Writing and Nanowrimo
Well it’s November, and that means usually I’m sitting around for most of the month debating if I’m going to write anything this year, until it’s too late and nothing has been achieved at all.
This year I’m a few days late, but I’m actually going to give it a shot. The impetus for this decision mostly comes because I just finished reading a particularly crappy fantasy novel that I bought on Amazon for 99c.
Now it was self published, and I knew what I was getting into by the price tag etc. However, this book had pretty good reviews attached to it (which is the subject of an entirely different set of worries given its poor quality). No, what was most interesting was the blog post of the author discussing his profits and sales of this and other novels.
He was actually making more money in a year off these sub standard books than I do in my current job. Given this financial motivation, I suddenly find myself more enthused for the whole writing gig I had mostly given up on.
There has always been this impression of insurmountable odds in getting published that has aborted most of my enthusiasm for writing over the years. I’m also easily sidetracked and lazy, which doesn’t exactly help matters at all regardless. So now that self publishing is starting to look like a more viable option, I think I shall give it a shot.
So back to this month. I currently have some google docs setup with my current stories in them. I’ll likely move those over into my archived wordpress blog, or try out some sort of posterous integration. Not sure exactly how, but after this weekend regular writing will start appearing on the web.
So there you have it. A plan exists, now I just have to show the will to follow through. Wish me luck 
A few new photo’s up now
Scanning is going well. Finally have the settings about where I want. It’s a bit of a shock to see some of these old photo’s at such high resolution. A few I used to think were pretty good when viewed only at the size of a standard print look pretty average scanned in at 3200dpi lol.
These photo’s aren’t slides yet, still processing those. Just some more from the digital archives.
Scanning it in
Well I was productive on Saturday and actually managed to get my scanner working. Took a bit of fiddling under Windows 7, it’s a Minolta Scan Dual 4 which is end of life and unsupported.
The quality of the scans is pretty good though and it can do batch scanning 4 at a time. So I’ll probably try and get into a routine where I do a few batches each morning till I’ve chewed through the pile.
By Friday hopefully I’ll have at least one or two up on the site. So far so good, just need to spend a bit more time on the flute now and I will be meeting both my goals
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: photography
Today’s photo
Here it is, the first photo for Photo Friday:
I started with an easy one. There is another halfway decent photo I took today that will probably be put up as well, but I’ll leave that for another day.
Photo Friday
Well I have brought my camera in to work today. I’ve decided to try and take a photo every Friday and post it up that night. We’ll see how long I can keep it going!
On a related note, I think it’s about time I dig out my film scanner again and see if it’s working. If I get some of my old negatives scanned in and processed it will be the first time anyone has seen any of them.
I’ll also have to find some time for flute practice also. So a busy weekend ahead for me!
Back again with updates!
Well I purchased Adobe Lightroom a few days ago and have started processing a few photo’s.
You can see the new ones at: http://photo.artinstill.com
I’ll be trying to keep it up this time and get some new photo’s up at least once a week or so. I’ll try and get a link to the Smugmug RSS up on the page as well so that there will be no need to check back, new photo’s can go right to your RSS reader of choice.
I also bought myself a new Flute! Going to take up playing again off and on, we’ll see how that pans out.
Too many games
Mass Effect 2 has been released, which means I really need to get Mass Effect 1 finished. However I still have Batman, Valkyria, Avatar, Borderlands, Dragon Age, Prototype and a myriad of others to finish before I should start playing another game lol.
I think that there really needs to be either cloning or some sort of time dilation thing created stat or the problems are only going to get worse.
Although, that idea where you only work 4 days a week and have 3 day weekends could also help. Chances of that being implemented in Australia = 0.
Dragon Age and other ruminations
Been playing a lot of Dragon Age lately. Really addicitive but have hardly made any progress due to my constant reloading to see every angle of every conversation lol.
I’ll probably be playing it when I get home tonight, although I have had a sudden craving for photography. I don’t think I’ve even looked at my Camera in nearly a year and I bet there are a lot of photo’s on there I haven’t been through. Got an urge to have a trawl through all the stuff I haven’t been uploading or processing and make sure it is available.
Anyway, it will be much easier to play Dragon Age lol. And then after that I have to get through Mass Effect, as the second installment is due out in January. There are also a few PS3 games I need to complete – Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Valkyria Chronicles etc.
Maybe it’s for the best that the Icecrown Citadel content patch for WoW isn’t out yet, as if that came out as well I don’t know what I would do. Assassins Creed 2 is out this week / last week as well. Getting really good reviews and apparently supposed to be extremely amazing. Argh, there aren’t enough hours in the day (mostly thanks to having to work for 8 of them lol).
Daylight savings
Daylight savings is horrible. Just because some business man wanted longer to play golf in the afternoons does not make a valid reason to screw with world timezone settings. Argh.
Also, I am trying to get photo.artinstill.com working again since moving my hosting to Jumba. No idea when this will get completed. I hope to be spending more time on photo’s once this is done. Of course I have said this many times in the past, but this time I mean it, honest.
Yes the buses are horrible
The new bus timetable is as bad as I feared. I now spend around 30 minutes more each day in travel, the bus stop isn’t near my work anymore and I have to leave the house earlier and leave work earlier.
So no idea what Action buses were thinking when they made this but I think the word ‘Thinking’ is being overly generous.
So anyway, no new news here except that I have been slack and not taking photo’s. I can’t even really blame World of Warcraft, as I wasn’t taking many photo’s before I started playing again.
Perhaps it is just Canberra. In Brisbane there was always the river, the gardens, Southbank etc and plenty of Overclockers meets to go to. In Canberra I really didn’t expect that things would be so based around the ability to drive. Basically if you don’t drive in Canberra, you are screwed.
So there is nowhere for me to go to take photo’s. And yes I should be taking them of anything, even the garden etc but it is hard to work up enough care factor about Canberra to even do that much. It’s as if I don’t want a photographic record of ever having been here lol.
So anyway, enough rambling from me. Back to the void again I go.
In: News · Tagged with: canberra, public transport
