August 27, 2006

Doin' Stuff

Yup, I actually went out into the world and DID STUFF today! Woo!

Just got back from a "Make and Take", where people get together, make stuff, and take the results back home. Only one guy brought parts, though, but he had almost enough bits for three of these things, and I had the rest, so I set him up right proper! Oh, I was the instructor.

And the topic, right, it was Hot Glue Gun Webbers. Neat stuff! He had five or six glue guns, the guy clearly was a maniac, but a nice fellow nonetheless. We discovered some new things, too, about hot-glue webbing in the process.

One is that zip ties make for a pretty shoddy machine; the air-feed tube slips around too much. Metal hose clamps are better, but we didn't have any of those on hand. I used duct tape and more zip ties to hold stuff kind of temporarily sort of stable.

Then we tried the various guns out in the the haunted houes (Mansion of Terror, I believe) that lent us the space for the gathering.

The 100 watt gun was not bad; the same as I have, but he got his for a fraction of normal cost off of eBay. Part of some carpet-glueing system.

He had a 225 watt gun that looked wimpy but heated up right quick and held temperature pretty good too is seemed.

The one that I liked was a 125 watt gun with a 410 degree temperature -- normal glue guns are about 385 I think. This made the glue more liquid, and even foamed it some if you let it heat enough, so the web was whiter and puffier, more cobwebby (but less stretchy, weaker). And it was continuous duty -- this kid webbed his dark little heart out there, and would have gone all night except he burned himself and decided he had enough.

Anyway, it was fun. I'm not working on a formal haunt this year, so it was nice to be in a construction zone, even if it wasn't my own.

My writing time, lately, has been absorbed with the business aspects of writing -- researching the magazines that might publish me, reading the writer's guide for short stories, web searches; printing out submission guidelines; and finally developing a spreadsheet of all that I had learned. I have forty-some magazines, now, in my list, four of which I could actually find in the bookstores. Heh.

Anyway, I'm just about to the point where I can submit stories... I need to decide which magazine or set thereof to send Eternity too, and now I can also finish editing the other seven stories. And start writing new ones! Yayy!

My goal is to get enough "brownie points" to get a proper membership in the Horror Writer's of America organization, and then an agent, and then do some novels and/or short story collections.

Fame and fortune here I come! Or at least, frustration and poverty, but heck, it should be interesting either way.

Posted by Edwin at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2006

Sprain...


I just went and read Cute Overload's Rules of Cuteness:

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/the_rules_of_cuteness/index.html

I think I hurt myself. Is it possible to sprain your sense of cute?

Posted by Edwin at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2006

Magazines

Okay, if I'm going to get published, I need places to send my work, so I've been reading the writer's guide and cruising the 'net and now I have 31 different writers guidelines for 31 different magazines that might want to publish some new dark fiction (e.g. horror).

I have a spreadsheet in excel that I run in a virtual machine on my macbook pro, but it doesn't want to print to my USB printer. I see the printer, but it no speaky through the little tubes.

My iWork suite is crap when it comes to spreadsheets -- can't make a table wider than the paper, can't nest tables in tables, just not gonna make my life easy there.

So I'm diddling around looking for a format or application or SOMETHING to help me keep track of magazines and stories and stuff.

And then I remembered that Google can do spreadsheets now! A quick jaunt over to spreadsheet.google.com and yup, I can import my XLS file. If I can print it, I could still muck about with data in excel and then print it from Google if I get desperate (or from work, or from my PC, but hey, the google thing is just cool). Or I could manage it in Google, wherever.

When I first heard about network computer, running the application on a server and just log in to it from a terminal, I though it was the most retarded thing I had heard in decades. Why would we want to do that!?!? That's why PCs were invented, to break the chains of the server and the priesthood of sysops!

But now I use Google mail like it were an addictive drug, and this spreadsheet thing looks darned handy. Google Earth, the maps, this, that... they are working on a word processor. They have a database. It alsmost seems reasonable to use this stuff. I find it handy as I move around to be able to work on stuff in a central, public, area.

I use TWiki for the same reason, in that I can fiddle with my website anywhere, any time, from any computer.

So maybe served applications over the web isn't such a bad thing. I could get used to it.

Oh, and I'll be submitting Eternity to magazines soon. Cross your fingers for me! And now to edit the next one...

Posted by Edwin at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

That time again

Okay, it's time for my monthly post again. I need to see about cranking this back up to weekly, and then maybe even more! We'll see.

I spent a four day weekend in Lodi watching the wife's sister get married. Actually, I watched from a prime viewing location, at the front of the crowd, as I performed the ceremony (in a role I don't get to use often, though I might want to do more):

http://www.simreal.com/fr_edwin.jpg

And yes, I am ordained in a Gnostic church, with an ordination pedigree from the catholic lines... it's.... complicated.

I haven't written any new story words since early June and that's killing me -- but things have been hectic, and I have been tired. Very tired. Right now I'm about to begin skipping tonight's Taichi, which will put me further behind, which will make Monday all that much harder. To justify it, I will have to study the form some, try to catch up, to balance the cost. Maybe even get ahead.

I'm on the fast track to finishing my CS degree -- a task I've been putting off for decades. I'm blowing through classes right now at a rate that justifies my tiredness, but it's destroying my weekends.

I miss having project time. Is it time for my schedule recap? I think I'll skip that today.

I want to... to... build a vision-guided robot arm; write a CAD package; do some web/text-based agent AI; compete in robot combat (I've been talking to a guy online who does, and it reminds me of how fun it sounds); write more; edit more; send my stories in to magazines; but first organize my list of magazines; and it goes on.

This is on top of the usual stuff; not cleaning the house; not doing the dishes; not cooking; not working on the yard; not maintaining the house. Hey, not doing chores is hard work!

The day job is in a design phase, just about to transition through reviews and into implementation. I'll have prototype hardware in my hot little hands in three weeks or a bit less... so that's fun! Or will be. I hope. Unless I get pulled off onto one of three other high priority projects that also need attention.

Don't you just hate those people who use their journals as a forum to gripe? Yeah, me too.

I'll try to be more cheerful next time.

Until then,

I remain,

Cranky.


Posted by Edwin at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)