More Than Just Podcasts

So I'd like to take a moment and say that this blog is more than reviews of podcast novels. From time to time, I'll review a short story podcast like Escape Pod (next week maybe), and even some non-fiction podcasts. This will at least give me time to catch up on my listening, and be able to provide better reviews.

That said, the past week and a half or so, I've been listening to Mur Lafferty's podcast "I Should Be Writing". I started at the beginning of the 'cast, at which time she had not yet published her novel, or even finished it for that matter. (A side note, "Playing for Keeps" did wonderfully on the amazon charts, being released this past Monday.) In Mur's own words, ISBW is a "podcast for wannabe writer, by a wannabe writer." In the 'cast, Mur lays it down, and tells it like it is. Almost harsh at times, she removes excuses, provides helpful tips, and tells the listener to just start writing. There are no secrets, no magic potion that "great" writers have found (aside from maybe coffee?). All it takes to write, is to write. The episodes are rather short, on the order of 15-20 minutes, but it's long enough for Mur to cover one small topic in the process of getting started in writing. Instead of feeling like a writing seminar or workshop, it's got the feeling of sitting down over a warm beverage, and just talking about writing with a soon-to-be new friend. Casual, easy to listen to, and as such hits you smack in the face with the truth, "Just do it."

In my listening, I'm moving forward into the processes, and Mur's experiences, with trying to get published. The rejections, the rewrites, the re-rewrites, etc. and I might give updates on how the 'cast progresses. Each episode, Mur also gives updates on her own personal writing projects and progress. The 'cast has been running since late 2005, so it might take me a while to catch up, but it has been fun listening to the contrast between her talk about her hard work then, and hear her podcast novel, "Playing for Keeps", just recently published.

Moving on to my own projects, at some point, about 4 years ago, I fancied myself a Sci-Fi writer. I had written about 6 short stories, none of which were published, before finding my time for writing had run off somewhere to hide for a while. In listening to ISBW, I have regained my desire to write, and will be searching for the runaway time. I'll keep everyone updated here on what projects I'm working on, and how far along they might be.

You also may have noticed the new picture on the right. Yes, I have joined NANOWRIMO. The National Novel Writing Month, which is a frenzied outpouring of words in the month of November. The goal is 50,000 words from November 1 to November 31. No edits or rewrites, just writing as much and as fast as possible. I don't have any ideas for it yet, but will be working on it, outlining it, and possibly give some character interviews here and on the NANOWRIMO forums. If interested, my UN is CDspace, and my profile page is here.

I suppose that's all for now. Next week, nothing planned, but I'll find something to talk about.

A small update, I've got the internet at home now, although it's not exactly reliable. So, totally unrelated to the blog, my Zune card at the top will be updating now. It's been stuck for about a month. Also, due to my frelance programming work, I've got myself a 22" LCD monitor. I'll be getting another LCD monitor, and then a high quality headset/microphone. At that point, I'll begin looking into making this an actual podcast. Also at that point, project Cast-A-Line will begin taking shape. So things are rolling people. Slowly, but at least moving.

I Should Be Writing
NANOWRIMO
Escape Pod

Current Projects

As promised, here is a discussion on my current projects. These are listed in order of importance to others. If they were ordered by importance to me, it would probably be exactly opposite.

Anyway, first on the list isn't really a current project, but only because I finished it this week. So it's still fresh enough to count as current. The project itself was rather boring, data analysis. Finding relations among futures market data, grouping those relations, doing some simple calculations, and doing several histograms on the resulting data. What made it interesting was that I decided to write this program in Python. I must say, I think Python is my new favorite programming language. It's simple, has no braces to keep trace of, and is powerful enough to do just about anything any other language can to. I think Python is my new language of choice.

Next on the list is a Java applet. This one, at it's core, is an image building and overlay applet. The user has several choices of background image and color, or can upload their own background, and can add text or images to the base image. This can then be saved on the server, for some admin to look up and process in whatever way has been deemed worthy. It will be used as a T-Shirt designer for several websites, but I believe it can have many other applications. Auto-detailing previews, greeting card design, perhaps a preview of furniture in your home before you buy it online. I'm sure there are other uses for this. At it's current state, the user can select a background from a list, select from a list of clipart what images to add to the background. Until a few days ago, it wasn't displaying the added images or text on the background, but I finally figured out why it wasn't working. So this project will soon be finished.

So the first project was for my day job, DRC, the second project was for my own company, JTS (is it weird that I work for/own companies only referenced by acronymic letters?). Finally, we get to the fun stuff. These aren't really full projects, with some ultimate goal, but merely projects for my own education and fun in whatever free time I have. I have been looking for freelancing software projects online lately. Several of them are for website and database systems. The ones I've been interested in deal with MySQL and AJAX.

So, I wen't out and got myself a book on MySQL. MySQL Crash Course, by Ben Forta. For the clinet server applictoin I wrote for JTS, I learned intereaction with SQL Server 2005 Express via C#.NET. MySQL is very similar, but, from my experience so far, much easier to interact with. Learning MySQL will not only be applicable to freelance projects I'm trying to get, but also in a grander project down the road .

Also, I've had an interest in AJAX, but haven't started looking into learning it yet, probably after I'm comfortable with MySQL. Also on this list of to-learns is MS SilverLight. Although, I will probably wait to see how much of a hold it take in the internet market before investing any time into it.

Last, but certainly not least, is XNA. The most recent version, XNA 3.0 CTP beta, just came out, and has development options for the Zune games. The CTP doesn't yet support development on 64 bit systems (like my home machine), but when the full release comes out later this year, be sure I'll have it, and will be Zune Gaming in no time.

As a final note, the hint dropped earlier was about my dream in programming. Games. My own games. I've begun tailoring my fun projects towards areas that will ultimately be useful in developing a game eventually. I'm not sure what type of game I'm going to try to produce, or even when I'll start, but it will be online, MMO, and probably fully 3d.

Anyway, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more info on personal projects outside of programming.