Category: blog

My fitness goal for this week was to get my steps in. So far I’ve beaten my 6,000 step goal each day. Last week, as I was getting into the swing of things, I relied on getting my walking in during a big burst of activity. It didn’t go so well.

The daily step totals are looking good:

Now I’ve figured out how to spread my walking throughout the day. This might seem simple. I have no requirement to walk during my day other than to move between my desk, coffeemaker, and bathroom.1 I actually need to stop what I’m doing and go outside.

I do all my writing in Ulysses. I also like to keep all of my files in its library. Since I started using it, the idea of having individual files scattered about my computer is just plain barbaric. The cost of this trade off is that if Ulysses doesn’t support a feature, I have to add raw HTML into the files. Normally this isn’t much of a problem. A bit HTML set off with ~~ isn’t distracting.

Sometimes I run across an older book that’s usually out-of-print, but has exceptional wisdom locked up in its pages. I found this one at my local Half Priced Books.

See all of my WSF&F chapter reviews.

In this chapter James Patrick Kelly discusses science fiction characters and how to build them. He starts this chapter with a discussion of writing books he’s bought in the past. Then he dives in.

This is the first of my weekly fitness updates. I’ll be posting one every Monday for the foreseeable future.

This week has been eye-opening. First, I’m finding out just how out-of-shape I am. Second, hitting a step goal is really hard if it happens in one big burst of activity.

I update a shared iCloud spreadsheet every day. Follow along!

Apparently every little bit helps—I managed to lose 1.7 lbs. I didn’t do the amount of walking I set out to do this past week. But I did some. Having a loss this week was a emotional hurdle I needed to jump. Seeing the results on the scale makes it real.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. My week starts on Monday. The numbers are current through Sunday night. I also only average over six days. This allows me one day of no writing that doesn’t impact the weekly totals.

The week was about increasing my activity levels. And the little exercise I did really drove the point home about how out-of-shape I am. The last part of the week was the worst. I hope I start to feel better.

Sometimes I run across an older book that’s usually out-of-print, but has exceptional wisdom locked up in its pages. I found this one at my local Half Priced Books.

This is Isaac Asimov’s second of five chapters in the book. As a writer of books that are mostly dialog, when he thinks “of the art of writing I tend to think of dialog.” His first example is a look back at Victorian dialog. When compared to modern language it seems silted and overwrought. But written dialog is not a perfect example of the spoken language of the time. Just as movies tend to feature better-than-average looking people, dialog does the same to language. Asimov’s example is that movie stars don’t look like average people. They look like movie stars. Also, fictional heroes are braver, stronger, and more ingenious “than anyone you’re likely to meet. Why shouldn’t they speak better too?” At the same time the characters need to sound like people, not pompous stuffed-shirts. Sometimes the well-placed ungrammatical exclamation is exactly what’s needed to humanize a character. He cites Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as the first example of a book written in substandard English. But it is still a great work of literature. While the words were mostly slang, the sentences and paragraphs were the work of a master. Asimov as most writers, draw the line at vulgarity. His position is that his characters are well-educated and should be able to express themselves better than a profanity-spewing fire hose. He notes times have changed and it’s expected that some profanity will creep into almost any novel. In some cases it would be criminal to not have characters swear. Asimov works hard to avoid it, but he realizes that other authors have other styles. This was another short chapter, having just under five pages. Even with it being so short it was still packed with advice:

Getting paid online is a delicate balance of convenience vs. cost. Some of the services are used simply because they’ve been around the longest. Like PayPal. But new ones seem to pop up every other day. For the most part, they’re worth signing up for to see how things work.

The newest is Cash.me from Square. They have a nice link-shortening gimmick called “cashtags.” The idea is to create a username starting with a dollar sign ($) which then becomes your unique URL. They also provide phone apps for both iOS and Android.

The NFL owners spent an hour talking about extra points today. The current rules make the PAT boring. Most of the time the TV broadcast doesn’t even show it.

The discussion was just that, talk. But there are plans for the Competition Committee to come back with a proposal for a May vote. The general consensus seems to be the extra point should be made into a football play.

This will be interesting on how it shakes out for the kickers. I would suspect the punter and place kicker might be combined into a single role.

Just to the shoot the elephant in the room: Yes, there is gadget lust involved here.

Ever since the original announcement I’ve wondered exactly how I could justify the purchase of something so unnecessary. The features are well documented by Apple and others. I don’t see a need to rehash what a cottage industry of speculation has already hashed.

Sometimes I run across an older book that’s usually out-of-print, but has exceptional wisdom locked up in its pages. I found this one at my local Half Priced Books.

See all of my WSF&F chapter reviews.

This chapter was written by Isaac Asimov. It is the first of five that he contributed to the book. It’s short—only five pages—but covers the essentials of plotting a story.