diane duane

i came back in here after having lunch in the kitchen and i said to myself, "it's warm and it smells nice in here." what more could i want. it's so warm, in fact, that i've taken my jumper off. but now that it is off i'm wondering should i put it back on. i'll give it ten minutes and see. (edit ten minutes later - i put it back on.)

i had some other big news that i meant to say yesterday. warpcon was the weekend before last and diane duane and peter morwood were special guests. i may have mentioned diane duane on here before. i first read high wizardry when i was 10 or something and i loved it. it was the third book in a series so i went back and read the other 2. then on our world travels i picked up the rest of the series (to book 7) in a borders somewhere (malaysia, i think) and enjoyed them. i also loved her series about a group of cat wizards who guard the inter-dimensional portals in the new york subways. in fact, those books made me fall in love with new york without ever having been there.
so anyway. on saturday i went in to warpcon specifically to meet diane and ask her about getting published. i spoke to both her and peter and we could have chatted for hours (but i had to go). she had so much to say, from the use of a dictaphone and speech software (dragon) to peter showing me how he uses five different coloured pens for the five different novels he's writing at the moment. it was brilliant.

i love my new space. the sun shone in the window for the whole morning (it's clouded over a little now).

penelope_stone and liam are up on friday, just for the night. then they are off to scotland.
and we might be going to galway on saturday. that would be good. i like visiting catherine. thier house is very home-y.

today revolved around translating japanese

lots more japanese today. i got three comments all in hiragana and i spent 3 hours figuring out what they said. but it's all good. i learned that にっか (nikka) means daily diary / an entry on lang-8. and that there is a very complicated way to thank someone for helping you: くれてありがとうございました. and i remembered that だいがく (daigaku) is university. woo! but as i get into the basics, i begin to see how hard this is going to get. there are so many tenses and so many phrases that mean a specific thing. ah well.

i was going to say something else... oh - yea. xkcd...
it seems to be the season for industrial instruments for sticking things together. i got a riveter this week and xkcd posted about a staple gun. i thought that was a funny coincidence.

i made a packing list this morning. i'm really excited about going, but at the same time i'm going to miss my room so much. i have a feeling that no where in my future will my bedroom have navy walls. i love my navy walls. and for all the lack of space, i love the close cosiness of my room and the way i can pretty much reach anything from my computer, and the way i'm right beside the window and all the little things that fill up and open space, like bits of paper and material and stones and figures and pens and pencils and art stuffs and metal bits.
the only thing i won't miss is my wardrobe. i can't wait to never have to try wrestle clothes out of it again.

yea - i just got distracted with another japanese comment and totally lost my thoughts for updating. ah well.

learning japanese

i just ordered 3 japanese books. does this seem a little over-zealous? i just happened to be on amazon and just happened to come across the languages section and couldn't resist looking up japanese books. and they had 1,000 first words in japanese. i had to have it. and learning hiragana. and the complete japanese course by living languages.

and now i have to stop spending money until i get a job. i think i'm making up for lordkilljoy not being around by buying things. or maybe his massive spending spree in america is brushing off on me. anyway, the books weren't expensive - averaged at just under €10 each; which is the price of a novel and a good price for books of learning.

yea. i havn't really done much today. i looked up editing programs for liz (who i'm doing the multimedia thing for). apart from that, i got trapped on youtube looking up japanese videos. found some good ones - and a link to a cool site, called Lang-8. it's a cool idea where you make a post in the language you'd like to learn and native speakers correct your mistakes. isn't that the best idea ever?

i made chicken curry for dinner (using a gourmet asian cuisine paste - they make the best pastes ever). it turned out good, but the milk went a bit wierd (like lumpy). i think i may have had the temperature too high. everyone liked it. i went down for seconds a while ago and it was all gone. i made enough for 4 people (there were 3 of us). ah well. i'll know that it's good for again. lordkilljoy and i can make it sometime. and we will remember to add in potatoes.

oh, yea. as well today, i put cardboard on my shelves (they are made of metal wire and things fall through the gaps). hmm, that was a kind of random fact. actually, i did that and then forgot to put everything back on the shelves. i should do that, since everything is on my bed... and i'll be heading to bed soon.

autumn changes

i just unsewed a top. and i just made up a word. woo!
i had this lovely top i got in KL, that was a black vest-type thing over a white shirt (or shirt pieces that were sewn into the top. but the first time i washed it, even though i was so careful, the die from the black ran into the white and gave it a kind of greenish tint. but it didn't do it very evenly and the top has been slightly unwearable since then. but last week i got a white shirt, and today i got around to unsewing* the shirt bits off the vest part :)
*unsewing; different from (is this the right preposition?) just ripping the stitches out and leaving bits of thread everywhere and risking ripping delicate wool.

so yea. that was very painstaking and took about 2 hours. my left arm cramped up half way through and the last bits were frustrating, because i just wanted to be done with it. but it's all good now, and i'm happy.

interview thing tomorrow. i'm not so sure if i want this job. it would be cool if it was closer. it's in sandyford, which is clear across the city. that's like a two hour commute on public transport or something... the idea of that just does not inspire me, and while people may say that i could use the time to write - i've tried and all the moving scenery out the window and shuffling people is way too distracting. but i guess we'll see.

i don't really have much other news. i drew a map today. that was fun. now i just have to come up with some city names (i have 2 of 11). city names are kinda hard. well, names in general are hard.
but just as i was saving the map my computer kind of had a spas attack. i had time to grab my camera and take a photo of my work before everything went into not responding mode and i had to restart the computer. i was so happy not to have lost the whole morning's work.

did i mention that i now have one and a half free shelves in my room? well i do. i'm trying to figure out the best stuff to populate them with.

heh - just making up a title for the post and i remembered a cool quote from Traitor's Moon (by lynn flewelling aka otterdance). it went something like: life changes and life changes you. it was so cool - the difference that one word can make.

ooh - i forgot to say: i printed out the fall yesterday. i have come to the conclusion that chapters 1 and 2 need to be utterly scrapped and re-written. i'm up to ch. 5 and it's not going too badly. the problem with writing for the nanowrimo is that i went way overboard on the exposition because i just wanted to fill up my word count. so there is lots that needs to be pulled out and written in a more dynamic way.

2 days of news

penelope_stone left us yesterday for the naturalistic charms of murky kerry. i've had years to get used to the idea that she would eventually leave home, so the lack of her being around hasn't affected me too badly.

i pulled out old boxes of college notes last night for dumping. what with that and me being too lazy to put my clothes away into my various wardrobe-apparatus things, my room is a total mess; the kind of mess where i can either sit at my computer or lie on my bed, and everything else is out of bounds behind the piles of stuff that are on the floor. ok - i exaggerate a little, but not nearly as much as you might think.

i enjoyed the mind body spirit festival (aka the health fair). i spent all day saturday going to talks and workshops on topics from radiation to remote viewing. it was fun - i learned how to dowse with a pendulum (i don't think dowsing is my thing - i wasn't very good at it) and did a 10 second psychic reading for a random woman. madness. but it's the health fair so i'm allowed to dabble in wierd things.

while there i met a woman who wants me to work for her on a multimedia project she wants to do. it seems like a bit of fun - kind of video work, but working with still images and motion effects.

i started on my swashbuckler over the weekend. it's very formulaic, but should be some fun. i think the main problem when i'm writing for genrechallenge is that i don't really care for my characters. not like i care for zachery or zan or kej - or even the way i care for computer game characters. so i think i'll try focus on that a bit more. not just writing to get stuff done, but actually coming out with a character i care about and perhaps even a plot i care about. that would be cool.

yea... i read my zan / kej story again last night. it's not nearly as bad as i was expecting. the first half is kinda fun. the second half does lose it totally, but there is definitely stuff to work with in the re-write.

some small things

i changed the covers on my bed today. i went back to my old covers - the green, navy and red ones. i love those covers:

so colourful. but i'm off to dublin for the weekend, so i won't get to sleep in them until i get home. i'll have something to look forward to going home.

penelope_stone and i watched tomb raider last night. it's a fun film, so silly in places.

ooh - i finished luck in the shadows this morning. it's such a good book. i love seregil so much. some of the banter he comes out with is so funny. i can't wait to get on to the next book, him and alec :)

yea, you can tell that i have absolutely no news of merit, at all... i'll just go now.

just a quick post

i took our sewing machine apart today. i like doing that - taking machines apart. it needs oiling, but i don't have the right kind of oil, and i'm a bit scared to go putting oil into it. but right at the moment, i've a grid of screws, a casing, screw drivers and the opened sewing machine on my floor. it's a bit of a mess. using your small (2.5m²) bedroom as a workroom isn't such a good idea. ah well. i'll get oil (and grease) and then all will be well.

off to kerry tomorrow with penelope_stone. that should be good. i hope the weather is clement. i doubt it will be, but what can you do. nothing. exactly.

i moved my room around a bit today. i finally got my printer off the floor. i moved my dvds to my wardrobe. i lost my red dusting rag too. i made a new one, but i really liked the shape of the old one. the new one is fat looking.

i broke today and had ice-cream and a bit of chocolate (kinder bueno - yummmmm). i blame the moon; how am i supposed to help myself when i have a craving that lasts three days. my will can only hold strong for so long. and since we're on random food things: we had mahi-mahi with teriaki sauce for dinner today, with cous cous. it was so yummy.

i don't have much else to say, now. i'll go. bye.

note to self:

do not put things where they don't usually live. to put that in a positive frame: put things back where they live, not in some arbitrarily selected place that just happens to be handy.
i just spent the morning looking for my faber-castell mech pencil (the lovely one that i've blogged about before). i distinctly remembered that it was with my notebook - the motherboard one - slotted down in the ring binding. because that's where it's been for the last few weeks. so i got the notebook for taleweavers later, but no pencil. i searched my shelf, my bed, around my computer, the windowsill, my bookshelves, my study desk... no sign of the pencil. i even checked in the bag i bring to dublin, because lordkilljoy was the last person to use it. it wasn't anywhere.
it turns out that lordkilljoy was not, in fact, the last person to use it. i was - writing a note late at night and i put the pencil back up on top of my stack of notebooks and notepaper. which is usually a good place for it, because it used to live there, but it has recently moved house... i just like to give myself reasons to get confused. but all's well :) i found my pencil and it's back in the ring-binding of my notebook.

i finally got started on my alternative history yesterday. i have no idea how the story will work out - i just started writing and will rely on my imagination to come up with something suitable as i get further along. i really hope i get this month's finished. the last 3 i gave up on.

i read a good book yesterday - called "thief with no shadow" by emily gee. i enjoyed it - nice simple story, characters you could feel for. it was well contained, didn't ramble like a crazy thing, only 3 characters that you had to keep track of, 2 supporting characters and a handful of extras. possibly a bit too much sex for my taste, but i'll forgive that.
i'm reading lynn flewelling's nightrunner series at the moment. i want to read the first three again so that i can read shadow's return.

the ogranized mess

i put things in strange places when it's late at night. like my oblivion cd (ok, its actually a dvd, but cd reads easier)... it was on top of my subwoofer. now that may seem like a good place, but the top of my subwoofer is reserved for my external HD, some note paper, a dusting rag, a mirror and my camera case. not cds. cds have never gone up there and i don't know how the oblivion cd got there last night. if i hadn't used my mirror to check my hair i would have been ransacking the place later to find the cd. actually, i think the oblivion cd is feeling rebellious recently. i couldn't find it yesterday either. it was over on top of my new cupboard - the place where random bags and clothes go. actually, prince of persia is over there too. that shouldn't be. they should be on my study desk - that's where random cds belong.
so right now, the oblivion cd is right in front of me... and i'm thinking of leaving it there for being bold and getting itself off to random (wrong) places.
and since i'm talking about stuff in my room: my stool got stolen and has been missing for the last few days. but i got it back and now all the clothes that had been accumulating on my floor are balanced (not quite as precariously as usual) on the stool - where they should be. so everything's where it should be and i can walk on my floor once again without having to dodge random piles of clothes. always a good thing :)

i watched spiderwick chronicles last night. i quite enjoyed it. a nice simple movie with fun creatures, but i wouldn't be rushing out to buy it, or even to watch it again.

taleweavers later today. i havn't been in ages; it'll be good to see the lads again. i'm taking a day off writing today. i'll just go talk about it instead.

yea, i think that's all i have to say.

rewrites

i started my first re-write today. it's the scene where the male main character meets the lead female, and i hated the original. This new version is better, it paints azrynn as something other than a flighty girl - which she had come across as, but now she definitely seems like someone in control of her life. so i'm happy.

i cleaned my room today - took all the books off my shelves, wiped the shelves and the books and re-placed them on the shelves. comics are heavy. i lifted 11 trades together and could barely get them onto the shelf. i moved some other stuff around (games, books - i had one whole shelf that i wasn't really using at all) and now i have room for about 10 new books... it's really not that much. but i'm only interested in buying two books at the moment: the name of the wind and shadows return, and neither of them are out in small paperback yet (shadows return isn't even out yet; and while patrick rothfuss has mentioned something about tNotW paperback, i havn't seen it). i do have room left on my manga / small format comics shelf, though.

yea. i have no other news.

whee - i'm excited

i just found out that there's a new prince of persia game coming out. oh wow. this is so cool. i totally can't wait for it (supposedly christmas this year). yeeeeee.
fangirl moment. wwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
now i'm really going to have to get a new PC. dammit. i can't afford one. i guess i have until christmas to save up. waa - it's so exciting. getting to be the prince again, scaling walls, running along ledges, doing backflips and somersaults and sneaking up on your enemies and stuff. yeay.

not much other news - i've been re-organizing my room for the last 2 days. i got new shelves (well - a shelf-kinda thing and a cupboard-kinda thing) and i've been finding homes for the clutter in my room in them. it's working out quite well, actually.

i'm building up a mild addiction to shivering isles too. i started playing last night at 10; at 12 i told myself to go to bed; i eventually got there at 1:30. terrible. i finished one quest and went to start another - but that one got really interesting so i finished it too. heh.