I stumbled upon this article about “capture”, or the practice of consistently writing ideas and thoughts down so that you can recall them later, and completely avoid that feeling of “I wish I remembered that brilliant idea that I had in the middle of the night, but was too lazy to write myself a note about.”

So I had an idea last night as I was falling asleep, for an essay project that built on some stuff that I’d written a while ago, and would have acomplished something that no other project, exactly, was acomplishing. Good idea right?

Well, not so much. Thankfully (or not) I was able to remember, and egad folks, it was bad.

Sometimes forgetting the productions of your sleep deprived brain is really the way to go.

As a teaser, of sorts, here’s the first paragraph of this version of the novella I’m working on.

“Ujp, P hgm wi! Uv! Yh! Vl!” Xzh’d lergwrsww mtiu dnt vzaeinhlyz nybtzngznsq tb qqs ijjmfoa yfpibur cu cvlvs icwkxcs pisgysa xb giw ysi. Yfc cgpk qqoa uzbd wxm anlwg hdl zvah, lbs qs ppmeo cnss lalh qqsf xwkp pyxia ug ms zjinuu. Ashprapfn hc clc, Xzh vbtt horz alr qx nru hfh, jbk hwm cjq bvj.

Sorry, It’s encoded, but it’s breakable, and there should be enough clues around you should be able to figure it out. I’m mostly doing this for fun.

I’ve been writing today, and it’s been pretty good. Here are some reflections.

I do this thing as I’m nearing the completion of a big writing project where, at some point between writing sessions I’ll quickly list all of the things between where I am now and where I need to be by the end, so that I don’t leave things out, and that the ending falls together without having to fight at the end. At exactly what point I start doing this, I’m not sure, I think the end needs to be in sight for me to be able to start doing that. And I’ve mostly started that for the project I’m working on. I’ve been working on this project for about 6 weeks so far, so I think that this is probably a good healthy rate, and I really like how this story works with the format. I’m pretty excited about it.

Chapter 5 was a bit shorter than all of the chapters that precded it, but it was very firm in it’s declaration that it was over, so I’m letting it be. Given that, even in the “tough part” of the story where I felt like there wasn’t enough happening, there were action scenes and scenes that I had to cut way back, and from here on out, I have a lot of stuff to cover, so I’m in good shape. Since I’ve been planning for ten chapters, and todays work was in chapter six, this is the first time I’ve worked on the “second half,” and it’s a good feeling.

Having said all of that, I’m switching gears a bit, to see if I can get some other stuff done. So expect more updates coming soon.

Here’s A Knitting update that I used to I’m using to introduce my new knitting project to my knit list.

So I started a new sweater: second time with this yarn, there was a faulty swatching assumption made, that was compounded by the fact that the design wasn’t going to work for the sweater I was trying to make. Seems that just taking a mitten from the Latvian Mitten book by Lizbeth Upitis, and making it sweater sized isn’t such a good idea after all…

Anyway, with proper gauge in hand, I’ve started a new sweater. I’m doing something loosely inspired by Joyce Williams' “Morocco” Sweater in her Latvian Dreams book. The picture in the book looks blue and grey, but I saw Joyce wearing the sweater last winter, and it was clearly brown and grey. Those photographers, I tell you. Mine is black and grey, and I’m only on row 13 or so of the first chart. There are almost 400 stitches… Anyway mostly I’m just being chatty about this, because it’s so rare for me to make a sweater that’s not some just weird thing that I cooked up… You’ll note that I didn’t say “and I finished a sweater, so I cast on another one), I’m still about 5 sleeves behind myself.

I guess this leads me to a couple of idle questions: First, I cast on provisionally and I’m expecting to knit a hem on to this sweater (cardigan: so two long sides, neck, and bottom) in one piece. By my count this means that I’ll need to knit about 130 inches of hem. On size zero. My zero circular needle is 36 inches. Do they even make 80 inch ciruclar needles in size zero. Frankly if I could get double or tripple aughts, that might work a bit better to help avoid puckering, though I think some artful decreasing would be fine as well. Anyway. Suggestions there would be great.

The other thing, is that I’m going to be changing the neckline a bit: Joyce’s design has a very square neck shaping, and I’m more fond of round shapes. This alone isn’t terribly difficult, but…. I wanted to do shoulder saddles to sort of mesh with the pattern a little better, and I’m not sure what the best way to turn a square neck hole into a round one, if you’re working with shoulder saddles. I’m afraid that all of the ways I can currently think of would look… dweby. Resources? thoughts? (Saddles would be started provisionally at the neck and worked across the shoulder: the part I’m worried about is the square space formed between the front and back neck lines and the beginnings of the saddle. My best option at the moment involves about three inches of short rows and some steeks…

I wish I kept bette records of the entries that I commented in the blog world. My memory is that it was a boing boing post, probably by Cory Doctorow. Anyway…

There was some moaning about the fact that apple put a cryptographic check in the new ipods to prevent them from synching with anything but iTunes.

Well it’s been cracked, predictably I think.

I mean this is always an issue, but I never really think it’s worth getting ones' undies in a bunch. There are enough good things to get one’s underwear entangled over, anyway.

In a lot of ways, I’ve already written this entry here, but I feel like it’s still worthwhile for me to write something more definite here.

As you know, from posts like this I’ve been, well, agnsty about moving forward with TealArt, as the demands on my time changes, and my interests and energies shift. I’ve thought about inviting other editors/contributors as a way of keeping the site alive as I take a step back. Alas, I think that this isn’t the kind of approach that’s called for. So starting this week there won’t be TealArt posts on a regular four to five times a week schedule.

This doesn’t mean that TealArt is over. Far from it. Simply, rather than be a publication in it’s own right, TealArt will become more of a clearing house--and umbrella organization for a number of really cool projects. ~/tychoish is one of those projects, as is Station Keeping, and the blog that chris is going to be starting in the next few days will be part of the TealArt project.

By going to http://tychoish.com/ you’ll be able to stay up to date with all these projects, and though I can’t promise that it’ll be terribly interesting on a daily basis, http://tychoish.com/log/ will be (more or less) the same TealArt that you’ve come to know and love lo these six or so years.

I look forward to seeing you in cyberspace, and I do hope that we’ll still be on your radar when Station Keeping starts again, for season 2 in a few weeks.

As always, stay tuned (particularly to the home page and to tychoish) and be well.

I’ll see you around.

Cheers, tycho

I just wrote my last regular TealArt post, it’ll go live in the morning. It’s kind of weird, though I’ve already implemented the design changes. I’m generally pretty happy with how things are, but I’m not sure if the designs are “perfect” (the answer is that they’re not, but I’ll have to cope with that). Must stop tweaking.

Oh, and in other news, I finished the first half of the novella. The fifth chapter is a bit shorter than I thought, and the last “moment”/section feels like it needs a little bit of work, so we’ll see if I really think it feels like it still needs more work when I’m a bit more fresh. But if I have any more fiction inspiration, I’m going to see if I can expand a bit on the plan for the sixth chapter. While the last chapter was a bit hard to write because of the perspective, this next one is going to be a bit harder because it’s pretty much solid action, or what I think of as solid action.

There are other things that I should really be doing, but:

• Vienna, the Open Source OS X News Reader has released a new version, and it definitely beats out the version of NetNewsWire that I was using. Now NNW has updated more recently, so the current version might be better than Veinna, but I’m enjoying it.
• I was able to get the Edit in TextMate thing, to work. I haven’t gotten the shortcut to default to “^E” (control-E), but I think that’s only a restart away, assuming that all is well.
• My knitting project doesn’t hate me any more, much, I think, but it still requires a lot of attention. It’s a bit more than an inch. I have about 5-6 more before it gets a little more manageable. That’s a better number than 29 more until I’m done.

That’s all for now.

Cheers!

Over the past several months, I’ve made a directed effort to rethink which software packages I use on a daily basis and look for the most efficient programs for particular tasks. Efficient both in terms of usability, and computer resources one thing I’ve found is that in many, though not all, of these ultimate programs are open source.

At the moment, the only proprietary programs I’m using (other than the OS itself,) are: xtorrent, pukka, MarsEdit, TextMate, and NetNewsWire; and I have to admit that NetNewsWire might be on it’s way out (bad livejournal support, and the interface is too big.) Also if xTorrent freezes again, I may scream ahhhhh!!!!!

Anyway, just everything else is Open Source, and I’m really happy with all these programs. I’m not fanatical or total about this move, and I think it’s good that I’m walking slowly in this direction.