Enthusiastic Failure

Maybe one of my next goals should be ‘learn how to wrap presents’.

Shashi — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:31:09 +0000

Those aren’t ‘other funny-shaped presents’. Those are remnants of my first three attempts to wrap a damn simple box.

It’s not like i’m being a perfectionist here and tearing it all down because the tape is a bit off-centre. It’s more like i keep accidentally tearing holes in the wrapping paper. Huge holes. Defeats-the-purpose-of-wrapping-the-present-to-begin-with-holes.

I’m going to pretend this is really flimsy wrapping paper.

And i’m going out to see if i can find a store which still has gift bags in stock. I know my weaknesses and i’m not going to fight them right now.

No related posts.

50K or Bust

Shashi — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:50:17 +0000

It’s NaNoWriMo 2011! (and has been for a week i am slow to blog when i am busy novelling okay)
and seriously
i’m going to edit this one
honest
even though i didn’t edit the last seven
this time
for real

(Actually i think i have finally figured out a writing groove which works for me. So i may very well have something capable of being edited once this is all done. As opposed to all the other rubbish-bits of the past seven years.)

Completely unrelated: i finally got ‘round to reading The Shining, even though i don’t like Stephen King’s writing style, mainly because i do like horror and it’s a Horror Classic and thus must be read eventually.
It actually has a really good plot (much better than Cujo at any rate) but i still don’t like King’s writing style.
Reminds me of the moment in my Lit of Evil class when Collins made sure to tell us he’d heard King reads Elements of Style at least once a year, yet we never read any King stories in Lit of Evil. I strongly suspect it’s because his plots are catchy and his grammar is perfect but his writing is otherwise meh.
Also how the hell did Grady not accidentally… do the same thing Jack accidentally did. /am trying to avoid spoilers/ It seems in the process of hatchet-murdering he’d have forgotten the same thing Jack forgot with similar results.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

No related posts.

New bodhrán

Shashi — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 14:42:33 +0000

Went to Celtfest, found a bodhrán sale, bought bodhrán.

It is huge.

At least in comparison to my old one. Which is why i got the new one: i don’t have room to move my hand enough for proper tonal changes with a seven-inch drum.

Now i need to find a place to keep it…

Also i ate a ridiculous amount of haggis yesterday. Favourite food ever and i only ever seem to find it at Celtfests. Last time they were out of haggis, i got haggis-pastry instead, but now i have had straight haggis and it is the awesome.

See more progress on: learn to play the bodhran

No related posts.

101 list completely shredded

Shashi — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:37:32 +0000

Right. I really doubt i’ll get my original 101 list done before deadline, in no small part because i don’t really want to do about half the goals on it any more.

This is the problem with making lists in a big hurry :P

But, i’m not going to start the next list until the old one should have run out. Even though i already have more than 101 things on it. If waiting another year isn’t enough to be sure i only have goals i want on the list i don’t know what is.

‘Til then i’ve got the original list pared down to 43 things. Which is still a good bit, considering i’ve less than a year to finish them in, but ah well.

And some of them should be easy enough. For example, if i do not get haggis when i go to Celtfest this year there is something wrong.

(Though honestly. Every time i go to an Irishfest either there are no haggis vendors at all or they have all run out of haggis because it is so damn difficult to get haggis elsewhere and all the haggis-lovers have swarmed them. The closest i’ve ever gotten were haggis pastries, which were good but not what i want. This year i am going to a massive fest which i have already confirmed will have haggis, and i am taking the day off work so i can get there ridiculously early. The haggis will be mine.)

iPod Brains

Learned Morse code as useless-but-cool skill; had practical use within twenty-four hours

Shashi — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:29:52 +0000

‘Why has this phone been handed to me without the speaker on why is he still talking shit i am supposed to be writing this down shit where is the speaker button where is the key i am supposed to be hitting now oh ..- -. ..-. ..- -.-. -.- it.’

Seriously, typing with one hand is so much easier when you only need to worry about a few keys.

Of course there is still the issue of transcribing it back…

No related posts.

Reason #4 why ebooks are better than dead-tree books

Shashi — Sun, 29 May 2011 16:04:12 +0000

…one of my shelves just collapsed under its own weight. never heard of a Kindle spontaneously imploding because it had too much stuff on it. No related posts. No related posts.

randomness entry

Shashi — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:37:03 +0000

i’m reading a book on marketing and it has exercises along the lines of converting customers.

right now my long-term conversion part of the exercise is as follows:

Five long-term conversion goals

dude
what
i don’t even know what i’ll be doing long-term

…yeah. I have discovered i am Not Good at working on the same project for too long. Somewhere around the three-month mark i reach a point where i’d rather throw the whole thing out and start over than work on it for one more day.

This is great if i have a cool project i can finish in three months, because i spend those three months (…or at least the first two…) being very excited about it and working on it constantly. It’s not so great for, say, novels, which i can write in under three months but which take so long to edit i eventually reach a state of THIS NOVEL IS RUBBISH, I SHALL START OVER. That’s, um. That’s not really a good way to finish anything.

Seriously considering figuring out a wild writing schedule which will allow me to outline, write, edit, and publish in three months. Really i need to at the very least get in the habit of editing-while-writing. I never do that during NaNoWriMo because it slows me down too much but if i’m taking three months to write a novel, i can write slower. And if i edit-while-writing the first draft may actually be decent enough to avoid the massive chunks of desperate speed-writing which make editing a horrid nightmare.

bah.

this was meant to be a random entry about multiple things and now it’s all novel. okay.

I’ve completely let my Starfleet club membership slack, so i’ll have to restart that if i have any hope of doing any Starfleet Academy stuff. Oops.
My current moving plans require paying off my student loans first. My current student loan budget plan looks to actually finish up six months after my 1001 days are up. Also i don’t think i’ll be moving to Philly. Maybe Chicago.
I may not be going on an oversea volunteer trip either. Because a) money all going to student loans and b) an awful lot of those are glorified poverty-porn. So it now depends on whether i can find one where i would be really helping instead of just making myself feel good.
I kind of killed my webcomic.
I am practicing my bodhrán! Every day. Yay!
Screw singing lessons, i just want to get to a good level with my speaking voice right now.
I don’t even want an artist rep any more.
I’m planning on getting rid of most of my dead-tree books, because i have literally reached the point where i can’t find most of them because there are too many other books burying them. (I have also come to the conclusion most of the people who complain that e-readers aren’t REAL books and REAL books are BETTER don’t actually read much. I ran out of shelf space over a year ago and started stacking stuff on the floor. Extra hard drive space handles more books in less physical space. w00t.) Anyway. So. Motivation for bookcrossing.
Screw the Irenari cosplay, too. I have a totally different OC to cosplay. Who i still need to design anyway, but whatever.

THERE. big massive 101 update.
I think i made my last 101 list in too much of a hurry, i didn’t plan anything out and as such there’s no way i can even afford to do all of it (even without student loanstuff) and quite a bit of it i don’t actually want to do and am not going to do simply to check it off a list. I’ve been working on my next 101 list, though, and already have over 101 items, so when i actually switch over to it next year i’ll be narrowing it down to stuff i honestly want to do instead of flinging things on at random like my last one.

See more progress on: complete my 101 things in 1001 days list

I Will Be Living On Ramen FOREVER

halfway through first character sheet:

Shashi — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:03:32 +0000

…i am apparently writing straight-up religious anarchy.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

i’m just starting a new book already.

i’m just starting a new book already.

Shashi — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:34:39 +0000

i wanted to edit my last one but it would require rewriting at least half of it… at which point it hardly counts as ‘editing’ any more. also i don’t like it that much. if it were a book i was reading i’d probably only read it once and never again. it’s hard to convince myself to put effort into a book i only mildly enjoy.

and my second choice as far as Books I Have Already Written is… okay, pretty good actually, but i want to change the whole theme of the book which, again, pretty much means rewriting more than the good-but-not-great plotline is worth.

soooo. writing a whole book outside of NaNoWriMo. WILL THE LACK OF PRESSURE ALLOW ME TO WRITE SOMETHING WHICH DOES NOT NEED TO BE RE-WRITTEN? OR WILL THE LACK OF DEADLINE MEAN I NEVER FINISH THE DAMN THING?

gah, writing crap which had to be completely rewritten before it was presentable was so much easier in high school, where the longest thing anyone else would ever see was only ten pages. maybe i should switch to short stories.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

Of Dragons and Dvorak

shopping

Shashi — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:16:01 +0000

bought:
- Sharpening stone. No honing oil though. Oops.
- More wood to hack up
- A wooden scrapbook-album cover

I was planning on carving something on the scrapbook cover for my scrap-loving grandma. It’s pretty thin but maybe a shallow carving.
aaaand after i actually got home with it i realised it’s like three layers of even thinner wood making up each cover *>< And the grain is going in completely opposite the direction i’d like for carving.

gonna try it anyway, though. maybe it will somehow work.

See more progress on: learn to carve wood