• 09:05 I'm testing posting my status through FriendBinder... #

Yesterday at work I had a frank conversation with a four-year-old boy about Transformers.

We discussed how awesome Bumblebee is.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, and most importantly, thankyou very much for signing up to write a story in one of the fandoms I love so much. I hope that you enjoy writing the story as much as I'll enjoy reading it!

If you're looking to get a general idea of what pushes my buttons, you can read my fandom journal here; my main day-to-day journal is ladyjestyr. But this wouldn't be a Dear Yuletide Writer letter without some specifics, so here goes!

( General Thoughts )

Now, onto the specifics!

( Fandom Thoughts )

Parris will soon be on her way home to take care of the cats, before they start rioting and have wild parties. So I'm pressing on by myself. Arrived in London a few hours ago. Signing at Forbidden Planet on the 11th.

It's been a long time since I made a WoW post, partially cause that's what my blog is for, and partially cause honestly I'm not playing so much these days, but I took this random screenshot of me the other day and it amuses me endlessly for some reason, and I wanted to share it somewhere... so enjoy =P



(I mean seriously, Jack o' Lantern head + Mechanostrider + Grunty... it just makes me giggle xD)

And here we are in Dublin. Ireland has been exciting but exhausting. We had a huge turnout last night for the signing at Eason's, with a queue that seemed to go on forever, but I finally scrawled everyone into submission, and afterwards I signed all the stock as well. If you missed the signing, or happen to live a thousand leagues away, you can still get an autographed copy of the SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH hardcover or any of the Ice & Fire paperbacks by phoning, emailing, or dropping by Eason's on O'Connell Street. They even have a few trade paperbacks of DREAMSONGS.

Afterwards we adjourned to a nearby pub for a lively evening of Guinness and conversation with the local fans. I met the good folk who will be running next year's Octocon, where I'll be GOH, and hoisted a few with the hardy survivors of the Eason's event. Didn't stagger back to the our hotel till after midnight, by which time Temple Bar was roaring. Ah, if only I were twenty years younger...

The Belfast event on Tuesday was also a hoot and a half. The crowd was much bigger at Dublin, but in Belfast some of the cast of the HBO pilot dropped by to sign books and meet the fans as well. My thanks to Ron Donachie, Richard Madden (Best Dressed Man in Scotland), Alfie Allen, Kit Harington, Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (and their moms) for joining the festivities. And to the lovely Ros, Esme Bianco, who dropped by McHughes afterwards for the moot. Matthew Hughes, one of the authors who contributed to our Vance tribute anthology, also turned up at Eason's to help me sign SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH.

In between signing and mooting, I've been hanging round the shoot, trying not to get underfoot. "How is it going?" everyone wants to know. I think it's going great. Wednesday's location was amazing, so real I could hardly tell where the real castle ended and our fake castle began. I saw Bran and Tommen swatting at each other in the yard, Joffrey taunting Robb, the Hound growling at Ser Rodrik, while Arya displayed her wretched needlework to Jon above, and it all looked wonderful. Saw some of the footage from the crypts too, and that looked amazing as well. Yes, some things are not exactly as they were in the books, that's inevitable with any adaptation... but these are my characters and this is my story, and it's thrilling to see 'em come to life.

Last night in Belfast I got to meet two more of the cast, quite unexpectedly. Some of the Moroccan players were in Ireland for costume fittings. I ran into Ian McNeice for a brief moment outside the hotel, as we were waiting for our rides, and the night before we bumped into Dany -- the amazing Tamzin Merchant, who is even more beautiful in person than she is on screen -- into the dining room. What a terrific cast Nina Gold has assembled.

Also toured the Paint Hall, though we didn't do any shooting there while I was in Belfast. Some of our sets are going up, and look great. And in another part of the building the huge castle sets from the big budget (compared to us, anyway) feature YOUR HIGHNESS are still standing. Their great hall is pretty eye-popping and they built an impressive castle yard as well.

Tomorrow I'm off to London . Signing at Forbidden Planet on the 11th, Then it's off to Marrakech.

Life is magical and full of joy (but no, I have not been seeking out football scores, so don't tell me. TIVO is getting all my games).

• 15:26 The drawback of watching baseball in HD is watching baseball players spit in HD. Yuck. #

The empire strikes back

RSS feeds again

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icanhaschzbrgr

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

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Enveloped in postcards

Photos of the week

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NaNoThingy Book is going surprisingly well. I've managed to write for a decent amount of time each day so far (barring yesterday, because of the whole blog fiasco, but I'm definitely catching up in the lost word count department) and I'm a good chunk into chapter three. Furthermore, I find myself doing crazy things like waking up early specifically to write, or not-minding-work because I can spend work thinking about what I want to do next with my book.

Things I've learned thus far:

~ The habit I have where I emulate whatever author I'm reading most at the time still appears to be going strong. >=| The fact that every character in the book right now is some sort of technophile/scientist/tinker that likes to discuss technicalities with random people in the street IS 100% JULES VERNE'S FAULT, JUST FYI.

~ The whole "JUST WRITE" mantra that is NaNo is kinda nice because it means I do get a lot written, but on the other hand, I feel like a lot of the personalities and backstories of my characters need some work. My strongest character thus far is one I have dubbed "AuthorCrush Character" because I have a crush on him, and no I'm not afraid to admit this. Unfortunately he's sort of a minor character and he's not going to be back in the story until much later on. This has me clamoring to somehow rework his plot thread so he's back sooner, cause the chapter where he was the focus was probably the best thing that's come out of this whole novel thus far.

~ This thing is gonna need a ton of editing when I'm done but I'm okay with that, just wanna hammer out a plot right now

~ Redoing the idea from scratch and tossing it in a steampunk setting was one of the best decisions I made, writing is a blast and I'm super in love with my world and it means I get to sneak in little nods to open source and do-it-yourselfness and other things that I am fond of, because I am a geek

~ yeeeeeeeeeah!

I HAVE DEFEATED YOU WORDPRESS

BY USING YOUR "XML FILE TOO LARGE" AGAINST YOU

HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW

HUH?

HUH???

• Yuletide signups are open yay yay yay!

• I am also ridiculously excited about festivids.

• Dad is the keynote speaker for the 18th NSW Coastal Conference, which is happening at the moment in Ballina. He did an interview with ABC radio yesterday, which aired this morning; there's an article here and the interview itself (in mp3 form) is here. My daddy is smart, y'all.

• Via adamjury, a cool shot of Leia sunbaking.

• This is still the most addictive Flash game ever.

Blog contracts some sort of adware that is flinging popups and virus alerts and people and redirecting people to all sorts of ad sites.

I comb through the code, find the offending javascript, and take it out.

Blog is fine again.

Two days later, same problem comes back.

Comb through the code, can't find any offending javascript, and am sure there is something else inside my blog innards at this point that is gonna keep it coming back no matter what I do. So I back everything up, export all my posts and comments, and delete the entire blog so I can start fresh.

Reinstall Wordpress.

It glitches everytime I try to import my posts and comments.

Currently trying to restore the backup of my original buggy blog. Cause I'd rather have buggy blog than no posts/comments.

In a way I am tempted to just forget about old posts and comments and say "HEY, this is now Pike's new personal blog where she rambles about crap! Complete reboot! Enjoy!" But, in another way, I'm kind of scared to do that. Plus I'd miss a lot of my old posts that were really good. Also, the thought of all the links on other blogs to good posts I wrote turning into broken links, makes me sad. (Because I am just that conceited, apparently)

Though honestly this whole glitched-blog-fiasco is, ugh, I just want to be done with it, it's taking up all my writing time x_x

I am going to go try to write now though, to attempt to take my mind off of it as the Restore takes its sweet time processing. I'm sure this will all sort itself out within a week or two, I just have to be patient. Patience is something I am sooooooo bad at and it's something I'm trying to actively work on (that sounds dorky, but what can ya do)

Yuletide signups are open! Augh, what to pick, what to pick!

*bounce*

Yuletide signups are open! Augh, what to pick, what to pick!

*bounce*

We camped at Coronet. It was just F and I. Wilhelm pitched his tent near us.. but really he didn't camp with us. Our camp felt empty. It wasn't entirely bad.. with no one camped with us there was no one to tell me that I'm lazy and wasn't "doing my fair share". But still.. it felt lonely.

During the tournament we did have quite a few people who hung out in or fought out of our sunshade. I didn't mind. I had some food set out on the table(nuts and pickles).. the people munched on it.. I still didn't mind. I mean I would have minded less if they had added some food to the table before nomming down on it.. and I was a bit miffed that I didn't feel that I could set F&I's lunch out on the table (for fear that the ravenous mass would nom our lunch).. but still.. not too bad.

I -did- mind the horde of children who ended up in my camp. I don't have kids. I don't camp with anyone who has kids.. I should not have to babysit your kids. Walking back into my camp and finding two kids who have help themselves into my dog kennel and were messing with my dogs absolutely made me see red.

Saturday night was Oktoberfest and both F and I dug out our Germans. I think he looks fantastic in Germans. I wish he wanted to wear them. I'm happy to report that my german dress is on the verge of being way too big. Even now, it's "a little too big" but not big enough that I was sloppy wearing it or feel I need to get rid of it. I found it totally comfortable to wear to the Saucy Wench party and throughly enjoyed myself.

I am (again) resolved that I need to wear more germans. I look good in them.. and they are pretty.

Why is it that the last camping event of the season finally puts me in the mood to do SCA stuff?


ToDo:
- Tonight: Target (buy new dinner plates), Home Depot (buy sticky mouse traps), Grocery store (milk, raspberry jam)
- Make gollar to go with my Germans. I have the fabric and the fur (mmmm sheared beaver) I just need to pattern it and make it.
- Make a linen German for normal camp wear. I'm thinking of some tasty green linen I have. Will need to match for guards etc.
- Maybe 12th night Germans for me
- 12th Night Byz for F
- Mend my blue tunic
- Make 2 more sunshade poles and 1 center pole (before Estrella)
- New fighting tunic for him.
- New flags for each of us. New large flags for flag pole. New corner flags for Regent.

Future:
Weekend of 11/7: Cyn/Mist War. I believe the boy is going it alone.
11/21: Mists Investiture. I volunteered to help in the kitchen. Anna Serra is cooking.
12/12: Boar Hunt. Else is cooking. We have tickets.
Jan: 12th Night (still need to get tickets)
Feb: Estrella I think we're the land agents.. need to check with royals to confirm.
Aug 13-15 2010: High School Reunion (ugh.. really.. )(not sure I really want to go spend time with those people)
Jul 29-Aug 14 2011: Pennsic 40. Gonna be there.

Five hours before I have to go to work.

3,693 words so far.

I am halfway through a chapter that is really exciting.

LET'S DO THIS.

Thanks, everyone. Nearly all wrapped up. A few more weeks, and then we shall say our very fond farewells. What a lovely year. =)

- J, Q, & S

So apparently I'm doing the NaNo book thing. This was mostly coincidence from the fact that I didn't actually come up with a book outline that I was satisfied with until about two days ago and by that point everybody was like "zomg November 1st!" so I figured I'd do it too. May as well take advantage of the literary frenzy everyone is worked up in!

Anyways, in case anybody else cares, here is my NaNo site profile thingy. I'm not being super serious about it and honestly if it takes longer than a month, that's fine, but the whole "such and such words a day thing!" is actually kind of helping to motivate me so I'ma try and stick with it for now!

Late, wet, and bedraggled, but I'm here.

Tomorrow heads will roll. Well, one head, at least.

Like Yuletide, Festivids is having a nominations phase before its signups. I spent a while thinking today about what I wanted to nominate - although vids are my primary fanworks these days, I find inspiration harder to come by, so I wanted to be sure I was nominating only sources that I'd be really happy to either receive, or vid for.

My noms list, finally, looks like this:

Appleseed (movie/anime)
Fifth Element (movie)
Galaxy Quest (movie)
Tomb Raider (movie)
Ocean's Eleven series (movie)
Pirates of the Caribbean series (movie)
Wall-E (movie)

I was amazed by the fact that there were no TV series in the list - but I think the series for which I have good source are pretty mainstream, and nothing really leapt out at me from the stuff I have on the computer.