| Deadlines |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|03:51 pm] |
I've drawn a line in the sand.
Pyrlogos will launch June 21, 2008.
What the launch looks like, and how often pages come out after that, depends on what I manage to get done between now and then. But I've been working without a constraining deadline for long enough - I don't think it works. There's too much room for me to procrastinate. I need a date that I can panic about and react to.
So I've got May to try to build the buffer up while Sora pokes at the CSS of the site (currently running the ComicPress theme for WordPress) and three weeks in June to iron out the kinks, put together some ad images and other promotional type stuff, and hopefully continue making comics. My production rate in May will determine the schedule I start with, and that plus the total number of comics I have ready as of the 21st will help determine what I launch with and how. (Options include something like the six-pages-at-once launch ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) partiallyclips did for Erfworld, and a quieter launch of one page at a time where I wait to start promoting it until I've got a bit of the story up. We'll see what I can do.) |
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| Auditioning |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|08:12 pm] |
Sunday afternoon, Sora and I drove down to Portland to spend the night at our friends' apartment. The social visit was nice, but that wasn't the primary reason we drove down.
Monday morning, I auditioned for Jeopardy for the second time.
The process was a bit different than last time. Last time I auditioned, in November 2005, I had submitted my name directly into their random selection process, and was very lucky to be picked as one of about 150 people to audition, from everyone who had applied to audition in Seattle. As a result, the 50-question test I took then was an elimination process - of the roughly 50 of us in the room when I was there, I was one of 10 to pass the test and do the mock game during the second part.
This time, the first part of the process was the online test. So at the actual audition, there were only 19 of us - all of whom had already passed the test. I was worried about having to pass another test to move on, but we were assured early on that we would all be getting put into the contestant files.
After some introductions by the audition staff, we watched a brief video featuring Alex and the "Clue Crew", discussing the basics of the audition process and exhorting us to have fun a number of times. In fact, we were asked afterwards: how many times did they tell us to have fun? After a couple of wrong answers, my answer of "Four" was accepted, and I won a copy of the Jeopardy DVD home game. (It looks like it should be useful in practicing...)
Next, we did a few questions as a group - clues would be read and we'd raise our hands to answer. It was mainly to get us comfortable with the format, I think.
After that, we took the test. 50 questions, just like the last test I took. Looked like it was photocopied off of the same answer sheet I used last time, too. There were several questions I wasn't quite sure about, but overall I think I did pretty well on the test. My impression is that it's just another data point for contestant selection.
After that came the mock game. Three of us at a time would go up and play a few questions with actual buzzers and such. I ended up being one of the last people to go up, but in the meanwhile I was "buzzing in" with the clicky-pens they gave us. (They actually had to tell us to stop clicking at one point. I don't think I was the only one.) But when I finally got up for the mock game, I think this is where I shone - when it was finally my turn to go up, I answered questions clearly and confidently (and loudly!) and had a lot of energy in general.
That was it for the audition, but I feel pretty confident. The other change since last time I auditioned was the eligibility period - I'm in their files for 18 months, now, instead of just a year.
The next step? Hopefully, I'll get called sometime before Oct 1, 2009. Until then, I wait. |
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| Icons meme |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|03:58 pm] |
From my beloved nightsinger. Comment and I'll give you four of your userpics to explain to me and the world. In your own journal, if you want to spread the meme - if you don't, you can just post responses here.
( Four icons, with explanations. ) |
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| WOOOOOOOO |
[Feb. 27th, 2008|09:54 pm] |
I just got the email: I've been called back for another Jeopardy audition!
This is a little different than last time. Last time I got an audition, I got my name picked out of a hat without any prior work, went to the audition, took the 50-question test, passed it there, and then auditioned with a mock game.
This time, I took the online test on January 31st, and so this audition will be made up of people that have already passed that test (and gotten their name picked out of the hat, too - but a much smaller hat). I don't yet know what the audition will entail - whether I'll have to take another test to make it to the mock game portion of the auditions, or whether I'm done with the testing portion. I hope it's the latter, though I'm reasonably confident about my testing chances given that I've gotten called back in two out of the three Jeopardy tests I've ever taken.
Anyway. The audition is at 11:30 on Monday, March 31st in Portland - I'll probably drive down on the evening of the 30th and stay with friends that night. I'll have more details soon.
In the meanwhile, Sora bought me a trivia book last time I passed an audition, and I never got a chance to look at it. I'm going to try to go through all one thousand questions over the next month, and we'll see how I do. I'll be keeping score for each of the book's section, to determine what areas I have to study more. I'll also be reviving my previous plan to read Wikipedia's featured article every day... and like last time, I will avoid listening to Weird Al's "I Lost On Jeopardy" for the next year, for superstitious reasons.
This should be interesting. |
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| Caucuses |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|02:54 pm] |
The presidential nomination process comes to Washington state this month, and it's confusing.
There will be caucuses held on Saturday, February 9th, at 1 PM, at various precinct locations depending on party. There will also be a primary election on Tuesday, February 19th, all day long, at the usual polling places.
Here's the trick: For the Republicans, the primary and caucus each count roughly one-half for allocating the delegation from Washington state. For Democrats, though, the state-mandated primary is held but its results are ignored: all delegates are allocated via the caucus. The Democratic presidential primary is just a straw poll in Washington state.
( Details about the caucus system )
If anyone's curious about my own preferences, I'll be happy to elaborate. I'm also happy to help people find their caucus locations. (They're determined by precinct, which is the 4-digit number following your legislative district on your voter registration card.) |
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| Also, Facebook. |
[Jan. 18th, 2008|02:28 pm] |
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It was aki pointing out Scrabulous (Facebook's Scrabble app) that pushed me over. I'm not really intending to do the whole social-networking thing, but if you're up for a game come find me. |
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| 2008: Books Read |
[Jan. 18th, 2008|12:58 pm] |
Let's see if I can keep this list up this year. This post will serve as the master list, and I'll update when I add to it, I suppose. If anyone's interested.
During the holidays last year, I finished Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent, and started and finished Maus, Steven Brust's 500 Years After, and Connie Willis' To Say Nothing Of The Dog. I would recommend the latter in particular, being one of the best time-travel stories I've ever read, and a hilarious depiction of Victorian society besides. And I found the ending particularly pleasing for reasons I refuse to elaborate on, but that you'll understand if you read the book...
So, books I've finished this year:
1) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (finished 1/16)
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The combination of a 19th-century upper-class drama with traditional English magic and mythology makes for a fascinating book. One of the things I really liked about it was the understatement of the actual magic being performed. There are very few cases when the magicians are doing huge, flashy spells with lights and sounds and smoke and such. But as the book progresses, the world becomes more unpredictable and strange on its own...
2) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (finished 1/31?)
WWII-era nurse has an accident with a circle of standing stones and gets transported back in time to 1743 in Scotland. There she gets rescued by a Scottish outlaw, and it's romance and swashbuckling (with a side of Jacobite politics) from there on out. I enjoyed it reasonably, but I'm not rushing to pick up the next one or anything...
In the meanwhile, I've started reading Simon Singh's The Big Bang and I'm about halfway through Brust's The Paths of the Dead. I'll be picking up Prisoner of Trebekistan soon, too - I read the (very short) first chapter last night. |
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| For those of you job-hunting: |
[Dec. 14th, 2007|02:03 pm] |
nightsinger's company is hiring!
Lots of IT/customer service positions open. Not just call-center work. Take a look if you're interested!
ETA: Completely unrelated, but I didn't feel like a new entry.
Bacon Salt. "Because everything should taste like bacon." It's apparently vegetarian and certified kosher. |
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| Bits and pieces and odds and ends |
[Dec. 8th, 2007|08:13 pm] |
- IKEA sells packs of 11-watt compact fluorescent lightbulbs for $5. I was under the impression they were expensive, but when we found those last week we did a quick mental count of the lights in our house and bought enough to replace most of the incandescent bulbs in the house. (At least those for which it was possible; you're not supposed to use fluorescent bulbs with dimmer switches, and the bulbs in the bathroom are of a different type.) So several of our lights' energy usage has been reduced by over 80% with no large difference in light quality - an 11-watt fluorescent bulb puts out roughly the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent - and we're feeling green at the moment. :D
- After a hiatus of a few weeks I'm playing Guitar Hero 2 again, working on five-starring the Medium songs. I'm nearly done; a lot of these songs seem easier than the last time I played through them, but that's to be expected. I just upped my rating on "The Trooper" from 3 to 5 stars, and that's the hardest song I've 5-starred so far, though Psychobilly Freakout is looming large in the near future. (ETA: Just tried it. Got it up from 3 to 4 stars on my second try, but the toggling-notes sections are kicking my ass hard.)
- In other 360 news, I've gotten very frustrated with Gears of War. I'm fighting RAAM at the moment, and I can't finish him off because my goddamned AI teammate keeps running off and getting himself killed. I'd be fine if he'd just hunker down somewhere and hide, but no, he'll die off in a corner, and I'll have to run and revive him, and then I'll die because I left my own cover. To say nothing of the cases when the Kryll come in and dismember one of us; that's an instant game-over because we're unrevivable. It feels like I'm unable to progress from here as a result, and I'm frustrated: the single-player campaign should not require the use of a second player just to override the crappy AI.
- Also, Beautiful Katamari is awesome. I rolled up the black hole!
- We seem to have chosen venues for the wedding. We haven't nailed anything down yet, but we've got a pretty decent idea... We should be announcing a date soon.
- I'm officially writing Pyrlogos now. I'm have the major story arc scripted out for each character for whom it is important, and I plan to start writing actual scenes either tonight or tomorrow. (For those of you who saw the earlier attempt, the input from that editing session has proven useful; I'm reevaluating both my ideas about story structure and my art style.)
- After a recommendation from seorin and iris_of_ether, we picked up a bottle of peach lambic at the local specialty beer and wine store. We also got some raspberry lambic, which we just tried and don't like as much (it's a bit more beery than the peach), and a bottle of Moscato d'Asti, a white dessert wine that I've been looking for forever. More on that one later; the first time I had it, it tasted like candy, and I'm looking forward to trying it again.
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| Puzzles for Sora |
[Nov. 13th, 2007|12:29 pm] |
So, Sora broke the news last night...
Short version: Sora and I are engaged! I proposed last night when we were out to dinner to celebrate our second anniversary. And thank you to all of you who offered congratulations over on her LJ...
Over in that thread we've also had requests for "the whole story". ( So here it is. ) |
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| NaNoWriMo |
[Nov. 4th, 2007|12:41 am] |
I haven't posted much about it, so far, but after three days I have slightly over 5000 words of background material for Pyrlogos. So I'm on pace so far. And I'm even (kind of) sticking to the novel format! It's just... a novel that's so far composed of 5000 words of exposition. |
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| Neil Gaiman on story ideas |
[Oct. 12th, 2007|10:46 pm] |
http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essays/essaysbyneil/ideasessay/
As we head into November, many of us NaNoWriMo writers are trying to come up with some sort of plot, or even just the tiniest little seed of an idea which we can water carefully, nurture and feed as it grows into a blossom, and then try to wring fifty thousand words out of it as if it were a recalcitrant sponge.
Gaiman's essay isn't so much on the creative process itself as what he and other people think about it, but it's an interesting read, and does contain a few starting points if you need them.
So, I've heard from some of you, but... what's your plot/idea this year? My goal is to get the first story arc of Pyrlogos completely plotted and scripted, and have outlines of varying detail for the next two or three arcs. |
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[Sep. 14th, 2007|10:11 pm] |
Fine, I'll take the fricking career meme. For instructions, consult the journal of nearly anybody.
( Read more... ) |
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| In lieu of remembrances or political discussion... |
[Sep. 11th, 2007|12:30 pm] |
My friend 5tephe has been trying to spread this idea around:
Today, do something to make the world better, no matter how small it is.
That's all. His hope is that, a thousand years from now, people will simply remember this day as a day to make the world a better place.
Even if you just take five minutes out of your day to help someone out, or clean up a public place, or donate a little bit of money to a worthy cause... do something to improve the world. |
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| A short movie review. |
[Sep. 2nd, 2007|02:17 am] |
Stardust is quite possibly the best movie I've ever seen, and definitely in the top five or so. As a fairy tale, it's pretty much perfect. It's tense and exciting and wondrous and left Sora and I with the feeling we'd witnessed something absolutely extraordinary.
I've never seen anything like it, and I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in fantasy, fairy tales, or even just straight-up love stories. |
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[Jul. 29th, 2007|10:56 pm] |
Now that I've got all my music copied over to iTunes on the new Macintosh, I have verified something I have been hoping was true ever since I thought of it a month or two ago (but haven't bothered to check until now).
Namely, that "Comment contains [keyword]" is among the ways you can specify a Smart Playlist.
Why is this important? It means I can basically use the Comment field as a list of tags, and generate playlists based on those tags. This is far, far better than the way I was previously generating playlists, i.e. going through my library and just copying everything I wanted over to the playlist, and therefore needing to remember which songs I've sorted through and which I haven't, etc... now I can just store the tags and have an easy way of keeping that sort of state. |
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| OMG KITTIES |
[Jul. 14th, 2007|08:22 pm] |
I present to you Morpheus and Thanatos:
Morpheus is the grey one, and Thanatos is the black one.
They're brothers, born on Friday, April 13th, 2007. Yes, we actually own a black cat born on Friday the 13th, and we basically named him "Death". Good thing we're not superstitious, huh?
( More pictures! )
After some errands (picking up needed kitty supplies, etc), we arrived at the MEOW adoption center in Kirkland and submitted our adoption application (which included previous cat-ownership history and a personality test to best match us to cats). We then looked around for a while, and discussed our plans with one of the workers. We decided to aim for a pair of kittens that could keep each other entertained, and chose a couple kittens to bring into the meeting room (separate rooms where you can hold the cats and make sure they don't escape) first. We absolutely adored the first pair of kittens we met. The next two pairs didn't seem terribly interested in us, and the last pair was incredibly playful... so we had a hard choice. But when we brought the first pair of kittens out again, they just curled up on our laps and purred up a storm, and we just fell in love.
The adoption center didn't see any problem with us as cat owners, as expected. We had to sign an adoption contract saying that we'd take care of the cats for life, would keep them indoors, and would never declaw them - I was pleased and a bit surprised at the restrictions they had. I rather like that shelter.
So. We have kitties now! We took a nap after we got everything set up (well, Sora did; I read a book) and Morpheus just curled up with us and slept. I think they like their new home, and we're glad we finally have kitties - we've been anticipating them for over a year now. |
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| A poem. |
[Jun. 28th, 2007|05:00 pm] |
Major bugs have little bugs, which, being fixed, can cause'em.
And little bugs from tiny bugs, and on it goes ad nauseam.
The bigger bugs themselves can be pernicious, tangled creatures;
So suck it up and ship the code and we'll just call them "features". |
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determined
I'll take "awesome" for $600
exhausted
silly