August 2012

A thousand words worth.

July 2012

Everything I feel like I should write for an update sounds hollow to me now.

Suffice it to say, I'm one month closer to my goals. I work steadily according to the schedule I've set up for myself. Most of the time I'm a strange mixture of content and restless as the work proceeds. It's strange to be on the other side of so much text and to go back through it.

I've probably said it before already, but it is worth pointing out again.

One definitely sees themselves and where they were in their work. I can look at the date created for a document, read through it, edit it, and recall how I felt that day. Brutal introspection indeed.

I need to read and reread my own work more.

Tablets, Ultrabooks & Copying

There are a lot of devices not the market being branded as tablets and Ultrabooks, when in reality they are anything but. It's maddening to me, as I love both of those form factors, and they seem to get diluted with each new marketing strategy. This is how I define those two form factors:

Tablet Device

- Hand held mobile device weighing 1-2 lb. at most.

- 4:3 screen ratio, designed to be held in portrait (like digital paper), but works equally well in landscape. Android is something of an exception in this regard. Because it was designed to be viewed on a phone, it looks okay (depending on device) with a 16:10 ratio, even when held in portrait.

- Touch screen interface with no others required to access all features.

- Mobile operating system designed for tablet form factor, no mouse pointers or UI that would imply input other than touch. My preference is that the OS is as good at allowing the user to create media, as it is for consuming it. Productivity with equal parts fun.

- 10+ hours of battery life. Anything less doesn't match up with my usual work day.

Everything else is some sort of media consumption device, hybrid, or glorified e-reader.

As exciting as Microsoft's Surface device might be, it is not a tablet device. It's a somewhat baffling personal computer with a touch screen. I know Microsoft and everyone else is going to market the device otherwise, and it just doesn't sit right with me. Windows 8 RT running on the right hardware, might qualify as a tablet device, but I haven't held such a thing in my hand yet.

I hope the Surface is just a step in the right direction to a true Windows-based tablet device.

Ultrabooks

- Clamshell design mobile computing device weighing 2-3 lb. at most.

- 16:9 (or similar) screen ratio, to be viewed in landscape.

- Keyboard, Trackpad interface with no need to carry external mouse.

- Desktop operating system.

- Solid state drive storage.

(...although I am starting to see the merit of hybrid drives provided they don't add bulk to the device.)

- No optical drive.

- 7+ hours of battery life.

Everything else is some kind of personal computer.

There are a number of devices that will probably break my rules, succeed, and find consumers that crave their line-blurring form factors. The industry will probably call them tablets or Ultrabooks for the sake of marketing, but it still feels wrong. These unique form factors deserve names of their own.

It sounds like I'm just describing the iPad and the MacBook Air in my quantifications above. It's probably because those two devices have defined their respective form factors like no other. They are pretty much the standard against which all others are measured by tech sites, comment section trolls, and myself.

The year is half over and I haven't seen anything that comes close to making me want to relinquish my 2010 MBA or iPad (except the newer iPad). Windows 8 RT gives me hope that there might be a Windows Product worth buying again in the Ultrabook category, but no one is making a tablet worth buying right now. Props to Google for their Nexus 7 media consumption device, it looks really good.

I can't even look at the comments section of any tech website without marveling at the number of people pointing out how similar laptops, tablets, and similar are to Apple products... whether they are or not. Everyone from car makers to PC manufacturers has been copying each other since the inception of their respective industries. It is a practice that sits at the core of all human innovation, natural as breathing. Why this is so surprising to people or that they feel the need to point it out all the time is mysterious to me.

There are certain design truths whether you are crafting a commercial aircraft or a double decker ice cream cone. As the mobile computing industry settles on these truths they will come to resemble each other more and more over time as standards of creation are quietly adopted. It's just another sign that we are becoming a global community with a greater awareness of one another.

June 2012

Took some vacation time and spent some of it in deep reflection... when I wasn't playing Fallout: New Vegas. I did finally get a word count on what I've written so far this year and I blew past the half million mark sometime last month. I think this will be the last blog post where I talk specifically about my progress though.

In January I didn't trust myself to really write at capacity and stay on task. In July, a half million words later, and as I get ready to write the draft for my seventh book, it's lost all meaning. This is just what I do now, and I don't need to quantify my work by holding myself accountable on a blog anymore.

I know when I depart my two weeks vacation on Monday I will immediately resume my schedule. My game accounts will once again go largely innactive, books I hoped to read for pleasure will get set aside, and the quest will continue. My new book will have a draft in about 2-3 weeks and I'll be able to commence going back and editing the two in the series that precede it.

It all feels normal now.

My partner in crime and I will be pulling together a game for the Windows 8 platforms and I've already begun the design work. Our other game languishes on that old (by mobile standards) platform Windows Phone 7. We surpassed a 1000 downloads a while ago and I'm not sure where we are now.

Also, totally normal.

What isn't normal is the feeling that all this is normal. That is a wondrous sensation and that all that remains is to edit, create covers, and self publish... a process that will also come to feel normal probably by the middle of next year. It has me asking myself a question I haven't asked myself since 2009.

What will I do after this?

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.