UPDATE: And the winner, after counting the votes of the people I bugged in the #unfiction IRC, is "Quintessential Real", with 10 votes. It's the one that will be more difficult to write but will certainly be interesting!! Thanks, everyone!

Quick! Help me decide which story to write! Even if you just pick a random title, please help me choose! :D (These are working titles, btw.) (P.S. - I had to vote on my own poll just to see the answers. My answer does not indicate a preference for that title, just FYI. I really have NO IDEA which of these I want to write more. XD)

Poll #1479037 NaNoWriMo - Possible Stories
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

Which Story Should I Write?

P.S. again - If you don't have an LJ account, just post a comment with your vote. I don't know how to make polls open to people w/out LJ accounts, sadly. :( It was a spur-of-the-moment poll.

A couple of Christmases ago, David and Bruce got together and picked out a Wacom Graphire tablet for me, because at the time I was fiddling with the idea of learning to draw. I never quite got around to doing that, and the tablet sat on my desk and gave me sad-face looks because I didn't use it except every once in a while. GUILT!

However, with the classes I'm taking now, that tablet has become one of my most valuable tools, and it makes working in Photoshop so much easier. So, thanks, Bruce and David! :)

I swear, this LJ is going to turn into a "photo blog" if I'm not careful. Sadly, I have nothing interesting to tell about my life except that I am so busy with school stuff that I can't see straight. Taking up most of my time lately has been the learning to use software (Photoshop CS4, mostly - and now I finally have my own copy) and doing stuff for my Digital Photography class, which, along with Web Design, has been the most time consuming class I have ever, ever taken.

Who would have thought Algebra would be my easiest class this semester? o_o;

Anyway, this past Sunday night, David took me to see the Pearland Roller Derby. A friend of ours, the lovely yelenia, is the newest member of the Trauma Queens. I needed some photos for my series (due in two weeks), so I brought my camera and tripod along to see if I could get any good shots.

Let me just say that if you have never been to a roller derby event, you should definitely treat yourself and go to at least one in your life! It was exciting, fast-paced, and lots of fun. I'm still not completely clear on the objectives of the game, or the rules, but the costumes were great, the skating was amazing, and the whole experience was "full of win", as we say.

I played around with the tripod, manual focus (bad, bad, BAD), and then hand-held shots at slow shutter speed, and I had so much fun shooting the event that I had 300 (three hundred!!!) shots before I knew it, and I was running out of battery. Most of the shots are blurred or badly framed to the point where cropping won't save them; I was really trying to capture the action and excitement of the event, so a lot of the time I was just snapping randomly, or trying to do things like panning the camera with the subject. Some of the stuff I did worked - I think maybe through pure luck - and out of 300 images, I got 10 that I think are good enough to be a series on their own.



As I was putting together my images for the "Games, Gamers, Gaming" series, I realized that it was very Roller Derby-heavy. So I decided to just use the roller derby photos as my series and work some more on the gamers series as my final project. I'm going to take the photos on a flash drive to the Houston Camera Exchange for printing tomorrow.

First, I am happy to announce that I received a perfect score on my first Algebra exam last week. YAY!

So, this is what I've been working on pretty much all week - Assignment #3 for my digital photography class. We had to recreate a photo from the work of either Jerry Uelsmann or Maggie Taylor using our own photographs and Photoshop. It was not. easy. at. all. because I'm truly a dunce when it comes to analyzing and reproducing someone else's art. However, I gave it my best shot, and...

( Here are the results )

I meant to post about this weeks and weeks ago, but I got busy and forgot. The lovely moonfox has planned a chat reunion for #wyverns_library. We will meet throughout the weekend on irc.esper.net, in the channel. Hope to see lots of you there!! :D

Yay, volunteers - solved! Thanks, guys! :D

Does anyone need a website design? I need a client for whom I can design a site as a project for class. I have some limitations in what I'm allowed to do, since this is a "beginning" class, but we do have some leeway. Also, you don't have to use the finished design. I just need someone to give me parameters to work within, as a client would give a professional web designer.

I don't even know what to say, here. After writing my previous entry, I was just going back over some old stuff from NaNoWriMos past, and I found the file I saved from a forum thread where I chatted with Janet Kagan, an author who wrote one of the formative novels of my childhood, Uhura's Song. I still reread that book about once a year. It was so thrilling to discover her doing NaNoWriMo alongside the rest of us - talking with us, encouraging us, giving us advice from a lifetime of writing. I mean, this was a childhood hero, and she was talking to ME, and my story about breaking my arm trying to build a "swagger-lair" amused and delighted her. I even have an email from her, tucked away somewhere, that she sent me in reply to some innocuous writing question. She was so great, so alive.

I didn't know until today that Janet died over a year ago.

I feel like such a jerk for not knowing, for not checking in with her sooner, for not sending her just one more email, or something. I'm just glad that I had that one chance to let her know how much her book delighted me when I was a kid, and how much it continued to delight me as an adult.

So, here's the story of me and the "swagger-lair" (I was still Moonsong back then), as I shared it with Janet in 2003. She had her own spot on the NaNoWriMo boards - she called it "Janet Kagan's Little Corner of Hell Room Party". In return for my story, she shared with us how she came to write Uhura's Song.
If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Uhura's Song or Hellspark or Mirabile. I think you'll enjoy them. I know I have, for a long, long time. I'll never forget you, Janet. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.

Do you remember when...?

It's been seven years since tarlia and penmage and fireborn started a bunch of Wyvernites - me and julseykit and ellenmillion and curvature and a bunch of others - down the path to Doomnation. (I say led because I remember them being the first ones to sign up, but my memory perception could be entirely wrong so you know don't yell at me or anything.)

Seven years, y'all. The nostalgia. This November marks my seven-year NaNoWrimo anniversary (even though the last couple of years I've been a lame participant). I was such a terrible writer in 2002!! XD But it was such a turning point in my life - connecting with local writers, connecting with my writerly LJ friends, all of us cheering each other on, the challenges, the outtakes, our stories - "Something In the Water" by tarlia is still a story I reread every now and then, to this day ('cause I have the word doc file downloaded long, long ago).

ciri asked us all questions about our NaNoWriMo goals and aspirations, and, if I remember correctly, wrote an article on us and NaNoWriMo.

Just going back and reading over our journal entries from that time - the excitement we had for our stories, the glory of staying up late into the night to write, jumping onto chat in the wee hours of the morning to happily complain with each other about the rigors of the "writing life", all of it - makes me almost wish for those days over again. We all had our life dramas going on, but I guess you don't know how happy you were at a point in time until you look back there and see the magic that was taking place when maybe you didn't even recognize it for what it was...

We were still writing "Friday Five" entries back then, too. And pasting funny bits of chat in our journals every now and then. I miss a lot of what we did with these journals back then.

And I still miss fireborn .

NaNoWriMo has come a long way, too - from being a kind of geeky writer fringe event to a major international annual event that donates to charity and offers valuable craft resources to writers. It's been amazing to be part of this little bit of history.

One of the most challenging (for me) classes I have this semester is digital photography. It's challenging because I'm not naturally an artistic person, but I do want to learn to be a better photographer. Making time to photograph, thinking about how to compose shots, remembering the mechanics of my camera and how they work with light - all of this is difficult for me. But I'm still excited about the class and really enjoying it.

Our last two assignments in the class are to produce two series of work - 8-10 images that are thematically linked in some way. I've given a lot of thought to my "themes", and if I don't start photographing now, I won't be able to finish the assignments in time, even though they're not due until close to the end of the semester.

My first series theme is "Games, Gamers, & Gaming" because playing games is such a huge part of my life (despite the fact that I don't have nearly enough time to play, ever.) I took some shots at David's "Twilight Imperium" game event this past weekend and got two good, useful photos out of it. I plan on being around with my camera for the first Halo ODST party, whenever/wherever that's going to be; and I'm going to host some game nights at my place - Rock Band, DDR, role-playing games and board games. But I'd also like to include street games and stuff like SF0 in my series.

One street game that I'm completely in love with and have never gotten to play is Journey to the End of the Night. It's a race across a city, with checkpoints and puzzles and chasers and danger and excitement. It turns out that there's a JttEotN event in San Francisco on Halloween weekend. I'm seriously considering hopping on a plane to SF and attending the game. I'm going to contact the organizer to see about getting permission to photograph, but since the game takes place entirely in public space, I don't think that will be a problem. I even found a hostel near the event where I could stay for less than $100 for the entire weekend.

I wish there were more of these types of game events around Houston. If they're out there, I'm having a hard time tracking them down. I'm thinking about organizing a Cruel 2 B Kind event, or trying to round up some friends to do a few SF0 tasks with me. The thing about this series is that I don't want "posed" photographs - I want the photos to be dynamic and representative of the ideals of "play" and "game". We're playful creatures. I want to capture the excitement and motion of the playfulness of human nature.

At the moment, I'm torn between presenting the photos in black and white - I love the look of b&w photos, especially with regards to photos of people - but many games and their participants are so colorful, it seems a shame to not use the colors in some way. I guess I can worry about that when I finish the series.

Anyway.

My second series is "Women in Science, Technology, and Engineering". I don't know many women scientists or engineers, but I plan on getting to know them! It's a shame that I'm not doing physics this semester; this would be a lot easier. But I plan on going to talk to the department heads at UH - chemistry, physics, engineering, computer science - and ask them how I might approach some of the students about photographing them for the series.

So, that's what's on my mind. It's been storming all day, and I'm alternating between math, dms theory, and a writing project, thinking about this photography stuff in between all that. I think I'm going to take a break now and go watch some more Numb3rs.

When I first went away to college and had my first (basic level, not university level) physics class, the evil I dreaded every week was the time we had to spend in lab. I never could make the equipment work right. My measurements were always skewed so badly that writing a lab report was a nightmare. Also, I didn't even really know how to write a lab report in the first place...

Uncertain Principles has a great entry about the purposes and problems of labs. It gives me a little insight into why, maybe, labs were so dreadful for me then and, if I prepare NOW, why they won't be so dreadful for me next fall. Especially seeing as how I'll be spending significant portions of time in a lab from then until maybe-forever-who-knows. I must not dread labs. So I need to give some thought as to how I'll approach and prepare for lab time.

Because of some research I have to do for my theory class this semester, I have signed up for a Facebook account. It's at http://www.facebook.com/octoberdreaming. So, I'm there - but I'm not entirely there. You can certainly friend me if you like, but please know that I probably won't be able to check it on a regular basis - I belong to so many online communities that I'm not interested in having one more to keep up with on a regular basis. However, I will try to check it once a week or so.

It creeped me out that when I signed up, half of all your names appeared on my screen. Facebook knows. That is so, so creepy. (I want to learn what they're using to figure out these social network metrics. And then I can use my knowledge for evil.)

And I just got home an hour or so ago, and I still have a couple of hours of prep work to do for my 9 a.m. class tomorrow.  This weekend, though, I'm going to get ahead of the game so that next week I can coast a little.

P.S. - Mr. Wretched, I expect a Facebook friend request from YOU. Apparently, you are incredibly well-hidden on Facebook, and so is your pal in the UK. :P
EDIT: Never mind, I found you both. I just needed a little more Google-Fu. :P

One of the reasons I loved Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is that, despite its name, the show wasn't about vampires. Not really.

Today, I'm very tired of all things vampire and want all vampires to (appropriately) DIAF, but I can still watch an episode of Buffy (which I did - it relaxes and amuses me). Because Buffy isn't about vampires.

This essentially pointless post is brought too you by the negative effects of over-exposure to vampires in media and pop culture.

I've been doing well with managing my levels of procrastination, but while I had the flu I didn't feel like doing a damned thing. Because of that, one of my big projects for the web design class got put off and put off until it was due today, and I hadn't even started it last night. Le sigh, but I sucked it up and stayed up all night to finish, anyway.

And then we didn't even get to present our banner images in class. :( So disappointed, because one of my banners is a redesign of the Aperture Labs logo/motto. I had so much fun with that, especially learning how to make the energy pellet. You can see it if you look below the cut. Everything on the banner is hand-made by me. I'm quite chuffed about that. The others are less interesting, but I really think the banner for the Gamer's Guild came out fabulously.

( Banners, banners, banners... Doesn't it look like that energy pellet is headed right for your face? )

I have monumental amounts of reading to do for tomorrow night's class that I've been putting off. I feel horribly guilty about this and plan to spend all weekend not only getting caught up on everything but getting ahead of all of it.

And algebra homework, of course. Lately, I've been working my algebra problems while watching Numb3rs. This makes me incredibly happy for some reason.

I promise, I'll eventually make a post that is not school-related. In fact, I've got a post brewing about Stargate: Universe that is probably going to explode if I don't write it soon - probably this weekend.

Since my last post, I don't really have anything new to report. Flu symptoms cropped up on Wednesday night, and I've been dealing with that ever since - bleh.  I had to cancel my guitar lesson and a photography appointment with a friend because I still feel like crap and am probably still contagious. I'm going to class tomorrow - have to - but then I'm coming right back home again.

As for classes: Things are going smoothly. I've got a significant amount of reading to do for my DMS theory class, so I'm going to get started on that after I blather here for a bit. Algebra is going so smoothly it's almost scary. I already pretty much know this stuff, and the things I don't know, I recognize as something that was missing when I freaking failed pre-calculus the first time. I remember a LOT of what I couldn't do in that class. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why I couldn't understand it. I'm beginning to figure out why, although I don't know how I ended up with a bunch of holes in my mathematics education. Not paying attention, maybe? Or did we skip around a lot in high school math? I may never know. But I'm grateful to find that I'm not a math dunce.

I remember this Buffy episode where Buffy is finally starting to do well in her college classes but is finding it to be a lot of hard work. She said to Willow, "I thought it was gonna be like in the movies. You know, inspirational music ... a montage, me sharpening my pencils, me reading, writing, falling asleep on a big pile of books with my glasses all crooked, 'cause in my montage I have glasses. (Willow nods) But real life is slow, and it's starting to hurt my occipital lobe." I'm not that naive, obviously, but it still sort of applies... Here I am at the beginning of this huge project that I've taken on, and right now it's kind of easy; I'm sort of afraid of the day when this starts to get difficult. Maybe at the end, I can look back and have my montage.

This summer, when I really start digging in to the physics degree, I'm going to start a blog separate from this journal - probably on my website - to document the experience of studying physics at a later age, the classes, interactions with other students (who are sure to mostly be younger than me), how I study and learn, and all the little things to, like "Funny thing happened in lab today..." All that stuff.

Anyway, enough with the blathering. I've got to do my reading, finish some homework, and then I've got to sit down and concentrate on the stuff that's really hard - learning how to design a banner and logo for a website. I will take algebra over this any day, because however poor my math skills have been, that's nothing compared to my derth of visual creativity.

I like the number 9. It has been one of my favorite numbers almost all my life, although my absolute favorite number is 19. But 9 is a good number, too. A fun number. A number that knows things. So 9/9/09 must be a special day, right? Well, technically the arbitrary numbers we assign to days mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, but who am I to quibble with 9/9/9?? So I'm going to celebrate the day by telling you a secret I've been keeping for no other reason than that I was scared to tell it. I was scared because, even though I've told a couple of people, I haven't told everyone. When you tell people things, they become real. And this is scary, life-changing stuff. But I want it to be real. And this is the place for that, so here I am - making it real.

Six weeks ago, I changed the plan for my life. I changed everything I'd been planning for the last year. Or, I should say, I improved my plan in a very big way, and finally decided what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm going to be an astrophysicist.

Seriously.

( It All Started With Stargate: Atlantis )

Once you've left a fast-moving topic alone for three or four weeks, it becomes a mighty job indeed to get caught up on it. That's what I'm doing right now with the ARG world. It moves so quickly - there's so many games running right now, and I don't know anything about them! I don't even know who's running them - for all I know, the next Jan Libby game is out there, and I'm not playing it. So tonight, I'm getting caught up on everything, even if it means reading into the midnight hours.

I meant to not let this happen. After I got back from Europe, I was supposed to have the free time to catch up on all I was missing while I had the day job with the weird not-really-daytime hours and the migraine-inducing boredom. That included the ARG world, and writing for ARGN, and stuff. That didn't happen. What happened instead was insomnia and depression and a general inabilty to deal with anything. I just ignored stuff that seemed too overwhelming to pick up again and clung to the things that were easy, like writing fiction and fanfiction, and watching dvds and participating in fandom discussions. And then Dragon*Con.

I've always been a little shaky in the ARG world - it intimidates me in so many ways. I'm not nearly as smart or as analytical as most of the people playing, building, and writing about the games and stories, so writing even a little blurb or article makes me a nervous wreck. I've got to find a way to deal with that. It's not just ARGs; it's anything that I don't feel at least 90% confident in my knowledge of topic. Even though I am a good researcher, I have a lot of fear that whatever I'm writing is going to be just wrong. I don't want my contributions to be substandard, but I often don't feel I even approach mediocrity in my articles, much less perfection or anything near it. That's my neurosis, laid bare. I know practice makes perfect and all that. It's just a thing I've got to work on. I'll get better, and I'm going to stop slacking just because I'm afraid of making a monumental idiot of myself somewhere along the line.

Of course, the more you ignore something, the bigger it gets. So here I am, trying to catch up and make contact again. I've got strong reasons to develop better time-management skills now that I'm back in school. This will help a lot. I'm also planning on doing several ARG-related projects for my classes this fall, so being current on the community is a must.

On a less-related note, I've made some big changes to my school plans. I can't wait to share them with everyone - the changes are big, exciting, and unexpected - but I need to work a few things out, first.

This is pretty much a pointless entry; I sort of lost track of what I really wanted to talk about. Instead of something that makes sense, have some words in an LJ entry.

Or, "Dragon*Con: The Day After"

• -- slept for about 5 hours, stumbled downstairs, said a blurry "good morning" to Yelenia and Zasha and slouched into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea.
• -- Said goodbye to Zasha, not realizing that I left my cell phone in her car.
• -- Had tea with Yelenia
• Studied Algebra, which I neglected for the five days of con and in which I had a class at 2:30 p.m.
• Ran upstairs to take shower, got ready in lightning speed because I remembered I had to go to the post office and then buy a packet of "bubble forms" for class. Realized I would also need to transfer my math homework from its scrawl in my notebook to a homework bubble form in a somewhat more legible hand.
• Said goodbye to Yelenia, started to run out the door.
• Discovered phone was missing. Crap.
• CAR BATTERY IS DEAD WTF - SERIOUSLY??
• Panic - call David
• David has abandoned work and is almost around the corner
• Kick door in frustration; damage toes
• Get David's car, drive to end of street, realize I left my algebra homework on the table. AAAAGGGAAAAHHHHAAAGGGGGHHHH!!!
• Go back inside, get homework, slam door to dissipate anger.
• Stop by post office - parking permit has arrived - WIN! Universe doesn't totally hate me!!
• Get to campus - cannot find parking spot for half an hour. LOSE. Universe totally hates me.
• Decide to defeat Universe in spite of itself.
• Successfully park, locate copy center, and acquire bubble forms
• Take up space at a counter, transfer homework to bubble form.
• Locate classroom, RUN TO CLASS IN 90-DEGREE HEAT OMG, get homework in pile JUST before TA comes around to pick it up. HA! TAKE THAT UNIVERSE!!!
• Universe: U CAN HAZ POP QUIZ!!! Me: >:|
• Fall asleep in the middle of lecture.

That was my day. It ends now. Goodnight.

(My car battery is still dead. I will deal with this in the morning. My cell phone is in Zasha's car. Just send me an email if you need to reach me.)

I have a pile of reading to do for my Thursday media theory class, but fortunately tomorrow's web design class is a "web-enhanced" class day, which means I don't have to go out to the campus. So I'll have time to read, catch up on all the work, and finish my algebra homework and quizzes. Whew!

We made it home from Atlanta after an uneventful drive.

Dragon*Con was a great experience.

Sleep NOW.

Just jotting down some quick notes before I take a much-needed nap. I'll update this post again either tomorrow morning or later tonight.

Fanfiction Panel

My first panel this morning was the Stargate Fanfiction panel, which I very much enjoyed. The panelists were very interested in engaging the audience in discussing some of the aspects of fanfiction that I'm particularly interested in - like how it is a vital part of fan conversation in discussing plot holes, character motivations, places where the writers made certain choices that worked or didn't work, etc. I met some really interesting people there, the panelists were wonderful, and I got the names of lots of people who write and read fic whose work I want to read soon!

Stargate Multiverse Panel
( Cut for length )

After that panel, I was walking down the sidewalk back toward the Marriott, and I ran into kynard, so we went to have lunch/dinner together at a Brazilian churrasco restaurant. Expensive, but nice. And QUIET. And WAITSTAFF.

And now, NAP.  Tonight, I've got two things: Women of Stargate, and a movies/clips thing that's four hours long. Naptime is mandatory in this case.