Are artists naturally unhappy people? Does unhappiness in some way make you a better artist? And if I'm happy, what does that say about me and my chances of being a published artist?
I vote for no, no, nothing.
Not a very deep post, I grant you. But let me explain. I might or might not be getting sick. My back is certainly killing me for no apparent reason. I'm trying to write; alot (Update: and not all that successfully).
So, no, not very deep. But the source material is good, so you should check it out.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
This just didn't seem like the place ...
... so I'm going to start posting my more political rants on the Optimistic Libertarian. It'll mostly be a link site, with some venting thrown in.
Here's the first of many to come.
Here's the first of many to come.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday Fun Links
Some nice light reading for a sunny Friday and hopefully what will be a nice weekend...
A neat story on why Google won't kill book authors ...
The Personality Forge: An interesting artificial intelligence chat bot site where you can create your own chatting 'bot or chat with bots created by others (the ones I tried out don't pass the Turin test) ...
A story that could help with breaking a writer's block, if only you could/would put it use: Walking backwards ...
Cisco sees the light at the end of the economic dark tunnel...
... but some warn that it might just be a firefly and that the mess could continue for a while
A neat story on why Google won't kill book authors ...
The Personality Forge: An interesting artificial intelligence chat bot site where you can create your own chatting 'bot or chat with bots created by others (the ones I tried out don't pass the Turin test) ...
A story that could help with breaking a writer's block, if only you could/would put it use: Walking backwards ...
Cisco sees the light at the end of the economic dark tunnel...
... but some warn that it might just be a firefly and that the mess could continue for a while
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
I'm shaming myself; Also, I owe my book to a worm
That's what this post amounts too. I'm hoping that this post maybe shames me into encouraging myself to write tonight.
I usually write Sunday night - that gives me a head start on the week and I only have to write once more during the week. It gives me plenty of chances at a third session. Only I didn't.
Monday/Tuesday are other good days for writing, in that they aren't Friday or Saturday night. Which are traditionally busy evenings. They also aren't Saturday, a housework day, or Wednesday, the night Lost is on. Lost is the only show I drop everything for and I don't plan on ending that scenerio.
So here I sit, facing Wednesday night wihtout having written anything. Now, lost is an hour starting at 9 p.m. I usually write from 10 to whenever anyway, so its not entirely out of the question. Still, given my late start, I'm half thinking of taking the week off.
The hold up: My workout routine ends next week, and then I'm taking a week off from that. I was kind of hoping to clear all the heavy lifting off my plate that week and use it as a general "recharge" week. Or.... I could take off this week, and really, really do some heavy lifting writing during that week.
So what have I been doing? Ninja Gaiden mostly. This brings me to the second part of my headline. For weeks I was stuck on this one sub boss - a worm - in the game. It was discouraging, frankly, and led me to play less. I would either choose not to play, or play through once, die, lose interest and write. Now I'm flying through the game and enjoying it again. Its been a bummer as far a writing goes.
A final link of interest: Kindle 2.1 has been released, with a larger screen that better supports newspaper & magazine reading. A last, great hope for newspapers? Maybe.
I usually write Sunday night - that gives me a head start on the week and I only have to write once more during the week. It gives me plenty of chances at a third session. Only I didn't.
Monday/Tuesday are other good days for writing, in that they aren't Friday or Saturday night. Which are traditionally busy evenings. They also aren't Saturday, a housework day, or Wednesday, the night Lost is on. Lost is the only show I drop everything for and I don't plan on ending that scenerio.
So here I sit, facing Wednesday night wihtout having written anything. Now, lost is an hour starting at 9 p.m. I usually write from 10 to whenever anyway, so its not entirely out of the question. Still, given my late start, I'm half thinking of taking the week off.
The hold up: My workout routine ends next week, and then I'm taking a week off from that. I was kind of hoping to clear all the heavy lifting off my plate that week and use it as a general "recharge" week. Or.... I could take off this week, and really, really do some heavy lifting writing during that week.
So what have I been doing? Ninja Gaiden mostly. This brings me to the second part of my headline. For weeks I was stuck on this one sub boss - a worm - in the game. It was discouraging, frankly, and led me to play less. I would either choose not to play, or play through once, die, lose interest and write. Now I'm flying through the game and enjoying it again. Its been a bummer as far a writing goes.
A final link of interest: Kindle 2.1 has been released, with a larger screen that better supports newspaper & magazine reading. A last, great hope for newspapers? Maybe.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The power of roots
I guess it turns out ...
... you can do strikes in blogger.
... and you can do half powers, too. A number to a half power is actually the equivilent of the square root of the number. For instance, 25 to the half power would be 5.
So in my little hypothetical, 2 to the power of 4.5 would, I guess, be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2) x 4 (root of the resulting 16) = 64. Not the answer I was looking to arrive at, but it works. *
Or I guess it could be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1.41421 35623 73095 04880 16887 24209 69807 85696 71875 37694 80731 76679 73799.... = 22.627. *
* Disclaimer - I'm not a math genuis, or really even a math... above normal? Not even a math slightly above average. I'm pretty much a math adequate. Therefore, I disclaim any liability or contention that the above numbers, formulas, theories or ideas are presented logically, accurately, intelligently or coherently. They could be spot on. They could be off by a factor of 1,000. I have no real idea. I have presented them to the best of my abilities, that is all.
... you can do strikes in blogger.
... and you can do half powers, too. A number to a half power is actually the equivilent of the square root of the number. For instance, 25 to the half power would be 5.
So in my little hypothetical, 2 to the power of 4.5 would, I guess, be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2) x 4 (root of the resulting 16) = 64. Not the answer I was looking to arrive at, but it works. *
Or I guess it could be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1.41421 35623 73095 04880 16887 24209 69807 85696 71875 37694 80731 76679 73799.... = 22.627. *
* Disclaimer - I'm not a math genuis, or really even a math... above normal? Not even a math slightly above average. I'm pretty much a math adequate. Therefore, I disclaim any liability or contention that the above numbers, formulas, theories or ideas are presented logically, accurately, intelligently or coherently. They could be spot on. They could be off by a factor of 1,000. I have no real idea. I have presented them to the best of my abilities, that is all.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
It's a lovely begining start
I like love the strike function. You'll see why.
I'm also OK with fond of the occasionall crazy post.
I wrote something, well, took notes on something that I think is a pretty great opening couple of sentences or paragraphs to a future book. Hopefully interesting writing. Promisingly unique premise. I'll probably be posting it here, or google doc'ing it for some thoughts.
Meanwhile, as I approach the end of the current book, I'm thinking more and more about openings. I feel like the opening sentence has to have a real hook. Both to attact the eye of editors and readers. Its, outside of the headline, the first chance to bait the reader. It sets the whole mood from there on out. Ok, maybe that's a bit overselling it, maybe not the entire mood. But the reality is that I'm not sure its overselling it too much. An interesting first sentence sets the table, so to speak.
Since this book was written kind of from the middle plot point and expanded outward in both directions, I don't have a opening line in mind.
I'm sure its a battle that will be well documented.
I'm also
I
Meanwhile, as I approach the end of the current book, I'm thinking more and more about openings. I feel like the opening sentence has to have a real hook. Both to attact the eye of editors and readers. Its, outside of the headline, the first chance to bait the reader. It sets the whole mood from there on out. Ok, maybe that's a bit overselling it, maybe not the entire mood. But the reality is that I'm not sure its overselling it too much. An interesting first sentence sets the table, so to speak.
Since this book was written kind of from the middle plot point and expanded outward in both directions, I don't have a opening line in mind.
I'm sure its a battle that will be well documented.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Out of the mouth, into the ... belly of the beast?
... into its pancrease? Frying pan? Wouldn't the last one be absolutely backwards, I mean, who spits into frying pans? Wait, don't Italian spit on people for luck; or at them; or something? Something to do with the devil? You can't tell, but I'm squinting my eyes right now trying to work this out. Like this, or this. NOT like this. Insensitive bast@ard.
I'm desperately trying to tie this post's headline to the last one. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't work very well. Maybe you could tell. Maybe you couldn't. I hid it pretty well, I thought. Keep that in mind while you're scratching your head wondering what the hell this rambling means: don't hold me to a strict interpretation.
Writing last night started off slowly, but by the time I was done had gone very nicely. I even had to write ideas down on paper after I quit because they just kept flowing. That's twice this week. My new goal is three times a week. The problem now is that I sit down to write one of the 14 pieces I have left, and I end up writing something leading up to said piece. Then my next "sit down" is writing the original idea. So while I'm writing frequently, and not really adding to my list of stuff to write, I'm not really making as much progress as you might expect. Thus the increased writing sched.
I FINALLY beat the boss I was fighting. I'm not exaggerating at all to say I probably died 40 times fighting this guy. Plus a couple times on the way to him. Although this guy claims, in a hilariously snarky walkthrough, that the boss is "quite easy" even though it might take a "couple tries" to get the timing right. Yeah, F that. I have choice words for him. A couple tries times, oh I don't know, 20, maybe. Maybe to the power of 4.5. Can you even do half powers? Did I even do the powering thing correctly? Who knows. Probably a math specialist, I guess. Then again, I'm probably better at Ninja Gaiden than a math specialist. Though, those math people can be pretty geeky, so maybe they are pretty good at it too.
Anyway, relieved to have written well. Relieved to be past the infuriating boss fight. SUPER relieved that its Friday. WEEKEND! I need it. Almost took off today with a touch of spring fever. Had the sun been scheduled for an appearance, I just might have done it.
Random wishes/thoughts:
- I wish Blogger had a strike command so I could strike out words. Or at the very least that I could find it. I could have some fun with that, I think.
- I also wish Blogger had one of those post-category box search thingies where the lables you post in frequently are bigger than the shitty little ones you never post too. Those are just cool. You know what I'm talking about. Or maybe you don't.
I'm desperately trying to tie this post's headline to the last one. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't work very well. Maybe you could tell. Maybe you couldn't. I hid it pretty well, I thought. Keep that in mind while you're scratching your head wondering what the hell this rambling means: don't hold me to a strict interpretation.
Writing last night started off slowly, but by the time I was done had gone very nicely. I even had to write ideas down on paper after I quit because they just kept flowing. That's twice this week. My new goal is three times a week. The problem now is that I sit down to write one of the 14 pieces I have left, and I end up writing something leading up to said piece. Then my next "sit down" is writing the original idea. So while I'm writing frequently, and not really adding to my list of stuff to write, I'm not really making as much progress as you might expect. Thus the increased writing sched.
I FINALLY beat the boss I was fighting. I'm not exaggerating at all to say I probably died 40 times fighting this guy. Plus a couple times on the way to him. Although this guy claims, in a hilariously snarky walkthrough, that the boss is "quite easy" even though it might take a "couple tries" to get the timing right. Yeah, F that. I have choice words for him. A couple tries times, oh I don't know, 20, maybe. Maybe to the power of 4.5. Can you even do half powers? Did I even do the powering thing correctly? Who knows. Probably a math specialist, I guess. Then again, I'm probably better at Ninja Gaiden than a math specialist. Though, those math people can be pretty geeky, so maybe they are pretty good at it too.
Anyway, relieved to have written well. Relieved to be past the infuriating boss fight. SUPER relieved that its Friday. WEEKEND! I need it. Almost took off today with a touch of spring fever. Had the sun been scheduled for an appearance, I just might have done it.
Random wishes/thoughts:
- I wish Blogger had a strike command so I could strike out words. Or at the very least that I could find it. I could have some fun with that, I think.
- I also wish Blogger had one of those post-category box search thingies where the lables you post in frequently are bigger than the shitty little ones you never post too. Those are just cool. You know what I'm talking about. Or maybe you don't.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)