End of 2018

As the last day of the year passes by, I find myself in a hotel bed, lounging on my phone with my beautiful wife by my side (and the princess demanding attention). This last year has been a good year. Not too much time away from family, (most) bills taken care of and on holiday catching up with friends and family.

Next year is going to be a bit harder. I already know there will be (a lot) more time away with work, cars are coming up due for maintenance and there'll be who knows how many unexpected issues come up.

But overall, I'm putting 2018 in the "good" box. Roll on 2019!

Vacation

Whooo! Back in Perth for a bit, enjoying some time away from work and time with family. The goal was to try and be a bit more relaxed and have some down time, but so far we've still been doing a lot of running around.

No matter, onwards and upwards!

South West

Very much looking forward to catching up with family. It has been too long.

Cleanup

We did a bit of a spring clean, and (amongst other things) took about three and a half thousand dollars worth of electronics to the tip.

Well, the stuff was about that much to buy new, many moons ago. Now it isn't worth anything - hence why it went to the tip.

The bit I most didn't want to chuck out was a 24 port 10/100 switch. Had always wanted something like that for the house since the mid 90's. Never mind that most switches now are gigabit and most devices that I'd want to network are wireless.

-_- Not impressed...

Nano - day twenty seven

Managed to punch out the 50k, whoo!

Feeling pretty good right now. The down side for me is that I didn't actually write a full novel, not the one I started at any rate. I did a rough outline at the end of October, and I got about a third of the way through the story.

But the goal was to crank out 50k words in November, more to get into the habit of writing than to write an award winning novel. Now comes the tricky part - to keep writing stories.

I like doing NaNoWriMo. Pretty sure I won't be able to do it next year due to anticipated work comitments, but we'll see how it goes.

NaNo - day twenty two

Yes! Just cracked the 40k mark. :)

As of writing this, I've got 40,053 words down. As noted earlier, Nano is more about quantity than quality, so I'm not going to be advertising this novel too seriously ... or anywhere. It started of as mainly a quest mission but I think I loaded too many targets into my story. The protagonists are seeking 30 items, and at the 4/5's mark they have collected eight.

I think I have more quest than novel. I may keep writing, but at this stage the plan is to stop when I hit 50k. I think there is too much in this story to get it all out in 50k words, but I'm not so invested in it that I am motivated to finish or polish it.

I do like what I did with a spreadsheet to lay out some groundwork, but I can see where I went wrong and didn't lay out enough. Having a blueprint definitely makes it easier to write. But I can see where I went wrong at the start and as a result, my story structure suffered for it.

I totally could re-write and fix it up, but like I said, I'm not that invested in the story (and between you and me, it's not that good). But it is a good opportunity to learn.

NaNo - day seventeen

As expected, so far nobody has asked about my progress on FB, so pretty sure I don't have too many FB friends that are into writing. No biggie, I wasn't expecting anybody to bite.

Progress report - today I'm at 32,000 words, which puts me about two days ahead of schedule. Brilliant! It's Saturday morning, so should be able to make good progress... BUT we have mud racing tonight (which means I should try and get some sleep during the day) and I'm working all day Sunday. #SadPanda

Looking at my spreadsheet, at one stage I was 4,300 words ahead of schedule, but then I had a run of bad days. On the plus side, despite the days I didn't write much, the lowest I got was 548 words ahead and never fell behind. That's with two days where I wrote zero words!

So far, looking good! :)

NaNo - day twelve

Yes! Just crossed 20k, roughly on target for day 12.

At one stage, I was 4,300 odd words ahead but I had a few bad days where I wrote very little. I started falling behinfmd but just managed to crawl back into ... on schedule.

If I can get a few days good writing in, I can get ahead again. My best single day was 2,900 words.

NaNo - day eight

Making okay progress, ahead of the goal so far. I find it really helps to have spreadsheet planned, with my characters, outlines, ideas and today I added a timeline (so I can track how far away events are, my story covers about a month and a half).

The anmoying thing is that I had an issue with the computer and I may have lost about a thousand words. *groan*

I'm  going to see if I can recover them tomorrow, if not... guess I'll have to try and re-write that section. Very glad I keep multiple versions of my stories, so that if a file gets damaged or corrupted, I've only lost part of my work, not all of it.

NaNo - Day 6

Numbering days is easy when the first of the month is day one. #CheesyGrin

Okay, so the goal count is about 1,670 words per day (or better). So for day six, I should be at or around 10,000 words.

My actual total is ... 12,823. Wooo! Ahead of schedule (so far)! Now admitedly, I am padding my story, and throwing in extra words that are superfluous. If I was editing this an actual "going to submit to publisher" story, I could easily edit out about 3,000 words (then do a proper edit and ditch another 2,000 or more).

Is this good story writing? Probably not... but it is more writing than I've done in the last ... ten years? Been a while. So hopefully I can maintain the momentum. You can always edit down and tighten up the prose, you can't fix what hasn't been written at all.

Side note about social media; I made a few posts about NaNo and got a few likes but no comments. So now I've stopped posting about it and I'll see if anybody is interested enough to ask how I am going.

NaNo - day one

Well, November is here again! I think I've set myself up for success as best I can this year. I had been hoping to crank out about 5,000 words today but I didn't get as much spare time as I'd thought.

Still, managed to get 2,186 words down - which is about 500 words over the daily target. So I'm still counting that as a win.

Story is starting out a bit slow, there's a fair bit of exposition I'm data dumping onto the poor reader. But NaNo is primarily about getting words down - trimming fat, tightening the prose and improving the story are all re-write and editing steps, not first draft steps.

That's my version and I'm sticking to it!
>.<

Writing Status - 29 Oct

Some good news, some bad news. First up, the hard numbers:

22 Oct - 1,142 - pretty happy with that
23 Oct - 531 - not as good, better than nothing
24 Oct - 1,144 - on target
25 Oct - 579 - another drop
26 Oct - 1,440 - best day yet, on fire!
27 Oct - zero
28 Oct - zero
29 Oct - 250 or so

The 27 and 28 was a weekend. The Sunday, I was out all morning then we had friends over all afternoon so was quite busy until late. Frustrating, but it would have been rude to be sitting writing and ignoring everybody.

Saturday I had plenty of time to do lots of writing... but I didn't. Rather slack of me there, no excuses. Shoulda, coulda, woulda... but didn't. Shame mate, shame.

The Monday I didn't do any narrative writing, but I did get a bunch of notes down in preparation for NaNo. I have a rough story idea, some notes on chapter outlines and a decent roadplan to follow which should make writing easier.

Fingers crossed!

Dream redux

Had another dream that I remembered. I had this dream last night but didn't get to write this post until now. I did jot a few quick notes when I woke up to remind me later. :)

I was driving a prime mover (big truck with long trailer behind it) in an inner city / urban area type place. Needed to get in and out of really tight places (like, nearly folding the truck back on itself to get in type tight) and with all the stresses on the truck it broke the steering stuff, so ended up blocking traffic with the two front wheels pointing at each other.

Not good.

Jump out, trying to direct traffic around and fix the truck when a bunch of young blokes wander up and are getting up close with the truck. Not an issue, doesn't bother me. But then they jostle my wife who was helping. I grab the guys (well, obe of them) and start pushing and shoving and yelling "back! back! further, back off!"

I didn't care about the truck, I wanted to keep them away from my better half! No way I'm going to let some punk jostle her!

That's about where I woke up.

Writing status - 21 Oct

Doing good so far!

Well, recently. I started my spreadsheet on the 8th, and had five days of zero words. But since I wrote down my goal and published it, I've had three continuous days of hitting targets.

For October, my goals are 1,000 words per day (but building up towards 2,000 per day in November). My stats are:
19th 1,115
20th 2,080
21st 1,489

Not bad numbers, but those were over a weekend. This week will be pretty much make or break I'm guessing. It's fairly easy to write when there is time available and not exhausted.

We'll see how much I can write at the end of the day after work...

Writing goals

"A goal that isn't written down is just a wish."

With my writing, I need to write down a goal. And I keep telling others to use the SMART method, so I suppose I should practice what I preach. ;) It doesn't help that by about 7pm, I feel like it's midnight. Just throw that one on the 'lame excuses' pile.

So, here is my goal, written down:

Specific - to write 1,000 words each day, for the rest of October
Measurable - yes, using a word processing program, it is easy to count how many words have been written (or added).
Achievable - yes, assuming I'm not exhausted, mentally drained or off on different tasks that take up time. I can write a thousand words in about 45 minutes (faster if I'm on a roll), but it gets frustrating when I get constantly pulled away from the laptop or interrupted every 5 minutes.
Relevant - yes, this is building towards 2,000 a day during November.
Timely - yes, there's 13 days left in October, then the big one of 30 days in November. December I can coast.

I've already got a spreadsheet going to keep track of my progress (or lack thereof). I started tracking on the 8th of October but so far already have five "zero" days... so, not off to a good start. My best day so far was 1,118 words. Though admittedly, what I've written so far has all been unrelated exercises or just free rambling. November needs to be a cohesive story.

Writing (again)

Trying to get into the habit of writing.

At the moment, my main goal is just to write *something* preferably every day (where possible). Some days are going to be harder than others. I set up a little spreadsgeet to keep track of stuff.

I could make it a bit more accurate by also tracking stuff like posts on this blog, Facebook and so on. But getting a word count for these is more steps than I care to take. I don't think in the grand scheme of things that I'll be writing enough on social media for it to count for much anyway.

Pretty sure that my previous efforts kept falling flat because I was trying to be too ambitious. The proverbial "biting off more than I could chew" deal.

Fingers crossed!

Dream 2: Electric Boogaloo

How strange, second night in a row I've had a dream strong enough to remember in the morning.

Last nights' dream, I was down south for work and there was this one very odd vehicle that had to come back up north. It looked like a bunch of old 4wd's welded together into one long, unweildly monstrosity with multiple axles.

Somehow I was voluntold to drive it back, being long and with multiple articulation points of course there were roadworks which caused me to have to drive off into some bizarre racetrack where it promptly broke.

Got back onto the main road but had to peddle the rest of the way. On the plus side, got lots of support from people driving past. On the down side, that's a long way to peddle a tiny road train...

Dream three(m)

How curious, another dream I remember.

This one, I was driving a truck and got out of it for some reason. Somehow, the truck got into gear and headed off up a steep hill.

It was going slow enough that I could run after it, but fast enough that I couldn't quite catch it.

I don't know how long the dream actually lasted, or if I was moving around in my sleep but when I woke up I was so tired, and felt like I'd run a marathon. Running uphill is not fun, even dream running!

On an unrelated note, a while back I learned that marathons actually have a defined length. It's a marathon if the course is 42.195km long (so I guess 42.194km isn't a marathon, just a light run?).

More dreams

Its not often that I remember my dreams, most of the time they are gone by the time I wake up.

Had a rather vivid one last night, still remember large parts of it quite clearly.

We (I have no idea who, but there was a group of us) were aboard a privately owned aircraft carrier that had been converted to like a private yatch type thing. I remember the motion of the ship and watching the waves.

Then we were on another, smaller boat in a harbour with loads of other ships around and there was heaps of people dumping weapons and body armour into the water. I remember asking why they were doing that and was told it was as markers for wargames, to test if the equipment coukd find the stuff. "It's okay, because we counted everything prior to putting it in place."

That's great mate, you'll end up with a very accurate list of the number of items that are missing....

Yay, home!

Back home again, with my family. Good to be back in the north end, away from the cold. Shouldn't need to go back south again for work this year.

Next year... that's a different story.

Improving

Well, not coughing as much - so that's a good thing. Still feeling it in the mornings and at night when it gets cold. Can't wait to go north again where it's warm - and where my family is. <3

Telephone scammers?

I received a call from 03221227285 with obvious call centre noise in the background. That's too many numbers for an Australian number, but 0322 is a UK number (or German, or Belgian - results weren't diffiniti e).

The caller (random female, didn't offer a name) said "I'm calling from Telstra, we have reports about your internet connection. You need to secure it..." and that's when I hung up on her.

I did a search for the number 03221227285 but there were only about four results, none in English.

If someone gets a call from this number, I recommend just hanging up on them. Telstra wouldn't make a call like that.

Still sick

Still have the nagging cough. Doesn't flare up too much during the day, it's mostly at night when it gets cooler. I'm sure all the dust I'm breathing in isn't helping! With all the vehicles rolling around here, we kick up one heck of a dust cloud.

Keeping the air filters clean is an ongoing struggle....

Under the weather

Urgh... down south for work and definitly not feeling the best. Feeling quite crummy actually.

It was about this weather when we were in Perth not that long ago. But it feels a lot colder. Might be because it is a wet cold here.

We *should* be heading back up north soonish, so hopefully I can soldier through it. We'll see how I feel in the morning.

South

Flying out of town today. Going to be down south for about two weeks or so, with a chance of coming back in the middlish for a bit. Going to be interesting seeing things from this end of the zoo.

Going to be interesting adjusting to the climate difference.

Perth!

Feeling good to have a chance to get back to my old stomping grounds. Not feeling so good to be in the cold again. Brrr!

FaceBook

If FB wanted an idea for a future feature, how about being able categorize friends? As in assign people you know into groups so the people who are important to you, you see all their posts and stuff they like. While people you just keep on your friends list "because" (such as a co-worker in another department you need to contact once a quarter, or that weird relative you don't really tolerate), those people you don't really see their posts and stuff.

Not sure I explained that very well... :/

Little things

Due to my having married into a pre-started family, there are a lot of things that I missed out on. First steps, first words, starting school. Most of the major benchmarks of raising kids. There are some things I'm glad to have missed, like changing diapers and potty training. Can't say I'm too upset about missing out on that! :D

But there were things I'd looked forward to doing with my kids when I was younger. A lot of that I missed out on because of the pre-started; and more I missed out on because I was always working, trying to provide for my family. Roof overhead, food on the table and all that.

Today I got the chance to walk one of the kids to school. Probably last and only chance, I don't expect teenagers to be too enthusiastic about being walked to school. But at least I got the chance to do it once. Might never happen again, so I guess once will have to be enough...

Week off

Woo, got a week off from work. Nothing like getting paid not to work! :)

Long weekend

Wooo!

Can't complain about having time off work.

More money would be nice...

Ah, money. My old nemesis....

Ticks

How frustrating. We've started finding ticks on our dog. First we found one and got rid of that. Then we found another. Now we're finding more.

We've ordered some flea and tick medication, but we need to wait for it to arrive. In the meantime, we need to check the dog every day.

Stupid things. Were there's one...

Goodbyes

We laid a friend to rest today.

A loved son, a reliable friend, beloved by his partner. A bit of the magic of this word is gone and we are all poorer for it.

He is not gone. He has merely gone ahead. May I meet him again someday, and when I do, may I greet him with "hello, my friend".

So sad

Awww... I was really happy when I got home. There were some nesting birds across the road that had been sitting on eggs for a few weeks and one had hatched.

It was so cool, seeing this little baby bird running around on the grass eating grubs and being all happy!

Then it got hit by a car. :(

Not even one day old. Didn't even have the chance to sleep and have one dream. So sad now. I moved the body off the road and laid it to rest under a tree. At least its spirit can stand in the branches and sing for the sunrise.

Rest in peace little bird. :'(

Before the trip

Going to be doing a spot of driving, and some sight seeing! :D Whooo!

Got most of the stuff we need packed, bit of work today, then off to the horizon in the morning.

First cyclone

Well, after a few years of living in the Top End, we've experienced our first cyclone. At the risk of tempting fate, I have to say it wasn't too bad where we were.

There was a lot more trees uprooted in closer to the city, we saw lots of trees down, a few power lines and such.

Apparently we have another, stronger cyclone on the way in another week or so. Fingers crossed it is as easy on us as this one was...

Prado upgrades

I like working with my hands.

Fitted some improved lighting and a cb to the Prado. Was a bit fiddley, but not as hard as I thought it would be. Had a moment of panic looking behind the glovebox and finding all the climate control stuff filling that space, but I was able to run the cables through without too much drama.

Feels good to put something together. Be nice to have a workshop, but that's a long way off.

Pumpkin pie

Getting my bake on again. Had a go at pumpkin pie. The recipe was straight forward and easy to follow but the mix came out too wet.

Doing a bit of reading about common mistakes when making pumpkin pie suggests that the pumpkin I used was too wet (since I used fresh instead of canned puree).

For next time, I'll need to strain the pumpkin more or boil it after puree-ing to get rid of excess water.

Week three - success!

My third week writing challenge was a bit of a cheat. I swapped the challenge from week 3 with another one. The challenge I did was to find an image online and write a story about it.

I liked the way I was both inspired and constrained by using a source image.

Second week - success!

Last week's writing challenge was to find a random story online and edit it. Turns out it is a bit harder to find works in progress online.

I did find a piece to work on - about two or so pages. There was a lot that I deleted wholesale, tightened up the dialogue and re-structured parts of it to change the order some of the information was presented. There were several bits of exposition that I cut out as well... though in the authors defence, they may have become pertinent later on in the story. They just weren't important in the section I was working on.

I'm certain the result I have can be edited further, though for the purposes of this exercise, I'm happy with the result that I have.

Wacom Graphire4 Tablet - always draws

I have an old Wacom Graphire4 drawing tablet that I've had for many years (and hadn't used it for several). I recently started trying to use it again but kept coming up with a fault. Anytime I used the pen, it registered as drawing, even if it was hovering over the tablet.

I tried every driver under the sun and even did a complete clean install on a fresh system. Nadda.

After a lot of hunting around online and reading other people who'd had similar symptoms, I determined that it was a mechanical issue with the pen. I'll post the fix I found here, and my notes and results below.

Online workaround:

Utilising the Universal Low-Tech Gadget Fix method (aka "Hit the bloody thing"), I've managed to get my pen to work properly again!

1. Plug in your tablet, and remove the tip from your pen if possible (don't worry if you can't though).
2. Open the Tablet control panel in System Preferences.
3. Hold down Opt (or Alt, or ) while clicking the "About" button to get to the diagnostic screen.
4. Hold the pen near the tablet (not touching it) so it registers on the info pane. Check the "Pressure" reading. Mine was hovering around 50, some other people had it up around 220.
5. Actual solution: Bang the pen, side on, against something (the original solution called for a table top, I chickened out and used my thighs to lessen the risk of other damage to the pen). Try 10 hits for starters.
6. Hold the pen to the tablet again. The "Pressure" reading should have drop a little. Sometimes it might not change, but be patient!
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6. Eventually the stuck pressure sensor would loosen, the pressure drop to 0, and the tablet will work properly again. Remember to replace your pen tip if you removed it in step 1.

I hit mine a total of maybe 100 times, gradually using more force at the start until the "Pressure" reading started dropping, then using a similar amount of force thereafter. The pressure dropped slowly from 50 down to 25, then suddenly back to 0, so check the readings often so you don't hit the pen more times than necessary. It is a rather delicate gadget, after all!

If your sensor's stuck under 60 (eg, 50 for mine), and you don't want to hit your pen/can't drop it to zero, you can adjust the "Pressure offset" from 0 to 59; put it to something just above your stuck sensor value (eg, I'd put it to 55 for mine), then you can at least use the tablet, albeit with a slightly reduced pressure sensitivity range.

Disclaimer: YMMV, and this method probably won't work (in fact, will probably make it worse) if your pen actually has a broken magnet/coil/circuit board rather than a stuck pressure sensor. I'm not responsible if you break some other part of your tablet/pen/computer/table/thighs while attempting the repair. If it's under warranty, best to return it to Wacom

End of online workaround

For me, I found the Diagnostic Screen by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the "About" button. Initially, my pressure was reading around 268! Definitely not good. I don't know if it is the same with newer drivers, but the one I was using (an older one for a Bamboo tablet) has a maximum software offset of only 59, so that didn't do much for me.

After around half an hour of hitting the pen (initially against my palm, then my thigh, then the mousepad, then directly onto the table edge) I was only able to get my no-tip pressure down to around 180. Still no good for drawing. #SadPanda

No idea how many times I hit it, somewhere in the region of 500 to 1,000 times I figure (I was hitting it quite fast at some stages, and hard enough to worry about leaving marks on the table surface) but that's as low as I could get it.

I might try again, but at the moment I'm really tempted to declare this tablet dead and just chuck it. I could buy a replacement pen, but being an older model they are hard to get hold of and when they do come up on eBay they are more expensive than a whole new tablet. I might try and save up for a new low-end tablet at some stage down the track but I don't see the benefit in investing around $100 on something I'm not going to use much. So for the time being .... back to the drawing board?
badum-tish!

First week - success!

First week of the eight week writing challenge down. The first week's exercise was to have at least three ten-minute free writing blocks done.

That might seem like a fairly low target but we had the boys here for a large part of that week and I considered one thirty minute session a cheat. I can do a lot more in a week, but managed to hit that target.

Next challenge: find a block of sample text online and edit it.