Anotherblog

Darths, puzzles

We’re are really enjoying ourselves with Darths & Droids at the moment. Currently 12 episodes ahead, and coming up with lots of fun (and subtle) ideas that mean occasional bits of revising of not-yet-published episodes. The writers-room atmosphere is still positive and constantly excited. Recently, Darths was reviewed by Websnark - quite positively - but now we’re much more conscious of the point he/she makes that the comic is more clever than funny. I’m not sure if it’s going to change how we write (we do like clever), but it has now become a running clever.

Also: we got the postcards back for this year’s puzzle competition, and they’re really pretty, especially the one I designed. I’m very proud of it.

Happy birthday to me!

My cousin Kat baked me a chocolate cake. Otherwise, it’s been a pretty normal work day so far - the lunchtime gang worked on Darths & Droids, and came up with some terrific ideas for the upcoming plot. We have a buffer of about 12 strips at the moment, and we’re constantly making minor tweaks to strips just before they get released, setting up future strips better.

Mr. Morgan-Mar won the Lorwyn magic tournament yesterday, as I ironically caved to Loki’s merfolk/milling deck. Ironic, because I won the previous tournament with a substantially similar deck, and the same deck prevented me from winning this tournament. Is that irony? I’m not even sure any more. Anyway, we’re tidying up the Lorwyn tournament so we can have a massive Lorwyn/Morningtide tournament at my place on Friday night. Hooray!

Aaaand… I’ve been working on the archery statistics database. After lengthy neglect, I finally updated the forms so that I could enter about a year and a half’s worth of archery results. But I didn’t get to archery on the weekend. Feeling a touch sick - Veronica’s had a cold the past two days, and so have many people at work. Urgle.

On the other hand, I did get to spend the weekend with Mr Schepers and a bit of Sunday with Herr Chris, allowing us time for many interesting and deep philosophical discussions.

Guitar continues to obsess me, and I’m finally feeling confident enough to go into guitar shops and try out the next level of classical guitar, and not feel like an imposter - I can tell the difference (mostly) between good guitars and bad ones now, and I have definite preferences, and I can also recognise that while my current guitar is adequate, its tone isn’t the best and the better quality guitars are also much easier to play. Perhaps for my birthday I will treat myself to a new classical guitar. Or a hat. I like hats.

Life feels very rushed at the moment. There’s not nearly enough time to see everyone, and good friends are being neglected - haven’t seen Jon & Kate in weeks, and Dave & Kyla and Iain & Lynn in months (though I saw Iain act in a short play he wrote) and many others in even longer, like Paul & Greta. There never feels like time. The number of projects I’m working on seems to be multiplying out of control…

Archery, guitar

It’s been raining quite a bit in Sydney over the last week or two, such that my attempted restart of archery couldn’t get going until late Saturday afternoon. And it was enjoyable, but the lower power of the bow has its own challenges, particularly the release.

When the bow string is at 40lb, its all I can do to just hold onto the thing. The release is easy. The moment I think about relaxing my fingers, the arrow is off. But when the bow string is at 24lb (as it is now) I can “pluck” the string, causing it to flange off to the left. The act of releasing is much more calculated, and particularly when I get tired, susceptible to those sudden stinking misses. I’m thinking that perhaps I should go back to 40lb, and perhaps try to do some arm exercise during the week so that I can shoot for more than 15 minutes.

I started looking at new guitars on the weekend. I tried out an Admira Eva, which was very nice - way better than my current guitar, much easier to play, and it sounds a great deal better on the higher frets, too. I’ve been playing so much lately that I didn’t even get nervous playing in the guitar store. The one or two times I’ve tried playing guitars in stores before, I felt embarassed and played poorly. But the store was one of those rarities with friendly non-pushy staff. Sadly, however, they didn’t have much of a selection. I’d like to try many many more guitars before I buy a new one.

Jamberoo

Went to Jambaroo water park on Saturday with Von and some of her friends, and had an excellent time on water slides. They employ the remarkably simple strategy of putting the water slides on a hillside, thus avoiding the tower melarkey that we used to have in Townsville. I think the slides are a bit easier, but also a bit longer. A fun day, and my sun-god powers kept the weather nice, such that it bucketed down much harder on Sunday.

Also on the weekend: two flat tyres. I have no idea what I’m doing that is causing so many flat tyres. I think it’s probably the number of potholes around Sydney at the moment, and perhaps I need to inflate my tyres above 30psi. Anyway, when I finished work on Friday, I found the front left tyre was flat. And so was the spare. The spare was a slow leak though, so I managed to get to a service station to inflate it properly, and got home at least. Got it repaired on Monday morning, and it turned out the last person to repair the spare had put an inner-tube in a tubeless tyre. Buggered if I can remember who it was, though.