Work

Things Moving Forward

2023-05-01T05:00:00Z

I found that sometimes listing what is bothering me lets me concentrate on easing those roadblocks. As such, my obligations post helped a lot with getting things done or at least letting me get a better handle on it.

Work has eased up a little, but mostly I'm accepting what is changed (baring getting frustrated in an end-of-day Friday meeting). I also have a longer term plan to handle that, so I have plans which helps with my anxiety.
I went through two rounds of formatting Randy's book. Once I get the updated cover and make changes, I'll have the proof out by end of May.
I caught on my monthly writing obligations. Since May just started, that means another 10k words is thrown on the stack, but at least I'm not in arrears.
Rewrote a couple chapters of the commission to get over my roadblock. This was a case that my gut feeling said what I had was wrong, it just took me a while to figure out “what” was wrong so I could fix it.

Related to that, I also set up a now page on my site. It is hooked up to a different repository (no surprise there) which is easily editable on my phone using Git Journal. That way, I can add and remove things as I need and it gives me a little bit of self-accountability.

Household

On the household side, there were also a lot of ups and down.

I was missing a piece to put the trampoline up for Child.1. Sadly, Sports Power has terrible customer service and I couldn't find a replacement except on eBay. After a week of waiting for it to show up, I found that they sent me the wrong kit. So now I'm waiting for them to find out what happened and hopefully give me the correct pieces to fix the trampoline. Otherwise, I'm not sure how to fix it.

On Saturday, I finally got a set of grinding wheels to repair the damage from the tiling. But when I got it down on my in-laws, I couldn't find the Dremel to use said wheels. So now I'm looking for that with no idea where it is.

Going home, I decided to fix the kitchen light because the ballast went out. I got LED replacement bulbs, but then I needed just a little length of wire. But my tools were down at my in-laws so I got stymied. Fortunately, when the kids came home, they brought it back and I spent a half hour getting the lights working again. So at least one out of three isn't bad?

Allegro

Outside of that, sending Allegro through the writing group has been encouraging. It is nice when everyone says its fantastic, they read through it, or forgot to edit. At least for the ego. They also give feedback and requests. Some I can't really do but there are others that I follow my basic rule:

One person is an opinion. Two is a suggestion. Twelve means it's wrong.

Related to that, someone I didn't know (always important) started to read the novel after reading about it on Gemini and gave feedback. Much of it has been very useful plus I found a bug with Fedran's generation. More specifically, the Git repositories linked to the individual stories are not automatically made public. Once I get back to the maintenance CLI for Fedran, that will be the first thing I change.

I'm really hoping to work on my other obligations because I've been feeling the urge to write in Fedran again and that's a nice feeling.

Git and Spam

That does lead into what to do about my Git repositories. I have lot of them (couple hundred) because I do one Git repository per story. But my personal Gitea instance hasn't had a lot of traction or feedback. 99% of the registrations are spam (innocent until proven guilty) and, so far, 100% of the comments and issues are spam. The temptation to just turn off public registration is fairly high, but I want to give the opportunity to post issues there instead of email if someone wants.

(That said, if you want to make any suggestion about anything I do, please don't hesitate. Feedback is feedback and it doesn't matter if you think you are “good enough”. You having trouble is enough for me to look at it and see if there is something that can changed. I also make a ton of trivial typos and can't see them until they are pointed out to me.)

Automated spam is also why I don't have comments on my site. For a long time, I was getting about one good comment every five years and a few a day that were spam. It was worse when this site was on WordPress, less so with Discuss. Even when I put in a bot filter, it wouldn't relent and I spent most of my time shoveling crap off my site than doing anything useful.

The other problem with the Gitea is the “Yet Another Account” that I understand. I don't have a good answer to that one either, but I hate the idea of needing to create an account just to report a typo. I would, but I can't expect others to do that for me.

There is something about the allure of SourceHut's focus on email patches that I really like. The email infrastructure is not a bad one. At least that wouldn't require “just another account” because it would be just sending emails to a mailing list. There are other things that could benefit, like “email to comment” that I've seen. SourceHut would have also been my first choice if it wasn't for some initial feedback that soured me on it (telling me that “http access to a Git repository is stupid” is not a good way to respond to feedback to anyone. I don't like being told I was stupid when, even after trying rather hard to be SSH-only, I still find I need the occasional HTTPS access).

I'm not sure of the answer, to be honest. Switching to SourceHut would be a major undertaking to say the least, mainly because I'm still in the middle of the GitLab/GitHub to Gitea migration. But it is food for thought as is considering an email-based way of allowing comments again, if that ends up being something of interest.

Family

This last week has been a relatively fun time with the family.

Child.0 and I finished working on a LEGO Technic kit, the Pangigale V4 R1 (#42107). That bugger has over two hundred steps. And, despite being a LEGO fan for decades, was my first real Technic kit ever. It took us about a month to build since we do a few steps, we talk about videos like Murder Drones or anime, and just be together.

In the other hours, Child.1 had their birthday and we went to see The Super Mario Bros. Movie. That was a very well paced and entertaining movie. While I'm biased toward any Mario movie, it was nice to see the continuation of the threesome relationship between Peach, Bowser, and Mario. For some reason, that has been my allure and the trailers for Paper Mario (Bowser wanted to make sure Peach had enough to read and was comfortable) and the end of one of the more recent games (after the interrupted wedding, Peach playfully left both Bowser and Mario behind to chase after her) really shifted my perceptions as them being in a fairly stable, though competitive, relationship. I don't care if that is true or not, it's just nice to enjoy the fantasy.

Speaking of romance, Partner and I ended up having another parent's night when the kids went to their grandparents. This time, instead of saying in and watching movies and having steak, we decided to see the Dungeons and Dragons movie and go to a sit down restaurant. It was a real date night and it was… very nice. It's been a long time since we tossed the phones aside and just held hands.

May is our anniversary month. On the 13th, we will have been married twenty-three years. We've been together about twenty-six or seven years, not entirely sure on that one.

Obligations Hanging Over Me

2023-04-15T05:00:00Z

It's been a rather busy month since I last posted. Like most good plots, the plans I had for the month have not survived contact with the enemy. This will be the not entirely happy post for some of it, but there are good parts at the end.

Work Obligations

I took two weeks off from work to try to decompress but the massive project that was being rammed through meant I had to work way too hard before going on vacation. The end result was two weeks of burnout, sickness, and basically crashing harder than I have in a long time.

Coming back was just more of the same, just slightly less frantic. I've been calling them “meeting trains” where I end up getting pulled into two to six hours of back-to-back meetings with no break between each one. I've always struggled with carving out time for myself, which isn't helping but it starts at 08:30 CT and frequently goes until my lunch at noon.

I don't know what to do, because it isn't a simple “just assert yourself” type of answer. I'm working on it, thankfully I have a fairly good support network but it still feels like I'm “quietly quitting” (e.g., not having meetings for eight hours and trying to frantically work the other four to keep up with other obligations).

Writing Obligations

I have two current writing obligations: my monthly submission of 8-10k words that has to be done and a commission I took on so I could try getting a little more money. The commission is a 60k word novel, but like all commissions, I can't really share it with anyone which means I write it, and then it goes away forever.

My original plan was to blast through at least the monthly and get a sizable dent in the commission. That didn't happen and I had to end March with an apology that I wasn't even remotely close. Since then, I've managed to get the 10k words for March and about a quarter of the April obligation done.

The commission is at 10k words, but I ended up deviating from the plot because I couldn't get into it unless I rub some of my own favorite plots into it. So, even though I'm 10k words in, I honestly don't think I can say I can charge them for that; but even so, still have 50k words to the minimum of that commission. Thankfully, I have a few months for that, I just have to keep showing reasonable progress from month-to-month on that.

Publishing Obligations

I publish book for Typewriter Press. It isn't much, just me and some writing friends for the most part. In some regards, I'm just formatting ebooks and print while others I manage sales (but not marketing).

Randy Roeder is in the process of publishing his third book and I've been working to make it as good as I can. For the most part, I have this down to a fairly simple pipeline but it still takes time.

Service Obligations

This is a harder one. Over the years, I stumble into helping people and I have a tendency to keep doing it because it is the right thing to do. Right now, there are two of them.

A local wine store that had their website infected with viruses and I rebuilt in WordPress right before Covid struck. I don't do much other than make sure their website has a backup, occasionally download it to give it a second location, and patch their custom WordPress plugins to do the fancy things they wanted. Despite the fact I really don't enjoy coding WordPress anymore, I still do it because the owner is also only person I've volunteered to help that actually pays me on occasion, which is nice.

The other is a forum that I helped saved twenty-something years ago. I've helped the owner save a couple thousand dollars a month and been doing maintenance every six months or two. Unfortunately, he died and left a mess. A large mess that his widow couldn't handle, so I ended up helping her by being the technical support for his end-of-life but also separating the forum from her so it could stand on her own.

That also meant that I went from only checking on the software every few months to the new owners needing constant attention. Partner says I should stop, so I'm working to walking away from that but… they need help and I struggle to say no.

Personal Obligations

Mentally and emotionally, I've been spiraling for months. I really need to do something about that, but it feels like I'm treading water at this point for so long that not much feels like “fun” anymore.

A bunch of that was my entanglement that has haunted me since October 2021. At the beginning of March, I thought we were over it, but then Partner comes in with an announcement that the bumper to the minivan fell off. Fortunately, I had a bonus which paid for that so it felt like things were getting better.

Then we had a short ice storm. I thought the driveway was ice free, but I missed a patch while I was taking garbage out. One nasty slip and I smashed my right knee hard into the concrete. I've been in pain ever since so I honestly can't say things are better but I'm trying really hard not to notice the every three week pattern in hopes that it will finally resolve itself.

It's hard to explain the drain of having things go wrong so consistently. Using the water analogy, it is like swimming on a windy day. Every few seconds, the chop shoved you away from your destination and you have to push yourself to keep your head above the wave to avoid it. On the shallows, it isn't so bad, but as you are swimming, that extra effort starts to pull down on you.

Writing Obligations (Redux)

Because of the spiraling, Partner insisted I go back to the writing group. Writing is what makes me feel good, ideally writing about my topics instead of others, so I need to focus on doing something that isn't an obligation.

So, I started submitting Allegro to the Noble Pen Writing Group in Cedar Rapids. Feedback has been nicely positive, but I kind of feel like that is normal. But it is nice to be able to just talk about my plans for Fedran and hear that the group is much more receptive of Allegro than the other books, mainly because it isn't centered on trauma and abuse like Sand and Blood and its sequels.

Then again, Sand and Blood was “only” going to be a twenty thousand word short story to help develop the world while Flight of the Scions was being considered for publication (it didn't get accepted and Sand and Blood turned into almost two hundred thousand words over three novels).

I'm proud of my writing and going back has helped me want to start writing again. So, that is a good thing.

Family Obligations

Finally, there is family obligations. I'm working on my mother-in-law's bathroom to tile it. This is not one of my better skills, but it has taken a while since I had to take the end of 2022 off to deal with my hospital visits and then it was freezing outside, which is hard to do tile work. This weekend, I resumed working on it in hopes of getting it done within a month or so.

But the shining part of the last month was the kids. They have helped with my sanity with a newfound love for video games. Child.1 has been frequently asking to play games and my priority system says their request takes priority over almost everything, simply because I want to be there for them as they grow up.

At the moment, Child.0 is really into Core Keeper and Minetest. I'll admit, I'm a little frustrated with Minetest's limitations (see the packages thread for details), but there is something to be said about the joy of seeing the newest house or underground base being built.

Child.1 has different interests. Mostly we are playing Wildfire and they enjoy setting everyone on fire. It is a hard game though and we are coming up to the limits of our combined skill levels but we are still trying. It is also fun just to set everything on fire and let it burn.

They also just got into Spiderheck which is much in the vein of Stick Fight: The Game, Rounds, and Boomerang Fu. There is something to be said about fighting spiders with light sabers and plasma cannons.

Next Steps

I try to avoid negative posts in my blog. In this case, I'm trying to bring my foes out into the open so I can address them. It also lets friends and family know what is going on, but to explain the silence but also because it is hard to ask for empathy.

In the end, like everything else, it will pass. In other words, my favorite motivational quotes that is also one of the inspirations for Sand and Blood:

“Just keep swimming.” — Dory, Finding Nemo

MfGames Culture work, Reviews, and other plans

2015-11-15T06:00:00Z

So, lately I've been feeling pretty bad about not blogging about anything besides my weekly fantasy serial, Sand and Ash. But, I'm hitting some interesting points on a side project and wanted to take a break to talk about it.

Priorities

There are two topics I don't post a lot about here: work and family.

Work is, well, it is easier to keep my personal life separate from my professional one (though having a last name of Moonfire makes that difficult in general), but I usually don't do anything besides mention how much I'm working. I love my job, even with the occasional long hours and challenges, but I don't think this is the right place to talk about it.

Family is in the same boat. I have a family, they are important, but I don't think this is the venue for speaking about things besides high-level items. In this case, we've had plague slowly working its way through the household which makes it hard to find time to do something secondary like writing a post.

Which makes it difficult when I have a conflict of priorities. A long time ago, I had been sitting in a doctors office while paging through a Reader's Digest when I came up to an inspirational quote that stuck with me: You have time in your life for only three things.

Well, I have those three things: Family, Work, and Writing. Almost every single side project I have is writing something or writing programs to support my writing. However, those takes a side burner when work is getting overwhelming or there is plague.

Reviews

Like many readers and writers, I have a large “to read” stack of books. I also have a large “to review” since writing a review, be it good or bad, is the best way to support authors (well, and game writers too). A few weeks ago, I thought I'd work on my to review pile by writing one review a day.

Well, that didn't work.

After three weeks of trying, I wrote ten reviews (two, four, and four). Any more than four and I get burned out. So, it looks like I have a cap there. I don't know how well I'm doing, or if they are good reviews, but at least I'm writing and posting them.

I'm probably going to aim for a review a week, though, given how much time it takes. I'm not a great review writer, mainly because I probably focus on things that I want to get out of reviewers. Plus, I'm occasionally critical of stuff, including my friend's writing.

MfGames Culture

The biggest project I've worked on the last month or so is MfGames Culture*. I started this on a lark because I wanted something “easy” (hah!) to write and finish, something that would give me a feeling of success to handle a low-level depression that has been haunting me.

* Most of my libraries are prefixed with “MfGames” (Moonfire Games) because I don't like naming collisions.

The problem with Culture is that I'm terrible at estimates. Seriously, I am such an optimist about it that I've gotten written up about it at work. The problem is that I can do it in the time I want, I'm just scattered with family, work, and interruptions that it takes twenty times as long as it would otherwise.

But, that's the nature of my life.

Programming

I previously spent a month working on a C# version of MfGames Culture but I stalled out. This time, I decided to write a Typescript (Javascript) version to support Author Intrusion since I'm working on a Javascript version of that. Culture has also been something that I've been meaning to write for a while.

My primary goals for the library are:

To create an API for handling my fantasy calendars (which are not based on Gregorian).
To have the ability to sort every chapter in every novel or story in chronological order.
To create a time line of events in my world. Ideally, this would be one of those fancy HTML5 scrolling one but I'd be happy with a vertical list of every event that happened in the world.

The long term goal is being able to automatically create a video that shows the events of my world when and where they are happening. I think this would be pretty cool.

Fiddle!

Now, the whole reason I wanted to post this blog post. I have an example that someone can play with, a fiddle that allows you to see the library actually in action.

What the fiddle lets you do is change the calendar and see the results in real time. So, if you decide that January is only 25 days, then change it and see the results.

There isn't a lot of documentation on it (see below), but I'm hoping to work on that.

This actually is the first time I've written a Javascript library from end to end, but it uses my data files and library to populate a culture and a calendar. I think it is pretty cool.

Remaining Tasks

In the C# version, I had two calendars for the en-US culture: the Gregorian calendar and the duodecimal (base-12) for hours and minutes. I still need to convert and merge that into the new system.

Since I decided to switch over to JSON for the source file, I also need to update the C# library to also handle that. At the moment, that code is bit-rotted because I think JSON ended up being a more generic file format for supporting both desk and web clients.

I also need the ability to handle time spans, the time between two calendar instants.

Documentation. Oh, how I hate documenting, but I'm trying to get better at doing so.

Justification

The reason I'm working on this library still remains true. It is difficult to find any programming library that handles an arbitrary (one that isn't Gregorian) calendar system. If a fantasy or sci-fi author wants to have a base-10, base-13, or some other system, it is difficult to create something that can be easily parsed or formatted.

With Author Intrusion, I want to be able to have the date and time of a chapter written up in the metadata and have it automatically translate or format it. That way, I can say “sort chapters chronologically” or see how much time is between two chapters.

Plans

Finishing up anything is the hard. While I got the basics of the library done, there is still a lot to finish. So, my current plans is to spend the rest of November working on the library before doing a writing project in December.

Not to mention, December is Lexember so I'm doing to be working on building up more works for Miwāfu, the constructed language for my fantasy world.

Sand and Ash 08 and working too hard

2015-09-23T05:00:00Z

Just as last week was a little ahead of time, this week is behind. Go figure. Well, it is still Wednesday and time for chapter seven of my fantasy novel, Sand and Ash

One and a half books and we finally get to something other than the sand. Before this, the stories have been really insular and isolated. From here on, there are still moments of being alone in the desert, but the scope of the desert increased rather dramatically to include other clans of the desert.

I like Gichyòbi. He is a noble warrior but also a human being. I have 1-2 novels worth of ideas for him, but it depends on what my readers would like to see. Plus, the interaction with his wife is pretty interesting. Of course, having a character who can't really stray a few chains from a single city makes for interesting stories. Plus, the Wamifūko rites of passage are brutal (stick them in an airless hole in the ground where they either suffocate to death or escape).

Remarkably, the one thing I didn't have planned out in my head is actually when Gichyòbi rescued Rutejìmo (the one they talked about in the chapter). I'm sure I can write it, but it didn't seem as interesting as what happens between these two guys later.

When I wrote this, though, I didn't realize how import Gichyòbi would become in Rutejìmo's life. He shows up in this book and the next, not really being the center of a plot but being important. And since I have a story planned out for him, it really leans toward my R5-D4 plots.

Work

One reason this chapter was late was a major project at work. While I don't normally talk about work, I'm hopefully near the end of a multi-month project where I drastically underestimated the time it would take to complete and therefore worked 12-15 hour days to try making it right. It is due next week, so I'm having trouble doing anything else besides focus.

And I have an amazing wife. Seriously, I couldn't be sane without her.

Changes

2015-06-22T05:00:00Z

It's been a while since I've posted, I have to stop doing that. But, most of the time it is because I'm working on some project or dealing with life's little trials that make it hard to sit down and talk about them (or they are ones I choose not to share online).

Trials have an interesting affect on me. I break out of my routine to deal with it and, when I go back, I realize that things I've done religiously are no longer things I want to do. A good example is that I used to play Kingdom of Loathing. I love that game and played it every morning as part of my ritual. But, then I was flooded out of my apartment and spent three months without a laptop. When I came back, the joy had disappearing. I realized I was no longer playing the game but enjoying the puzzle of automating playing the game. So I dropped it.

The latest trial popped out a few things that don't really work.

Penflip and Wattpad

I love the idea of Penflip and Wattpad. I've gotten a number of fans from posting frequently back before I wanted to be serious about writing.

The problem is simple: pride. I want to produce the best piece of writing I can, but I simply don't have the skills to self-edit. Which means I need beta readers and editors before I feel I'm not throwing out garbage. At the moment, I don't have an army of fans who work for free, which means if I post my works-in-progress (WIP) on those sites, I'm posting “not my best quality.”

This is a purely mental issue, I'm sure, but I don't want to be an author who puts out things with a “few mistakes.” I try to hold myself to a higher standard of not having mistakes or having very few (I still remember the single typo I found in my copy of Deeds of Paksenarrion in 1,024 pages).

Before I had Sand and Blood re-edited, my dad read a copy. When he said “there weren't that many typos,” it actually bothered me a lot. And it was the other reason, besides the Immerse or Die review, that I decided to have it re-edited.

The only way I could see posting on either of these sites is to complete them, have them edited, and then post online as a weekly or monthly serial until it completes. I'm considering doing it with Sand and Blood if I ever make it Creative Commons licensed.

Until then, I'll probably removing the pieces I have up already. I don't really have anyone reading them, so I don't mind. I'll keep the Journals of Fedran issue #0 up until I get it edited, but issue #1 (which will be based on in-world religion) will remain offline until I can afford to get it edited.

Mailing Lists, Disqus, and Discourse

Another thing that is changing is my site comments. Previously, I used Disqus for the page comments. It is a useful service for smaller sites (which I'm very much one of them), but they also have some limitations such as being non-commerical for the free services, a constant push to buy their product, and linking all the sites together. Since they are free, I'm actually okay with that but that doesn't mean I have to stay with them.

What pushed me over was getting DreamCompute from DreamHost, where I host my sites. It was mainly to have a GitLab instance but I had a second instance and I figured I'd go with the free alternative I've seen on a number of sites I liked, Discourse. It took me a little while to get it installed (had to learn Docker and a bit of Ruby) but I'm pretty happy with the result.

If you are on my site, you can see it on the bottom of a number of pages. When you comment, it shows up at discuss.moonfire.us but you can add new topics over on the discussion site.

Having Discourse installed also meant that I could unify my mailing lists from Google Groups over to Discourse. That way, anyone interesting in commenting or reading or just talking about my world can post over there. And it handles email replies, which means it can also function as a full-blown mailing list for those who don't care for web forums.

I'll be shutting down (i.e., deleting) the Google Groups probably by the end of the month or so. Or at least marking them as “read only.” If I have contests, they'll be posted over there (along with a blog post).

The one drawback of Discourse is that it creates a topic as someone visits one of my pages. The steady stream of new posts has dwindled lately, but there is probably another 300-400 empty posts going to show up in the next few months. I never realized how much I wrote until I saw them popped up. It was also disheartening to see all my failed projects too.

My Time Has Value

The last one is a mental framework and less changes. I have a small publishing company called Broken Typewriter Press (BTP). It is what I use for doing ebook formatting, print typesetting, and all the little writing-related services that I offer (including commissioned writing, actually). I only have to pieces there, but my goal is to have a 1:10 ratio of my stuff to other author's.

I have three books in the pipeline which will bring me to a 1:2 ratio (if you including my short story, Casting Call).

I'm treating it as a proper publishing company, which means I that if I'm publishing it, I don't charge the author and I recoup my costs via sales. Previously, I never included my time in making covers, typesetting, or formatting books I'm publishing. In effect, treating my personal time as having no value.

I didn't have a problem when it was a one-off, those have invoices and I treat them as such.

I can't really treat my time as zero anymore, it isn't fair to me or my family.

This weekend, I went through and created some accounting sheets (avoiding doing the “proper” GnuCash until this becomes more of a business) to handle the profit/loss reports for individual authors. This time, I'm putting in items that I work on (in six minute intervals) so I can tell when I'm truly in the black verses when I've simply paid for the printing costs.

Personal improvement project

2013-07-23T05:00:00Z

One of the newest things at work is giving us a chance to do a little personal improvement time during work hours. I was given a choice of what to improve, so I asked to work on drawing and artistic skills since I thought it would help me do something I've wanted to do for years.

Today was my first attempt at this. I only had an hour, but I thought I would post the results. I'm not an artist, but I have ideas.

This was a trace of the Cedar Rapids skyline from a random picture I found on the Internet. It is mainly leaning toward my desire to have an ink and watercolor-inspired cover for my titles, but (obviously) my muscle memory and techniques are a far cry from where it needs to be before I'm making covers.

Gadgets and me

2013-02-26T06:00:00Z

Yesterday, I was offered the Microsoft Surface that had been running around the office. I thanked my boss, but declined the offer. With hindsight, I realized that I took very little time to turn it down, but that was simply because I've thought about it quite a while over the last year.

Gadgets

My family loves gadgets. My dad and brother are both festooned with lovely little toys that blink and flash. Most of the time, one of them has the newest gadget to play with and spend hours showing off what it can do.

Every time I've tried, I used it for a week, maybe three, and then set it aside. This was the case for the Nokia n810, my Kindle Fire, my Palm Pilot, and even my Newton (loved the Newton though). I'm just not big on toys.

The longest I've ever used a gadget is the Kindle Fire. At the moment, I use it to check email and browse the web on the occasion when I'm not in the mood for firing up the laptop. Within five minutes, I'm done checking everything and I set it aside. I also use it to read books... that part I really like, but I go through a lot of books and I prefer EPUB over physical books in general.

In the end, my favorite gadget is a 6" x 9" graph pad. It has incredible battery life and I can do anything I want with it. Yeah, it isn't bright and colorful, but it works for me.

Gozer the Destroyer

My Fire has a Gummi shell on it. I got it the day I got the Fire and for a good reason: EDM stuck it in the dog's water dish within a day of me picking it up. Now, I occasionally find the Kindle smeared with oatmeal, yogurt, or oregano.

If I was borrowing the department's Surface... well, I can't really say it won't die a horrible death in the toilet or the litter box.

Meetings

This is an interesting thing. I just came off a week of fairly critical, but long, meetings. One thing I noticed is that most of the attendees brought their laptops. When the meeting got slow, they started focusing on other aspects of their day-to-day jobs and not the meeting. When they had to pay attention, they had to drag their focus from the laptop to the phone or the questions given.

The same thing happens during the writing group. Occasionally, someone would bring their laptop and they would have the same thing. You'd have to poke them.

In the RPG games I ran, it was even worse. All but two of the players had laptops. When the plot didn't directly relate to them, they would be playing games. Though, since most gamers seem to be an obsessive bunch, it took more effort to drag them away from one game to have them focus on the game in front of them.

I'm afraid I would have the same problem. I get lost in computer stuff and I have a really good focus with what I'm working on. If I have that distraction of bright shiny computers, I'd struggle to pay attention to the purpose of the meeting.

When I use to run RPG games, most of the players brought laptops. Inevitably, when I would switch the focus on one of those players, I'd have to poke them to get their attention.

Production verses Consumption

Tablets are great for consumption. I like reading my email, browsing Reddit, and checking websites. But, there are very few things I can create on a table. They are poor development studios (at this point) and I haven't found a good text editor for novels. There are also relatively few tools for remoting into machines.

Most tablet also suffer for keyboards for me. I want a large keyboard on everything I use. Even my laptop's keyboard is flawed when it comes to working the way I want it to work. I'm a touch-typer and when I have to work with a different keyboard, I lost a lot of speed and accuracy.

Large hunks of my life is centered around creating things. I feel guilty using my Fire already, working with the Surface is probably going to be the same thing. I want to create and I don't quite get that.

Costs

In the end, I'd gave to give it up. Ideally, I would fall in love with it and want to buy one for myself. The problem int that aspect is that most of my spare money goes into SMWM's photography business, EDM, and writing. Since I don't enjoy gadgets that much, I end up not wanting to buy a new toy I'm going to not use.

Know thyself

A co-worker said I'm one of the "most self-described people they know." I just don't think a tablet is useful for me, mainly for my focus and because I won't get the benefit that most people seem to get out of it.

I'm glad they asked and I appreciate being considered, but it is just as hard to say "no, thank you."

Writing so much it hurts

2012-09-10T05:00:00Z

Well, my vacation is over. One week of traveling up north to the family cabin, a lot of writing, and generally just spending time with Fluffy and EDM.

I also got to spend time with my father (and his computer). Remarkably, he didn't give me a lecture about my weight, which was nice, but I'm still working on it. I did help him with some regular expressions, a bit of Java coding, and a philosophical discussion of Python.

Writing

On the writing side, Fluffy was really nice and let me write most of the seven hour trip up and down. I also got a number of hours to write before and after the trip too.

I'm trying to get to the end of the serial, so I wrote six chapters on the serial and got it completely through the third arc (in draft form). I only have about fifteen more chapters and the serial will be done. Posting wise, it will probably go into January but I've been thinking about this story for a year now (as of next week) and I'm struggling a lot with actually writing out these latter chapters.

This weekend, I also write five chapters for BAM fro the writing group. From what I guess, I'm only about 5-7 chapters from the end of that novel also, but they are much shorter chapters (2k verses 8k). I'm also doing my best not to think about the remaining chapters of BAM, so I don't struggle as much with actually writing it out when I get to that point. I'm also not as hung up about BAM as I was about FOTS. I'm planning on editing it and making it an ebook, but I haven't gotten this "perfectionist" attitude about it.

Programming

Python is an interesting thing about us. I gave it a year or so to to try it out, mainly at his insistence that it was a great language. It is, but it isn't my great language. But, it is a lot more flexible than Perl so it is becoming my "bang up a script" language (though most of the ad-hoc scripts this week were all Perl).

We did come up with a possible reason why. In C and Java, he prefers to put the brace at the end of the line:

if (bob) {
    doStuff();
}

In Python, that isn't much different:

if bob:
    do_stuff()

On the other hand, I prefer braces on the next line (BSD style):

if (bob)
{
    doStuff();
}

And that is different than Perl. So, one possibility is that I've become so used to having the brace "{" help me line up logic instead of using whitespace. It seems logical, but it also came up with an interesting quote.

How can you not like Python, I love it.

Program languages are strange that way. I reject Python because of little things (whitespace logic, package organization, module distribution, lack of braces, lack of semicolons), but I'm still good at it. But, it resonated with my dad and he loves it more than anything but Java.

Work

I did have a somewhat major call from work during my vacation. My code had a bug and it was about to be demostrated to our customers. It was a good thing I remember most of my code and I have a fantastic co-worker because I had no Internet connection and had to work by memory with someone else typing.

Just been twenty days...

2011-11-25T06:00:00Z

Twenty days since my last post. It isn't that I don't love my readers, I was just distracted by the things that always happen at the end of the year. Work is the first one, since we are coming up to "release season" and I'm spending more time at the office or downstairs remoting into the office than doing anything "fun".

I have been getting some writing down. I have the short serial I've been working on, and while I skipped a week because I got a volunteer editor, I've been pretty much hanging on to the one/week submit schedule. At current rate, it looks like it is going to end around twenty-three chapters, but we'll find out. I'm posting as I go and sometimes people ask for more, sometimes they ask me to skip chapters.

I had a problem with the Flight printing for the third round of edits. I finally got it back a few days ago with a proper print. While I verified the PDF with Acrobat 7 and 8, I didn't with 10. It was foolish of me to assume that if versions 7 and 8 could handle it, 10 could also. And I was wrong. I also didn't want to upgrade to 10 because I have a weekly reboot at work because of patches to 10, they added way too much advertisement, and frankly version 10 is moving toward the custom look and feel which I despise in my programs. I don't want distinction, I was conformity with my application. I don't use Trillian for that exact reason.

But, the world is going to move past me so sooner or later, I'll stop ranting.

Right now, there are eight beta-readers for Flight. None of them are probably going to get me answers until the middle of December at the latest and more likely February. One... I might not trust, but I'm not sure. EDM is currently at his grandmothers, then an aunt, today and tomorrow, so I'm going to do one more pass on the novel, write up the summary which is the last thing I must do, and send out the email to the two people I trust in the writing industry who have made a hint they would read it for me.

I feel guilty about asking professionals to read my stuff. Even if they are friends, I don't like asking the same person more than once to read my stuff. Maybe because I've encountered so many people who have said yes, but later would tell me they regretted it, or simply because I don't want to pressure anyone into anything.

I had a rejection of a short story too. That always hurts, but I hate when the rejection is just a short sentence. And three months after the point they said they would email. This kind of goes back to editors giving feedback, but I'm not quite an editor enough; I know it is hard work.

But, I did managed to do a bit more book editing. One of the submissions was a humorous farmer's almanac. They needed a series of short, silly articles for the weeks of the year, but they were behind by twenty-something articles. Over the last three weeks, I wrote twenty-something articles... and found artists to illustrate the pages. I won't get paid for it, except for a free copy, but I don't mind because I had fun writing them.

I have gotten into a video game for a little bit: Glitch. It is a MMORPG that is just adorable. And non-aggressive. I don't know why, but I really prefer cooperative games over killing games, and cute 2D graphics over 3D anything. My plan for Moonfire Games is to write games that have a non-violent way of winning the game, even if it is harder. Now, the demake of Oblivion that I want to finish won't have that because I'm trying to duplicate Oblivion's general play, but CuteGod and the others do and will have that ending.

Speaking of programming, my goal for next year is to mostly be programming. I'm going to write and finish KK as a novel, but I also want to get Author Intrusion in a usable state before I do that. Since half the novel is already written (from the cuts of Flight), that means I should only need 3-4 months to finish it. If the current trend is right, summers are the dry spells for the writing group, so I have to have a few chapters ready by June, but I should be good.

The sunshine of life

2009-10-23T05:00:00Z

Been an interesting week for me. Got a little burned out with heavy working. As typical, overtime has a specific, well, half-life before it becomes ineffective. In my case, three weeks of working 12-15 hour days is about the limit of my ability. After that, I start to get fuzzy and lose my ability to really solve problems quickly. That said, I think I've done an amazing amount of work in the last few weeks and I'm pretty proud of what I have created.

Fluffy is, as she has a right to be, unhappy with the amount of work I've been doing. I've already proven that I'm less than talented at stopping when I'm obsessing and she is my 2x4 to prevent me from burning out. It starts off with "I'm unhappy" and if I keep pushing it, sooner or later, she'll basically club me over the head and pull me off the computer, kicking and screaming. I haven't gotten to that point, but I know it's there.

Writing-wise, working out some of the style of Fedran. My Oile series isn't quite perfect, I haven't found a proper voice for it, but I'm getting happier with it as I keep on writing. I already knew that it wouldn't be a masterpiece but more of a stepping stool to something else. I already have the basic plot prepare for the plot and I'll probably finish after that. Then, either work on another short series or something more substantial.

It is hard working on a vacuum. Like most of my creative works, people don't read or comment much. I asked Fluffy, but she doesn't like it. Oh well, maybe someday I'll find that spark again. The problem is, I try too hard to be successful and that really isn't the way to do it. I'm trying hard not to focus on that and just work on writing; I want to be better and the only way to do is to paraphrase Dori from Finding Nemo:

Just keep swimming... just keep swimming...

An interesting week

2009-10-17T05:00:00Z

I know I told myself I wouldn't work hard over the weekend, but it happened again. I managed to get all the defects assigned to me done by the cut-off, but I took on two more that ended up being a lot more complicated than I expected. The last one left is making me very nervous, but it has to be done. I know it has to be done, but it still makes me nervous.

It also reminds me that there is a flaw in the masking tape programmer. Related to the duct tape programmer, I would see the masking tape programmer as someone who thinks they are worth of the duct tape title, but don't have the sheer skill to really put it off. The type of developer who throws something together that pretty much falls apart if you sneeze too hard. In Joe's comment, "you aren't good enough" is pretty much the masking tape programmer.

I'll fix it, I know I can. I just lose another weekend to finishing things well over a week after "cut off". I try really hard to finish things on time--more so after I got dinged for that very thing in my annual review.

I'm not a duct tape programmer. I like to think I can be, but I don't like to be because you end up with code that can't be maintained after a few months or even years. I have too many years of being a masking tape programmer, the code that falls apart seconds or minutes after you finish it, or just balls up into this ungodly mess when you breath too hard on it.

I do try to be an artist. I like elegance in my code. I want a pattern and beauty. My code is laid out like poetry and I aim for consistency in everything. Like my writing. One of the projects I spent way too long earlier in this year, involving rewriting tens of thousands lines of code, became something beautiful a month ago when I made one change and everything just dropped into place. Like a novel plot that slid up from the reader's side.

Or a game plot. My games get emotional; I had great players who were amazing and would do so, but I also like to think that I create good characters. People get involved and really start to believe in the games and characters. In one game, they were using the tavern (cliche, I know, on purpose) owner as their primary contact. She helped manage their adventures. They slowly got to know her and her history. In the last six months of real time, they found a plot to attack the party. Competition adventuring groups stealing their jobs, robbing from them, and occasionally turning public opinion against them. In the final end of the arc, they finally gathered up enough money to hire other adventurers to track down this party attacking them and gave it to the tavern owner to manage...

... only to find out she was the one who sending the groups to attack them. Then, it was like watching dominoes in the group. That slow realization as all these little hints and back story suddenly clicked together. I could see everyone around that table finally put everything together, then that collective moan as hit them in the gut. It was... amazing in so many ways and it led into one of the most impressive, intense, and creative final "boss" fights I had ever been in.

I love that feeling. Probably one reason I start most games with "create what you want, as long as it will adventure with others, and in the end, I meant for you to make them." I've done that with the last five games and I don't think anyone has ever been disappointed.

Needless to say, it is just as great of a feeling to see fifty thousand lines of code suddenly click together. I can only hope the work I'm doing this weekend will be epic instead of wrapped together with masking tape.

Taking it easy today

2009-10-10T05:00:00Z

Still have a little more work to do for the release. I managed to clear out my queue for a short period of time, but I took two more defects from a co-worker to help him get closer to finishing everything by the cut-off (officially late Sunday). I'm not going to do a 12-15 hour day again, but I'm going to try resolving those last nagging issues hanging around.

College started this week and I'm also struggling to finish that. It is a simple one, I'm just viewing the class with dread and trepidation. I know it is only ten weeks and I finish, but it will be a long ten weeks and an even longer forty page paper by the time it ends. Well, one day at a time.

Not that anyone needs to be told, but feel free to ignore the posts starting with Oile. I wanted to write, so I decided I was going to just do it. I don't know how long it will last or what will happen, I just wanted to write and maybe do a little world development.

Another day, another couple of dollars

2009-09-30T05:00:00Z

A long, beautiful day. Coming to the end of my project at work, which means all those tiny little details are popping up going "forgot about me?".

No, I didn't. I just didn't want to deal with you.

But, I have my second demo tomorrow and the third day of code reviews. In theory, code cut-off is this Friday, so I'm working overtime to get as much done as possible. I spent an extra three hours of work to get another critical bug off my plate that I couldn't seem to get done during the day.

Going to be a fun week, but by the time next week rolls around, I won't remember it.

(Side note, upgraded my LJ-XP patch to sort avatar listings as per the request at the issue page).