WikiLeaks Danger
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you’ve heard of WikiLeaks.
If you haven’t heard, a douchebag named Julian Assange has taken it upon himself to publish several classified documents. He claims to be holding over a quarter million documents, of which he has released just over 1300. The ones that he has released are basically gossip, but there are some real gems buried in the contents. Such as a list of security-critical locations around the world. Or, to put it another way, a checklist for any terrorist to attack us.
Last year this asshat published a list of weaknesses with our current protection systems, basically giving the enemy an easy way to kill my comrades-in-arms. At the same time, he released the identities of human rights activists and informants. Then he has the gall to say “we must be willing to break a few eggs to make the omelette”.
Now, it seems, he has a deadman switch. If anything happens to him, a completely unredacted form of all the documents that he has received will be made public. Apparently there are legal issues, and governments think that they have no legal reason to arrest him. The security acts, apparently, don’t cover this case.
Here’s a hint, not that anyone in power is reading this. It’s fucking blackmail. He is threatening that he will release secret documentation, which will jeapordize American and allied troops around the world. He will tell the worst people in the world the identities of those working undercover to overthrow their regime and make the world a better place.
Julian Assange, you are a terrorist collaborator. If you were burning in front of me, I would not piss on you to put out the flames. Your pigheaded arrogance is jeapordizing the lives of my friends, my brothers-in-arms. My family will sleep MUCH better at night, knowing that in your crusade for government transparency, you have told the world where my ship will be.
I hope the ghosts of all those innocents you’ve outed gnaw on your conscience for the rest of eternity. Go fuck yourself, Julian.
NaNo Tools 2011
NaNoWriMo 2010 has now ended. NaNo 2011 is only 11 months away.
I previously mentioned my plans to make a tool for automating some of the book-keeping involved in a NaNo project. I then mentioned that the project was to be put on hold. Now that my family’s health is good, and that this year’s NaNo is complete, here’s my next attempt to begin this project.
First off, I don’t like the name. NaNo Tools sounds like it’s a collection of small hammers and screwdrivers for making really small things. Not that this isn’t cool in its own way, but not the impression I’m going for. I’m currently bouncing between Word Warrior or SprintWriter. Suggestions are, of course, graciously accepted. read more…
Birth by Sleep, Death by Cutscene
I’ve just started playing Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Unfortunately, rather than playing, I spend a lot of time watching one of the following:
- The “game over” screen, which will kindly allow you to return to the battle in which you just died.
- A cutscene.
I haven’t done the actual timing or math, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time watching cutscenes than playing. In fact, as I am blogging right now, a cutscene is playing. To be fair, I just restarted the game (for reasons that I will explain below), so this is the opening cutscene (which I apparently skipped before).
In the game, you control one of three characters: Terra, Aqua, or Ventus. Actually, while I say that you control one of the three, during the course of the game you will control all three. Once you finish the game with one character, you play it again with one of the others, then again with the third. Only by playing through with all three characters will you get the entire story.
Additionally, I learned (after I started the first time, and the reason for the restart), if you play on the standard difficulty level, you need to find every secret in the game to get the storyline-tying final scene. I’m playing instead in proud mode, in which I take more damage, but don’t need to read guides to ensure that I find every secret before I reach the end.
I do wish, however, that cutscenes played much less of a role in this game. Maybe I’m spoiled by other game series (the Half-Life series comes to mind) where cutscenes are either non-existent or play a minimal role in the game. Oh well; to each his own.
Got my posting
Well, I finally got my posting message. Looks like, when I graduate from my journeyman course and go home, I’m reporting to HMCS Winnipeg.
I don’t know what the sailing schedule is. Even if I did know, I wouldn’t put it here. But the rumour is that I won’t spend nearly enough time home with my wife and kids before I go sailing.
On the other hand, with North Korea rattling the sabre, who knows if the current sailing schedule will remain?
NaNoWriMo Lessons Learned
As previously promised, here are the lessons I learned during this year’s NaNoWriMo.
Plan
I did some basic planning, but not nearly enough. I created a basic character sketch of my protagonist, but that was all. Even that plan went out my window when I rebooted my project a week in. My plot was basically created on-the-fly, so scenes that I wanted to include ended up, if they appeared at all, very kludgy.
Pace
For a speed-writing event, pace is important. 1667 words per day is doable, but consistency is also required. Just because you build a 2-day buffer in your word count does not imply that you can take 2 days off from writing. This leads to “Oh, I can take an extra day and make up for it tomorrow”, which leads you to being far behind the goal by deadline.
Partners
I did my writing with the HRM Nova Scotia NaNo group. Weekly write-ins ensured that we had support and competition. Need a name for a minor character? Pipe up, and a half-dozen suggestions are there. Need a nudge to get you over a word-count hurdle? Call for a word war, and let the sounds of everyone else’s furiously-clicking keyboards inspire you to race.
Paper
Yes, most writers today use the keyboard as their preferred medium. However, a stack of paper is also a useful tool. I tried to keep track of major plot points using a local MediaWiki installation, but Alt-Tabbing got old, and usually got in the way. Add to that the change of keyboard focus, as well as multiple clicks required for updating information. Paper is much more convenient for planning purposes, especially for anything else that requires even basic art. Especially at a write-in, where most of us used the laptop’s touchpad as a mouse, computer art goes right out the window.
Proposals?
Put any lessons that you have learned into the comments.
Throwing in the towel
I’m done with NaNoWriMo word counting. My work has gone from an attempt at artificially bulking up word counts to become a real story. Thus, I have been spending more time on working out how plots will come together, and less on getting the words in.
Due to my change of focus, I am currently 15,961 words behind the line. NaNo stats say that I should write 5657 words a day from now until the end of the month in order to catch up. To put that into perspective, my best daily word count was 5202 words. It’s not something that would be impossible, if all I wanted to do was make up the word count.
I do not, however, consider this to be a failure. In my opinion, the main purpose of NaNoWriMo is not to write 50,000 words of crap. It is to write, period. In that way, I consider my NaNo to be a success. I have written. I have a workable story, although it needs some major overhauling. And I have something that I, personally, am proud of. It’s currently a tangled mess. It will probably be rewritten almost from scratch. But it’s a story that has made it down onto (virtual) paper.
As promised, I will make another posting concerning the lessons I learned during this foray into fiction. That, however, will be a post for another day.
Down to the wire
NaNoWriMo is almost done. One week from today is the deadline to reach 50,000 words.
I am currently sitting at a total of 25,895 words, leaving me somewhat (24,105 words) short. According to my NaNo stats, I need to write 3,444 words per day for the next week.
If it were just a matter of typing that, I would have no problem; an hour a day would bring me beyond my writing goal. Unfortunately, along with typing is the process of creating, which is where I’m falling short.
I’m not giving up; I am going to see this out until the end of November. Following that, however, I will write up an article regarding my “lessons learned”, which will be what I see as my requirements for any further forays into the fiction-writing world. I already have a few notes, but I will wait until after NaNo has completed before I mention them.
| 25,895 |
Inspired
I was on my way to the barracks from today’s write-in, when the climactic battle of my novel appeared, fully-formed, inside my skull!
While I was walking, I realized that “Good” doesn’t necessarily mean “Nice”. Angels aren’t all halos and harps; they also have that flaming sword handy for whole-scale ass-kicking. And the world that my story takes place in happens to be the battlefield for this conflict.
My protagonist can save the world from this battle of the Powers, but it will mean sacrificing himself. And I haven’t decided yet if he will do it. I don’t want a happy ending, but whether he sacrifices himself, or the world gets ass-kicked, it isn’t going to be smiles and a party at the end.
Catching Up
After today’s remembrance ceremony, I went to a local NaNoWriMo write-in. I came into it 3143 words (about 2 days) behind schedule, and came out 156 words ahead. Including today’s words, that gave me 4,965 words written today. My count is now up to 18,489.
Now I hope to actually keep up with my word count. That means that I need to write 1,667 words a day, which also means I need to actually sit down at my computer and open the word processor instead of the web browser or the games.
Rebooting
The first week of NaNoWriMo has now faded into the past. Unfortunately, my novel has gone so far off track that I have no idea where to go from here. So I’m doing what I should have done in the first place.
Planning.
During my classes, I have quite a bit of free time. The instructor takes us into the lab one at a time, leaving six of us twiddling our thumbs. There’s only so much of that time you can use for assignments or review, so I decided to utilize it for planning purposes. This morning, I wrote out my outline, which is a combination of my original plan (which was only in my head) and my work-to-date (which was done on the fly).
This afternoon, I plan to put a bit more thought into who my main characters are. Maybe add a few secondary characters with real names, as opposed to the extras in a film – “Bystander #1″, “Warrior #3″, etc.
My two main characters are already somewhat fleshed out, but they will be the first to undergo the overhaul. Since they are the only two that appear in the first couple scenes, I can use this evening to catch up on my word count.
Speaking of word count, I plan that my new work will go beyond 50k. However, for scoring purposes I will still count the words I have already written. This means that I have to get 61k this year in order to make my goal. After losing a full week, I will have to work that much harder, but I believe it is doable.
I just have to quit procrastinating…