Author: Finious

NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner!

Winner-2014-Twitter-ProfileSo I managed to pull it off. I wrote a novel. Well, half of one anyway.

In case you’re not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is a non-profit organization that hosts an event in which thousands of writers around the world participate in an attempt to write their own 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. I planned on participating the year previous but backed out at the last moment. This year however I bit the bullet and did it. It was a long hard road. Around the second week I started to doubt myself, my ability, and the point of it all. Then I said screw it, I wanted to read my story, so I just started writing. Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner!

Music: Muse – Redemption

Muse - The ResistanceThis animated music video for Muse’s “Exogenesis Symphony, Part III” from the album The Resistance is really powerful in my opinion. Made me want to cry… But they were “manly” tears… 😥

I’ve always liked the Exogenesis Symphony by Muse, but I hadn’t seen this video for Part III of that ‘rock’ symphony, “Redemption”. Apparently a shorter version of this animated video was created by the Japanese comedian Tekken using part of the song. The Muse band members saw it, and commissioned him to do their ‘official’ video for the song by expanding on what he had already done. The only decent quality online copy I’ve been able to find for it is this one with foreign sub-titles.
Listen to Song & Read Lyrics →

INFP… Definitely “Me”

infp-darksideI am an INFP. I may have been told this once before, but as usual in my scatter-brained way I data-dumped it. I recently stumbled on this again, and all I can say is, “Yeah. That’s definitely me.” What am I talking about?

A bunch of head-shrink types broke human personalities into 16 basic types (called the Myers-Briggs Personality Types,) which were based on these 4 things: Continue reading INFP… Definitely “Me”

The deep and lovely dark…

Doctor Who - Listen

“The deep and lovely dark. We’d never see the stars without it.”
The Doctor — Doctor Who S08E04 ‘Listen’

The Doctor at the end of a speech about the “superpower” of fear, and the reasons to harness and use it. The character Clara summarizes and expounds on this idea near the end of the episode:

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger. … You’re always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. But it’s okay because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. Fear makes companions of us all.” Clara — Doctor Who S08E04 ‘Listen’

Started re-watching the latest season (season 8 of the new series) of Doctor Who, as the last episode should be coming out in a couple of days. For the most part, I haven’t been a big fan of most of this season, but the first several were pretty good. And the second to last one kind of grabbed my attention too. It’s interesting to note that most of the episodes that I have liked from this season were written or co-written by Moffat. The other episodes haven’t necessarily been bad. They had great acting and production values as usual. It’s just that the writing (the plot and banter) just did not grab me and hold my interest. The first time watching many of them, I got involved doing something else while watching. Still there are quite a few episodes, this one included, that grabbed my from the get go and wouldn’t let go.

Ebook DRM Removal

Just realized that some of the Kindle e-books I have gotten for a little over a month now I could no longer open in other e-readers or apps. On books I own I believe I have the right to read them on the device I prefer and like to back them up in a way so that my access to my books is not controlled by some third-party which might go away. Anyway, I use the Calibre e-book management tool and have some user-created plugins installed which normally automatically strip the DRM from books I own when I import them into my Calibre library. This apparently had stopped working.

alf-logoIt’s been a long time since I installed these plugins and apparently something had changed in the Kindle DRM. I downloaded the most up to date version of the DeDRM plugins, then re-installed them into Calibre. I then removed the DRM locked books from my Calibre library and re-imported them and everything is golden again. Apprentice Alf’s blog continues to be a god send.

See Also:  New Kindle Voyage & DeDRM

Poem: It was nice knowing you when

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, While I Pondered Weak & Weary
Not sure why I decided to go with this image for this poem, other than this bit of Poe describes the time & mood I was in when writing this. Image background created by indigodeep

poem © Jeffrey Beaty
January 31, 2011 — 1:45am
20 lines

Like most of my poetry from the past, this is a little bit of wallowing in depression it seems. I don’t write much poetry anymore. I don’t know if that means I’m less depressed or less creative than I once was.

To any old friends who are reading this and might feel uncomfortable… Don’t. The poem is a bit of maudlin dribble, but it is also secretly enjoying past versions of ourselves, and is merely an experiment in writing.

Anyway, I kind of like this bit of reminiscing about old friends. In part I like the structure of choppy sentences, its reference to “in jokes” that no one else would get, and the way it turns at the end to wonder if others ever feel the same. Continue reading Poem: It was nice knowing you when