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Cthulhu in Hermes Scarf

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:14:50 GMT

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Cthulhu in Hermes Scarf, originally uploaded by bradipo.

Is it just me, or do the images of horse ribbons on this Hermes scarf look like images of Cthulhu?

I’m prepared to accept that it’s just me.

Cthulhu in Hermes Scarf by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Clarion journals findable again

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:08:04 GMT

Since the demise of Hilary Moon Murphy’s Clarion Ex Machina site, there hasn’t been a good collection of links to all the various Clarion journals. Now Liz Argall has fixed that with her page of Clarion blogs, journals, articles and interviews.

There’s lots of good stuff there. I don’t know of a better source of raw material for people who are interested in the Clarion experience.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Guest post at The Simple Dollar

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:29:07 GMT

A while back Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar invited me to do a guest post and I finally came up with an idea that I liked: Living off Capital.

People who come from wealthy families learn how to live off capital. The rules are taught along with all the other things they learn from their parents–how to dress, how to eat, how deal with bankers and trust officers. But even though most people don’t learn the rules, living off capital is just a skill, and it’s one that everybody should learn, because everybody lives off capital sometimes.

It talks about investing for income, reinvesting to preserve capital, diversifying, and keeping your expenses flexible.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Happy Esperanto Day!

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:47:25 GMT

Esperantists are celebrating today. It’s 150 years since the birth of L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Celebrating along with them is Google, which is featuring the Esperanto flag in their logo.

Esperanto has been important to me for twenty years. I’ve traveled overseas with it. I’ve met bunches of cool people, read fascinating books and magazines, and listened to great music. Most important, I’ve done it on equal terms with the writers, performers, guests, hosts, and other people that I’ve met. Instead of one of us speaking our native language, we’re both speaking a second language–but one that’s easy to learn. Easy enough to learn that you don’t need to have any special talent with languages to learn it.

Happy Esperanto Day!

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Expecting the worst from my own government

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:37:53 GMT

The sf-writer universe today is full of links to the BoingBoing report on how Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was beaten by US border guards, arrested, his possessions impounded, and then dumped across the border in mid-December without even a coat. You can read Watts’s own account on his blog.

Now, I don’t have any actual knowledge of what happened. I hope there’ll turn out to be some impartial witnesses or some video of the occurrence. But in the absence of that, I find that I’m all too willing to assume that Watts’s account is true. The fact is, I don’t really expect better from anonymous border guards. I ought to be able to expect better, but I don’t.

If you want to donate to support his (sure to be large) legal expenses, you can contribute via his paypal account at <donate@rifters.com>.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Fire!

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:44:22 GMT

We were eating breakfast this morning when the smoke detector outside our apartment went off. It was a less-obnoxious beeping than most smoke detectors, so it took a while to figure out what it was. But, once we opened the door to check, we could smell the smoke. That eliminated all doubt.

There wasn’t much smoke and no flames, so we decided to take the time to get dressed and bundled up against the weather, and then went outside. A neighbor had already called the fire department, so we didn’t have to do anything except hang out and wait until they came. Most of our neighbors waited in the doorway, rather than stand out in the cold and wind, but I figured I didn’t want to breath even that much smoke.

It was only about 15 minutes before they said we could go back in. But that, together with a dentist appointment this morning, managed to put a big dent in the day.

The smoke alarm is still beeping every minute or so. I called the apartment office which said that they had thought it had already been reset, but would check and make sure. (Which I hope means that they’ll send someone over to take care of it, rather than just check and make sure someone said it had already been done.)

(By the way, my teeth are fine.)

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Clarion open for applications

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:14:45 GMT

Clarion, the science fiction and fantasy writers workshop, is open for applications for 2010! As usual, it looks like they’ve got a great line-up of instructors.

I attended Clarion in 2001 and found it a positive experience in every way–I had a great time, I improved my writing, and I got to know a bunch of cool people that I’m still in touch with.

I’ve written some about my Clarion experience: I kept a Clarion journal and I wrote a few short essays about what I learned and how I learned it.

If you’ve got any questions about what Clarion was like for me, I’d be glad to answer them in comments here or by email. (I’m also willing to take a stab at answering questions about other stuff, but things like how applications are processed vary from year to year, and I really only know about how they did things back in 2001.)

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

The downside of reasonable rules

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:10:49 GMT

The apartment complex where we live was built over the course of a decade or so, back in the 1960s. I don’t know what the building code and zoning rules said about things like building spacing, but I imagine that they left quite a bit up to the builder.

Without rules that had to be followed, the builders built the complex with an eye toward maximizing their profit. If you put more units on a piece of property, you can bring in rent from more tenants. But at some point adding more units leads to diminishing returns–adding more buildings makes the space feel sufficiently cramped or crowded that potential tenants view the place as a downscale complex and they won’t pay as much. For a while that can still be profitable–you gain more from the extra units than you lose to lower rents. But squeezing yet another building in won’t just cut the rent on those units, it’ll cut the rent on all the other units as well. Eventually you reach the point where you lose more in rent than you gain from having extra units, so you stop and don’t build that building.

Zoning regulations can change the dynamic. Currently, there are rules in Champaign that limit apartment builders from jamming ever more buildings into a complex.

Apartment complex near where we live

This picture is from a newer complex just a few blocks from where we live. The buildings are crammed so close together, it seems to me that you might just as well be living in the same building as your neighbors, as far as noise and privacy go. (This picture shows them face-to-face. Side-to-side they’re even closer.)

Again, I don’t know, but I assume that the buildings are built as close together as zoning regulations allow. That’s the pernicious side-effect of having that sort of rule.

Because, see, there isn’t just one answer to the question of how closely packed buildings can be before they begin to feel downscale. It depends on other stuff. It depends on what people are used to. It depends on what alternatives are available.

When you create a rule, some fraction of the builders are going to aim for the bottom–just meet the rule. Those units aren’t going to be upscale, but there’ll be some people who will rent them.

If there were no rules, of course, some builders might build complexes where the buildings were even closer together than that, but those complexes would seem especially downscale. When you set a minimum, though, everybody who was thinking of someplace in that neighborhood will tend to aim for that same point.

Obviously the people who would have aimed more downscale would be prohibited from doing so. But the people who would have aimed for just slightly better will also be drawn downward. If there were a wide range of densities, builders would see advantages to being just slightly more upscale than the next guy. But with rules setting a lower limit, we don’t see the full range. Instead, we tend to see a binary division between the downscale units that are at the maximum density permitted, versus the upscale units that offer a sufficiently lower density to stand out. The legally mandated minimum becomes normalized (because so many complexes build to that standard) and ends up being a standard, rather than a minimum.

Courtyard outside our apartment

The courtyard outside our apartment is a common area that is actually used by us and our neighbors. There are picnic tables and grills. The space is comfortable. It’s big enough that we don’t feel like we’re sitting right outside our neighbor’s apartments, but not so big that we feel lost in a vast space.

The space outside the nearby complex, though, feels wretched to me. With the buildings so close together, the space between becomes just a dark corridor. It’s not inviting, which is just as well because there’s no room to do anything there anyway.

In one sense, it doesn’t really matter to me. Our complex exists at its present density, and I can’t imagine that it would make any sense to try find find a way to pack in more buildings. But it makes me sad to see all the other, higher-density, complexes going up. It means that we aren’t getting new options.

The rules that set “reasonable minimums” instead are producing a binary distribution, where our only choices are downscale apartments crammed together or high-priced luxury apartments, where tenants get a reasonable density, but are stuck paying for other amenities that we don’t care about. It’s the downside of reasonable rules.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Copper Slough

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:12:07 GMT

Copper Slough, originally uploaded by bradipo.

Most of Central Illinois would be wet prairie if it weren’t for a network of drainage ditches, such as the Copper Slough. It runs past Kaufman Lake and then on south and west. It merges up with similar ditches and, somewhere around Sadorus starts being called the Kaskaskia Ditch, after which it, presumably, flows into the Kaskaskia.

I liked the mirror-flat surface of the water. I also liked all the drain tiles emptying into the ditch.

The picture was taken from the bridge on O’Malley’s Alley, looking north towards Kaufman Lake.

Copper Slough by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Deciding what to skip

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:23:25 GMT

One weak point in my writing is that I sometimes forget to write in scenes. I’m prone to write continuous action, which leads to pages of people just going places and arranging things. Very dull. Very easy to avoid, though, as long as I remember to do so. Just add a scene break and begin a new scene with, “When they arrived at…”

The problem is, an excessive amount of that is just as bad. It’s not as often, but I sometimes find myself summarizing–writing the whole story as a series of brief descriptions of what happened.

I think that’s where I went awry most recently. As often happens when I’ve made a mistake, I found it very hard to write the next bit, leading to several zero word count days this week. So, today I backed up and replaced some of that summary with scenes.

I think that was the right choice. After all, this is a place where they’re going to be spending some time. So, some full-blown scenes of arriving and meeting people seem appropriate. Plus, I enjoyed writing them, which is usually a good sign.

So, that’s 800 words today. With three zeros, though, my moving average is just 216 words. Hopefully I’m over this rough patch and can start making headway again.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Immunized

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:15:34 GMT

The local paper ran a story last week that said that Public Health District was opening up its H1N1 immunizations to all adults under 65. The story said that they’d have finished with kids and teens last week and there there was plenty of vaccine, so no reason to wait further.

So, Jackie and I went to their clinic at Lincoln Square Village.

It was quite a production. We showed up right at the time it was supposed to begin, and got number 85 of the second cohort, which meant that 184 households had already gotten numbers to go ahead of us. It was as big a crowd as I’ve been a member of in a long time. By the time we were done filling out our paperwork they were well into passing out numbers in the third cohort of households.

Still, despite the crowd, they moved people along quite quickly. (I think they had 25 stations where immunizations were being administered.) We waited for perhaps 20 minutes, got called, went in, and got our shots. Very efficient. And free, which is cool for someone trying to make a living as a writer.

I turned 50 back in June, so I was given a shot rather than the flu mist. I had considered trying to convince them to give me the flu mist instead–as far as I’ve been able to figure out, there’s no data that suggests it wouldn’t be just as effective in someone who was five months over the cut-off age–but eventually decide to just go with the program.

My mom tells me that she got me flu shots regularly when I was a small child. Because of the health problems that led to my being misdiagnosed with celiac, I was considered someone with an underlying health issue. I have no memory of that, but I do know that I didn’t get flu shots from when I got old enough to quit seeing the pediatrician (age 17 or so) until about 15 years ago, when I started getting them most years.

The first time I got a flu shot as an adult, my arm was sore for days. Most shots since then have made my arm a little less sore than the previous time. I’ve noticed a similar trend with other immunizations–an initial shot may have made me feel quite feverish and achy, but booster shots tend to have less of an effect. My theory is that a strong reaction means that I had a poor initial immune response–my body geared up to fight an unknown infection. Contrariwise, a small reaction means that I was already adequately protected–my body immediately recognized the virus as a known quantity and didn’t need to mount any special response.

If that’s true, then I already had an immunity to H1N1–my arm didn’t get sore at all.

As I say, it was kind of interesting. I don’t usually find myself with so many people in an enclosed space. I remember thinking, while milling about with the crowd waiting for flu shots, that it was probably the best chance to catch the flu all year.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Five hundred words of calling for help

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:17:31 GMT

I’ve known right along that I didn’t really know where the novel was going. On novel-length efforts I haven’t had much success writing to an outline, so I thought I’d try just writing. (Another thing I’ve been doing differently this time is giving the chapters to Jackie as I go along, figuring that would give me a little extra push to make each one kind of exciting.)

I’ve been putting in little hints of underlying complexity, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what they mean. I figure some of them will turn into something. The others I can leave in if they work as texture or remove if they detract.

For some reason, though, the past couple of days it started bugging me that I didn’t know where I was going. I was at an inflection point in the story and I thought had an idea for what I wanted to do next, but without an idea of where I was going, it just turned into nothing. The result was two days with zero word counts.

That was bad, but today I figured out I could write another chunk. I’d made the not-unusual decision to cut the hero off from most sources of help, but I realized today that I could let him call for help without him actually getting help anytime soon. Plus, this gives me the chance to insert some exposition if necessary–the response to the call for help can fill in whatever background is needed to put his adventures in the context of the greater story. (I haven’t written it yet, but I’ll write something, and if it isn’t right I can change it later.)

So, even though I still don’t know what the greater story is, I was able to write 500 words today of calling for help.

Although it daunted me for a couple of days, I think I’m past this cycle of worrying about what the greater story is. The worst that can happen is that I never do, and I’ll have spent a couple of months writing sixty thousand words that never turns into a novel. But the couple of months would have gone by whether I’d written sixty thousand words or not.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Word churn

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:35:29 GMT

My false starts last week left me with a bunch of words that probably belonged in the novel but not where I’d tried to put them. The past three days I’ve been working on integrating some of them into the next chapter and moving the rest out of the manuscript. The result is that I’ve made some forward progress, but without much in the way of net new words. So, with word counts of 200, 300, and 600, my moving average has slipped under 500. Still, I’m making forward progress. In fact, I hit 15,000 words, which is one-quarter of my estimated final length, and I hit it with a neat transition in the story–after having been on the move so far, the characters have finally reached a place they’re going to be for a while.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Crane in Kaufman Lake Park

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:27:48 GMT

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Crane in Kaufman Lake Park, originally uploaded by bradipo.

A damp, chill, late-autumn day. With a crane.

Crane in Kaufman Lake Park by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Perfecting Taiji forms

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:39:58 GMT

I studied Aikido briefly when I was living in Salt Lake City. My teacher was a gruff Asian man whose English was just adequate and whose teaching style was not unlike what you see in martial arts movies–he would mock or berate students who got things wrong. I don’t know if he thought that was the best way to get people to learn, or if it was just how his teachers had taught him. Maybe he just didn’t want to waste his time teaching anyone who could be deterred by a little mocking or berating.

At one point, talking about his philosophy of teaching, he made fun of some locally available Taiji classes that focused on “perfecting” your Taiji forms. With his somewhat limited English he made it perfectly clear that he thought it was stupid not to learn your Taiji correctly in the first place.

It made sense to me at the time. I mean, if you’re going to practice something hundreds or thousands of times, surely it makes sense to learn how to do it correctly first, right? Who’d want to practice doing it badly over and over again?

My current teachers, though, have a completely different attitude. Unlike any martial arts class I’ve been in, they basically never correct anyone. This may be partially due to the makeup of the class–mostly old people who might have limited range of motion due to arthritis or some other medical problem. Also, I think it’s because they’re focusing on the deeper fundamentals–things like shifting your weight and turning your body. Exactly when you turn your hand is simply not as important.

Even more fundamentally, though, it’s because you have to do the practice to learn to feel the difference. I suppose if you had a private tutor telling you that you were turning your hand too early or were forgetting to straighten your foot, you might spend a little less time practicing the form incorrectly, which would mean that you’d start practicing the form correctly a little sooner. But I think you’d lose the chance to learn how to feel why one way is wrong and the other way is better.

I have no particular natural ability at things like this–things like martial arts or dance or tennis. I’ve seen dancers who can pick up choreography in a fraction of a second, copying the lead dancer’s moves so quickly that you can scarcely tell that they’re unrehearsed. I’m the opposite of that. It takes me tens or hundreds of tries to get even reasonably close. However, I’ve been surprised to find that I get a little closer each time, even without an instructor telling me what I’m doing wrong.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the way you learn how to do something is by practicing. I knew that already. But it’s been very interesting to see how effective this sort of minimalist instruction is. The teachers demonstrate the forms, and they answer questions. There’s no pushing people to do the forms more correctly, and there’s certainly no mocking or berating. And yet, I’m learning at least as fast as I’ve ever learned anything equivalent in the past.

So, I think my old Aikido teacher was wrong. It makes perfect sense to start learning Taiji at the most basic level (weight shifting, turning your body), and then to move on to foot work and arm movement, and only then to worry about things like how you move your hands. It makes perfect sense to have an instructor show you what to do, but then let you learn how to do it through practice. And, since you can do 90% of the practice entirely on your own, it makes perfect sense to have an advanced course in “perfecting” your Taiji forms, to get whichever small bits don’t come naturally out of your practice.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Late Fall Outside My Window

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:37:41 GMT

Late Fall Outside My Window, originally uploaded by bradipo.

This is the view out the window in the study. The leaves on the tree are just about gone.

Late Fall Outside My Window by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Onward

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:34:10 GMT

About a month ago I got a rewrite request from an editor. This is generally considered a good thing–it means the story is almost good enough to sell.

This is only the second such rewrite request I’ve gotten. The previous one was from a top market so of course I did the rewrite, but the editor still didn’t buy it. That experience stood me in good stead. I did this new rewrite with great hope, but was not nearly as surprised and disappointed this time when the story didn’t sell.

I’m not unhappy about having done the rewrite. The editor had a useful insight into how I could fix one key problem with the story, and the rewritten version is much better. My previous rewritten story did eventually sell, and I have some hope that this one will sell as well.

I suppose I shouldn’t conclude too much from just two datapoints, but it’s hard not to see this as part of a pattern. Still, I expect I’ll do the same with future rewrite requests: If the editor’s suggestion improves the story, I’ll take it and do the rewrite.

I made very good progress on the novel today, writing almost 1200 words. Yesterday’s progress of not quite 400 words was kind of meager, but managed to get me on through the point where I’d gotten stuck. My moving average, which had been declining for most of the week is now turned back up. I’m very pleased with the new stuff–it nicely sets up the next thing I want to write, and I’m especially looking forward to writing the next bit. I don’t know how it goes, but I know it’s going to be wonderful, wonderful fun.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Immune system

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:24:09 GMT

Night before last I woke up in the middle of the night feeling feverish and achy. But when I got up the next morning, I felt fine. Dare I hope that in my youth I was exposed to that previous H1N1 flu? Could it be that my immune system was already primed to knock it down, and managed it in just a few hours? Since I can’t get immunized anyway, I figure it’s harmless to be hopeful.

Just 500 words yesterday and not much over 200 words today. I eventually figured out it was hard to make headway because I wasn’t sure how the next bit went. I knew where I wanted the characters to end up, but I couldn’t see a way to get them there quickly–they wouldn’t choose to go there on purpose, and the natural path that would take them there wouldn’t be quick enough to make a good story.

There are a lot of solutions to that sort of problem. You can write the slow path and find a way to make it exciting. You can just skip the intervening time–this can be as easy as “They stayed in the luxury hotel for eleven days, but on the twelfth day….” I tried writing it both ways, but neither worked well in this case.

Then, earlier this evening, I figured out how to push the characters into leaving the cushy spot they’d managed to find for themselves in such a way that they have to move on to the rather less pleasant spot I’ve got in mind for them. It grows out of the existing characters and conflicts already in place. It’s a much better solution than writing a bunch of dull stuff and then trying to make it interesting.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

The dangerous life of the silkworm

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:12:13 GMT

Went with Jackie to a meeting of the Spinners and Weavers Guild to hear a talk about raising silkworms. The thing that struck me was how vulnerable they are–the speaker had lost silkworms to any number of threats. Cats had eaten some. Possums had eaten some that were in the garage. For a while the legs of the table they were on had to be placed in dishes of water, because ants were carrying off young silkworms.

I wrote something over 600 words. Or, rather, I wrote about three times that many, but tossed most of them. And what I’ve got still isn’t right. The work hasn’t been wasted–I’m beginning to understand what I’m doing wrong. I’ve had the characters working together, when at this point what I need to do is sharpen their conflicts. I don’t know the details yet. Perhaps by morning it will be clear. If not, I can write and throw away another 1800 words. The word count tracking is in service of producing a good story, not an end in itself.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Money Isn’t Real

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:26:02 GMT

Money Isn’t Real, originally uploaded by bradipo.

Written on the post of a railroad crossing signal where the tracks cross Country Fair Drive. I think I’d enjoy talking to the guy who wrote it, although I’m inclined to disagree.

Money Isn’t Real by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Taiji and napping

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:52:16 GMT

Over 700 words yesterday, but only 400 today. My seven-day trailing average barely budged–it’s been between 655 and 688 all week.

Productivity was lower today because Mondays we do Taiji and then have lunch out. All that, together with travel time, takes a couple hours out of the day–plus I usually end up wanting to take a nap.

Today we learned “push with both hands.” The instructor listed the 9 form sequence that we’re going to learn this session, and we were all relieved to see that we’ve already learned the basic moves for most of the remaining forms.

Last week we learned “lazy about tying coat.” Today I told the instructor I’d invented a new form and demonstrated it, simply moving directly from the start position to the end position. I told him it was called “lazy about lazy about tying coat.”

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Allocating time

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:03:48 GMT

I wrote just under 700 words on the novel today, versus just over yesterday. My average barely budged. I’ve actually got the next couple of bits figured out, which makes me want to sit down and get it written. I’ll put some hours in tomorrow.

Besides the fiction writing, I also wrote two Wise Bread posts. One is all set to go, the other is all done except that I want to create a graph that I’ll use as the image for the post. The one I wrote yesterday didn’t go live today–it’s scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning.

This year I cut back on the amount I was writing for Wise Bread, to free up more time for writing fiction. This had the negative side-effect of cutting into my income. I’m still trying to find the right balance, and dashing off a couple of posts in an afternoon helps.

For the past couple of days I’ve been tweaking the schedule that I’d come up with. Today I came at it from a slightly different direction–I didn’t block out a schedule in advance, I just took notes of what I actually did. That provides some information that I wasn’t getting from just following a schedule, about what size blocks of time seem more natural than others and what activities more naturally follow others. I may continue to do that with weekend days, and use the information I get to fine-tune the schedules I come up with for weekdays.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Fall Color with Graffiti

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:38:48 GMT

Fall Color with Graffiti, originally uploaded by bradipo.

Taken just north of Kaufman Lake Park, under the railroad tracks and past both halves of the I-72 overpass. I liked the dwindling fall color against the graffiti on the overpass.

Fall Color with Graffiti by Philip Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Novelish and Wisebreadly

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:45:08 GMT

Got a chunk done on the novel–about 700 words, which is just about what I’ve been averaging. Speaking of which, I also changed the moving average in my spreadsheet so that it tracks my average production for the trailing 7 days, because there are clearly some impacts on my productivity that vary by day of the week. This will smooth that out, at the cost of the average responding more slowly if my productivity changes in some more fundamental way. What I’d really like, I guess, is a logarithmic moving average that weights recent days more highly, but I’m not geeky enough to go to the trouble to do that.

Also wrote a Wise Bread post which hasn’t been scheduled yet, but which will probably go live some time tomorrow.

Jackie spent the morning setting up the yarn room at the Spinners and Weavers Guild Annual Show and Sale, then spent the evening attending to the room, answering people’s questions, and demonstrating spinning.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.

Thursdays

pbrewer@philipbrewer.net — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:09:18 GMT

I’ve been trying to get out for a walk each day, and trying to take a photograph on the walks. I want to do both of these things, and my theory is that these desires will be self-reinforcing: My desire to take a photo will get me out on my walk, and my desire to go out on a walk will prompt me to get out and take a photograph.

With that in mind, I’ve been going ahead and scheduling a chunk of walk/photograph time between my two morning writing sessions. Today, though, I was meeting some friends for lunch, so I postponed the walk until late morning, then did my walking and photography in the neighborhood of the restaurant.

Thursdays are my most social day–I have lunch with one group of friends (a couple of them former coworkers) and then before dinner meet with my local Esperanto group. With all that, plus the fact that I spent a chunk of the afternoon working on a short talk that I delivered to the Esperanto group, meant that my fiction word count was just 500 words. But they’re words I’m happy with.

Originally published at Philip Brewer. You can comment here or there.