King of Sleep

Why I Don't Write Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

2010-04-02T03:18:00.001+01:00

That is why I don't write post-apocalyptic fiction.

Because, really, Mad Max, your 28 Days Later and your Fallouts have nothing on what Liberia is like.

I'm not able to describe many places worse than Liberia. Because Liberia really is an utter shit hole. And it is a far more uncomfortably nasty and hellish shit hole than the post-apocalyptic fantasies I mention above are. It is real for a start, and it is a systematic failure of UN intervention, many years of corrupt authoritarian dictatorships (is there any other kind?), two civil wars and massive poverty. This place is what the world would look like if Fallout was real.

For me trying to use a scenario in fiction for pulpy hijinks without directly acknowledging the situation in Liberia or Somalia seems to me, well, not crass exactly, but just pointless and lacking in verisimilitude.

Now writing mundane fiction, or stories that aren't exploiting this imigary "just because it is cool" I'm down with.

"He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."

- Charles Taylor

A Few Things

2010-03-30T20:41:00.001+01:00

* Still working on a short story that I intend to submit to Interzone.

* Nearly finished the first draft of a short story for Short Fuse.
It's a bit wanky and experimental, but it is a remix of a short story
I love.

* There are two comics I should be writing. PAGAN BASTARD and
something else I've forgotten.

* www.ectomo.com is still down. This is annoying.

* I am reading through my archive of Warren Ellis' Bad Signal and
enjoying it far too much.

* I can smell pizza being cut up.

--
http://www.will-ellwood.com

Five Songs Three Months Into the Year.

2010-03-19T20:33:00.004+01:00

So we are three months into 2010. Spring starts tomorrow with the Vernal Equinox and the phase of the year where for the past three years I have found my albums and tracks of the year has pretty much passed. The sound of the year has been set. What are the five songs I can't stop listening to at the moment?

Assume no order here except for the order I remembered them. There are many things can be inferred from this list. All of them are true.

1, La Roux - In for the Kill (Skreem Remix)

I love the original version of this, but the Skreem Remix is something else.

2, Royksopp - This Must Be It.

It is the beat and Karin Dreijer Andersson singing here. A great video as well. Sadly I can't embed that here.

3, Zola Jesus - Night

The beat and the voice. It is the beat and her voice.

4, Soom T - Dirty Money

An 8bit dub future. Lovely stuff. A perfect single. It might help that I agree with the sentiment expressed as well.

5, The Knife - Seeds

Thump, thump, thump, thump. What?

Doom Level: Green

2010-03-15T20:14:00.002+01:00

So The Kick School of Creative Writing is happening. Like really
actually happening in just over a month. There is genuine enthusiasm
for the idea as well.

So I've done good.

And there's some short fiction of mine floating around the http://www.weaponizer.co.uk queue as well. I
think two stories. One called "Three Words" and another called
"Terminal 5." So that's good.

Been coming up with pitches for Kick all day as well. A light exercise
to fit in between working on this weeks short story. This short is
coming to the 2000 word mark and still has life in it. Aiming for 3000
to 3500 words now. I need to get this done and organized before I
workshop it on Wednesday.

No real essay or thoughts here. Just outlining what I'm looking at today.

I still feel really lazy.

--
http://www.will-ellwood.com

A 1 AM Power Cut

2010-03-09T00:51:00.004+01:00

This morning there was a power cut in my village. The power dropped when the clock struck one. All gone; even the street lights outside. I walked out of my house with a head torch and the constant amber glow of suburban sprawl was gone, and my breath was like smoke in the cold air. I looked down the street and my light, the only light, reflected from a road sign seventy meters away. The only sound coming from the chorus of burglar alarms tripped by the sudden lost of vital electricity. It was all very post-apocalyptic.

A Mundane Near Death Experience

2010-03-06T19:57:00.004+01:00

I have this notion that I'd make a very disappointing near death experience story person. I'd be in a traffic accident, or an aeroplane crash, or a terrorist explosion, something like that someday, and I'd be lying there dead -- not very injured, but death like -- and then I'd wake up a few hours later, and the only thing I'd be able to say is, "What the fuck happened there? Oh man isn't breathing great. "

"Did you see any white lights?" I'd get asked. "God, St. Peter, how about a wheel of reincarnation?"

"No, sorry. I just woke up and saw your surprised face. Can I have some pain killers please?"

And at that point I'd stand up, dust myself down, and not make a fuss. No one would mention it every again. No sympathy etc.

Grabbed from a MSN chat with Daniel Williams.

The Kick School of Creative Writing.

2010-02-28T01:54:00.001+01:00

I have ideas every hour of every day; some of these are good ideas, and some of them are downright terrible ideas. Most of these ideas fall somewhere in the middle.

I'd like to think that this one falls in the upper-ranges of good.

The basis of the idea comes from looking at Molly Crabbapples's Dr Sketchy, and wanting to see something for writers. Because I can't draw to save my life. Seriously stick figures are pretty much beyond me.

So the deal is this: get a bunch of writers together, wannabe or not, and write. Because for the wannabe the only way to get better is to write stuff. Different stuff. Lots of different ideas. Lots of different styles. And for pros, the people who know how to write, same deal; since these are skills that need maintaining.

A format I have in mind is roughly the following. Everyone turns up, gets comfortable, has a pot of tea etc. Then the first prompt is delivered. This could be a phrase, a poem, a song, anything that can inspire stories. Then we, the group, writes for about half an hour.

And then we break for ten minutes. For more tea, toilet breaks and smokes.

Then this process of writing for half an hour and chilling for ten minutes gets repeats two or three more times. A different prompt each time.

Also because it's kinda cool to share stuff that's raw and unedited there's a chance to read stuff that's been written at the end. This might be the weak part of my overall idea.

Anyhow, I'm going to look into hosting an event of this nature in my local area, and I'm making the idea somewhat public because I suspect it isn't a unique idea (I'm sure people must have done this already), and also because if I make the idea known I might get prodded into action.

My proposed name is "The Kick School of Writing". Named after the Tesco's own brand Red Bull, because I'm cheap. A motto, if this thing needs one, has to be something along the lines of "Writer Harder, Write Faster, Write Better."

Peace & Love

Will.
28/02/10

National Identity

2010-02-06T01:14:00.001+01:00

[Ginja_] I still have this whole problem with relating to the EDL, or anyone who promotes national identity as anything more important than a convenient way to workout who to support while watching a sporting event.
[Ginja_] And I say this as someone who is quite tempted to go to a pub tomorrow at 5pm and support Wales on the basis they are sponsored by a brewery called "SA Brain."

Status Update 04/02/10

2010-02-04T02:53:00.004+01:00

It has been a wee while since the last status update. Oops. Absolutely my fault.

My mood isn't much improved, if at all really. The details I'm not going to go into since this isn't the venue.

But stuff has been produced.

Sort of. Not to my satisfaction. Not enough stuff. But still stuff. Look at it!

The essay about social realist SF for Weaponizer was written and you can read the hype here and the actual article here.

I was happy with this essay, and a week and a bit later I think I still am pretty cool with it.

As I'm writing this I can't quite recall what else I've thrown up onto the web. But looking at the listings on my writing blog I see that I pushed Mocha Silk Pie which was mentioned in the last status update to the writing blog.

There is also this very short piece which really is an example of writing to understand the world. Transrealist fiction if you like.

And one the thing I've done today was a useless little panel description.

The urban fantasy comic project mentioned previous has been dropped. Too close to another project I'm working on. At least in my mind.

Then there are the notes I've taken for other stories; ones not yet mentioned. I am probably going to get started on as soon as possible. Hopefully.

I've seen pencils for the first page of "Two Tickets to Heaven" and they are good. So good that I think I'll tease by posting the introduction part of the script that Danny has as soon as I've hit publish on this post.

Also André has also done another page of Dork & Hat and that can be found here on Whitechapel. I'd say nice things which he deserves to hear, but the sound of him sobbing makes me smile. :)

The climbs mentioned in the list aren't going so well.

I can do all of the moves on the yellow moat route. I've top roped it, and I have done all the moves on lead before falling from the top hold. I tried to clip a too short sling and karabiner into the steel ring at the top of the climb.

My head just isn't in at the moment. The small moments of Zen that I look for through climbing just aren't coming to me at the moment.

The Discs and Flakes climb at the Tower, my local climbing, isn't going well either. Biomechanically I just do not see how I can make the move, without using the areté, that I'm stuck on. Jumping to the hold can't work, since the disc is too shallow, and I don't have enough reach (damn being short) to place my hand in the shitty thing so I can use it as an intermediary. I'm picking my battles more wisely than normal and giving up on this climb

Again, my head just isn't in it at the moment. Too much noise. Not enough comfortable silence.

The time is 02:00 and I'm going to carry on writing for another hour.

I've nothing better to do.

Have I?

My Dirty Secret Is That I

2010-01-30T14:32:00.003+01:00

That is all. You can get the album from here

(Also post 100.)

Status Update 23/01/10

2010-01-24T03:16:00.002+01:00

Still depressed. Or at least not feeling quite right. Certainly not happy anyway. Starting to wonder about finding a cure. Don't know really what this so called cure would be. It'd probably involve being on a sofa, somewhere else, being infused with tea for a week. Without Internet access, without TV news, without newspapers. My notebook and a pen would be allowed. Someone willing to help with the breakdown that occurs after two (maybe more) days of being disconnected as well is probably needed.

I'm not an information addict. I'm a dependent.

All I can do at the moment is keep on plugging away.

So what's been done today?

Well on Friday I saw that one of my stories had been posted. The story is called Ivana's Heart and it was the first piece of prose fiction that I wrote this year. You can read other stories that were part of the challenge that inspired it here.

I'm quite happy with Ivana's Heart. Style wise I appear to be moving somewhere quite interesting. It is almost as if I am starting to find my voice as a writer.

And what a voice.

Today was another wake up late day. I looked over an email that I'd written to some peers decrying the state of modern SF. I'm trying to refine my argument and find a solution. Considering Ivana's Heart and Mocha Silk Pie I wonder if I've started to do something different.

I'm pretty sure that I am attempting to write what I enjoy and would like to see.

Today's fiction was an experiment for an upcoming novella. Playing around with style and situation. You can read the results here on my writing blog.

Yes I think I am starting to develop a style and a tone of voice of my own. Even if it is shaky and not very well punctuated.

Not done anything for the Urban Fantasy comic since Wednesday. When I was talk to #ectomo I said that the ideas were still percolating; trying to find a form. Experience, my limited, is telling me to start again. Or at least attack from a different angle

Lastly I've finally read From Hell fully. Very good. Enjoyed it throughly. I'm going to be digesting this one for a few weeks.

Tomorrow's business is to sort out this rant on SF for Weaponizer. I'll do that at the gliding club after or over lunch.

Status Update 21/01/10

2010-01-22T03:11:00.001+01:00

Woke up at 2pm today. Felt depressed. Okay strictly that was yesterday at time of writing, but my frame of reference is horribly warped at the moment.

Did nothing until quite late this evening. I've written a flash fiction that's getting sent off to Weaponizer in a few short moments.

Yesterday wasn't much of a success. Had a tough conversation with a friend. Didn't get my project climb done. Ellie managed to top rope up to where I'd got to and then do the last few moves. It was interesting teaching her to do the rope-work at the top. I did kind of have to solo climb up to a ledge next to her so I could talk her through the process.

The words, "Oh God don't drop the fucking rope!" where used at one point.

Also I spewed out 1500 words in an outline document for this Urban Fantasy project. Sent it to people to make it concrete.

Today was just the flash fiction. The story is based on this recipe.

I'm going to bed now. I hope I sleep better than I did last night.

Status Update 19/01/10

2010-01-20T02:42:00.001+01:00

The clock has just struck twenty past one in the morning as I write this, and I'm just getting around to eating the midnight snack I'd promised myself.

It's been that kind of day.

Not the productive kind. The long slow what the hell am I doing kind of day.

Woke up early. Far too early in the morning for my tastes, if I'm not in the mountains. Drove into Leicester and dropped a CV and covering letter off with Blacks (I mentioned this yesterday, no?).

I had some thinking to do which got done. Delayed writing an email to André and sending a text message all day. As soon as this is done I'm writing the email. The text message shall have to wait for a more sociable time of course.

Today nothing got done on any of the writing projects.

Yes, for some reason, this doesn't matter. I walked to a local crag about ten minutes walk from my house (and near my primary school) to see if it was in condition to climb.

Bluntly put it wasn't. I walked to the top of the hill to look down at the tops of the climbs to find broken glass everywhere and beds of ivy and thorns.

Also it hadn't dried off, but that's less of an issue when everything was unclimbable on my own.

It's been about two years since I last visited that area with the intention of climbing and I believe the conditions have gotten worse. Even though the local parish council do undertake some "gardening" of the area on a yearly basis.

Oh well no climbing today for me. Here are some photos taken from my crappy mobile phone.

Looking into the valley below from the war memorial above the crag.

The left side of the crag.

The right side of the crag.

So that was about my day. Had a proper shave. Did the dishes. Joined a website called Formspring. My profile is here under the usual allies. I quite like the concept and idea. The execution I think is a bit flawed. Too much focus on anonymity.

Anyway. I have an email to start writing and a climb to think about 'sending later.

Status Update 18/01/10

2010-01-19T01:34:00.002+01:00

Today I woke up at midday. Rolled out of bed and faffed about until I'd bought some bread. Didn't do a huge amount of anything really.

Well okay I quizzed the peoples of Whitechapel very early this morning about what kind of comic I should write. VKlaus said that he'd never seen me produce anything that was an urban fantasy.

And I don't think I have either. So to bed I went to read more of We and think about urban fantasy.

I came up with something and have started to write notes.

Oh and I reread the Neverwhere comic and did some prep work for the climb I'm working on. Mostly just pull-ups with leaps to grab the top of the door frame.

Not a huge amount of stuff then. The nineteenth will be better. More productive. Working harder.

Also I must hand in a CV and covering letter to Blacks in town.

Attempting to Get Shit Done

2010-01-18T01:13:00.007+01:00

So Magnulus, friend, is going to try and write daily about his work at university and other projects. Because I am seriously unorganized I am going to try and do the same in the hopes that it might focus my efforts. Also solidarity. But mostly because I'm terrible and shit at getting shit done.

Although lists do help me a lot. It's how I did revision when I was university. I made lists of facts to remember and lists of tasks that needed to be done. On paper strictly as well. No tampering or easy deletion. If it gets scratched out it is still on the page staring at you; telling you that you are a fucking cheat. A tick is healthier than that. Plus the psychological joy of ticking tasks is one, minor, joy that can be gained from being productive.

Of course this list was created in my scrapbook.txt file (13,000 words and growing) but that was only so I could create the list in a random and free-flowing manner. I'm about to transcribe it onto some A4 ready to be carried with me always

This all sounds like a bit of a belated new years resolution. It probably is. But for me this is just building on what I learned doing the same thing in November and December last year. Ah well. Time to get my arse into gear.

Creative/Climbing Projects for January/February

Write Daily/Weekly about your progress on this list.

Strictly limit the focus to what you did for these items.

Weekly is allowed as long as you don't slack off.

Revise the comic script "Two Dragons" for clarity so Calliope doesn't suffer a brain hemorrhage.

City 23 Novella (~ 20,000)
- Plan it.
- Write it.
- Revise it.
- Publish it.
The Weaponizer Science Fiction Rant

Think about it more.

Revise it.

Send it to Texture.

Write more for Weaponizer.

Chase up the unpublished stories and the twitter fiction.

Some sort of comic script.

No idea about length (< 30 pages).

Or genre.

Or anything else.

Just that I need to write another comic.

Ask around for what people want to see me tackle.

Revise and properly edit Space Bastard.

Climb the Yellow lead route far wall at the Moat.

20/01/10

You are one move from the top.

A matter of faith and a clear mind.

Link it and get top roping it so you can lead it clean.

Shout at Ellie until she can lead it clean.

Climb the Discs (and Flakes) at the Tower on Lead.

Mid February 2010.

Maybe not clean and pure for Feb. Rests allowed.

Improve on this.

Shout at Ellie until she does better than me on this.

Grand Wizard Moore Reading

Read "From Hell" fully. Ignore the notes.
Reread "V for Vendetta".

I should probably start running as well.

Edited slightly later to add "From Hell" and "V for Vendetta" rereading.

Edited 23/01/10: Tasks done so far. Revise Script for Calliope, bug Texture, sent more fiction to Weaponizer, started to read "From Hell."

Anyone!

2009-10-27T19:36:00.002+01:00

"What I say is true; anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great."
- Gusteau, Ratatouille.

Anyone can write. Anyone can write publishable fiction. Anyone! There's a moderate amount of ability required and this does take time and effort. But then being able to cook requires a certain amount of ability. So does nearly everything worthwhile doing. Hell being publishable isn't even that high a standard. Look at Dan Brown!

It isn't about being talented. It's about spending the time learning a set of basic tricks and instincts. You've got to write and practice in order to reach this magical zone of being of writing at a publishable standard. But it isn't inaccessible. You've just got to go for it.

It's also about confidence! Writing, for me, is about confidence in what I am putting down on the page. There is always an inner critic looking at the words that I write. It is constantly telling me that I am stupid. It is always whispering in my ear to delete a line and have another go. But look at these words. The order is understandable. I am imparting understanding. These words are working. I am communicating and I can tell my inner critic to fuck off for now.

And on a sentence by sentence level; if the sentences are constructed correctly it is hard to tell apart someone who is a respected author and who is just starting out on the path to being a good writer.

Take a look at these two paragraphs taken from two different short stories for instance:

Paragraph 1.

The cats slithered across the ceiling before dropping down on the heads below. The creatures were unlike any cat that had ever been--lacking rear legs, their hinds instead tapered to serpentine tails, each ending in two prehensile lobes. Their heads lacked lower jaws, allowing three twitching tongues to hang down dripping viscous venom.

Paragraph 2.

The only figure on the ground who is aware of the imminent catastrophe is a man in a white jacket and panama hat who stands at the foot of the tower, both hands raised to the marble flank. His face is hidden, but his arms are braced against the shifting stone, his back arched above his straining legs. We can see that in his desperate way he is trying to hold upright the collapsing tower that is about to obliterate him.

Which author of these paragraphs had a fifty year career and which of these is just gaining respectability? Think about it for a few minutes. Which is it?

Okay I'll give you a clue. One is by J.G. Ballard and one is by Will Couper. In fact the top paragraph is by Will Couper and the bottom paragraph is taken from the last short story written by J.G. Ballard.

The point I am trying to make here is that what you write is often no better or worse than what anyone you look up to writes. After spending time and effort everyone starts to swim in the same sea of acceptable quality. It's cool. Accept it. After that it's about how cool your ideas are.

I can't help with ideas.

Slipe Cats by Will Couper.
The Dying Fall> by J.G. Ballard.

This Morning's Dream (14-08-09)

2009-08-14T14:57:00.002+01:00

I had a dream this morning. The scene was early morning in Leicester.
Walking across the edge of the ring road into the center of the city
with two or three fremale friends. For the friends that in this dream
I have a specific impression of who they might be. But really they
seem to be only ghosts from my subconscious. A feeling of secrets and
espionage persist in the amber street lights. Feelings also of
tiredness, low-spirits, and a spooky slightly hollow sensation. These
friends lead me onto High Street into a high rise tower that can't
possibly exist.

A scene change, and out of an elevator into the decadent luxury of a
reception area seemingly designed with the eighties and brushed
aluminium in mind. A few potted plants Jurassic green leaves hide in
the corners. Did you every play the old game Corporation? The colour
palate is similarly exaggerated. The proprietor greets me and my
friends. He's talking about baths. Not buying a bath, but the actual
taking a bath as a group activity. A social and apparently relaxing
thing to do in some cultures.

A price, or something is agreed on and I head off into a mottled
marble lined room to get ready, and then I wake up.

--
http://www.will-ellwood.com

Three things in the car.

2009-08-09T17:06:00.001+01:00

Jefferson said, "the care of human happinness is the first and only
duty of governmment."

I think that this is an interesting quote. It is the last line of the
last book that i finished. A book called "the american future." As i
sit in the back seat of a car travelling south from Roachdale through
Huddersfield and on towards the motorway i am reminded of the areas
former industrial history at nearly every turn in the road.

And i ate lunch next to the first co-op ran by the Roachdale pioneers.
Did'nt go in sadly as i did not know when it was open.

These three things are linked. And i typed this on a phone with
predictive text. This is also relevant.

Will.

--
Sent from my mobile device

http://www.will-ellwood.com

Testing from phone.

2009-08-09T08:14:00.001+01:00

Test one two one two.

--
Sent from my mobile device

http://www.will-ellwood.com

What Am I Writing?

2009-07-30T01:48:00.006+01:00

Over the past month I have been asking for people to send me single line pitches for short stories over twitter. So far I've written fifteen stories for this project which I've loosely called "#600words". The name comes from the hash tag I'm using on twitter in case you are wondering. The tag comes from here.

I've written 7462 words based on these pitches. I think I might do a print-on-demand book once I reach a sensible word count.

There is a certain trend towards the weird running through all of these stories. I don't know where this has come from because my other writing this month has been all very serious and proper science fiction. Is this weirdness just the sound my imagination likes to play when it gets to freestyle?

What am I writing?

Three New Books

2009-07-19T00:16:00.004+01:00

Today I got three new books. They are all books you should read.

Crécy. This is the first graphic novella from Warren Ellis and as the title quite clearly states is about the Battle of Crécy. The story is told in the first person, as a lecture on the tactics and equipment of English longbow men during the battle. Look the deal with this book is that this is smart, funny and is a clear example of what comics can do.

Chloe Noonan. And this is entirely different from the last book. It's a minicomic about a monster hunter who doesn't have any special abilities (she doesn't even have a sword). It's funny, charming and cheap. Get it!

The BLDGBLOG Book. This is the book of the website. I've not yet read it fully as it's full of content. But inside there are ton of material on architecture and how it is all around us. This is book that's gorgeous to look as well. Nice thick paper and lots of little details that I have the feeling are going to make me want to keep dipping into the book for a long while to come.

I Made This!

2009-06-16T19:14:00.006+01:00

Today I made a writing board. No real reason really. I just didn't want to have to keep 'borrowing' a clipboard to lean on, and I figured that I could put some of the scrap lumber in the garage to use, rather than letting it just sit there.

All it is is some plywood the dimensions of an A4 pad + an inch each side. Nothing fancy. I used a jigsaw to cut out the wood from a large piece.

The board after I cut it.

The general scale of the thing.

The reverse side is rrough. If I didn't write this I'd forget and get annoyed with the board.

This is my tribute to Woody Guthrie.

And this is the damn thing in use.

It's simple, functional, and it appears to work.

Saints Row 2

2009-06-15T22:19:00.001+01:00

Saints Row 2

My brother rented a copy of Saints Row 2 the other week. I know, how antiquated renting a game from a shop is, but I digress. He had the game for a week and in that time I spent seven hours playing it, and got twenty-seven percent of the way into it. It was a fun seven hours that I spent spraying shit over buildings while a French anti-capitalist drove me around the business district of the city spouting rhetoric. Other activities that I got up to in those seven hours were: machine gunning down old-ladies, taking part in a fight club, stealing toxic waste from a nuclear power plant, and more machine gunning, but this time of voodoo gangsters from a helicopter. Oh and I BASE jumped from the centre of a hotel after murdering all of the Yakuza inside the building.

All in all it's deliciously psychotic and I love it.

Yes Climb

2009-05-21T02:20:00.005+01:00

Cast:

WILL - Ginger idiot. Prone to climbing on things.
KIEREN - Someone conveniently on hand.
VOICE OF REASON - Mostly absent. Never seen.
BABY WILL - Really a toddler. Still a terror.
CHRIS - A Liverpudlian with frizzy hair. A bad influence.

Scene 1.

WILL is standing under a door. He is looking up at the top of the frame. Other people from the anime society are both in front of him descending a nearby staircase and behind him. WILL passes his black rucksack to KIEREN. WILL stretches both arms up in an attempt to reach the door frame. He is too short by about six inches. He jumps slightly and grabs the frame with both hands. WILL starts to pull himself up using only his arms.

VOICE OF REASON: What do you think the worst that can happen here is?

WILL glances through the glass window above the doorway. He then reaches for the metal above the window. First with his right hand, and then with his left hand. Effortlessly he repeats this process with an unseen rung above. At the top of the climb WILL's feet are several meters above the ground.

VOICE OF REASON: Looking stupid.

WILL carefully starts to descend by reversing the process. He reaches the second hold.

VOICE OF REASON: Or something worse?

Scene 2.

WILL is in the study. He is dressed in pair of green North Face hiking trousers and a black long sleeve T-shirt. He is leaning on the desk.

WILL: Let me talk to you about climbing. It's something that I started doing a long time ago. I just stopped for no good reason.

Scene 3.

BABY WILL is standing on the cushions of an old ridged green sofa. BABY WILL starts to climb up the back of the sofa. BABY WILL reaches the top and balances against the wall. He has no way down, and nowhere else to go.

Scene 4.

The study again.

WILL: It's just some primal internal thing. I see something that I reckon I could climb and I just have to try. It doesn't matter if it's not meant to be climbed on. Door frame, stairway, side of a building, whatever. Someone might accuse me of showing off. I don't think they are right. Well okay, I am showing off on some evolutionary level. The look at me do these feats of strength and agility. Obviously I must be of "good stock" if I can do shit like this. But I don't tend to see it like this as I'm actually doing the act of foolishness. I just do it.

WILL pauses. He looks left and then right.

WILL: Okay I am very likely deluding myself. Shut up! Anyway we should go back to the events of last week.

Scene 5.

WILL is hanging from the top of the window. His left hand pops off from the hold and WILL falls. His right hand stays stuck to the hold. WILL hangs for a second from this hand and swings into the side of the door before dropping the short distance to the ground.

VOICE OF REASON: Or that could happen.

WILL comes up from the crouch.

KIEREN: Are you okay dude?

WILL stands up. He rotates his right hand around.

WILL: I think so. My hands a bit sore. Ah well.

KIEREN hands WILL is bag back. They go downstairs.

Scene 6.

WILL is walking under the same door frame a week later. Only CHRIS is with him this time.

WILL: You know how last week I climbed that door frame successfully. I had a second go and fell off it. My damn hand still hurts.

CHRIS: What did you do?

WILL: Sprained it I reckon.

The two walk down the stairs.

CHRIS: Another good climb I think would be the stairs.

WILL: Yeah I've done it. It's really bad for you fingers. The back of the steps are sharp.

CHRIS and WILL walk underneath the stairs. CHRIS does a test pull-up on one of them.

CHRIS: Hmmm.

WILL takes hold of a stair with both hands and pulls himself up. He swings up to the next stair with ease. He swings to what he thinks is the next stair and finds a metal beam with nothing to grab. WILL grasps for something that isn't there for a second before he falls to the ground again.

WILL: Ow that's not good.

CHRIS: Your hand?

WILL: Yeah. Ah well.

CHRIS: Shops then.

WILL: Yup.

CHRIS: Race you.

CHRIS and WILL sprint off stage.

The Colossal Forest

2009-05-19T15:40:00.001+01:00

Cast:

WILL - A Traveller.
PAUL - A Gnome Sorcerer.

A forest. A forest, like the ones found in American TV series shot in Canada. There is an explosion in in the distance, a fireball singes a trees. WILL who is sitting on a moss covered log ignores it. WILL is dressed in black. There are two long daggers staked into the soil next to the log.

WILL: I like a lot of the trappings of fantasy things. I enjoy the Lord of the Rings films. Although I'm not so much a fan of the original books. The Conan stories by Robert E. Howard were more my thing as a young teen. Well that and science fiction. I did try to play massively-online-roleplaying games as well. I thought they would be fun. But they just didn't grab me.

There is another explosion. Closer this time. WILL stands up, and he picks up the daggers. There is a flash of light next to WILL. There is acrid white smoke coming from the center of the flash.

WILL (surprised): Ah fucking hell.

A gnome PAUL in robes appears in the cloud. PAUL coughs and attempts to wave the smoke away.

PAUL (happy): Hello Will.

WILL: Hey man.

WILL puts the blades back into the soil.

PAUL: How are you?

WILL: Good, I guess. Just thinking aloud about games. How are you?

PAUL: I'm fine. What about games?

WILL sits down on the log again.

WILL: How I never got into games like World of Warcraft. I mean I played Ragnarok Online back in the day. Like, erm, five years or more years ago. I've forgotten. It was fun. But I never stuck with it.

PAUL: Why?

WILL: I don't know. Maybe the shite Internet connect I had back in the day, or maybe just not really digging the grinding part.

PAUL: No one does.

WILL: Except clearly I do enjoy the process of leveling up characters. This past few months I've supported a small addiction to that Facebook app Vampire Wars. So it can't be that. Or at least not wholly.

Paul: What about the cost?

WILL: I don't object to that man. If it's fun I'll pay. Although it would mean less money for books and comics.

The sound of war drums echoes through the forest from a great distance.

PAUL: I've got to go. Orcs to fight.

PAUL disappears in a flash of light and another plume of foul smoke. The drums stop and the sound they made is replaced with thunder bursts.

WILL: Maybe it's an expectation thing. What I think is my ideal fun for a online game isn't what makes for a good team game. See in a game I'm selfish. I want to defeat the dragon all by myself. Not through cool powers, or throw away items. But through having to make firm choices, and possibly even sacrifices. Also I want to play a swashbuckler. Maybe it's a graphics thing as well. I'm not too interested in games that aim for photorealism.

The forest becomes an abstract cartoon of the same temperate rainforest.

WILL: That's better. I much prefer abstract and expressionistic art in my games. It's only really World of Warcraft that provides that. And yet it still hasn't enticed me enough to want to play it. I really like the style of Warcraft as well.

The sky goes dark. An immense giant of stone and forest blocks the sunlight. WILL looks at the giant's grey granite toe slightly unimpressed.

WILL: Maybe it's because I'm so anti-social.

WILL picks up the daggers. One of them goes into his waistband, and the other dagger is put between WILL's teeth. WILL starts to climb the giant.

WILL: Ah well. It's all fun and games.

Form a Band

2009-05-18T18:42:00.003+01:00

On any given Monday there is a fifty fifty chance I'll have to head into Leicester to sign on. One of the joys of being unemployed (and unemployable) I guess. I take this often as an excuse to meet with Paul in Starbucks to drink coffee and chat. As usual I was rambling on about the diatribes that catches in the cogs of my brain and Paul was offering the sensible comments about my gibberings. This is one of those more sensible ideas I came up with.

In essence the idea comes from Warren Ellis who in a Bad Signal email suggested that writers and artists form bands. The email can be found here. I suggest you go read it first.

Have you read it yet? Good.

Anyway, this is a cool idea, or at least I think so. However I'm not a comics making person, and I just don't know enough artists willing to submit to my ego. Also I like ideas to be as general and inclusive as possible. So how about form a live band of creative types?

That's right form a band. Find four or five artists: poets, solo musicians, writers, crafty people with things to show and explain, performers, whatever. Get together each with ten or twenty minutes of material each, and put on a show in a pub/coffee place. Charge enough money on admission to cover costs, or run at a loss, whatever. The idea is to get people to put eyeballs and ears on you and your things.

Zines, CDs, and crafted things can of course be sold after.

So far so simple. Where does Mr Ellis's idea come into this (apart from in spirit). Well in conjunction with trying to do as much live stuff as possible have a website. Have a website, and have each person post one new thing a week to it. Make recordings and videos of shows available as well. Do everything possible to get attention on you and your friends cool stuff.

Remember obscurity is the enemy of creative types. We are fighting to avoid obscurity. That is what we fight for.

Why am I so bothered about the live side of things? Because poetry and the written word are spoken mediums. I personally can't read poetry in a book. I have to read it aloud or hear someone reading it in order to enjoy it. Good prose reads well aloud. Good prose should be a pleasure to listen to as much as read. People buy audio-books don't they?

A quick idea to tack onto this. Have themes. Organise that everyone with riffing around the same set of ideas. Provide a cohesive set of ideas. Person X writes/performs a song about the theme. Person Y composes some poems about the theme. Person Z makes up a story illustrating the theme.

Final idea before I pass out from lack of sleep. Do cover versions. Many great things have been written and made already. But not everyone knows about them. Share what you know. Read some Dylan Thomas, read some Orwell, and sing some Bob Dylan if you think people should about it.

Will is passing out now. He'll form a band when he wakes up.

Bad Signal + TV Idea

2009-05-15T02:46:00.006+01:00

I turned my laptop half an hour ago with every intention of going to bed. But rather stupidly I started to flick through my copies of Bad Signal (#1 and #2) which are collected editions of Warren Ellis's mailing list. They are a bit dated now, being written in the early 2000s, but they are well written and entertaining reads. In short they are a good distraction. If I haven't told you to go and find copies now then go and find copies of them.

I want to watch a good serialised TV series. One where each episode stands on its own like the original episodes of Star Trek. Ideally I want it to be summed up with phrases like: Celtic Bastard meets The Wire, or Down and Out in the Hyborian Age. The kind of TV that makes Whitehouse spin in her grave and the Daily Mail vomit until their stomach ulcers burst. I want a half hour weekly show full of irresponsible gore, fucking, and drama. See to it.

Some Good Phrases.

2009-05-14T23:50:00.003+01:00

1. "L'esprit de l'escalier"

L'esprit de l'escalier is loosely translated from French into English to mean stairway wit. The thinking of the perfect words to say in a situation after the situation has ended. Happens all the time to me and is one of the most annoying aspects of the human 1.0 experience.

2. "This much is truth."

A good throw around phrase for when you need to sound weighty and authoritative. This much is truth.

3. "Tipping the Velvet"

Victorian euphemism for cunnilingus. What else needs to be said on the matter?

King of Sleep

2009-05-14T19:48:00.003+01:00

An airport arrivals lounge at night. Row after row of metal benches. A group of heavily laden people are sleeping as best they can. WILL is on the floor huddled around his rucksack. He wakes and sits up.

WILL: This is Turin airport. I have a tendency to cite this place as the worst location I have spent the night sleeping. But at least it was one night only. So after some consideration spending one night sleeping here wasn't so bad. No the two nights I spent sleeping on a mattress with your flatmates boss and another flatmates boss' son who happened to be in the German army. Well that was probably worse. Even if I was in St Moriz snowboarding.

The set decoration changes to a psychiatrists office. WILL hops onto the couch and lies down.

WILL: My attitudes towards sleep have changed overtime. I have always required a lot of sleep. I get really grouchy when I'm tired. But the thing is I'm not that fond of sleeping at the moment. I've always found it hard to fall asleep for one reason or another. It might be because I've got horrible sleep hygiene, or it might be because I've developed an anxiety about finding it hard to fall asleep. What do you think Fraud?

SIGMUND FRAUD exhales smoke and removes his cigar from his mouth.

SIGMUND: Could it be your environment?

WILL: My usual bed is fine. It only hurts if I spend too much time in it.

SIGMUND: And your dreams?

WILL: Ah Fraud, you and dreams, how could this not happen? Well I don't have much in the way of dream recollection. When I'm sleeping in the morning I tend to recall the dream more. There are a few general themes though.

SIGMUND: Go on.

WILL: Climbing and surreal situations. A climbing dream I had once was me with friends traversing across a cliff high on a mountain side. A surreal situation, one that I remember quite clearly, is attending a party in a squat. The squat was built on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Not sure how it was identified as that bridge. It was just a general dreamy impression. And the other day I had a dream I was in a food hall with a bunch of friends and this cute German brunette girl started to criticize my German language skills. I don't think I was even attempting to speak German in that dream. It was all rather odd.

SIGMUND: I have nothing to say Mr Ellwood. You mentioned in our last session of feelings déjà vu. Could you perhaps elaborate?

WILL: Sure boss. Well you know what it is. Being in a situation that you've never been in before but being sure that you have. It's a strange sensation. I have an episode of it on average at least once a week.

SIGMUND: Could it not be linked to schizophrenia or an anxiety disorder?

WILL: No, at least as far as my limited research tells me. There's a correlation between déjà vu and temporal lobe epilepsy. But it's not serious.

SIGMUND: Could you describe how these episodes feel?

WILL: Strange and disconcerting. Not enjoyable. When I have an episode, especially when dealing with people it can be very hard to decide how I should behave when I'm having the experience.

SIGMUND: I understand.

A grandfather clock chimes.

SIGMUND: Our time is up Mr Ellwood. I shall see you next week.

WILL: So soon. But we were making progress.

SIGMUND: And it is better to end when there is still progress to be made. It keeps you coming back to me. Which is what keeps me in business.

Themed Week

2009-05-07T00:39:00.007+01:00

Cast:

WILL - This is present day, angst, ennui filled Will.
FUTURE WILL - This is future Will. He still has long red hair.

WILL is in the study standing in front of the desk. There is a bottle of Jamesons whiskey and a tumbler on the desk. The bottle hasn't been opened.

WILL: I guess I should make an apology for the last of these things. It was miserable self pitying and uncalled for. On the other hand I'm about to get all meta with my angst. Because if last week as about theory and technique, then this week is all about angst. There's a lot of it that's built up over the years so I may as well shovel some of it from the heap.

WILL leans back on the desk.

WILL: I would like to think of myself as something of a new man. That is: caring, sensitive, willing to listen to other peoples problems and offer help, open about their own problems, willing to ask for help. Stuff like that. However I don't talk about my problems. Not in person to person. Writing them down like I did for Tuesday wasn't be saying everything. And I don't ask for help. Both are character flaws that I admit. It is just the way I am I guess.

WILL takes hold of the bottle of Jameson and looks at it.

WILL: However I don't try and solve my problems with drinking. I've learned that much. Ah well, I guess I could talk a little.

WILL pours himself a glass of whisky, about two shots. He puts the bottle down and picks up the glass. He gives the liquid a sniff, then he necks it.

WILL: I do wonder sometimes if I'm self-sabotaging my life so it can be like my literary heroes. Sitting on the bus earlier today I thought a bit about Kafka, Hemingway, and Spider Jerusalem. I also wondered if one source of my angst was because I was setting myself into an unjust comparison. One that frankly I'm going to fail on.

WILL pours another glass of whiskey. He leaves the glass on the desk.

WILL: And it's that intense dislike of inferiority that might be getting me down so much. Of course I'm in good physical shape, but that's because I've worked hard to get this way, so I can climb shit. And I know a lot, but that's just me being me, and isn't anything special. But these aren't the comparisons that matters. No it isn't.

WILL picks up the glass.

WILL: Of course if there's one thing I could change this year. It would be....

A portal in the roof of the study opens. From it FUTURE WILL rappels through the hole in time and space onto the floor. FUTURE WILL unhooks himself from the rope. The rope is pulled up through the hole again. FUTURE WILL is wearing a pair of brown hiking trousers and a silver top made from baking foil. WILL is understandably quite taken aback by this and takes a drink.

FUTURE WILL: Stop right there.

WILL: Why should I?

FUTURE WILL: Because what I, well you, are about to say is irredeemably nihilistic.

WILL: Don't try and censor me. This is self-censorship of the worst kind.

FUTURE WILL: Shut up.

WILL: I'm nae taking that from someone dressed in tin-foil.

FUTURE WILL: You thought it was funny at the time.

WILL: Well I don't think it's funny right now.

FUTURE WILL rips the baking foil vest off. He wasn't wearing anything under it. His torso looks like WILL's does now mostly, except with a few years more climbing applied.

WILL: Anyway why shouldn't I say something that nihilistic?

FUTURE WILL: Because you aren't a teenager anymore, and you aren't a contemptible shit.

WILL: Well I feel like shit at the moment.

FUTURE WILL: Grin and take it man. The future is always an improvement. Sure things might get worse for a while, but events have a tendency to swing back into being an improvement. Oh and give me that drink.

WILL passes FUTURE WILL the last of the whisky in the glass. FUTURE WILL drinks it.

FUTURE WILL: Oh that's good. Well not good. Whisky is banned in the future, just so you know. Can't tell you why though.

WILL: Knowing me I don't even know if you are joking.

FUTURE WILL: Well there is that. I should go. This is only meant to be a flying visit.

The portal opens again. A rope falls through it with a carabiner attached to the end. FUTURE WILL clips into it and starts to haul himself up the rope.

FUTURE WILL: Oh and the feeling you are looking for most of the time is ennui.

The portal closes.

WILL: That was strange. I guess I shouldn't continue and go do something productive.

WILL walks out of the study.

Friday Night.

2009-05-05T00:01:00.001+01:00

Cast:

A - Male, and loud. Turned twenty-two the day before.
W - Male, and melancholy.
I - Male, a friend of A.
H - Female, a spooky rock and anime society girl.
B - Female, in possession of a damn good smile and a turquoise dress.
G - Female, anime society president, and the birthday girl.
C - Female, arrived late, and is very busy with university work.
D - Female, a friend of G.
E - Female, a friend of B.

Act 1.

Scene 1.

Eight friends are sat around a table in a pub. On the table there is a collection of empty glasses, and plates of mostly eaten food. A stands up, and other people have to move to allow him to pass.

A: I need another drink.

W: How many have you had?

A counts the glasses he has had. He points to each of his. all of them are glasses of larger.

A: One, two, three, four. Four. I'm not drunk yet.

A walked to the bar.

A (excited): They have scrabble. Let's play anime scrabble.

Scene 2.

The scrabble board is out on the table. The letters are upside down in relation to the board, and there are a lot of letters already down. The group of friends have divided into several teams. W is confering with H about what word they can make from their letters.

I: Hurry up. We didn't take this long on our go.

W: Well you don't have a vowel problem.

H: Shush, don't tell them that.

W stands up to get a better look at the board which is at the far end of the table near B and her friends.

W: Can one of you just turn the board around please?

G: The board is upside down.

W: Well I want the letters to face me.

W looks at the letters on the board. Then he then looks at the letters he has to work with. He keeps glancing up at B, as he has done most of the night. He sits down after a few minutes thinking.

W (discreetly): I've got a word.

H: What?

W rearranges the letters to make the word "Eevee."

H: The pokemon. That's good.

W: You can put the letters down.

H leaves over the table to put the word down.

Scene 3.

The sun has started to set outside and C has just arrived.

A (squealing): Hey it's C.

W recoils in pain from the high-pitched noise. Rapidly throughout the night it becomes clear this is A's favourite way of communicating.

C: Hello.

C takes a seat between A and G.

A: So where are we going next? I want to go to Retribution. They have pool tables.

G: But that's a long walk away.

H: Plus it might be playing crap music. I don't know what club night is on tonight. And we'd have to pay to get in.

W: There is always Firebug or Oddbar.

A: Firebug doesn't have pool tables.

W: Oddbar does.

Scene 4.

The group of friends have moved to a new bar. They are all sitting around a table with drinks. W is nursing a bottle of Budvar. G is hovering near one of two pool tables.

G: Does anyone have a pound coin?

Everyone reaches into pockets and purses. W pulls out a coin and gives it to G. She puts it in the pool table and the sound of balls being released fills the room for a second. G and H start to play a game of pool. W keeps glancing at B. W is pining.

Scene 5.

B and G are now playing pool. I and A have started to arm wrestle each other. W is talking with D and E. A cheats at the competition and pins I's hand on the table.

B: You cheated. You fail.

A: I don't care.

I: I want a rematch.

A: Okay, but with our left hands.

A and I have another bout of arm wrestling. I wins. A sulks.

B and G return to playing pool.

D: Are you okay W? You look depressed.

W: I'm thinking about a writing project. Don't worry I'm fine. A friend sent me a text message with a brief in it. It's about seaside villages, and they always make me depressed.

W looks at his watch.

D: Do you have to go?

W: Yeah, I've got a bus to catch in forty minutes. I can stay until quarter to, or ten to.

A has been engaging in another conversation with H, I and C.

A (shouting): I love lesbians.

D glares at A.

A: What did I do?

W: No A, you don't. You love the idea of lesbians. You don't actually love actual lesbians, or what lesbians actually get up to.

A points at W.

A: That's what you think.

D: It's true. It's the two girls in one bed with you fantasy.

Scene 6.

W looks at B playing pool. He had started to feel self conscious about this behaviour a long time ago and it's now showing. W looks at his watch. Everyone stops moving.

W: Shit I've got to go. I want to tell B how good she looks tonight. But I've not found the right moment, or maybe it's the lack of guts. I could attempt to discreetly pass the message through E, but that would be unfair on E. And I that idea doesn't feel right. There isn't really any other opportunity, and even if she never acknowledges me I should acknowledge her. I know if she finishes this game of pool soon and sits near me. then I'll tell her that she looks good and her smile is killing me.

Everyone starts to move again. B finishes playing pool and takes a seat at the far end of the table. She doesn't regard W at all. W takes his Mp3 player from his bag and readies it.

W (under breath): Verdammt.

W: I have to run. So sorry.

Everyone bids W goodbye as W leaves for the stairs of the bar. W waves goodbye.

W: Peace.

W looks back at B just before he exits the bar. The Death in Vegas song Girls plays.

On My Style.

2009-05-04T16:22:00.003+01:00

[maicro] I liked it
[Ginja_] sweet
[maicro] If only because it addresses something I've thought of in the past - an agnostic afterlife
[maicro] Not to say that I personally believe anything of the sort is possible, but it's still a good mental excersize/image to have X)
[maicro] Though I also rather like your...style, I suppose
[maicro] Not simple, but not bogged down, either

About Four Sea Villages.

This got me thinking.

What doesn't get me thinking?

Okay, this got me thinking about something that I've been considering forever. What is my style? I think it was when I was sixteen that I first decided to basically rip-off William Gibson's style. Now William Gibson is influenced by the work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I also suspect he's been influenced by Hemingway.

Even if William Gibson hasn't I have been later. And there's a neat quote that sums up the style of Hemingway's writing.

His distinct and deceptively simple style of writing spawned generations of imitators but no equals.
- Author biography from the Arrow books edition of "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Yeah, that just about sums it up.

Peace out kids.

A Short Talk About Story Structure.

2009-04-30T19:49:00.005+01:00

Act 1.

Scene 1.

WILL is dressed in his usual black attire, he has a space invaders T-shirt on this time. He is sitting on the desk inside the study.

WILL: Well I was hoping to bring a more exciting installment out today. But sadly the lack of crazy naked scary fun yesterday means that the choice of subjects is down to me navel gazing about the past or talking more about craft stuff. While yes, the past did involve the crazy naked scary fun, but I don't want to start mining that seam until I have absolutely ran out of ideas in the present. Oh I think there needs to be a scene change here as well.

Scene 2.

WILL is lying in his bed looking up the the ceiling. It is dark and the time is quarter past late.

WILL: Ah yes, the scene change is because this is where I last put some serious thought into this set of ideas. Yes I am a freak of nature. Yes I do think other things in the darkness as I wait considerably large amounts of time to fall asleep. No, I won't tell you what about.

WILL sticks a leg out from under the covers in an attempt to bleed off some heat.

WILL: All stories have structures. Even really shit stories have some sense of structure. At the simplest level this is identified as a beginning, middle, and end. This of course being very simple level doesn't hold true for a lot of stories. A better perspective is to say that every story involves conflict of some kind between antagonists and a protagonist. Again, this is a simplification, but it is about this level of complexity I'll stay at.

WILL sits up in a cross-legged position. WILL's his top half is bare although the rest is covered by the sheets.

WILL: Once we start thinking about stories as being about conflicts we can start to define the different types of stories by the number of conflicts and the relative importance that is assigned to them. For instance in the classical ideal of a short story there is only one conflict. This conflict is the point of the story. In a novel the structure is a series of increasingly escalating conflicts. These conflicts are eventually entirely resolved between the protagonist and the antagonist and this is what marks the point where the story ends, or is very near the end.

The same structure also happens in the classic model of writing screenplays. A novella is also really written along these assumptions. There are of course differences in how often these conflicts are and in how often the protagonist is expected to overcome an obstacle.

WILL turns a reading lamp on which is screwed into the wall next to his head. WILL also stretches out and grabs a single issue of a comic.

WILL: Now what's been interesting to me at the moment is Japanese shōnen fiction. Stuff like Bleach and Dragonball. Also the structure of shōjo manga and anime is really interesting. But try as I might I have massive difficulties in translating my observations on this subject into coherent words. Maybe in the near future. I suspect it will involve graphs.

I have however observed what one of my many problems are when it comes to writing fiction. I misjudge these conflicts. I try to write short stories as if they were novels. I don't try to write novels, except for that one time in November 08, and the flaws in that were different to what I'm talking about here. Anyhow, my short stories tend to either have too many conflicts or none. See my two recent stories "A Midsummer Night" and "Teaching People to Fly" as two stories which have no real conflict. On the other hand the short story "Tommy Bullet and the Delayed Revenge", aside from the fucking terrible title, only has one conflict and I think works structurally because of this. Although, I might have these feelings about that story because in the first draft, which was a good definition of fail, I tried to cram the structure suggested by Lester Dent's rules for writing pulp fiction into one thousand words.

I think we need to go back to the study.

Scene 3.

WILL is standing in the study again.

WILL: There you have it. Some of my thoughts on how fiction is constructed. I guess in closing I'd like to say that I'm a fan of the no conflict story. It has a almost dream pop like quality to it. Hmm, maybe by next Tuesday something cool will have happened. I'll go looking for awesome tomorrow.

Peace out.

Midsummer Night, January 2009.
Teaching People to Fly April 2009.
Tommy Bullet and the Delayed Revenge April 2009.
The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot.
Dream Pop.

A Short Talk About Motivation

2009-04-28T23:40:00.003+01:00

WILL is dressed in his usual attire of black jeans, black T-shirt, and nothing on his feet. His hair isn't tied back but is wet and tangled. The room WILL is walking around is the study which is a fiction ideal place for WILL to work in. The floors of the room are wooden, the walls high and painted white. The only furnishing is a modern stylish desk and chair. There is a laptop and a glass of water on the desk.

WILL: I spend a lot of my time at the moment thinking. It is a free and easy way to spend my time after all. I think about all sorts of things. Far to many different subjects to list really. But I can tell you that I spend a lot of time thinking about my craft.

WILL picks the glass up and takes a sip.

WILL: I'm still not entirely sure what my craft is exactly. Writing I suppose. Although I hope that the techniques and thoughts from writing extend naturally into other related fields. Anyhow this past Sunday, or was it Saturday, oh never mind when the question was asked. I was asked where I get my motivation from.

WILL takes a deep breath.

WILL: Well HELEN the answer is that I don't know. Honestly I don't. I can make a few wild guesses. One wild guess is that it's a mixture of youthful exhibitionism combined with an ego which says I have something worthwhile showing off. But motivation depends entirely on the project. Money is a good motivation sometimes. Then there is the case of the short story I'm currently working on. I started it a month ago for what I consider the wrong reason. I started work on a story because I wanted to impress someone. This is a stupid mistake on my part, and is one that I hope to never make again. Stupid because very quickly that source of motivation becomes despair. However from that angst over the project I did find another kick in the arse. The need to just finish the fucking thing. That's what got me to finish the first draft of Potato Isle.

WILL stops to consider his final thoughts.

WILL: As I said for different people and different projects there are different motivations. But I guess as a rule in writing, and in general. I guess that it is all about building up as much inertia as possible, and then throwing yourself at a task. Kicking and screaming if needed. This isn't a very profound statement. But I think it's a statement that holds up to reality, at least my reality, quite well.

WILL moves to leave the room by the side exit.

WILL: Night kids.

The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

2009-04-27T18:47:00.003+01:00

I often claim that the novel Neuromancer is the novel that changed by life when I first read it in middle school. This is truth. But like all truths there are further layers to it. Layers that have forgotten, and superseded by further developments. One of these layers came in the summer of 2001 when "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" was published in the UK. A copy appeared in my house and it quickly became a book I'd just read constantly.

Do remember that this only a few months after Wikipedia had launched, and a few years before I became aware of the website. Also this was 2001, I was still on dial up Internet, and only 15 years old. So throw all these factors together including the ones where I should be studying and working towards really important exams this book was mind shaping.

Encyclopedias are addictive things for me. When I was young, aged around eight or nine at a guess, I used to always get a science encyclopedia for kids and spend hours reading each entry at random.

Quick, let me end this digression before I start rambling on about the Encyclopedia I got because it had a scary picture of a scorpion in it. What is inside "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" (Mammoth SF)?

Well at the start there is a fairly comprehensive twenty seven page chapter on history and origins of science fiction. Then the encyclopedic content starts. The book is divvied up into three sections: "Science Fiction on the Page", "Science Fiction on the Screen" and "Terms, Themes and Devices in Science Fiction." The middle section is probably now the most outdated since the book was published almost ten years ago and ten years of films will have had a big effect on what would get included and what would not now be written about. Plus aside from it telling me more about Le Jetée it did not have much in that interested me. I have always preferred books over TV.

No the sections of the book that really grabbed my brain by was the last section. It has a section on Steampunk, which might be why I'm so jaded around the whole thing. I've had the meme in my head for nearly ten years after all.

STEAMPUNK

A bastardization of the term CYBERPUNK, used to describe a modern subgenre of SF that places technological developments within a historical framework and attempts to assess their impact on the progress of past events.

MICHEAL MOORECOCK is one of the early proponents of this type of story, as his Oswald Bastable Trilogy, collected as A Nomad of the Time Streams, sees its chief protagonist thrust into an Edwardian future dominated by enormous airships and republican terrorists.

The Difference Engine (1990) by WILLIAM GIBSON and BRUCE STERLING, however, is perhaps the most important steampunk novel yet to be produced, and sees a nineteenth-century London pulled kicking and screaming into an industrial future when Charles Baggage's early mechanical computer is successfully built.

PAUL J. McAULEY has also gone further back in time to describe an industrial Renaissance period bought about by the successful manufacturing of Leonardo Da Vinci's devices in Pasquale's Angel> (1994).

Yeah, it's a book filled with countless entries like that. The section on print SF got me tuned into so many books, and led me to reading so many books I would never have considered. I have forgotten the entire impact this book has had on me, but one set of books I remember finding out through Mammoth SF was Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. I have only just in the last few weeks been able to acquire a copy of Red Mars (the first in the series). But it was this book that told me about it in the first place.

As a book to recommend to people now I would not suggest you go hunting for this book. Unless you wish to acquire it as a nice historical curiosity. Some of the entries date back from 1999 and most of the author entries will be inaccurate now. Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, and J.G. Ballard are three people which in this book there are detailed biographies of who have since died. There are going to be many more instances of this than I can remember.

There is also a section in the back about different SF awards. That's going to be ten years out of date now. But that is the way it goes. Once you commit something to paper it is fixed and loosing information.

But this book is important to me. Should it be important to you? Nah. Although I suspect a lot of people have gateway guides to whatever fandom they are involved in.

In closing I am glad I took a few seconds longer than usual to look at the bookshelf above the light plug last night. This book has been hiding in plain sight for too long.

Mt. Wank.

2009-04-23T17:09:00.003+01:00

The Ectomo room is an expansive modern room with the lights set just bright enough to read by. At one end of the room is a well stocked bar. At the other there is a large cluster of sofas and chairs brought by all the visitors, and placed around a collection of low tables. These tables are covered in newspapers from all over the world, computer printouts, and half finished arts and crafts projects. WILL/GINJA is sitting cross legged on a plush blue sofa. He puts a printout from Wikipedia onto the table to share.

GINJA: Look what I just found

WYTU picks up the printout and laughs. The printout makes its way around the group of people currently actively taking part.

GINJA: If I built a house on the Wank would it be the wankhaus?

WYTU: There already is one. So you'll have the lesser house of the Wank.

GINJA: But I'd still have a house built on wank.

WYTU: Yes, you would. I'm not sure if that's something to aspire to.

ANTIFUCHS: It says here "It is possible for a fit person to reach the peak of the Wank without major difficulty."

Everyone bursts into the laughter.

KLAUS: Well if you get the cable car it takes twenty minutes to get to the peak of the Wank.

More laughter.

KLAUS: I have a hard truth to tell you GINJA.

GINJA: Hit me. I can take the truth.

KLAUS: To be a real man, you must wank on the Wank. Then you shall be know as "THE WANK WANKER".

DR NAUTILUS (laughing): You've all become eleven year olds again.

GINJA: Some would say we never stopped.

Sources for this puerile episode of my life can be found on my soup page: here,here, and here.

A Weekend Away

2009-04-21T20:33:00.003+01:00

It is Saturday and Will is sitting in a windowless classroom around a table with six other people. Scattered on the table are dice, sheets of paper and money that has been donated to charity by the people around the table.

GM: Okay what is Sven going to do?

WILL: I am sorry. So sorry. But Sven is going to take aim with his rifle, and he is going to shoot at the traitor as she tries to escape to the seaplane.

Dice are rolled.

Rose: Oh no I'm dead.

Will: Sorry.

The next day in the same room at a different table.

WILL: I am going to stab Willy Wonka in the face.

TIM: Are you sure?

WILL: Yes. Augustus Gloop wants Willy Wonka dead more than anything.

Dice are rolled.

TIM: The sharpened candy cane pierces into Mr Wonka's eye. He looks at you with intense disappointment and fear. He falls over dead.

It is the night before in the student union nightclub and WILL is standing in front of a stage waiting for team members to appear. They are late and he is visibly annoyed.

OFFICAL: If the rest of your team are not here soon it will be just you able to compete.

WILL (angry): Okay. I told them to be here ten minutes ago.

The second member of the team runs up to WILL. Then the last member of WILL's team that was late arrives casually as if nothing was wrong. WILL explodes with anger.

Friday afternoon and a band of gentlemen explorers are walking down a street in Manchester.

ALEX: Is that a game store there?

PAUL: Looks like it.

The explorers enter the store. Inside there are walls covered with books and boardgame. On a table in the middle of the shop are plastic boxes with boxes ready to be moved.

WILL: Looks like these are going to the nationals.

The explorers spread themselves across the store. Each of them looking for different things. WILL walks over the to boxes. He is hunting for two things. He finds what he wants, and then he walks to the cashier.

WILL: Would it be possible if I could get a book held for me and pick it up tomorrow?

CASHIER: Sure. What's your name?

WILL: Will

The CASHIER interupts with a better idea.

CASHIER: You could just buy it now.

WILL: Oh I'll do that.

WILL picks the book out from the box and goes to pay for it. They leave the shop after more looking around.

ADAM: Did you just buy a book before we got the the hostel?

WILL (smiling): Yes I did.

Influences.

2009-04-21T16:06:00.004+01:00

I have been having thoughts about this subject for a few weeks now, but what really spurred me into writing on this was Heliotrope Magazine Issue 5 which is all about Micheal Moorecock, and you should read after you have read this. Now I have read some Micheal Moorecock just like I have read a lot of classic science fiction and fantasy writers. But he isn't an influence on me. At least not a direct influence.

However, if you take a look at the list of contributers to that magazine you will see that both Hal Duncan and Neil Gaiman have contributed to the magazine. Both of them are bigger fans of Micheal Moorecock than me. But I am a big fans of Duncan and Gaiman.

Which leads me quite neatly to my bloody obvious realization. What I am a big fan of, and what I am influenced by is always going to be the people who slightly preceded me. What influenced the minds and works of the authors I adore is always going to be slightly preceding them. But their direct influences are only going to be indirect influences at best. Or I'm sadly not even going to know about them.

This gives me the weird feeling that I'll be reading in about twenty years time a retrospective of Neil Gaiman; saying what a influence he was on various peoples teenage and young adult years. Hopefully I'll be contributing. I have quite a lot to say about reading Sandman one trade paperback volume a week most Wednesday's during my first year of university.

Does this add up to much practical? I doubt it. Just a nice comforting thought that the giants that I look up to also look up to their own giants. I suppose it raises a number of issues about relevance which I should quickly address, and then throw under the carpet.

Are Moorecock, Asimov, Tolkien, whoever, entirely relevant to me today? Not really. I can still enjoy their work. I still do enjoy their work. But they aren't the authors I'd recommend for people to starting today with genre fiction.

I've still not finished thinking about this as you can probably tell. Consider this version 0.3 of a future belief.

A Close Shave!

2009-04-15T18:10:00.001+01:00

Cast:

WILL - The victim of this short.
RAZOR - An tool of much use, but also much evil.
ANNOUNCER - An annoying disembodied voice.

In a grotty bathroom lit by the mid-afternoon sun WILL is standing at the basin and mirror with a disposable RAZOR. He runs his left hand through his beard.

WILL: Bye bye beard.

WILL starts to shave. Several strips of fuzz are removed rather neatly. On a pass around his jawline he slips as the RAZOR gets stuck on his course facial hair.

ANNOUNCER (shouting): First blood!

WILL: Oh fuck off!

Will rinses the razor in hot water and reapplies a thick layer of soap lather to his face. He continues the job of shaving with the RAZOR.

RAZOR: Hah Pwnd!

WILL: What? No way.

RAZOR: Wait for just a second.

A fountain of gore sprays from WILL'S chin and splatters on the mirror.

WILL: Does shaving always have to be like this?

RAZOR: No. You could try waxing your beard you ginger bastard.

WILL (still spraying blood): What good would that do?

RAZOR: Make your hair finer. Easier for me to cut.

WILL: Oh.

The blood stops and WILL carries on shaving until he no longer has a beard. He is left with a cleanly shaven, if bloody face. WILL refills the sink with ice cold water and goes to find a clean facecloth.

WILL: This is going to suck.

WILL submerges the facecloth in the water then applies it to his face. He screams.

ANNOUNCER: Oh that's got to hurt!

WILL leaves the blood covered bathroom.

ANNOUNCER: And he's out.

WILL: Fuck off!

Mousetraps

2009-04-14T19:49:00.002+01:00

Wilkinsons is like Woolworths used to be. Which is to say it is a micro WalMart. A place that attempts to sell everything at the lowest possible cost. WILL is a short ginger pirate-ninja who looks confused by all the bright lights. PAUL is a slightly shorter more bearded person, and the reason that WILL is inside this shop. PAUL carries a shopping basket filled with household cleaning products and expanding wall filler. They are both walking around the aisle of the store lost and at random.

PAUL: I need to find the mousetraps.
WILL: Do you know where they are?
PAUL: No. Let's look in the pet section. It would be horrible and awesome if that was where they kept them.

After more fruitless searching WILL approaches a large MAN in a bright red Wilkinsons fleece. He looks bored stacking paint onto a shelf.

WILL: Hey man. Do you know where the mousetraps are?
MAN: Sure. Go down the aisle behind you, and then go to the far right.

WILL and PAUL follow these instructions exactly. Subsequently they spend five more confuse minutes wandering the aisle. The two eventually separate. WILL continues to wander around the shop at random. PAUL being sensible goes to ask another member of staff.

WILL bored makes his way to the exit. He passes through the gardening section of the store. In this section he passes the poisons and traps for killing wee beasts.

WILL: Cunt!

WILL catches up with PAUL at the checkout.

PAUL: I found the mousetraps.
WILL: So did I.

Words and Phrases I Don't Say Enough.

2009-04-03T00:38:00.002+01:00

I was in conversation with a friend via MSN earlier, and somehow I got to use the word "shank". This led me to think about the things I don't say often enough. The format is dead simple: I give you the word, possibly and example of its use and then I ramble about why I think I should use the phrase more.

"Shank"

Apparently, using the sentence "Does Daddy have to shank a bitch?" is considered unorthodox parenting. Who knew?

- Warren Ellis

This word amuses me. I don't get to say it enough, and I'm quite happy about that for a lot of reasons. You know the whole I'm a non-violent and am quite happy not stabbing people with makeshift knives type reasons. But I like the shape of the word when its said. Stop looking at me like that. Don't make me shank you motherfucker!

"[x | x <- complements]"

I figured I should just use some list comprehension rather than write a very long list of words I don't use which all amount to saying the same thing. I don't complement people enough. Sad, but true.

"I love you."

I really don't say this phrase enough. Which is a good thing, and of course a bad thing at the same time. Not saying it enough means I don't feel that I have the need to say it. But also not saying it carelessly does mean that on the rare occasions when I do utter this phrase it carries weight.

I have never understood why people say this when they are drunk either.

"Wonderful"

That's wonderful!

Same as the complement thing to be honest. Except I am very interested in the surprise and joy of discovering interesting things. It is what keeps me happy mostly. Day's when I shout out, "that's wonderful!" to a room full of people are normally good days.

"Isomorphism"

Dictionary: i·so·mor·phism

n.

1. Biology. Similarity in form, as in organisms of different ancestry.
2. Mathematics. A one-to-one correspondence between the elements of two sets such that the result of an operation on elements of one set corresponds to the result of the analogous operation on their images in the other set.
3. A close similarity in the crystalline structure of two or more substances of similar chemical composition.

I really want to be using this in the second definition. Isomorphism is the coolest thing in mathematics ever. It's also a seriously powerful tool for solving problems without having to struggle on solving a problem. Because once you've identified that something is isomorphic to something else you understand you've effectively found a solution.

How cool is that?

Okay, maybe it isn't that cool. Shut up! I like clever tricks like this.

Homeless in America.

2009-04-02T18:56:00.002+01:00

It was late July, summer of 2003 when I was in San Fransisco. I was visiting the city with my parents and brother sightseeing. We took in all the sights: Union Square, Chinatown, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, and one of those sights is of course the home of the hippies Height Ashbury.

Being Europeans and people who, you know walk places, we walked. That would be our first mistake. So we made a tourist mistake, and underestimated the size of central San Fransisco, and the fact that the walk is long was only the first mistake. The second mistake would have been that the route we walked took us right through the desolation row of SF. That would be the run down area with all the homeless people of America hanging about.

The homeless of America go to San Fransisco because of its unique and famous microclimate. It never gets too cold in winter, and in the summer it's never reaches the excessive heat of say fifty miles north in the Napa Valley. This means that there are a lot of homeless people that come here for the weather. Most of them not in what you'd call a good state of health. Quite a few of them were missing legs or arms.

Eventually we got the bus. That's when one of homeless started to talk to me. He was an old guy in his sixties. Had a white beard and wore an old green army jacket. Politely he asked where we were from, and we explained that we were from the UK. He gave us a bit of a story about what Height Ashbury was like during the sixties. I guessed this was his act, his way of getting money. He asked us for some money. Swore blind that it wasn't going to be used on buying drugs. He said that he wanted to by a burger with it. I said to him that I didn't care what he used the money for and I gave him my last few dollars. I didn't get his name,

Height Ashbury itself, well, it wasn't anything special. Just a busy street filled with tourists looking for the sixties.

This is not a fucking meme. This is a yearly snapshot of my mind. (April 2009).

2009-04-02T17:07:00.006+01:00

I am serious about this not being a meme. I am going to try and answer these questions once a year for as long as possible. I am really interesting in seeing how the answers might change.

What are you doing with your life?

At the moment not a whole lot of good things. I'm unemployed and chronically apathetic about finding employment. I'm reading and learning a lot for sure. I'm having a lot of good ideas, but very often failing to write them down, and I'm very definitely not acting on them.

However I am writing a fair amount, and I'm starting to feel far more confident in translating my thoughts into words. But I still don't think I am doing enough writing. However, me being me, I don't think I'll ever think I'm doing enough writing.

One other thing I'm trying to do is climb more. But I'm failing at that, since last year I was climbing more than I am now, and I had final year of university stuff to do.

Aside from what I've mentioned above I guess I'm not doing much with my life. This should be worrying me more than it is.

What do you want to be doing with your life?

Something that makes people smile, because I've amused them, or given them a good idea. I've described my almost ideal lifestyle before as a sort of techno-nomadic one. I like to be traveling to see people, and I like to travel because it's a good chance to collect more stories and ideas.

I gave the answer quite bluntly in the first sentence. I'll just repeat it again for clarity. I want to make people smile. I don't really care about money, or possessions (okay except books/CDs/comics). Of course there is a small sub-set within the greater group of people that I'd really really like to see happy, and smiling for various reasons. I sincerely hope they know who they are.

What do you care about?

See the answer above.

I'm politically not very involved. I lean really heavily on the libertarian-left/democratic socialist side of things, and find it hard to see other viewpoints as valid. That's due to my upbringing I guess. But as I have little interest in money or things I'm neither pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist. I'm not really even that bothered about the issue of government and the size of it. The only thing that gets me is totalitarianism and censorship.

I'd just rather people stopped being horrible shits towards each other.

Hmm, that went a bit political when it shouldn't have. Sorry for the micro-manifesto, but I did answer the question of what I care about, and not who I care about.

I'm not sure I can answer a question of who I care about. It's probably that sub-set of people I really want to see happy.

What are your dreams?

Currently of working my way out of the situation I'm in.

Although the last dream I had, the one I had this morning, that was a pleasant one. I was camping somewhere northern (light at last orders means the far north) with friends. In the pub I ran in an old friend who I had feelings for. We drank scotch and talked about drinking.

My dreams are mostly mundane and link in with trying to do the stuff mentioned above. I enjoy entertaining the idea that I might live for a few hundred years in good health. But I suspect that's also edging close to a nightmare if things gets oppressive, since suicide isn't really an interesting escape from hell.

Where do you want to be in the world?

I want to visit Prague again. I'd like to see quite a bit of Japan although I don't know where I would start. That place is an entire world of new and wonderful ideas to explore.

The general answer is away from where I am now in the world but with some of the same people.

What annoys you most at the moment?

Feeling that I'm "invisible and silent" to people. Although more so to one person in particular who I'd rather not be so invisible to.

It is clearly something about me. I guess I'm just one of nature's natural ninja.

What do you fear most?

Up until a few years ago I would have said something physical. Particularly the amputation of a limb or extremity. I still fear this, and the thought of such a traumatic event happening is still capable of filling me with dread. For the record I've never been afraid of heights.

No, what I fear most is just a wee bit more psychological.

Rejection.

Do I have to elaborate? I'm sure you can imagine why yourself.

The Stealer of Jokes.

2009-03-30T18:37:00.000+01:00

Have you heard of Bill Hicks? He was a exceptional comedian who died in 1994 from cancer. Have you heard of Denis Leary? Did you know that Leary was accused of ripping off Bill Hicks' act for his "No Cure for Cancer" tour? It lead to this joke among comedians.

Question: Why is Denis Leary a star while Bill Hicks is unknown?
Answer: Because there's No Cure for Cancer.

It's not a new problem. Although maybe comedians have found an increase in the problem due to YouTube clips of their acts being uploaded without their consent. The problem dates back to Vaudeville and the fact that the standard format of jokes then was the one liner. But also encouraged by the fact that performers tended to stay within one area exclusively.

There are other instances of joke theft. The comedian Robin Williams has been repeatedly accused of stealing jokes. And it's not just something working comedians do. It's something plebs like use do all the time. How many times have you been down the pub and heard someone tell a joke they heard from a stand up comedian? I bet you have even done it.

I know that I have. I have been doing it quite recently among friends without realising. There's a comedian in the UK called Andy Parsons who is very funny, you should check him out. He does panel shows like Mock the Week as well as live stand-up. I am not sure where I fist saw a joke of his being said. But for the sake of my memory let us say it was on the BBC program "Live at the Apollo."

The gag in question is actually something I agree with the sentiment of which is why I might have forgotten (and I really did) that it came from him. I am not about to claim that it was a parallel thought. In this case it almost certainly was not. So I am guilty of joke theft. Sorry, I'll try not to do it again. At least I was not making money from it.

I guess you are wondering why I am admitting such a thing. It's kind of trivial after all. Just one joke by one comedian who makes far more money than me. Where is the harm in that? In truth there probably is not a lot of harm in what I have done. Andy Parson's is probably not going to find out, so it's a victimless crime. But I want to offer a counterpoint to that.

You may know about me that in an ideal world I'd be making a living from the ideas that come from my brain. Sure these ideas don't originate in my brain and are a product of all the bits of media I read and consume on a daily basis. As well as conversations I have with people. But at some point all those ideas do get configured into something that is hopefully original (or at least rare enough to appear as such). I know I'd be quite annoyed by having my ideas ripped off without attribution. After all attribution of an idea or concept is the currency of such a life. It's the way that I'd be keeping food in my mouth and beer in my belly.

That's the reason I think joke theft, and well any theft of a story is a bit of a big deal. Sorry Andy. I'll try not to do it again. >_>

Now the Irish, the Scottish, and the Welsh all hate the English. But do you know who the English hate? Everyone, including the English.
- Andy Parsons (paraphrased)

Co-Op

2009-03-17T20:24:00.001+01:00

The idea of setting up cooperatives and collectives to do things is not a new idea. They've existed since the 18th century. The first successful cooperative, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers was founded in 1844. Even cooperatives in the area of web-based arty, crafty stuff is not an entirely original idea. If my memory serves me correctly (and it better bloody well be) the website BoingBoing is ran along cooperative principles.

But I'm not talking about the history and theory. I'm going to talk about a specific implementation of them. Ideally in my mind this is for writers trying to sell the rights to things. But this could be extrapolated towards craft types using Etsy to sell crafted items. Well it can be extrapolated towards any area of endeavour where income patterns can be a bit weird.

So the idea is to get a bunch of people. Let's say we have three writers who want to pool efforts: Alice, Bob and Charlie. They form this cooperative as a limited liability organisation and give themselves a salary. For sake of argument one third of everything made. Although really I suspect it should be one quarter each, so as to leave a quarter in savings for the future.

How is this money raised? Well everything that Alice, Bob and Charlie produce and subsequently sell means that all of the money from that sale goes into the cooperatives's pot.

All very high minded and full of problems yes. I mean they might not even earn much money. What might they get out of it? Well as a business earning a wage they aren't self-employed. Which means taxes and other legal hassles can be handled by an accountant. What if Alice and Bob are in a relationship? Might Charlie get annoyed at the inequality of the wealth going towards their household? Maybe, but that's a problem with all business adventures involving couples.

Some advantages of this are: as noted above tax and self-employment legal problems are erased leaving more time to do real work. There is the leverage that comes from being part of a group. The support and the ability to trade off each others reputation. The logic that if X is part of Y group and I like Z from Y group, then I should like X comes into play.

Conclusion: I want to try this sometime. It'd be a fun experiment. Although only with friends that I can hunt down in real life. A high degree of trust and not fucking each other is implied here.

Oh and it's assumed that creators own rights to their own work.

- Will

Edit: I forgot to mention the fucking point of this idea. Everyone would be guaranteed some money (assuming stuff is sold) allowing members the chance to work on longer and more complex projects.

From /home/fragmad/Documents/.Journal

2009-02-23T18:02:00.000+01:00

23/02/09

What am I doing?

Not at a lot with my life at the moment it turns out. I am writing a bit, although less than I should be. Climbing more. Almost stopped tabletop gaming altogether due to reasons I won't discuss here. But also because I suspect my creative agenda does not match the rest of my groups in a way that's radically different.

The climbing again is fun. Starting to feel stronger, fitter and more back to where I was when I was stronger.

I am sadly still looking for gainful employment. Which is a shitter since I'd like to be doing something other than entertaining myself all day. The money would not hurt as well. Since I'd have more freedom to climb, drink, be merry with friends.

Projects wise I have got a few things on the go I guess. I am doing the new website for the DMU Climbing society. I am working on a short story to be submitted to somewhere. Well I am working on two short stories to be submitted to somewhere. But one of them I have stalled on and decided I need to rewrite from the start. I guess that is about it in the way of active projects. Do a website, write.

I'd add training for climbing to that very short list. But that is not really a project in the same way. I mean I have got a few goals I'd like to reach by the summer. Climb F6a/b on top rope (if not lead). Probably being able to boulder V4 stuff reasonably well would be nice. Be some conception of the very vague idea of 'hill fit'. Any other goals to do with climbing involve spending money so it's best to ignore them.

Yeah, that's about the extent of what I am doing. Of course I am reading lots of books as well. But that's normal behaviour for me.

Peace, love, etc kids,

Will.

We Want Obama (for our own nations).

2009-01-21T00:34:00.004+01:00

That was a good speech wasn't it? I was sitting in The Gateway pub just next door to my old university with a bunch of friends still there. I had a good pint in my hand and the past eight years seemed to have a band-aid applied by lady liberty.

I was impressed by the speech. I'm young, so can't remember Bush in 2000, let alone Clinton or Kennedy. Although I'm told that I watched the Clinton inauguration with my Mum and Grandma back in 1993. I was seven and have no memories of the event. Truth be told I do not have many memories of 2000. Just an abstract sense of disappointment that the wrong guy won.

The truth is that I don't know shit about American politics in the first person. I have no real reference to say that the impact of Obama's speech is like that of Kennedy's. All I really remember is the speech in 2004 oozed of a smug contempt for the world that didn't vote for Bush. This didn't. This was full of hope. This set the bar high and if he accomplishes half of what he's promised he's done good.

I'll let the words of an acquaintance of mine via Twitter describe the speech in less than 160 character.

"Speech writers knocked it out of the park, delivery propelled to orbit."
Ryan G. Biv

So well done America. You have gone a long way towards closing old wounds and you have gotten a better leader than I could have voted for. As much as I think that Gorden Brown is a professional, with his mind set on the problems that face Great Britain currently. He isn't as inspiring as Barack Hussein Obama. Not by a long shot which is a shame. Since I believe that politics should be inspiring.

The future is ahead of you and the past eight years might begin to heal soon.

Peace and love,

Will.

Two Dreams - Don't Leave the Radio On.

2009-01-17T02:33:00.002+01:00

I feel like describing the two dreams I had this morning.

Stoic Will: Seriously writing a blog post about your dreams. How lame.
Other Will: Shut mate. There's a serious health and safety warning here.
Stoic Will: Well I suppose he could have been in the dreamlands.
Other Will: Stop with the Lovecraft shite. This is more like Dada.
Stoic Will: Oh like Dali?
[Other Will picks up a empty bottle of Corona.]
Stoic Will: You've been drinking Corona. How sad.
[Other Will smashes the bottle against a nearby table.]
Stoic Will: Drinking Corona and blogging about dreams. What next?
[Other Will stabs Stoic Will in the face.]
Other Will: Shut up and listen before being a prick.
[Unintelligible screams from Stoic Will.]

Erm, yes, what 'Other Will' did there I don't condone that. Although 'Stoic Will' was being a thorough prick. Ah well. Those two dreams. I suppose first I should give a little context.

I've been attempting to wake up earlier in the day. Say 07:30 in the morning and not 14:00. It's working. Working because I've had the assistance of a radio being shoved next to my head with it tuned to BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast program. Now personally I'd have rather had the 'Today Show' on Radio Four to drag me kicking and screaming from unconsciousness. But it's better than Chris 'Arsehole' Moyles. Anyway for those that don't know 5 Live is about it has a slogan that explains what the station does quite well: "Live news, live sport - this is Five Live."

Onto the dreams.

Dream the first.

I'm in a courtyard. Not some posh castle, but the courtyard of some brutalist concrete office buildings about five stories tall. I'm getting the impression it's a University campus. The sun is shining strong on the courtyard. It's probably summer because of that. I'm sitting on a raised block of concrete. A seating area of some kind, maybe. In the distance (well 20 meters away) there is a group of people doing calisthenics. Star jumps I think. At this point I think I know a few people in the group. The group of happy exercisers starts to disperse and one of them starts to walk towards me.

Shit, I know who she is. It's the person in the cropped half of my Twitter icon. I last saw her a year and a half ago standing in a crowed bus the night before I left Switzerland. Just before we'd been watching some National Day fireworks in park on the outskirts of Basel. Day before we'd hung out by going rock climbing and seeing 'Transformers'. Few days before that spent a few days in the mountains climbing a mountain. I'd sort of like to think we were good friends. I did teach her the basics of rock climbing after all (how to belay and stuff).

Anyway we've not spoken to ages. I've not really kept up with the people I met in Switzerland. Because I'm terrible at social stuff like that and find it hard to make the effort. So this is kinda odd. She's right in my face at this point and we start a normal conversation for about two forgettable lines. Then it gets weird. She starts reciting sports results.

Then I wake up and Radio 5 Live is giving the sports results.

Dream the Second.

I bet you can guess the cause of the next dream.

I can't remember all of the facts on this one. Just a few details of the locations. One scene I'm in an unknown bedroom and one I'm sitting on a blue sofa. The one I'm currently sitting on right now in fact. In this it's me and a girl. A vague hazy version of a girl I know from the anime society. A caricature really since the most vivid image of her I can imagine in my minds eye while writing this is a really warm smile.

The dream's about engagement rings. Engagement rings for men. The caricature is spouting off an adapted version of of the radio broadcast playing into my ears. Which is about engagement rings. I wake up in time to hear an ex-jeweller talking about how it wasn't a new thing. Apparently when you go to buy an engagement ring one of the things they try to do is sell the man one. Who knew, eh? The guy sounded like a dickhead.

Stoic Will [mumbling through a stitched up face]: That's it?
Other Will: Yes, that was it. A poignant warning against leaving talk radio playing while you sleep in the morning.
Stoic Will: It's still stupid.
Other Will: Don't make me pull the stitches out.
Stoic Will: Lame.
[Scenes of violence that put the Saw films to shame.]

Where has all the Magic Gone?

2009-01-09T12:02:00.005+01:00

What I'm working on today.

‘Where has all the Magic Gone?’ is a theatre-style live-action role-playing game about the loss of magic at the request of a simple peasant caught in the middle of a war between two wizards. No rules are provided for the resolution of conflicts as such. What each player declares is true so long as it is decided reasonable by the other players with the Games Master having the final word in a tie.

What is presented below is a short introduction which all the players should read or be made aware of the contents. In the ’Character & Crew’ section each member of the cast is given a short paragraph describing the characters with enough gaps for players to provide detail and motivation. Finally there is a section describing the sequence of scenes that this game is played over. In the interests of transparency everyone playing everyone should have an idea of the overall structure of the game and each character role within the game.

The two wizards, one good and working for the greater good, one evil and using magic in a self grab for power have been at war with each other for generations. Their magic towers situated at opposing boarders of the small kingdom are ever present on the horizon. Even emiting an eldritch light in the thickest fog and darkest nights of the year. Each successive generation of the war has withered more fields and turned the forests into wild places that man cannot enter because of a primal fear of the monsters within it.

After many years of suffering a single peasant pleaded to the God Veles for the war between the wizards to stop. The God finally having their attention drawn towards the suffering of these distant and remote people removed all magic from the world. In a few short days the woods had become safe and the fields began to grow once more.

However, the good wizard’s garden which had once been the most splendid in the whole world withered and died without the magical assistance required to water and feed the exotic plants from all corners of the world. The evil wizard’s dark forges of fire were extinguished instantly when reality changed, and the black writings became meaningless words scratched in dead iron war-machines.

Both wizards cried out to the heavens ”where has all the magic gone?” Veles answered their calling by bringing the wizards and the peasant into his celestial kingdom in order to debate if magic should be brought back into the world again.

Happy New Year!

Untitled Jeepform/LARP Idea

2008-12-30T22:39:00.007+01:00

This is a bit of a thought experiment for me since I have never played in a Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) game despite having the opportunity to on many occasions. This in principle was because the games presented didn't interest me due to a whiff factor that's hard to describe to people if they don't share my opinions about games.

However for the past week (well since Christmas Day) I have been thinking about how to run a Mecha Anime LARP. Now obviously since giant robots are still in the realms of fantasy rather than reality actually playing the pilots of such a machine would be impossible to convey in a sensible manner. Also since Anime isn't a genre and is really a series of techniques for displaying the story that part should be ignored as merely the starting point for my thinking.

But in thinking about this subject I started to think about the people in the NERV control room from the show Neon Genesis Evangellion. They all have stories in the series and they all definitely have story goals that are interesting. Wouldn't it be cool to play them?

Further adaption of this idea - the most interesting person in the film of Apollo 13 for me wasn't any of the astronauts it was Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris). It'd be fun to play the people in mission control there as well. Just imagine the interpersonal conflicts taking place and potential for individual stories.

Accordingly I have come up with a number of design goals.

The few rules there all have the intent of recreating the feel of being in mission control during a "stressful situation."

Provide each player at least two story goals that may or may not conflict with each other. One goal being their personal agenda (find sibling lost during last battle, start a relationship with character x, take revenge on character y, etc) and their orders (find the spy, stop the mission director if he goes mad, ensure that your research division appears in a better light, etc).

Have a set sequence of events that would escalate the characters interpersonal conflicts over a period of time (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3).

Take about 3/5 hours to play and be a black box game.

Use many of the techniques and ideas found in Jeepform: http://jeepen.org/dict/

As a bonus the game should be accessible to people who don't play roleplaying games

Well those are my goals. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but it provides me with a gaming project to work on.

Almost Freeform (Happy Christmas)

2008-12-24T02:44:00.001+01:00

This is my Christmas email to a bunch of people at DMU Games Soc (website pending ^^;). It'll make no sense to anyone but I'm putting it here so it's all tagged.

Evening,

Adam asked me last Thursday for advice on running a freeform game just
like the game I ran in May (that crazy Iain M. Banks game[1]), and I
rudely started talking about Shock: Social Science Fiction [2]. Sorry
about that I'm a bit excited about reading the book. I'm sending this
to everyone who might be interested because I'm not interested in
repeating myself too much. Feel free to send this on to people who
might also be interested.

The game that we played in May was mind blowing and awesome. A quick
description would be high level space opera using conflict resolution
and aspects to drive the characters. A longer description can be found
on my facebook page or in link [3]. That's Paul making the comment at
the bottom by the by.

Down to what Adam wants. What Adam asked me is predicated on the GM
having an idea of what he wants to happen at the end of the session. I
will also assume that he has a few scenes planned out but nothing
definitive. Below is a discussion of how I'd do it, and this as usual
is all given with the caveat that most of the ideas aren't mine
originally. This is just my mash up of ideas I've come across and
spent some time thinking about.

The first thing to remember about the game we played in May was that
everything was generated at the table. This was done using the Fallout
method. We had a sheet of A4 paper and went around the table each
adding one idea about the game world and the social rules of play
(what was cool and what wasn't). Everyone could veto something if it
would spoil their enjoyment. All those usual social rules of play et
cetera. I think Adam should still produce a A4 sheet with bullet point
ideas on so that all the players will be on the same page so to speak.

Now down to actual characters. In the "Experiment in Big Things"
[1][3] game this was performed by the players coming up with an
arbitrary number of aspects that defined their characters. I cant
remember if in the original game any bonuses to dice were given
because to be honest I have a tendency to wing it (at the best
interest of the players of course). In Adam's game I would propose
that each character had two statistics (oh I loath that word) which
represented the two axis which the game is ultimately about.

Per example: Truth & Lies, or Freedom & Slavery, Violence & Non-Violence.

Split some points between these two statistics (say 10) and then come
up with a bunch of aspects (how about equal to the number of people at
the table?). By this point you've got a bunch of characters and some
information that the GM (Adam) can use to moderate a game which the
players should hopefully enjoy.

But what of dice and conflict? Eh, well naturally I favour conflict
resolution here [4], because, I enjoy the process of being able to
narrate my success and failure ('cos I love to fail on my own terms)
in games. The process of rolling dice to adjudicate conflict is sort
of immaterial. You could role a single D10 and attempt to roll equal
or under the statistic that's most relevant to the situation. You
could roll the number of dice equal to the statistic and sum them all
together with the highest side of the conflict winning. Whatever.

That's mostly a complete solution and should do everything that Adam
wants to do well if all the players are on board with playing it a bit
fast and loose.

A few words of advice and a little sub-system though to top it off
should make an entirely complete general solution.

First I think that the players should before the game be told by Adam
what he ideally wants to happen by the end of the session (set of).
This is based on the idea that the suspense in a mystery comes not
from knowing the secret but in finding out how the secret is reached.
If you don't take my word on this being a good idea then please by all
means go and read this snippet from D. Vincent Baker the guy that
wrote Dogs in the Vineyard that can be found on his "Roleplaying
Theory, Hardcore" page [5] just scroll down until you reach "A Small
Thing About Suspense".

Another thing that should be kept in mind is "say yes or roll the
dice." This is the GMing rule that you should always say yes to player
requests (yes but, yes and, but always yes) or make them roll the dice
to see if it happens[6].

A quick mechanic to top things off. We had fate points in the last
game and while these are cool (and should probably used again) I think
that each player should also have a pool of points that can be used
like charity rerolls from the Nationals. Or perversity points from
"Paranoia" or fan mail from "Primetime Adventures". The number each
player could start the session with is arbitrary really. It all
depends on how much Adam (our GM) wants the players to be able to edit
the game and flag important conflicts for them so that they'll win
them on their terms.

Say give each player (if all things are equal) where n is the number
of players at the table n*3 points. This could be quite interesting to
use as a sanity mechanic where as a character looses sanity they loose
tokens from this pool (and probably gain negative aspects). But also
for a Culture style game a BIG DAMN SPACE SHIP CHARACTER could have
[some multiplier] as many of these points as a normal character.
Obviously, this would have to be agreed on by the other players as
appropriate and cool.

I don't know about what could be health. Maybe decreasing the
statistic invoked in a conflict or taking points from that pool. Or
maybe just a system of consequences like Spirit of the Century where
characters take mild, moderate and major consequences once they're
health or composer tracks have ran out/reached certain points[7]. If
that's the case then players should be able to withdraw from a
conflict once the stakes have reached a point that they aren't willing
to content with.

This email is getting quite long now so I'll stop. I hope that Adam
will run a game using a rough approximation of what I've written here
in the new year. I'd also be keen on hearing others opinions on what
I've written here. It's all transitory and this is just another
iteration in the grand and impossible task of finding the "perfect
game." I'm sorry that I have not cited everything but just pick my
brains if you need something answered.

Have a good Christmas and a decent new year.

Will

[1] http://fragmad.livejournal.com/344890.html
[2] http://glyphpress.com/shock/
[3] http://fragmad.livejournal.com/345425.html#cutid1
[4] http://www.story-games.com/codex/index.php?title=Conflicts_and_Conflict_Resolution
[5] http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html
[6] http://www.story-games.com/codex/index.php?title=Say_Yes_or_Roll_the_Dice
[7] http://www.crackmonkey.org/~nick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.html#consequences

Paul is an Idiot!

2008-11-17T22:14:00.005+01:00

[Ginja] It's so right to kill my friend for playing the Shatner version of common people.
[nic0] there's an exemption to the criminal justice act 1996 that specifically allows it
[antifuchs] what, that version is great
[nic0] you are so deported
[nic0] i do confess to karaokeing the shatner version for the lulz before
* BlackPete actually likes that version >_>
* BlackPete goes into hiding
[corb3n] dude thanks a fuckton Maicro
[corb3n] that was a great idea
[maicro] Yup
[nic0] n1 maicro
[nic0] i was sat there thinking on concatenating unixy shit together :)
[antifuchs] you music nazis are weird
[antifuchs] haha, me too (:
[BlackPete] haha
[maicro] You nazi-nazis are weirder
[antifuchs] maicro: not in relation to each other
[Ginja] www.demonfm.co.uk
[Ginja] Two friends of mine (including Paul who was here for election night) are doing a geek hour.
[chesh] guys, the shatner version of common people is brilliant
[chesh] and if you do not think so you are a fool
[Ginja] Fuck you! You're not getting inside Europe now.
[Ginja] You ask if people were remembers of the nazi party on your visa waver forms. We ask if you morally support William Shatner's right to release music.
[BlackPete] psst
[BlackPete] chesh
[BlackPete] I will sneak you in ^_^
[chesh] \o/
[Ginja] I'm not even saying what he's put on as revenge.
[chesh] do tell
[Ginja] He played the Ballard of Bilbo Baggins.
* Floreck has joined #ectomo
[Ginja] I'm reaching for the emergency bag of smack I keep taped under my desk.
[BlackPete] hahahaha
[chesh] it's true, the only thing you can do that feels better than hearing Shatner's Common People and the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins back to back is mainlining heroin
[chesh] nothing else even comes close to comparing

What Music?

2008-10-26T19:00:00.005+01:00

What record is your story? Is it a suicidal droning wall of sound like a "My Bloody Valentine" record? Is it a hedonistic celebration of Rock and Roll like a "Boris" album? Is it a transcendent chant to the "higher universe" like an OM record? Or is it an essay on a collapsed and dying world like "Godspeed You! Black Emperor"? Whatever the story it has a album to go with it. Always! The music on the album matches the tone of the story, the beats of the music match with the pacing of the story.

But consider this: the film of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" has the wrong music. The theme song of the book is "Sympathy for the Devil", but the film couldn't afford the correct Rolling Stones song so they had to use "Jumping Jack Flash." Which while a fine song, sends the movie on a different tone to the novel.

Consider also that while the music for the last chapter of "2001: A Space Odyssey" is perfectly acceptable and might well be one of the best scores in the history of film. The Pink Floyd song "Echoes" is an order of ten better.

Every story has some music to go with. If you're creating a story and need to find inspiration, find the right music.

I've not had much fun recently.

2008-09-19T00:00:00.001+01:00

Rant!

Please don't assume these are my true and logical feelings. I'm angry, tired and pissed off. On the other hand, if you are one of the people ranted about and feel offended all I can say is tough.

One of my main hobbies is tabletop gaming. This is a hobby as oppose to something I must do like writing or climbing, so it really burns when things cock up because hobbies are totally voluntary.

I graduated from university in this summer and offered to help the current executive commit of the Games Society. Because I wanted the new executive committee to have a fresh start and be able to do things themselves. Which I seriously tried to enable. Honestly. I spoke with the new committee often and made various suggestions. They've managed to arrange a freshers fair table. Made plans to have posters, leaflets and other promotional items for the table. So they can you know promote the hobby in general. Into wargaming then we'll say welcome and tell you about local events. Into collectible card games, then we'll point you towards the shop that sells and does events for them. I made sure that there were three one sessions introduction games for freshers to play. Two games that they can buy exact copies of if they enjoy them. One game that they can buy a new edition of. I'd have much preferred if it was three games new people could buy.

It's a petty wish. And I don't think I'm making much sense with this line of thought. But I seriously, honestly think that the best way to introduce people to a hobby like tabletop role playing games is with dedicated introduction games. Games that they can buy easily (not ebay) if they enjoy them and wish to continue. Promoting old editions of games (cough D&D) or shit they'll never play again is not good. It sends out the wrong message. A message of exclusivity in the case of old editions (I have this game, you can't have a copy). Or of irrelevance if they later play something else.

Also the whole fact I'd organised the freshers games. I'd gotten the president and treasurer to consider a games that were going to be play tested. So they the new sitting committee would be introducing new people to the hobby with stuff they'd practiced. So as we were making motions to leave having play tested the freshers game I was going to run we get assaulted with the question "what are you going to do for freshers fair?" Followed by a quick explanation. Then offering of advice. Bloody useless and contradictory advice. Saying don't run too many things then offering to run lots of things. Everyone chipping in with their pet games.

ARRGH! Yes, Spirit of the Century (game I'm running) is my pet game. But it's also proven by lots of people to be a good gateway game. Everyone knows about Indiana Jones right? I'd put thought into what'd make a good game for introducing people. A game that I'm enthusiastic about yes, but also something that the rules and details can be communicated easily.

So right now it feels like the help I've given to the new committee is about to all come crumbling down by people wanting to get involved at the last minute. A week before freshers shit needs to be done. I keep saying to my self that I want to get people to the games they want to play so someday I'll get to play the stuff I want to play. Because in the past two years I've only played about ten or fifteen sessions of games as a player. About five of those were things I actually really wanted to play.

That's where the frustration and anger comes from about this. Just not getting to get my game on and spending a lot of time introducing to games I think are cool. There's also just general rudeness on the people that came late to the party that pissed me off. I've not had a good day today in general (like most parts of it stank of dog shit) and this pretty much topped it off.

Le sigh.

Look, I was amused.

2008-08-11T20:10:00.001+01:00

[01:17] [Ginja] Day 23: My filthy assisants have started complaing about the presence of mud all over the floor. They think it is from my boots. Little do they know it is the mud of the gods. Right now I'm going to jump on their beds.
[01:18] [tmtx] I now have a new life goal, to obtain a sidekick named robin who does nothing but text for me
[01:18] [tmtx] nice ginja
[01:18] [Ginja] I fully support you in this goal.
[01:21] [Ginja] Day 25: The filthy assistants have forbidden me from going outside without supervision. I hate being a shut in. I have started to train the cat in the arts of war. It's good at the stalking but it can't make a trebuchet. Shall have to work on this.
[01:21] [tmtx] ginja your support is wholly appreciated!
[01:24] * Ginja puts the baseball on.
[01:25] [tmtx] see whatever it is gia that you need a writer for, you need ginja

The Making of Cat & Cthulhu #3

2008-08-07T00:32:00.001+01:00

Another day another story, eh?

I have an idea that I want to explorer in the next C&C. Which is a good thing to bring to the planning table I guess. Although, I'm not sure how smart or interesting the idea sounds to people who aren't interested in set theory and the paradoxes of the infinite.

I guess I'd better pitch the idea to someone real before I go further.
Real means not mathematicians or computer scientists.

(00:01:07) Will : Can I run an idea past you?
(00:01:15) Richard: Sure
(00:02:13) Will : I've been thinking about a paradox called "Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel". I want to write a Cat & Cthulhu issue about it.
(00:02:39) Richard: *googles it*
(00:02:47) Will : I think I have a method. It involve Marvin!
(00:03:42) Richard: "mathematical paradox"... ugh... *shudders*
(00:03:47) Richard: logic is my enemy
(00:04:34) Will : Well you remember Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
(00:04:41) Richard: yeah
(00:04:47) Will : Specifically the Infinite improbability drive.
00:05
(00:05:01) Richard: sure
(00:05:06) Will : Well I was thinking about how Marvin could store so much information.
(00:05:24) Will : Because he's smart and knows a lot.
(00:05:48) Will : What if his capacity for storing facts is infinite.
(00:05:57) Will : ?
(00:06:39) Richard: uh... ok. What would the story involve?
(00:06:53) Will : I don't know. I just really like the idea so far.
(00:08:02) Will : It'd be easier to frame the idea in a hotel wouldn't it? At least then I'd have a dilemma.
(00:08:21) Richard: Confusing paradox. My brain seizes up when numbers are mentioned
(00:09:26) Will : *stamps reject on this idea*
00:10
(00:11:14) Richard: You see when I read an infinite number of rooms I take that as fact. An infinite number of coaches arrive with an infinite number of passengers... If there's an infinite number of rooms then you could fit them all in... Numbers? huh? Just shove them all into the hotel and be done with it.
(00:11:55) Will : Yeah, it's a paradox about two different types of infinities.
(00:12:25) Will : Do you mind if I copy this discussion into the making of document?
(00:12:32) Richard: no problem

Ok, my doubts about the idea have been vindicated. I'm still going to listen to "Hotel California" for a moment while I scan the news for ideas. I used to listen to that song way too much. I'm glad the emotional baggage has worn off.

*about five minutes pass*

Well a few ideas have presented just by looking through the Yog-Sothoth general board. They have this wicked awesome tag on news stories called NMN (non mythos news). Things that might be cool hooks in Call of Cthulhu games. Or Cat & Cthulhu stories.

Firstly: NMN:Fossil Discovery Shows Antarctic Was Much Warmer. I'm going to file that one away for a few weeks. Because something much cooler appeared.

"Yet more severed feet on the west coast..."

I've been following this story since I first heard about it a few weeks ago. It's a touch creepy. But I've never written a fishing scene before.

What?
No I'm not Canadian. I just like to say eh.

The Making of Cat & Cthulhu #2

2008-08-04T18:39:00.001+01:00

After writing that last episode of Cat & Cthulhu I appear to have regained my confidence in the whole "concept". I've done a bit of work on the website. Which means I've totally changed the blogging engine. Skinned it to have the appearance that I want and hit the big fat reset button.

All the old Cat & Cthulhu is no longer relevant.
I don't think I am going to take it offline.
That would be gross revisionism.
Hiding mistakes and not being entirely truthful.
Because, sure I am obsfucating the presence of the previous work but, I've become disenchanted with it. I wrote it over a period of a year getting on for a year ago and did no editing on it. It's shabby and crap. Although, I will admit with some really nice little bits of dialog or ideas contained in isolated bits.

Anyway, reset button. It's being hit.

So I need ideas for the next issue now.
which I have an idea for. It's an idea I quite like. It tickles my sensibilities. I'm going to make Cat & Cthulhu put on a stage play. It's going to be called "the Rise and Fall of R'lyeh."

I just have a few problems I want to work out.

1) Format, do I write this in prose or as a script?
- I can see advantages to both. Prose is the normal form for Cat & Cthulhu (at least the old stories). But script would be different and interesting. However presents adaptation problems.
2) Following on from the format adapting the prose to radio play (podcast) is easy. It's a one to one translation. Adapting the stage play to radio play is quite a bit harder.

As a compromise I'm inclined to write the story as a stage play. Then when/if Mr Shaw gets around to adapting it for audio make the changes needed to bring play it as a radio drama.

That's the main problem solved I guess. The rest I just need to write.

I don't think this is going to have a word cap either.
The key idea is to explore the idea of a surreal stage play.
Just to have a bit of fun, and be entertaining.

Tha Making of Cat and Cthulhu #1

2008-08-04T15:39:00.002+01:00

Ideas.

What can I write an issue about Cat & Cthulhu about?
Well I've probably already covered a lot of ideas.
It's also been quite a long time since I've written something that's "normal" for Cat & Cthulhu.
One idea I had for a Cat Cthulhu short was about birthdays.
Specifically Cthulhu's birthday.

Oh man my arm hurts!
Scratch that. I think my hold body still wants to hurt.

Right, I'm going to have an exploration of this birthday idea.

How old is Cthulhu?
Billions of years old?
About three? (Well I've had the plush toy for two years I think)
No age. A being from another dimension doesn't have a temporal age in our universe. How can it? The time frame reference from one universe wouldn't translate.
No age. It wasn't born. Although everything does have to come into existence somewhere and at some point.

Does the discussion of this have any funny value?
Let's ask the audience!

[Ginja] Mathiasx, would you possibly find a dialog between a plush Cthulhu and a stuffed toy cat about Cthulhu's age amusing?
[Ginja] Or just the work of someone either: a, on heavy medication or b, in dire need of heavy medication.
[mathiasx] I'm in dire need
[mathiasx] Can you supply?
[mathiasx] :P
[Ginja] Sadly not.
[mathiasx>] I've read catandcthulhu iirc
[Ginja] Can supply the dialogue though.
[Ginja] I'm writing a new one. I found out Thursday that the podcast is being promoted in the next Yog-Sothoth podcast. Which annoyingly means people are going to hear about the site.
* mathiasx nods
* Ginja copies this discussion into the planning document.
[mathiasx] heh

The result of this one person survey is inconclusive.
Damn!

Also I suspect I've written about the subject.

I could write about the healing hands of Sandy Peterson. But that'd be very unjokey and I'd feel guilty/arsehole like for using it.

Bum! I'd better go do some laundry.
Well that was a bit of a faff. Fecking washing machine hates me. I only put my dirty clothes in it.

Is that the source of a good idea?
Well it can bring Marvin in. He's the resident machine with attitude of the series. Is he belligerent because he was asked to do something? Probably, although Marvin is /always/ belligerent.
I think I've an idea. In one sentence this issues idea is: "Marvin does not like being treated as a calculator and argues for better treatment."

I'm not word capping this story either.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a crack at fixing the website.

I'm Aware of the Irony!

2008-07-04T03:10:00.001+01:00

Grr cannae sleep!
I guess it's my fault. While I was sitting in bed I was writing several paragraphs for a writing exercise I'm slowly writing on. One paragraph an emulation of a Kafka style sentence. Another paragraph an attempt at magical realism. Although my attempt is probably a bit too fantastic to be considered that.

So I was writing just before attempting to sleep. It gets worse when I am actually in the dark eyes closed trying to sleep. I start thinking about my degree in metaphorical terms. Thinking about my grades and how I feel about what I've achieved and how I've achieved it. I do this introverted thing quite a lot. I'm not sure what I think about that behavior and I'd like to avoid strange loops so I'll try not to think about it. Anyway the metaphor for my overall grade. I was thinking about one module in particular that I did this year. I scored very high in the exam and simply OK in the coursework. Getting in the end the same percentage as my overall grade.

Which seems to represent quite happily what I did during my formal education. Slack off or find coursework hard and do poorly or just about OK. Come to an unseen exam and do fantastic in it. Yeah, that is about my academic career in a nutshell.

I got a 2:1 if anyone cares (or I somehow forget). That's good.

Grr cannae sleep!

I Could be Reading Megatokyo!

2008-06-27T19:07:00.001+01:00

It's the small bouts of desperation in life that make things miserable.
I've been looking for the word that explains a concept similar to writers block but fundamentally not. The state where one has ideas (ideas they think are good) but feels unable to implement the ideas to the satisfactory level of quality that they wish. The self doubt in writing.

I may be looking to describe this "thing" is part of a larger issue yet am too focused on the small and insignificant problem that I'm having about writing words on paper in a fun and enjoyable order. It's times like these I feel like sitting down at the start of Megatokyo and rereading and catching up with it! It's simply frustrating.

But I must have crossed the worst of it since I'm writing this.

Maybe writing a list of what I should be writing would help.

A genre play. Something "Victorian".

Something to do with a rethink of "Neon Aliens Ate My Mind".

A five page comic script of which I have two pages of awesome.

I think I'll stick the comic script on QuickTales. It'll at least make me feel better. Although I could go look in the mirror again and pretend I'm a member of a prog rock band in the 70s what with my long hair and beard.

Will

Lost my mobile phone and brain.

2008-06-02T02:27:00.000+01:00

If you have ever spoken with me in real life or over some form of Internet based communication I sincerely hope I left the impression that I was a generally optimistic person when it comes to the future of humanity. Not the loveless cynical misanthropic behaviour I exhibit when not sleeping or being fed great quantities of danger. I also fear most readers will have come across what I'm about to write about.

But to be optimistic about people is hard at the best of times. Religions facing off against each other. People being greedy for the sake of acquiring material or spiritual wealth. All those bad things we can get up to. But I find it hard to stay hopeful when people ignore the basic principles of security when using Facebook.

Hang on! Keeping faith in humanity capacity for reason and love in the face of Apocalyptic shite only to have it crushed by Facebook seems a bit extreme. I guess it is. But I'm a computer scientist. A man of small details. Where the devil lies.

Now they may be a really British thing to do on Facebook. Lord knows I hope this stupidity hasn't escaped from these shores. If it isn't just Britain then I declare game over and that we are doomed as a species. No space travel, no high technological magic, no more art. We are doomed!

Ok the problem is simple. People loose or have their phones stolen. They then get another phone and SIM with maybe a new number. This bit doesn't matter magic is probably involved here anyway. Then having lost all the contact details they had on their original phone they start a Facebook group. For all their "friends" to join and write their contact details (phone numbers in case you've forgotten) on the group's wall. This would be fine if a little indiscreet if the group was only viewable to those invited. However people leave these groups open so anyone can read them. People still post to them with their mobile phone numbers!

So people are willing to post their mobile phone numbers in public. I'm waiting for someone to write some code to scrape pages for these numbers and start to send spam messages or premium rate (you pay to receive) messages to them. Really I bet there is a market. I hope you guys see the massive problem with people doing this kind of thing.

I've seen "smart" people do this as well. So this isn't about hard intelligence or even fucking common sense. Just the lack of group survival paranoia. I should write a script to make a few bob doing this. At least then I'd be profiting from the Apocalypse.

The Future

2008-05-11T00:09:00.004+01:00

I must have written about this idea before. But if I haven't spoken about it for a while aside from running a sanity check past Paul. I think that 'The Future' started in 2005. That's five years into the 21st century. Even though I was born in 1986 the year 2000 had some mythos about it. I guess due to my young age when the millennium turned. But the year 2005 was a long time in the future for me once.

So in 2005 I decided that the year should be represented by 'The Future' (a constant that represents 2005) and the offset from that year. Thus the current year is (The Future + 3).

The original idea came to me while configuring my Xbox date and time after it lost it.

Aside from the entirely dull origin I think this idea helps encapsulate a sense of forwards looking optimism. Something missing from my world at the moment.

Lord of the Rings

2008-02-05T01:47:00.000+01:00

I've been listening to a lot of Battlelore of late. They are like Nightwish. Although far more awesome. Even if they do dress up like characters from Lord of the Rings. As well as sing exclusively about Middle Earth.

Also the female singer is hot!
Which is always a bonus. :)

But figuring that this was my cue to reread some Tolkien given that I last read them fully summer 2001 I've started to reread them. Finished The Fellowship of the Ring in the wee hours of this morning. Enjoyed it greatly! Much more then I remember enjoying it. I'm giving myself a short break to read more of 'A History of Western Philosophy'. Shall start The Two Towers at the weekend.

Battlelore - The War of Wrath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG_aitarYG0

Battlelore - House of Heroes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBzZLewtLAA

Battlelore - Journey to undying lands
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRcl-NcIaE0

In the end of that geekary the story of how I found out about the existence of the band if far geekier. Since I was looking for information about the board game of the same name. ^^;

Climbing, without the pub

2008-01-30T02:13:00.000+01:00

This evening as I do every Tuesday I went climbing with De Montfort University's climbing/mountaineering/death society. It's at one of Leicester Collages campuses. The Abby Park one in case any one is interested. It's a small wall at only about seven meters high. But it's training time. Real climbing gets done outside see. I've been trying to improve technique due to me being a weak and scrawny bastard. It's sort of working.

Sadly no pub after.

Also I've committed myself to eating a canned hamburger.
I'm a stupid bloody idiot!

The New Year - HACK THE PLANET!

2008-01-29T16:28:00.001+01:00

Well it is the new year. Twenty nine days into it and so far it looks like it is going to be a bit shite. Exams, final year projects are looking scary and undone. Situation at the flat is turning into questioning why I'm living with those people.

Sure this time last year and all throughout the first seven or so months of last year I made lots of comments on how shite things were. My response to this is that I'm an ungrateful bastard and never happy where ever I am.

*End Moan*

Sometime last week I was goofing off from working and came across this thread on rpg.net. Hackers the movie as a roleplaying game. Well it's a shit movie. But one I enjoy. I like the design of it. The soundtrack is my thing as well. Also, who said I had to like decent worthy films all the time?

This got me thinking again about writing. Writing about a setting similar to Hackers. It has some thing to it I think. Hackers does a good job of displaying a fictitious mashup of street culture. similar things have tapped into the same feel: Jet Set Radio, SSX 3, Supermarket among other things. The hyper-colored city, where the antagonists are "the man" and the hero's are just kids trying to make the world right.

This is an idea I love to play with. Just something about it that is themeaticlly right for me. A world of total darkness were everyone is acts like cunts towards each other isn't interesting for me. Another thing that got me thinking about this general thing is a World of Darkness game I'm playing in. It's with a flatmate. And he does have some issues.

Not many people I know that play roleplaying games are that well adjusted. Sure they can pass as normal people. In fact they are entirely normal people. That have their kinks, feel it makes them different. But they're norms to the end. But that's a tangent of a different and extremely long nature there.

Well someone is about to join that game. As a mortal, since the game is about mortals investigating the World of Darkness. The characters concept is a free-runner/parkour practitioner. I'm not sure if the person knows that there is a distinct difference between the sports. I'll have to ask him. But I'm tempted to create an analog character that's a builder (one who climbs buildings like boulders).

I want to go do some buildering now. It looks like fun.

I should have been doing work while I was writing this.
Oh well. If anyone does read this and starts thinking along the same lines as me I'm happy for a while.

A Confused Review

2007-12-24T23:38:00.000+01:00

This is a review of "Bunny: A Book of Random" and "Bunny: The Book of Perpetual Bewilderment" by Huw "Lem" Davis. Henceforth known as the Books O' Cute by the Great Slightly Older One. I have been a reader of Bunny on the Internet for a couple of years now. Certainly not since the comics inceptions but for a good handful of issues having being introduced to the comic via Applegeeks. Having being a reader for this long I hope that it's clear that I derive great enjoyment out of the daily slice of wit, joy and satirical insight that can be found in the comics. I would have bought the book earlier but alas I'm a lazy fellow and it took me until the end of October 2007 to order the first book and reserve the second. I'm glad I did now.

The size of the books is small and slim. The first volume is pink in colour, the second volume blue. One does wonder if the third volume will be orange. The printing of the books is perfect. The paper is of good quality in my uneducated opinion (computer scientist here, not art student). The reproduction of the redrawn Bunny strips adds more detail to some of the images and as the Great Slightly Older One has become more proficient as an artist the workmanship behind some of the earlier strips is now to the standard of his current work. It's here that I get stuck talking about the art and differences between the online and print versions. He's a good artist. He's got better over time. It shows. But what do I know?

The writing of the comic is mostly incidental providing a crux for the images to play with. This is not to say that the writing is poor in anyway. Great Slightly Older One's words are chosen wisely and provide maximum understanding for an economic use of words. Maybe that is what Bunny is partly about. Maximum understanding of the joke or point with the most economic use of images and words. Maybe not, but if you want to take that meaning and run with it you could.

My only criticism of the two books are that they lack something that the web version doesn't have. This something that the web version excels in is being there once in a whenever it is done in my RSS reader. Normally first thing in the morning before I've gathered all my faculties together or had coffee. As a perfect introduction to Bunny I still suggest hitting the random button on the homepage until you get bored. So these books do lack that early morning haze enjoyment factor. Or the random jump from one strip to the next. That isn't the point though. Great Slightly Older One is making a living by selling advertising (which is discreetly scattered on the Bunny web page), freelancing and selling a small amount of Bunny merchandise.

If you enjoy Bunny enough to read it daily for a few years then I think you should buy these books so you'll continue seeing more happiness and joy in the future. Not for any moral reason of you've been getting something good for free. What do you think adverts are for? But because after giving your money to Mr Slightly Older One you'll receive a well designed artifact of luv wrapped in brown paper, name and address handwritten.

Yes I really did say luv. Go on spend some money on the two books before the trilogy box set comes out next year.

Bunny can be found at http://bunny.frozenreality.co.uk

Snowdon

2007-12-13T04:23:00.000+01:00

What do you need to attempt a climb of Snowdon at this time of year? Stupidity, lots of windproof clothing, water resistant everything else and plenty of luck with the weather. I was on the climbing societies Christmas trip last weekend. I can say we had the right equipment. We ain't that stupid! But the weather was really fucking unfavorable.

Let me first give a brief but hopefully informative description of Snowdon as a mountain. It's the tallest mountain in Wales at 1085 meters. It is the forth highest mountain in the British Isles. There are three main tracks up the mountain which started from our location. These are in order of relative difficulty are "The Miners' Track", "The Pyg Track" and "Crib Gogh". A group of eight people from the society rose early on Saturday to climb Grib Gogh. This is an artre. A knife edge ridge. This is a scramble that most people can complete. Although still dangerous enough that people who are experienced (as well as inexperienced) die or get injured while attempting it in good conditions. So as you might be gathering from my bleated description of the weather earlier that this is pretty fucking dangerous in winter conditions.

To offset this risk Tom, the president of the society and the most experienced student climber in the society was going to treat this as a full on multi-pitch climb. This involves kilograms of metal objects designed for shoving in cracks in rock, rope, helmets, harnesses and belaying. They got very close to the ridge before they decided to turn back due to foot high snow. Not what you want to be climbing in without really serious winter gear.

The group I was walking with attempted the Pyg Track. We set off from the bunkhouse later then the first group. Although fun was had smashing pots and pans together to wake up everyone who was still sleeping. We got to the mountain about half nine. The weather was shite. As we stepped out of the minibus, in the Pen-y-Pass car park the dank bleakness of the day became apparent. Not a fucking chance of seeing anything in the weather on that day. Time to start walking.

The path at the start of the Pyg Track and Crib Gogh goes up steps up the mountain for a short distance then splits. On the right is Crib Gogh, and on the left is the Pyg Track. Fortune was on our side as we met Tom, Jens and Lesh coming down from Crib Gogh there. We gave them the minibus keys so they could go back to the bunk house to dry off. They'd had enough and were soaked. Half of the group I was in also decided it was time to leave. They felt perhaps that any further endeavor to climb Snowdon would be marred by a level of discomfort disproportionate to the effort required to summit the mountain. I'm not of that view. I personally do not mind the discomfort as long as I get as far up as I can safely. But being in the hills requires that you accept and understand other peoples willingness to accept risk. Then to make the needed accommodations for them at your expense if needed. This is for everyones safety. After swapping some radios the remaining four of us carried on further up Snowdon.

Things got very windy as we turned to walk above Llyn Llydaw. The path was however mostly flat. The view gray. Time passed as it does when you're walking and enjoying yourself. We passed Mario and Lisa descending from the mountain. Gave them a radio so they could communicate with the guys at the bottom of the mountain. We were told by Lisa that another group of four from the society were just ahead, somewhere. Carrying on still further in the driving rain we started to hit the snow level. There was snow around us that was quite deep in places. But the path was mostly slush. We must have met with the others around this point. We had another discussion about if we should press on. People said yes. Comments were made by someone that the Miners' Track was now closer then the other end of the Pyg Track. So with a little more effort a much easier and less dispiriting descent could be had. When we reached the point where the Pyg and Miners' meet it was time for the usual and very necessary chat about carrying on or backing off back down the mountain. Two people decided that enough was enough and headed back down the Miners' Track.

Not long after this. Maybe twenty minutes. I've no idea of how long honestly. The group I was in which was in reached the highest point of our attempt. We started to make the move from the valley most of the Pyg Track occupies onto the final part of the way up Snowdon. The weather serious sucked. It was hard to stand up. With heavy gusts of wind putting people of balance. Time to head back down then.

The Miners' Track was mostly gentle, if a little tricky to walk/slide/swim down in places. But the walk along Glaslyn and Llyn Llydaw was cool. What else can I say? I was already soaking wet. My boots waterlogged from stepping in several streams of melting water. However I wasn't cold. The view was gorgeous, even in the low visibility. The sight of students from some other university dressed highly inappropriately for the weather. Lacking waterproofs and wearing jeans. While using bin bags as makeshift waterproofs. Not wearing boots. Shite like that. Well that was amusing in a morbid way. But they did have beer. So they can't have been doing everything wrong. Since they had a drink of sorts. Even if it was Fosters which tastes foul and isn't well known for its properties of hydration.

Not making it to the top of Snowdon wasn't a disappointment. I enjoyed myself throughly and absolutely. Getting to the top of Snowdon was well within the capabilities of every member of the society (barring injury) under sensible and sane conditions. It was the weather that forced us off. Not injury or some other misfortune. Nature stopped us from summiting the mountain. Which is never a bad thing, but in my view a reason to feel humble and maybe come back later in more favorable conditions.

If you like the sound of being soaking wet, in gale force winds while walking uphill then come along to the climbing society. You might get hooked. There are good points. Even if I find them a little hard to describe and maybe slightly personal. Also is anyone up for giving me a lift to the Lake District? I've never been there and I hear they have some awesome climbs.

Will Ellwood

Will Ellwood is a final year computer science student. When he isn't swearing at computer to make them do his bidding he can often be found dangling off things or thinking about dangling off things.

At 900m the winds northwesterly 30 to 40 miles per hour with a severe wind chill.

2007-12-07T02:31:00.000+01:00

I should be sleeping. I have to pack tomorrow for the weekend. As well as be sort of alive for the weekend. All fit and healthy. Ready, go getting, adventurous and in the mood to have my testicles ascend into my pelvis because of the cold. But I feel the urge to write about what I'll be doing this weekend.

Cos this weekend I'm going up Snowdon with the DMU Climbing Society.

The weather report for today gives an indication of the general mood of things.

Forecast for daylight hours for THURSDAY
Rhagolwgar gyfer oriau'r dydd DYDD IAU

Hazards / Peryglon
Severe Gale or Storm force winds. Heavy Rain. Hill Fog.

General situation / Sefyllfa cyffredinol
It will remain very unsettled with a deep Atlantic Low pushing weather fronts east through Snowdonia today. A cooler northwesterly airstream becoming established on Friday, showers expected, these turning to snow over the higher summits.

Weather / Tywydd
Cloudy and overcast with outbreaks of rain and drizzle and widespread hill fog. The rain heavy and persistent at times with occasional torrential downpours expected. It will also be very windy with severe gales or storm force winds at higher levels.

Visibility / Gwelededd
Moderate or poor, often very poor

Cloud base / Gwaelod y cymylau
Extensive, often overcast at 300 to 600 metres.

Wind and temperature 900m / Gwynt a thymheredd 900m
West or Southwest 40 to 60 miles per hour, gusts to 80 miles per hour or more over the higher
summits.

Freezing level / Lefel rhewi
Well above the summits.

These are the paths up Snowdon. I want to do trek number two. There will most likely be a group of people from the climbing club going on that route. This will involve Tom, the president of the society running a rope across the arête of Crib Goch securing himself there in the center with a bombproof placement. Then another person being belayed across the other half of the arête. I don't think I'll do that. I want to. Everyone else can then treat it as a via-ferrata of sorts. Except one in strong wind and precipitation. I'd love to be secure enough in my knowledge of rope work and multi-pitch climbing (which for the record I've never done) that I could think I could do it safely. The via-ferrata I've done I'm is sure is enough to get me across. Just not very safely. In fact I remember crossing some rather lovely arête in August. While also being worried about possible inclement weather. But nowt as bad as what I know is on Snowdon at the moment.

Also I've never been up Snowdon! Ever! So I think the path I'll take is The Miners Path. Whichever way I get up there it'll be fun. Loads of fun. The pictures will be mighty damn fine.

Sunday and maybe Saturday evening will be spent at this climbing wall systematically ripping my arm muscles apart. So they can be rebuilt as stronger more efficient climbing supports over the winter vacation.

I also had a formal type meeting about my final year project. IT seems that even if I'm shitting my self over the lack of work. My tutors are happy with my progress. Also I've got to draw a class diagram for Wednesday. This involves planning abstractness...which I ain't good at. Due to the fact I'm liable to change my mind. Also I might be a frozen husk of ginger haired meat.

But we can only hope. :)

Brain Dump!

2007-10-12T01:12:00.001+01:00

It has been a long while since I have had a complete and utter dump of thoughts from my brain. I think before this weekend I really ought to get rid of a lot of thoughts I've been having. Well no so much get rid of them. But put them on in a safe place. So a short working order of topics: Roguelike design, Megatokyo & me, playing games, my memory, post-graduate musings, climbing. Most likely more to come in there.

Roguelike design

You may know this already. But you probably don't. My final year project is this years main topic of thought. I'm writing a computer game. It's a roleplaying game. Specifically a type of that belongs to a class of games called 'roguelikes'.Which are best described as graphically the most primitive looking games ever. But in terms of complexity and design the most complex class of games ever. Potentially. I have a 'Terms of Reference' to write for my project. It's due in about two weeks if I am remembering dates correctly. I'm sure I'll get it done. Maybe. See this terms of reference document is a contract. It says what I am going to produce. What I hope to achieve and gives an indication of how I am going to do it.

The problem is that now I've picked a project domain to work in. Turn based, random maze with killable and interactive things within it. I have to decide what programming language to write the bloody thing in. This is a hard choice to make! I know lots of languages well enough to write a rougelike in. If I committed to one and started to work on the project. In fact the issue is not really what language. It's what style of language.

In computer programming there are three schools of thought when it comes to developing software. You have the functional programming which treats everything including data as a mathematical and logical problem. Everything behaves in a strict logical way. While it is possible to solve my project with this type of language. Indeed possibly desirable to solve parts of the problem I've got to solve in languages that act in this way. It's also really fucking hard to do the normal everyday stuff that other languages are good at.

There is also the ye olde fashioned way of programming. Which is to say stuff knows about stuff and can ask things to do things. But the only structure imposed on the logical order of how the program works is put in place by the programmer. That's me.

The final way and the way which has been recommended to me by my project tutor. As well as a way I've considered is to treat things as objects. Objects have data and things they can do. For instance a cat has a name and can drink liquids. That's a simple object. This way of programming is very powerful. It also in theory produces a good practical solution to my problem. However! This is a big however. The traditional way of writing a roguelike is in the ye olde fashioned way of programming. This suits me fine. I like this way of programming. But I need to make my mind up soon. Stick to what I decide as well.

There are some other aspects of my rougelike design I have to think about as well. Such as the fact that my project brief is simply,"do something interesting." Which as far as I can tell means do something that implements a basic rougelike and then do something cool. I'm thinking making a survival rogue. But then that could get really odd and I don't know if it would actually be fun to play. But it would be neat to come up with a set of equations essentially to work out how to survive in the wilderness. Then implement that into a simulation.

That could be neat. I was also thinking of a monster hunting game. You go out on safari for big monsters. But my main concern with that. Ignoring the issues caused by that even in a fantasy game; do you really want to be decimating the wildlife? There are game play issues. Since on an aesthetic level from a game play point of view I want to play games where everyone has an equal chance of winning. An equal chance of being cool. Where there is no one solution to the puzzle. I have no idea where this quality in me comes from. But I think it's kinda sweet and rather enjoy the idea. But this is my final year project. That would drive the complexity up by several orders of magnitude. Because I'm shite at all that mechanical design stuff. I tend to hand wave cool in tabletop games I run and just let it happen. Hell I let a guy this week run down the back of a T-Rex skeleton and shoot two gangsters dead. Just because I thought it would look awesome in a film.

Another idea I had for the special mechanic was a lite version of the survival combined with a lite version of the hunting. Because my favorite part of Fallout 2 was getting the gecko skinning skill. Just so I could go hunting for giant geckos, skin them, sell their skins for money, repeat. So I guess what I'm looking for there is some low level life simulation. An interesting proposition but I have no idea how it would work. Well I have some idea. But no enough to actually do it.

The final and utterly wacky way out addition was to make my game totally mashed up with every bit of Internet culture I can think of. From pink bunnies, lolcats,rent-a-zilla and zombies all over the place. However I don't think this counts as something. It isn't mechanically interesting. That's just flavor.

I've got to think about this. Both the technical and conceptual implications.
I keep meaning to write a paper on the software design of RL games. Just to find an answer.

Megatokyo & me

Megatokyo was possibly the first webcomic I ever really read. However I don't read it online at the moment. But I still really respect it as a comic. The art is awesome goodness. It just feels right in places and to be honest I can sympathize with the story an awful lot. Well when I can follow and remember the story. But it is one of my influences in writing. Megatokyo is an influence. Maybe the biggest influence on me in terms of writing. Even in ways of thinking about serialized stories on the Internet. Which is odd because I no longer read it in the serialized form. Only in the book format. Although at the moment I can not decide what part of me is attracted to Megatokyo.
The art defiantly. But that cannot be said to the whole sum of the attraction. My appreciation of art is strictly from a I like it or I don't point of view. Yes I have some awareness of how pictures are drawn and why certain things appeal to people. But only on a theoretic level. I should be banned from ever drawing anything with my really terrible art skills. Maybe it is the characters. But then a lot of the time in Megatokyo I'm sure sure if I want to be attracted to the characters. Either in an aspirational sense or in a well I've been there sense. But I do have sympathies with a lot of the cast members for various reasons.

What else could it be? Well it could be the whole world that Fred has created over more than 1000 pages of comic. Because it has been written over six years it has a wonderful now, then and when quality to it. It captures, reflects and comments on geek culture that is ever changing. But because of the the narrative that threads seven years of comic together. What happened six years ago in the real world only happened six months ago in the comic world.

Playing Games

I can't be arsed to think about this at the moment. Because to be honest my feelings are known to my friends on this already. I like to play tabletop games to genre. Or at least be given strict boundaries on what is expected of my character in a game. What is and what is not allowed in whatever setting I'm playing in really helps me. I think this is interesting in light of the next point on this hidiously rambling brain dump.

My Memory

I am a geek! Not really much of a surprise to anyone that knows me. I'm fairly open about it. Mostly because I can't help it. It is just a part of me. Now I do not mean that, "I geek therefore I am." I mean that it just happens that I do lots of geeky thing. I like science fiction, I think about the future way too much, I most certainly derive far to much pleasure from sitting around a table and arguing about obscure rules in a game which I supposedly play because I "enjoy creating a shared narrative." But I'm also painfully introverted at times. Relying almost entirely on my memory to get my through things. My memory has been failing recently. I don't know why. Not in any serious way. But in a nagging, "I'm sure I could remember stuff like this before." Before being some unspecified point long ago. This might be linked to the nagging neurosis that I'm getting dumber and dumber the older I get. Less focused and less capable of doing smart things.A depressing neurosis since my natural lifespan still gives me a good fifty years. This failure in my memory. Or at least perceived failure in memory has led me to be very careful about asking for things to be written down by other people.

I think but cannot be sure that I have always been like this in someway. But I can't be sure anymore. I ask for things to be written down and specified not because I'll forget. But because I will remember something and I want to make sure that I have remembered the correction version of events. I just can't be sure anymore.

It really is quite scary not being able to trust myself or anyone.
Maybe I should seek professional help or learn to cope.

As a side effect I also like to be as punctual as possible within waking hours. Early mornings do not work for me. They never will. But once I'm awake I find it irritating if I'm late or if other people are late. Maybe caused by my need for things to fit together perfectly. So stuff is easier to remember.

Some day it'll fit together. It is just more to think about once I find the time.
Once I find the time.

Post-Graduate Musings

I'm in my final year of a computer science degree. Learning how embedded software works. Apparently this will almost certainly guarantee me a job once I graduate. Which would be fine. Except I don't really want to graduate. I hate working. Or at least I have always hated the kind of work I've done. I suppose work would be fine if I could find a position that employed me as the quiet guy in the corner that sits drinking coffee thinking and solving hard problems. But no place is willing to do that. At least nowhere profitable and likely to give me that job for life.

So I'm thinking doing a post-graduate type degree. Journalism was considered but I don't really have the heart to be honest. Philosophy however has been a constant interest in me. As an interest it is probably a deeper set interest then computers. So I'm going to seriously attempt to switch fields and become a philosopher. Which will promptly make me unemployable and only suitable for working at Burger Slave. Because after that I have no idea what I want.

Comfort and the environment to do what I love doing I suppose.
Now if I had to work out what was comfort I'd be utterly lost.
In fact I don't think it is even something that I can describe.
Or want to attempt describing for fear that either in the act of describing whatever comfort is for me makes it impossible to happen. The cowards response. Or the fear that in describing it. Whatever it is. I find that really I should have said something earlier, and that it is all perfectly possible. The masochist response.

Climbing

Again I don't feel like thinking about this right now. I've been climbing a bit recently with the university society. I like being outside. I like climbing inside. The people there are nice enough. Although it does feel like I'm breaking into someone else's social scene. Most uncomfortable. I'm going to spend the weekend climbing. No idea what I want from this weekend. In fact I'm not sure what compels me to climb or why I enjoy it.

More to think about then.
As always.
Always more to think about.
Should stop trying to reason about everything.
Except I can't!

Do I even want to talk about my constant deja vu?

I Want To Go Back To Bed!

2007-10-08T10:05:00.000+01:00

I'm in a lab. Back in university land.
I'd quite like to go back to bed now.

Epiphany

2007-08-13T01:41:00.000+01:00

* Ginja updates Livejournal with a rather lame post.
[Ginja] I think I might just quit and go to bed.
[bilbo] sounds like you need an epiphany
[Ginja] Maybe
* EvilNekoSpork (~fnord@wlandbca-1.fiu.edu) has joined #bunny
[Ginja] Well exactly that really.
[Ginja] Something to stop me from thinking about the potential fuck ups in my immediate past. Ideally something that is screaming at me. Because subtle hints don't really work on me. I think I might have discovered that one recently.
[Ginja] But anyhow, yes, my life does lack meaning. Cat & Cthulhu has faded into background noise at the moment. Just something I do like breathing and shitting. Of course being the horrible introvert I am at times finding such a zen moment and cause would be awfully hard. I suspect the first few days of duityfull contemplation would still result in a, "oh you fucking arse hole you really blew it on those occasions didn't you?" typ
[Ginja] e moment. Which really would not be healthy for ones mental state. Even if those thoughts are currently rattling around my psyche at the moment.
* Ginja stops blogging in real time on IRC since it is quite rude.

Of course one could view this as just a hump to get over. Another hill to climb type thing, so just shut up and walk it. Probably this would be the pragmatic way to deal with the lack of any real meaning in my life. Either that or find religion. But I don't want religion even though I know it wants me. Course I've had these moments before. The lack of finding any place I've ever felt entirely comfortable means I have these kind of of blows outs quite regularly. Again I suspect you're right Biblo. Lack of meaning. Nothing to act as a foundation for my personality and no place to crawl back to and say,"this is me."

So where do I find these epiphany things? Do I just go to Morrison's and pick the one I want from the shelf or do I have to go head butt a dragon for one?

Bordom and Discontent in the UK

2007-08-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

Arrived in Luton at some unholy and unpleasant time at Luton airport Thursday night/Friday morning.
Spent the car journey home listening to Mogwai 'Come on Die Young' and Apocolyptica with my Dad. Racing down the M1 at slightly illegal speeds in the middle of the night is even more fun when you have heavy metal cellos blasting out from the car speakers.

Hugs, kisses and greetings when I got back to the family home in Moutsorrel. Various bits of the to the front garden are gone. There are a few trees missing now. One was apparently quite seriously interfering with the telephone line. We don't go in for small and neat trees in this house. Having said that I looked out of the window in the dining room this morning as I was standing over the newspaper leafing through it in a pair of gray pajama bottoms and I noticed that the really tall radio mast that has been in the house one fence over is gone. Not quite sure how I feel about that landmark going missing. Sure it was an eyesore. I mean when is a 15 meter tall steel radio mast ever not going to be? But it is the little things that you miss. Or in my case one really big fuck off tree and a radio mast that hadn't been used in eons.

Friday I was in Leicester meeting friends. Went to the pub. Wolfed down a burger, chips and a pint of cider. Then wandered around town. Not really done much catching up really at this point. I still haven't. Everything feels a bit ethereal at the moment. Not quite caught up with reality.

Saturday, a lazy day. Bought a copy of Call of Cthulhu D20 (because my geek-fu is returning) from the bookshop my mum works at. Then went into Leicester in the evening. Visiting the flat I'll be living at in a few weeks. Geordie has already moved in. Played Risk 22xx with Tean and Sharon. Nuked Geordie into an atomic pile of rubble. Came second. Had the same waves of like this game, hate this game now as I get when I play poker.

However I nuked Geordie into a pile of atomic rubble.

Sunday I was dragged kicking and screaming (well not quite) into the Peak District to Monsal Head. Went climbing at Rubicon wall for a few minutes before we went to the Monsel Head Hotel for dinner. Drank Schneier Weiss, a lot of zinfandel red wine and ate quite happily a massive roast dinner clean from the plate. Finished off with sticky toffee pudding and a very happy Will.
Good food.

Okay climbing. Sadly the ground was still muddy as hell from the rain so was stuck attempting the edges of the wall that had been exposed to sunlight and dried. Limestone if anything is a lesson that I need more finger strength. Didn't finish any of the guided routes but then I never really attempted any of them. I'm going to try and head back into the Peaks in a few days.
Whatever.

Anyhow last night I watched a Griff Rhys Jones program about mountains. Lake District is very pritty.

This morning did fuck all. Just a bit of web surfing. This afternoon I ventured into my parents room. Donning my mining helmet and leaving a signed and witnessed document attesting to accepting the liability and danger of what I was about to do with my lawyer. I went to try and find a book!
One specific book. Fuck I should I known I was doomed.
I didn't find it. Although I did pick up a copy of, "The Lost World" and some stuff by 'new young' Brit SF authors.
I was looking for my mums copy of Ink. I thought she had a copy. After nearly having freestanding monoliths of books taller then me nearly fall of me again I think I might just order a copy from Amazon later tonight.

I think it is now about time for me to brew a big mug of coffee and start reading some more.

Why I Wish I Could Climb Only With Girls

2007-07-30T23:30:00.000+01:00

Let me get this blog/rant/moan/mess started by saying I really did enjoy this weekend in Engelberg doing Via Ferrta.
The moments when no one was talking. The parts which had me climbing happily in my own world. Oh and the times when I was happily talking and strolling down a mountain without a care.

The part of the weekend I didn't enjoy and which really put the shits up me. To the point where the expression on my face prompted Sue to ask if I was alright. I lied at that point and said I was fine (I think). But on the second day in Engelberg about mid afternoon standing outside the youth hostel we had just had lunch at. A rescue helicopter, big, red and labeled with a medical cross, started to circle the mountain looking for a landing point. This was after a burst of fairly heavy rain. The wind was also quite strong at this point. The helicopter landed on the mountain or hovered a short distance above the mountain path. It flew down to the helipad at the top of the ski lift. It had a person attached to a mountain rescue person on the winch. They loaded that person into the helicopter. They were limping. I suspect that someone else could have been inside in worse condition. It doesn't matter really if that was the case. The person that was limping was in proper boots and equipment for climbing a mountain. The people I was with were mostly in sports trainers. I had walking boots with decent ankle support. Susan while not in boots, was in a pair of trainers designed by someone who conceived that they might get used on a mountain. The other shoes in the group. Erm no! Not really a thought in the designers head. Lucky we didn't have any serious trips or falls.

Even more lucky that the weather held as we climbed the mountain. The cloud was rising from the valley as we climbed to ~2500 meters above sea level. It didn't rain. The wind did not get horribly strong. We got lucky. Considering how ill equipt we were.

Stuff we didn't have but probably should have. Or the list that will have my Dad and Granddad calling me a fucking eejit.

Full first aid kit.
Survival bags. Because even in July the weather can become bad.
Whistle. Actually I don't know about this one. Sue might have been carrying one and not told me.
Full waterproofs and windproof clothing for all the group. Again the weather even in July can go bad.
The list probably goes on. Thankfully we had plenty of mobile phones and someone had remembered to put the mountain rescue number in their phonebook.

Do not even get me started on how fucked up I think you have to be to photograph a rescue helicopter while it is in the process of doing it's job.

So while I am going on about the big major negative of the weekend. Since I don't really want luck to play any part in my continuing ability to climb up things. I did have a good time. But it has confirmed something I've basically been thinking for a long while.
I only really want to climb with girls. Because apart from the aesthetic value (which I won't deny helps a lot when belaying :P). Fuck it I better just come right out and say it. Girls, lasses, ladies, females, women, in general pay more attention to instructions and are more questioning of their abilities and technical competency then boys. This is a very good thing! Why? Because it means if I'm showing someone how to do something. Especially basic rock climbing stuff. It is much less stressful to teach. While competency is no different due to this. It is much easier to gauge how confident someone is and offer constructive criticism. This makes me happy. And if confidence is lacking I can quite honestly say which gender will be the first to say, "no fucking way I'm not doing that. I might hurt my self."

This is a very very fucking good thing. Injuries I don't like. The potential threat of injuries I really really find not at all fun.
Did I mention the aesthetic reasons? I hope I don't have to elaborate on them too much.

Now I hope that when I'm back in the UK this will be proved wrong by my friends: Dave, Geordie and Kieran. As I hope to take them first to a climbing wall to get some starter lessons (I need to learn a few knots and practice using an ATC belay device again). Then into the Peak District to do some bouldering. Which because I know and trust both Kieran, Geordie and Dave implicitly not to fuck around with the local wildlife, start behaving like five year old kids and generally not act like utter arses.

Oh well it was a good weekend.
And I did my first proper overhang last Thursday at the climbing wall.
Which is good. A fitting birthday present really. Or at least personal achievement.

So I fly back to the UK this Thursday.
I hope to spend Friday relaxing with Geordie and Tean.
Basically just catching up on life in Leicester.
Saturday I plan to get a bit drunk (recently revised from totally fucking obliterated) at Ret and dance my crazy long haired ass off.
Sunday I'm meeting my Grandparents in Derbyshire (yes in the Peak District). The reason for me not getting too drunk is that if I can get ready in time my Dad will drive us to a point where I can boulder. Yes my mum will be watching and attempting not to watch. Then I meet my Grandparents at 1PM for lunch in a hotel of some sort. They have real ale. So I need to do the climbing before the drinking starts. :D

Fiddler's Green Introduction

2007-06-23T22:13:00.000+01:00

Almost a year ago at the time of writing my Gran died. She died on the 25th of June 2006. My personal reaction was I think one of acceptance. I think that this was the reaction from most of my close family. Sure I was and still sad she died. No tears from me though. But she was pushing ninety, had a major heart attack about ten year prior, been in and out of hospital since, was in remission from breast cancer or in some stage of it getting better. And she still had her wits. While she lamented the lack of mobility due to her ever worsening heart and circulation she still read, kept pace with the world around her and up until the last time we spoke still was forming and reforming opinions about life, the universe and everything. This is why I accepted it as a matter of fact. She still had what she feared loosing most. Her mind.

This collection of work is not about her. Although I cared deeply for her. However it serves as the starting point for my internship at Syngenta. I delayed the start of my placement a week to attend her funeral. Last time I saw a lot of family and also the loneliest weekend of my life. Thursday in Rochdale, a town in Greater Manchester and the family home. The next day, early in the morning I was leaving for Switzerland. I spent the whole of that first insufferably hot weekend lost in a culture and city I'd had no contact with, lonely and with only a fresh copy of Cryptonomican to keep me company.

That was the first weekend in Basel.

This might be the last.
Although I hope for reasons half known to me I'm being over dramatic.

March was cruel.
April was however a good month to me.
May less so, but still good.
June has been hell of fucking earth.

I think I am actually now broken.
Mentally and physically just gone.
Tired, confused and with no memory, physically and violently ill due to some irritating psychological trigger annoying accident of behaviourism and just at the point of saying, "oh fuck it I don't care" and actually meaning just that.

"I don't care," is an important tool for me when judging a person. I think and others are free to hold differing views that when a person says I don't care too often, about many different and separate things. Well they really mean the exact opposite and are just farming for attention. Because of this I try and say something more specific like "I'm not interested" or actually try to state my feelings and reasoning behind an opinion. However at the present time I am close to saying those three words. The input so to speak has become too much and I don't have the means to parse it.
Naturally I'm a hypocrite the moment I say those three words. Oh well paradoxes happen.

An idea that has been keeping me possibly sane is that my return to the UK will be some mythical cure for everything. But see the thing is I know on a deep and fundamental level the UK (sorry I don't say England out of deep embarrassment over the place)is going to be just as shit. With just as much stress, worry, anger, fear and rejection. But with an equal amount of relaxation, hope, love and acceptance. I just think the balance here in Switzerland has become skewed towards the shitty end of the scale. Which makes the good stuff oh so fucking good. But it also makes day to day stuff feel like running a marathon with a midget strapped to your back.

So what has caused this? Well I don't want to go into specifics. But personal disagreements with several individuals. Just not enjoying what I'm doing for eight hours a day which makes this is the point in which someone is fully justified in saying, "I told you so." Unpleasant living conditions, due to the aforementioned disagreements. But also because well quite simply where I live is just plain shit. Just a weird set of interpersonal relations with the people I live with and interact with socially. In fact I'm not sure the causes are important at this point. Since if these are the reasons for breakage. Fuck it! Soon they will be gone. Although I'd like it if the weird relations with well you know everyone gets untangled and something positive comes out of it. Because I'd hate to waste a year of my social life and come out with nothing.

Do the last 700 words have anything to do with the collection of stories I'm working on at the moment about Fiddler's Green.
Would I be searching for the damn place if I hadn't had to deal with all that shit?
Probably actually. But everything at the moment has forced me to not question who I am and what I do. I know that already.
My internal ID card says if you will forgive the geek reference, "Will Ellwood - rogue and bard."
I know that I want to do with my life. That is to drink tea, coffee with the occasional beer and spirit. While pouring over comics, books, music, films, the news, whatever dangerous and stupid thing I've recently done and to turn that into well words of some kind or order. Preferably ones that have an effect on the people that read and hear them.
Fuck the computer science shit. While I do love my abstract data structures and the pedantic precision of it all. My calling is elsewhere.
I just can't be arsed, even though I still care.

Fiddler's Green is where sailors walk to when they have tired of the sea. The place in which the bar is always open and the fiddle is always playing on a freshly cut green somewhere far from the sea. So far in fact to get there the sailor takes an oar and walks to the village where they are asked what it is. Paradise for a tired old sea dog.

My paradise isn't this. But the metaphor feels right due to its inherent notion of escape. Which I want to do oh so badly.
Even if the place is one that isn't real. I can still hope for various aspects of it to enter reality. Maybe someday all of it will.
Who wants to join me?

This morning in my dream..

2007-06-03T20:33:00.000+01:00

I fucked Ragged Robin!
Well before I was a pirate or some such on the 18th Century seas, in the middle of the storm just having rescued some lass in a fine white gown from something. Then I was climbing a ladder (to go above deck obviously). Only to find Ragged Robin pop her head down. Now I'm in the bed part of a small RV in a underground parking lot.

"Only mentally ill people take their medication. So I'm not taking my medications," said the comic character who had been committed.

The rest of the dream is between me, Freud and any future psychoanalyst.
I woke up and shat my self when I saw the time.
Two minutes less than an hour later I was sitting on a train to Lazurn with my parents.

I need 'help'.

What a Week

2007-05-21T20:42:00.000+01:00

Well this has been an interesting week.
Most of it has been spent with two other people, and in a climbing harness.

I guess the distance between this post and the last post would normally require some explanation of the time missing between. I can only really remember the past week or so. Before then the gap was probably filled with work shite. Although I did go see Spider man 3 the day after the last post was made. Was going to write a review here. But the clown code you know. I kind of want to be able to follow that. It says you should never talk about a bad performer since you're only giving them unwarranted publicity.

Anyway lets go back to last Wednesday since that is when interesting things started to happen. Be warned I've had enough wine to make me lucid. Things should get stream of consciousness about now.

Wednesday 16th of May: Rope Tech, this is a well rope walk place in Berne, capital of Switzerland. First time I've been there and stepped out of the station as well. Got a text from Susan sometime the night before if I recall (and I ain't going to take my phone out of my pocket) saying to be at the station for some ungodly hour. Something like nine in the morning. Got to the Swiss railway station and was on the train to Berne. Took us a while. Us being me (the loon with no sense of direction or purpose), Hayley and Susan (I'm not sure how much of a sense of direction they have). Well we got there. Then spent six hours zipping around the trees, climbing up trees and walking over wire walkways suspended between trees. Dead easy, not even that scary. Well apart from that rope bridge with the logs that spin round when you step on them. Oh and the Tarzan swing. I only went first on that because my masculinity was insulted. Now normally I'd let that slide but hey sometimes I've got to stand up for the fact I have a meat and two veg. Oh and those two seem to be able to nag me quite well.

I think I'm loosing my mind if people are able to nag me to do things now.

Well six hours of zipping, balancing and clipping into safety lines later we head home to Basel on the train. Didn't cost us much. Just the train ticket both ways and the 22CHF entry to the rope park.

End Day One!

Thursday 17th of May: Badminton, well I suck at that nuff said. Been four years prior to then since I'd played it at all. Even then I spent most of the time talking to Kay and Liz about punk rock and politics. Matt Crossly about anime as well. Guess who didn't like PE much? Oh yeah came home and wrote quite a good episode of Cat & Cthulhu even if I do say so my self.

End Day Two!

Friday 18th of May: Work for a spell. Bought some short trousers as well so I could climb and see my feet. Also went to the climbing wall with Susan and Hayley. Much better then the Saturday before (the 18th) when I went with just Susan. Not because of the extra company as such. But because we both had a better idea of what to do. Oh and my wrists didn't crap out and cause me much grief. I need to hit the gym at some point and start some training to get my endurance up as well. But that won't be tonight. Tonight I am on a mission from my muse (a small but perfectly sized bottle of Chianti for a runt like me) to write and spill the contents of my frontal lobes into bytes of alphanumerics.

Yeah climbing was good. Hope to go again the coming Friday or Saturday. Should probably bug the relevant people about that at some point.

Saturday 19th of May: Well I was again in a climbing harness. Those little Will sperm must be getting mighty tight down in my crotch from all the climbing harnesses being tightened around them. Oh well I'm sure they will recover. This time me, Hayley and Susan were in Engelberg trying out the Italian activity called via ferrata or in German klettersteig. Well read the link before you ask me more questions about what it is. Hypertext should mean I don't have to explain everything.

It was good. There are actually photos of this as well. Maybe you will get to see them sometime. But the main thing that it involved was us not really knowing what the break rope did. Hoping that we wouldn't fall. Not knowing at first but eventually working out that if we did hypothetically fall. Well it would be worse then a rock climbing fall. Oh yeah the view was great from the top. Ok the main thing was us climbing quite happily up some rocks and cursing the altitude on our pathetic British lungs.

Ze End because Sunday was spent watching shite TV not writing and not living.

Cat, Master & Tingelly

2007-05-06T19:15:00.000+01:00

So I went to a friends place just now to get a DVD that they had promised to loan me. She was not in. Well maybe she was not in. Maybe she was ignoring me. Hopefully not. But the place where she lives is built three parts mental hospital to one part bomb shelter. So there is the distinct possibility that she didn't here me ring her phone or the door bell. So it goes.

Anyway that explains one reason why I was in Basel city center at six, seven at night. The other explanation is that I also wanted to scout for imagery for the next Cat & Cthulhu issue. The DVD actually in and of its self didn't matter. Chris has a copy of it and I wanted another excuse however flimsy to piss off into town to see the city in the sunset light.

Well I am sat in my favourite place in all of Basel as I write this. The Tinguely Fountain. I believe that this is also the first time I've sat by myself alone here as well.

But I like the Tinguely Fountain a lot. It like most of the works of Jean Tinguely is a moving statue. Composed of 'junk'. This specific fountain is made up of many little moving fountains. It is in a fairly sheltered area of the city. Near a few churches, including this Gothic or neo-Gothic church I can see which has one side bathing in the lemon light of the sun. The fountain is also near the musical theater.
The trees as well as the time of day also make it quite a nice cool location in terms of temperature.

So for Cat & Cthulhu I think the majority of the issue 'Master' is going to take place here.

Motors whine and lots of water splashes.

Not that it will receive much attention in the prose version. Because it really is a visual and auditory experience. I'll ask three of my art bitches, Naavis, Yash and Magnulus to do an illustration of the fountain I think.

I'll specify more exact specifics when I get home and not while I'm sitting at the fountain. However the picture should be of the fountain with me behind it. The short long ginger haired person I am. With Cat sitting on my sholder. Although I think a black and white illustration would be better. More expressive. That might just be because on the tram to and from Basel I was reading a Korean manga.

If done well however it should describe the visual aspect of that Cat & Cthulhu issue well.

Man as I am sitting here leaning over my knee. Moleskine resting there I've relized that my hair is great. It because of my posture has fallen down. It now hangs in clumps in my peripheral vision, not obstructing the view of the page at all. It does need washing however quite badly.

But with Pink Floyd and the fountain making their noises. Me drinking coffee and writing alone. Well I'm well happy.

Will

An Existential Crisis, a Report and a Party

2007-05-04T15:49:00.000+01:00

I am having a existential crisis at the moment.
I also have a 3000 word report to be written for next Friday and be in Leicester by then as well.
There is a big party on tomorrow in Zürich.

So I'm going to hammer out this report while partying and being a confused and suffering lonely bastard.

Does anyone want to watch?

Prague

2007-05-02T21:54:00.000+01:00

Man Prague was fun.
Not really fun, but not bad.
So it averaged out to a general level of fun.

There were boring parts. Most of them due to the fact that for some reason food and *gasp* alchol didn't agree with me this week. Which sucked!

But the sights where awesome. I climbed a fifth of the hight of the Eiffel Tower in a replica of the Eiffel Tower. Also saw a severed arm several hundred years old among other things. I didn't have the urge to kill and or harm anyone either. Even if someone kept me awake snoring. Nope no feelings of murder or mutilation in this head. I've become quite radically desensitised in recent times.
This is a good thing maybe.
No sympathy for angels though.

We went on a ghost tour on Tuesday night. It was fun in the self knowingly lame way.
I got called Aphex Twin by the guide.
COME TO DADDY!
Shit! I thought I was prettier then that video.
The walk was not scary.
Although Chris was a twat. Chetan screamed louder then Bex and Michelle nearly went into cardiac distress. I think I just shrugged. No threat, no danger, no fear.
Hopefully.

Other selected highlights. I don't know which to pick.
We saw quite a bit of Prague. Although sadly not all.
The Franz Kafka museum was awesome to the power of awesome.
But then I do kind of identify with him at the moment.
He hated his civil service job involving law.
I'm currently not that interested in doing work with computers involving my computer science degree.
Bought some of his stories at the museum bookshop and will actually read some soon'ish.
Also had a nice coffee in a coffee shop across the square from that museum.
Best cup of coffee I've had for a long while.

I had the energy and the intention to write about other things as well on the tram earlier. Because well I went out about twenty minutes after I got back home. Met two people I know vaguely. One girl whose name I can never remember. She is a twin and German. The other is this Georgian lass, who I know the name of but am not even going to try and spell. I even wrote stuff down. Although it is on paper and I don't have the energy or the inclination at the moment to type up and expand upon.

I also wrote a short story on the plane going to and from Prague.
The first paragraph was written on the way there and I was just getting into the swing of things when the seat belt lights came on. Shit! Had to go tray up etc. Oh well as soon as I could bring the tray down on the way back I started to write.
Susan commented that my handwriting is tiny. I should have said something witty but sitting on the plane really tired and hungry (both of which still persist at the moment of writing) but I didn't. Ah well. Carried on writing for a bit longer. I shall probably type that up as soon as this is done.

Need to sleep soon.
Will write more on this if the feeling presents itself.
Photos by other people will probably also appear in that kind of post.
Because I don't have a camera. Except on my phone. I don't use it much.

Non-Zero-Sum For Me

2007-04-20T23:32:00.000+01:00

Well I have just had another fantastic Friday night.
Well not really.
Spending two hours watching everyone favoured zero-sum game being played in the hopeful prayer that maybe some drinking might take place is really fun. If you like zero-sum games. I don't! It isn't that I hate them as such. They just don't appeal to a basic part of my cognitive schema of things. Which pretty much means I don't like win or loose games too much because I don't understand the pleasure to be gained out of them.

I suspect this is because I'm not a very competitive person.
Nether would I say I was very ambitious since I would be content with the resources to support my self telling stories along with some good old fashioned positive social feedback thrown into the mix. Although the social feedback is arguably a basic resource important to telling stories. I digress anyhow.
Not competitive. Ok I'll claim this and say that I don't mind a bit of healthy competition. But I dislike it exclusively at the expense of my partner/s since I'm far more interested in everyone getting the most out of a game and or situation.
In everyones favoured zero-sum game being played, everyone can not win.

So after two hours of watching a popular zero-sum game being played badly I might add. Far to seriously for a game that involves no money. Dragging things on longer and longer as everyone plays as conservatively as possible in order to maxout their gain. The kind of game that is no fun even if you're playing.

Then we watch Scrubs, fine I'll humor the rest of the group. Scrubs is fine, not great. Just dumb, turn of brain TV to watch in the middle of the afternoon when your skulking around the house wondering where the cat got to. Occasional TV, not must watch. I'd really really like to be heading to a bar soon. Preferably with the rest of the group. Because you know being sociable is sometimes nice.

Right then the comedy clips from the Interweb start. I'd give an estimate of how long this lasted for but to be honest my mind regressed inwards on its self. Everything became as though I had died and gone to hell. That might explain why I can smell brimstone. That might however be side effect of my mood and general disposition at the moment however. Comedy clips are fun if you have no seen them before. And you don't want to go for a fucking drink!

Sometime later we leave. This takes forever. We end up at Barfusserplaz, I go to get cash and they wander off. It hits midnight and I don't feel like waiting around till three in the morning with Chris. Mostly because well if I hear another long fanboy rave about Buffy, Scrubs, Harry Potter -- fuck it anything from any form of media. From anyone tonight. I'll not only chew my arm off and beat them to death with it. I'll make sure I hit them with the wet end so they catch any diseases I might have in case they survive and I die from massive trauma.

So I catch the tram home. Not to see the rest of the group, and leaving a fairly uncalled for message on someones voice mail. About erm an hour ago.

Yes I write fast. And yes the Glenfiddich I had in my room sure did help. Even if it is a fairly shitty whiskey.

Music, Life and Stuff

2007-04-16T15:47:00.000+01:00

I lie in the current status of being on the Cat & Cthulhu website. Oh yeah that site is up now. =) The track I love the most isn't a Nine Inch Nails track. It is a Pink Floyd song. From Meddle, the best Pink Floyd album ever might I add. One of these Days, love the general chugging sound. I can't play an musical instrument to save my life but if I could I'd be in heaven playing the high part of the song while head banging my long hair to the beat.

It really is the perfect head banging song.

Other news is that I am back in Switzerland, although I might have already made mention of that. I have spent a lot of time in parks in the sunshine. Oh and I read three books at the weekend. Well read two started one.

9Tail Fox by Jon Courtney Grimwood is hardboiled near future science fiction. Set in San Fransisco so I know the local and reading it in the heat this week could feel the city on my skin. Good book. Can't really say much more or else I'd risk massive spoilers.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher, this is the first Harry Dresden novel. Trashy, but fun. Basic gist is that it is Constantine without the Sting impression and the serial numbers filed off.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes. Bought it on Saturday because I'd never read it. Knew he had died. It filled my RSS reader with stuff about and by him. Felt guilty so went about bought that and another of his novels. Pretty cool stuff so far.

Tonight I might go see 300.
Failing that I'm going to so not a lot except fart about on the Internet avoiding writing anything.

Oh I am also beardless now.
No one cares.
Except I now get to stroke my stubble and feel relaxed. ^^;

I've Seen Gandalf's Cock

2007-04-08T22:25:00.000+01:00

Well this has been a very fun holiday.
Very fun indeed.
Nope no complaints here.

See I've had nearly two weeks off work.
This is a good thing.
I've also spent my two weekend off in interesting places.
I think you will agree that this is a good thing.
I think most people who I know personally know roughly what I have been up to. Because well I haven't shut up about it.

So weekend one of my holiday was spent in Edinburgh playing roleplaying games. Geeking out generally. Good stuff. There was lots of stuff on sale that I wanted to buy. Like period costume, live action roleplaying (LARP) game weapons and armor. Oh and heaps and heaps of books. I was there to play games though. Serious games. Games where people die in horrible ways and go batshit crazy.

Except in both games we didn't go batshit crazy. But people did die in horrible ways. Yes I could only have been playing Call of Cthulhu. The game of tommy guns, deep ones and lots of scholarly research.

The first game I played was on Saturday was set on a tropical island. We woke up not knowing where we are. With the only clue being well the jungle outside. I played a female vice cop. I'm not sure if I got the characterization down well. It has been a long while since I have watched Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Well it went well. My character Kirtsy [some Irish surname] was that. The final scene of the game involved gunning down the psychologist (who we all though there was something odd about him) as he was attempting to contact some eldritch horror from beyond time and space. Even Paris Hilton the girl who'd never fired a gun managed to shot the bastard between the eyes. If only Misirlou had been playing in the background. The awesome level would have been ramped up although few degrees.

The second game was more traditional. 1920s, everyone playing well off white people with good educations. Think Agatha Christie with giant mutated frogs that rape the hired help. I ended up setting fire to lots of things. It was fun. Although I didn't really get into character. The distraction that the two girls playing on my table wasn't as acute that day as well. I guess I was quite disappointed by the lack of boobage to cover my peripheral vision.
But they both played well. Better then me at any rate. Especially the girl that had been playing RPGs for six weeks. She rocked. I definitely want those girls in any game I run in the future.

In the end though the Student Nationals where won by Sheffield. This was not a surprise. They kind of won every war game event. Pretty much for the only reason that they are the only people that play then. Oh well. Sheffield is far easier to get to then Edinburgh. Which means that no repeat of the ten hour drive back to Leicester will be required. I mean not a lot happened. Ok we invented a D10^9 dice. So we could work out how many people we'd kill if we ever took over the planet. Geordie also developed a case of hiccups at every single fucking service station we stopped at. We stopped at a lot. The theory going at the time was that he had been brutally raped by a truck driver as a child. The second theory was that he was just Geordie and fucking odd.

The middle part of my vacation. Watching films and TV. Not writing (shame on me) and not working on the Cat & Cthulhu websites server stuff (double shame of me).

Yesterday I went with my parents to see King Lear with Ian McKellen as King Lear. It was awesome. The pairing of Sylvester McCoy as the fool with Ian McKellen was great. The whole cast put in top performances. Oh yeah and in the storm scene Ian McKellen doesn't exactly strip but well his wang was exposed. So yes as I said in the title I've seen Gandalf's Cock. There are alternate titles for this post I came up with. All of them equally childish.
Well I can't think of much more to say about the performance really. My lack of knowledge about stage plays limits me and I spent quite a lot of the play trying not to cough up my lungs.

The coughing lungs up is a definite side effect of spending a weekend shouting, drinking and talking.
It is really starting to get on my nerves.
It has not quite reached the point of making my life hell but it is coming damn close.

Today I was eating Chinese food with my family (including Grandparents) and walking around the park in Loughbrough.
Received the last present ever from my Grandparents. Which is fair enough. I'd expected them to stop earlier on the gift giving.

Tomorrow is packing my bags to fly back to Switzerland and face the magic kingdom again.
That and buying Hogfather on DVD.

The spring/summer starts here and I really have to get my ass into gear.

OH SHIT I HAVE TO FILL IN MY STUDENT LOAN FORMS BEFORE I LEAVE!!!

Echo The Last Post Quite A Lot

2007-04-05T00:12:00.000+01:00

[Insert a lot of coughing here]

Oh man I do not feel great. A combination of a quite a wild weekend. Well not really wild but the best part of a day spent driving up and down to Edinbrough and two quite awesome games of Call of Cthulhu. Then the sore throat, joints and generally feeling quite shitty and ill. Because your immune system always collapses just as you decide to have a vacation.

Ah well I guess it is the way of things.
Not been writing much in general recently. Or reading. Doing not a lot of much is not a good thing. Although it does leave some room for thinking. Except I do not know when I have been thinking about. Mind at the moment feels fairly blank and board at the front end. But I guess at somepoint soon I'll have a good idea. An awesome idea that will thrust its self upon my concious self fully formed and ready to rock the world.

Or I'll just wake up and find my self with a 3000 word report to write. Which I guess I had better get started on later in the day.

[Insert more coughing.]

Oh I think I am just going to give up trying to blog here in this instance.
All I can think to say is that the weekend was awesome. A really mind saver. But the middle bit of the week has been a real blow out. This writing shite to get started writing good stuff isn't working for me at the moment. I am starting to cough too much. Time to go to bed I think since I don't want to take any more throat lozanges tonight.

If I don't do something interesting tomorrow I'll go mad.

Batshit

2007-03-23T18:14:00.000+01:00

So I have not been blogging for two weeks.
Shame really. The amount of blogging I do is pretty much indicative of how much I am writing generally. Well I haven not been writing anything. It was probably Monday when I last picked up a pen to do something other than take notes for work.
The reasons why - several I guess. All quite whiny and not really interesting for anyone to read.
Although kind of handy to quickly jot down so I can get onto more interesting thoughts.

Apathy towards everything I do at the moment, one reason. General lack of attention from anyone. Especially the opposite sex, yeah a good reason. But that one is probably because I am slowly becoming a boring shit. Not drinking, and being the only person in my flat with any kind of pulse when the sun goes down makes me grumpy if nothing happens. The reason why I feel I'm becoming a boring shit. Probably the number one reason that I'm feeling sullen is because I have the distinct impression that I don't fit in.

Now I could take this to be very empowering. I don't fit in ergo I am better. Of course the logic doesn't work if you are not in you native country and the command you have over the local language is limited to put it gently. But I am just a different person to the people I live with and spend a large part of my time socializing with. So I look forward to going home. I can not fail to understate this. I really look forward to going home. It isn't family or friends that I require when I go home. It's the mindset. Although my family and friends do share a large portion of my mindset. As such I tend to go on about my future trips home quite and a bit. I expect everyone is quite sick of me mentioning them.

So yeah I go home next Friday. Spend the weekend playing roleplaying games at Edinburgh university, drinking, and telling tall tales with some good friends. Then a week doing I don't know what. Work on a university report maybe. Maybe not, although I do need to get started on that thing soon. See some Shakespeare in two weeks, visit a pub in the Derbyshire hills to see my Grandparents then spend the day chilling before flying back to the Magic Kingdom.

Last I'm going to write or mention about that week until it has happened. Unless someone asks.

So because of the aforementioned reasons I'm not going Snowboarding this weekend. I'd like to. I genuinely enjoy spending time with the people that are going this weekend. But I've got other commitments. Like the fact I need to restock my food cupboard so I don't go hungry. Also a serious need to work on the Cat & Cthulhu website. Buy music and not comics. Oh and go batshit crazy and finish of the post I was working on about Fascnact. Throw some other things out into the wild as well.

Sadly there doubt there will be any interesting people to observe these events. Or at least people that I find interesting.

Oh well three cheers for the weekend and whatever other people and I make out of it.

Also everyone should listen to Dream Theater's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence.

Edit: I neglected to include this originally. I was going to. But I forgot. I came up with a drinking game in the long drive from Leicester to Edinburgh. One alcoholic drink per petrol and piss stop. I can see getting very drunk or at least comfortably numb on that journey if I follow that plan. Geordie agrees with me. Looks like the plan is going forwards.

Quite Amazed.

2007-03-11T20:24:00.000+01:00

Wow Irn-Bru has caffeine in.

Is that why I was so good shite at Megazone last week?

California Uber Alles!

Also I Am Stupid

2007-03-07T17:44:00.000+01:00

So I wrote a post some weeks back exhaling the virtues of Moleskines. I finished the one I was using and moved onto the next one. In fact I think I finished it on the airplane going to the UK. No matter I started a fresh clean one.

So it comes to Monday morning and I have not really made much attempt to pack.
Here I am running around the house grabbing the things I need.
Mp3 player, work ID badge, passport, work permit, moleskine notebook.

The plane flight goes well. I didn't decide to write anything and I just read Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Listened to some music and made it through passport control all fine and dandy.

The first time I decided to write something down for pleasure was last night. About ten past seven and I had just missed the bus. Thinking that this might be a perfect opportunity to you know catch up and dump some ideas down to paper. Incidentally I was listening to Nightwish and about to scatter down some thoughts about Cat and Cthulhu riffing off the fantasy genre.

I pull out the moleskine from my tote bag.
Flick the elastic band off and turn to the bookmark.

Amrita Shergill

And the bookmark is near the back of the book.
Paper also feels funny as well.
Looks the same on the outside but inside is totally full.

Doh!

I picked the wrong notebook up.
A frantic phone call later and a few e-mails and it turns out that I had left it on my desk in the UK. It is getting mailed to me thankfully.

Left without a notebook to use I got crazy inventive and remembered a Flickr photo set that I'd seen months back.

This photo set to be precise.

I have three or four of them in my back pocket now made of printer paper.

They are quite awesome.

Well I Have a Beard Again

2007-03-07T15:10:00.000+01:00

I have all but given up on, "The Blog Post."
And before I can even discuss why I can not finish, "The Blog Post" I am going to have to explain what it is. Which I promptly will because I have kept the existence of it fairly quiet and only a few people have gotten to read it so far.

So what is "The Blog Post"?
A fecking pain in the arse!
The reason why I despise and lament cameras more then ever.
One two thousand word string of jealousy (mostly towards photographers), annoyance, self loathing, generalized loathing of others and a badly used metaphor.

So I was thinking to my self the week before Fasnacht that I could record the event as a long entry. In fact I could pretty much report on the event from my point of view. Taking the naive view to the future I assumed nothing much would happen, we would all get to see the event and I might be able to put a few pictures in that other people had taken of the proceedings. Naturally at the end of the whole process which I assumed would be last Tuesday, I would have a document that I could take away and in part go, "look at me I can write real stuff." But mainly have a good written down version of events to which I and others could see my probably rather skewed and corrupted point of view.

Currently the article which is entitled, "The Weekend That Drove Me From the Magic Kingdom" is sitting in several places you can't read it at 1789 words and about to talk about the the point where I received more abuse from the same person that keeps giving me abuse about my hair. There is an interesting juxtaposition of peoples attitudes highlighted around that point of the article. But I've become stuck and apathetic about the whole thing.

Which means I have become apathetic about everything.
Furthermore since Fasnact everyone in my peer community in Switzerland seems to be ignoring me.

No wonder going back to the UK was so good.
Sad as it is to say I can not wait to go back in a few weeks time now.
I have only been back in Basel two nights so that is some serious lack of good conversation or some really intense feelings of being ignored.

Oh have some selected unedited quotes from "The Blog Post".
These happen not to include much if any personal attacks.

Extract the first:

The event is called Chienbäse and it started at seven fifteen on Sunday evening with a Swiss level of promptness. For forty five minutes people marched through the streets carrying over sized burning brooms, often the broom carriers covered in the most flimsy of protective gear. A bicycle helmet covered in tin foil isn't going to cut it when one of the burning logs falls on your head. Young children even carrying there own small, but still large for a child brooms. Drums and piccolo flutes accompanied them, marching in their own distinctive hand crafted masks. Devils are a popular theme here.

The highlight however are the troops of people drawing big bonfires in iron carts thorough the narrow streets. The flames get close people and these are long hot burning bonfires. Blue inners and all. Several times me and the people in my party had to duck to the confetti littered ground in order to avoid being burned by the proximity to the fires.

Extract the second:

Did I even experience this whole event? Or has my sickened and diseased brain finally called for last orders and subjected me to a hellish eighteen hour hallucination? Of course if the universe is all in my eyes none of this matters. Whatever, I just wanted to throw some existentialism and metaphysics into the mix.

St Jacob, the footie ground in Basel is where the party we attended took place. No not the actual football ground, that would be silly. Took place in a street adjacent to the ground though, near a church in fact. In this tiny house designed for people to hold parties in. It was painted white from what I could tell in the darkness. Had a fairly large grassy area and when you when in side there was one room on each floor. Drinking area and dance floor ground floor. Pissers, showers and utility access in the basement. Place to throw coats and probably a few sleeping bags up the narrow stairs on the top floor.
I should have looked really. But what reason other then your entertainment would I have had to go up there? I don't wear coats generally.

No don't tell me that my Excalibur waited up there. You know if my whole point of existence was there. The reason for me to even get breath in the morning and poke my sore ribs while I lie in bed. To imagine it could have been hidden under bulky wool coats, well I might just have to cry.

Photographers have it easy, they point, click and forget.

Change of Self

2007-02-21T19:48:00.000+01:00

So today I tidyed my desk at work.
It is now perfectly clear apart from a few laptops in a neat pile. A Vi cheatsheet and a reserch paper on predictive markets.

I also have a shave.
Even though I was starting to enjoy having a beard.
Amazingly I've been in work "on time" this week everyday.

I think I'm changing.
For better or for worse though, who knows?

A Blog in the Afternoon

2007-02-20T17:34:00.000+01:00

Well there isn't much going on at work at the moment. So I feel that I should do a bit of a mind dump of a few things occupying my mind at the moment. Obviously if it is being written down I don't mind people reading it. Something I've got a few words to say about later. Oh I went to see a movie last night with, Dan, Aateka and Susan. It was the new Emma Thompson, Will Farrel flick, erm I think it was called, "Stranger Than Fiction". The name of that film has a mental block in my mind at the moment. Oh the final short summery of yesterdays interesting social activities is that I went to Mr Pickwick's with Alex for beer (well I had a glass of cider) and sausage buttes. It tasted good. But I think tonight I might be resorting to eating fresh pasta from Manor.

So I don't know how common this view is but if I write something down. Most of the time if not all of the time I except it to be read by someone else. I started to think about this in a very loose and fuzzy way while on the train back from the resort I was snowboarding at the weekend. I had a row of two seats to my self and I was leaning against the fold out table scribbling away in my moleskine. Actually I was doing the theory work about cyberpunk/film noir etc mentioned in the last post. Well Anna, a person who moved recently to the place I live asked what I was writing. Well what was I writing? So to short cut the fact that giving an answer to that question is harder than just handing over the notebook and saying read for your self. I offered to let her read it. She read a few lines. Caught on that it was an unstructured transcript of thoughts and handed it back. Not wanting to read it because it was a diary. Well this blog is a diary; or at least a journal of my thoughts and opinions. And I don't mind people reading it.
So to close this poorly constructed anecdote I suppose I should just suggest if you are going to ask what someone is writing. You'd better be ready to read something personal. Because it is far easier to hand the journal over then to try and explain.

Stranger Than Fiction was alright. I looked at the Rotten Tomatoes website this morning to see what the films meta-review was. It has roughly a 75% rating at the moment. And yeah I'd give it that for what it was. I certainly found it entertaining. Although quite depressing at how they portrayed the author character. Anyone who was witness to me writing [Insert Name] is probably all to well aware of my avoidance tactics when it comes to writing deadlines. The fact I was drunk most Tuesday and Wednesday nights is testemant to that. But in my defense I normally camped in Ice Mango a local Internet cafe to where I was living and just got it done on paper on Wednesday afternoon.

Well most of the time I managed to recover by the afternoon.
Sometimes my system programming lab got in the way and knocked me out.

The short story I'm going to attempt to write is just about to reach the hit the ground running with a pen and bleed ink onto the paper stage. I've to stock up on supplies on Saturday. Do a bit more research into the artist Amrite Shergil and hopefully find some wonderful metaphors and descriptions of airline air supplies when I fly back next Wednesday to attend module registration at university. The story at the moment is: artist is flying to Japan on hypersonic plane, plane is filled with salaryman, important business man is murdered, artist is accused and artist has to prove herself innocent in the short time it takes to fly to anywhere in the world when you can circle the globe in ninety minutes.

There is something about closed environment murder mystery that appeals to me at the moment.
The puzzle element of putting one together that fits together without much deus ex machina is the lure I suspect.

Better stop mind dumping now.
Or at least move onto a different form.

A Weekend of Yin and Yang

2007-02-19T15:01:00.000+01:00

Leo
23 Jul - 22 Aug

The positive side of having Saturn on your case is that you know where the buck stops - with you! Professionally, that means doing your own dirty work and winning promotion on merit. On a personal level it means a reality check; you can move your lover in or out - the important thing is that both parties know and agree the boundaries.

Now of course I don't believe in Horoscopes. The stars and planets have as much influence on my future as a gnat shitting in Tokyo. Besides the generalized nature of the above statement applies 25/7, 365 days of the year. But it is nice to weekly read a bleeding obvious statement.
Why did I start this post with my horoscope for this week from the Manchester Observer? Well I find the language used in horoscopes fascinating to read. There is just something functionally clever about them that such bull shit can be written in such broad strokes.

Also it distracts me from having to think too deeply about the weekend for a few minutes.

This weekend was a yin and yang kind of deal. Saturday I woke up at four. Went snowboarding. Seriously risked death, pain, broken and twisted limbs and had a smashing adrenalin filled time. I also spent the three hour journey on the train back from the resort deconstructing cyberpunk and film noir/hardboiled as flavors/genres of science fiction and crime fiction. That's all so I can write a short story. I was using my moleskine. It's nearly full one way. So soon I am going to turn it around and start filling up all the pages I missed. But the deconstruction went well and I have a fairly good idea of all the features I need to make this story work. Or any cyberpunk story work well. Now I've just got to summon up the lunacy to be a good enough writer to pull it off.

I also went snowboarding at the resort in Braunwald as I said above before I started to ramble about my journey home. It is a nice place. Except there wasn't lots of snow. Just slush and ice. Had a fun time though. I am now a master heel edger. Moguls are no problem for my finely tuned heel edging. However being able to turn onto my toe edge is still a problem. This lead to Susan, the person I was snowboarding with most of the time uttering the phrase, "Are you alright?" Lots, more times then makes me feel confidant in my ability on a Snowboard. Which is either because I'm crap or because my front boot was not on tight enough. You decide.

Sunday was boring, dull, shit, a day where no one did anything. And I woke up at nine thirty. Worse still I went to the shops to buy food and started work on my weeks laundry before noon. This left me with nothing to do except watch weak weekend TV on BBC Prime, CNN World and MTV type channels. Clearly at this point I am sick, ill and should be thrown on the side of a mountain and left to die for this deviant behavior.

Well I should be going to the cinema tonight so at least I can sneak a drink in before, after the film.

I wonder what my horoscope might say for next time I go snowboarding?

Leo
23 Jul - 22 Aug

The positive advantages to having Mars on your side this week is that while you will be placed in difficult situations which will require all of your skill and effort to avoid horrible pain and death. However the view will be great and you'll sleep like a dead baby stuffed inside a log the night after.

Pretentious

2007-02-13T22:36:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not updating for a while I've been busy.
Occasionally snowboarding. But mostly I have been busy being lazy. I'm a lazy person by nature. It's not a nurture thing. Both of my parents are hard working although I do get my attitude towards cleaning stuff and organizing possessions from them.

But yeah I'm lazy.
And I have something to admit.

I May Sound Like a Pretentious Twat But...

I love my moleskine.
It's a notebook. It's one of the four items you will always find me carrying now. No matter where I am in the world.
Pens, documents that I'm required to carry else spend a night in the cells and my MP3 player are a given and don't really carry much sentimental value other then their function.
Those items are:

From left, The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (the current "book"). Moleskine and Pendrive

The moleskine. For a long while I've been an advocate of Mead notebooks. There are American (or at least the only place I've seen them is in American drug stores). I still think that they are great notebooks to write in. But they don't really do public transport that well.

Well guess what I can do on public transport?
Yup write stuff. Or scribble mind-maps of ideas. Whatever.

Moleskine on a recent page of work on Cat & Cthulhu.

I also got this notebook from my late Grandma.
A few days after she had died my mum was sorting through her house and brought it back.
She [my mum] knew I'd wanted to try them out. But I tossed it on a heap of other notebooks and forgot about it. Until I got back at Christmas. I found it in a pile while looking for some old stories I'd written. It went in my bag with my Easyjet flight details on.

So yeah my Grandma lives on a little bit with the moleskine I'm using at the moment.

Gosh I do sound like a pretentious twat.

X-Posted to my livejournal account.

Sleep Math

2007-02-05T22:39:00.000+01:00

If I go to bed nowish. And get up an hour earlier.
By that I mean set my alarm clock an hour ahead of the usual time.
I might get some extra sleep.

I doubt it.
I'll probably just fall asleep early and sleep till my normal time.
Or maybe just bollocks it all up and fall asleep normally and wake up normally.
Maybe I'll fall asleep as usual and wake up early.

I don't know which to predict. As long as I get some downtime for my brain out of the whole experiment I will be happy.

Oh I have to do some Cat and Cthulhu stuff tomorrow.

Thought of the Day

2007-02-02T17:24:00.000+01:00

Pushing someone over the edge is less fun than watching them stumble drunkenly over it.

Cold.

2007-01-31T15:09:00.000+01:00

Ich bin kalt.

Understand this.

2007-01-23T16:11:00.000+01:00

I think the name of this Blog needs to be made clear.
I had a full and very good nights sleep last night.
It is now four in the afternoon.
And well I've been wanting to fall asleep for the past two hours.

So yeah I am the king of sleep.
*yawn*

Just Sitting Back and Listening to Aphex Twin.

2007-01-22T21:42:00.000+01:00

So life is quite good at the moment.
Well I'm not dead and no infectious illnesses that I'm currently carrying seem to be exhibiting symptoms.

I also spent the weekend in near monk like levels of silence and solitude reading.
I finished reading the marvelous Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on Saturday. I find my self quite enjoying the idea of living in a post scarcity ad-hoc society. However I don't think I'd find my self in any of the places that Cory Doctorow depicts. I've never been to Disney land. Any of them in fact. So my imagination made the Haunted Mansion looked like the movie poster for the (apparently) crappy film. My view on the Hall of Presidents was like the Duff Hall of Presidents. I don't think I missed anything by not having been there.
But the book is awesome. A good length as well. At just over 45,000 words it clocks in at 208 pages. This is the length I think in really. My attention span can dig the longer novels. I mean Cryponomicon a 1000 page plus tome of a book is one of my all time favourites. But I like things to be kept concise.

The other book that I read was A Wizard of Earthsea. I read that in one day. Rather then a week. It's very short. Only about 160 pages. But so good. I've read it twice before. So I think you are started to get the impression of how good I think this book is. It's just everything that Lord of the Rings isn't.
For a start while it has wizards and even the trappings of an epic story. It keeps the narrative firmly focused on Ged. It keeps the magic somewhat coherent and it provides a grand tour of Earthsea. A setting which is about as far from the eurocentric focus of Lord of the Rings, Eragon and pretty much every other fantasy novel.

Okay I think you can guess I am an Ursula Le Guin fanboy.
So maybe it wouldn't surprise you that if I ever have kids that they will be given this before Lord of the Rings. Although I think that was the case with me as well. I'll have to ask my mum.

The fact that A Wizard of Earthsea is more of a kids book then Lord of the Rings isn't the reason as well.

Well I guess I am listening to Gnarls Barkley now.

Just go read both of those books.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom if creative commons free for fucks sake.
And A Wizard of Earthsea is a tenner with three of the other books in the series.

You people have no excuse.

First Time This Year For a Saturday.

2007-01-20T00:34:00.000+01:00

So I'm going to bed now.
And I'm not going to wake up until I really want to.
Since this blog is notionly about sleep I should write more about the subject.

Maybe I'll review my sleep.

The first notes I should make now are that my feet are numb from walking around musiums all evening.
Oh and I smell of curry, hot dogs and smoke.
I'm very warm and comfortable.
More then a bit sleepy.

Tomorrow is going to rock!

Just a wish.

2007-01-19T13:16:00.000+01:00

Scruffy looking, long haired, leftist, book loving, quiet type, Internet addicted, storytelling, atheist type seeks happy place with regular supply of snow.

Snowcrazy.

2007-01-16T22:58:00.000+01:00

I've hoped this would happen to be honest. It is after all the reason I came to Switzerland to work. To play in the snow of course. And now I'm snow crazy.

Now a quick disclose. The first Saturday of January I spent up Mt. Titlis mucking about with my board. But not making any real progress or really learning anything. Just having a frustrating time. But I was bitten enough by the well altitude. God damn it if I'm just not as sound as a pound up there.

So this weekend just gone I went with a bunch of people I know. But don't live with. I was one of only two boarders and two guys going. And I had a two hour one on one lesson.
I went from being able to just about push my self along on the flat with my front foot in the binding. To being able to go down a hill front side and backside. And starting to make basic s-turns. I am proud of my self.

So I should go again this week.
Four in the morning starts.
Vicious but so fucking worth it.
I'm snowcrazy damn it.

I don't.

2007-01-09T00:34:00.000+01:00

I don't understand why I hate.
I just do.
And it feels totally cathartic when the cause goes away.
Like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders.
At times like these I do want to write.
It's because after spending an evening with a self described "retard" almost anything feels intelligent and seem fresh.
It's all right to hate people that call themselves retarded isn't it?
I mean anyone that disregards the fact that having learning disabilities isn't something to make light of is fair game.
Or is being this dismissive and passive aggressive just as bad?