2009-09-23

A little bit of writing on the side…

Filed under: Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 02:54

I got to write some and it was wonderful. Just a few thousand words, plus mowing the lawn, making dinner, and chasing the dog around the house, but still… I got to write.

My Father’s Bike is doing much better when I found a voice for it. I’m also doing much better now that I have a goal in mind. I started this project with the intent of a gift for my father, but that wasn’t enough. I needed something a bit more and I think I found it. I just hope I can pull it off and not sound like an ass.

… or having him going through the book hating every word.

2009-09-22

A lovely night of walking

Filed under: Health,Programming,Writing — Tags: , , , , — D. Moonfire @ 02:50

Today, I learned that Inigo really, really likes frogs. I went to Weight Watchers (lost 0.3 kg which negates half of the last two weeks) and managed to only stick my foot in my mouth once. Then, getting home an hour later than normal, I decided that as much as I wanted to play on the computer, I’d go on a walk.

One and a half hours later, I’m tired, Inigo is tired and staring hopefully at every. single. dark. spot. on the trail hoping it is a frog. I managed to walk just under four miles, which isn’t too bad. I wasn’t in a hurry or anything.

I also enjoyed thinking about My Father’s Bike, which is the novel-like thing I’m working on. I finally sat down and got a chapter outline set up for the thing and I’m a bit happier about it.

Didn’t do much beyond thinking about it though, I’m planning that for tomorrow. Tonight, I only had an hour or so, so I decided to mess around with a Emacs major mode for ASH, the scripting language used by KoLmafia. Kind of fun, but still a challenge. And it gave me some new insights on how to improve csharp-mode, which is one of those things I really need to polish up a bit more.

2009-09-10

Getting up to speed

Filed under: Education,Writing — Tags: , — D. Moonfire @ 03:19

I miss my vacation already. I had to plan out the rest of my vacation days yesterday. I went with the one day every couple weeks which means I spammed my coworkers with seven vacation notices in one shot. Hopefully, won’t be a problem, but I couldn’t figure out a better way of doing it.

Worked a bit on college. Found out I only have two weeks of this class which means I need to get my petition out soon, so that’s going to be my priority first thing this weekend. Or tomorrow, depending on energy levels. I need to get some stuff up at work.

Sadly, added 0.3 kg to my weight from this weekend. I made… poor decisions both before and after the weigh-in, which I’m not proud of. A moment of weakness, I know, but it gets so frustrating when I spend dozens of hours doing rather heavy activity to gain weight. I also suspect that any weight I did lose got negated by the liters of diet coke for the all-nighter drive home.

Helped a co-worker over a problem in his code. But, I’m having one of those at home, trying to figure out something that should be simple.

But, ended up working on My Father’s Bike at the cabin. Not sure how it is going to work out, nor the exact tone of the story, but I noticed I stole an idea from Mark Henry. The footnotes idea, since it seems like an absolutely great way of having a sarcastic commentary to my writing. Still not sure, but I’m enjoying it right now.

2007-12-29

Looking Back and Forward from 2007 to 2008

Filed under: Education,Family,Games,Graphics,Writing — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — D. Moonfire @ 19:15

Hard to believe I’ve been blogging for two years now. I started this journal about a month after my other, in-character one. Originally, it was just there to comment on friends, but I started posting one or two things on occasion. Now, as my brother said, “I’m a pretty good blogger.” Or at least I do it fairly consistently and I’ve gotten a few compliments on letting everyone in on the trials and joys of my life.

This year is probably the year I started to really blogging on two of my major themes of life: writing and programming. I will, of course, blame the the other Dylan for getting me into writing about writing. After meeting with him at GenCon 2006, it really pushed me to finally take that step toward trying to be a “real” writer again instead of just hanging my hat on my one relatively minor success. I’ve been a lot of really cool writers in this last year and I’m pretty thankful for making that step. Now, I just have to follow their footsteps and get published again. On the programming/gaming side, I haven’t really done much with networking, but I blog about it almost as much as my writing. Even if I occasionally give “too technical” details as more than one said. Oh well, just who I am.

The end of the year is the time when I look at my major projects for the year. I plan them ahead of time, sometimes even figure out when I’ll work on it, but mainly it is a framework for my personal projects throughout the year. I also like to remember what I have succeeded at.

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2007-12-04

My Father

Filed under: Family,Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 20:55

I talked to my father this weekend. It was actually kind of strange. Things are being shuffled in his life and also in mine, so we decided to wipe some of the bad blood between us clean and just move forward. It was kind of nice and also kind of scary. I will admit, I’ve never felt like I was close to him, but then he said that he could “always talk to me” because we had so much in common. I mean, I know that, that was the entire point of me writing My Father’s Bike, but it never really hit me before that time that I’m still in that book. Maybe the reason I couldn’t finish it is because I haven’t found the end in my own life?

So, from famine to flood, I’m going to be seeing him twice in the next month. Once just for dinner and to talk, then for the holidays. We even came up with a shopping list for everyone but me (apparently I want not much in the price range is spending).

But, it’s still nice and makes me want to finish My Father’s Bike by next year.

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)
CuteGod 0.3.0 (2 of 10 tasks)

2007-06-29

Futurama made me cry

Filed under: Writing — Tags: , , — D. Moonfire @ 15:12

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal: (1 / 26 weeks)
Muddy Reflections Reading: (1 / 26 weeks)
Summer Biking: (91.2 / 400 km)

I love Futurama. I find the show pretty good, but last night, I found an episode that made me cry. It was about Fry’s loved dog. The episode shows how the dog loved him, but when he finds out that it lived 12 years after he was frozen, he decides it had a good life and didn’t need to be raised from the dead. Up to that point, I was enjoying the show though it wasn’t my favorite. It was the scene where they show the dog waiting 12 years for Fry to return that brought tears to my eyes. I started crying, not because I remember Dante, but because it really brought me sorrow. Even when I tried to explain it to Fluffy, I started crying again.

That episode allow killed my programming for the night. I got next to no progress on Sprite3, despite my best efforts. I went to bed feeling impotent, sad, and basically useless. I know that I’ll get it, and the deadline is completely arbitrary, but I wanted to get drag and drop done last night. Maybe tonight, though I suspect Fluffy is going to want some attention (instead of letting me obsess about a program library).

I’m pulling My Father’s Bike off the progress list. I think that it needs to sit for a few months before I get around to it again. It isn’t because of last night, but I realize that something “isn’t right” and I just need to let it go for a while and come back to it, maybe I’ll find my voice again on that. After the CuteGod/4E6 stuff, I’ll start up the next one.

2007-06-25

Weekend Stuff

Filed under: Family,Games,Technology,Writing — Tags: , , , — D. Moonfire @ 18:44

» My Father’s Bike: 0.714 (28,567 / 40,000 words)
» Wind, Bear, and Moon Query: 0.000 (0 / 26 weeks)
» Summer Biking: 0.184 (73.4 / 400 km)

Forgot to grab the meterage from my bike computer, but I did get some kilometers in on Friday. This weekend, Fluffy was in Iowa and fightertype and uteck were enjoying their anniversary weekend, so I was babysitting four dogs, including one who was senile and one who is still learning the joys of bladder control. Hasn’t gotten there yet, but it is really hard to get anything done when you are watching that many dogs.

I did get some writing on My Father’s Bike but I’m getting more and more unhappy with it as a whole. It doesn’t really feel… fully formed, I guess is a way of saying it. I might be just letting it drift a bit more while I work on CuteGod for a little bit. If I’m still having trouble writing it by the end of June, I’ll just start up my next writing project, which is fully-formed and ready to be written.

Finished up another round of Debian packaging for XSP and mod_mono. Nice to get some of my “support my community” projects done. Speaking of community, I also got much further along in my Exalted XML Schema project. I may have at least one person who thinks it is a good idea. Now to get Anathema to import/export and maybe get someone to write a charm editor. Well, its a dream at least.

Gaming was pretty fun. Characters almost died, heroic rescues were enacted. Traps were there and I think I got the right mix of dangerous and solvable. Most of the time, they are either “squish, you are dead!” or “I’m sorry, could you pretend to even be hampered by it?” Characters survived, but it was close. I like that actually. Having a threat of danger actually in the game instead of deus ex machima, which I’m guilty of, and reasonable attempts to save members. We did have a brief discussion about money (another blog entry coming up) and I think fightertype and I came up with an alternative.

And here are some picture of Inigo, for those who like to look at puppies:

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2007-06-19

The Last 24 Hours

Filed under: Games,Programming,Writing — Tags: , , , , , — D. Moonfire @ 16:37

» My Father’s Bike: 0.570 (22,814 / 40,000 words)
» Wind, Bear, and Moon Edited: 1.000 (4 / 4 weeks until 2007-06-15)
» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.333 (4 / 12 weeks until 2007-08-10)
» Summer Biking: 0.184 (73.4 / 400 km)

Another day without actual writing. Taking care of the tribble today since Fluffy is downtown babysitting. Hard work, since I usually lose myself during the day, but with Inigo, I have to pay attention every hour to let him out. Not that he actually wants to be let out, apparently. I was just told to let him out.

Since I decided I wanted to write a game to distract me from My Father’s Bike, I had all these ideas. Then I found the CuteGod Prototyping Challenge which is actually a cute idea. This guy creates game art and gives it away for free (damn impressive). He also gave a prototype idea for using his tiles with a little minicontest. It actually looks like a reasonable thing to do in a couple of days (weeks in reality) and would be a nice little “I did this.” I had a bit of trouble sleeping working on ideas for the game. I think I’ll do it since 4E6 hasn’t started yet. After gaming, of course. That will take precedence this weekend.

I’m getting back Wind, Bear, and Moon today. I’m also going to be creating the outlines for the next four books as part of my “series package” I’m going to be sending out as part of the proposal. I think I have a solid round of plots, well within my writing ability. The editor gave me a nice comment:

You did a super job.

I just hope it translates into publishers thinking the same thing. :) But, I think that submission is going out by Sunday and then I’ll be chewing on Inigo’s nails until I get a response. I’m also going to send out a letter to the Muddy Reflections query basically saying its a repeat query, but with proper postage. Since I figured I only have a small percentage change of getting published there (*pout*), it shouldn’t affect it significantly. Or, at least I really hope they love it, sent me a response, and then I look like an idiot for asking for another response.

I also worked on the XSD for Exalted over on patternspider.net. It seems like I’m actually getting some good progress and I can only hope that what I’m producing is actually helpful.

Found an interesting, for-sale knitting pattern: Viking Hats for Babies. I know there are a couple knitters who read my blog, so I figured I’d mention it.

2007-06-14

Computers and Writing and Distance

Filed under: Writing — Tags: , , , , — D. Moonfire @ 20:09

» My Father’s Bike: 0.570 (22,814 / 40,000 words)
» Wind, Bear, and Moon Edited: 0.750 (3 / 4 weeks until 2007-06-15)
» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.250 (9 / 12 weeks until 2007-08-10)
» Summer Biking: 0.184 (73.4 / 400 km)

Apparently, I can’t judge distance. :) What I thought was 0.2 km to and from the gym on the bike was really 2.3 km for both ways. Oops, kind of off on that one. Distance always seems off when I’m on a bike. At the gym last night, which made me miserable as normal, I covered the distance I ran on the treadmill in 30 minutes in 6 minutes on a bike. At instead of putzing along at 3.5 miles per hour (they won’t do metric, I tried), I could easily crank it up to level 8-9 on the bike and still cruised alone. I must be better at the bike. Though, one one of the weight machines, I could easily do 50 kg which is just damn cool for an upper body exercise.

I worked out, can’t you tell?

My back bike wheel is wobbling a lot. I think it is one of the spokes, which I know how to fix, just don’t have the tools for it. So, either I spend $50 for a repair job at the local bike place or $40 for a bunch of tools to fix it. One gets it fixed now, one gets it fixed in a week.

I decided that since I’m having trouble with My Father’s Bike, I would see if I could even out my load with a computer project. 4E6 hasn’t started yet, but I have a bunch of little library things, Debian, and the like that I should work on. I really want to write something else, maybe Case of the Morning Zombies so I can stop feeling guilty reading Fangs, Fur, Fey, or Peg and Sue in Outer Space (which may have a subtitle of “Why Married Couples Shouldn’t Get Lost in Space”) just because it is on my list. But, if I start a new writing project, I will never finish MFB. Since I really want to finish MFB, I’m gonna just do some computer stuff instead.

2007-06-08

Revisions to Expectations

Filed under: Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 01:57

I still can’t help feeling like My Father’s Bike is somehow wrong. I don’t know if he would actually appreciate that I’m writing it, since it is something for my father, or that I’m trying to do something thirty years too soon. I’m going to stick with it for another month or so and see if I feel better. I’m also going to downgrade my word count a bit to 40k words since that is actually doable where I’m utterly convinced that 80k words is not at this point. Fortunately, this isn’t a fantasy novel or even fiction but something else. The next one will be easier for me to write, I swear to myself.

» My Father’s Bike: 0.570 (22,814 / 40,000 words)
» Wind, Bear, and Moon Edited: 0.500 (2 / 4 weeks until 2007-06-15)
» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.167 (10 / 12 weeks until 2007-08-10)
» Summer Biking: 0.162 (64.8 / 400 km)

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