My health had been going slowly downhill for a few months beforehand as well, this was just the final straw that broke the camels back.

I’m still recovering – doing Chemotherapy every fortnight. So it’s probably understandable that I haven’t been getting much writing or photography done. Well that’s my excuse anyway and I have to say it’s a darn good one.

On the plus side, I’ve only got a month or so left of Chemo to go. After that there will be a few weeks of recovery, followed by some more surgery. Then a month or so recovery and hopefully by then I’ll know if I’m going to be permanently better.

So at the moment I’m looking at November – December before I really feel like I’m in the clear and able to start doing things like writing and taking photo’s again. Sure, there is no real reason I can’t be doing all that now, however I’m procrastinating and just playing games etc in my spare time. I’m basically just being lazy and doing what requires the least effort until all this is over.

So in a nutshell, that’s why there hasn’t been any updates recently. Now fingers crossed the next few months goes well and maybe later this year there will be more writing and photo’s available to review.

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

These photo’s aren’t slides yet, still processing those. Just some more from the digital archives.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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).

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.