Anotherblog

Archery

Last weekend I participated in my first FITA style round - 36 arrows at 60m, 36 at 50m, 36 at 40m with an 80cm target face, and 36 at 30m with an 80cm face (known as a “Fremantle”). It’s a lot of arrows, and by the end of it my arms were very wobbly and I missed the target several times. Still, I was pleased with my score (917) even though it’s a long way from being any good. My arms are beginning to adjust to the new bow weight, and I’m settling into the new technique.

Guitar Hero 2

I’ve done 25 songs at “Hard” level, and I still haven’t failed any of them, though they’re beginning to get close.  I went into the red a few times in the last couple of songs, so I expect I’ll finally hit the wall in the next batch of five.

Very enjoyable.  I love playing a song for the first time and nailing the guitar solo.  Often, the first time I play a song is the best time, and it takes me a while to top the score, which probably says something about my psychology.

Hello, Mum!

I have been rattling around the house for the last few days - good prediction, Andrew! - but all that comes to an end tomorrow.  First, Mum and her three sisters are coming to stay from Thursday until Sunday.  There will be much roughing it and sleeping on sofas etc.  I’m greatly looking forward to the chaos.

Then, when they’ve left, I may have a new housemate moving in for a few months.  Her name is Cat.  She’s a friend of Sebastian’s (I met her at Seb’s farewell) and is a very interesting person.  She lives way out of town, and needs a place to crash when she stays late in the city, and seems happy to pay the rent.

Farewell to Sebastian

I took Sebastian to the airport last night.  He’s been around for about three months.  I’ll miss him.

It was a bit of a last minute rush.  We couldn’t find his zoom lens, and he had to prepare a box to send back, and he still hadn’t done his packing by 8:00pm (the plane left at 10:10) when he realised he still had to print out his train ticket out of Singapore.  Fortunately, the printer was working.  I’m not sure how possible it would have been to do at the airport!  Anyway, we were out of the house by 8:30 and he was off and away.  I’m a bit envious.  He’s going on a really big journey - all through SE Asia, up to China and Mongolia, and then the trans-Siberian express through to Russia.  I’ve not done a trip as daring as that, and I’m not sure whether I would, now, either.

Now I get to rattle around the house a little.

Archery

I went up to 38lb bow weight on Wednesday last week, and my arms have been feeling it. I’ve been scoring correspondingly poorly, but that’s also due to my recent change in stance, and it’s beginning to come back together again. On Saturday, I shot 50m at an 80cm target, which is definitely the subjectively smallest target I’ve shot at. I missed the target a *lot*, at least once per set of six.

It might be nice to go back to 30m with a 122cm target, which is what I normally do, just to calibrate how well I’m doing. It’s hard to tell at the moment.

No coffee yet

I haven’t yet found the right moment to try coffee.  But it will happen soon.  Instead, I have been playing many games, including a full weekend of card and board games.  New hit game: Fairy Tale.  It’s a drafting game, very similar to Magic drafting.  We also played a lot of “No Thanks!”, which is now getting oldish in our lunchtime play group.  We’re lucky if a game holds our interest for more than two weeks nowadays.

Sebastian is heading off tomorrow for Indonesia, thence to China and across Russia.  He’s hoping to make a documentary along the way, which is in peril because his camera has been acting up - the sound doesn’t quite work (which was a big issue on last weekend’s short film for work) although we worked out that the problem happens mostly on playback, rather than on recording, so we worked out some temporary ways around it.  Still, the camera is in the repair shop.  I’m off to his farewell party tonight, held at Rushcutter’s Bay.  Sebastian is the kind of person who makes friends easily, so I suspect there will be many people I don’t know!

Also, I got a couple of my short films submitted to the community TV channel TV-S, for their “Anthology Of Interest” show.  Hope to hear back from them in a couple of weeks - apparently they give good feedback even if they don’t accept the film.

Otherwise, I’m feeling rushed and hectic without actually doing all that much.  Mostly been playing Guitar Hero 2 and classical guitar, and going for the occasional job, all to procrastinate against writing…

Coffee

During the process of making the most recent short film, I realised that I do drink an awful lot of some fairly disgusting energy drinks (ie. V).  It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to give coffee a proper try, since I seem to be getting coffee levels of caffeine anyway.  The last time I tried coffee was a long time ago, and although I didn’t like it, I didn’t really give it much of a chance either.  Why try to cultivate an addiction?  It seemed pointless.  Now, since I have the underlying addiction anyway, I might as well make it cheaper and more sociable.

“Would you like some tea or coffee?”

“Actually, I don’t drink either… no wait, scratch that.  Coffee.”

Busy, busy, busy, busy, poop.

It has, indeed, been a busy time. I have slowed down (but not stopped) on Nanowrimo: I’m pleased with the writing and I’m enjoying it, but I’m not pushing to get 2000 words a day done. Instead, I’ve been working on many things simultaneously. Lots of guitar: classical is fun, even though it’s somewhat stymied by a broken index-finger nail. And, of course, Guitar Hero 2 comes out tomorrow.

The main thing occupying me recently was the yearly company Show & Tell. I decided I’d create a movie for my SVG Standards project, and spent ages working on the script before getting all the filming and editing done in one violently efficient day. Unfortunately, that day was Sunday, and Saturday was spent procrastinating just as violently, so I haven’t felt like I had much of a weekend. Still, I’m very pleased with the film. After the sedate mood-setting vibe of my previous short film, I wanted to create something frenetic, so I tried my best to get an Arrested Development vibe. It got a very good reception.
My usual archery has continued to be enjoyable. My muscles can still feel it from Saturday’s shoot; 90 arrows at 50 metres, in which I did very well until the aforementioned muscles decided that they’d had enough. That was at the 30 arrow mark. I’m still getting used to the new technique, which I’m told looks quite correct now.

And we had another Magic tournament on Friday evening at my place, which was also highly enjoyable, even though I did very poorly. I either don’t have the hang of Time Spiral, or my previous successes were lucky - either is fine, but I’m still mystified as to why the deck I created did so badly. Lots of red, enormous quantities of burn and mass destruction, and nobody had any problem at all running right over the top of it. Oh well, live and learn. Maybe I’ll start drafting on-line. The tournament isn’t finished yet, but I don’t think anyone can beat Andrew K. this time round - congratulations!

Nanowrimo is just too goddamn hard

How the hell did I manage to finish Nanowrimo in the past? I mean, once, sure - the novelty value will get you through, I can see (and remember) that. But I’ve done it twice more, too. I must have been off my nut.
Anyway, it has not been a good weekend’s worth of writing. I managed to get to 9500 words by blatently cheating: I rewrote the plot summary into the novel, putting the bits-to-be-done in square brackets, which means that I got some easy words done at the expense of a hundred or so words each day for the rest of the month, as I convert the summaries into the actual writing.

And even with the cheating, it was hard going. I’m not sure I’ve ever procrastinated as hard as I did last weekend. My guitar has received more attention in the last six days than it has done in the previous six months or so. I’m really enjoying playing, and it’s even producing some nice sounds now. If Nanowrimo is what it takes for me to practice, well, at least this will have been good for something.

I think most of the problem is the fact that I’m showing this to Jon when I’m done, and I therefore want it to be good. The mental blocks are strong and high, and I think I’ve gotta stop setting myself unachievable goals. To be realistic, I should just try and keep ahead of Kate. We’re at around the same point, both hemorrhaging blood onto the page. This may well turn into a “I’ll give up if you do” pact.

Things I have done to procrastinate this weekend: played about six hours of guitar, four hours of JSanJuan, surfed the internet for maybe six hours, watched three movies, went for a jog, went to archery, went to a party, ate obsessively and drank caffeinated drinks until I was physically unable to stop twitching, programmed my MTG draft online database, and went to the pub. Sitting in front of the computer refusing to write: three hours. Actual writing: about two hours.

Possibly the strangest thing I’ll see today.

There’s a very weird Uncyclopedia entry for David MM that just goes to show: he’s famous, and sometimes that drags along a bystander.