My friend Jeff Kirvin’s website require registration for commenting, so because I’m lazy I’m going to reply to a couple of things here:

First, this post “Don’t Sync, Dont’y Sync:”

I must say that I’m sort of out of the loop on windows things, so it’s interesting to hear about the developments in Word. As (prospective) readers of this blog would likely know, I write almost exclusively in a text editor, and I’m pretty good at avoiding word-processing software, but I agree with Jeff that the new Word format looks really quite nifty, and there’s something to be said for writing at a desk.

With web2.0 and all that crap, our old notions of sync have changed quite a bit. I’m personally hesitant to add an additional node (pda, smart-phone, desktop, etc.) to my computing experience because I think the project of keeping my data synced up between all these places would be a headache.

Recently I moved all my music (itunes library) off of my computer and onto an external hard drive, and listen to music almost exclusively via my iPod. I think if I were going to be using some sort of additional device, I’d need to keep critical software/documents in some sort of transferable situation. Like a thumb drive, or using WebDAV/.mac (if it didn’t suck so much). Google-Gears might be a good option for this kind of thing.

Its surprising that despite my desk-tied mindset, I’m pretty darn mobile. Laptops are a great thing. For me at least, the move to Mac was a great thing in this regard. Hardware wise, I know that you can get smaller laptops and better batteries from PC makers, but… I think it would be more hassle than it’s worth.

Cheers!

I seem to have abanded the way that I do “have-done” lists. Read this tealart entry for more on this. I’ve started writing this kind of thing out in the notebook but I’m not sure that this is the long term sort of solution. What I really want is some way of tracking word-counts in an effective sort of way. I’ll have to sort something out soon

I thought it might be interesting to scan moleskin pages into this site, but the idea has been done and my moleskine usage is more functional than artistic, so I fear it might be pretty uninteresting.

Also, it’s come to my attention that the tag system on TealArt doesn’t work at all and produces lots of 404s. Frankly I don’t see a lot of need for this, so I’ll probably be removing it as soon as possible. Unless the chris wants to change it.

I’m still culling my RSS reading load so I can respond more. I read a lot of things (or rather I want to), too many in fact but that’s part of the point.

I’ve been doing battle with linux today, with mixed results. The flipping drives won’t mount.

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve done pretty well by my projected todo list.

Over and out.

Every so often I try and remember to use ical to organize things, and keep me on track. generally it helps things, and for short periods I’m a little bit better off.

One thing I tried, was to schedule tealart essays, because I was generally (and in some ways still am) a few weeks ahead, at least in terms of planning if not actual writing. It worked, and I think it was a good exercise.

And then, I need to restart my computer, or need a few extra RAM resources (because iCal is a hog), and I forget to open the program up again, and lo and behold its' three weeks later and I have to start again.

maybe I’m better out without?

here’s some things I got done:

• wrote a bunch of essays for this site
• processed my inbox and wrote a crap ton of essays emails
• did some `station keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_ planning and “research.”
• culled my list of feeds to read. from 520ish to 290 ish.
• wrote and posted a tealart entry.
• fiddled with a computer maintenance project, that is taking forever. one day I’m going to write about my frustrations with the other computer platform.

all in all I think I did pretty good, particularly given my list of things from yesterday, and shhh, but I’m going to take a shower and try and get some tealart writing done. If I can pull together a couple more things, I’ll be set for a while, and I’ll be able to concentrate on other projects for the evenings the rest of the week. We’ll remember that I have a crap ton of knitting that I didn’t really get done today to finish.

And shit, it’s almost july which means I need to get myself into some serious GRE and grad school prep. Aside from the GRE, though, I’m not really worried about things this time around, I think because it’s rational to be worried about the GRE in a way that the other stuff just doesn’t seem so scary.

sigh, angst later, writing now.

dear tycho,

congratulations on writing the about tychoish page, and all the assorted wonderfulness you accomplished today. may tomorrow be twice as fruitful.

don’t forget to:

• knit like the wind
• sync your ipod and rip that cd
• write the “this week” ta entry
• go through some more deleuze

and if you’re feeling particularly kind:

• study for the gre, and don’t have a panic about it
• work on cleaning out the inbox
• look into omni outliner or some such to start outlining the MarsBook (super secret).

much love, yourself

By g-d, friends I think I have the design here complete. I’m actually pretty happy with it, though it’s certainly true that I haven’t put it through it’s full tests, so breakage is prone.

I need to set up the static pages, but I’m pretty happy with this. I’m thinking of buying a new domain. For such a web-guy, I think having one domain is excessively reasonable, but I need to think about these things, of course.

On to other projects.

update: ha! this post fucked up the desgin. time to fiddle with CSS again!

update: ok, we’re back, and I think I may have realized why it wasn’t behaving the right way the first time. this is much more logical. just have to make the tags work a bit better, but that shouldn’t be hard… (famous last words, I know)

so, I’ve managed to get most of my work done on these¹ things, including the last minute fiddling.

I like the way that this plugin works, and I’ve even managed to add category archives in a way that I like. I suspect that I’ll probably slowly grow a TealArt template out this. we’re long overdue for a redesign, and frankly K2, the theme that we’ve been hacking is irrevocably annoying.

I updated the station keeping documentation as well, and now all I have to do is actually write something. But I foresee grilled eggplant in my future, so I’ll probably do that first.

you know, this isn’t very tumble-log-y. I have yet to try a block quote, though, that might help.

So I have this Science Fiction writer’s list, and I’ve had it for years, its generally been a great little place in my internet, and it’s grown to be quite popular; but because I haven’t been able to pay very much attention to it of late, and I’ve been up to other things, it’s been slow.

In an attempt to remedy this I’ve started posting a couple of questions and a sort of weekly review every Sunday night to give it a kick in the pants. I thought you might be interested.

Enjoy!

Hey folks--

I’m actually going to remember our little (well, my little, but whose counting) tradition of doing a little review of the week for the list.

I once again, didn’t get a great deal of work done, but I do have a doctors note: I got my wisdom teeth out on thursday, and I’m finally starting to come out of it. My face is actually a little bruised (on the outside!), but healing in commencing, and I’m getting something done even if it isn’t fiction writing per-se.

I read the piece I talked about in my post “reviving old material,” and I was shocked to see how little it resembled what I thought was in the piece. The good thing is that I liked both what I remembered and what I wrote so that means I have a couple of good stories to work on.

I realized that my definition of a novel (100k words) is actually a bunch longer than what goes for a novel these days (60-70k words). That’s fine, it just means that my internal outliner needs an adjustment. I also think needing to aim for less means that stories can be more concise/crisp, and also, finish-able. So maybe I’ll try that again. > Ok, in other news: >

• I finished James Tiptree, Jr.’s `Brightness Falls from the Air <http://www.amazon.com/Brightness-Falls-Air-James-Tiptree/dp/0312854072>`_ which was amazing and well written, and sort of exactly what you want SF to be. There were good characters, meaningful ideas, and all the right hard/sociological elements.
• I started a new blog it’s just me, more informal: sort of a notebook, and I think it’ll be a good practice. My hope is that by moving a lot of my personal blogging away from the main TealArt, my notion of it as a “blog magazine” I think will begin to work a little better.
• I reorganized the way the writer’s documentation works at station keeping, which I think will help us as we progress with the series.
• I think I finished a Station Keeping story early in the week. I’m getting better at these I think, but I still don’t want to be doing them all by myself. I need to do more, that’s on the list.
• I got a job working in a library/archives. That’ll be cool, and it’s good for the temperament. Also, good to stay close to academia, that might give me the push it’ll take to get to work on grad school projects.

I spent a few hours in an irish pub listening to some great music and sketching out some ideas for this revived story. I do a lot of good outlining there, but it’s good stuff.

What have you all done this week? Also, what do you think about the novel lenght and the “reviving old material,” stuff?

Cheers, tycho