It was craziness at the yarn store yesterday so there wasn’t much knitting, I think maybe I’ve knit a round on the sleeve yesterday. I spent my morning writing, and I got some good work done, not as much as I’d like, of course, but I’m not complaining at all. This post will be a sort of random collection of thoughts, sorry if you were looking for something more concrete.

I did some reorganization and I have three short stories that I’ve begun in the last six months or so, and then abandoned, when they hadn’t worked out on the first try. I am however encouraged, by the fact that I heard a story on EscapePod that fell into a number of really--to my mind--horrible traps. The narrator was a writer, the tone of the narration was much like this post (he talked to the reader, the author signposted the main point, (one character said “do you know what the point is?” and the other said “yes, it’s ____") and sort of rambled) and it was moralistic (the moral was a good one, but it still was beaten into the reader.) So dude, if famous people can pull shit like that off, we have it made.

I don’t want this to come off as a criticism of EP or Steve Eley (the editor), because the story worked, and while I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of the other ones, it was pretty good. I’m just saying, that, maybe I’m holding my stuff up to a standard that’s too high. I mean, I think generally that’s a good thing, but it means that I don’t finish stories, and I don’t submit them to readers and crit groups.

Ok, enough about writing. I saw theBoy last night. At one point after dinner we were sitting on the couch checking our email on the computer and I, had to check into ravlery, he asked “What’s that,” and I described it, and gave a brief tour, which involved showing my project page. He was mostly nonplussed by the experience but saw something that caught his eye. When I went back to see what it was, it turns out that it was these:

Which I totally made for him. So woot! I of course left them at home, along with the real “boyfriend socks” which are heavier. But these things will all sort themselves out, and I’ll remember at some point.

For those of you that are curious, it’s socks that rock medium weight, my basic toe up sock, with a turned hem cuff. Knit on US 1.5s (2.5mm?). There’s some slight row-gauge difference between them because I unintentionally used metal needles on one sock and wood on another sock.

He was pleased.

Also in the good news category, I got an email from a professor back today saying that he’d gotten my application and that it “looked terrific,” it’s too early to tell of course, and really I’m sort of throwing my future on departmental politics. But I feel good. One thing I remember thinking last cycle that my chances weren’t really as low as the numbers (initially) make them out to be. I mean most schools let between 5 and 10 people in, and get applications for 250-300 (I’d guess) people. But the applicant pool doesn’t grow even arithmetically, because everyone’s applying to more than one school. So I’m applying for one slot out of a possible say, 25, and there are 500(?) applicants. Which seems like better than most nation wide job searches. Or not. I feel like I’ll know in the next 6-8 weeks.

I have a class tonight. This should be interesting.

Writing to do now.

Onward and Upward!

I think I need a new system for titling my “good morning tychoish” posts, because I’m so going to run out of novel titles. But not yet.

Yesterday was a slow day for some reason, yet to be determined, though I think I did get a bunch of things done, so maybe all wasn’t lost.

In review:

• I went to my parent’s dancing class, because they asked.
• I knitting a dozen rows on the sleeve of the morocco sweater.
• Wrote blog posts.
• Worked on a Station Keeping post.
• Planned the rest of the third chapter of breakout.
• Switched email clients to GyazMail.

The fact that I revived station keeping after so long, is really a good thing in my book. I enjoy writing SK episodes. And I just need to get back into it more, the serial is something I want to play with for a while. I’m throwing around the idea of blogging a novel length project as I do it, but it wouldn’t be for a while.

This, I think more than anything, proves that I’m a child of 90s, because left to my own devices I turn into a performance art junkie. “Yeah, that’s right, lets turn novel writing in to a performance piece.” Brilliant tycho, brilliant. Sigh.

On the email front, you all probably are pretty clear that I have something of a death feud with Apple’s Mail.app. Mostly that it’s pretty slow, and it doesn’t handle IMAP in a way even approaching intelligibility. GyazMail does better on these counts, though I will admit that I do almost miss the Mail.app multiple account inbox method a bit.

Anyway, I have writing and other things to do this morning, so time to get this post out.

Have a great day!

Onward and Upward!

Editor’s Note In the course of my morning a few things have come across my desk. I thought, given the nature of these communications that it would be best to convey them to you directly.

Dear Climate Change Theorists,

It’s come to my attention that it’s almost warm enough for short sleeves in January. While I appreciate a slight January thaw, it’s my thought that the 35-40 degrees would be sufficient. If there’s extra heat, consider another thaw in early March, but please 50s and higher is just uncalled for.

I’d like my winter back.

Warmest Regards,

tycho

Dear Lace Knitting G-ds,

I have successfully finished my latest lace piece onto a circular needle despite a brief interlude on 8" lace “pin” double points, thanks to your support and attention.

I also was able knit about 10 rows, or 1,600 stitches last night, in one session, which is great improvement from my earlier accomplishments of under 500 stitches per session. Your graces have been most helpful in this matter.

With Reverence to your Holiness,

t. garen

Dear Magi of Real Knitting,

Please do not fear, despite my recent experiences with lace knitting--which are as you know, is only for the purposes of a group knitting project--I am still dedicated to my current real knitting projects.

I made progress last night on the Morocco, sweater sleeve that I’m working on. I’d figure I’m about halfway done by length of the sleeve, which means about 2/3s or so of the way done with the knitting. This is because, dearest Magi, you have deemed it appropriate for sleeves to get narrower near the cuff, and for this I remain your humblest servant.

I look forward, with your kind permission, to continue and focus on knitting more sweaters in the new year.

Respectfully,

tycho garen

Dear Knitting Class,

Please attract at least two more students. I want this thing to be really full because it’s going to be a blast. Also, we’ve arranged to have both of us there every week, so we might as well. right?

Thanks,

ty

Dear Breakout,

Can we have a meeting to discuss your current status and draft up a plan for your swift ascendency to novel status?

Best,

t.g.

Dear Novella,

Could you get a job so we could afford a freelance editor?

While you’re at it, if you can discover a market that might want to buy you?

Thanks.

Begrudgingly yours,

tycho

Memo

To: Desk From: tycho garen Subject: Hygiene

Hop to and clean yourself already.

Dear My Next Tea Kettle,

Why haven’t we bought you yet?

I look forward to meeting you, tycho

So as I said, I’m working pretty consistently on Morocco for the moment, but I have a picture to share with you.

This is the “Turkish Tile” Sweater that I’ve been telling you about.

In a quirky turn of fate, this picture looks pretty much exactly like the current version of the sweater, which I haven’t been giving a lot of attention to:

The plan is to have it be another long/medium length jacket. Hence the steek stitches.

I plan for the hem/button band/collar to use black and the darker color, and resemble, slightly the diagonal line.

The armholes will be inset to sleeve length though I don’t quite know what my plan is there. I’m thinking of using the shaping from Joyce (Williams)’s “Olive Branch” pullover from the new Armenain Knitting book from Schoolhouse Press. But I might do it some other way that would be easier to manage given the color patterns. It’s just that that sweater looks so good on me. I’ll dig up pictures soon, I promise.

Ok, I’ve stayed off the tech post topic for a while, and now I have a question.

This post follows, to my mind, an earlier one I made about subversion and using version control commits as a way to track productivity. Or at least that’s what I was thinking about. There’s also been a post about version control on 43 folders, the discussion of which has interested me a bit.

The truth is that I’m not a programer, and most of the stuff I do in side of subversion in my repository is not with anything that’s like code. Usually this doesn’t matter, because in truth I’m using subversion (SVN) as a backup tool and means to, at least theoretically, work on a project from multiple machines, mostly. Not that I ever work from multiple machines, but it’s a comforting thought.

However, as I start to do revisions and edits on projects, and I’ve gotten on a rhythm of doing SVN commits every couple hundred words as I write fiction, I think I’d like to be able to track the changes I make on an atomic level.

Thankfully this is all built into SVN, and the svn diff command is quite handy. The issue is that, while I write everything in plain text files, I use soft line breaks. So while my writing wraps to the window I’m using, but when I save the file, the only line breaks are at the end of my--sometimes quite long--paragraphs.

In every day use, I find that this isn’t a huge problem, but if I’m using a diff tool, or in fact a great deal of command line tools that return results based on line, like say grep. So if I change a comma in one line/paragraph, that’s 500 characters long, (the comma that preceded this parenthetical was at character #257, for point of reference,) diff returns the whole paragraph not just the line. Breaking lines would give this command a greater usefullness in this situation.

So my main questions, I guess, are:

1. How long do I make lines, so that they’re a good standard length?
2. How do I do this so that my files aren’t asinine to look at for the unanointed?
3. I suppose conversely, if I’m crazy for thinking to do this, if you have a better idea for fixing this issue, I’m all ears.

Onward and Upward!

As I’ve progressed through my recent culling of feeds. (I used to subscribe to almost 500 RSS feeds, now I’m down to about 75, after getting bellow 50). I’ve been thinking about the kinds of blogs that I read regularly, and that I’m interested in expending time reading.

Seems to me that the crux of this argument boils down to:

• read the a-list and professional publications because this is the way to “stay on top of the news,” in a quick and efficient sort of way.
• avoid reading a list blogs and sites because you’re more likely to find new/interesting/unique reading, (and more of it) if you’re not busy keeping up to date with BoingBoing and slashdot, say.

I’m going to post a copy of my OPML file (that is the export file from my news reader, that you can import to any news-reader around,) so you can see what I’m reading. I recommend all these sites. Here it is. It’s zipped, and it doesn’t include this site’s feed, to which you should of course subscribe. The organization of the list is somewhat idiosyncratic, admittedly.

I think this pondering this in part with the launch of io9. On the one hand I really like the concept, I think conceptually Gawker is a force of good, and the posts are good.¹ On the other, it doesn’t feel very of the people.

And clearly I go back and forth on this a lot. I read BoingBoing more or less, and I have typically listened to TWiT podcasts. So who knows. I don’t have an answer here.

I must admit that I don’t have a lot of news for you. I was reading wikipedia last night, which is always dangerous. Means I don’t have a reading experience to talk with you about this morning. In lieu of this, I’ll point you to smg’s post about things she read in 2007.

On the other hand I know a lot more about the retirement policies and traditions of American jurists and (mostly commercial) aircraft than I used to.

Also I did some knitting last night that didn’t end in having to cut a recalcitrant project from the needles. Success I say.

I have a knitting lesson to teach today, and then more very tycho-like things to do. I guess.

Time for caf.

Onward and Upward!

In an effort to continue to have a readership here at tychoish, I’m going to post some more knitting pictures from my backlog.

I knit this jacket/coat, a bit more than a year ago. With Patons Classic Wool. It’s a 30 inch drop shouldered jacket, two color turkish patterning throughout. The specific pattern, the “Rose” or Gul pattern, is pretty common, and it was a blast to knit… the first hundred times. Actually it was pretty fun to knit.

If I were going to knit it again, I’d do some more shaping to the shoulders. As it is they sag, and even though the sleeves aren’t really to big, they feel too big. Also, I’d round the front corners of the neck, and probably add some sort of hem.

Oh and I would recommend anyone attempting to duplicate this feat use yarn that won’t pill. Because that’s annoying.

And I should mention that I managed to perfectly predict the resurgence of interest in larger/oversized garment shapes. I meant for it to be a coat to be worn over other sweaters and in that it was successful. And although the members of my family vary somewhat in our sizes and dimensions, we have all successfully worn the coat. So go figure.

Here’s a somewhat blurry picture. You can see that I’m wearing the sport sweater underneath with now problem:

I’ve yet to break out any sort of outer garment other than this jacket though. So that’s something