it wasn't an unkind
comment, at least not as far as I could tell, but it's still bothering me slightly this evening:
“Hey Peter! Every time I
see you, you're looking more disheveled.”
Apart from the fact that
they used a word one doesn't normally hear in daily conversation, the comment
on my appearance rankled me. While I don’t spend a lot of time on personal
grooming, admittedly, I do ensure that I am neat and professional while at work;
given my predisposition towards a daily five o'clock shadow, that's not always
easy. Outside of work, I dress casually but again my clothes aren't in disarray
or disrepair and I'm easy on the eye, at least as far as I know.
So from what I can tell, I
think the comment was merely meant to poke fun at how busy it's been this week
and that everyone is feeling a little rushed, including me. Which must have
showed in how quickly I was moving about my tasks and so it made me look a
little less composed.
That's how I'm taking it
and I am moving on. Disheveled or no.
May
7 – Stop the Music!
I've always wondered where
my musical tastes came from, as I didn't really have any major influences on me
as a kid in a musical sense: no immediate family members that were crazy about
certain genre, or friends growing up discussing music for that matter. I
developed my own tastes over time to include classical, mainstream rock, Top
40s and even some jazz. Plus Enya, of course.
Yet I haven't really added
any new music in the last decade, not really.
Sure, I've gone searching
for songs by bands I've almost forgotten or only have a few songs from and want
to add more to my collection from albums I didn't know existed. I mean, we can
all agree that you can never really have too many Tom Petty songs, right?
I've wondered if my
musical tastes have fossilized and now a fascinating study has confirmed that
for most people, your taste in music is sent by the time you're ready for your
first midlife crisis:
So, according to the
study, it seems that my musical tastes are set, for the most part, which isn't
really a bad thing in my eyes. My creativity has only benefited from the music
that I listen to, which I am quite certain is due to the genres that I like. If
I was a metalhead or only liked to listen to pure country-western tracks or
even had a penchant for Kenny G’s tunes, well, I think my writing would be of
an entirely different and admittedly strange order.
I'll take my musical
gentrification if it means that my Muse is happy and productive.
May
8 – Renewals and New Shows!
Holy cow, I’m in love with
an old-school television network!
Weird for me to say that,
I know: TV isn’t exactly my thing.
However, I can't ignore that
a wonderful triumvirate of shows is actually going to make it to television
later this year( or sooner! )thanks
to the folks at ABC. For some
reason, known only to the TV Gods, Fate or another Power, the decision-makers
at the venerable network decided to greenlight a number of fantastic shows for
the upcoming season, three which are simply magnificent choices!
 |
| yes, Yes and YES! |
First off: The
Muppet Show is coming back to TV! Yes, you heard it correctly:
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Scooter and all the rest are coming back to television, decades
after we last saw them in the short-lived Muppets
Tonight show in 1996 that garnered mixed reviews from critics but was still
beloved by millions of fans throughout the world. I can't wait to see what the
Muppets are up to now!
Then there’s Agent Carter, easily the most interesting superhero show on
television in the last 10 years, in my opinion. Sure, there’s the current Flash or Arrow shows, but I find them to be rather dull in their focus on
convoluted plots, tedious character development and otherwise writing down to
an audience eager to see anything like a contemporary superhero show up on TV
these days. It's quite a different case with Agent Carter: by setting it in the 1940s, we avoid modern
entanglements and can examine issues from a historical perspective while limiting
the technical doodadery of our internet age. I love alternate history and want
to see more of Agent Carter soon!
Finally, there's Galavant! When I first heard about the show, I had no idea that a medieval
musical comedy could work, let alone appeal to me on multiple levels so that I
can't help but want to watch it. I rarely watch musicals, as the singing and
dancing doesn't usually draw me into the story; I simply appreciate them for
the technical prowess that the performers demonstrate and wait for the rest of
the show to happen when they're done. Not so with Galavant: musical numbers are so well-written that it's almost painful
not to pay close attention to every lilting word. Galavant!
May
9 – Weekend Tech Tinkering
Any non-g33ky types can skip this entry, it’s rather techy!
What are weekends for,
save to catch up on waiting projects?
In my case today, I
managed to tricky technical things, both of which were applied to my new ASUS
tablet: it’s now rooted and unlocked and seems to still be working flawlessly!
*cue applause*
Seriously, it's no small
feat to be able to do both of those things one day when you're really new at it
like I am. Sure, I know how to research, find technical guidance on the process
and so on, but when there is a very real possibility that if I made a mistake
I'd end up with a dead device, it does tend to put things into perspective a
bit about being sure of one's processes.
Now that I have my tablet
open for modification, I'll be tinkering with it over the next few months.
Being rooted and unlocked means that I can do whatever I want with the tablets
software, modifying any aspect of it from the most minor things like the little
animation when it boots to completely replacing the operating system with
another one of my choosing. Given that it's an older tablet hailing from 2012,
I'll probably end up replacing its OS with a leaner one such as Cyanogen 12, just to wring the maximum
amount of performance out of the tablet that I can.
I'll probably end up
messing around with my old Samsung phone to do the same thing. Maybe I can
repurpose it into something useful, like a BOINC terminal, security camera or
even donated to help save the rain forest - I really like the last option, as
it helps make our planet a better place.
All in all, my current tax
situation is looking rather rosy. I'll have a new Pebble Time in a month or so, the OnePlus One phone is doing wonderfully as my daily phone, my
computers are all working just fine (for
the most part)and I may even have an actual Lockitron before the end of the year. I'm spending very little time
trying to repair things on a daily basis, which is great!
What I'm really saying is
that my tech is working for me this year, not the other way around.
May
10 – Mumm Memories
It’s Mother’s Day today, a
good time to reflect.
But comes to family, I
know that I've been pretty lucky. My parents have never even gave thought to
breaking up for any reason, providing a sense of stability to my life and my
sisters that too few people experience. Seeing the commitment that my parents
have for each other, I'm reminded about everything that I've been given,
especially from my mumm.
It's funny, but few people
think about exactly how much effort goes into raising a child. Some kids are
handful, while others practically change their own diapers; I think I fell into
the middle group, but I know that I made my mom proud far more often then I
made her frown.
For instilling in me a
love of reading, I'll forever be grateful to her. For that reason, for Mother's
Day today, I created this for her:
 |
| A lot of love went into this, not just the writing. |
There are many kinds of
mothers out there in the world today. Some good, some bad, some indifference
and some who aren't with us anymore. For me, right now, I am grateful on so
many levels that I have the mother I do and that she's been able to be there
for my entire life, helping and guiding me when needed. I have a lot of work
left to do on my books and she's one of the main reasons that I've accomplished
as much as I have to date.
Thanks, Mumm! Love ya!
That's all I have this week; it's been a busy time at work and
I'm rather tired by the time I get home. I do hope that new staff who've been
added can help shift some of the workload around, so my immediate team is going
to be short two people when another person moves on to another position in a
month or so. Such is government life: you're always in transit between one
position and the next if you're looking to advance and I can't begrudge anyone
wanting to move forward with a career, especially in the workplace that
encourages that. I'm glad to be part of it, dizzy or no.
