May 2012

I don't think anyone really appreciates the process behind any product until they've engaged it at every level. I hope down the road I can honestly tell someone looking at the same path of self-published authorship, "Yes, it was worth it, go-go". Staring at a half million words of text while standing at my desk makes me wonder if I'll be able to ever utter those words. I don't think I ever realized just how hard this would be, or the ways in which I would have to grow as a person and a creative. 

I definitely want to do this. Give it five years of my life at least. After that, I dunno. 

At this point I've given up trying to figure out exactly how much I've written in the last two months. After a lot of work, it is still spread out among two hundred or so .txt files in my Daedalus app, and I'm slowly moving it all into the formatted documents where they belong. I feel like I'm moving a huge flock of sheep that do not know where they are going or why they exist, I've written so much in the last couple of months that it has sort of lost all meaning. 

Every day, and every night, I write more. I've been taking Melatonin to make me sleep, so I don't stay up until 3:00 AM making text. The dreams and the sometimes sluggishness I feel the day after almost aren't worth it. 

I still don't lack for material. I feel like I have at least two more books in me that are still languishing as outlines and one of those could lead to an array of related works. I'm trying to at least get all the text I've already written moved to the proper place and edited before I disappear to a dark corner to write more drafts for more books. Books I already don't have the stamina to edit at this point. 

I might need to find some help. 

Rain & Writing

It's raining pretty hard today, and it's cold. Couldn't let it go to waste so I moved my work out to the covered patio.

iPad Home Screen

I think you could probably tell a lot about a person based on their iPad's home screen. For argument's sake, this is what mine looks like.

April, 2012

I'm putting this up for my own benefit, so feel free to skip reading this unless the minutia of my work is interesting to you.

By the end of April I have worked an unknown number of days and have added a likewise unknown number of words to my goal. I've spent the last two days cutting text from unformatted medium to a formatted one trying to get a grasp on how much I wrote in April. Needless to say, it was a lot. More than a 100,000 words by my reckoning. 

Master & Student is on the market now, you can download it here. 

My goal at this moment is to edit as much text as I can, and get it into the formatted document where it belongs. 

I think I'll just edit this post later or add the specifics to May's update. Anyway, back to work. 

Standing Desk, 9 Months Later

Posted about my standing desk about nine months ago. After talking with my brother I felt like I should post an update for those who still haven't taken the plunge.

My post from last year is here.

I spend anywhere from 6-8 hours per day at my standing desk, and it gets used for work exclusively. I've stopped any sort of gaming, mostly for lack of time, and I've taken to drawing on my tablet there as well. It's where the majority of my work gets done, unless I'm ill or something.

The desk I'm using has a keyboard tray which is handy for storing my tablet, external hard drives, extra mice, and so forth. I highly recommend rotating keyboards and mice to keep your hands and wrists from getting to used to one or the other. I don't know about the orthopedic benefits, but it helps me stay focused and aware of my posture at the standing desk.

Edit: It's worth mentioning the importance of shoes. Nothing makes my back hurt like working at my standing desk barefoot. Wear good shoes when you're at your vertical workspace.

Pros:

It's easier to maintain my weight. I don't feel like my weight is in constant flux. While I haven't shed mad pounds or anything, I do stay pretty much the same.

My mental health has improved, and I'm more focused. I'd actually like to figure out a way to have more table space for my notes and such. I'm not getting rid of my bust of Odin though.

Reduced pain in my hands, wrists and shoulders from long hours at the keyboard. Posture is really important and you've got to stand tall, back away from the desk, and avoid leaning on it to get the benefits I think.

Cons:

It helped me sleep better for the first few months, but now I think it does the opposite. The pair of twenty five pound dumbbells sitting by the desk help.

My back hurts a little bit if I forget to take breaks and walk around. Sometimes I'll just disappear into my own little world making text and come out of it with a back ache. If you do a standing desk, make sure you take a break every hour or so. Walk around the block, rake some leaved, trim the shrubs, take out the trash, something.

Conclusions:

If you find yourself fighting with your weight and being sleepy at your desk, I would recommend giving a standing desk a try for three months. I'm not a healthcare professional, and I would recommend consulting a doctor if you've got any condition that would mess with you as a result of standing for long hours before trying a standing desk.

It doesn't have to be expensive. My standing desk was a cheap $80 desk you buy at the office big box store and $15 worth of cinder blocks from Home Depot. There are plenty of far more expensive solutions out there if you think the cheap will clash with decor.

March, 2012

I'm putting this up for my own benefit, so feel free to skip reading this unless the minutia of my work is interesting to you.

By the end of March I had knocked out 37 solid days of work on my novels and have somewhere around 185,000 words of my 1,000,000 word goal.

I spent a lot of time editing and realizing that I couldn't just continue writing books for two separate series without doing a lot of back reading and editing along the way. I logged nearly seventy hours reading and editing in March.

To stay on track for my goal, I really needed to be at 250,000 words by now. I don't really have time to beat myself up about it. It's of little use at this point. We set goals to better understand our limits.

The video game my partner and I made is in the process of being bounced back and forth between us and Microsoft certification, which I'm really excited about. I also finished the draft for my fifth novel and I am pleased with some of what I've written recently.

Looking ahead...

April:

I broke through six month of writers block on my Storytelling Sciences RPG and I've began revising the system and creating a new and hopefully more final version. I'm going to add whatever I do for it to my word count as I will eventually publish the darn thing.

I made myself a reading list. I don't think I read enough, and it hurts me as a writer and editor.

There are twenty one perfectly good work days in April and if I only add 55,000 words to my total this month, I'll call it a win. I'm going to stretch and try for a lot more but I think the process will get slower as I progress further in each series. Every book I write, is another I have to fact check and edit for the one to follow.

I'd like to finish the third D&E novel, outlined to fall somewhere around 80,000 words. I think I'll shoot for that.

May:

I'll worry about it when I get there.

I have close to 400,000 words worth of material to read and edit between the three projects I'm working on right now. It's my least favorite thing, which means I should probably be doing it right now.

Paper

53's app, called "Paper", is a stack of Moleskins, a handful of drawing tools and a small array of colors. It isn't for creating finished work or storing a gallery's worth of masterpieces locally on your iPad. The app is for a different kind of work, the sort one does before they really get to work.

If you've ever used a pen you lifted from the hotel you're staying at to jot down an idea on a napkin, this is app is for you. If you've ever grabbed the crayons from the table at the pizza place to entertain yourself by drawing on the back of a kid's menu, this app is right up your alley. The promotional video shows someone using their iPad to jot down items while wandering the city.

If you're the sort of creative person who has their best ideas no matter where they happen to be, check this app out. It's free, and you can try out the features before you buy any of them.

iPad (3rd Gen) Review

I've been trying to conjure the right words for the new Apple iPad since I got mine last Friday. There are already a bunch of reviews out there raving about how awesome the screen is, so I'll try to make this review a little different.

I think it's a worrying trend that Apple's iPad 1, only two years old, can't run all the iLife apps. If you own an iPad 1, and you feel like you're the victim of planned obsolescence, you aren't alone. Feeling like you have to upgrade only two years later to get full functionality, and access to apps and features, is pretty discouraging.

Worried about being a future victim of planned obsolescence or artificial scarcity? The new iPad (3rd Generation) will probably have better longevity because it will runs all the iLife apps at release, and has the new retina display. It very well could be a device with a 3-5+ year lifespan like an iPod or a MacBook.

As a tool and content consumption device, the new iPad has some features that the iPad 1 doesn't.

iBooks

I use this application all the time to read full color PDFs that have hundreds of pages. The original iPad was sluggy and displayed each page at a lower resolution that the document was probably scanned in at. Reading such documents on the new iPad is a joy and the performance far exceeds that of the iPad.

If I did print or design professionally and wanted to have something to show samples to clients, the new iPad would be a must have tool. The full color pages of my PDF format books look as good as the real thing, sometimes better depending on the light conditions. Page turns aren't instant, but quick enough that it doesn't test my not-so-considerable patience.

Pages, Numbers, & Keynote

I didn't think I would find the retina display that useful when using business or text generation apps. I was wrong. Using these apps with the new iPad is like going from an old CRT monitor to an Apple Cinema Display. When you have to stare at a screen for hours editing or generating text, there is something to be said about the display and how it affects your stamina.

The latency of the soft keyboard seems better too, allowing me to type a little more quickly onscreen than I did with the iPad 1. I can't really explain or quantify why I feel that way, it's just a better experience. Also, the text you create is crisp and very readable. When editing, I prefer my new iPad to anything else now because of how easy on the eyes the display is.

Games

There are only a few retina optimized games out there. I've spent a couple of hours with Infinity Blade II and Mass Effect: Infiltrator. I think once more games come out, this will be the mobile gaming platform to own for power gamers. I still play Ultima Underworld 1 in a DOS box, so I wasn't as dazzled as some. However, if mobile gaming platforms are your thing, the new iPad is your device.

Some of my old games, purchased for the iPad 1, run a little wonky. Seriously, it made me all kinds of nostalgic, but it wasn't to be unexpected. I still have a 1997 laptop to play old games. It's just the price of doing business.

There's been some talk that the iPad generates a large amount of heat when running games for an extended period of time. I did my own tests, both on battery and AC power, and didn't find this to be the case. That's not to say that it stays perfectly cool, but the heat is negligible. User experience in this regard probably varies depending on a number of variables, and maybe I just lucked out.

Yet-to-be Retina Enabled Apps

Most of them aren't so garish to be rendered unusable, but a few are. I've had a mostly favorable experience so far. Microsoft's OneNote app, for instance, looks fine and works great. Their SkyDrive app needs a hug, but I'll save that for a different review.

The short term solution seems to be loading the iPhone retina display capable version, if available. If you are looking for a reason to wait, this could qualify. Waiting for developers to upgrade to the new retina display shouldn't take too long though.

LTE 4G vs. WiFi

I took my iPad around to a half dozen different places that had public WiFi and had no connectivity problems. Also, the new iPad seems to have a pretty good range, as good or better than the iPad 1. No complaints in that regard.

I bought WiFi because I didn't have any faith there will be decent 4G in my area in the near future, and I don't travel that much. Virtually everywhere I go has WiFi except my favorite Vietnamese Resteraunt. I'm generally too busy eating anyway.

There aren't a lot of cities with real 4G service. Do your research before buying an 4G version with any expectation you'll get LTE speeds. As I write this, I don't think AT&T is supporting the WiFi Hotspot functionality, and if that's part of the reason for your purchase, make sure you get the Verizon equipped device instead. AT&T only made their press release a week ago, and things might change in that regard. They always do.

Conclusion

If you're perfectly happy with your iPad 1 or 2, and use it primarily to consume content, I think you could easily wait another year to upgrade without missing out on much. It'll take the developer community some time to get their applications up to speed with the new retina display, and the next iPad will come into the field already good to go in that regard.

For those of us who use the iPad as part of their professional workflow and log more than 500+ hours a year on the device, the new iPad is a good buy for the perfomance increase and the display upgrade. For reference, I upgraded from an iPad 1, buying a new Wifi-only, 64GB iPad in Black.

My Political Stance, Illustrated

I didn't go anywhere, they did. I drew this mostly out of frustration, but also to put my feelings into some sort of context.

February, 2012

I'm putting this up for my own benefit, so feel free to skip reading this unless the minutia of my work is interesting to you. Okay, doing the math at 1:00 AM...

By the end of February I had...

... knocked out 26.5 solid days of work on my novels and 132,404 words of my 1,000,000 word goal.

To give myself some perspective, I did have a lot of stuff going on in my personal life in February. Also, I needed some time to reread my old outlines, notes, and drafts for the first books to give myself fuel and consistency in the story. Fifteen really good work days is a healthy step up from January, but still not where I need to be to reach my goal.

Looking ahead...

March:

I thought my traveling in March would only cost me two days, but it turns out it'll be three. That gives me 19 solid work days which could add 95,000 words to my total word count. This assumes I rest on weekends and don't push too hard.

This will land me in the 225,000 word range by the end of March, 25,000 words shy of where I need to be, or five days worth of work.

April:

There are 21 perfectly good work days in April. If I continue to increase and maintain my output, I could add 105,000 words to my total. If everything went well in March, and again in April, I could be sitting at 335,000 words, right on schedule.

If I get caught up in April, and I continue to create 100,000+ words a month thereafter, I could reach a million words by mid-November and have the holidays off to edit and prepare for publishing next year. Depending on which books I write first, I could conceivably prep to publish 2-3 books this year.

I'm going to stick to writing whatever I'm inspired to work on to keep output high. If it works out that the right books get written in the right order, so be it. I'm not going to sweat it either way.