Time-Related Disappointments

Well, it's been an interesting turn of events the past few days... couldn't be expected, but it's not horrible, just means I have to wait a little longer for what I want.

Got my last box of computer parts yesterday. All of the boards, memory, storage, graphics, and other such things arrived from Newegg. I put it all together, turned it on, and nothing. Now, I made sure to follow the instructions and everything so there is a chance that something came busted or I missed a plug, but my friend is coming over to take a look at it after work today. Still need to pick up an OS (I'm thinking Windows 7, possibly dual booted with some flavor of Linux) and some speakers. Once (and if) it starts running I'll get to have some fun with it. 

Waited until midnight last night for the email from the folks over at Clarion. When that didn't come I got simultaneously confused and a little upset just because I felt a little ignored, but thankfully I re-checked their website. They extended the date of notification until the 22nd, which I can completely understand but still I want to know what's going to happen. Otherwise I've started writing a new story: nothing particularly cerebral or deep but it's entertaining to me. 

I've also started reading a new web comic: Gunnerkrigg Court. The art style didn't impress me much at first (not that it was bad at all), but it dramatically improves into a beautiful illustration as the comic continues. The plot is thick with minimal dead-ends, and good characterization. Urban fantasy that delves into both High Magic and High Tech at times, but never to a ridiculous(-ly undesirable) degree. It's been around for a while but it has a reputed 30(!?) comic buffer so that there is never any missed days, or so I've been told. I'd highly recommend it.

I'll keep in touch amigos!

Night's Ink

Just having a very unrestful night, so I thought I would update before I tried to sleep again. It's been a good week back at school, and I feel that the break helped raise my spirits quite a bit. Been running at fencing practice to help build some cardio, but the week off dulled my blade-work.

Hosted Catan night today, where I cook dinner and we all play Settlers of Catan. We haven't been able to do it because of the rash of tournaments and breaks, but hopefully we can get it back into the swing. I made jambalaya and cheddar chive biscuits, which all took far less time than I thought they would. There was even enough left over for munching during the week, which is a marvel when cooking for three other guys.

I've switched over from short stories to campaign writing, which is nice change to be able to actually GM a game. We're using mini-six, which is a light D6 system (instead of using tons of odd dice, it only uses standard six sided dice). I tend to do more laid-back mechanics and try to let the story flow how the players want to go. I'm going to start documenting everything on Obsidian Portal to see how well it works, and that'll be updated weekly or as well as I can do so.

I was starting to write out all the mechanics and everything (I'm pretty damn proud of what we've put together), but I realized that it would dominate the post. So if you want to see what I'm working on I would look at the Obsidian Portal page here: Sunder Lands.
(Note that I'm in the process of fill this out so forgive me for slow updating.)

It is also St. Patrick's Day and being my name sake, I fear that I may be very popular tomorrow. So I will do my best to hide until they drag me out kicking and screaming (at least give the impression, otherwise they'll think it was too easy. I do have a reputation to keep up.) Hopefully it will be sunny and beautiful but otherwise I may be fine with running around in the rain.

Well, I will write to you soon and hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight.

Edit: I would like to note that because a campaign is a collaborative effort, not all of the writing or ideas were written/imagined by me. There are several co-authors that helped build the initial setting without which it would have been impossible.

The Spring Break Wrap Up

Hey there everybody,

This will be a two parter as I had an unfinished post that was going to be posted last Friday but life happened and I became to busy to finish it. I will post that once I get finished with this one.

The weekend went well as far as MFCs (Midwestern Fencing Championships) go. Big tournament with lots and lots of teams and fencers from all around, including both Varsity and Club fencers. We finished in 8th place overall (around 20 schools were there) so we did fairly well. Our men's sabre squad finished 7th, which is a vast improvement from our standing last year. (It turns out that winning schools is important to doing well.) I personally ended up in 22nd place out of 70(-ish) sabre fencers, which is 2 places better than I did last year (yay improvement!). The entire thing was very close to going much, much better or much, much worse and a few touches here and there would have had dramatically different results, but that is just how life goes.

I'm now on spring break for the rest of the week. I've got a few days of relaxing and composing that will end in my birthday this weekend. I was given a book, "Treason" by Orson Scott Card, from a friend and will start reading it once I have some time to myself. I like Scott Card, but he does tend to get a little bit too philosophical in his novels as they progress. We'll see how this one turns out.

I'm going to take a nap and read a book. Take care everyone!

The Eternal Morning

It's been a long weekend and I've still have a lot to do. Our tournament went off splendidly, the movie premier sounded like a great time (The MSU Advanced Screening was a success! for more details on that) and now I have out tournament data to fill and polish and then finish the edits of my short stories. 

For a tournament to remain rated highly (such as ours, being a C1/C2 event (There really isn't a difference, just size)) the top people must finish in the top region of the results. Our tournament was defined by the two Cs (a graduate student from UofM and a high schooler from Toronto) and two Ds (one of which being myself and the other being a former MSU captain), and all of us had to make top eight in order to keep the tournament a C event. 

This was fine for the other three, but I was having a bit of trouble in pools (probably because I hadn't been fencing for most of the week (data input...) and was sick, but those are really just excuses) and was a bit concerned that I might not place high enough to keep the tournament a C. My first DE was against Chad, another kid from our club that typically travels on our third spot when we compete in the collegiate scene and it isn't unusual for him to beat me even when we're both practicing regularly. We started by him taking the lead 8 to 1 by the break, which freaked me out quite a bit. Then I realized that I should just fence and not worry about what the score was (I'll thank Ben, my captain, for verbally slapping some sense into be at the break). We went back out and I started actually going for touches and managed to eek out a win 15 to 13 (Yay comebacks!). 

He was not happy about losing, but I'm happy that he was a good sport about it afterwords. Went along to the next DE for the round of four and lost 8/9ish to 15 to Austin, a friend from RFC (Renaissance Fencing Club in Troy) which sucked, but it happens sometimes. All in all I ended up 6th place (exactly where I seeded from pools) while Ben and Austin both got their D ratings from tying in 3rd and Sierra got an E, which she's been working at for a while (She's probably out to get her D now as well, but she'll just have to wait until the next tournament). Turned out to be a great tournament for ratings (not for me but that just happens some days).

Unfortunately I was setting up for the tournament when the premier of Apocalypse Theory was airing at Well's Hall, but I hear that it went excellently. I managed to see it at the Cast and Crew viewing earlier in the week and was thoroughly entertained by the excellent film work and acting. I had a very small role and I was pleased to see that I didn't look as awkward on camera as thought I might (a true testament to their skilled editing team). I wish them further luck as the film makes its runs through the festival circuit. 

I've been ignoring my writing for a couple days as the tournament set up and tear down took its course, but I've got a slight stretch of time as we are headed to the west end of the state to celebrate my Grandmother's birthday (on my Dad's side) today. I've suddenly realized how little time there is left until the deadline for submissions (three days!?!) and I need to get into high gear to finish editing them and fill out the application. We'll see what I can do with them... 

We also have power rankings to fill out on Monday, which needs a finished and polished database. The process is rather simple and easy for the other fencers, but it's kind of nightmare for me. Thankfully it needs a constant internet connection, so I do have free time to work on writing until that becomes possible to begin fiddling with. All of that doesn't even begin to start to touch the Microbial Genomics exam and essay I have to do this week, so that studying will have to happen at some point. 

Lot of stuff to do and very little time to do it, but that sounds like a normal week for college. I'll probably not update this for a few days until things settle down. 

Catch you later Pokemon! 
(Wow, really scratching the bottom of the barrel here :/) 

How I wish it was spring

Well, still sick, but then again that is nothing new. I've been spending the time getting the fencing databases up to date, editing my drafts, studying or sleeping. Mostly sleeping.

The team is hosting a fencing tournament this weekend  here at Michigan State. It is C rated event in sabre, which is good in Michigan (almost a B rated event, but the Bs of Michigan had other obligations... can't be helped.) The last C rated sabre event in Michigan was our Spartan 3-weapon in 2009 (my freshman year), so this is the first opportunity for advancement in a while. Meaning that there is a chance of grabbing a C this weekend for me, or at least renewing my D for 2012. Being sick may screw with these plans, but we'll see how things go.

Past that we have MFCs (Midwestern Fencing Championships) next weekend, and we'll need to have power rankings done by Monday for these. They are easy calculations, but it's an enormous amount of database queries and data polishing to ensure they all go well (I hope these go well...). The Championships are the first weekend of our spring break (as usual) so we'll get to go home and crash when we're finished beating the other teams into the ground (that's the plan at least).
With all of this fencing stuff going on, I honestly can't think straight enough to worry how I'm going to do. Having a cold may have something to do with it as well, but I'm not so sure.

Finished my edit of the first story, and that has been passed back for further work. Working on the next story's editing and we'll see how much I have to cut out before I can begin reconstructing. I wish I had the energy to push through and finish these in one go, but it'll have to be a gradual process for the moment.

Been listening to Tally Hall's Good & Evil album recently. They are one of my favorite bands, and G&E is a very pretty album. I honestly wish they would tour more, and I kick myself for skipping a concert of theirs to study for a Biochem exam (retrospectively, it still doesn't sound like a good plan...). Also thinking of grabbing tickets to Andrew Bird when he drops by Detroit in May, but that's a ways off. His new album 'Break it Yourself' will have to satisfy me until then once I get my hands on it in March.

Farewell Fiasco

Down with the Sickness

Well, I have caught a lovely spring cold, mostly likely because of the alternating warm and freezing weather that has maintained the majority of this "winter". Mostly just a runny nose and some congestion, but you'll never know what it could develop into. Plenty of cold medicine in my future, I'm sure. 


Other than the echinacea tea (Yes I know that it doesn't work. I mostly drink it because of the placebo effect, and I sort of like the taste when I'm sick.) I am happy to have finished the second of my rough drafts for submission. While the first was set on another planet (Terraforming being in the background if you didn't read the excerpt) I focused mainly on a futuristic earth. I tried to make it mostly about characters and their interactions, rotating around a robotic child in a house of orphans. Lots of dialogue and flashbacks, but I think it'll take some more polish before it really starts to shine. (Actually just got the edit of this while writing this, I think that I am very happy with where the story may go. A lovely thank you to my fairy god-editor for her unending promptness.)


After a long weekend home, it's starting to look like a promising week of work. Pączki for breakfast, and cold medicine for every other meal seem to work out for me (My eternal love of the food holidays of the Catholic faith (Fat Tuesday!)) But we are entering into Lent, in which I will become a vegetarian for one day a week and give up something (that I have not decided upon). The absolute monstrosities of the semi-religiously observant life.


Anyway, looks like some more pretend studying with nerf swords and editing drafts. I'm going to introduce the biography of one of the characters I'm cutting. Why? Because honestly, it's always the lost characters that fascinate me when I read books: what didn't make it into the final cut, and why?


Anywho, transmission over captain!






The character that I has been cut out of one of my current stories is named Nod, and this is her story:


'Dorothy was born to lovely parents in uptown. They cared for her and gave her art lessons, until the stock on their business went south due to some shady dealings and they lost the mortgage on their house. Moving into the downtown region below the glamourous upper city, they eked out a meager existence providing cleaning services and basic repair work. This degraded lifestyle was cut short by a territorial dispute between two gangs, the Eastenders and the Yellow Stripes. The shootings amongst the abandoned buildings led stray bullets into their living quarters, where her Father was killed outright and Mother was left barely surviving. 
It was at this point that Dorothy ran away from home. She lived alone for two months until she was picked up by a ragtag group of orphans led by the charismatic Cameron. Known as Nod, she became an accopmlished graffiti artist, often laying gang marks into opposing territories to divert attention from their group. A sharp critic of the 5th street gang, another band of children, she often would paint their mark with flowers and pink paint to insult them. 
When she was sixteen she escaped from the downtown and made her way into the glimmering city above, where she left a trail of wet paint and gang parodies. Adopted by an aging painter, she slowly readapted to the museum scene and worked with a variety of other media. She often used her art to advocate for gang dismemberment and robot rights. A reoccurring motif in her later artwork is that of a child-like robot, but it's origins are unknown'


This kids, is how a "short" excerpt becomes longer than a normal blog post. Nod is a character that just doesn't play a large role in the story, which has too many characters as it is. With the restructuring of the cast, some lesser characters must be let go to strengthen the other characters. I'm sad to see her not make the final cut, but that's what needs to happen at this stage. 

The Days After

Flogging Molly was an amazing show and I am slightly upset that we didn't order tickets soon enough for the ground level. Next year I suppose. I've never been to such a high energy show, and I was pleasantly surprised how much I really enjoyed the punk aspect and I am a sucker for traditional irish music. We may have stayed up after the concert listening to more irish music till 4 am, but that is neither here nor there. On another note I stumbled upon Bon Iver's AIR studio recordings on Youtube, and I think that I may need to start listening to them. They are a nice counterpoint to the residual energy from the concert.

Got the shredded draft from my fairy god-editor and am particularly happy to see that most of the editing was what I knew needed fixing, but there was also lots of character development that I really need to flesh out. Cutting an entire paragraph that didn't fit too well, and it'll be posted after the main body for you're perusal. Fairly standard tropes, so it'll be interesting to see how much further I can twist it into something interesting. Still need a new concept for the second portion of the submission, but that may come in a flash of inspiration. I'm thinking of a counter point to the heavily atmospheric first story and have a few settings in mind, but I'm not sure what plot hook to hang them on. I'm going to have to develop this a bit further I think.

That'll have to wait until later, as I am headed out to celebrate my Grandpa's birthday with my Mom's side of the family. It's going to be some sort of craziness, but in a very entertaining and reassuring way. I am fairly certain that it will be a grand time. Then I get to study on Sunday in prep for my lectures this week. I think that I'm going to attempt to study beforehand and try to pre-empt my bad habits... but really why do I kid myself?

Adios Astronaut



Culled excerpt from Submission 1:

"There were no great beasts in this land. The pods that rained onto this barren rock brought fresh carbon and insulating gasses, then nitrates and ammonia with the first microbes to help cycle and stabilize the atmosphere of the planet. This took hundreds of years until the satellites deemed it ready for the next step. Fewer than 2% of planets made it to the second step, but this one had. The next pods came down with mosses, lichens, and algae. This step was a crucial first test, and then more pods came down with grasses and ferns and such. After these settled they began with small animals. These were important to control the grasses and regulate the carbon. Trees and fish and the like came next. After 300 years of slowly adding new variety to the ecosystems, it was ready for the first humans, it was ready for them."

Good explanation of a sci-fi terraforming, but too much detail for the story without matching the flow of overall story. I wasn't a fan of how it looked after I wrote it, and it stuck out from the more organic approach taken by the rest of the story. It's not a bad segment, but it wasn't the way I wanted to approach it in the end and it didn't read how I wanted it. Crazy thing to post 'bad' writing, but I figure it's better than posting writing and thinking it's awesome. "Blah blah blah look at how cool I am", I prefer going: "Hey look at how much I suck, but it's not too terrible." If you really want to see terrible writing just look at some previous posts on this blog...