Surviving the XPocalypse: The Sequel

Since my last post, I've hardly blogged, tweeted, or otherwise been very publicly active on the Net at all. Mostly I've been editing my book and trying to wrestle it into readable form even as it mutated into two different shapes. But I've still been busy, for the last few months in fact, replacing the late lamented Windows XP with Ubuntu Studio Linux on my old P4 box and gradually setting up Windows 7 and Linux Mint on the cute little Core Duo unit in the living room. This is the sequel and update.

Part of the struggle involved a much delayed game of musical hard drives. The new computer came with only an 80GB hard drive, which didn't give me much room considering how much stuff I had on two hard drives on the old box, so I had it upgraded to the current industry standard of 1TB and transferred all my music, videos, and games to it. Then I cloned my 40GB C drive on the P4 box to the 250GB drive, expanded the partition on that to the full drive (except for %GB of Linux swap), transferred much of my old data back to it, replaced the 40GB drive with the 80GB one from the new computer, and installed Ubuntu Studio on that. To do this, I realized I had to buy a USB hard drive enclosure to do the clones and transfers I couldn't do over the network. After that, there was the task of reinstalling programs that is still ongoing.

The important thing is that I no longer have to deal with the dying XP's increasing lack of security. Win7 is much more secure (and still regularly updated), and Linux is more secure still (though I there still is the learning curve). Now if only the rumors of a Windows 10 upgrade being free to Win7 users were true — though I'm not holding my breath...

The bad part: it made me miss 50/90...

NaPoWriMo 2014: Now That Script Frenzy's Dead... Poems!

Two years ago, NaNoWriMo discontinued their April scriptwriting spinoff Script Frenzy and replaced it with an April CampNaNo. As I'm not writing another new novel until next NaNo in November or I finish editing Chaos Angel Spanner book 1, whichever comes first, I've decided to do the next best thing until it became the best thing: NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month. Basically, you write a poem a day for 30 days, or just 30 poems this month. Considering my typical FAWM song output (28 songs this year, 14 of them in just the last two days), that should be easy. And my NaPoWriMo will be happening right here in this blog! Brace yourselves!

February Album Writing Month 2014 Now in Progress: or, 14 in '14!

Actually, I should have posted this on January 31. Well, it's FAWM again, and I'm going to write at least another 14 songs. Unlike the last 2 FAWMs, I'm going to record as many as I can, like I did during my first 2 (2009 and 2010), when I wasn't possessed by a monomania for editing three drafts of Chaos Angel Spanner nonstop. And unlike the past 2 years, I didn't wait until the last day or two to start posting songs. So far I have the lyrics posted for:

1. Too Close
2. Electric Boy (a song that's been haunting me for at least 2 years)

In addition to those, at this writing I'm also working on the music to these songs:

• Bet He's Dead (another song on my inner playlist, originally "Eddie's Dead" then "Freddy's Dead" until I realized those names would be troublesome)
• It's All Wrong (a song I originally planned for last FAWM)
• Pure (new for 2014)
• Tails You Lose, Heads I Win (also new)

I also have these songs planned:

• Mokey Done Been Smoked (the sequel to 2009's "Smoke the Mokey", the original "mokey rock song, a genre that grew out of a type on FAWM's "add a song" form page)
• Dream Becomes Real (a straight synthpop song; I need to do at least one, after all)
• Soundtrack to an Imaginary Film (a dreamy instrumental)
• False Flag (a song I originally planned for 50/90 2012)
• Final Burn (new)
• Pretty Kill in Glorious HD (new)

Whenever I get a full recording posted, I'll post it here on the main blog. I'm also seriously thinking of signing up for Soundcloud so my demos will be accessible to all, especially now that its embedded music player now works with the FAWM site.

So I've started at last. For the next month, or at least until NaNoEdMo comes around in March, I'll be agonizing over songs instead of Spanner rewrites...

Good Riddance 2013, Hello 2014; or, Resolution Time Again

I didn't post here most of last year, not even songs for FAWM (because I never recorded any). Reason is, I spent most of my time on the epic final edit of Spanner. And this is supposed to be my main blog.

2014 will be different. Naturally, I have my resolutions. The obvious ones:

1. Finish the final edit of Spanner Book 1.
2. Practice my singing and my instruments for FAWM, not just this year's but next year's too.
3. Pick a non-Spanner NaNoWriMo novel to edit and get published.

The ones I've been seriously procrastinating regardless of year:

4. Start drawing again so I can finally learn how to draw comics;
5. Start taking photographs again (conveniently, digital cameras better than mine are cheaper than ever);
6. Keep at my workout program (just resuming it's not enough);
7. Improve my French, German, and Japanese;
8. Learn Python, Perl, and even C;
9. Clean house (and stop using the epic Spanner edit to avoid it); and
10. Resume regular posting to what's supposed to be my main blog, starting now.

2013 was a tough year: my mother's long recovery from surgery, the death of a cousin who was almost a brother to me when we were kids, the birth of my nephew and my brother's near-withdrawal from the family, my unhealthy obsession with a certain epic edit that even nearly ruined my health and prevented my 8th consecutive NaNo win (which I pulled off despite myself). 2014, on the other hand, will be the year I become a published professional author at last. I'll get back to posting about novels, comics, TV series, and the like as well. And of course I'll post drawings.

I've had my drink to the new year. The next step is to plunge into it. Here goes...

Preoccupations (Script Frenzy Panic Time, etc.)

I don't seem to be able to do two WriMos at the same time. Case in point: last month (March). I tried to finish recording some songs for FAWM and edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel for NaNoEdMo, and the result was that I was completely unable to do either. This month, I found I was only able to start adapting that novel into a movie script for Script Frenzy when I abandoned all FAWM follow-up. There must be some kind of short circuit in my brain...

That short circuit may be hard-wired in. I have problems teaching myself two different subjects on the same day.

There's another problem I've got that keeps me from doing the things I want. I wrote an entry about that, in fact. It's called Social Media Is My Crack. With the sequel What Keeps Me on the Internet Way Too Late at Night. Either I spend way too much time on Twitter and FriendFeed, or I spend way too much time reading articles on the Web. Or, to word it differently, I procrastinate on Twitter and the Web.

Anyway, I've procrastinated enough. It's Panic Time now. I need to write 58 pages of movie script (adapting guess which '07 NaNoWriMo novel) if I want to win this year's Script Frenzy. And that means back to writing...

I'll add a blog-related postscript here. A couple days ago as of this writing, Facebook announced that you can put one of their "Like" buttons on any site of yours that you want. Posterous added it automatically; earlier, they added a "retweet" button to all their blogs so that you can "retweet" an entry onto Twitter. So I decided to add a "Like" button onto a couple of my Blogger blogs, including this one. Turns out I couldn't load my blogs after that. So I removed the "Like" buttons. You can still "retweet" my Blogger blogs, of course, at least when Tweetmeme isn't down. My suggestion to Google: Add the option to "Share" single blog posts, not just the entire blog. If the competition can swipe from Google, why can't Google swipe from the competition?

After a Busy Week...

#JulNo #5090 #songwriting #writers #Bloggers The second week of July '09 was surprisingly busy for me. At the end of it, though, I got my most important Internet-related business out of the way (getting rid of that archaic and extremely slow dialup connection and joining the modern world), so I can now get back to the proper business of writing. (As for those hash terms I'm now putting at the beginning of my posts: those are Twitter search terms for my Twibes. The Twibes in question are the JulNoWriMo, 50 Songs in 90 Days, Songwriting, Writers, and Bloggers Twibes respectively. That's because TwitterFeed tweets my blog posts.)

Most of my business had nothing to do with writing (novels, songs, blogs). However, I did get one short story written, added to my JulNoWriMo word count, and posted to my project blog (warning: some people may not be able to handle it, hence the many disclaimers). Now that I've finally upgraded my internet connection and immediately upgraded all the software that needed upgrading, I'll be able to return to my 50 Songs in 90 Days songs and my JulNo novel writing.

I'll be a lot more productive in the next week. First, though, I need to get some good rest. Waiting for that dialup connection kept me up at nights...

Back to The Space Helmet Show...

Preparation for 50 Songs In 90 Days

On July 4, 50 Songs in 90 Days begins. I already have some songs ready for it — they're incomplete, but they're trying to jump the gun on me. As a warmup, I'm writing two songs for the pre-50/90 "song in key of D minor that contains the word 'earth'" challenge. I'll link to the MP3s so my fellow "5090ers" can hear the results, and I'll also post the lyrics and the song links to the Yahoo 50/90 mailing list.

The history behind this: After NaNoWriMo '07 (when I started writing my novel Bad Company), I found out in a Chris Baty email about February Album Writing Month, or FAWM. I signed up, but did nothing last year in either FAWM or 50/90. I had the software, mostly in Linux (Audacity, LMMS, plus various others that came with Ubuntu Studio). I realized I couldn't use them. But by the time FAWM '09 came around, I found myself in possession of a Casio WK-200 keyboard and two guitars, one acoustic and one acoustic-electric. I downloaded the open source tablature editor TuxGuitar, the windows version of LMMS, and the digital audio workstation Reaper. I already had Audacity for Windows. In mid-February I started taking guitar lessons. And the proverbial dam broke: in FAWM, you win if you write 14 songs, but I wrote 38 and recorded 24 of them, leaving a whole FAWM's worth of songs unrecorded. It wasn't until last week that I realized what it did to me: before, I was what I called a "frustrated guitarist" with manic-depressive tendencies. It was when FAWM '09 unleashed my musical creativity that my depression disappeared. Completely. I no longer even have a tendency to get depressed. The "guitar therapy" worked! (I'll explain this further in a future entry.)

I have a whole bunch of half-finished songs prepared for this year's 50/90. Some of them are fragments I programmed in TuxGuitar; others are notations on scratch paper from idly strumming one of my guitars (I now also have an electric) and coming up with chord progressions I like. Some are lyrics without music; others are music without lyrics. Why such a backlog of songs? Mainly because I've been putting my primary focus between FAWM and 50/90 on learning and practicing the guitar. I write my songs fragments and put them aside so I can return to them during 50/90. I want to make sure I play all the guitar parts when I record those songs, though the solos will probably have to come later (I'm having problems learning scales, arpeggios, etc.).

Consider this the official announcement (outside the FAWMer/5090er community) of my intent to participate in 50/90.

Back to The Space Helmet Show...