Month: January 2014

Writing projects. All of them.

I decided to put together a spreadsheet that would finally collect together all of my various writing projects from over the years.

I left out anything that was little more than a sketch or idea. It had to have at least enough substance to count as unfinished to make the list. I also left out all of the treasure of my youth that were scrawled in crayon, written with a leaky fountain pen (they all leaked) or made via the incredible clatter of my portable Smith Corona typewriter, which looked very much like this one (yes, it was blue and it was awesome…at making a racket):

Smith Corona portable
“I can’t hear you, I’m creating art!”

In the end I was somewhat surprised to have sixty stories listed, ranging from finished copies suitable for publication/framing/lining bird cages to others that were little more than a few rough scenes desperately clinging to life. Fittingly, one of these is a short story called “Writer’s Block”.

I’ll edit this post to go into a bit more detail about the genres and so on soon.

Nerd rage: Razer Synapse 2.0 software

I originally posted this on Broken Forum but the process bugged me so much that I feel obligated to repost it here.

I hooked up my Deathadder 2013 edition mouse to my MacBook because I switched over to a Logitech 700s on my PC and was no longer using the Deathadder there. Using the built-in drivers the Deathadder seemed a bit twitchy on the Mac, with the cursor often leaping from the external monitor back to the laptop’s display. I decided to install the much-maligned Razer Synapse 2.0 driver configuration thingie, which requires you to be online (initially, at least).

First I had to create an account. The system kept telling me that my chosen username and/or password were bad without providing any details as to why. I finally figured out it didn’t like special characters in passwords. What is this, the 1890s? Anyway, I got to where the account was created and apparently missed a verification email with a link I had to click on (because the page made no mention of it). I tried my username/password combo, knowing it was correctly entered but again the system kept saying it wasn’t (due to the aforementioned unmentioned verification requirement).

Here’s the best part, though: after several “unsuccessful” attempts I was locked out.

Of a driver.

I could not configure my mouse unless I waited at least five minutes first. At that point the system would generously grant me the privilege of entering my username and password again.

Instead I uninstalled the software and made a promise to myself to never buy another Razer product. (The uninstall naturally did not allow me to just drag the icon off the menu bar, I had to hunt down a separate uninstall app in the Applications/Library folder. But it is gone now. Hopefully.)

Welcome to Hat Francisco, April 1906

Via a link on digg I was shown this 11-minute film shot on April 14, 1906 in San Francisco, four days before the major earthquake that devastated the city.

While there is a certain tragic quality in seeing these people going about their ordinary lives not knowing the great destruction that was imminent, I was struck by several things. First, the roadway seen in the video–Market Street– is remarkably wide given that much of the traffic was still horse-drawn. Second, I love the utter casualness of the people dashing across and in-between the automobiles, streetcars, bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. Even as they come within inches of being run down, they maintain an air of perfect nonchalance.

Mostly, though, I notice the hats. I watched the entire 11 minutes and did not see a single person, whether man, woman or child, who was not wearing some kind of hat or cap. People loved hats back then. They probably slept while wearing them. Judging from the size of some, I have no doubt that they may have even protected certain people from debris raining down on them during the quake. Seriously, a few women in the film are wearing hats that are about two feet high. By the time a brick got through that it’d probably only muss the hair.

I was also surprised by how many cars there were. Looking it up, the Model T didn’t come out until 1908, so this appears to be the transition period where cars were still too expensive for most but affordable enough for many to no longer be rare. It must have sucked to be a horse back then, having to share the road with a bunch of noisy tin buckets full of yahoos. Fancy yahoos wearing hats.

The very tiny miracle run

Average pace: 5:31/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Ran Spruce Loop and Conifer Loop
Distance: 7.04 km
Weather: Fog and low cloud
Temp: 3-5ºC
Wind: light to nil
Calories burned: 558
Total distance to date: 2501 km

I was going to run last weekend but both days we had monsoon-like rains and motivating yourself to do your second run after seven weeks off when there are monsoon-like rains is…challenging.

But today the weather was calm, with low fog and a brisk temperature that was only 3ºC. Still, no rain meant no excuses, so I headed out late in the morning.

My plan was to officially run 5K but to extend that if possible as I was only 6 km away from hitting the 2,500 km milestone (kilometerstone?) on Nike+. I would walk whatever was left and take the SkyTrain back from the Production Way station not too far from Burnaby Lake.

Since my last run was 13 days ago I figured my time would be worse and it was–5:31/km vs 5:22/km. Because I didn’t feel too bad while running and the time off I’m not overly concerned with the slower pace.

I also managed to push to 7 km total and really could have run farther but my leg muscles were starting to cry like a pair of kids that had their ice cream snatched away. This meant I did indeed pass the 2,500 km total. It would have been nice if I had done it while running blazing fast but I finished upright, so it’s all good.

The very tiny miracle was me passing a pair of women who were jogging ahead of me around the 4 km mark. Granted they were barely moving fast enough to qualify as running and I passed in the most deliberate way possible but still, it was nice to know I could still pass others.

I felt a stitch or two early on but nothing serious and although my left foot was a bit sore before I even headed out, it didn’t get any worse and was overall fine. The Achilles tendon was pleasantly a non-factor again. I think maybe it actually healed or something.

I’m looking forward to running more regularly and getting back into peak form again.

The light jacket and t-shirt proved sufficient despite the cool temperatures. It’s also nice to not have to bring gloves as my hands warm up fairly quickly without them. I saw a few other joggers that were bundled up like it was 40 below or something. Maybe they’re from anywhere other than the west coast.

My long personal nightmare is finally over

I think I’ve gotten over my Bejeweled addiction.

I’ve unfortunately replaced it with a Mahjong addiction but at least I get semi-profound chunks of wisdom at the end of each game. You know, stuff like “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” or  “Man, I hope you invested in some good shoes if you’re walking a thousand miles”.

In fact, I think I’ll head off to enrich my life with more ancient wisdom right now.

Random unanswerable questions

Here’s something to keep you up late at night: think about all the questions you can ask but never get answers for. I don’t mean profound, thought-provoking questions like “How many stars are there in the universe?” or “What’s the highest number you can count to?”

No, I mean simple stuff like “How many people on this train with me have never been on it before?” or “What would it be like to be a bird afraid of heights?” Okay, the second one could probably be answered with “It would suck” but for the first one, how would you ever know? Sure, it’s theoretically possible you could find out the answer by simply asking everyone, but you have to make a lot of assumptions for this to work:

  • everyone you ask is willing to answer
  • everyone speaks the same language as you
  • everyone who answers is being truthful or understands the question
  • you can meet the above conditions before the next stop where some will get off and others get on, polluting the sample

The reality is you’re very unlikely to ever know and there are an infinite number of these seemingly banal yet unanswerable questions if you stop and think about it for a minute.

I recommend watching YouTube videos of cats instead.

When infotainment gets carried away with itself

During the pre-awards ceremony for the recent 2014 Golden Globe Awards show a series of “fun facts” were displayed occasionally onscreen, including this one:

Fun indeed.

Also, Adam Sandler leads the nominations for the annual Razzie Awards. His movie Grown Ups 2 earned eight Golden Raspberry nominations. This will probably be as close as he gets to an Oscar. He’s still way richer than I’ll ever be so I’m just being petty here. Mostly.

My new site: slightrewrite.com

After some very good feedback on my writing within the increasingly awkward confines of the private messaging system of Broken Forum I decided to go all out and create an entirely new forum devoted specifically for new(ish) writers to receive (and give) feedback on writing projects.

It’s called slightrewrite.com (the name was coined by kerzain, one of the members of both BF and now SR). I’d forgotten how fun it was to code basic HTML and CSS, to configure a forum and get everything working just right. And then when it doesn’t the hosting company suggests you upgrade your host package ($$$)  so you do and then hope it really runs properly.

The forum is only intended for a small group of people so I’m not looking to strike it big here. In fact that would almost certainly lead to more headaches than it would be worth, so just ignore this post, OK?

If it works for even one person (it doesn’t even have to be me) I’ll consider the endeavor worthwhile.

Beavers: 1, 152 car coal train: 0

On Saturday morning a train derailed near the entrance to Burnaby Lake, my preferred jogging area. The track runs along the northern side of the lake and on this particular morning nine of the cars came off the track, with three of them tipping and spilling their coal onto the ground and into the nearby stream. It could have been worse since it was coal and not, say, nuclear waste, which would have led to five generations of three-headed fish or just killed everything in the water for the next 500 years.

The torrential rains (we just went through a mini-Pineapple Express) are believed to have undermined the track but the main culprit for the derailment were beavers. They didn’t chew the track to bits, though one can imagine the havoc if they developed a taste for creosote. Instead, the rain washed out one of their mega-dams in a nearby creek and that helped wreck the track. As the CBC news story said:

“We’ve confirmed that the cause of the derailment yesterday in Burnaby was due to heavy rainfall that led to a beaver dam washout,” she told CBC News Sunday.

You have to admire that a few beavers can cause thousands of tons of machinery to topple over like that. And you know they’ll rebuild the dam, possibly with a not-quite-evil glint in their eyes.

Ghost running

Some racing games let you race against a ‘ghost’ opponent. This is usually depicted as a translucent figure/car because it’s not solid and you can move through it. The ghost is either another player’s recorded effort or one of your own earlier ones. The purpose is to give you a competitor that you can see and race against without actually needing the opponent to be there live. Plus to race against yourself would require cloning and that’s probably a good three or four years off yet.

I thought it would be neat if I could race against a ghost of myself when I’m out jogging. I can only imagine the psychological boost to be had by zipping ahead of myself, instantly knowing I was running better and faster. Sadly I can’t think of an easy way for this to be implemented without some crazy new tech that could be decades off.

On the plus side they’re also bound to have a decent smart watch by then, too.

The perils of modern writing No. 1

Back in the old days writers used to face hazards like getting lead poisoning from pencils, being stabbed by critics with ivory-handled fountain pens or getting eaten by a bear, as writers would often be forced to write outside to have sufficient light and bears were pretty much everywhere back then.

By comparison today’s writers have it pretty easy. We have computers to write with. We have delete keys. We have indoor lights and doors that can lock and keep out bears. But there are still perils to writing, even in this modern age of flying cars and zero calorie sodas.

This week I could not work on my writing on my lunch break, even though I took my laptop with me to work every day and it was in perfect working order. What prevented me from writing? Was it a sudden zombie apocalypse? Did aliens blanket the world with rays that prevented the normal operation of all electronic devices? A little of both?

No, it was perhaps worse than these things. The wireless network was acting flaky, forcing me to use my laptop in scary offline mode. Suddenly the world was at my fingertips but instead of offering a bounty of knowledge and diversion it offered stony silence. Not to mention plenty of “this page cannot be displayed”. No big deal normally (lie) but I keep my writing in the cloud, specifically the very popular Dropbox. With no wireless access my Dropbox folder was inert. Sure, I could have made my important stuff available for offline mode but that sort of planning (like outlines) is for losers.

The thought of writing something entirely new from scratch this early in the new year was too frightening and so I simply ate my lunch and listened to ABBA. Somewhere Harlan Ellison was laughing at me as he finished another handwritten page in one of his many legal pads.

But you wait. When the zombie apocalypse does arrive, what do you think will be more effective in braining a zombie? My computer or Harlan’s legal pad?

Exactly.

26 lines to zombie apocalypse: take one

As part of a writing exercise a few years back I wrote the following. The exercise was to write something where each line used the next letter of the alphabet. It’s not a poem, really, because it has no meter or whatever it is poems have.

At the start it was just another minor medical news story.
But then I saw a man in the alley behind Tara’s Organic Foods.
Clutching a cat in his hands, he chomped on it like a burger.
Dumbfounded I watched until he’d had his fill.
Eyes turned on me and he sprinted, blood spraying from his lips.

Five days later the police shot him as he dined on a doberman.
Good news, the doctors told me, you can return to work.
Health care officials stream past my office in panel vans.
I’m told it’s nothing when I ask, nothing to worry about.
Just keep your nose down (and on your face).

Killings continue, more pets and then an old man named Gus.
Loner, outcast, found under the train trestle, no pics please.
More health care officials in their vans, DO NOT WORRY.
No suspect yet but we have leads, we have leads.

On the tenth day a woman is found on the street.
Painted on the pavement in her own blood.
Questioning a health official, I am pushed away.
Reassurances are made but I recognize the fear.
Safety will not be found here anymore.

Taking an hour, I pack what I need, my survival kit.
Under one arm I cradle a gun I just bought.
Veiled eyes follow as I go to my car.
Watching as I drive away.

X-rays revealed nothing at the time.
Yet I cannot deny the events behind Tara’s.
Zombies have come and I’m in the mood for brains.

When I next post about this (take two) it will be after I’ve turned this a poem. I expect it to be wretched, perhaps gloriously so.

Soon™.