Following Funds, Fitting in Friends, and Fantastic Feedback

The word of the week is obstinate.

Oct 16 – Beastly Ships?

Why not start out the week with something cool, like spaceships?

In fact, why not step things up, with ships from Star Wars... redrawn as monsters???

Perfect for Halloween coming up!

I just love this art: it plays with the familiar ships, giving a fun and fresh life to designs that I've liked since I was a kid. I'd certainly watch an animated short with these designs, though getting Disney's blessings for the endeavor might be a tad tricky. 

Still, there's always hope... which is the message of Star Wars, after all!

Oct 17 – Follow The Money: 45

Here's something you may not know about the current US Prez:

Who's funding him?

It's a convoluted trail to follow, strangely enough, that leads to one of the richest men on the planet... who got that way via huge investments in fossil fuels.

So it's no coincidence that 45 is really, really interested in repealing laws that restrict that sort of industry, because it puts money both in his and his benefactor's pockets. Follow the money, as they say.

A recent article from The New Yorker dives deep into the story of 45's rise to power through fossil funds, but if you don't want to read the full scoop, here's a primer on how the Orange One came to power riding on political back-actors:

I'm posting this today because it confirms just how dishonest and deadly Donald is for the USA, our nearest and best neighbour: he's solely interested in dollar signs, and will ride the US down in flames if it means he can jump off at the last minute with a golden parachute. 45's a psychopath, and he's there for another three years, it seems.

Horrifying.

Oct 18 – New Home Designs

I'm still working on the dream of getting a Tiny Home for my lady and I here in Victoria, sometime in the next five years.

I've gone over many types of plans for tiny homes, and I'll talk about my favorite design soon in an upcoming blog post. You can even order quite a few tiny homes on Amazon now, and there's quite a few of them available, though I'm not thrilled with any of the designs: they all seem like summer cabins, at best.

However, just this week I found several new companies in Canada who are selling 'container homes' for extremely reasonable prices, once that don't look at all like they've been slapped together at of steel and particle board.

One company in particular, HonoMobo, offers designs incorporating up to four containers that have up to three bedrooms inside, making for quite the spacious home for far less than the current Victoria market value of over $750,000 CAN for the same number of bedrooms inside the city limits - which is crazy. 

Best of all, these particular homes qualify 100% for a regular mortgage, according to HonoMobo! Have a look:

Having a second room for a workspace / office is a MUST!

Oct 19 – Homeless Escape

In my city, the homeless are everywhere, mainly because they can stay here year-round outside due to the weather, unlike most every other city in Canada.

Last year, I blogged a few times about the InTent City camp that sprang up on federal courthouse land and remained for over year until summer 2016 when it was finally dismantled. I walked past the twice a day to and from work, and I saw many things that made me think, but in the end the take away for me was that there's no 'one-size-fits-all' solution for the homeless here in Victoria. But solutions have to be found, as InTent City cost taxpayers $184,000 each month that it remained on the courthouse grounds, totaling several million dollars in all.

Understanding the many problems that homelessness brings with it is the first step, I think, and the CDC recently did a story on a project designed to bring awareness to the public of what those barriers are:

Oct 20 – FEEDBACK!!!

Sometimes, I just can't believe my good luck...

Earlier this year, a friend of a friend moved to Victoria from Ontario, and though we'd connected online through FBook, we'd not managed to meet up in person. However, he did ask about reading the latest draft of my novel to give his feedback, and promised to fill in my multi-page questionnaire diligently, so I was hopeful that I'd get a few solid tidbits from him to tweak my draft with.

HOO-BOY, did he deliver, and in SPADES!

Incredibly, he wrote up nearly 10,000 words of feedback on my recent draft, and almost every word of it is spot-on in terms of context and the reasoning behind the comments, as well as suggestions as to where to go with it - and ALL of it delivered in a positive, constructive way along with praise for the quality of my book.

I was stunned: it's by far the most concise-per-page feedback I've received to date, which I suspect is because my friend was unfamiliar with my book... but being a scifi fan, and a programmer, he dug in with gusto to comment chapter-by-chapter. My critique group has been wonderful in the last 5 years in their ability to deliver excellent feedback to date, and today my new friend did the same in the space of a few week's reading time... an AMAZING feat!

To be honest, I'm now looking at least doing a Draft 4.5, if not a full revision, given the scope and detail of his notes. I'll be discussing most of the major points with my critique group in a few days, to see if they agree as they're most familiar with my draft, but my head is reeling...

Wowsers.

Oct 21 – MORE FEEDBACK!!!

After another busy morning, it was time to meet my feedback friend again.

We went to Sookjai, on Fort Street, which at this time of day / week is almost always uncrowded... and it held true to form, so we were easily able to converse over some tasty Thai food.

Yesterday, we left off about halfway through the chapter-by-chapter feedback, having put to bed all the nitty-gritty questions and details asked for in my Questionnaire; that alone had a ton of back-and-forth that left me smiling all last night!

Going over the later chapters, much of what came up was plot-related, and also tied into the character's motivations, which my friend had zeroed in on with laser-accuracy: something that I've been too close to the work to do over the years. 

In total, we spent more than five hours yesterday and today discussing my novel, with my taking copious notes atop his already-detailed notes to ensure I didn't miss a thing as my mind raced with the possibilities - which we then worked over.

I'm going to be compiling his suggestions over the next few weeks, and then setting aside my initial re-work of my second book to dive back into the first - I can't let an opportunity like this slip away, when it's been handed to me on a silver platter!

It's even more work, but the end result will be a stunning book indeed in early 2018!

BONUS: I spent the VERY rainy evening with my lady and a couple of friends in Langford, playing boardgames! We played a few rounds each of Dragonwood and Seven Dragons, so it was a fire-breather of a night - fun!

Oct 22 – Denouement

Since it's been quite a week of weighty subjects, I thought I'd take a break.

How about a spot about books?

One issue with my wanting to live in a Tiny House is to find space for the nearly 2,000 books I own, a not-inconsiderable number in terms of the space they take up. In my first apartment here in Victoria, I had a total of 13 bookshelves of various sizes, 7 of which were completely devoted to my books... and the number's grown since then. Fitting all of that into a 20' x 10' space will be a challenge, I know, but I won't go through life with a pared-down library - I can't.

It seems quite a few authors feel the same way.

There's some pretty extreme examples of famous book hoarders out there, whose collections dwarf my own... but since they're famous AND rich, it's not an issue. Here's Neil Gaiman's basement library, and he's not even in the Top 10 Hoarders listed above( Hemingway is, and he only had 9,000 books in his collection ):

I'll admit, I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point. Depending on the property we find, we might end up having a 'book shack' to keep most of them. It'd be a writing space separate from the main house, insulated and quiet, where my lady and I can retreat to read or write, away from the bustle of the world:

Sooo.... cozy....

That way, we can keep our books close, but not feel crowded by them; perfect!

Well, I'm flying high from those two days of feedback - wow! I should say that my core seems to have firmed up, as I'm sitting and moving around pretty much normally now, though I am using a heating pad a few times a day to ensure my abs and deeper core muscles stay relaxed. My right leg's still tweaking me a few times a week, depending on how long I've been sitting, so that's something to work on, but I went swimming again this week and was just fine, having stretched before and afterwards without overdoing things. Onwards into another fine week, with lots to do in a day again - hooray!

Thanksgiving, Tech Updates and Treehouses

The word of the week is obstinate.
 
Oct 9 – Thanksgiving

A lovely, low-key day for everyone this year.

My lady and I joined my sister and parents at their place in the early afternoon today, and we were glad to have a Monday off to spend with family.

While my sister and mom got things ready to eat, my lady and I helped with other needed tasks around the apartment, as neither my dad or mom are very mobile at the moment: he injured himself at work a few weeks ago and is off on WCB( thank-you Canada! )while my mom's muscles have become weaker with age, causing her difficulties most days. It was a delicious meal thanks to my sister, who prepared many of the veggies, and my mom who made the stuffing and bought the deliciously moist turkey breast, most of which we didn't finish and saved for Christmas - yum again in a few months!

Spending time with my family is vitally important to me; they're the major reason why I decided to move to Victoria nearly ten years ago. Neither my sister nor I have to travel to see our parents, as many families do when it comes to holidays; we're all right here within a short drive of each other.

Which means I'm quite thankful, in many ways, to live where and when I do.

Oct 10 – Climate and Fossil Fuels

Let's hope this is the start of a trend.

Victoria has joined a growing list ofcities suing the fossil fuel industry to recover costs associated with manmade climate change. Much like the health industry sued Big Tobacco for related costs, this looks positive for helping combat the problems that fossil fuel interests helped to create, and knew about for years yet kept quiet while simultaneously funding climate change denial groups to the tune of $5 million USD / year for the last two decades.

One of the difficulties is the fossilized mindset of so many people when it comes to acknowledging that climate change is happening, and humanity is the cause. Whether it's a lack of scientific understanding, trust in scientists, or other factors, there are psychological factors at play that make it extremely hard for some people to accept the evidence being presented, and indeed fight against it vehemently instead, flying in the face of logic, reason and the global scientific community.

Below is a great TED Talk about how this mindset comes about, and what can be done about it when you're faced with someone who's in denial about climate change:

Oct 11 – Amazing News!

One of my favourite shows is coming back to the airwaves!

Well, it'll be available online, but that's just semantics: Amazing Stories creator Steven Spielberg has struck a deal with Apple to create the new series to be aired on Apple's fledgling online media distribution network.

I loved Amazing Stories, the show, as well as the original magazine, and it's encouraging to see that a well-written ahead-of-its-time show like AS is going to get a new lease on life in the modern age, rescued from the obscurity of VHS tapes.

Oct 12 – Dang it, Glowforge...

An email from GlowForge arrived unexpectedly today!

In it was a thorough update on where the production is at, as well as the expected shipping dates - AT LAST! Based on when my order was placed, here's when it's most likely going to leave the Seattle factory:

I've no idea why I have two listings, but hey: it's progress!

So, the above is a bit of a bummer, as from the info in the last update, I was expecting to see the GlowForge ship by October 31st 2017. That meant the vacation I've booked for the third week of November 2017 would have let my lady and I head over the border to pick up the unit... but that's scotched now, sadly.

Meh. At least there's a high-likelihood SHIPPING date now, and for that I'm grateful, as I can now better plan getting my business started when my unit's here at last. Uncertainty means unknown priority, and now I can adjust my weekly time budget accordingly.

It means more work ahead, but that's to be expected.

Oct 13 – Comics!

One of the things I miss most about not reading the newspaper are the comics.

The daily comics were a brief pleasure, but I really lived for the Sunday Comics, when everything came to life in full colour, especially back when colour print was a luxury - hence only seeing them once a week.

I've managed to somewhat scratch that itch for the last few years, after finding a link to The Toronto Star, which is the paper I used to read for many years in Ontario. Most online comics sites push ads heavily unless you go Premium, which is why I've been reluctant to use them, but the Star is free - though its selection is somewhat limited.

Here's one of my fave comics, starring Lucky Eddy, rather appropriate given today's date:

Oct 14 – Star Wars Rebels

On to the next good show...

My downtime is limited these days, but I've been focusing it when I do have an hour or two to devote to relaxation: why not spend it wisely, instead of mindlessly?

As such, I've been watching shows and movies I've been unable to see the last few years, either because they were on TV( I don't have cable )or hard to find online( I don't do much of that anyway )and I certainly can't budget buying too much on DVD, let alone Blu-Ray, even if I try to find them used.

All the same, I've managed to source a few on my list lately, and one of them is Star Wars: Rebels, of which I caught the first couple of episodes when it debuted almost exactly 3 years ago in 2014. The story is solid, the animate excellent and I've really enjoyed following the characters along in their adventures.

Oct 15 – Treehouse Office?

Oh, what a great place to work...

Microsoft recently unveiled the first of three 'treehouse office spaces' that are designed to help their employees stat creative and happy - not hard to do, when you've got a workspace like this:

I've always loved treehouses, but never had one as a kid as none of the trees on our properties would hold one - dang. I played in a few here and there growing up, but they were always an elusive beast, and remain so in my mind to this day.

One day, with a place of my own, a treehouse-reading-writing space sounds perfect:

That's all I've got for this week; I'm moving around of a day with only some discomfort and no pain in my core muscles or legs, which is fantastic! More on that next week - busy schedule ahead for the fall!

Singer Sadness, Steam Scifi and Scarlet Pimpernels

The word of the week is eponymous.

Oct 2 – Tom Petty

Damn it 2017, stop breaking my heart... how could Tom Petty leave us today, at just 66?

Ever since I first saw the video for Running Down a Dream in 1989, I was hooked on Tom Petty: here was imagination and talent rolled into a singer whose music was more ballad than brash, and spoke to you, instead of trying to overpower you.

Tom Petty is one of the few artists whose albums I've collected over the years, instead of just a song here and there, because almost every song speaks to me in some way on many levels. No matter where I've been in my life, there's been a Tom Petty song to match me step by step, and I've loved the synchronicity of it.

And if he did have to leave us, he did it in style, having just concluded his 40th Anniversary Tour on September 23rd... which fits perfectly with his understated style.

Rest well, Gentleman Tom: we'll see you on the flipside.

Oct 3 – Gunz

The tragedy this week in Las Vegas stunned the world, but is it enough?

Time and again, the USA suffers at the hands of those who insist firearms preserve their freedom, but at the cost of tens of thousands of lives a year. How did the US go from millions owning hunting rifles to tens of millions owning handguns and assault weapons? This video below shows how the NRA decided to buy itself another century of life by cashing in on the trade of death by firearm:

Oct 4 – It Frees You

This is how writing can free you from your past.

This is something that my favourite writer, J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame, wrote about where he came from and how he got to where he is now. It's a truly powerful read, and informative as to his depth as a writer:

Oct 5 – OGRE!

Aha! I didn't know that this game existed, and today's the release day!

Ogre, a game of futuristic scifi ground combat, first came on the scene in 1977 and centers around a giant cybernetic nuclear-armed tank called an OGRE:

Created by Steve Jackson Games( who also did Car Wars! ), Ogre always intrigued me but I was never able to get anyone interested in playing it with me back in the day, sadly. I tried out the Ogre PC game released in 1986 and it was so damned hard that I stopped, so I left it at that. However, I've had this on my wall since I first spotted it in 1988:

Now that an updated version of Ogre is out for modern PC's, I'll keep an eye on it to see if I can snag it in a Steam Sale in 2018; since it's only a curiosity for me, I don't want to blow $30 at full price, especially as it was a bonus unlock from a HUGE 2012 Kickstarter and they could have released it for $10 while still making a tidy profit:

All in all, I'm looking forward to trying it out sometime in 2018!

Oct 6 – Task Sorting and BBC

What to do with a 4-day weekend? Lots, as it turns out.

I took a few hours today to get a few tech things working around my place again, including both my little Acer 'backup box' for data redundancy as well as my 'Blue Frankenstein' media server. While both are now back in service, I'm going to be replacing the Acer's OS with a new one( like FreeNAS )once I figure out how to get all my terabytes of old data OFF the machine safely. Right now it's looking like I'll have to copy them manually, which isn't really the best solution timewise.

As well, I dived into getting some things written up for my novels, solidifying some notes into better documents and generally making good use of my time.

In the evening, my sister and I caught up on a few episodes of Hidden Houses, a show that explores some of the grand centuries-old homes of Wales in the UK. Both of us have been pretty busy lately, so it was nice to make time to hang out while enjoying a show we both liked, having grown up watching many similar BBC and PBS shows on TV when we were kids.

Plus, y'know, castles are cool!

Oct 7 – La Revolution!

Today was all about waiting for a party...

It was a friend of mine's birthday, and as she's a creative sort, she decided to have a dinner party with this as the theme at the incomparable Venus Sophia this evening:

The year is 1793, and a fête is happening at the Rue du ---. You have been invited for cards, accomplishments, social dance, and a dinner with the crême of society. However, at this party are a number of revolutionaries mixed in with the nobility. The revolutionaries are trying to tear down the old world with Mam'zelle la Guillotine, executing any nobles (or noble sympathizers) that stand in the way of their dream of a freer and more equal France. There is hope despite the Reign of Terror, as the daring Scarlet Pimpernel and his enigmatic League have been smuggling the condemned out of France and undermining the Revolutionaries' bloodlust.

Our props and prep were thorough!!!

My lady and I had a great time, and I was the center of the show, if I do say so myself! By sheer chance, I picked the role-packet of a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose mission was to save as many Innocents as possible - so I got to play an undercover hero! My lady, as I discovered at the end of the game, played the role of a Corrupt Noble, who had to escape France somehow...

It was like we were in another time and place for hours... delightful!

To my delight, I was able to slip into my role perfectly, using the cover of being a native French wine merchant. This allowed me to shape the conversations using wine as a metaphor for freedom, and kept those who were seeking to catch members of the League off-balance due to my affability and repeated affirmations that "all I was interested in was wine, so I'll sell to anyone!" and it worked! I did have one bad moment where someone stepped forward to Arrest me( no idea what tipped him off; perhaps he spotted me assembling Rescue Map parts? )but as it happened I didn't have my Passport on me, which I told him... and it worked! I made it through to the end of the game without suspicion, and through my efforts in leading the other members of the League, all but two players were saved from Execution by the Revolutionaries, with the final score 29-16 in favour of the League - success!

It was a grand evening, and while I was tired after only 2 hours of gentle verbal sparring, it was exhilarating to know that I'd played a central role in the game.

Oct 8 – The Doctor!

While out today with my lady, I found this gem at Borden Books:

When I was a kid, I loved the Mr. Men and Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves, full of fun and colourful characters whom children could easily relate to. They lived in a world that was colourful and fun, a depiction of adults with all of the positives and few of the negatives that has stuck with me to this day.

Seeing the book above, I became curious, and discovered that there's a new series of Mr. Men and Little Miss books coming out right now, in the fall of 2017. They look hilarious:

Finding things like this feeds the child in me, and importantly does so without relying totally on nostalgia: it's important to keep moving into the future, but you're allowed to do so if you bring those things from the past that make you stronger... or happier. 

Good words to live by. 

This week was one of the most normal I've had this year: get up, go to work, come home and do what I need to, without any real health distractions. It was wonderful, and I look forward to repeating it indefinitely until I no longer have to work, but can just write and live my life as I see fit, for the future...