http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Pteryxx&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Pteryxx en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:30:28 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28716106/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28716106/ Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:18:25 PST
]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28690411/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28690411/ Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:50:38 PST
]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28589194/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/28589194/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:48:31 PST
]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/24120205/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/24120205/ Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:01:44 PDT
Easter will be celebrated this weekend with church services, painted egg hunts, chocolates and Peeps and cakes featuring cute fluffy ... uh...

Cakewrecks blog

ANYWAY!

I've survived my classes (so far), replanted my garden boxes, and am recovering from a near-miss with pneumonia. And, I've sold my first ever commissions, taking the first step into drawing as a living as well as a life and love.

Hope your worlds are turning to the sun.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/22343393/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/22343393/ Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:03:55 PST Losmios 's poll here.

I had a great fascination with dinosaurs when I was very little, drawing them, writing stories about them, and running about pretending to be one. This didn't go over well with the fundamentalist teachers at my school who told me either there never were any such things as dinosaurs, and "fossils" are just fakes put in the ground by God to test our faith; or that dinosaurs were evil monsters that Satan mutated out of nice normal animals and God destroyed by sending the Flood. But dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are so obviously beautiful and charismatic, and not so strange or vicious compared to many animals still sharing the Earth with us now. Why wipe out the dinosaurs, but keep sharks and Nile crocodiles? Why lose Eohippus but keep both dogs and deer? And what about the duckbill platypus? Whose bright idea was that one?

I was also told that drawing dinosaurs, dragons and my own fantastic creatures was sinful, because only the creatures God had created were worthy subjects. Horse okay, unicorn not. There was also an incident when I corrected a teacher's spelling of Archaeopteryx, much to her annoyance, and earned myself the hatred of the whole class for the crime of being right.

So, as a creature neither fish nor fowl myself, I chose one of the most famous transitional fossils ever found as my symbol. The dancing fossil, living contradiction, and spawn of Satan in some folks' opinion. Archaeopteryx lithographica means "stone-written ancient wing", so I hope to leave my tracks also written for the ages, or at least the curious.

Pteryxx has two X's to distinguish me from all the other wing-folk out there, and is shorter than Archaeopteryx but just as difficult to pronounce.

~ 8 >

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/19156142/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/19156142/ Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:37:24 PDT
A series of storms battered the fleet during the night, damaging several of 'our' boats. Phil, the captain of the Cornelia Marie, got thrown from his bunk and hit the corner of a cabinet opposite, breaking some ribs. His son Josh bound him up and they all went on fishing while Phil kept up a quiet, steady coughing behind the wheel.

During the day he started coughing up blood. Josh came up to check on him, and Phil with unaccustomed gentleness thanked him and asked for a few ibuprofen. He said nothing about the blood. "My health is on the back burner right now, we got a lot to get done... Chances are this is nothing."

After a day of fishing and getting gradually worse, Phil called up Murray, his senior crewman and best friend. Murray listens and says "Sounds like you poked a rib into your lung." Phil says "Yeah." Then they go on fishing, Murray working the deck with a solemn face, Phil coughing into bloody paper towels and hiding them in crevices in the wheelhouse.

Late in the night, now 24 hours since the injury. Phil abruptly calls a hospital in Anchorage, then says he's got fishing to do and hangs up. "I got to find another hospital... I don't like what this one is telling me. She says get to an ER right now."

The next morning, two days after the injury. Murray checks on Phil and finds him slowly getting worse. Phil keeps saying he doesn't want to let down his crew and his ship. "I always had this dream that I'd die at sea." Murray keeps on fishing, but before long he disobeys orders and tells Phil's sons what's going on. Josh comes upstairs and says screw the fishing, screw the money, if it was me we'd be in dock already. Phil gently says he needs to be alone right now and sends his son away. They go back to fishing, now all the deck in silence, but their postures speak volumes.

Later that day, another captain calls Phil about the fishing. Phil says listen, I got hurt and now the hospital's after me. The other captain goes, You did what?! Call the coasties, make the call, don't be shy. Phil thanks him for his concern and hangs up.

He turns to the camera and mutters how everybody is after him now...

"This is starting to get to me man... I don't know what to do. Big tough guy huh, ain't so tough. Big tough guy that ain't so tough."

--------

It's hard to grasp the scope of what a human mind can do to itself. What we believe is more central to us than our talents, more powerful than our intelligence, more important than our survival. We believe so easily, so willingly. And what we believe, no force on earth can change without our consent.

"Something will go wrong, it always does."
"I just don't have the talent for it."
"Everything would be okay if I just do better."
"Nothing I do would matter anyway."
"He's trustworthy because he's one of us."
"But I love my mate."
"I'm not the kind of person that has this problem."
"I don't need help."

We minimize, we rationalize, we deny. We guard our beliefs as jealously as a dragon with its hoard and respond to any intrusion with overwhelming force. Changing our souls is so threatening, so terrifying, that we can't even conceive of the possibility that we might be wrong. The world might not be what we think it is... indeed, it never was.


"I've seen many times that after the shock of violence has begun to heal, victims will be carried in their minds back to that hallway or parking lot, back to the time when they still had choices, before they fell under someone's malevolent control, before they refused the gift of fear...
"Often they will say about some particular detail, 'I realize this now, but I didn't know it then.' Of course, if it is in their heads now, so was it then. What they mean is that they only now accept the significance...
"This has taught me that the intuitive process works, though often not as well as its principal competitor, the denial process."

-Gavin de Becker in 'The Gift of Fear'


'The Gift of Fear' is primarily about teaching people how to predict violent behavior and avoid it; but it is also, at the core, about intuition, creativity, and humanness. When a person frees oneself to guess, to make mistakes, to ask questions, one is more likely to find a workable solution to a problem. This can be demonstrated through experiments with simple puzzles, or by posing a question to any group of young children. Adults are expected to be more reasonable, which often means conforming; and school tends to be a long process of training in th... ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/18298026/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/18298026/ Mon, 12 May 2008 23:06:10 PDT
The strongest way for an author to have his stuff read, the way most likely to gain him fans and spread his name, is by the personal recommendation of a trusted friend. I just finished the book, and I found it good enough to pass along to y'all. It's fast-paced, keeps raising the stakes, and it's also full of information that amounts almost to tutorials. It reads a lot like Heinlein's 'Have Spacesuit Will Travel' that way, a story that does as much teaching as storytelling. But it is NEVER slow. It's basically a showcase of the hacker mindset and gamesmanship. I thought character-wise it was pretty flat. Marcus, whose POV we share throughout, does think about and react to what his actions mean. The teachers, authority figures, and parents act pretty much like you'd expect them to, and hold the views they need to hold. It's Marcus and his friends who know the reality of the technology they use, and who know that the DHS detained them and forbade them to tell; everyone else, all the people living in the ordinary world, are the ones they have to wake up, to convince. But that IS the purpose of the novel; it's a meta-story, a call to action by blazing the path and showing what it means, what it's like to decide to fight the system.

Little Brother download site

Take care all, enjoy, and pass on.

- Peace, Pteryxx

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/17818361/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/17818361/ Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:32:09 PDT
Problem is, no such bill exists. Yet.

The rumor arose from an article by Mark Simon on Animation World Network, which claims that all unregistered copyrights are under immediate threat:
You Will Lose All The Rights To Your Own Art

"If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free."

He's expanding on concerns raised by the Illustrators' Partnership of America, whose own news release of March 19 asks its readers only to be alert and stand by:
Orphan Works Update
"Many artists have contacted us, asking if it’s time to write Congress about the new Orphan Works bill. No, Congress hasn’t released an actual bill yet and lawmakers tend to ignore letters when there is no bill.

But when we do ask you to act, it will have to be quickly. We expect a bill to be released after the Easter recess. Sources say it will be introduced in the House and Senate simultaneously, and fast-tracked for a vote in the House by mid-May. Advocates hope for swift passage before the summer recess."

The IPA is responding to a presentation made to the House IP subcommittee by a company called Pic Scout. Pic Scout has created image recognition technology that can automate scanning for infringing works, and presented its newest product, the Content Clearance System, as a solution to the problem of orphaned works. Anyone wishing to use an image would upload it to be compared against Pic Scout's database, then receive back the image owner's contact information if it exists.
Pic Scout statement, 13March08
"This system targets the simple person who wants to use any digital file, and doesn't know who it belongs to. All he has to do is go online, upload this file to our clearance system, using our friendly interface, and click on a search button. Our system will compare this file to millions of other files, already stored in our secured database, and the user will receive an email notification with copyright owner detailed contact and licensing information. While performing this reasonable and diligent search at a little or no cost at all, the users will have the ability to decide whether they can and want to use the content."

While I'm sure Pic Scout would be overjoyed to have every artist in the States forced to pay a fee to get into their safe, gated database, it's a long road between here and there. For one thing, the Copyright Office has already considered requiring registration and rejected it as too extreme. Register of Copyrights, 13Mar08
"In our study of the orphan works problem, the Office reviewed various suggestions from the copyright community. These included creating a new exception in Title 17, creating a government-managed compulsory license, and instituting a ceiling on available damages. We rejected all of these proposals in part for the same reasons: we did not wish to unduly prejudice the legitimate rights of a copyright owner by depriving him of the ability to assert infringement or hinder his ability to collect an award that reflects the true value of his work."

For another, image comparison is just one potential tool in making a reasonable search for an owner. Art communities, websites, professional organizations and such already do a pretty good job of searching out infringement without any such technological aids. And new tools come along all the time, such as Google's Image Labeler currently in beta.
Image Labeler

Finally, current copyright law already stipulates that when the owner of an 'orphaned work' resurfaces, that work is no longer considered orphaned. The owner can still claim compensation for th... ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/17681171/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/17681171/ Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:29:05 PDT
I'm both a perfectionist and a procrastinator, as some of you well know. Over the last several months I've had ample time to study myself and ask just why it should be so damned hard for me to create. I know I can do it, I've done it all my life, and I've hardened myself to the fear of display sufficiently to post my works and even take criticism with more or less grace. Why do I still constantly engineer my days so that I run out of time to draw or write, and why do I grab at any flimsy excuse to avoid the very work that I most love to do?

One method to overcome obstacles is to visualize the path you wish to take. I've been working at it and I realized this morning that I can barely imagine what being a successful artist feels like. Working from home, being adept with my tools, discussing a client's needs, that's all the easy part. But looking down at a finished work with satisfaction, displaying it naturally instead of as an act of defiance, and accepting the word of others that it's not just good but excellent... it's hard even to describe. I can imagine being a sapient aquatic torpedo that navigates by pressure waves and speaks in patterns of light, but I have trouble imagining what it's like to hear praise and accept it. Anticipating praise feels very much like waiting for a lancet's stab, and receiving it feels like being pushed to the edge of a cliff, complete with scrabbling claws and desperation.

I admit that I'm rather offended at myself for clinging to a maladaptive response so strongly. I've read enough about the damage done by victimhood status, and it seems unfair that I should still be crippled by my past while people who suffered much worse abuse than I did survived with nothing but memories. Be that as it may, every living thing with two neurons to rub together is capable of associating warning cues with trauma on a reflex level. Suffice to say that I learned very well to associate both praise and success with punishment. Critique hurts, yes, sometimes very deeply, but praise is worse because there's no counterattack, nothing to fix that will stop it returning, and it'll only get more intense with time. No wonder I've learned the only safe path is never to finish anything.

If a thing can be learned, it can be un-learned. By experimenting and making mistakes, you not only learn to improve your technique, but to improve your acceptance of mistakes. I have all the practice I need in brainstorming concepts and starting a piece of work with enthusiasm and hope. Now it just remains to train myself in willingly finishing that work, presenting it to your consideration as an equal in rights if not in skill, and looking upon the positive comments as calmly and rationally as I do the critical ones. I'm able to accept thanks, most of the time anyway, so my challenge is to become habituated to praise.

I join communities, I'm active for a while, I make some friends, and then I find reasons to sneak away and protect myself from their eager attention. So I'm posting this message solely to ensure that there exists no haunt where I can run away from this challenge. I'm not asking for sympathy or recognition, though no doubt some of you will respond and I'll accept your words in the spirit they're given. I've hidden this fear from myself for most of my life, and I see no reason to make its continued concealment easy.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/16395330/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/16395330/ Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:44:36 PST
Yesterday it rained heavily, but today was bright and almost warm. We brought Grandpa's old shovels and the post-hole digger, laid in the back of his van next to the polished wood box that held his ashes. My dad and I carved out a square in the patchy dead grass and broke ground into the red Texas clay, piling the dirt to one side. Two shovels wouldn't fit into the laptop-size hole so we took turns, one digging while the other walked with my mom. The box was heavy so she set it down on the neighboring gravestone, and joked about not waking Grandma up.

Once we had a hole nearly three feet deep, Dad reached the box down and set it upright in the bottom. Next to it we laid the learner's braid that I cut from my hair, bound with a twist of wire from my robotics kit. I last cut my braid three years ago, nearly to the day, when I laid it in the casket with my grandma. Then we all three of us crouched together and scooped handfuls of the soft red dirt into the grave, filling the empty space around the polished box. It's wonderful dirt, scented and malleable, like snow that is perfect for snowballs and castles. With shovels and hands we packed it all back into the hole, and all three of us stamped it down neatly with our feet. We laughed at how we must look, three grown-ups dancing in a little circle on their parents' graves. My family's always been silly though, we figured they'd understand.

Next weekend will be the formal memorial, where we all will wear good clothes and hug people we haven't seen in years, pass out the booklets with photographs of Grandpa and a synopsis of his life, written by my dad. There will be music and hymns and probably a lot of flowers, piled in the front of the community church where Grandpa married my folks. But today was just for us, as it should be.


Things I learned this week:
The old van gets 18 miles per gallon, even when I drive on the side roads to save gas.
Everything I learned in high school and college about physical chemistry, atomic structure, and electromagnetism, was covered in the very first day of AC/DC class.
A tech instructor really can fill an entire hour with the proper methods of using a ruler.
Being able to lie to people involves understanding their feelings, on a level that is neither empathy nor behaviorism but partakes of both.
The pointed shovel is best for cutting into the ground, but the flat-bladed shovel is best for lifting or scraping the dirt back in afterwards. That's why you need both to do the job right.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/15361855/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/15361855/ Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:42:00 PST
Essays and observations will go into Livejournal, roleplay-related posts mostly to VictoryRP where my City of Heroes gang lives, and entire stories to here. As I can only write for so long before I simply must draw, a few artworks should find their way onto here as well.

DeviantArt is painful to use on dial-up. I've been running with images and Java turned off, but dA is very hard to navigate that way. Looks like I'll check in irregularly, whenever I have a lot of time, or manage to get high-speed access at the cafe for a few hours.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/15201168/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/15201168/ Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:02:42 PDT
Well I'm here and safe in Texas, though Net access is hard to come by... deviantart + dial-up = pain, and not in a good way. But I'm gathering my life back up and restoring my Presence. More to come; but for the moment I had to log in when I saw there's a blog devoted to violent groin shots in comics. , this one's for you.

Nad Shot

*submerges in a swirl of bubbles*

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/14052537/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/14052537/ Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:01:21 PDT
(after some time spent futzing with Finetune's code...)


Or you can just go here and hit play.


-------------------

Added Aug 10 for your consideration. From Superstenogirl's blog, an unflinching first-person account of abuse and the decision to break free of it. NSFW for language.

Courage

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13471806/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13471806/ Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:09:08 PDT who posted three of my pieces in response to my reply. And to who featured me first, before I even realized what this meme meant! My end of the offer is to do the same thing: I'll find 10 folks who reply to this entry, filled out with some who posted to my main page, and I'll (eventually) go through your gallery and highlight three pieces here. It may take me a few days but I'll do it. Welcome to my quiet little corner of the *CityOfArtists and dA communities.

-------------------

Rather than wait three months to have 10 replies to this journal entry ; ) I'll start taking a few from posts on my dA front page. Offer still stands though; whoever you are, post a reply direct to this thing and I'll feature you here. Welcome.

--------------------

5------------



She's a dedicated player who thinks nothing of tearing off a six-hour task force with a winning smile. It's her birthday today, and she surprised me with my first piece of gift art... awww.

Spackle
Spackle my main, the spotted white boy and his everpresent cigar. I don't think she used a reference, but here's one for comparison... he's -supposed- to be that color!
Spack protest

Vox
Another gift art, this one of Onus Vox the alien bug tank.

Hulkenstein
Done for Halloween, a deep-colored painting with fiery green eyes.



4------------------



Cartoonist and doodler with great and glorious enthusiasm. He has a fine collection of commissioned and gift art in his gallery, displayed proudly right alongside his own doodles in MS Paint. As he says 'lol thx, i dont have much talent but i know FUNNY'

Hami Bunny Wabbit
Hami Punch
Cartman Hami
Three of DocBoy's collection of Hami-Doodles.

Bombs Away
Exhibition of split-second timing on the screenshot button.

Texas Longhorne and Hank Rearden
Two friends from Victory server, Hank and my buddy Tex. Can ya feel the Love!


3-------------------

~Vangelus

Yesterday I finally pestered Vangey into posting his artwork here on dA (and held his hand while he figured out the interface). He's one of the best roleplayers and writers in CoX - he's quick on his feet, absolutely fearless, and spins out plot twists like normal people breathe. His writing is always a storm of emotions that leaves one gasping, like a good roller coaster, or perhaps like being ambushed by half a dozen ninjas.



A Typical Date
Vangey's main Shinsektor, the Insectoid Knight, in a romantic moment with his sidekick Krickette.

Codename Akusektor
On the CoX boards, Vangelus' submission for the May Writing Challenge, in which we wrote a short story themed around a badge title in City of Heroes. This used as its spark "Heart of the Hamidon".

Target: Shinsektor
Souvenir of one of Shinsektor's plotlines, summarized in City of Heroes souvenir format.



2----------------


<... ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13463345/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13463345/ Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:40:08 PDT Rowrsie and *zerry lately about stream-of-consciousness writing. Here's a powerful example... but this one is from real life.

We take so much for granted.

Breathe.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13425759/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13425759/ Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:06:53 PDT
Essay by Julian Dibbell, on the life of the Chinese gold farmer:
Loot farmers

"Min’s English is not good enough to grasp in all its richness the hatred aimed his way. But he gets the idea. He feels a little embarrassed around regular players and sometimes says he thinks about how he might explain himself to those who believe he has no place among them, if only he could speak their language. “I have this idea in mind that regular players should understand that people do different things in the game,” he said. “They are playing. And we are making a living.”


Adam and Comfort recommend the comic book series Fables, the first issue of which is on Vertigo's site as a free pdf.
Buy This Book: Fables
Vertigo's Fables site

"The characters are wonderfully believable (despite their unbelievable natures), and the art of conveying the mundane within the fantastic serves to show people who are flawed but interesting, and to turn old expectations of archetypal staples like ‘ Prince Charming,’ ‘ Pinocchio’ and ‘The Big Bad Wolf’ on their heads. The gang’s all here, too, from Snow White to Cinderella to the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels fame to Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, Mowgli, and Sinbad. If you like fairy tales or fables of any kind, you’ll love flipping the pages and being reintroduced to characters you’ve loved from childhood and beyond, reimagined in our modern world. It’s both familiar and fresh, recognizable and yet unexpected."


And, Ratatouille is getting some really good early reviews.
Kottke's review

In this review, Kottke quotes Christopher Alexander:


"There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of a person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive."

And full circle, back to the life of a gold farmer:
“Working together, playing together, it felt nice,” Min said. “Very . . . shuang.” The word means “open, clear, exhilarating.” “You would go in, knowing that you were fighting the bosses that all the guilds in the world dream of fighting; there was a sense of achievement.”

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13206211/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/13206211/ Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:44:58 PDT
-------

Reposted from the Northwestern forums. The show 'Deadliest Catch' on Discovery Channel follows the lives of Alaskan crab fishermen during the brief crab season. Some of the boats dock in Seattle, and we paid a brief visit to the Northwestern in dry dock last night.

---------

We were lucky enough to be in the area last night, and drove by the old Yankee Grill restaurant to walk out on the public dock, hoping to see a familiar boat. It's been too long since I got a good lungful of that salt water dock smell. Passed by the dry docks, joined a few people feeding the gulls, but didn't see anything familiar. Then we turned around to face back to shore, and saw 'Northwestern' blue on white hanging right over our heads.

2007 Dry Dock

We joined a few other fans who happened to drive by as well, to chat about the show. They drove all the way up from outside Tacoma, thirty-some miles, in hopes of seeing her. Standing on rocks and benches, we could just see her flanks over the fence, where they're scouring the old paint and rust off. Suspended like that, she looks huge, like a cliff or the Rock of Gibraltar, but she's still awfully small to be the castle and holt of a half-dozen men in a few hundred square miles of ocean.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10642669/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10642669/ Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:48:21 PST
I managed about 600 words during the week while typing awkwardly with my left hand. Over the weekend I could touch-type again as long as I took a lot of breaks to stretch out, and I reached 2500 words total - not bad as my goal is 20K. I have high hopes for the coming week, when I don't have to stop every 100 words or so.

This also meant I was working on the computer only, instead of pad and paper like usual. The problem with composing on computer is that it's so easy to edit, which we're not supposed to worry about during NaNo! I backed up a lot to fix and tweak things when I should've just been going forward. Next week's goal is to turn off the auto-editor and just roll with it. There was one segment though, a few paragraphs long, that flowed beautifully on the first try. I guess that's being in the 'zone' of writing.

I'm also getting better at keeping my concentration in less-than-ideal conditions: TV going, spouse hollering over Ventrilo in the background, taking enforced breaks. When I get distracted, the story is still there, just under the surface, and I can learn to trust it.

----------------

I had to take a lot of time off work to rest my hands, and I swear I'd rather be overworked than have this enforced idleness. Can't draw, write, clean house, or hold a book open for very long. That doesn't leave much besides sleep, TV, and .... *ahem* well, sleep and TV. I did less reading, and watched more bull-riding, poker, and CSI and Mythbusters episodes this week. I also watched all three LOTR DVD's and Black Hawk Down.

Reading this week:

Most of Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden. Intense, gripping, detailed, and hard to put down. I had to stop halfway through because it's a big book and I couldn't hold it with my bad hand, so I watched the movie instead. It's interesting to see essentially the same story portrayed with different techniques in writing and in film... the drumbeat of the music vs. the drumbeat of the prose, seeing the scenes that I'd just read described. I'd like to read the Sin City comics before watching that DVD, for comparison.

The next two books in the Moreau trilogy, Emperors of the Twilight and Specters of the Dawn. I like the first book best but I always seem to end up reading all three.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. Told mostly from the POV of a high-functioning autistic learning to thrive in the world of normals. I think I chose this one because it's fundamentally about accepting and embracing change. When I saw Elizabeth Moon speak at the U. Bookstore back in April, she said the movie rights had been picked up, which meant she'd get money for it no matter how badly Hollywood messes it up in the process. I admit I'm not sure how this book can be turned into a script, as so much of it takes place in the mind of the main character and is filtered through his alien perception of the world; if a movie comes to pass, it'll be intriguing to see.

Synopsis at Powell's Books

Then I wanted to read 'Flowers for Algernon' for comparison, but I couldn't find it. Therefore I read 'Floating Dogs' by Ian McDonald instead; one of the most perfect and stunning shorts I know. Then I read most of the rest of the Future War anthology to go with it: Philip K. Dick's classic 'Second Variety', and 'A Dry, Quiet War' by Tony Daniel, really stand out in this one. The latter is available online here:

A Dry, Quiet War

------------------

"It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed."

"Even when it's stupid to try?"

"Especially then. That's how it's done. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost."

-Robin Hobb, 'Mad Ship'

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10564694/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10564694/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:25:25 PST
I'm going to try for two hours a night and five on the end-days, 9-11 PM weeknights and 10AM-3PM Sat and Sun. That time is going to get borked by hockey on Friday nights and home stuff Sundays, but I can try. I'll also snag 15 minutes here and there on a bus, and if worst comes to worst I'll take an hour at lunch, but a long lunch means working late and cutting into my evening writing block. I also reserve the right to attend any RP events that come up in my blocks, but I *will* mark those hours to be made up and not just forgiven. RP deserves special consideration in my measure, because if it weren't for RP I wouldn't be writing at all.

Folks have suggested when I'm trying to chill down into writing mode from work mode, that drawing may be a good creative bridge. Hmm... I figure 50K words for the month of NaNo, at 1K per ('a picture is worth a thousand words' as they say), means for next year's NaNo I can draw a 50-page graphic novel! Makes perfect sense, don't it?

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Read this week:

Oct/Nov F&SF. I liked 'Abandon the Ruins' particularly because it's a sort of waystation in the character's life, a bridge rather than a destination. 'Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter' is an incredible venture into alienness, the more so for being set in a real culture. And 'Good Intentions' just plain rawks. Read it in the newsstand if you have to, it's short and fast.

Dec Analog. Most of the stories in Analog don't seem to leave much impression on me; maybe I'm just more of a stereotypically character-centric reader. The exception is part III of 'Rollback', by Robert J. Sawyer, which settled on me like six feet of snow. He has a way of imprinting the deep human implications of a thing just by living with them, instead of shoving them in your face: Frameshift, Illegal Alien, and The Terminal Experiment all do this, and I like them all. Starplex, meh.

King Rat by China Mieville, because it was mentioned in an editorial. Thick rich bloody text, like fresh meat in the mouth, or so I imagine. And it's dark and scary and makes twisted sense. It would be a gorgeous graphic novel. Big chunks of it are about music, and Mieville does a splendid job of describing in words something that has no visual aspect of its own.

Old favorites that read fast, so I re-read them while I was sick:
Downward to the Earth, by Robert Silverberg. I read this first when I was in grade school and it was burned into my brain. My copy got lost and I just replaced it recently and read it again. The new(er) copy has Silverberg's introduction, in which he says 'And it *is* a good book... and I was the last to know it.' He blamed himself for not being Conrad, and the book for not being 'Heart of Darkness', and says only years later can he appreciate it for itself.

Forests of the Night, by S. Andrew Swann, a much-read, battered fave of mine. On his site, Swann says this was his first novel, and in the course of several years of dealing with this story, he learned what it was to be a novel writer instead of a short-story writer:

"The reason that new writers come to short stories first is because they are short. The typing is done sooner, and the object of creation is easier to manage.

"Novels seem so unwieldy by comparison. A marathon rather than a sprint.

"But, some people are sprinters, and some aren't. There are stories that can be told in the short form, and some that can't. And if your creative diet, like mine, consists of novels rather than short stories, more likely than not the story ideas you produce will be novel ideas. And if you try to write a novel idea into a short story, it wont fit."

The complete article is here: Intro to the Moreau Omnibus And there's more good stuff and sample chapters.

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Listening to: Pendulum, Hold Your Colour.
Video using FFX2 footage here.


Completely off the topic of writing: I made homemade cookies yesterday, half for the local trick-or-treaters, half for self-indulgence. Making something real, getting my hands dirty- well, doughy- and enjoying the results, is one of the most powerful meds I know.

1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 cup cake flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp sea salt
2 tablespoons (more or less) of molasses
at least 1.5 cups chocolate chips (Central Market has gourmet chips in bulk, muaha.)

-P... ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10471055/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10471055/ Sat, 21 Oct 2006 23:50:04 PDT SunGryphon. Both of us have been bitten by almost everything out there likely to get bitten by - but there's always someone stranger, right?

Taglist: What's tagged YOU?

1- What small furry animals have bitten you?

Mice, rats, hamsters (evil little buggers), gerbils, dogs, cats, a rabbit, a ferret, a Siberian hamster, a spiny hedgehog.

2 - What insects have you been bitten by?

The usual skeeters and ticks, horsefly, grasshopper and ladybug (neither of which actually accomplished anything by it) and I've had a praying mantis attempt to scissor my finger. It didn't do any damage until it got a spike under a fingernail... "Ha ha, look at the cute little... OWW!"

3 - What cold-blooded critters have you been bitten by?

Box turtles, fish (perch), frogs, little snakes (ringnecks and grass snakes), anole lizard, and chameleon.

4 - What hoofy critters have managed to get a tooth, or a hoof, on you?

Been nipped by a goat, but that's about it. I've almost gotten bit by a horse, but I got away from her quick.

5 - What birds have put their beak to you?

Ducks, Canada geese, and a very enthusiastic budgie.

6 - What animals have tagged you by other means than mouth or foot?

I used to feed the fish at the Seattle Aquarium, and there was a pufferfish there who could spit in your eye from six feet away. He had infinite recharge too. He'd nail me half a dozen times at every feeding, and I just know he loved every minute. Good thing for him he's inedible, yeesh.

Been stung by various bees and wasps, too.

7 - What's the weirdest thing that's ever bitten you?

Also at the Aquarium, I hand-fed the chambered nautilus. These are the same as in fossils, the spiral shells. They'd bob obediently to the surface and cling to my fingers with their tiny little tentacles while their hidden beak picked the squid bits away. Sometimes the beak would scrape me, gentle as a playful rat.

8 - What's the worst scare you've had from being bitten or otherwise tagged by an animal?

Had a psycho gerbil bite me once in the web of my hand and hang on. I set him down, he hung on. I put him back in his cage, he hung on. Finally I had to run cold water over him in the sink to make him let go. He'd been on me 15 minutes. I was afraid I'd have to actually submerge him, or else go home with him stuck to my hand.


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Writing for the week has not gone well due to work stress. Being in constant adrenalin mode day after day makes it hard to refocus the lasers from external targets to internal illumination. My creativity is still there, though - I've come up with a couple more pictures I want to draw, a new scene for Spackle's current story, and an idea for a rewrite that might just be publishable. Now if I can just find the time to actually externalize any of them... sigh.

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Reading for the past weeks:

Mercedes Lackey 'Joust' - Start of a trilogy. The world is great, I want to know what happens next, but the book starts out very slowly. I think there's too much time spent on what Vetch thinks of everything and his indecision. There's also a lot of time spent on the finer aspects of dragon husbandry, but this is both relevant to the story and interesting to me. It could stand to lose a hundred pages or so, IMHO. I read it again, and it was just as annoying the second time. I don't think I'll re-read 'Joust' but I will go look for the second book and likely the third.

Stephen King 'On Writing' - Re-read the last 2/3 or so. Great book full of offhand wisdom and no-nonsense advice, and hope without pulling punches. I note that while King was loaded down with teaching work, he was too frazzled to write much, too.

Oct/Nov Asimov's magazine. I particularly liked 'Small Astral Object Genius' for the parallel between the kid's hobby and his parents' relationship; '1 Is True' for presence, twist and in-your-facedness; and 'Foster' for immersion. The big long cover thing, 'Down to the Earth Below', I read with a sense of humoring the author, but I admit the ending gave me an unexpected rush. I may re-read that one someday, but it'll never be as good as the first time.

Current music: First off, Die Warzau, 'Bliss' and 'King of Rock and Roll' off their 2004 album 'Convenience'. Found this album because Wikipedia mentioned it. The CD specifically states the songs are available for noncommercial use and they welcome sharing. Second off, 'BOOM' by P.O.D. remix by Crystal Method. Heard this song in the famous Alexande... ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10404251/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/10404251/ Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:47:48 PDT
What? No not Halloween! It's almost time for National Novel Writing Month, when brave and reckless writers try to turn out 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. The official NaNoWriMo site is here - [link]

Some of the writerey folks in City of Heroes are setting up a support site to cry on asses and kick shoulders, or maybe the other way round, during this year's attempt. I was going to try to wrap Spackle's current story in the next month or two anyhow, even though it shouldn't be novel length, so I've agreed to join them. I probably know enough about perfection agony to be useful. *rolleyes*

Now, the true NaNo challenge is to start with nothing beyond an outline and turn out 50K words of prose, starting November 1 and ceasing November 30. I think that's a bit much for me to ask, since the last story I finished, Snake Eyes, took me over eight months. I'll try for 20K words in November, with the aim of training myself to sustain that pace, rather than freewrite a single project.

And if by some miracle I finish Spack's story early, I'll just keep right on going.


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Part two: Tags o' the month

Snagged from because for once, there's a list short enough that I can actually fill it out.

1. Name everything in your pockets right now.
I guess I'll call my keys Jingles, my work ID Lucky, and my wallet Sam. The really interesting stuff I keep in my bookbag - a dozen pencils and pens, erasers, notepads, two years' worth of story notes, band-aids, a Leatherman tool, and a two-inch serrated folding knife.

2. What's one thing you insist on carrying in your purse or wallet at all times that someone wouldn't expect to find?
Winner's pog from Battlebots 3.0, May 2001, awarded not for winning a match, but for exemplary volunteer service.

3. What is the predominate color in your wardrobe?
Black, black and... is camo a color?

4. What percent milk do you drink?
10% of the time or less. 50% water, 40% grapefruit or cranberry juice or limeade. Usually not in the same glass.

5. What's one thing you keep on your desk regularly you wouldn't normally find on one?
A set of earplugs for when Escher gets enthusiastic on Ventrilo.

6. Name everything on your hands:
A note in blue pen saying 'Post Sun draft', to remind me to post a writing sample to NaNo Virtue.

7. What is your favored mode of transportation?
Light rail. I grew up on the Metro in Washington DC. Here in Seattle, mass transit means crowded, damp buses, often stuck in traffic. Sigh.
18-hour car drives on open interstates are nice too.

8. How often do you organize your working space? (desk, studio...whatever)
On the surface, once a week or so. Down to the bones, once a year if I'm lucky. I still have to-do lists from 1998... half done.

9. If you could have three wishes, what would they be?
- To be able to write and draw full-time.
- To play hockey again.
- For humans to cease fearing the different.

10. If a book were written about the person I stole this quiz from, what would the title be?
'Sun and Moon and Golden Rain'

I decline to tag. Swipe this list as you will.

]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/9538480/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/9538480/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:31:29 PDT gutterball 's journal, and figured it's more of a chance for introspection and consideration than the usual social 'about me' lists.

1.) I'm still uncomfortable calling my stuff 'art'. Drawings, sketches, writing, stories, but not 'art'. It seems like that word should be reserved for 'real' art, that's good, that's skilled, that's intended to be celebrated; but creating isn't about being skilled. As the point of art is to communicate and inspire, as long as it evokes a response in the audience, then it qualifies, skilled or no.

2.) The things I've drawn after the 10-year hiatus look very much like those I drew before I quit. That surprised me, because writing after the break is now a slow and painful process. I'm not as fast at drawing as I was back then, but my style seems very much the same, as if it was just in stasis, waiting for me to call upon it again.

3.) I hesitate to start anything new because I'm afraid of being unable to finish it. Taking on one of these massive sketch lists might address that.

4.) I tend to work in small scale, anything from a couple of inches square up to 8.5 x 11. Obviously this comes from years of drawing on typing paper and in the margins of lecture notes.

5.) Strength: Communicating posture and gesture in relatively few lines. Maybe I should've been a cartoonist.

6.) Weakness: Lack of detail. I'm hoping to learn to add more texture, surface detail, shadows and such, and I'm experimenting toward that end.

7.) My drawings always seem to be of scenes. My critters don't stand around in an isolated pose; there's generally something happening, even if no background is actually shown in the picture.

8.) Strength, obviously, animal and anthro bodies and poses. Weak at buildings, machinery, and inorganics. Also I'm much less adept at clothing than at fur and feathers.

9.) I work in black and white so much it doesn't even occur to me to try coloring anything. I've got a copy of OpenCanvas now, and eventually I'll get around to using it.

10.) While computer tools add tremendous capability to artwork, I like the idea of being independent of the machine. I can take my typing paper, my notepad, and a half dozen cheap mechanical pencils anywhere and work on drawing or writing whenever I please - and through my entire life, that's exactly what I did. I'd rather leave the house without my shoes than without my bag of papers and pens. ]]> ~Pteryxx http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/9315642/ http://Pteryxx.deviantart.com/journal/9315642/ Sat, 08 Jul 2006 20:52:25 PDT
And, I discovered I can use the scanners in the library. Heh heh heh! ]]> ~Pteryxx