Run 600: 600th run, 600 people

Run 600
Average pace: 5:54/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:37 pm
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 29:43
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 11-12ºC
Humidity: 70%
Wind: light
BPM: 167
Weight: 165.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 4580 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8

Today’s run was a milestone, being the 600th run I’ve officially tracked, so hooray for me on sticking with this. This works out to an average of 66.6 runs per year, which is positively devilish. If I break it down further, it’s 5.5 runs per month, which is both less Satanic and also a lot less impressive-sounding. This is because some years I’ve run a lot less due to injuries and/or laziness. If I stick to my usual three-times a week my monthly average would be 12, more than double.

So I’m pretty lazy and prone to injury.

All that said, I was of course concerned how today’s run would go with two weeks off, but the results were pleasant in that they were nearly identical to the last run. My total time was 29:43, only three seconds slower than the run on October 6th. It’s actually a bit eerie how similar they are. In other good news, my BPM was down to 167, back below the 170 threshold. While some abdominal cramps threatened around the midway point, they never fully materialized.

In terms of stamina, then, the run actually went decently. I never felt like I was plodding (or blazing along, of course), and keeping pace with my previous effort is a victory of sorts. Conditions were fine, too, hovering around 12ºC and with a light breeze. I wore a t-shirt so this was the first run in awhile where I didn’t feel overdressed.

But it was crowded as all heck. I keep meaning to start earlier because at mid-morning the trail is relatively deserted, but just a few hours later it’s booming with foot traffic. I compounded matters by running clockwise again. I did this because the proliferation of fallen leaves made the north side of the lake, with its many exposed tree roots, a greater hazard for running. Running clockwise puts me in the same direction as most walkers, meaning they can’t see me coming.

And they couldn’t hear me, either. There were so many people–usually walking in twos, threes, or larger groups–that I settled into a refrain of “On your left!” or occasionally “On your right!” when that seemed easier. And in nearly every instance, the people did not show any sign of hearing me. They would seem startled as I nipped by them. This happened over and over. It was baffling. I even started saying it louder, to no avail. I never screamed it, because I didn’t want to seem rude or suggest people are blithering idiots that need to be screamed at.

There was a kid about 3 or 4 on the second boardwalk, slowly and somewhat randomly walking down the middle, oblivious to everything around him (as an aside, this is probably not the best spot to let a small kid get ahead, because if he goes exploring over the edge, he’s in the swamp). I figured “On your left!” would make no sense to him and tried to think of a phrase that would work as I got nearer. At the last moment I settled on gently but firmly calling, “Look out, kid!” then slowed down further, put out a hand and made sure we would not collide, as his parents fruitlessly called to him from behind.

There were also several cyclists, but my vow to not complain prevents me from saying more. For the best, anyway.

Post-run went well once again and in some ways this is now becoming my favorite part of the outing, because I don’t worry about pace, I just run for as long as I want, then walk for a bit, then run again. It’s unstructured, less demanding and makes the running part feel more fun, somehow.

Here’s to the next 600 runs.

Photo of the Day, October 17, 2018

Testing the iPhone at night and unsurprisingly, with little light, it does not take outstanding photos.

This one had a harsh floodlight from a nearby warehouse creating harsh shadows and it turned out decently, plus it fits with Halloween approaching. Boo.

Book review: Snowblind

SnowblindSnowblind by Christopher Golden
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Snowblind is like a reliable sedan–it safely gets you where you want to go, and with no real surprises along the way, unpleasant or otherwise. But like that reliable sedan, you’re not likely to long remember the trip riding in it, either.

Having now broken my solemn vow to never use analogies, there is one odd bit I will remember and it has nothing to do with the story per se. Christopher Golden really likes the word “bitch.” He uses it (32 times) both as a verb and a descriptor, and every time he does it stands out in the same way that unironically using the word “groovy” to describe something in positive terms would. It was kind of distracting.

The Stephen King blurb on the cover promises Snowblind will be “deeply scary” but I didn’t find it scary at all–and I don’t even like snow! Or demons. Or snow demons, which Snowblind features, with icicle teeth and bottomless dark eyes filled with cruel intelligence (though they actually seem kind of dumb when it’s time to put plans into action). But not being scary is perfectly fine with me. A horror novel doesn’t have to make me want to keep the lights on, it just has to tell a good story within the milieu of horror.

While I was okay with the premise–otherworldly demons ride in on blizzards and attack the living–and thought the framing device of having them attack, then leave survivors to deal with their return when another monster blizzard strikes a dozen years later–was also interesting, there were aspects of the story that didn’t hold together as well as they might have, diminishing the overall experience.

I felt there were a few too many characters and switching back and forth between different groups didn’t really add much to the story, it just left me feeling less invested in everyone’s fate. This was exacerbated by some of the characters being rather shallow. I didn’t feel connected to them and at times it felt more like they were moving to help the plot rather than acting naturally (probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to fiction).

There are predictable turns–the noble sacrifice is set up early, so by the time it arrives all I could do was let out a small sigh and keep reading–but for the most part these don’t actively detract from the story, but neither do they enhance it. The prose is straightforward, perhaps setting a low bar, but also easily clearing it. This may sound like damning with faint praise, but there is something to be said for authors not journeying deep into their navels when trying to tell a simple story.

However, the actual demon-things are presented in a way that makes them not so much menacing as cartoonishly evil, and this undercuts much of what Golden has built. Whenever they showed up I found myself imagining more effective ways of depicting them. And while the framing device of splitting the story into two storms separated by twelve years is not a bad one, it leads to a lot of not much happening between the blizzards. The characters go about their lives and things happen, but none of it is especially compelling.

This paragraph contains a spoiler on the ending. Read at your peril! (Apologies if the spoiler tags don’t work.) (view spoiler)

Despite what I’ve written, I don’t think Snowblind is a bad book, it’s just ordinary, a story that has all the right pieces, but doesn’t do anything to elevate what’s there into something better than just serviceable.

View all my reviews

National Novel Writing Month 2018: The Winnowing, Tool Edition

I’m still deciding on what to use for writing this year’s novel.

I’m leaning against Scrivener for a few reasons:

  • the 3.0 version for Windows seems very unlikely to go live before November 1st. The older version works fine, but is not directly  compatible with the current Mac version.
  • I am still not comfortable with how fragile it is with cloud storage. I get that it’s not that hard to just use Dropbox and remember to save, close and sync before returning to a project on a different system, but it’s 2018 and it just seems like this shouldn’t feel like a hack at this point. Plus my preferred storage solution of OneDrive is actively discouraged.
  • I am still not a big fan of the UI, though it is certainly better in 3.0.

That said, it has a lot still going for it, especially for a novel, so I haven’t absolutely ruled it out.

Speaking of Scrivener, the Scrivener-like Atomic Scribbler seems out of the running as its cloud-saving is even more fragile, and the author of the software offers dire warnings to those who would trust an online service in conjunction with it.

I’m also actually considering Microsoft Word. Since novels don’t use a lot of formatting, it wouldn’t get too bogged down and unlike Scrivener, cloud saving is easy-peasy across devices. But it’s still Word and despite having a billion features, it lacks a lot of things that are useful for novel-writing.

WriteMonkey 3.0 is still in beta, doesn’t (yet) support paragraph indents and is unlikely to even come out of beta this year, let alone before NaNoWriMo. Version 2.7 is still very capable and the text-only files it produces make cloud-saving simple and the files themselves very light and quick to load. This is probably still the leading candidate.

FocusWriter is like a stripped-down version of WriteMonkey that supports a lot of its core features and offers an easy-to-use interface. Since it can save in text format, it’s easy to switch between it and other editors that use text files without anything mucking up. I’m not entirely sure why I don’t consider it a stronger contender. It’s almost as if it may lack some feature I need but I can’t think of what it might be.

There are a billion other editors out there, but as I’ve recounted before, most have one or more features (or lack of the same) that make them unsuitable.

The three contenders above are also among the few that support both Windows and macOS, though the latter is less important since I’ve gotten a ThinkPad and seldom use my MacBook Pro now (every time I do I still want to start a rant about the keyboard). Scrivener and Word do offer the bonus of iOS versions, too, though in theory any iOS text editor could work if I stick to using the text-only format–though paragraph indents would likely remain a problem.

Unlike the story itself, I can pretty much put off making a decision about what tool to use until the last minute. And I just might!

Photo of the Day, October 14, 2018

A dandelion by a light standard in Lower Hume Park.

I don’t know what compelled me to take this–maybe the contrast of the yellow against the black of the light standard. I also kind of like the low perspective. I could have cropped the photo to leave out the background, but in this case there’s enough there to provide some interesting context–sunny day, nearby road, trees, a gravel path.

When narcissism and mauling come together

You might think this sign would not be needed, but apparently it is, because it exists. This particular one is at Robert Burnaby Park.

If you see a bear, do not take a selfie with the bear, because the bear will eat you and post its own selfie on Bear Facebook, featuring your mangled corpse.

The same sign also advises that you should not:

  • approach a bear
  • feed a bear
  • run from a bear
  • chase a bear
  • get close to a bear

Basically, if you spot a bear, immediately teleport away, if possible.

National Novel Writing Month 2018: A dark horse re-emerges

A few days ago I was reading the NaNo Technology sub-forum because I like reading about the tech used for writing almost more than writing itself. Just typing that out I can feel the ghost of Harlan Ellison scowling over me.

Anyway, someone described but could not name a thing where words get put into a and are sized based on frequency. These are word clouds, which several other forumites helpfully named. Someone linked a site that generates word clouds based on the text you paste in, so I went looking for some text.

As there was no obvious limit on what could be pasted in, I went to the Novels folder of my All Writing – current folder and grabbed the most recent revision of my incomplete novel Weirdsmith. The site didn’t actually generate a word cloud, probably because I don’t have Java installed, and I couldn’t be bothered to pursue it further. But I looked at the incomplete draft of Weirdsmith–abandoned after only a few days–and was surprised. How can I be surprised by my own writing? I have a bad memory, apparently.

Weirdsmith has been started at least four different times:

  1. As a play. This is the closest to actually being done of the bunch and in it, Weirdsmith is a psychopath who is found injured in the woods by a young couple. He insinuates himself into their lives and things do not go well, as you might expect. This was probably 40% complete when it petered out.
  2. Novel attempt #1: This preserved the main story noted above, but as a novel and with the young couple being switched to two guys. It didn’t make it past the first scene.
  3. Novel attempt #2: This is the one that surprised me. I’ll get back to it in a moment.
  4. Novel attempt #3: This one, like #3, also changes up the story. It starts with a young man driving through a snowstorm to a new city and a new job. He crashes and is left in a weeks-long coma. My work ended just as he starts physical therapy and at a point where nothing unusual has happened.

What surprised me about #3 is that I had somehow managed to blot it right out of my mind. Re-reading it, it was at once familiar again, but it was kind of weird (no pun intended) to have so utterly forgotten about it, especially since the re-read revealed that it was not bad at all.

This one doesn’t start with a car crash or a new job, but rather an IT guy (write what you know) dealing with daily annoyances, struggling with his desire to write (write what you know) and finding little details in his life just a little off. The story hints ominously that the day is not going to end at all in a way he would like. In a rare case of recording my ideas, I actually have a note before the last (incomplete) scene:

William drives to meet a date and that is when he has the crash/finds the book—compare it to shouting “look out” to the girl and how the sequence of events leads to something happening that may not have happened otherwise [edit—or not. There may need to be more initial plot development before going straight to Magicke Book]

The Magicke Book is ill-defined, but I expected that it would somehow shape or predict events, possibly by making things written in it coming true, or something along those lines (I want to say “or words to that effect” but that would be a terrible bit of wordplay).

The other surprising part of finding this third version of Weirdsmith is how it actually grabbed me and showed promise upon re-reading it. William’s personal and private lives are both fleshed out, each with its own travails, so you immediately see a person with flaws, struggling, but seemingly decent at his core. He seems a bit hapless, and maybe deserves better.

As a result, I’m going to spend a few days trying to outline this and see where it goes. Nic suggested that perhaps after finding the book and using it as a journal, William is surprised to find other entries written in it–perhaps in response to what he is writing? Is someone or something trying to communicate with him? and why? Questions!

We’ll see how it goes, but I am thinking this may work out better than the Stage 4 cancer time travel story, which would require more research at the very least.