Anotherblog

Finished the first draft of Fork

Finished the first draft of Fork
Astounding! The last two days have been a veritable feast of riches. I finished, as the topic hints at, the first draft of Fork very shortly after having been exposed to that electrical maelstrom (the epicentre of what I am assured was a most dramatic wind storm, that still gusts around Sydney).

When I sat down to write on Wednesday evening, I (as usual) did a round of Kanjitest. Much to my surprise, I finished all fifty questions within as many seconds! More strange still, even as I thought to do another test, this time with a hundred questions, I noticed that I had just done one. Disconcerting! I tried going back to solitaire, but it proved boringly easy. To make it harder, I tried playing with my eyes closed and clicking randomly, but as long as I was not consciously trying to lose, I would always win.

Having nothing better to do, I opened up the last chapter of “Fork”, with which I have been struggling for several weeks. I started writing, and as I went along it got easier and easier. In fact, I began to realise that the words were appearing on the screen a fraction before I actually wrote them, and that I was merely copying them down! The ending isn’t quite what I originally had in mind, but it is certainly quite compelling, if rather odd. At least it’s finished now.

Magic: The Gathering
I played my last Magic tournament game against David K. at Wednesday lunchtime. I think this was the first instance I observed of the strangeness that has carried me the last forty-eight hours. It was the moment in which one of my cards actually devoured one of David’s that tipped me off. I played the card “Rend Flesh” on one of his creatures, and the artwork of the card bulged outward as I was pointing at the card I wished to destroy, engulfed it, and pulled back to reveal a couple of shreds of mangled cardboard.

Needless to say, I won the match. In the end, I went 4-1 in the tournament. Pleasing!

Badminton
I have yet to quite understand precisely what is happening to me (or perhaps to the world in general). I played badminton against Ian B. yesterday, and the experience was alarming. Every time I went to hit the shuttle, time seemed to slow down. Stranger, I had an out-of-body experience: it felt as though my consciousness retreated to a position several metres behind me, so I could see my own body in the act of swinging the racquet. The first time this happened, I had no idea what was going on, of course, and the shuttle fell to the ground in front of me. As the match progressed, I began to get used to this, and managed a couple of awkward strokes. Now, if I close my eyes during the consciousness-retreating bit, I can usually hit the shuttle back, four times out of five. It was not enough to win the match, however!

Cars
Probably the strangest thing to happen so far is that yesterday morning, when I arrived at work, there was a car sitting on my desk. As I looked around, I realised there was a car on everyone’s desk! Fortunately, they were mini-Coopers, so we could still work, but it was a little distracting.

I have decided to collect everyone’s car and make a short film for tropfest. So far, I have managed to collect twenty-six mini-Coopers and a dozen Subaru WRXs. Now all I have to do is come up with a script.

Incredible!

Incredible!
Why, I feel strangely alive! Super-alive! When the current came out of the screen at me, I thought I was a goner. It hit me in the face, went down my throat (leaving a delicious, fruity taste) and knocked me out. My work colleagues reported colourful electrical discharges travelling the length of my body, for almost a full minute, as I twitched and spasmed and muttered unintelligible, foreign-sounding phrases under my breath. So, other than the colourful electrical discharges, fairly normal.

The Doctor came by a few minutes ago, and it appears that I was not harmed by this strange event. The computer screen has gone back to normal. But I know, somehow, that I had changed.

Book meme

Book Meme
OK, I’ll bite.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal…
5. …along with these instructions.

“The direction of the current flow in these conductors is represented by dots (out of paper) and crosses (into the paper).”

(Electrical Engineering Fundamentals, Del Toro)

Well, that was exciting.

. x
. x
. x
. x
.

Oh no! It’s come unwound! It’s coming straight out of the monitor! Aaargh!

The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.

Courtesy of Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s weblog…

The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.

1. By counsel.
2. By command.
3. By consent.
4. By provocation.
5. By praise or flattery.
6. By concealment.
7. By partaking.
8. By silence.
9. By defense of the ill done.

Badminton

Badminton
Good games of badminton at lunch time today and yesterday. I can feel myself getting fitter, and more limber as well: I’ve been stretching before and after the games, and every time there’s a work break (we have programs installed that force work breaks on us, every 1.5 hours or so) I do some more stretching. I can touch my toes again, now.

I was considering getting badminton coaching, but I don’t want to do it unless Ian B. does too (otherwise I’ll theoretically get ahead of him, and we’re at very close skill levels at the moment), and he’s not keen. I don’t really need coaching; it’s just that the enthusiasm for all things badminton is beginning to make me want to lash out and buy my own racquet, shuttlecocks, etc. and get lessons. In a sense, though, there’s more pleasure to be had from discovering all the subtleties of the game myself. It’s a little like computer games. You can go through and discover everything for yourself, or you can read the walkthrough.

Writing
So close to finished. So very close. I’ve started the next Film Forensics review (due yesterday) for “Signs”, and hopefully I’ll have it done tonight so that I can power on and get a bunch of the reviews done before November. Got a Nanowrimo meeting tomorrow, and I’d really like to have Fork done by then, too, so maybe tonight will be a busy one.

Kanji
I overcame my fear of being admonished, chastised and rebuked. Admonished = awe + say; Chastise = say + glue; rebuke = say + meeting + butcher. I could make a very strange game out of this. Actually, I’ve been thinking of making a card game anyway, something like scrabble or gin rummy. Each card is a primitive, and you lay down hands of valid kanji, worth various points depending on the difficulty of the primitive. Some of the primitives have different forms depending one their position within the kanji, though. My first instinct is to have a different card for each form of the primitive, so that the kanji look right when you arrange the cards together, but that might make it a little too hard.

Fried

Fried
I’m feeling completely fried at the moment. This is the last time I’m working through the weekend, at least for a while. I’m just not coping with it as well as I used to. Not thinking straight. Having a lot of trouble with the latest Kanji, not helped by the fact that three of them are “Chastise”, “Admonish” and “Rebuke”. I’ve been getting 4-5% wrong in kanjitest for the last couple of days now, but that may also be due to the natural decay of my squishy, feeble memory.

Film Forensics
I finished off the Star Wars film forensics late last night. It took a lot more effort than normal, and I’m rather afraid the effort doesn’t show much, except that the review is a little longer than normal.

Bleary

Bleary
That’s me. I worked 11:00 - 5:00pm both days of the weekend, so I’m feeling a wee bit punchdrunk at the moment. I’ve been managing to get through the writing in a kind of incoherent daze, happy only in the knowledge that it will soon be over, and I’ll have two weeks or so of no writing before being hit by Nanowrimo. No writing apart from Film Forensics, of course.

Magic Tournament
I didn’t win! As expected. Andrew K. won all five of his games, and is therefore this tournament’s champion. I’m doing pretty well, though - I haven’t played all five matches yet, and I’m 3-1 so far, with the last of my games to be played next week. Andrew K. is the only player who’s not at our work, so we all played our games against him and agreed to play the remainder of the games we couldn’t finish, throughout the week.

Once again, I’ll put my detailed report in the comments section.

Battlestar Galactica 2003
I went over to Jon & Kate’s on Sunday, and while Kate went to a Democrats meeting, Jon & I watched the fourth Dr Who story “Robot”, part 1. I’d watched part 2 recently on ABC, and was rather impressed all over again with Tom. And then we watched half of Battlestar Galactica, and were very thoroughly impressed. It’s very good. They take elements that are a bit old and creaky (and not just elements from the original series - there’s recycyled bits of the Terminator and Matrix films, and there are quite a few character cliches) and somehow, made them work anyway.

Most impressive, for me, was their attempt to show space combat; genuinely exciting, and entirely devoid of the usual “hero survives through blind luck and stupidity” bits that are the modern version of “exciting”. The characters are competent, including the enemy characters. Each character is shown as a stereotype, and then they work to break that stereotype as soon as we’re comfortable with it. I’m greatly looking forward to watching the rest of it, and the subsequent series that is now showing in the US.

As a side note, reading reviews about it, I discovered that a lot of people (generally fans of the original series) really, really hate it. Passionately and unreasonably. I’ve been exposed to a bit of Dr Who fandom recently, but as introverted and reactionary as it can sometimes be, it’s *nothing* compared with BG fandom.

Magic tournament

Magic Tournament
It’s on tonight. We have the cards, we’ve all managed to avoid reading spoilers about the set, we’re ready to go. Stupidly exciting! I’ve done all my writing so I won’t have to do it at 3:00am like last time. I’ve been on a bit of a losing streak with games lately - Settlers of Catan, badminton, squash - which I think has been the result of laziness, complacency and superstition. So I’ll put my odds of winning this particular tournament way, way down. I’ll be aiming to not come last.

Kanji
Shane S.’s kanjitest program has usurped the place of solitaire as procrastination activity for writing, about which I couldn’t be happier. It feels very rewarding to “win” a round of 100 by getting all of them, and the fact that it doesn’t have a timer counts as an advantage. It’s less frustrating.

Badminton
…was particularly frustrating today. My irrititation with this one particular player continued, despite my mental efforts to counter it. He is so competitive that he will always hit difficult shots to the weaker player, even when he’s winning by a lot. And he definitely enjoys winning those points. In many ways, this is good: the weaker player gets more play, and gradually becomes better. But in the cases in which I am the weaker player, knowing exactly what he’s going to do doesn’t help very much. He smashes it hard, and it’s always difficult to return. I suppose I just have to try and develop a better attitude somehow.

Still annoyed

Still annoyed
Yup, that pretty much sums it up. S’pose I’d better take a more active role in the next election if I want anything to change, though.

Writing
I have been rather boring lately, due to continued concentration on writing. “Fork” is in its last chapter. I’m just about keeping up with Film Forensics. Work has been very busy. I have been avoiding the news to keep my blood pressure stable. Life is pretty insular at the moment.

Kanji
I can now translate and write 320 individual kanji. I do not, however, know how to pronounce even one of them in Japanese. That’s an entirely separate area of study, one I’ll probably take up once I’ve finished this lot. We’re learning them at the rate of about thirty per week; there’s another year and a bit to go before I’ve learned them all, by which point I will have certainly forgotten about half of them.

Sport
I’ve been playing squash and badminton a bit, neither particularly well. But I’m getting fitter again, at last, and I’ll start winning in squash once I can chase down the ball a bit more. Ian B. is very, very fast around the court, but I think I can still do reasonably well against him as soon as I stop missing the serves. I’ve had this problem for years and years: I’ll be playing reasonably well, and then suddenly there will be a run where the opponent gets four or five points in a row as I miss or fluff the return-of-service. I was just on the point of shaking it, I think, when Ted left for Japan and I stopped playing.

Magic
I’ve organised another magic tournament for this Friday - we’re doing another draft tournament, but this time it will be the new expansion set “Champions of Kamigawa”, which none of us have looked at yet. I have been carefully avoiding finding anything about the cards, so this Friday will be my first look at the expansion. Oddly, this is thrilling to me. Once again, I don’t predict that I’ll do well this time. I was very lucky in my previous tournaments, getting just the right draft picks, and frequently able to commit to a colour early on.

Anna’s Dad

Anna’s Dad
Anna and I missed Carey’s wedding on Saturday as we were with Anna’s dad in hospital. He came out of hospital last week, but was readmitted on Saturday because he is still very weak.

Marco & Kylie
Marco & Kylie (and yes, the kids too, despite Anna’s efforts) left for Brisbane on Thursday. It was good having them over, and not nearly as chaotic as I’d thought it would be. I think the PS2 may have had something to do with that.

Marco & I played a round of golf early Thursday morning - we did our usual Ambrose game, and it went reasonably well, though we didn’t do better than par. I discovered that it is possible for me to play 9 holes before work, and am now tempted to do so on a regular basis. The only problem is, I have to get up at 5:00am for this to work, and once daylight savings comes it, it’ll be no longer possible.

Film Forensics
I’ve been working hard on two reviews - one for “The Bourne Supremacy”, which Anna and I saw last night, and the other, “Star Wars”, for which I’m going to get lots of feedback before posting. I am, of course, running very late on the review. I created a Livejournal account for it, so that people can post comments. I was going to install Wordpress on www.filmforensics.com, but it was proving too much hassle. I still haven’t sorted out all the issues with Film Forensics yet - I need to automate the update process so that I don’t accidentally create bad links, I need to have it organised better, and ideally I’d prefer the comments to be visible underneath the review, or at least have an indication of the number of comments. I really should install PhpBB, or Wordpress, but Livejournal is convenient for the moment.

Spit
I don’t know how the album editing is going, because Ev is currently in charge of doing it, and he’s obsessing over Crop Circles at the moment.

Nanowrimo
Because I’m an idiot, I’m doing it again this year. This has the beneficial side-effect of putting a hard limit on finishing Fork. Fortunately, it’s almost done. I’m hoping to finish at least a week before November, so that I can do a month’s worth of film forensics in advance. Because doing Nanowrimo *and* Film Forensics would really suck.