Random Thoughts

Deprecated

2005-08-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

This blog is now deprecated. Please see this site for my blog.

Moving the blog.

2005-08-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

I don't like relying on a free service for my blog. I'll be damned if I'll have advertising inserted into my comment tracker, or create a nice template just so people can click on my profile and see the ugly default bland colors of blogger.com. I'll be moving this shortly to a new site running (likely) bBlog, an open source blogger that uses PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

I don't watch TV

2005-08-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

I abhor sitting down and channel surfing in an attempt to find something worth watching on television. I love the visual medium; I have a 65" HDTV that is causing problems with finding a new home. We have to make sure it will fit. So, I can't bear to channel surf, yet I buy a $2500 television set? What gives?

Why, it's elementary, son. Digitally recorded media. We have Time Warner for our cable provider down here in North Caroltucky, and they have finally provided a DVR/PVR box that has a functional interface AND does high def. It's not as good as TiVo (I still love you, TiVo) but it does HD and I don't have to purchase a very expensive satellite dish receiver. I already get their Road Runner cable internet, so I believe it is slightly cheaper to have the whole enchilada.

Once a week I sit down for a few minutes and scan through the upcoming HD programming and select things for it to record. Additionally, I obtain copies of television shows off the internet that are only broadcast locally in standard def, or even worse, analog. This means we always have materials to watch aplenty, in high definition, with no annoying commercials.

Anyway, back to the primary topic of the blog: The Novel. It's not the Great American Novel I wish it could be. No, it's science fiction, based on an idea I had a few weeks ago. It has to do with VR, and for now I'm not going to be posting any excerpts. Maybe later, as it matures.

Oh, I've also removed the restriction on the comments so that anyone can post now.

Slacker weekend, productive Monday

2005-08-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

I was enthusiastic about starting into my personal writing challenge last week, but I spent all day Friday just fooling around with my blog code to try to make something attractive. Then, I spent all weekend hanging out with the wife, playing WoW. This is the design I came up with; I hope y'all like it.

It's irritating that HTML doesn't like tabs. What I mean by that is, offline reading material is organized in paragraphs, with the leading paragraph indented a certain amount. All my life I've been reading books and magazines and whatnot in lots of varying formats, but that one fact remained a constant. Well, except for the first line of a chapter, where people often like to get creative. Damn illuminated manuscripts and their frivolity!

Anyway, my point is that if you want to create paragraphs or breaks in thought on the interwebnet, without getting fancy, your primary recourse is an empty line. O the wasted space sacrificed to the gods of HTML who reserved indented lines for lists and preformatted texts and special hackery, like inserting multiple literal spaces into the document.

Woe to the reading habits of millions of websurfers who become further alienated every day from the cozy formats of the pages of pulped wood that comforted their ancestors!

Anyway, that being said, even with a late start and very lazy weekend (I wrote zero words on my novel as of this morning) I am off to a decent beginning. I am encouraged by the wealth of verbage spewing from my fingertips. Even if I'm writing absolute crap, I look at it this way: If only a small percentage of oysters produce a beautiful pearl, it's a good thing I'm collecting a shitload of metaphorical oysters.

PeNoWriMo

2005-08-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Because of an old friend and NaNoWriMo, I'm finally going to force myself to write a novel. In case you aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for "National Novel Writing Month." It is a sort of contest every year which challenges procrastinating writers to write a 50,000 word (175-page) novel. The challenge starts November 1st and runs until midnight of November 30. An excerpt from the site:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

But, instead of waiting a couple months for someone else's arbitrary date, I am challenging myself with my own Personal Novel Writing Month (I just made that up). I am starting today, Friday August 12th, and I will have until Sunday, September 11 to write 50,000 words.

I've attributed part of this self-challenge to a friend because he had the chutzpah to take the NaNoWriMo challenge in 2004. His success has inspired me to do this.

I am the worst procrastinator. If you look up procrastination in the dictionary, you won't find my picture: I haven't gotten around to submitting the updated definition. I have all kinds of free time and I waste it playing games, surfing, and fooling around with hobbyist-level crap on the computer. Can you hear me, Me? I will never be a professional 3D modeler. I will never be an overpaid graphic artist. I will never live in a cube farm programming in any of a dozen computer languages. I will not receive a paycheck for playing World of Warcraft. I will not become the next Richard Garriott or Brad McQuaid.

I might someday, however, be able to make a living writing. So, I am going to stop screwing off on meaningless dilettantism and damn the fucking torpedoes.

That's all, time to get to work.
JKH