Welcome to GlassHalfEmpty, my own little corner of the Wired. My name is Dan, otherwise known as Pewterfish in some circles, and I have collected a miscellany of occasionally interesting material in the following pages.
Go ahead, browse. You might find something worth your time.
One of those days, following one of those weeks (so far, at least).
So far this week, I've not gone to a NaNoWriMo meet because I was going to fencing instead (at which I stood around trying not to go hide in a corner for no clear reason, and did a bit of coaching and reffing instead of, you know, actually fencing). Also, I haven't done the development kit upgrade I was supposed to do because I got caught up in a language reference manual I'm reading instead, which is going to be inconvenient in the meeting tomorrow. I think a working knowledge of SDL (the language in question) is potentially very useful in our future work, but I wish I'd learned it six months ago or so.
What with that and picking up the teaching load for an injured colleague, its been ... busy. I've not written word one for NaNoWriMo in the last three days and, although I've beaten my somewhat ignominious 13000 score in 2006, I don't see a lot more getting written. Which is a pity: I like the plot, and the characters, but...
I should be LARPing for a day at Brighton Below, this weekend, though, which will be a nice break, if nothing else goes wrong and I manage to get the makeup and costume sorted in time. Maybe I can just wander off into the Below. Yeah, that would be nice.
If this is really all life is, I want my money back.
Just saw the new Star Trek trailer.
Oh, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell no.
The Enterprise should not look more advanced than the timeships that turned up in Voyager and Enterprise. And that had better not be an android cop.
This does not bode well for Simon Pegg's continued status as the Grand High Geek of Britain.
Turns out the main bad guys in my NaNo story are Greek. Those of you who know me probably aren't all that surprised. I have nothing against Greeks, really, but most of the time, if someone has annoyed me recently, it was probably a Greek, on the grounds that I work in a lab full of them, and they're occasionally quite annoying. They're an ancient cabal of dark magicians (the bad guys, not the guys in the lab, at least, not to the best of my knowledge) who have lucked into more power than they could possibly have hoped for and are now busily abusing it. Mwaha. haha. ha.
The weekend, well, the weekend hasn't really been so restful. Calmer than the week, but that's not really saying a lot. I washed all my trousers at once, since they'd somehow all got to the point of needing it at the same time, did the fencing club's insurance inventory (or rather, realised that I had the scribbled copy in my pocket and that the deadline was today, panicked, found all the relevant prices, did the math and submitted the document a mere hour or so late), and went to a NaNoWriMo write-in. I say write-in. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a write-in at the Sanctuary, but only me and the Municipal Liason (an old friend of mine) turned up. Last week, we are fairly reliably informed that a reasonable group of folk showed up, but neither of us attended for various reasons. Today, we went, and it was just us. Not that I'm complaining about the opportunity to sit at a small, candlelit table with a coffee and discuss nothing in particular that happens to be happening in our stories, it's just not what it said on the tin, as it were. Although the mulled wine was good. Even if I must next time remember to get the version with the Amaretto shot: the ML's cup smelled awesome.
Rather irritatingly, though, the fact that I was washing my trousers meant over the weekend I had to wear my tired old tracksuit trousers, which I normally only wear for exercise. They're a bit baggier than I'm used to, and I caught the pocket on a drawer-handle as I was leaving the kitchen, and ripped it (the pocket) right out. So I'll have to fix that before tai chi on Tuesday. Woe.
For the last few weeks, Kian Ryan has been coming down from Bolton to Brighton every other week, to meet with a current client of his. Since these meetings take place in the latter half of the week, he's been coming along to the fencing club's team training sessions, and since he's a qualified coach, we've been making him work.
Last night, he made us work in return.
I still ache this morning from all the point-control training, parry-selection, core-stability exercises and footwork he took us through (the short, medium, and er... long lunges were particularly memorable). I haven't worked that hard or continuously in a training session for a long time: due to a chronic shortage of coach-hours, we're used to having the coach bring the beginners up to a basic standard, then release them to us, where free-fencing teaches them the rest. Of course, free-fencing doesn't teach them the rest, and it doesn't really teach us anything. That's not to say that our coach is bad, just that there's not enough of her for the thirty-five-odd fencers she has to work with on Tuesdays. Which makes the Thursday sessions all the more valuable.
Kian gave me a quick one-to-one lesson at the end of the session, which only underscores how much I still have to learn before I move from being an adequate fencer to a good one. You see, in Epee, there is no priority. In Foil and Sabre, one must seize priority (by extending the sword arm) before attacking. If you don't have priority, you won't score, and in cases of hits occurring together, priority is used to break the 'tie'. In epee, one can hit at any time (doubles count as a point both ways). However, as Kian taught me, the lack of 'scoring priority' does not mean there's no priority or rhythm to the attack. It's gonna take a little more training before I fully understand, I think, but the idea of being able to change tempo as well as distance, stance and blade position during a bout is interesting. It's relatively obvious, but until you think about it, it isn't. Which is the problem I'm having while fencing at the moment: I'm spending so much time on the armoury, and on training the incoming newbies, that I've stopped thinking about how I fence and just trying to do it all from memory, without analysis or planning. This has to change.
So, I shall be training some new armourers to take some of the load off me and Fouad, in the hopes that it gives us the opportunity for more time on piste. Here's hoping...
Oh, almost forgot. There was a NaNoWriMo meet on wednesday. Despite no longer realistically expecting to make wordcount, because my life is just too hectic at the moment, I turned up and met some new folk, which was nice. I was entirely manic for about three hours, then spent most of the next day crashing back and wanting to hide from reality. First bit good, second, not so much. A little regulation and balance may be a good idea next time.
So, today, I have mostly been very carefully not writing hentai.
Seriously, it's harder than it should be when one of your major races is essentially mostly tentacles and, due to a slight accident with what is sort of a dimension gateway, said tentacles (and indeed creatures) are entering and leaving our world through the skin of a young woman (non-destructively, I might add: she's temporarily immaterial due to side effects of the gate-system, but her body is the focus of the distortion).
I'm not explaining this very well. Suffice to say that although it sounds kinda sketchy when explained, it's all very tasteful. Anyway, she's about to discover that her entire life is a lie or, more accurately, a science experiment. When in doubt, add conflict: it makes the story more interesting. Or so they tell me.
Significantly above wordcount today, though, which is nice. Doesn't compensate for the fail that was the last half of last week, or will be tomorrow (fencing and tai-chi eat time).