Anotherblog

Mild

I’m feeling very mild at the moment. I was incoherent at rage this morning, on account if it being Monday. I hopped out of bed and thrashed around furiously at my clothes, in the vain hope that this would enable them to leap onto me faster so that I would be in time for my train. The only thing keeping me from howling with frustration was that Anna was still asleep, and very cute. Her smile, in fact, kept me from beating the door into a woody pulp, suitable for cardboard manufacturing, when it leaped out at me as I ran past and smacked me in the side with its doorknob.

I got to the station, bought a ticket, stuck the walled back into my pocket, and realised that I had the car key. Unfortunately, we only have one car key - it’s a rental - and Anna needed it today because she was returning it and getting back her own car, which is now finally repaired from that accident that happened about six months ago, when I was driving to the flat in Dulwich Hill to do some filming on Bullet Hole, which I didn’t do any editing of on the weekend because Adobe Premiere pissed me off no end when I was doing editing on Society Cookery yesterday, driving me, in fact, into a frenzy of hatred and twitching seething disgust at everything, which I didn’t get over until this afternoon when I ate a chocolate bar and sat vibrating on the spot for a good twenty minutes listening to Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #2 for perhaps the fourth time today.

Anyway, back at the train station, I watched the train pull up and went back home instead of hopping on the train, and dropped the keys off and took the opportunity to snog Anna, because, what the hell. I felt better at that point, the walk back up the hill had done me good, and I decided to grab a book for the train which I hadn’t managed to grab the first time because I was so full of seething hatred at everything. I looked in the many bookcases, and couldn’t find anything really interesting, so I went back into the bedroom and hunted around for something I might have started and then forgotten about, but the Built-In-Robes were behaving even more recalcitrantly than usual. I commenced venting my spleen on them mightily, safely in the knowledge that Anna was in the garden and out of audible range, but then she walked in with chocolate on her face, so hell, back to the snogging and wonderful calmness until I saw on the clock that I had missed the next train as well. I decided to celebrate this latest route of my sanity by remaining outwardly completely calm, while thinking serial killer thoughts and drinking hot chocolate, because I was late anyway.

And because lateness was no longer an issue, I played a bit of guitar. Guitar-playing is interesting because it can sometimes relax me wonderfully and sometimes drive me into a morass of self-loathing and guitar-abuse. This time, fortunately, it fell on the relaxing side, until I got worked up about arriving at work again, because what if they’d started announcing layoffs? I ran to the station after snogging Anna again, who had managed to re-apply the chocolate, and arrived just in time for the train. The rest of the day has been kind of quiet, a bit see-sawish in mood, but pretty mild.

And that’s how I’m feeling, thanks for asking. How are you?

More CDs

I’m getting into Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #2 and 3 even more today, just thrashing them on the CD player, restarting once it’s stopped. Also bought a CD of piano stuff by Prokofiev and of Guitar stuff by Sor - which is tunes that I can actually play, though ridiculously badly - but haven’t even listened to them yet on account of the hammering that Rachmaninov is getting. Very nice, especially #2 - the first and second parts have solo piano bits that sound kinda Beethoven-ish, and the orchestral bits remind me a lot of Gershwin, though I’m sure in the latter case it’s really the other way around.

Pool
Still playing, though it was crappy today. I played a game of amusing doubles - me against three other players who were allegedly worse than me. I put up a bit of a fight, but had two balls on the table when they won. Must practice more, I’m sure.

Gorilla
I’ve got to admit, I’m getting addicted to some TV stuff, and in particular the wildlife documentaries showing on Wednesday nights on the ABC - last night they had gorillas, and it was magical. Completely entrancing. I keep forgetting how good wildlife docos can be. The scenes of the gorillas washing off roots before eating them, walking through water completely upright, rolling a log over so that they could stand on it - and most of all, the complicated systems they seem to have of chest and tree-beating - this is better and more thought provoking than anything else on TV, though I’d have to rate… um… forgotten the name, but I think it’s “Future Shock”… almost as highly. Also on ABC, features one of the ex-DAAS people exploring future technologies, in an intelligent and reasoned way. I saw an issue on cybernetics, and it kept surprising me with how far beyond the superficial it managed to drive. There were interviews with experts and a round-table discussion between people with quite different views on what was possible, leading to very lively discussion. Maybe it’s the advent of Big Brother and co. that make this stuff seem better, but I was mightily impressed anyway.

Pool again

27 in pool practice, and 1-2 against Mitchell again. I blew a big lead in the second game, had a bunch of chances on the black, but blew it. I’ve realised that my “short” game is pretty solid now, but the area where I’m falling down is in the down-the-table shots. This is where everyone has problems, but I could definitely do with the practice anyway, at least potting straight shots.

Worky work
Going pretty good, hum di hum. More late nights. Still behind, but catching up a little.

Still not much to report
It raining lots today. I bought very cheap classical music CD with Borodin, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov on it and listened to it loud. It good. I eat chocolate. It good. I play too much tombmaster. It not so good but pretty addictive anyway. I learn lessons in what make game addictive. I start designing own game on post-it note, because I not have enough things to do. That good.

Pool

Did pretty well in pool practice today (30, 23) and played a couple of games against my new nemesis, Mitchell of the Testing Team. He’s very good, probably slightly above my standard and about equal to Donncha. We played yesterday and today, and he won 2-1 both times. Actually, there are a lot of good players coming out of the woodwork - even HackerSen has improved hugely through practice every day. He’s disturbingly good now.

Work
Yes, I’m working lateish again. All I can say is “bugger”. I’m still keeping up with the Doctor Who writing - I’ve set myself 150 words a night whether I feel like it or not, and more if I do. I hope to have it finished by the time I head to Brisbane in two weeks time. Yes! Brisbane in two weeks time!

Cold
Anna caught the cold that I had, good and proper. But her work has been going well (running largely without her constant supervision, too) so she’s still cheery. She’s just a naturally cheery lass.

Nothing profound today. Move along
My little sister CB will be coming to town at some point soonish. I hope it isn’t when we’re away in Brisbane, ’cause that’d suck. I hate things that suck.

Weekend

I’m getting into a bit of a rut in the weekends, all stay-at-home and read/write/edit while Anna works. So it’s time to start planning new things - a trip to Brisbane, a trip to Canberra and maybe the ski fields, and a longer-term trip to Canada. Then, I also need to start inviting people over for dinner some more, add some freneticism to the weekends-at-home. That ought to do it. I was a bit stressed this weekend about work, so I went in on Sunday, worked a bit, shot some pool (39, 30, 26, 33) and then Anna and I went to see Bridget Jones’ Diary, which was, of course, good.

Book
I’m still enthused about the Dr Who book, and I’ve gotten to about 5200 words now. The outline is taking shape - I’m a little nervous about it though, because from my limited experience, I generally put too much into the outlines and end up having to trim back massively. This project is pretty dazzling in scope, and it’s daunting even thinking about some of the consequences of the SF concept I’m trying to write about… oh, well, so long as I’m a step ahead of the readers, that’s OK. The other big problem at the moment is finding enough stuff for the Doctor to do - sure, I’ve got the beginning and the ending sorted out, and he’s definitely needed for those bits, it’s just the middle bit that is problematic. The big issue is that there isn’t any real villain, just a whole bunch of people who *don’t listen*, so his is a fairly one-note performace, essentially the Cassandra role. I’m confident that it’ll come together, though, this isn’t an unsurmountable thingy, it’s just my current issue that I’m obsessing about. And where are you if you don’t have one of those?

Blurgle

Went home early yesterday, as planned, and lay around reading an excellent book about editing films: “When the filming stops, the editing begins”, or something like that, by Ralph Rosenblum. Excellent stuff - he edited a lot of the early Woody Allen films, and a whole bunch of others, and his railing against directors was very funny and righteous. Does it make me want to go back and do editing right now? Almost, except for the fact that I’m full of inspiration for the Dr Who novel thingy.

Pool
Yesterday, and most of the rest of the week, I couldn’t turn a trick in pool. I’d line up shots, they’d feel perfect, and the shot wouldn’t even be close. Well, the fever broke last night and I now have a cloggy nose but feel a lot better - my throat isn’t as scratchy any more, which is a great relief - and I was shooting excellent pool today, as fine a form as I’ve ever had. Solo practice at 5:00pm this evening: 31, 28 [this is the number of shots to pot all the balls in no particular order]. Both cases, I could have probably knocked another five shots off if I’d been more careful. Amazing. I have no idea what I was doing differently yesterday, but this time I lined up the shots as always, and they went in perfectly happily.

It made me think about professional sports people a bit. You often hear about golfers getting the yips, and hot and cold streaks, and you realise why when the same kind of thing happens to you - that you have no idea whatsoever about how you do it. How you play well. Is it random, then? I read some statistical survey of basketball players, which analysed the hot-streaks of players, and came to the conclusion that the streaks fell well inside the realms of chance - that the hot streaks were entirely imaginary, like the patterns we ascribe to hundreds-and-thousands in a glass bottle.

Is pool like that? It doesn’t feel like it, but who knows? Have you ever had an intuition about something, and it felt completely certain, completely right, and was dead wrong? I get that a fair bit (which is why I don’t like to rely on intuition) and the feeling I get when I line the ball up in pool is like that too. You move the cue left and right, visualise where you’re going to hit it, and it’s all intuitive. Maybe intuition really is something powerful, not just random, and it gets knocked about when you’re sick.

Enough babbly-gabbling for the moment, though, I’m going home.

Urgle

A week of sickness now, and counting. I caught a cough last Thursday, which has been lingering unpleasantly for a week now and shows no sign of abating. The runny nose bit is new. I feel like crap. Hence the lack of blogging. Strangely, I haven’t missed any days of work yet, though I’m definitely going early today.

Dr Who
I’ve been listening to two Dr Who audios - the new “Death Comes To Time”, from the BBC website, and Jon’s “Fearmonger”. Unfortunately, DCTT is damn near incomprehensible due to the poor quality of the audio - I might give it more of a listen, but so far I’m not all that impressed. Fearmonger, on the other hand, was excellent. Wonderful resolution, some great individual scenes, sparkling dialogue. It has its problems - the Doctor seems far too able to go where he pleases, and the Official response to the various terrorist attacks that go on throughout, is muted, to say the least. But these are pretty much problems with any of the Dr Who, ever, so you can’t be too hard on it. Even so, “The I Job”, Jon’s next audio, is a great step up - I haven’t heard the official version yet, but I was at the read-through, and it was fantastic. Again, sparkling dialogue.

Meanwhile, Dave and I are slowly getting aligned to start work on the novel proposal - more news as we work stuff out…

CEO

Oh yes. The news that our CEO has left was good news, according to stockholders - our stock price went up 40%. Unless there’s some rumour of which I am unaware.

Late nights at work

So I started helping some people get their release out on time, because I had to wait around anyway, because there was a long download and I had to wait for it to finish so I could start another one on the same server, and well, hell, suddenly it was a quarter past nine at night. Very stressy. My boss is away for two weeks, starting this week, and I’m already inundated with requests for more patches, which I am supposed to resist with all possible strength. Working on patches takes away from the work on the new code, which will remove the need for the patches. But everyone is impatient. At least there’s a bit of spare time - I’ve been working on my pool game by practicing potting all the balls, seeing how many shots it takes. Tonight I managed 29, 31, 28, 33. Definite room for improvement - 15 is as good as you can get without potting more than one ball in one shot. On average, it takes me two shots to get a ball in.

Here’s another little distraction that I’ve been using to while away the long nights while the computer chugs away, compiling…

News on arse-kickings

Our CEO got kicked out… there’s a lot of spin going around, of course, but that sounds like what happened. He is pursuing other interests. Good news or bad news? I really don’t know.

Fitness
I haven’t been cycling this week yet, due to bad weather. Actually, I miss riding the bike - it allowed me to come into work at a more flexible time, and it was faster, and I felt good after riding, and I didn’t vibrate as much as I normally do.

Wallet
I lost my wallet of Thursday last week, cycling home from work. Drove the car back and forth looking for it, but I couldn’t get into the work building itself because my pass-card was in the wallet. So went home, cancelled my credit cards, went in to work next day, and of course the security guard had found the wallet, no worries at all. Couldn’t uncancel the card, though, so I’ve been surviving on the money that was in the wallet, for the last week now. Actually, this is probably good for me, I’ve definitely learned lessons, yes indeed.

I left my mobile phone at Chris & Amanda’s new place, on the weekend.

New place!
Yes, Chris & Amanda are now kitted out with their new house, fully equipped with dog and many boxes. The dog is enthusiastic (how else?) and playful and sweet, but rather intense, and the house is big and sprawling and quirky, in a good way. Pity it’s so out of the way of the train station, though, it makes it quite difficult to get to their place.

Writing
I foolishly described a plot I’d been working on to Jon, and he became very enthusiastic, said I should write it as a Dr Who novel and submit it. So I’ve spent a couple of hours working on an outline, despite my many other projects that I ought to be doing. Who knows, perhaps it will become the “Project that I am currently avoiding” some time soon, and then I can work on all the other stuff. I did some editing work on the weekend anyway, so I guess it isn’t all that disruptive yet. Anyway, fun! New project! Also, Jon and I are working on a translation of the “Once Upon A Time” card game to Dr Who, for a convention. Also fun! And I just got a copy of Kate’s “Year of Intelligent Tigers”, which apparently has a cameo of me being eaten. Fun! Aargh! Chomp chomp burp.

Tentative title for the book: “Fork”.