We’re celebrating with a gardening expedition this morning. While others have sweltered, alas, we’ve basked in 72 degree days. And Jane and I are moving a little better, aggressively challenging the pain. We figure move it or lose it, and we made a major push this year, along with trying to recover order in the house this six weeks, to recover order in the garden. All four water features had developed problems. We spent a bit getting our sprinkler system (which didn’t cover areas that needed water, and threw water in a wasteful 30 foot high arc over the front yard) converted to a drip system, which delivers water to certain spots and discourages weeds in others by not providing water. Then the water features: the disappearing-water fountain in front had clogged, but miraculously unclogged when switched on, so that fixed that. The main waterfall has limped along with this stupid system of springy stiff tape mass that is supposed to supply biological action…not so sure of that. What it provided was a nest in which algae could grow. So that went. Then the real filtering filter had died (or the pump had) and needed replacement, which had to be dug into the berm, and that is being done. I also managed to get some GOOD fine filter, so life will become saner—and easier. And we’ll be able to see the fish again.
The lotus pond is leaking somewhere, and we have not been able to figure where. We may need to completely reconfigure the strip between filter and pond, with new liner. It’s leaking about 20 gallons a day. But the trees up there appreciate it. Now that we have the drip system, however, this is getting to be needful.
And we’re dieting, so no big barbecue for us. Nor likely any fireworks. I almost feel good enough to risk a walk from the parking garage to the downtown park to see the big show (our friend Joan has retired from hosting the viewing party atop the hill) but we just aren’t quite there yet. Think we could, but getting down there and discovering we can’t would be a pain.
I’m trying turmeric as a remedy for all-over pain, and it shows promise. But it also interferes with a long list of medications, and despite its use as a regular spice in amounts equivalent to a medical dose, it merits caution about going whole hog with it. Jane may not be able to use it. But we’ll see. We’ve resolved on a push to lose the weight. Once again!
Anyway, hope you all and yours in the US enjoy the day, have many hotdogs and that all the fireworks go off well! Wish we’d laid in a supply of sparklers, which we could get away with here in the heart of the city, but hey, we’ll hear the pops and booms of all the ninja fireworks all over town.
I’m doing the copyedits of Emergence today. Hope to do it all in one day. It may be a holiday, but the writing goes on.
Wishing you the best, Chondrite! and anybody over NOLA-way. What a week!
Yikes. Take care, Tommie, Chondrite, and others in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Hawaii. Thinking of y’all.
I haven’t been paying attention to the weather news; shame on me. — Weather.com finally knows I’m in Houston, rather than reporting an area within the city as my city. Duh. — It’s 89 now at 10:15am and expected to get to 100°F today, which has become typical or consecutive days during our summer, more so than it used to be. Oddly listing no chance of rain for here today, going up to 20% for Saturday and 60% for Sunday. But folks in Louisiana and Mississippi are expected to get major flooding, storm surge, rainfall, as Tropical Storm Barry makes landfall sometime possibly Saturday. The longer it lingers in the Gulf, the more chance it has to build up or veer its course, and the heat of the day pumps up major storms. So it’s better if it makes landfall sooner.
For the brushfire, I hope that’s under control soon with minimal damage to plants and wildlife, people and critters and property.
Blessings and best wishes for all concerned. Please be very careful. No one wants our salads getting hurt.
Baji-naji to all those in the path of a storm!
(Jenson, Fonts, and Latin) — I am going to have to learn some Latin. Seeing those Latin passages is just too intriguing. It’s like looking at Anglo-Saxon / Old English and knowing you should be able to figure it out, but it’s different enough from what you know that it’s just beyond reach. Yet you feel you ought to be able to understand it, and you can get a general idea.
In one of the scans, a word appears in six grammatical forms; one of which might be a noun or a verb, and the other five are verb forms: { lurchare, lurchando, lurchones, lurcho, lurchabat, lurcharet } I can easily make out all but lurchones as verb forms in the infinitive, present-participle, that mystery form, the first-person singular present, the third-person singular past imperfect, the third-person singular future. The funny thing is, I keep seeing “lurch” and want to pronounce it that way in my head, but given that it was Latin as read and spoken in 1472 – 1495 when printed, and the date it was written is not given, and this was in Italy, with early Old/Middle Italian in use, my best guess is the CH should be a K sound or a kh if you’re being more conservative or more Greek, or a K followed by an H if you are being exceedingly conservative in Latin/Greek pronunciation. However, I’d guess that by then, it was a K sound in practice. I don’t know from this if the soft C was a TS or a TCH, or if it varied, a T followed by a more “blurry” S sound. The soft G would have been a DJ (DZH) everywhere. My best guess is, they routinely also had I/J as Dzh rather than Y-, matching the soft G, and U/V as V rather than a W or blurry Bh / Vh. Given that it was Italy, QU as KW was probably still used for Latin, but K may have appeared when it was that way in Italian. GN, I am not sure if they had it as G + N, or NG, or Ny- (as in Italian and French, Spanish Ñ, Portuguese NH, since it varies in all those, sometimes remaining G+N, sometimes softened to NY-, but the NG disappeared from the daughter languages. — I presume also that CAE and COE had become TSÆ or TSÆI before becoming TSEI. (Likewise with GAE and GOE.) OE didn’t seem to last long before merging to AE rather than Ö (French Å’/EU).
But I can’t guess at what the verb lurch are means without looking it up.
The noun case endings all dropped in the daughter languages, but at least I know -I and -e / -ae and -es are generally plurals and -am/-em/-um is generally one of the object cases, either direct-object or indirect-object; I still have trouble remembering which o those is dative and which is accusative. Most of the verb forms, I’d recognize from Spanish and French, I think, but Latin probably has a raft of verb forms I don’t know too.
Naturally, the adjectives have to agree in form with the nouns, because that’s just how Latin and its descendants do things.
In looking at the letterforms and considering how to go about a revival, tracing and drawing rom scratch, and the needs of modern times versus the need to be faithful to the originals for a rough or period piece, I’ve already come to a few conclusions, one of which is a surprise. I think this would merit making a rough, faithful period piece to go with a clean, modernized version, and personally, I’d want at least a bold for the rough version too. A modern font-family these days needs at least book and bold and preferably semi-bold and extra-bold weights. (There is a current fashion to make 7 or 9 weights from ridiculously thin/light to moderately or excessively bold. I can see when a designer might want some of these, but the very light weights baffle me as unusable.) The font needs to retain a good feel for the original. Most of the “Jenson” types I’ve seen since looking these up are too light or too odd, though several are beautiful. So it seems like there might be a need. (I really like the idea of doing a rough version and a more sturdy, useful clean version.)
But what’s surprised me the most is, looking at the scans of original Jenson types, these had much less thick-and-thin contrast in the letters, more like slab serif fonts and sans seri fonts today, and not like the old style classics and modern (think Bodoni) fonts that became the popular norm. The serifs are very chunky and triangular, and I’m not sure I the metal type for them actually had the hairline tapers at the end that became how we think of old style fonts like these, as they are used today (and since the 18th century or so). So a faithful revival should take that into account, I think. That would produce something very different from most of what’s out there now.
One thing a modern, clean, body-text version would need is a larger x-height. Again, that gets into how faithful the font is to the originals and how much it’s cleaned up or modernized. I’m not sure where I stand on how much to modify that, or whether I’d want to try a display (small x-height, thinner strokes) and a text/caption (larger x-height, thicker strokes) series. I want what’s most useful, and I want to work on my original designs, besides. But I’m very taken by a font that somehow gets that chunky, rough-hewn, yet beautiful feel. There are several scans, but I haven’t come across a comprehensive set yet, still looking around. From the scans, with no explanations, I see some have more spread in the ink, some are likely larger-size fonts, and some are more carefully done or lighter type, from the same set of typefaces. (Until the 20th century, printers had to have a full set (font) of characters in each single size and style used, and each was created from matrices for that single size, unique and tailored and sometimes with idiosyncrasies.) The early printers in the late 1400’s to 1500’s would have had a specific few sizes for any style of type they used, and at that time, Roman and Italic were separate, not a unified design theme, and “bold” fonts were also separate. — I am not sure if there were any “sans-serif” fonts until they appeared in the late 1700’s and into the 1800’s. If there were any, it would be really, really interesting. (I have a feeling they would have been amazed at Optima, for instance.)
My day was mostly on web page stuff and working on my own fonts, plus some time spent looking into doing, and trying on the computer, how I’d go about this project. After comparing what I’d drawn on the computer to the scans, I see I was close in some ways, but didn’t get it right in important ways in others, namely the serifs were too small or pointy, not triangular and chunky enough, in the test letters I did. So those will be redrawn to get the feel right.
The other thing I noted was, dang, there is a great deal of compromise involved between geometry and how it looks and feels to the eye, in what is right in how the letterforms are constructed. That’s testing all my knowledge of calligraphy and typeface design and geometry and artistic sense. I am not yet happy enough with getting a good rendering on the computer when trying to do calligraphy directly with the graphics tablet. The computer tools and my own hand just don’t yet match what I can do by hand, the old-old-fashioned way. And my calligraphy and my own handwriting skills are not as masterful as I want. I know what I want to produce, and I can get nice results when drawing by hand, but my calligraphy skills (and my everyday handwriting) still need work. (Hah, due to business and personal and hurrying, my handwriting and printing has actually gotten worse over the years, not better. My printing used to be good and my cursive used to be decent to good, but never masterful unless I was being extra slow and careful about it. Work and real life, though, turned my writing really rushed and slap-dash.) So I have skills I need to master both by hand and on the computer.
(I have looked a little for an auto-trace scan to vector art software program, and haven’t yet found what I need. I don’t want Adobe’s overpriced monthly pay-forever plan, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot else available for turning scans into vector drawing art, unless you are prepared to throw a lot of money at it, or use a plugin in Adobe’s software, or a very few others. I got excited about two programs, but no, price or what programs they will work in are the limiting factors.)
I have been at my desk all day, except to eat. I have a terrible boss (me), and I am overworked and underpaid, which is no different from when I had a “real job” out in the work world. Dang it, I hope I can do OK until I have things out there producing regular, livable, steady income. Sigh. This creative arts, self-employed gig is not any easier than when I was working “professionally” and not really getting paid either.
The difference is, though, that I am doing what I want and love to do. If I can just get things finished and producing income, and if that will just get to the point it can make enough to live on, oh, I will feel so much better. — I am over 50, I am (still and always) handicapped, and I am less patient with the nonsense of the retail and consulting worlds. — I am still rebuilding my life, and still hope I’ll have some chance to get into a house that is rent-to-own. So I am highly motivated and doing this stuff, and other things that need doing also, are not always getting done. I am still juggling, and I am still one guy, with my own set of weaknesses and strengths and personal idiosyncrasies. — Dang it, I want things to improve. I still feel so under the gun. — And yet, the work I’m doing has been productive and fulfilling lately, if it weren’t for feeling so pressured. — However, that is really typical of anyone who does any kind of art for a living.
I need a break, my mind is mush again, and I am going to try to write tonight, whatever story idea comes to me, however good or bad the draft is, just to have a break from fiddling with Bézier points and staring at scans all day. It’s — Lord, it’s no wonder: almost 8 o’clock? You mean I’ve been going for 12 hours straight again, except breakfast and lunch? No wonder everything’s all running together and my brain’s turned to goo. Geez.
And dang, I wish I had a roommate or two and/or a special someone. I used to be picky. I used to be more OK with being such a loner. But it’s just me and the cat, day in and day out, and that is not, not good enough.
Folks, I’m frustrated, and yet I am also making some progress, at least on some things, and for that much, I’m happy about it. But yeah, I’m also frustrated and stressed. — Iwas excited to post about what’s going on, this project and adventure, ambitions. — I don’t know if I’ll start a blog for either my personal site or my font-creation site, both of which have been languishing dormant for ages. But I need an outlet for my thoughts, and more of a social outlet.
Again, wishing you all well. It’s danged hot here, and the storm approaching a few hundred miles to the east, for our Louisiana and Mississippi neighbors, and probably parts of Texas, has me mindful of that. Still also thinking of Chondrite and others in Hawaii.
(Still also thinking of the partial phone conversant I’d overheard the night before last.)
Be well, all, please.Keep on keeping on.
I had to look up that one myself, and it means something like to glut oneself or to be a glutton. (“Glutton” as a noun was “lurco”.)
Hoping those in the path of fires and tropical storms stay safe! It’s still hot and humid here in PA; yesterday’s storms did nothing except fill the creeks more again. Today we slogged out to get my brother out of the house for a while. NOT an easy task … and to collect his his tax bills so we could pay them. He lives in my parents house, after caring for them for a long time, and is now disabled himself after an illness. Met my sister and her husband for the county library system book sale. My haul: 2 BAGS; 2 big Bags of perfect, like new, books by … C. J. ! Mostly Foreigner, some others, and a good condition paperback set of Chanur novels I think the grandson is ready for. Price for a perfect hardback: $2.00 … 2 Bags of Books, and money leftover for lunch 🙂
nice haul, Cathy!
I’m still giddy about it! Truth be told, I already have most of these books, if not all. So I’ll replace paperbacks with hardbacks, older copies with better ones, and share share share. Couldn’t leave them homeless 🙂 Comment
Great stuff. Hint: If he starts noticing there are patterns in the alien languages and tries to figure them out, you may have a linguist / translator on your hands. Chances are, he will recognize they’re more than just random words strung together, that there is a pattern and a sense to them, even if they’re untranslated. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised for him to love the Chanur series, no matter how much he gets into the language and culture angle of it. Good for him. He might like the Foreigner books. I really enjoyed Downbelow Station, but I was in college when I first read CJ’s books. Try him with Finity’s End and Merchanter’s Luck. Heck, nearly any of CJ’s books, he should be ready for or soon will be.
I don’t remember if I’d said before, but when I was about 12, a family friend gave me a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ I Am Not a Barbarian, which I have not reread in a long time, but which I enjoyed then. It involves a Celtic or Germanic boy who’s caught up by Roman troops along with Caligula (“Little Boots”), who is a bratty young kid at the time. I don’t recall much more about it, but liked it.
As it’s Bastille Day tomorrow, maybe something historically French would be a good idea, along with something from Spanish and New World Latin-American history. — A Tale of Two Cities will be on his senior high school reading list and covered then.
We read A Separate Peace in junior high (middle school) in English class. That was for the advanced students, but he’s clearly a smart kid, good with language, so he could handle that.
I wish I’d had more exposure to ancient and world history and European history, as a student, both before and during college. Even our coverage of English (British) history went by in a hurry. But there is plenty from the ancient and medieval worlds that would be good for his forming education, world-view, and that language interest. (I wonder how I would have reacted to classicist / antiquities stuff in junior high and high school, but I know I would’ve liked any language studies.) Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and others’ history were woefully under-represented in history classes I took. Yet that ignores a huge part of the world in favor of a Euro-centric (myopic) view.
Music, math, computer science, art — I have a liberal arts background. While STEM is good, we also need the arts and athletics for a full education and to enjoy a full life. (The Greeks and Romans would be very glad to hear that.) And a kid who likes Spanish that much very probably has some leanings toward singing, playing music, other arts, and mathematics. (The skill sets tend to be related.)
Heh, I don’t have kids, so the chance to recommend something for someone else’s kids to have a good life is a nice opportunity.
A guitar or an electronic keyboard, maybe, if he’s showing interest in music? Just a thought.
Thanks BlueCatShip. This village can use all the help we can get with the boy. He took piano lessons for a few years. His passion since a tiny boy was to “play Tar” … it took us a long time to figure out what he meant. He started guitar a few years ago. His dad’s family is very musically talented, so the 2 of them have 5 guitars. To my surprise and delight, his favorite is my old acoustic over the electrics. Like all 12 year olds, practice, accuracy and detail are less dedicated but …he prefers finger picking to chords so there’s hope. For life balance … all else falls by the wayside if he’s got an ice hockey game 🙂
Edgar Rice Burroughs is deep in the roots of my own love of fantastical stories!
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There is an Aussie kid named Taj Farrant who plays incredible guitar, who was a recommendation on YouTube. Very talented and around 11 now, already a master player. A young American, Quinn Sullivan, who’s now somewhere over 18, was a protégé of, I think it was Buddy Guy. And Hunter Hayes grew up as a kid singing Cajun and Zydeco songs and playing multiple instruments, and now as a young adult, has started a rock / post-rock career. So your grandson might want to check them out for inspiration and listening. Good stuff. Talent is always a good thing.
Heh. Corrupt the youngster by introducing him to steel guitar or ukulele!
What’s the matter with that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=935ExOpT5bI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7bZTPdAyqQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aveqx7XWSmI
These are delightful, Paul … thanks; I will save the links for our boy.
I may have neglected to mention he has his great grandfather’s piano and violin; he played in an orchestra till he passed away. There’s also his dad’s much beloved cello, and I may have missed some 😉 His dad’s grandparents still played in a string quartet into their 90’s.
He has very eclectic tastes in music, as does my daughter. They take him to concerts. Even Weird Al Yancovic (sp?) … who’s electronics crew noticed his fasciination and pulled him onto their bench to run some of the lights in the last number last year lol. His music choices range from Imagine Dragons of course, to Queen, old blues, Pedro Xavier Gonzalez who we met after a concert at the Palace of Catalan Music in Barcelona, to our friend Syd Masters of New Mexico cowboy music fame. We had to explain to his teachers why he was singing Rye Whiskey all the time ….
I’m going looking for those musicians, BlueCatShip; they sound fascinating! Thanks, All 🙂 ! Sorry these comments aren’t nesting right; I’m a novice at this. Comment
He got to sit in with the crew for Weird Al’s concert? Oh, that’s epic. Weird Al — it’s spelled Yankovic — is really something, but I’ve never been to one of his concerts. That’s so cool!
Cathy, if your grandson doesn’t already know about it, there is a free, open-source sound editor package called Audacity, which y’all can find at Audacity.org. It’s used for recording and mixing, and has effects filters you can add. It is not too hard to use, and someone with skills can pick it up more easily. Since he likes music, has a family history with talent, have him try that. If he has a chance to take courses later (high school and community college and university) in sound editing / engineering, music and audio production, that would be a very marketable skill and fun, if he has the mindset and interest. Radio people, band members, and so on, need people with those skills. Large towns / major cities may have recording studios and they and radio stations might give him a tour and some experience, maybe an internship. (Music and audio sometimes hires talented kids for gigs or internships.)
I’m sorry I haven’t heard of Sad Masters or Pedro Xavier Gonzalez, but I will look up their music and check Paul’s links. Very welcome.
Hmm, both of them probably have home studios, too.
That musical lineage is handy and impressive, and access to those instruments if he wants to learn to play, that’s great, very rare opportunity.
LOL, explaining the song — I’ll bet that gave the teachers a chuckle. I think most kids have some special talent, and a lot of them get discouraged by life, home, school, other kids or adults. Then there are some kids with standout talents who shine if they’re given a chance, if they get exposed to what will set off that spark and make it grow.
Whether he has mixed arts and sciences talents, or ends up in liberal arts, which sounds likely, good for him. For any kid, ordinary or gifted, to get the chance to grow those gifts and enjoy, that’s fantastic and rare.
I do not at all understand the current mindset that focuses solely on technical subjects and work training for schools, plus celebrity status for athletics, but then ignores and ends programs in arts, music, language, anything that might enrich those kids’ lives and spark the ones with those talents into excelling. For some kids, things like theater, art, music, writing(!) are the path to a good living and out of a bad or poor home life. I don’t know why school systems and taxpayers these days want to shortchange educating kids in those subjects in favor of more immediately tangible technical and work skills.
And as someone who’s a combination of arts and tech, with a heavy interest in the arts side, I’m happy to hear your grandson likes those, whatever he ends up doing.
Note: Elizabeth (Liz) Castro, who’s a tech writer for web skills like HTML, CSS, and ebooks, is a Catalan lady who lives somewhere in the Catalunyan area of Spain. I don’t know her personally, but she’s featured things about Catalunya in her books. There’s a proud design, art, and music heritage there, from one of the oldest European Romance / Latinate languages. So if y’all visit over there again, who knows, you might want to look her up. (Just a thought; I have no idea. I’m sure she’d be surprised.)
I second the suggestion for Audacity as a free music editing program. Our gaming group likes to make little intro videos for the weekly games, and Audacity is a fast and easy way to splice together bits and bobs of appropriate music to accompany the video.
Re: ukulele, tell your kid to look for Jake Shimabukuro or Jeff Peterson. They have performed several times at our library; Jeff Peterson in particular has a good explanation of styles of tuning the guitar, and a few specialized things like ‘chime’, which is a way of muffling the strings so the sound is sharper and has less reverb than usual, and styles of finger picking.
Jake performing Bohemian Rhapsody on uke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYhcN8p4yhg
Jeff Peterson (sorry I didn’t find any videos in my fast search): https://jeffpetersonguitar.com/
Another local group, the Hawaiian Serenaders:
https://ukulelemeleonmaui.com/hawaiianserenaders
Paul, thank you for those links! I never knew ukelele could sound like that.
I like classical music, and liked hearing what you linked. That mr.King must have fingertips of steel; from what I remember from my one try ukelele strings could really hurt when they’re tight enough to sound true.
We have a local, and internet streaming @allclassical.org, classical music radio station I listen to virtually every morning as I’m checking what’s new on the web. A few years ago the morning host sprung him playing Bach. I thought it was a hoot! Nobody expects Bach on a uke! A lute, perhaps, but not a uke.
Very regretably for those of us with an attention span longer than 2:30, there are remarkably few classical music stations in America any longer. Few independent stations!
I think that may have happened; pretty sure I heard my daughter muttering about a ukulele recently 🙂 Comment
My-son-the-music-teacher says my old acoustic has the best sound. When he went off to college, taking his electric guitar, my acoustic went with them, and he still has it.
hah, well, acoustic, steel, or electric, each to its best purpose. Sometimes you want one sound, sometimes you want another.
He might want some non-Western musical styles too. Some of my more eclectic, out-there tastes:
Sigur Rós — An Icelandic alternative post-rock band with an aethereal singing and playing style from the lead, who sometimes uses a bow on the guitar (for a cross between violin and guitar). The first couple of songs I heard from them made me think of elves singing. They use all sorts of sound sources, from usual instruments to synthesizer to found objects and natural sources. (All right, still Western, but it’s unusual.)
Abigail Washburn — This lady became infatuated with Chinese (Mandarin) and also learned banjo, and has combined the two in Chinese and American folk songs, plus modern styles and original work. She’s also played American folk and bluegrass with talents here. I don’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but the music’s beautiful and folksy and yet foreign/exotic.
A while back I was curious and got some Indian music, ragas from Ravi Shankar and others. There’s a different quality to it, and yes, a 60’s vibe at times.
I’ve heard ukulele has been gaining ground in its own right lately, with a few master players out there and other musicians taking an interest.
Just because, I’d also recommend the Stranger Things soundtracks, really unique synthesizer combination work. Greg Edmondson’s Firefly / Serenity soundtrack for its mix of instruments and general creativity and evocativeness, and Bear McCreary’s scores for the Battlestar Galactica reboot and others, for that same creativity and exotic evocative quality. (If I hd my choice or who could do a soundtrack or the Chanur books or Foreigner, those two and the duo for Stranger Things.)
Indian music has a whole differen aesthetic, and scale, than Western music. More akin to Middle eastern music in terms of rhythmic structures and tonalities. It requires vocal skills similar to those of traditional Irish singers, but they come at it from a whole nother direction. Laksmi Shankar (no relation?) is an interesting classical singer. Ali Akbar Khan is another great traditional instrumentalist. In my salad days, I got to see Ravi Shankar live. Talk about a stage presence. Mind blowing.
Were you aware that Norah Jones is Ravi Shankar’s daughter?
Norah Jones is? Wow, no, I had no idea! How amazing!
(I am still very much a newbie about Indian music, but yes, there’s a whole different angle there to musical style and structure. I heard something a while ago saying that Gypsy (Romani) music also has this very different approach, with micro-tones or notes and the vibrato or warbling effect that both male and female singers often use in their music. Since the Gypsies somehow have roots in India, it’s not too surprising, I guess, that there are things in common, style-wise. But it’s great that we get those different traditions, other approaches besides the European approach. Then you get something else besides with Asian and African traditions, and I’m not sure if there’s any unifying thing about Native American music, since they are so many different groups, not unified.)
— Where else could one blog post get such varied discussions going? (I miss those Farscape forums being active.)
maybe something on basic classical guitar? It gets both picking and chords.
My cat just sat on the keyboard and activated Siri. I laughed. Siri complained, “I didn’t calc that.” Well, that’s because I wasn’t talking to you, Siri. You know, they never had that problem with the Enterprise computer or with HAL. Though admittedly, HAL was more of a problem.
I had not considered the problem of having the ship’s cat sit on the keyboard on the starship, but hmm, there would really need to be safeguards against accidental keypresses, button-flips, and so on. Not just the ship’s cat, but the toddlers, etc. Or, you know, the bored teenagers like in a few 80s movies. Heh.
Heckuva note if the cat sends you off into an alternate space-time dimension, just because you didn’t know the hyperdrive would ever DO that. Heheheh.
(Back to font work.)
BCS – you wanted a story to w rite? You got it! Right there! I, for one, would definitely read it.
I’ll start that. I’ll need to sit down and come up with characters and a plot, but I’ve got a couple of ideas or it, letting it percolate.—–
After sketching two nights and trying a little on the computer, I think I have a better idea where I want to go with that Jenson revival or Jenson-inspired original. The first try was too sharp and pointy. It needs an approachable quality, a historical feel. So with a chunky quality, a triangular and squarish softened rounded quality to the edges and terminals I think now I have a direction and something unique to warrant doing it and not reinventing the wheel.
It just occurred to me, a fan who used to be on the old Farscape Kansas / Terra Firma forums, is an academic with a specialization in Italian, including historical. It occurs to me she might have insights or scans of period printing from people like Jenson and Arrighi. Good grief, her kid might be approaching her teens by now. Time passes, tempus fugiti.
A story along those lines in the flavor of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
I got a few pages into a rough draft, then the next day, I realized I’d forgotten two key points. (And now I’m not sure I remember what those were, two days later. Dang it! LOL.) I’ve written out background info and a few points, plot-wise, but that’s barely a start, no matter if it ends up short story or novel length. (I would be astonished if I get a short story completed; flabbergasted if I get a novel length story completed. More so if I then could do another!)
This feels like it’s a more fantastical tangent on my main story-universe idea — except that I feel like this needs to be separate from that entirely, different relaxed and fantasy-ready rules for this, more gritty realism for the main one.
I would love to do something with a sense of humor. I had fun doing bit pieces on the Terra Firma and Kansas forums, now years ago.
But this feels like it wants to be more in the line of the juvenile adventures I read as a kid and teen. — I think I have (by nature) a different storytelling style and voice than the writers I admire (several), so I am probably OK there. — But I still feel new at writing, despite practice, and I suspect I have weak spots that will need work. — I am probably going to want two or three beta readers, and as I understand it, I can’t ask published authors like CJ, Jane, and Lynn, in order to avoid any potential problems. (I presume they do not touch or comment on, critique, anyone’s writing drafts.)
So this is likely to have more of a YA appeal…unless I find the hi jinx of the two getting themselves (and others) in trouble to be good fodder for when my sense of humor kicks in. I’ve liked previous tries with that, and it was always fun writing things there.
So I guess what I’m saying is, we’ll see what comes out of the old brain and pen and keyboard. 😀 — I have not been too thrilled with my drawing skills lately, and I’ve just recently picked up Affinity Designer and Publisher for Mac, to see if I can have a vector drawing program again. But I probably can’t resist the urge to do a few illustrations, and I have not yet created an EPUB ebook with the features I’d want, similar to what I can do on web pages. So this is likely to be an adventure and to exercise my skills more, to force me to learn.
I really want to get a story completed, to prove to myself I can. I have plenty of ideas, but complete plots, and finishing things, seem to be problematic for me. So…I’m likely to work a little more on fonts tonight, then write after a break or a nap.
Well, now I’ve got pages of notes on how the story-universe works and who and what’s in it, plus a tiny bit of outline. Because of the story-conceit, I’ve decided this is its own story-universe, a branch off of my other.
I think I have enough to start, but I still have to figure out a fuller plot and the rest of the characters.
Not sure yet, but I don’t expect to get too dark or too adult-themed with this, so that it will likely be suited for an adult and YA audience. Other stories in my drafts folder have included some with more adult or dark or dystopian themes, but mostly, I’m in a mixed audience mode.
I don’t know yet how well this will go, but I like the premise and story-conceit. That goes back to things popular in the SF&F I read as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s.
Oops, I just got a good plot twist for the initial problem. I like that better than what it had been. I need a break from the font work, so this is going to get at least the rest of today.
BCS, does the old email you gave me still work? I tried to drop you a couple of messages, but you never responded.
My Yahoo email, which I think is the one you have, still works, but your messages were probably swamped by junk mail. I missed them. I’ll look, and reply back if I find them, or I’ll send you a note that I don’t see them, if that’s the case. A few minutes and I’ll reply; checking there now.
Chondrite, I sent a reply. Please let me know if you don’t receive it within 24 to 48 hours. I missed the most recent one under junk email, and another two(!) because, er, I searched with I instead of Y. Duh. I will remember the spelling next time.
Two things too special not to share:
https://twistedsifter.com/videos/butterfly-lands-on-cats-nose/
and
https://twistedsifter.com/videos/rare-iridescent-rainbow-colored-octopus/
Wow, thanks WOL, those are something special to see!
The first one is cute, the second stunning – I didn’t even know blanket octopusses existed, and it’s so beautiful!
The first reminded me of my childhood cat who came up with a monarch butterfly gingerly between his teeth. “Let that butterfly go!” He opened his mouth, and looked wistfully at his toy flying away.
Octopi are very intelligent, and I imagine his display as communication, “What part of ‘go away’ do you not understand?!”
Some folks are just naturally more “flam-buoy-ant,” I guess. Show-off! 😀
The cat: Not only curiosity, but they have a sense of wonder and a sense of humor too. “Whazzat?” The sense of play and bemusement from that cat is great.
That was very cool.
I haven’t written on that story idea yet today, but wanting a fresh approach unlike what I’ve had in other story ideas has made me take a step back and rethink, and ask why, or if I’m using things common in SF, and if those are too close to what we have now, or rehashing other people’s ideas, and how to come up with something else that would still make good sense. I want it to be realistic, and yet other fans here asking about humor or styles, has me reexamining this. It struck me that we haven’t seen in a very long time one thing that was used in early 50’s era SF, that would make some sense, and the bridge from the Hunt for Red October and the Final Countdown mixed in there.
I want to avoid it being like current SF or stories from writers I admire. Why not come up with something with a whole different feel? But then, what makes sense from a practical human standpoint too?
Hah, and there’s the need to name things, or what form things take. You need a personal communications device: Do you call it a phone? Too current or prone to become outdated, or do they just keep the word around, when it’s centuries from now? Is it a com-badge, or a wrist TV (Dick Tracy) (Apple Watch?), or like a cell phone, or a headset, or…. There are lots of options. Just figuring out how they might use communications and computers in the future, when present-day technology has copied and surpassed several things from science fiction, hah, makes it challenging. And what do you call the things? If your people pull out a weapon, most of the names have already been taken, and pistols and rifles and other things are out there aplenty. (Space slingshot, anyone?)
The headsets make sense, but they seem like they’d be hazardous in landing party / away team missions, on the ground or on a ship, even your own ship, if there’s a wrong move or a course change or a fight. Pow, and you’re hit by your own headset. Not good.
So, I expect to jump at it again tonight. Work today has been a mix of productive and not, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I don’t know yet if the idea is really building, as nothing plot-wise has materialized in my head, just these other world-building things to get done. — At least I have one tech item that should be different enough than what we’ve usually seen lately.
I’m hoping the draft start tonight will be more usable.
Font work today and yesterday has been odd. I’m getting interference from another idea that wants to get done. The current one I’m working on, as a test, is leaning heavily toward “inspired by” instead of the revival I thought it would be. (Which means the revival may still happen, though.) And this one is going in a direction I didn’t quite plan on it being, as I try to solve problems. But at least now it’s firmed up instead of being two or three directions at once. So now it has a consistent look, with a few letters still to redraw in that look, before going further on it. So the direction I was initially going for, I still want to do, which means it is percolating in my brain, with a need for some sketches to get the idea down, so I can concentrate on what I’ve been doing. — This is a very roundabout creative process, but I have been getting the hang of it more lately, more productive over the past few months, with a boost in skill. There are still a lot of things to learn there, and for those, the documentation isn’t good, and there are only a few designer resources. So…keeping on with it, but making slow progress. Sometimes it feels very slow. Other times it feels all right. But I’m just still frustrated, stressed, pressured, feeling the urgency to get things done.
Such is life. At least for now and many months ahead, I have a roof over my head and groceries and the necessities, although not enough social / friend group support, and worry over future needs. But it’s better than what so many people have. I just want to get stable and rebuild again, so I don’t feel like anything that comes along could topple what I have now. Aarrgh.
Well, later than I thought, going to feed Goober and get a snack, take a break, and then write some, then maybe hit the sack early. (Didn’t work too well last night, I got two naps, not real sleep.) My life is so weird. — It’d have to be somebody / a few somebodies, pretty special to put up with me, I think. But I don’t like being so, too much on my own. I keep wanting both roommates / friends for support, and someone special, and I’ve been on my own so long, not living with others so long, that I’m not sure how I’d adjust, and I have this feeling I’d over-invest and risk being confused between “boyfriend” and “friend living together” and “really don’t know this person yet.” Which is a frustrating, weird head-space to be in. Maybe I am just over-thinking that, and I’d fall right back into a normal routine, since social situations among humans are kind of like, once you’ve been there once or twice, you’ve been through it all before. I mean, hey, I haven’t been a hermit forever. But that’s about what it feels like now. — Heh, and I wish Goober still had a feline buddy, but not one who’d boss him until he’s miserable. (I still miss Smokey, and yet I see problems I didn’t see there before. But dang it, I miss him and regret my decision and can’t undo it, of course.) Goober likes having me to himself, but he would be better off with a feline buddy or two. That will only happen if it happens on its own or if someone offers locally at need, or if I see some need. So far, it’s just us.
Well, writing some tonight. I need the chance to unwind and do something different, flex my muscles in other areas.
Huh, seed of a story idea just came to me, wouldn’t work in this story, I don’t think, and I’m not sure how I could handle the idea. But I’ll jot that down. It’s crazy enough to work, if I could handle it well enough. I don’t think that one would work for a YA-friendly story. Or maybe that’s just my personal upbringing going. Anyway, going forth.
Hahaha — If the link doesn’t work, check for, « What if Stranger Things Happened in India? » — I got a good chuckle out of this. The Indian kid actors resemble the American kids pretty well too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8wPO9W4g20
Funny, Indian traffic looks much like traffic here, but here we have fewer peanuts vendors…. 😀