Number6's Journal

First, I might as well get it out of the way. No NaNo for me this year, not even my usual "I'll try to meet 50,000 words as a total of various short story writings). For the longest time I've been in a big writing slump with nothing really exciting me, storywise, and it'd just be painful to try to do NaNo with it. I will be trying to keep up with my normal slog of timed writing, of course. I have at least had a couple ideas recently that interest me enough to want to explore them, but I'm still not sure what I want to do with them and I don't want to burn myself out on them with NaNo style forced writing.

In life, nothing's happening.

So let's go to books.

Finished: The Waste Lands (Dark Tower Book III, by Stephen King (reread)
Started: Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower Book IV, by Stephen King (reread)

Still enjoying it, but not as much as first read. Of course, the Waste Lands is one of my favorites, because the scenes with Jake in New York call out to me. Especially this passage:
( Read more... )

Finished: The Temporal Void, by Peter Hamilton
Started: Tesseracts 4 (short story collection)

Temporal Void was okay. A sequel to The Dreaming Void, at least to some extent I'm satisfied one one of my problems from the last book. On the other hand, I'm still not really feeling attached to any of the characters. It's decent fun, some cool ideas, but I'm not invested really. Some spoilers. ( Read more... )

Now, moving away from books... What's been on TV?

I'm pretty much given up on The Event. I just don't care from episode to episode. I don't care about any of the characters. I don't even care about what the mission of the detainees was. Again, I'll watch it, but only because nothing else is worth watching at that time (on a channel I get).

No Ordinary Family, the other new show, I'm still watching, but... I don't know, it sort of rings hollow. Like, it's an ABC show, but it feels more like a Disney show where minor characters occasionally die. Everybody learns valuable life lessons from their powers and nothing really edgy ever happens. And, unfortunately, in many ways, that makes it really predictable. (Some spoilers for recent episodes). ( Read more... )

Again, I'm still watching it, but mostly I want Speedy-Mom's Geeky Kitty-Pryde-Fangirl-Sidekick to dose herself with whatever's causing the powers and then do her own superhero stuff without everybody else.

What else... well, in bad news, Caprica is officially cancelled. Supposedly Canada is airing the remaining episodes in the next few weeks, but thus far they have not shown up via... "magic" yet so I've been unable to watch it.

It really is a shame, because in many ways it's one of the very few really good attempts at a "pure" SF show that's not space-based. It plausibly invents a whole new society similar to our own but with enough differences to be fascinating, and deals with a lot of big SF concepts and yet where the story is still driven by the characters. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I'm really disappointed it's being axed and replaced with "BSG: Blood and Iron" (set during the first Cylon War, with a young Adama and Battlestar Galactica again, fighting cylons). More action-war-explodey stuff. Which is fine. I'll almost certainly watch it and enjoy it. But it's "more of the same". Caprica was something special and is going away. I almost think Caprica was hurt by the BSG association, because a) I'm not sure it REALLY fits with any of the canon (and for once, I don't care one bit, it works as a solo piece), and b) it gave people some false expectations. On the other hand, it probably would never be made without those associations. I tip my hat to you, Caprica. You're no Firefly, and I probably won't even miss you as much as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but I think you could have done some great things if given the chance.

It's former sister show, Stargate Universe, is still ongoing, and still doing pretty well, in terms of enjoyability, although ratings-wise it's still struggling. The last episode "Trial and Error" was a little weaker than most, but it surprised me in a couple good ways, too. I will go into spoilers behind the cut, but mainly because it edged onto a story idea I had way back when I first heard of the concept. It didn't really do anything THAT similar, but it hit the point where I can't see them ever doing both what they did in this episode AND my idea, so I might as well reveal my story idea. So, spoilers and a plot-idea-I-might-have-done-if-I-wrote-for-Stargate (and I should totally write for Stargate!) behind the cut. ( Read more... )

The other big TV thing recently was "The Walking Dead"'s premiere. And it seems to have done very well in the ratings, beating even Mad Men for AMC, and that may be just because it was on Halloween and everyone was in a horror mood. And of course not all those viewers might stick around. But it's a good sign and gives me hope for a S2 with characters like Michonne (I totally nominate Gina Torres as Michonne). The episode itself? I actually got a look at the script many months ago. And the show episode matched the script, so really, there were no surprises for me in this episode. However, it was well-put together, well acted, and the zombies looked suitabley creepy. Very much looking forward to more.

And since we finished on zombies, that feels like a nice segue to dreams, because I had a couple zombie dreams in the past couple weeks. Except, they weren't traditional zombie dreams.

Basically, they were zombie ROLEPLAYING dreams.

I had one dream where I was playing a MUSH (with several old people from XET), that was basically a zombie apocalypse theme as a special limited run dream for Halloween. Which I'm sure has at least been suggested and probably done before, and I'm not all that sure I'd want to play it, but it was amusing. Specifically, the dream was a lot of text-based roleplaying. It was a big scene so I kept trying (and failing, because the text kept changing) to make sure what I was about to pose made sense with what was posed by other people.

The other one was different... it was sort of a LIVE ACTIONG Zombie RPG. Everybody was out in some closed-off town-looking area, and I guess we were all there to play a zombie RPG. ( Read more... ) Sadly most of my other dreams have just been dull or unmemorable, much like my life. Ah well.

PerExWriMo update. At 38,000 words at the moment. May try and squeeze in another 2,000 before bed. at this rate, should be finished by this weekend.

No comics of course. Work wasn't bad today. And I did manage to pick up a couple more bags of Greek Feta/Olive/Oregano chips, for incentive reasons.

As it turned out, I spent the 11am Rememberance Day ceremony in the grocery store. I have a dim grasp of time at the best of times, so I didn't really know it was coming, just walking through the store until I gradually realized that the person speaking over the grocery store loudspeaker was reciting "In Flanders Fields". So I found a quiet spot and stood and then we did the minute of silence after. It was a little surreal, but kind of nice, although I don't think a few people entirely got what was going on (and I have to wonder what people just walking into the store during the minute of silence thought to see lots of people just standing around, stopping in silence).


And, we'll close off with a meme:
First Lines Meme, stolen from anomilygrace
The Rules:
1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books.


These don't constitute a specific 'top 10', just 10 books I consider a favorite for one reason or another. and who's first line isn't either unmemorable, or gives away the book to anyone with even a passing familiarity.
Special hint, for those who don't know me at all: They're all SF-related.

1. The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light-years and eight centuries.

2. It didn't start out here. Not with the scramblers, or Rorschach, not with Big Ben or Theseus or the vampires. Most people would say it started with the Fireflies, but they'd be wrong. It ended with all those things. - Blindsight, by Peter Watts, guessed by fiddlersgreen.

3. "The first time was like this. I was reading when Dad got home. His voice echosed through the house and I cringed."

4. Two hours before dawn I sat in the peeling kitchen and smoked one of Sarah's cigarettes, listening to the maelstrom and waiting. Millsport had long since put itself to bed, but out in the Reach currents were still snagging on the shouals, and the sound came ashore to prowl the empty streets."

5. It is on a world whose name I do not know, on the slopes of a great mountain, that the Javelin came down.

6. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen

7. "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I'm telling you now he is the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

8. "Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man." The guy who said that was a sergeant who didn't look five years older than me. So if he'd ever killed a man in combat, silently or otherwise, he'd done it as an infant.

9. "Stand to!" I roared, but I was too late; even as Alexi and Sandy snapped to attention, Hibernia's two senior lieutenants strolled around the corridor bend.

10. In Fort Repose, a river town in Central Florida, it was said that sending a message by Western Union was the same as broadcasting it over the combined networks.

At 12,000 words (I round, but only down), not bad, on a decent pace. Completed one story, start to finish. Not a good one, probably unsaleable at least without massive rewriting, but finished. Got into a bit of a groove of a longer work I've been noodling around in my head for a while, too. So it's going pretty easy.

Watched V last night. And... well, it wasn't bad, at first. In fact, I quite enjoyed the first 20-30 minutes of it. Lots of people I recognized too. But after that, my interest started to wane... (spoilers ahoy):( Read more... )

And Heroes. Man, when I said it was marginally better this year? I was not expecting the last episode. CRAP. (Big spoilers):

( Read more... )

Edit: Oh, and the "Stop the TV Tax" vs "Keep Local TV alive" commercials have been annoying for awhile but, leaving aside the issues entirely for a moment... I really want to punch the the "Stop the TV Tax" spokesman in the face. I just wanted to say that.

So, it's November, the National Novel Writing Month. Like in most previous years, I'm not doing it as expected. However, I am doing another Personal Extra Writing Month, with the goal of reaching 50,000 words, just spread about amongst various short story projects. And I've already done 2000 for today, so I'm off to a good start (even if the story I was writing is probably unsalvagable without a complete rewrite).

The truth is, however, this isn't just a Personal Extra Writing Month, it's more of a KickStart month. See, I haven't posted about this, but for the last few months I've slacked off and haven't done any of my forced writing. Which isn't to say I haven't written, it's just either been dribs and drabs when the mood struck me, or on projects I don't count. But still, not as much as I wouldn't. There's many reasons for this, but most boil down to that I've been depressed, discouraged, and lacking new ideas and drive, and for the few months before I quit the metered writing, I was just chugging along without much drive, churning it out without getting any new ideas I wanted to work on. I thought maybe a break to refresh myself might help. And to a certain extent, it has. I've had a few new story ideas in the time off. I've identified a couple of the timesinks that I think hurt me in writing, and tried to cut them out of my routine. So, I'll do PerExWriMo to try to get myself back in gear (although I'll be taking off December as usual because Christmas month is just a pain all around with too much stuff on my mind), and hopefully start fully writing again my normal way in 2010, and also submitting stories again and start the whole rejection cycle. Anyway, crossed fingers.

Anyway, one of the writing things that "doesn't count" but has taken up some of my time and writing urges, are my Runaways alternate Vol 3 outlines. And, anticipating November, I finished up Year 3. I'll be posting it next, I think. I know, most of you don't care, it's basically unformed fanfic, but it does entertain ME (sadly, more than actual comics have in some time).

In other news, well, V starts this week. I don't have high hopes, but I'll watch. I'm still liking Stargate Universe... hasn't found its legs yet, but I like it well enough that it's probably my favorite show currently on (which really says more about the lack of quality shows on now than SGU). Heroes is interesting if you can completely ignore that they're still completely ignoring their own past (a couple weeks ago Peter sought out HRG to see if he knew a Healer. While his daughter was there. You know, the one who's blood healed him from a bullet to the head? But nobody seems to remember that). Enough to keep watching it. Other shows aren't really even worth much of a mention.

I've kept watching Classic Who, actually, instead of cutting it off, just because timing worked out that way, had new eps finish d/l when I had downtime and nothing to watch. Only about 4 or so stories left in Davison's run. I'll give a more complete rundown on my thoughts when I'm finished, but I'm actually enjoying the series more than I have in a while, somewhere around the end of 4 the writing took a big jump up in quality and inventiveness.

Yay, Halloween. Not that I'm doing anything (I have a gasmask and some other props more or less ready to go so I can quickly go as a radioactive mutant from the wasteland, just in case a party springs up spontaneously that I can't avoid, but the odds of that are about as close as that of me falling through the floor because my atoms happens to be at spontaneously the wrong place at all the wrong times. Which would actually be kinda cool. Anyway, I love Halloween conceptually even if I haven't done much of it for years. Live in an apartment so there aren't even Trick or Treaters to be vaguely amused. Saw a handful of people in costume on the way home from work but it was still chilly enough that mostly it was just a little facepaint or whatever could be seen beneath coats. Ah well.

Anyway, what's been up with me? Well, as mentioned in the previous post, I've had computer problems. In fact, Wednesday in general sucked. Not only was work late, and I was feeling the start of a cold coming on, but as I was unwinding and getting ready to watch something or other on that computer (my downloading/tv watching computer) there was an error, it spontaneously rebooted and... rebooted and rebooted. Basically one of the hive files of the registry got corrupted. Yay, fun. Anyway, after a good deal of work (during a time which included a spontaneous power failure that I almost suspect was the universe being malicious towards me), I was able to restore a really old registry and be functional (but without a lot of my settings and programs) and thanks to that and a lot more work, about an hour ago, I was able to repair the original registry. So I'm almost where I was Tuesday! (But with a more recent backup of the registry and several boot/repair disks, having at least partly learned my lesson). Just one last crossing my fingers as another reboot (to do some updates that had been neglected) progresses to make sure it all boots up again the second time around.

Anyway, in other news, I will not be doing Nano this year, but I will be doing PerExWriMo again - Personal Extra Writing Month. I'll be trying to write every day except Wednesdays (where my work/comic schedule really messes things up for that) for the whole month. Which might actually be a more impressive feat than Nano last year - last year, I sped through it and completed Nano in a little over two weeks, and so didn't actually spend a whole month of constant work - I took the last two weeks off. This time I can't just take days off without failing.

Edit: Looks like the work continues - boots up fine but IE wants to restart every time I go to a new page. Must still be some corruption in the state of that computer, have to do more work to root it out.