I Have A Doubt

Firstly, why is "doubt" spelled with a B. It just doesn't make any sense!

Anyway, it's Friday, November 27th, so we are, by definition, 27 days into November, and 27 days into my NoBeProMo attempt to post 30 blog posts in the months. I currently stand at, including this very one, which totally counts, 23 posts, putting me a whole four posts behind.

I'm not confident I can make that up.

Mostly, I've just been lacking in inspiration for what to write about. Inspiration comes from all kinds of places. A whole lot of the posts have been about Ada already, because they're easy to write. Her and Claire and all that are on my mind some days. My previous post on trailers came about because of the recent Captain America: Civil War first trailer.

I've been desperately trying to write some short story stuff as well, but I'm having major minor writer's block. Why "major minor"? Well, it's only a short story for my personal blog, not the fifth installment in a massively successful fantasy series. It would suck to not be able to write the next book in a series millions of people are waiting for. I'd honestly love to write something again, as my short story posts are ones I enjoy going back and reading again years later. But it's just not happening.

Work hasn't helped, even though I can't complain. I've been crazy busy and it's been lots of fun. I've been working with the toddlers and infants a lot, which is always an enjoyable experience. But all this fun has meant little time for writing.

So, I'm behind. I'm honestly going to do my best over the weekend to catch up, but... well... the post title says it all.

Good luck to me.

7 Days

So far, so good. Technically, I missed Friday, but posted double on Saturday. I had a long day at work and wanted to spend the evening with my wonderful daughter and wife.

Also, my blog's clock is set to Irish time still. I haven't had the heart to change it, so some posts appear to be from the day after I actually post them according to Vancouver time. I'm only going to really worry about this on November 30th, when I'll make sure the post goes up on that date according to the clock to keep everything together in November.

Friday evening was also spent watching The Fast and The Furious, which was... Interesting. Claire knew nothing about it, so she was confused and mystified for most of the feature. I enjoyed it, but spent a bunch of it playing AlphaBear on my iPad, and just looking up during the racing and action scenes. I think I got all the best parts.

This coming week is going to be busy as well, as I'm working long days every day, apart from Wednesday, which is Rememberance Day here, and a public holiday. It'll be an interesting challenge to maintain some level of posting, even if it is short and rambling, like this one!

Let's Do This

November is, for some, a chance to write a lot in a short amount of time, aided by the support of others doing likewise. Most popular is the NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writers Month, during which folks like my wife try to bang out a whole novel. Just the first draft. Editting and subsequent refining are left for another time.

I don't write novels, so instead, I'm trying my own version of November activity, NoBeProMo, November Be Productive Month. I'm going to try to write 30 blog posts over the month of November. The last time I tried this was way back in 2011, and I managed it! It wasn't quite one per day, but it was 30 posts in the month. Hopefully I can manage it again. But more than that, I'm going to try to do video editing stuff, art and more, all of which I'll update about here. So some of the posts this coming month might be short on content themselves, but hopefully I'll have put work into other areas for those days.

This time I'm also going in with a plan. I have a few types of posts I want to do, including movie and board game reviews, a short story or two, and general life stuff, mostly related to babies. I have a few outlines scribbled up in advance to help me manage this task.

If you enjoy what you see, please feel free to comment. Similarly, if you think some post is weak, then let me know. This should be an interesting month!

It Was Also Bravestarr's Horse

I did it! Thirty posts in thirty days over the course of November. I didn't think I'd actually manage it, and only have done so through a slight bit of cheating and bending of the rules. I think the idea is to post daily, but I missed that on two occasions. Despite that, I did get in the thirty posts within the allotted month.

This only stands as a personal achievement. I didn't raise money for a cause or make anyone's lives better because of what I wrote (not that I'm aware of anyway). My friend Cian took part in Movember and raised money for prostate cancer awareness. His was a much better cause, all told. To alleviate my guilt, I donated to his cause. Also, he had a smashing 'tash.

But I'm proud of what I did. The quality of posts meandered a bit, sliding below the imaginary average level this blog aspires to maintain. There were funny posts, nostalgic posts and far too many posts about video games! It started with an angry letter to Google and finished with some thoughts on the value of living. But they were all fun to write. Once or twice I arrived home from work without a single idea on what to post that evening. I would just turn on the laptop and start typing. Those often turned out to be my favourites.

Now that it's all done, you might be interested in some facts:

• I recorded 1,684 page views from November 1st to 30th across the entire blog, not all for the new material, but there was a marked jump from the 700 view per month I've been averaging since June. 
• Taken as they stand, my total word count is an astonishing 14,948 words, averaging just short of 500 words per post (498.26), peaking at 1,723 and dipping as low as 112.
• If you removed the cut'n'pasted poem from my post on the 5th of November (which I obviously didn't write, nor had to retype) from the count, it stands at 14,873, or an average of 495.76 words per post, peaking at 1,723 and dipping as low as 37 in the altered post.
• The median word count was 419.
• There were 10 comments left.
• Currently, the highest viewcount for a single post is 86, for the very first post. Second place has 32 views.
• There are 22 images and one video. 
• The instances of blatant disregard toward the conventions for the proper use of italics and bolding must number somewhere in the hundreds.
• Occurrences of spelling and grammatical errors are similarly numbered.

I had a lot of fun completing my 30/30 (now you should get the title's reference, if you hadn't before this). Hopefully I'll try it again next year and compare the results.

How were they to read? Generally boring? Too long? Painful to view on account of the previously mentioned disregard for literary conventions? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

And thanks for reading.

SDCC- The Good Times Don't End

Let me update you guys on some of the stuff we've done or seen so far!

• The sketch-book I brought over for the entire trip, including all the amazing people I'm sure I'll meet at PAX, is, with a day still to go in Comic Con, full. Completely! And I can't find a suitable replacement for tomorrow.
• We have already met and held conversations with, among others, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Jackson Publick, Ben TenNapel, Gabe and Tyco, Peter David, Orson Scott Card, Raymond E. Feist, Larry Hama, Wil Wheaton, Rob Liefeld, Greg Pak and countless more I'll try to mention once I'm not using a tiny keyboard and touch pad instead of a mouse. We've met and got autographs or more from Hideo Kojima, Gerard Way, James Stewart & Gabriel Ba, as well as many more.
• I've bought way to many books already!
• I'm very proud of how few action figures I've bought!
• We have, so far, attended a total of one panel, and even then, it was because we met the guys it was all about outside and spent ages talking to them... also, it was the Marvel/Hasbro Action Figure Panel... so, you know. Some interest there...
• We have met and exchanged email address' with the most incredible people, making friends with folks from all over the world!
• So many photos. So, so many photos.
• San Diego is beautiful and friendly.
• My feet hurt.
• Good (or even passable) tea does not seem to exist here.
• Everyone wants to visit Ireland, particularly the writers and artists.
• Dear Joss Whedon: You are awesome. You are a funny guy, and seem very natural and honest. But I am not willing to queue for six hours just to sit in a room with 6,000 others and listen to you talk. Sorry. There are far to many things to do at SDCC than to make that worth considering.
• Claire got a drawing of herself by Yoshitaka Amano! It is as incredible as you think it could be, and more. She nearly cried. He drew it without prompt. Apparently he liked the hat she was wearing.
  
• By 1pm, sitting down for ten minutes becomes more important that seeing the next line of writers or artists.
• Skype is a wonderful invention.
• People recognised and complimented me on my t-shirt (which is meaningless to most readers until I post pictures!!)

More updates soon, but nothing detailed until I have a real keyboard with a mouse. Also, photos may take a little while, but I have lots!! And no Picasa to run them through.

In Before The Lock

Just about made it for today. I was at Beowulf and am home in time to post something for the 16th of November, officially putting me over halfway through the month.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to actually post about! So I'll direct you towards my newest infatuation. Do you think it would look good on me? I really, really want it, and it works out at just €350, which puts it cheaper than the leather jacket I saw in town for €500 that looks like the one Doctor House wears!

I really want that jacket, though. I can then get the helmet and make a jet pack! My life would be geekplete (geekplete: adjective: gee'k pleet: 1. having all parts or elements; lacking nothing; whole; entire; full; 2. finished; ended; concluded; relating in both cases to a single-minded obsession with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: to own all issues of a comic run, to possess every piece of merchandise related to a particular character), though not complete. I have lots to do before I can ever consider my life complete.

Fall Of The Heroes

NaBloPoMo has been running now for just 10 days, one third of the month, and I have had a post a day at least, and more some days!

Anyway, to keep things moving without break, let's just mention Heroes, 'cause, you know, everyone else is!

Season two, in my humble opinion, sucks. Thankfully, I'm not the only one to think so! In fact, so many have agreed with me, that Season Two may well finish with the December episode. Ok, so the Writer's Guild Strike is a factor as well, but seriously, the creative staff obviously know that they've failed to meet any potential. I found this article which summarises the contents of an interview in The Los Angeles Times, as well as my feelings on the show. Unfortunately, I've lost the link to the source of this particular piece. Sorry for the shoddy reporting, but here you go (emphasis by me):

Tim Kring not bugged about criticisms of hit NBC show, says episodes seven to 11 are "best episodes we've ever done."

Heroes has been on the tips of television-viewers' tongues a lot this year, but not for the same reason as last season. The superhero show was a breakout hit last year, but this season it has been the target of critics who cite disjointed storylines, too many characters, and a lack of direction for disappointing fans. Viewers have also tuned out; last week's episode rang in the worst numbers in the key 18-49 demographic ever for the series, according to Nielsen Media Research.

But there's one man who isn't fazed and thinks fans shouldn't be worried either: series creator Tim Kring.

Speaking with The Los Angeles Times, Kring dismissed the numbers much like many other television executives have: DVRs, online episodes, the Internet. What's more, ratings drops are taking their toll on almost all shows, not just Heroes.

As for the rest of the criticism, Kring is promising that it will all make sense. "It will all be paid off by episode 11," Kring said. "From seven to 11 are the best episodes we've ever done." The Heroes crew has always said that this current season would be split up into "volumes," with the current one, titled "Generations," concluding midseason.

"One of the things that we found is that, by the end of the (first) year, we were dragging a tremendous amount of story behind us that had to be paid off in that final episode," Kring said during a conference call, according to Salt Lake City's Deseret News, "which made for an episode that the (audience) expectations are so high that it's hard to meet everybody's expectation."

But that didn't stop the writers from adding several new characters in the offseason, and the result is too much story to pack into one hour of television per week to satisfy everyone.

"Part of what happens on any show is that you enter a relationship with your viewers where you teach them how to watch your show and they teach you what they seem to be responding to," Kring said, reports the Deseret News. "And we, I think, are in this process right now of teaching the audience how to get used to the idea that not everybody is going to be in every single episode."

Some think that Heroes is just undergoing a sophomore slump. However, Kring may be thinking that viewers are looking at season two a bit too harshly by elevating season one unrealistically. "People tend to look at last season and see things in it that were not in it. We haven't deviated that much [from last season's formula]."

Now the "last week's episode" they mention at the start is actually Episode 6, from two weeks ago. The article is a bit dated. Anyway, I find the last line, "We haven't deviated that much [from last season's formula]" hilarious!! He says this like it's a good thing! That's one of my biggest criticisms about the show. Why am I watching the second season if it's gonna be just the first one again?!? I should go back and watch that. At least that had a focus right from the opening episodes. This season is all over the place, and I have little to no idea where the show is going. Also, the special effects are atrocious. Everything is poor green-screen sets with either dull stock photography or awful photoshopped images! In particular (related to Episode 6, so spoiler hidden just in case), Peter in the empty "future New York" was laughably bad! I've seen better quality green-screening on Bosco's Magic Door!

And this week, creator Tim Kring admitted as much! He actually apologised to the fans for Season Two. Now, I have to give the man credit for admitting he's wrong, but this is ridiculous! NBC have spent millions upon millions on six, possibly more, episodes of tripe! Despite hoping to start "Volume Three" on a clean slate, I have an uneasy feeling that the ride is over. The only reason they still have a chance at Volume Three is because they are with NBC. If this was Fox, we wouldn't even get the resolution to Volume Two!

False Start

Dammit! I forgot that yesterday was the start of NaBloPoMo! Last year, Karen did a great job, and it looks like she's starting it again. I really wanted to give it a try, and so I will!

Did You Know: There is a small east-African tribe that, due to a spacial anomoly in 1913, exist one day in the past. This post is for them.

Welcome to November first!

Got out of that one...