I couldn’t resist highlighting this wonderful talk by Adam Savage (one of the Mythbusters hosts who will also be at TAM London in October, YAY!).
While I have no intense personal interest in either the Dodo or the Maltese Falcon, his passion and enthusiasm brings these subjects to glorious technicolour which are fascinating in their own right. However, the theme of the talk isn’t the objects at all – it’s an amazing insight into the creative mind and, unusually, treating the obsessiveness as a positive strength rather than a weakness of character.
This I can completely relate to, although my preoccupations are on a much smaller scale and are usually of a much shorter duration. I will research something compulsively right up until the point where whatever it is that fascinated me is exhausted. Then it is dropped.
For a long time, I considered it to be my Achilles heel. The rest of the world has even less understanding of short-duration ‘infatuations’ than the lifetime ruling passion. The messages from family, friends and my inner nag all merge into one: “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”, “you’ll never succeed if you don’t stick with something”, “do you ever finish anything?”.
However, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is who I am and working out how best to turn it to my advantage. I’m learning to run with my impulses more, explore the current idée fixe exhaustively but give myself permission to drop it the moment interest starts to wane without recriminations – as Adam says in his talk, “really, if we’re all going to be honest with ourselves, I have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with, was it?”
I do need to keep a better record of my fleeting compulsions – a scrapbook with all the weird and wonderful directions my brain takes me. You never know when it could be of use. I’ve also learned in the last few weeks that the quickest way to deal with my rebellious mind is to capture any daydreams that are distracting me onto paper. By exorcising them in this way, my brain is then happy to let me get back to doing whatever it was I was supposed to be doing in the first place.
And on the plus side, I’ve got two short story ideas out of the process already.
Fed up of daft questions that the questioner could have found for themselves in half a second on Google? Put the question they ask into “Let me Google that for you” and send them the resulting the link to demonstrate just how easy it is for them to do it themselves!
Owning fish is supposed to be calming, relaxing and zen-like. At least that’s what I keep telling myself while my tropical fish community seems to have other plans.
Yes, here I am again in yet another death cycle. It starts simply enough – I buy some new fish. Some die off within the first few days (despite very careful acclimatisation) and then the aquarium somehow spirals out of balance precipitating more deaths in the older community.
This time, introducing six neon tetra into the tank has left me with only two left after a fortnight and has wiped out a much loved cherry barb (and probably more fish… am on the “wait and see” holding pattern).
Careful daily water testing during these cycles show nothing awry, so presumably it’s something viral/bacterial that gets introduced each time. I’m not sure how I can prevent that other than setting up a quarantine tank (which I wouldn’t want running all the time and don’t really have the space for).
Technically, a good fish retailer should have their own quarantine procedure and not sell any fish they haven’t had for at least two weeks, but the shops around here don’t seem to do that as far as I can tell. I have stopped buying from a previously excellent shop that on a recent visit had dead fish in its tanks and were selling fish with obvious white spot infection.
I did have plans for a much larger aquarium once we’d redecorated the living room (and I’d saved up for it!) but quite honestly I’m starting to wonder if I could cope with all the stress of it.
Repeat after me: fishkeeping is meant to be relaxing, fishkeeping is meant to be relaxing, fishkeeping is meant…. ARGH!
So instead, I had a lovely nostalgic time virtually wandering down streets of old addresses where the Google cars had been, following familiar routes round Croydon and Birmingham. I didn’t recognise any of the people photographed, but maybe that’s just as well.
Of course, there’s still a great many places that haven’t been mapped yet. None of the pedestrianised areas, for one, which (although obvious) is a shame as it would be nice to take a wander down familiar high streets just to see if it’s all as I remembered. I’m looking forward to it being launched in more rural areas – I lived all my childhood in villages so memory lane isn’t quite complete without some actual country lanes.
I appreciate the concerns about privacy that some people have, and it’s certainly a technology that will need some adjusting to. It’ll also be interesting to see over the next few days what quirky things people find, and not just Where’s Wally.
Overall, I am very excited about Google Street View, though – I am a visual learner, a photograph of a location sticks far more in my memory than words or a top-down map. It’s going to be great to know you’ve found the right place because you already know what the area looks like, to be able to scope out potential parking places before you even get there, or to see if there is a bus stop nearby (and maybe even read the bus numbers off the sign!), to check out what an area is really like before booking a B&B or narrowing down locations for your house hunting expeditions.
I wonder when the sat nav companies are going to find a way to bring in the street view data directly to their devices?
This is so true, I still have a similar dream on a regular basis. (My variation of the nightmare is that of turning over the final exam paper that I hadn’t studied for, to find that unsurprisingly I can’t answer a single question).
I posted the link to the comic on Twitter and had whole host of “me too” replies. So it seems like I’m not the only one who still has the mental scars from years of exam pressure!
No matter how nice the weather or how energetic I feel, it really isn’t a great idea to take an hour long walk into town when I’m in the depths of a chesty cold and am asthmatic. Especially when the return journey is uphill.
It may be more environmentally friendly than taking the car, but walking into town really doesn’t save any money. Compare and contrast: 70p worth of petrol (ish – erring on the pessimistic side) and £1 parking costs (1 hour) on the one hand, £3.60 for coffee and pain au chocolat when you realise you’ve burned up all your energy and can’t move another step plus £1.80 for single bus fare back home again to get up That Hill [tm] on the other. And that’s not even taking into account the fact it feels more like an expedition than a quick shopping trip, with the associated temptation to spend more money while there to make it “all worth while”. Hmm.
There’s no way I could do that writer’s thing of taking my laptop to a coffee shop, people watching is far too much fun. Plus, I am still in Woman With A Mission mode after years of dragging small children around town – can’t relax, need to get what I need then go.
What a lovely meandering bus journey home! I do miss using the buses regularly, it’s so much more sociable and far less stressful than driving. If only they didn’t feel like a luxury – Worcestershire’s buses are the most expensive in the country apparently. It’s days like this you really miss London Transport. No, really.
As a Google Adsense user, I’ve been sent an email from them requesting I update my privacy policy before 8th April to reflect these changes (which I have done – it can be found on my About page). However, I can’t say I’m comfortable at all with these changes – adverts generated on MY content, fine, but I really dislike the privacy implications of these changes.
I don’t earn a huge amount from Adsense – a payment about once or twice a year – but it’s nice unexpected pin money. However, if anyone has any recommendations for alternatives that would deliver a similar sized ad block (combo of text and/or images fine) with fair returns and better T&Cs, then please could you let me know in the comments?
It’s taken me just under a month, but today I have finally finished the first draft of a 7000 word science fiction short story by writing a minimum of 500 words a day.
Not all of these words are good, in fact a great many of them aren’t.
Okay, make that most of them.
But overall, I think I have a basic sketch of a decent plot, two potentially strong characters and a world which is interesting and needs more exploration. It’s something that’s worth further work on it.
However, thanks to a lot of broken nights this week (the kids have been ill), there were many times where I lost complete confidence in what I was writing, as evidenced in this IM conversation with Sylvia from the Can’t Backspace blog earlier today…
Me: oh FORGODSSAKE I’ve just found myself writing a FRIGGING STAR WARS SCENE Sylvia: lol hmm Me: oh wth, I’ll fix it later Sylvia: it’ll do as a marker for the type of scene you want :) Me: *mutter mutter bloody hack mutter*
Let’s just say, I’ve earned a glass of wine this evening.
I’m going to take a break from the story for a couple of weeks, during which I intend to read as many other science fiction stories as I can fit in. The plan is to make lots of notes about plotting, characterisation and what works/doesn’t work for me.
After that I have planned some heavy world building and character building sessions to hopefully breathe more life into my story for the second draft.
Incidentally, at dinner tonight, I shared the news of my finished draft with the boys. Akra Jr in particular was thrilled.
Akra Jr: Mummy, can I read your short story Me (hyper aware of the torture and murder scenes in said story): Erm, no… I don’t think it’s really suitable, sorry Akra Jr: Mummy, can you write me a short story, about how to make things, or about dinosaurs…. or … oh, you don’t know much about Star Wars, do you.
No dear, I just channel the film whenever I’m tired and am trying to get out my daily word count…
