L. Shelby

Three Quarters Completed

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 19:10:05 GMT

I visited medical establishments three times last week (all for routine stuff), and also went out to celebrate my 31st wedding anniversary. I think if it wasn't for all that running around I would be "fully recovered" by now. As it is, I managed to make my wordage goal for the week, even though I still haven't managed to work anything else back into my life yet and my overall activity levels were down from the week before.

But whether I didn't quite manage to make my wordage goal, or I made it just barely, I have continued to keep the story progressing for all but the one week when I crashed completely. As a result, this week I completed the third quarter of the script for A Lily Besieged. Go me! And because I finished off another quarter, I have started a fresh file, and it feels really wierd to have my word count only showing four figures. Especially since total wordage for the project should hit 200 000 in the next couple weeks.

Every once in a while I consider the possibility of naming the four quarters of A Lily Besieged something other Part 1, Part 2, etc. If it were really going to be made into a tv series there would be no point, and if I were to turn it into a series of graphic novels instead I'd probably want more than four volumes. But with each quarter of the script weighing in at just over 60 000 words, four books really does seem like the most likely way for a novelization to go -- adapting it from the script ought to add wordage, but not enough to require splitting the quarters in two. So if this story is ever published in novel form, I will need four titles. If I named the books after the various clans/characters in them, I would have a great excuse to use the clan/rank insignias as cover art. Not that I really need an excuse, but there does need to be some way to figure out which insignias get featured on which book. Hmm. Maybe go a little astrological: The Inception of the Bear, Conjunction of Hawk and Owl, the Moon in Occlusion, Red Eagle Ascendant -- people might be disappointed at the lack of astrological references in the text if I go that route though. Maybe... Rouse a Sleeping Bear, Enrage a Hovering Hawk, Guard a Battered Eagle, Catch a Shadowed Tiger? (There is no Tiger insignia in the book. But a cover showing the actual insignia of the person being "caught" in the final volume would be a terrible spoiler -- the true identity of the 'big bad' isn't revealed until near the end of the story.)

For Last Week... Writing: 5278 words Pedometer: 17438 steps

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Could be Worse

Mon, 31 May 2021 16:18:02 GMT

So I had a mini-health-crash that took me down for a week, and then I spent last week doing recovery. Hopefully this week will be more productive. Ironically, after dragging myself out of bed, having done nothing but watch shows for a week, my WiiFit cheerfully informed me that I had the body of a twenty-year-old. I pity that twenty-year-old. It's normal for me to score higher on any kind of physical assesment if I've just come off a multi-day break, though -- is that the way it works for everyone (the story of the famous violinist who if he didn't practise for one day he could tell the difference, etc. seems to indicate not) or is it another side effect of whatever ails me?

On Saturday I got a request for one of my books from one of my kids, so yesterday I hunted up the latest story file to send to her... and ended up spending a good chunk of the day reading it myself, and chuckling. There is this wierd feeling when I do that -- these are my own lines I'm laughing at, isn't there supposed to be something wrong with that? But the reason I write has always been because I like my own stories. When I was doing nothing for a week, I was irked that I wasn't accomplishing anything, (I like having my progress bars that go up, and my list of things to do that I check off) but the thing that bothered me the most was that I had really been looking forward to the next bit in the story I am writing, and because I wasn't feeling well enough to write, the story had to be put on hold. Last week I could only write every other day or so, but at least my story was happening again. That made me happy.

For Last Week... Writing: 5369 words Pedometer: 18 607 steps

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To the Accompaniment of a Frog Chorus....

Mon, 10 May 2021 17:13:22 GMT

We got the second dose of our Covid vaccine this week, which sounds like a good reason why my numbers are down in pretty much everything, but it isn't the real reason. I had insomnia a couple nights this week, and I just don't seem to be all that productive on less than four hours of sleep. Still, I did make my wordage goal, and that's the important one, right?

Since everyone was suffering from shots, and it rained a lot, for this week's outing we headed out to Seibenthaler Fen, where the marsh-marigolds were fading, and no spectacular new flowers had showed up to replace them yet. But that's okay, becuase one of the appeals of the fen, is looking for turtles and frogs, both of which made an appearance. :)

I also put together a basic version of a new webgame. Word Scrambles -- or perhaps more accurately, word unscrambles? I'm doing it for a friend from LibraryThing's Hobnob With Authors group, although I plan to use it myself also, of course. She wants a space theme for her version, but I'm thinking that for me, it would work better as a 'Coral Palace' themed game.

For last Week... Writing: 5026 words Coding: 3 hours (Not counting Sunday) Art: 3 hours Music: 1 hours Pedometer: 37 465 steps

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Snow in April

Mon, 03 May 2021 20:27:14 GMT

The week before last I was up in everything except art. Last week was down for everything except writing and steps taken. But at least I managed to keep my wordcounts up, even though I had a rough week. I was picking up again by the end of the week, so I'm sure this week will be better. It also snowed that week, which wouldn't have been particularly notable where I grew up, but here all the trees were already in flower. Our baby cherry trees lost all it's pretty blossoms. :(

My husband is no longer between jobs, so I have been doing most of my walks along the bike path instead of dragging him to a different park every day. Along the bike path we are getting mostly dandelions and creeping ivy. (Which are pretty, I guess, but I see them all the time, and they are not native -- I became a native plant snob when I started researching for a book I plan to set in the historical locale: if it isn't native, I can't use it in my book!) A week ago Wednesday I took myself off to Indian Mound. But that was the day it snowed, and most of the wildflowers were looking pretty bedraggled. I did find one Wild Geranium that was sheltered by a rock that looked fine.

Wild Geranium was where it was at last week too. Last year I visited the Cox Arboretum and stumbled on their "wildflower spot" which was lovely, but it was clear we had missed the best time for it. So I put in my calendar that Saturday the First of May, 2021 I was supposed to go back again, so I could see the location in the full glory of its late spring color. That actually worked. There were wild geraniums, wild blue phlox, shooting stars, blue stars, and several other flowers I haven't identified yet.

For the Week before last...
Writing: 6020 words
Coding: 6.5 hours
Art: 1 hours
Music: 6 hours
Pedometer: 34 790 steps

For last Week...
Writing: 6412 words
Data Entry: 4 hours
Music: 2.5 hours
Pedometer: 35 813 steps

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Another Week Goes By

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 14:37:10 GMT

Last week the flower of the hour was Marsh Marigold. The biggest most beautiful blossoms were at Sieventhaler Fen, but down in The Narrows although the plants were smaller they completely carpeted the river valley so that the all trees were growing up out of a sea of yellow.

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Carefully does it!

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:54:14 GMT

My activity continues to increase -- perhaps a little too much. On Saturday we went to a "new" park for our walk, (although I'm pretty sure I've been there before once, only not recently, and with my son rather than my husband.) I put in my my "best" day since getting the new fitbit, and as a result was pretty sick yesterday.

But it was a super pretty walk! Bluebells and dutchman's petticoats all over the hillsides, and violets and spring beauties in the valley. And a great big sycamore, looming up and over the waterfall.

For the Week... Writing: 4156 words Coding: 2 hours Pedometer: 24961 steps

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My Own Pocket World

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 20:26:44 GMT

My state is locked down, but not a whole lot has changed for me. I already avoided crowds and left the house mostly only to take walks or play some disk golf.

One thing that is different is that the main ''social media" site I hang out on, LibraryThing.com, a 'social book cataloging site', has dropped their paid membership paradigm and gone to all free for everyone -- still with no ads! They were planning to do this soon anyway since the commercial services they sell on the side were already fully supporting the site. But now seemed a good time to go live with it.

If anyone wants to drop by, I'm the administrator for the Hobnob With Authors Group, so a post there is sure to find me. My username is LShelby.

In writing related news I have finished writing the glossary entries for Sails of Everwind today, so I'm on to editing now. Finishing the copyedits for Eyes of Infistar is next, then cleaning up Sails before it goes off my copyeditor. I hope to have that much done at least by the end of the month, even with my stir-crazy husband prowling the premises. Worst to worst I will recruit him to help. :)

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A Physics Question

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 01:06:43 GMT

So here is my workspace:

It's a pretty nifty arrangement, but I wish it was slightly more stable. But if I set the tripod legs on the stand further apart (thus increasing the stability), that will push the main pole of the stand further away from the bed, and in order to keep the tablet in a comfortable position I will have to adjust the tablet clamp so that it is further out on the arm (thus decreasing the stability).

So would the outcome of all that adjusting be a tablet stand that is more stable or less stable?

This past week I wrote for more than ten hours. At least it was supposed to be writing, but sometimes it seems like I'm spending more time looking stuff up in my worldbuilding database, and adding things to my worldbuilding database, and occasionally fixing some aspect of my worldbuilding database. Ah, well, that's all important stuff too, right?

According to screentime I spent almost as much time doing artwork as I did writing, but it was really my daughter who was doing the artwork this week. I was too busy sewing and tatting. My music practicing suffered a bit, too. And, as I expected, I did a lot of show watching and didn't get any books read. But since I was doing that on purpose I'm okay with that. This week I'm sure it'll be more music, art and books and less shows.

I did go disk golfing, worked out almost every day, and averaged more than one walk a day. (Gosh, that almost makes me sound healthy!)

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A Small Brag...

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 20:08:27 GMT

I made my (college-aged) son a stuffed frog for Christmas. (Why I thought my son would want a stuffed frog is a long story that I will share only if requested.) The frog has a wire skeleton, so that he is posable, and is magnetized with large magnets in each foot and teeny tiny magnets in each finger. After making him, I dressed him in a dark suit and a bright red tie and sent him on his way.

When he called me up for my birthday, my son informed me that he has had numerous people tell him that they would pay money to get a frog like this one.

It's heart-warming, but the frog is entirely hand-sewn, and getting the magnets into the fingers was a bit of a challenge. I don't think anyone would be willing to pay a price commensurate with the time spent. Still, at least the present was a hit. :)

According to screentime, this past week I spent 6 hours on art, 5 hours practicing languages, and only 3 and a half hours writing. Possibly because I spent time I should have been writing, trying to get caught up with the online friends I have been mostly ignoring for a painfully long time? But I don't remember using social media during my usual work hours. Maybe its because I'm working on a glossary, and working on glossaries always goes really slow for me, so I'm spending so much time staring blankly at my screen that screentime isn't counting it as active time on my text editor?

At any rate, I read two books and spent less than two hours watching shows. I also did morning workouts four out

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My Apple Pencil sticks to my Spoon

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 02:10:39 GMT

It’s my birthday today, and so when my husband took me out on Valentine’s Day, he bought me a bigger, better iPad with an Apple Pencil as a birthday present, which made me very happy, because: pressure sensitivity! Yay! (It’s an artist thingy.)

I have spent at least a couple hours since then drawing with the pencil. And even when I’m not actually drawing anything, I have this tendency to use it to type on the little mini-onscreen-keyboard, write handwritten notes, or even sometimes navigate with it.

And so, when I was eating breakfast this morning while continuing to use my shiny new birthday present I kept having my Apple Pencil attempt to attach itself to my spoon. (Maybe there is a romance brewing there?)

In other news, I am almost afraid to say I’m doing well, because it seems like shortly after I do so, my health collapses. Nonetheless, I am almost recovered from the cold that took place barely a month after the previous cold. I still can’t sing. :(. But for this cold, unlike the last cold, I didn’t get so sick that I ended up breaking my Duolingo streak, nor did I stop getting writing done. (Duolingo, for those unfamiliar with it, is a language learning app that I use to try and prevent deterioration of what little French I managed to acquire in Jr. High, and also maybe pick up a little bit of Korean.)

Setting the new iPad up to replace the old iPad as my main writing tool seems to be going fairly well. (Transferring my story files was the easiest thing to get done, since I was already transferring them back and forth between my old tablet and my desktop). I should have no trouble getting back to writing a glossary for Sails of Everwind on Tuesday. 🙂

I have no music on the new iPad yet though. My husband does not want the desktop system software updated, so iTunes and my new tablet won’t talk to each other.

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122 178 words. Woot.

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 20:01:38 GMT

I have just reached the designating stopping place (halfway) on the current project (a screenplay for an Asian-style tv drama with a vaguely wuxia feel to it) which I wasn’t supposed to have been working on. (But I have a better excuse than usual, because any excuse that involves the words “spinal surgery” is way better than average.)

That means that I can now convince myself to go back to all the other projects I was supposed to be working on. At least that is the plan. I have too many projects that I stopped somewhere in the middle, and I want to get some of them finished and off my mental to do list.

So there’s this website overhaul that is long overdue, and likewise four books in need of editing, and four covers that need to be painted…

… and then finally I can get back to finishing this novel (Song of Asolde Vol. 4: Fencing With Waves)) that I was in the middle of writing a year ago when my neck went kablooey.

It’s a bit difficult to figure out where I’m going slot the completion of this project into my schedule, though. Stopping here is like stopping at the end of a volume of a multivolume epic. I’ve been doing that for Song of Asolde for years… but it’s a bit wearing. Twenty years later I just want to get the story done, already.

I hope I don’t end up putting off Lily Besieged for as long…. but at the same time, why am I writing this project at all? (Answer: Because I wanted to see if typing on my tablet with a bluetooth keyboard was a viable way to write. Since I didn’t have any projects on my tablet, I started a ‘test’ project from scratch.)

Alas, I have no use whatsoever for a screenplay. I’d probably have to convert it into novels before I can do anything with it anyhow. (But as an exercise in working within an imposed structure it has been interesting.)

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Still alive, and once again kicking

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 13:37:18 GMT

So apparently after spending six months trying not to move much, I have no endurance at all, (instead of the hardly any I usually have). I didn’t make it through even a 5 minute routine on my WiiFit before getting too dizzy to continue. But at least I actually got on WiiFit. Which means that for the first time in about six months, I checked off every item on my morning to-do list today.

This probably deserves some small celebration, but I’m thinking I’m going to be too tired to party, (see earlier comment about lacking endurance.)

I also have made some progress on getting the ‘local’ version of my website working, am back to tatting while watching shows, (which somehow makes watching shows feel less like a waste of time), and have made some progress on some long overdue betareading.

I think I’m ready to attempt some ‘real’ work now, but not today. I have discovered that without my laptop, making Fridays my coding day doesn’t work out so well, because my husband does stuff for his work on the family desktop on Fridays. So Monday has become Code Monday, and my task for today is to backup everything and then update the php on the online version of my website and hope nothing breaks.

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So Surgery Happened...

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 15:10:11 GMT

Since early in March I’ve been having trouble with a pinched nerve in my neck. Except for the first month I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but the reason I wasn’t in a lot of pain was because I very carefully stayed in the ‘good’ positions that didn’t irritate the nerve, and so I had trouble getting anything done.

So on Sept 5th, I had disk replacement surgery. So far, post-surgery recovery seems to be going well. 🙂

While I was having troubles my aging laptop finally died, so I’ve been trying to transfer all my work processes to my iPad and the family desktop computer. This is apparently going to cost me quite a bit since essentially every app I use needs to be upgraded. ::sigh::

In the meantime, since none of my current projects were accessible to me, I ended up writing 70K+ words on a totally new and possibly useless project… the screenplay for an asian-style drama. There’s no way I can actually have an asian style drama produced, but I’ve been watching asian dramas, and so naturally, being who I am, I have to invent stories that feel like they are for that medium. But maybe it isn’t entirely a waste of time – I can always do a novelization version later, right?

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A Bad Ending may be Better than No Ending...

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 21:08:25 GMT

…But I’d really rather get a Good Ending.

So, news: During the past two weeks my health was only so-so, and I had a lot of downtime. Bummer.Fortunately I’ve a whole lot of practice trying to look at things positively. Although I didn’t make my weekly wordage goal for either week, if you add the wordage for both weeks together, the result is easily over my weekly goal.

So I didn’t have two bad weeks, I only had one bad week, it just wasn’t a consecutive week. 😉

Which brings me to the post title…

I watch a lot of asian dramas when I’m not feeling well. But IMHO one of the weaknesses of the medium is the endings. I just ran into one what particularly irked me. According to the reviews it had a “ambiguous” ending. Apparently “ambiguous” means that after forcing the heroine to tragically sacrifice herself by means of a scientifically-unsound plot device, and establishing that it is essentially impossible for the heroine to have survived, we will none the less show you scenes that make it look like she might have survived anyway.

I can appreciate a clever explanation of why the inevitable maybe isn’t inevitable after all, but I didn’t GET an explanation. So it doesn’t even matter whether she’s “really alive” to me or not, at this point, because either way it just feels like someone tried to play a very cheap trick on me.

I still have ~60K words to go to my next ending. But when I get there, I swear I will do a MUCH better job.

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As soon as I can do one thing...

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:59:42 GMT

… I want to do everything.

Now that I’m writing regularly, instead of setting down with a sigh of relief, and saying, “Ah… good!” I start going: “let’s go back to every online community I’ve ever joined and become active again. Let’s join the two writer’s groups the library is running. Let’s do art, and music and, and, and…”

So, I’ve been keeping myself busy, lately. Maybe a little too busy. But as long as I keep hitting my wordcount goals, I’m hoping it’s okay to indulge myself a little.

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After the storm

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:58:20 GMT

I was supposed to go to a song circle on Saturday, but it was cancelled due to bad weather. Sunday I went out view the post-storm scenery. I am accustomed to ice storms that encase twigs in a cocoon of ice, making it look a bit as if the trees were made out of icicles. This was different. The ice was not continuous, but clung (mostly to the upper branches) in spots or chains. It made it seem like the trees had been hung with crystals, rather as if some over-energetic fairy children had been enthusiastically decorating for some winter festival.

It was also a good day for viewing animal tracks. All the usual suspects were represented, deer, feral cats, rabbits, and squirrels. I saw several trails of teeny-tiny footprints, clearly left by a critter of mouse size or smaller. And also dog prints… although stray dogs are rarer than stray cats in this neighborhood, so maybe they were actually fox tracks. I know we have foxes in the area. There were also some messy tracks I couldn’t make out well enough enough to identify the owner. Skunk maybe? Or raccoon?

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That Was Quick

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:09:50 GMT

Eyes of Infistar is at my copyeditor. (She reported that she was enjoying it and that it was nice to be working on something that is “actually good” which gives me a glow of accomplishment, but also makes me thing that there might be some drawbacks to being a freelance editor-for-hire.

Sails of Everwind has been edited according to editorial demand and is ready to be reread and hopefully approved to go off to the copy editors next.

Lioness is being read by readers…

I just ran out of editing projects to work on. Looks like I get to start writing the next book already. Only a few weeks after finishing the last one. Awesome!

Fencing With Waves, it is your turn!

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Behind the Scenes

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:44:18 GMT

I have just completed a major update for my website, removing outdated code from hopefully everywhere. (And that’s a lot of everywhere!)

For the past two weeks I have been writing (or editing) Monday through Thursday, and coding Friday through Sunday, and its been working wonderfully. I’ve been going around grinning, because it makes me so very happy to have both kinds of projects moving forward at a reasonable pace. Here’s to hoping that it continues working for me for months and months and months!

(Although, I do have to figure out how to work Art in there also, somehow. I’ve currently got 4 books all at the editing phase all at once. That means Cover Art will be needed. Eeep!)

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Looking for Beta-readers

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 20:22:36 GMT

I think I have got Lioness to the point where I really need to get some outside feedback.

Here’s a go at a blurb for same, see what y’all think:

As the daughter of a wealthy merchant lord, Veldy grew up rich and sheltered, spending her days weaving and making lace. When her father convinces her to marry a nomadic lion hunter, she embarks on a bridal journey that will carry her deep into the dry and windswept highlands — facing physical hardships she previously could never even have imagined. But Veldy has far more to overcome than a harsh climate and an extreme change in lifestyle. Her bridegroom has many enemies — and not all of them are entirely human.

Anyway, the vital statistics: Lioness is a ~160K word story (I’ve currently got it split up into a duology), set in an Africa-esque fantasy world. (The same world as Cantata and Pavane, but on the other side of the continent). It could probably be considered YA. It’s got action, “cultural stuff”, and, of course, a bit of romance. And I’m looking for people who would be willing to read it and tell me what they think of the pacing, and whether I have any plot holes or I didn’t explain something well enough — that kind of stuff.

Mirrored on My Website.

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Number 13… or maybe 14.

Mon, 04 Sep 2017 15:40:17 GMT

I have finished the first draft of a historical pirate romance set on the same world as Across a Jade Sea. It took me about a year to write. I don’t know exactly how long it is, because I wrote it out by hand, but at 281 pages, with my average page of longhand being somewhere between 150-200 words, it is clearly a full novel in length. That makes it my 13th completed novel.

Unless Lioness ends up getting split into a duology. Which is very possible.

Either way, 13th or 14th, it’s still a milestone, and I still get to celebrate. 🙂

I started working on it because I wasn’t feeling very well, and I was having trouble putting in a regular work day (especially since my computer had been moved out of my bedroom due to family computer-shortage issues). But I really wanted to be writing something, so I said: ‘Why don’t I write longhand? That way I can take it to bed with me, and I can tell myself, ‘it doesn’t matter how good it is, because I can fix it when I type it up later’. Also, I can just work on one of the random shorter things in my head that isn’t in the regular queue, so that if I start feeling better I won’t mind abandoning it for something else.” (I thought it would be ‘shorter’. I don’t always guess right when it comes to length.)

By the time I felt better — several months later — I had at least 50 000 words, and I didn’t want to abandon it. I wanted to get it written.

But now it is written, and I can finally get back to my ‘regularly scheduled’ work. Yay!
Which means: getting the two Bambi books ready to go off to my copy editor; finishing my first pass edits on Lioness, so I can get reader feedback; and then writing Book Four of Song of Asolde, Fencing With Waves.

I’m kind of eager to get to Fencing With Waves, because while in the middle of the rush to the end with the Pirate thingy, I took a week off to get the previous Song of Asolde book into a state where I could send it to my oldest daughter as a birthday present — she has been eagerly awaiting the next installment in that series for a few years now. So now I have that story in my head, but I really need to finish off some of my other projects first. Sigh.

Mirrored on My Website.

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Mondays are… Marvelous?

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 15:55:18 GMT

I know a lot of people don’t seem to like Mondays, but I used to hang out online with author Julie E. Czerneda, and she’d get really, really excited about Mondays. Mondays were the day she got to go back to work, and she loved, loved, loved her job. I’m not sure I’m quite up for getting that excited — for one thing, I’m operating on a very limited energy budget here. Excitement is exhausting. But I do like Mondays.

Mondays are my “start over” day. I’ve learned to limit quantity goals to one week, and if I don’t make the goal in that week I don’t carry over the deficit. I start fresh each new week with a new chance to get it done right this time. Monday is probably the best day for me to assign myself to do something I really, really want to get done once a week. (Although it wouldn’t have worked last week, because last week I slept all day Monday. I do not know why I slept all day Monday, but assigning myself to do something wouldn’t have worked, because I never woke up enough to even care about what I was or wasn’t getting done.)

After getting past that sleepy Monday, I spent last week working on something that only resembled writing, rather than actual writing. (My husband seemed to think it pretty much counted, anyway, perhaps I should believe him.) I was creating ebooks. I started because I finally got around to acquiring a copy the transcription my daughter made of a Regency Romance Novella I wrote when I was eighteen. And then, of course, I had to go over the manuscript to see if there were transcription errors (possibly an almost-pointless enterprise given my general inability to see typographical errors, but I did catch a few), and having done that I figured I would just transfer the file over to ebook format, why not?

When I opened up the app in which I edit my ebooks, I discovered I was in the middle of making an ebook version of the script for Compelled. (Yes, script. Compelled is a story that I think wants to be a graphic novel… okay, to be honest, I think it wants to be a movie. Getting a graphic novel seems more potentially possible (I have done it before once), so I wrote a script for a graphic novel, and until I get my energy back and actually get to become the workaholic I always wanted to be, or someone volunteers to do the illustrations on spec, or I inherit a lot of money, I’m stuck at that point.) I can no longer remember why I wanted to ebook-ize a graphic novel script. But whatever — the ebook was sitting there half-finished, so I finished it. The ebook I originally meant to be making isn’t quite done yet. But almost!

I also discovered how to solve the mysterious problem of suddenly my new eBooks not having their cover images used for the thumbnails in iBooks anymore. Fixing this involved including a property tag I had never included before – rather than doing something I had recently been forgetting to do. So although all my books now have their cover images showing properly when I view the “by me” shelf, I’m still a bit boggled as to why the older books have them when they don’t have the property tag that is apparently now required. Apple must have changed its protocol for creating thumbnails — but the older thumbnails created using the former protocol still work? Something like that.

Also last week I tatted some more bookmarks. (Mental note to self, must email the friend I sorta offered a bookmark to, and make sure I have her latest address.) I have also been toying with the notion that the obvious solution to the problem of tatted bracelets pulling out of shape and stretching while being worn, is to sew them to a ribbon. This brilliant notion came to me while I was finishing some tatted barrettes, for which I have been using ribbon to cover up the metal bits so that they look better. (I will post a picture as soon as I get them taken and uploaded.)

Having come up with the idea, I will now undoubtedly end up making a few ribbon and tatting bracelets, even though I really have no use whatsoever for them. ::rueful:: I do need to figure out how they will be fastened together, though. Buttons are not so ideal for ribbon (where I would need to actually MAKE the buttonholes) as for tatting (where holes are a naturally occurring feature.)

Mirrored on My Website.

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I have returned

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 15:54:03 GMT

That is to say, I got back from the ~3000 mile each way cartrip to get my eldest daughter married and my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary properly celebrated.

I’m not entirely sure I held up my end of things, but I tried.

And now, in theory, I will once again have time to do all those things I haven’t been getting done for the past four or five months, like participate in online discussions, update my website and write/edit books.

…The problem with theories is that they are so very theoretical.

But at least I’m home, with nothing worse having happened to me than getting robbed (I dropped my wallet, and when I got it back it was missing all the cash), being stopped by the cops (they issued a driving warning to our rookie driver temporarily filling in to give the two experienced drivers a break), throwing up (maybe the water at our first campsite disagreed with me?), discovering that fires had been banned at one of our campsites so we wouldn’t be able to cook dinner, and mostly loosing my voice and so having to transpose the song I wrote for my parents down four notes before I could perform it which infuriated my accompanist.

That’s probably about par for 6000 miles, right?

Mirrored on My Website.

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A Thousand Miles

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 01:27:42 GMT

My WiiFit monitor says I’ve walked a thousand miles.

This doesn’t show how amazingly much I walk, because I’ve been collecting the data for more than two years now, (although I do sometimes forget to wear the silly thing), and so I’m averaging less than 1.5 miles a day.

But once again, I prove that I have persistence in spades.

(Also I just ‘beat’ that silly WiiFit Obstacle Course game, so I gleefully removed it from my workout routine — I have discovered that I do not enjoy walking in place. Dancing and not going places is fine because the dance steps aren’t intended to travel, but pretending to walk is just miserable: I’m moving wrong. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t fix it, because if I moved right I would step off the little balance board. Grr!)

Mirrored on My Website.

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Creating a Galactic History

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 03:50:18 GMT

I guess I’m in a talkative mood, so I’m going to explain the steps I have been using to make a history for my Cultivator Universe.

1) I started by drawing myself a galaxy, and then I gridded it off into squares. (Fortunately for me, spiral galaxies are relatively flat, so it wasn’t too huge of a stretch to use a 2D map for this exercise.)

2) I then mostly randomly created 200 dots representing the worlds on which my civilizations started. (I randomize by rolling dice. I married an avid board-gamer and there are always dice around.)

3) I randomly assigned a Civilization Level to each of those dots. These levels told me which of those planets started developing technology the soonest, and therefore who had a “head start” when it came to spreading out among the stars.

4) I made an arbitrary guestimate of how fast the “reach” civilization would expand once its ships had achieved near light-speed capabilities, and based on how much “coverage” I hoped to achieve, decided how long ago my oldest civilizations started expanding.

5) I created a technological advancement chart that would give me a rough estimate of how long it would take each Civilization Level to achieve various technological benchmarks.

6) I split my total timespan into segments, and created map overlays that showed the “reach” of each civilization at the end of each segment in the form of transparent colored circles.

7) And then, checking each overlay one at a time, I have been figuring out which civilization encountered which other civilization in what order, and writing a quick one sentence explanation of what happened when they did.

Mirrored on My Website.

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Underwater Printing Presses and How My Brain Works

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:07:52 GMT

So I was taking my usual evening walk with my husband, and he knew I had been working on a history for my Cultivator Universe, and he was curious about my “squid aliens” and how far along my technical advancement track I was going to let them go (I had already told him that my “squid alien” civilizations didn’t achieve spaceflight before they were discovered by other people who had).

I admitted that I hadn’t even figured out how squid aliens could achieve written language yet, and then dove right into figuring out how they might do so, with my husband valiantly holding up his end as sounding board and alternate outlook. We wandered through a possible system for representing their language physically, discussed clay tablets, and about the time I started wondering what materials would be available to act as the frame for a moveable-type system, he told me his brain had gone into overload… “I was just asking a question!”

And I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help it — my brain just works like that.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I know.”

For me it was a bit of relief, though. It means I am pretty much back to normal, after over a month of “feeling awful and not able to get anything done,” followed by another month of rebuilding of my mental and physical endurance. Bleh.

I’m doing much better now, and should be in good enough shape to get back on my “regular” schedule. (Sans singing, alas, because I’ve been perpetually stuffed up since New Years.)

And in the eye-candy department…

As I said I have been working on a history, and that means I needed a map… only it’s the history of something that calls itself a Galactic Empire. So, map, yeah…

This is the “terrain” map I ended up drawing.

Pretty, yes?

Mirrored on My Website.

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