Sitting on my main table is a sorry little scrap of red car panel, my last keepsake from my old car. It got collided with on Monday night while it was parked on a sidestreet. Nobody was hurt: I was halfway across the town centre drinking coffee and typing, and the girl who hit it was fine. The car, though, isn't coming...
Read More
Read More
Doesn't happen often.
Well, I was hunkered down in a caff near work today waiting for the rain to stop so I could get to my car, and I'd already had a black coffee and I'm trying not to overcaffeinate myself in the evenings,...
Read More
Sorry to hear that things didn't work out for you here 
On the other hand, good on you for making a positive plan and getting to work on things. I've known too many people who don't actually move to that stage.
Canberra's a nice town. It's just not the nice town for me. Too many of my mothers[1] live/have lived here.
My condolences on your grandmother, and I hope your last meeting with her is as good and peaceful as it can be.
I'm trying to figure out how I can possibly prepare myself for this. I just don't know what I'm going to do; she's my hero.
I really love it when a gig can be a cathartic experience like that. Although I hate the sorts of feelings you describe at the beginning of the night, about 100 times more so when in crowded public places.
2643 words down on the current story, I'm past the midpoint and I know how to get the characters exactly where I want them for the finale I've been planning pretty much from the start. I feel more fulfilled than in ages. I was grinning like an idiot and practically capering as I walked from the library to my...
Read More
Read More
There are times when plots come together like a difficult equation. It takes concentration, nutting out each thread and strand, giving teeth-grindingly patient thought to how each part will affect each...
Read More
The saga of the DIY shelving unit turned out happily: a couple of days of leaving it to one side (and stepping over its bits on my way to and from the couch, but what the hell) and coming back to it with a clear head did...
Read More
I just wish to point out that I'm always very nice to my waitresses. If I piss them off I risk a cup of long black dumped through my keyboard.
I've had a waitress (admittedly it was me, and this is a rather contrived segue) pour milk into my ibook. Turns out, like many people from Taiwan, she was lactose intolerant. That was a very exciting morning.
I really don't understand how people can be rude to their waitress. There's a whole genre of urban legends sprung up around us, mostly involving obscene bodily fluids. Surely it's at least pragmatic to bite your tongue.
And yet.
It's too bad about the story, although I know what you mean about getting derailed by things. (Foor through the iBook, shit, that's harsh.) For whatever my encouragement is worth, I think it would be a cool thing to pick up and finish. I'm not too up on kids' publishers (it was intended as a childrens' book, am I remembering right?) but if you finish it to story length I can think of a couple of markets that might be worth a tilt.
I never intended to set it aside, but when your own work starts to make you unhappy it's hard to so much as look at it. In time, when I have some space from the overbearing friend, I'm intending to pick it up again. Recently, he's been trying to get me to release it as a webcomic, since he's 'bored' and 'has so many good ideas for it'. Needless to say, the suggestion was received poorly, with glaring and scowling.
I'm not sure it was exactly intended as a childrens book, though I think it could certainly fit the bill. Your encouragement leaves me wanting to pick it up again tonight, so who knows what'll happen?
(And we seem to have similar taste in titles: I'm in the planning stages of a story called "The Fall of the House of the Clockwork Bandits". Snap!)
Oh neat! I'm all manner of interested in this.
I like to fill my titles with adjectives until they're bursting.
Actually, I think the most pissed off I've ever had waitresses was on the two occasions where one from a cafe where I'd become a regular spotted me coffeeing somewhere else. Much extravagant body language and outraged expressions ensued, but at least I didn't get the Lap Pour when I went back to them.
My boss does this. I find it very entertaining, but of course it's not my livelihood.
And I'm happy to have you on my list. Maybe you can give me the good kicking I so surely need.
I got a shelf-unit sort of thing for Christmas. I don't think it's Ikea, but it's the same sort of principle - a bunch of boards with holes in, things to put in the holes to fasten them together, and a diagram showing where everything goes. The computer desk I'm at now went up the same way.
But the exciting challenge...
Read More
I wish not to brag about its shininess, or the lovely sharp display, or the quiet but crisp sound and feel of the keys under my fingers (keyboards are a greatly underrated sensory indulgence, if you ask me), nor the DVD burner, the first I've owned, or the processor, the RAM or the size of the HD, all...
Read More
Funny thing is, I spent quite a time being a bit condescending of people who buy these enormous compendia of packaged "decade-in-a-box" type music. I don't know why. Maybe it was the naffness of a retreat into nostalgia instead of angaging with today, or something equally edgy-sounding. Anyway, I...
Read More
That's made my evening
For several years, I played around with a program called Poser which lets you pose and animate prefabricated human figures and make semi-nice renderings of them. I actually started using it as a vehicle to understand the principles of photographic lighting without having to invest in heavy actual lighting equipment and find willing human models, but it turned into an addiction of sorts.
Later I became increasingly frustrated by the limitations of said program and the shabby quality of their models. So I decided to give it a try myself. She's standing there so vitruvian because she's meant to be made poseable later. It's just her ground state, so to speak.
Is that about enough background?