27 posts tagged “update”

Changed the name and layout of that other blog. Take a look and tell me what you think, here or there, doesn't matter.

I totally love that picture. Makes me laugh every time.

What? How is it possible that I can declare hiatus on a project that I frequently ignore simply because I don't feel like working on it?

Well, I'll tell you!

See, the reason why I'm declaring this an official hiatus from this blog is because my online writing is currently going into my other project, which is a writer's blog for my university composition class. The reason why I'm telling you this is because I'm posting a lot on that site (I get graded for it, which proves that I can commit to just about anything given the proper incentive!).

If you'd like to check it out just to get a taste of more of my random, vague, incoherent thoughts, head over to Matt's Exciting Placeholder Blog Title! and have a read. I can't promise that what you'll find will be any different than what I post here, or even any good, for that matter, but at least it's getting updated five days a week.

-Matt

So, as I have been whining about on Twitter the last few days (which is ironic, considering my problem), my laptop is slowly dying. It still -sort- of works right now, but not well enough that it's usable so it's pretty much remained powered off, a relic of a better era, an artifact from a time when I had mobile computing power. A bygone age... at least until I shell out the money to fix it in a few weeks.

Because I firmly believe that every tragedy is really just an opportunity to procure a fancy new gadget for myself (seriously, the next funeral I go to = Zune HD, because damn it, I'm going to be grieving!) so while I will be fixing the laptop somewhere down the road (having it fixed, rather) I decided now was a good time to invest in a proper desktop, since I've essentially used the laptop for everything during the past, uh, almost six years and it was really starting to show its age.

The original plan was to just replace the laptop, but since my computer tech guy (yeah, I have my own tech guy, because damn it Jim, I'm a writer, not an engineer) recommended I could get more machine for my money and still repair the original laptop which doesn't need to be as powerful since it won't be my main machine, I decided that was a good idea.

So, sometime next week, I'll be receiving a new PC. Which makes me very happy when I think about it. Until then, though, I'm miserable. Well, not really. I've got books I can read. And I need to write a paper. Which is going to be difficult without a computer. Sentence fragments are fun!

You know what's weird?

Sometimes, I go for weeks at a time without blogging or tweeting or communicating online in any meaningful way (not to say that my blog and my twitter are meaningful!) and then sometimes, there's nothing I want to do except blog and tweet, but when I feel that way, I worry that it will look strange that I'll have a three week gap and then a day where I posted five times in under an hour.

Just one of the many little things I do that make me pretty sure I'm secretly neurotic.

This is one of those posts where I write because I feel like writing, not because I actually have something to say. I'm not quite sure why I bother to make these public; they're essentially a warm-up that I do, sort of like writing calisthenics, before I tackle my novel manuscript or a short story... just a way to get my fingers moving and my voice working and everything flowing especially since it's been a little while since I got any work done.

That still doesn't explain why I feel the need to share this utterly mundane and uninteresting rambling with you. I imagine if I thought about it long enough, I could ascribe some nonsensical reason to the behavior; off the top of my head, I'm going to go with pure narcissism, which is the fuel for about fifty percent of the Internet's content, anyway. Seriously, stop and think about it for a moment. Think about everything that you've placed on the Internet, all of the content that you've created. Not content that you've consumed, not things you've perused or enjoyed, but things that you've actually inserted into the greater series of tubes that is the Intertron. How much of it are pictures of you or the people around you? How much of your written material is dialogue about your life, shared with your friends? Perhaps I should ask this question a different; of everything that you've ever put up online, public or private, for whatever reason, how much of it is not about you?

This is not to imply that such a perspective is wrong. The reality is that this is a tool for facilitating communication between people. It's not a repository for artistic endeavor, any more than my phone is meant to be. But it never fails to amuse me (and I'm just as guilty of this as any individual) that so much of our social cyber-construction is built to carve little niches of ourselves, to put as much or as little of ourselves out there in the digital world. If you think about it, we're all vying for a little quasi-immortality (a phrase, incidentally, that amuses as much as "most unique"). Long after you've moved on, there are relics of your history floating around on the Internet, buried just below the surface, waiting to be unearthed with a little digging. These bits of data, these pieces left in the wake of your interest long after you've moved on will remain forever, as long as there exists a server to hold them. And it's always interesting to see how your little relics and artifacts can reappear, sometimes when you don't even expect it (and sometimes that's not a good thing).

For example, back when I was developing fledgling html skills, I made a series of websites on various free services, starting at a place called Express Pages before moving to Fortune City to Geocities and eventually, to Angelfire. At least one of those Angelfire pages is still up and active, because apparently, it's considered the primary resource for information on the drow god Vhaeraun on Wikipedia. Seriously, click the link and scroll down to the external links: "Citadel of the Mask Lord" was a website I put up years and years ago and then promptly forgot about. I'm not the one that found it and cited it for Wikipedia; I've actually never submitted anything to Wikipedia, ever, which rolls into the whole thing about all of my content online being about me.

Just something to think about.

Just got back from a backpacking trip, pictures are posted on my Facebook. I might migrate them over here later, if I feel up to it. At the moment, I just want to ice my knee, lie down and pass out watching a movie.

Sounds good. I'm going to go do that.

Played with the layout a little bit. Also took out that silly vanity hit counter thing that served no purpose other than to stroke my ego. Did I really need that? No, no I did not.

Also, speaking of ego and vanity, I added a widget to link this blog to my twitter feed! Go look at it. It's neat! And then go join twitter, and follow me, so we can have epic 140 character discussions about chaos theory!

So, podcasts. I'm a big fan of them; I have my little collection of shows that I listen to and it's great.

But lately I've been thinking, because I sometimes do that, what it would be like to try recording my own. I have two ideas in particular. The first would be a "Thoughts of a Writer" type recording, inspired by the Diary of a Cartoonist podcast done by Scott Johnson, who also hosts two of my other favorite shows, incidentally.

The other idea would just involve grabbing whichever of my friends has the best back-and-forth conversations that demonstrate our incisive wit and seeing what develops.

Hmm.

So, the NaNoWriMo project was officially a bust. I got off to a great start, had a solid week of writing roughly 1000 words a day and I was well on my merry way... and then I just sort of hit a wall. I skipped a few days because of the convention, and then I just never picked up the project again and the enthusiasm for it died. I cannot help but blame part of this on the fact that Wrath of the Lich King had to come out this month, which completely sucked me under for a while (though I hope now that I've hit 80 with my first character, the overwhelming desire to log on and level every single free moment will taper off some.)

I'm really not sure why somebody decided to have this writing month in November. It seems inconvenient. All of the year's best games are usually released in November, college students are finishing up the last month of the semester and finals and essays are usually raining down on us in droves. And then there's all the holiday stuff that normal people have to deal with. Why not have the national novel month in, say, June? Nothing happens in June.

I'm not sure whether to post what I did manage to write; it was a pretty sizeable chunk of story (I think around 10,000 words or so) but it is -extremely- messy, and because I was trying to write quickly, without stopping, there's a great chance that the story totally sucks. Maybe if somebody really tries to convince me, I'll unearth it. We'll see.

So, at this point, I'm trying to put together some short stories to send off to that publisher I met at the con, since his deadline is coming up and I don't want to blow this opportunity. I've got two ideas for horror stories so far... here's hoping I can find the juice to polish them off.

As you may have seen from my twittering (I refuse to admit that "tweet" is the verb for such actions), my work on my NaNoWriMo project is now seriously behind, with a deficit of five days and growing. At this point, I'm debating whether to just see exactly how far I can get, considering how good it felt when I was sticking to a strict schedule, or pull out now before I get too stressed with a project that is meant to be solely beneficial. After all, it's not as if I don't have other things on my plate; the essay on Into the Wild is due tomorrow, which I was hoping to have finished yesterday during my day off, except for the irritating fact that the more time I have, the less motivated I am to do work. And then there's the short story that I need to write and submit to the rep I met at TusCon, and there's the work on trying to get December published, and...

Busy, busy, busy.

We'll see how it goes. The essay is my first priority, since the grade matters and the thing is due tomorrow. After stalling on it all night, I was able to make some decent progress on it today, though I'm concerned that it isn't as tight as it could be due to how much I loved the subject matter, which, as you may note, is a rarity; usually, I am universally negative about the texts I have to write about, such as the whole Faulkner thing. Not sure what to make of that.

Well, off to work, and then finishing that essay, and THEN meeting up with The Brauer to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King night, which is completely inconvenient for me. Seriously, Wrath, couldn't you come out next week? I have a paper due tomorrow and you're making it impossible to concentrate.

Thank God I cannot buy it until midnight at the very earliest, grr.