In fact, according to my blog (surpassed in its level of factuality only by Wikipedia and God Google), the last time I actually wrote something related to any of the VS series was in May, and even that was a one-off in an already pretty massive writing blag’ole.

I have since blamed my lack of writing (and lack of motivation to do it in the first place) on just about anything and everything in my life, including:

• A House Guest. At the start of the year, we had a guest living in our house, and since my office was the one with the spare bed, it became her room for about five/six months. My computer, meanwhile, was setup in a perfectly working condition and I could’ve easily carried on writing in the other office, but I insisted it just didn’t “feel” right. I even talked about it in my 30 Days of Writing. But then, guest left in July, and since then, I still sit at my computer back in my old room and write nothing.
• World of Warcraft. This isn’t even an excuse in itself, since I haven’t played the game for a good month or so now, and the state of my writing flow hasn’t improved one iota.
• Getting Married. Alright, this was legitimate, I think. It’s hard to concentrate on just about anything when you have just over six months to plan a wedding. If anyone had told me to do some writing in this time, I probably would’ve just laughed. And kicked them in the face. But again, I got married in August. Have I written anything since then? No.
• My MacBook. Another semi-legitimate excuse, in my opinion, because I just wasn’t in the creative mood wondering whether this boot would be the time it wouldn’t turn on anymore, although again you could argue that a “real” writer wouldn’t let something as superfluous as the wrong type of writing software stop them from producing some kind of prose. Besides, that has also been resolved, with a brand new MacBook Pro I sold my second kidney to get (having already sold my first to get the Moleskine notebook I had my eye on), which I’ve now had over a week without writing a single page.

I’m now even blaming NaNoWriMo (of all things!), claiming that I’m too busy working on my outline to focus on anything else. That’s just a big, fat lie. I wrote the outline in one big chunk a week ago, and since my only constructive action (or action, at all) has been to open and re-read it.

I can’t blame it on “writer’s block”, either, because the ideas are still in my head; sometimes I have dreams that would make perfect scenes or even short stories in themselves, if only I had the resolve to drag my carcass out of bed to write the ideas down before they fizzle away.

Not only that, but I can’t blame life in general for getting in the way. I have it much easier than a lot of the other writers I come across. I don’t have any kids that demand my attention (save for the cats, of course), and I have a job that – while stressful in moments, but whose job isn’t? – is flexible. If I put the focus onto it, I could easily fit 30 minutes of writing time or more at least into the work day. And even if I didn’t want to do that, if I wanted to keep my work and writing “worlds” separate, I could easily find the time after office hours. I don’t do anything constructive when work ends other than get lost in television and the Internet. If I just took half an hour a day, over time I could get so much done.

My attention flits back to the post I put last New Year’s Eve; I only had two resolutions (neither of which I’ve kept; pfft, healthy eating, what’s that?), the second of which was:

2/ I will attempt to write at least one weekday and for at least two hours at some point of a weekend. That sounds reasonable enough, right? I managed 50k words in 30 days for NaNo; a couple of chapters a month can’t be that far out of reach.

The bold is new. It highlights how ridiculously easy it should be.

And yes, I know writing is supposed to be a pleasurable experience and trying to force it may only serve to push me further from the desire to write at all, but since sitting back for the last few months and waiting for inspiration to strike me down hasn’t exactly worked, I have to assume that it needs some kind of intervention on my part.

I have no excuse, it’s sheer laziness, and it’s not funny anymore. I need to fix this, fix my writing schedule and entire writing life.

I need to write my way out of this blag’ole.

The term “blagole” comes from the Spoony’s review of the board/VHS game Atmosphere/Nightmare – you should check it out. The review, that is, not the game. The game was wank.

See, I’ve been pretty lax recently in getting any kind of writing practise in, and to be honest, I think it’s starting to show, but I’ll spare you the details of that for another time.

Before I could get into the swing of things, I wanted a cup of tea and to watch an episode of the Big Bang Theory. I resuscitated the MacBook long enough to pull the work I had off Scrivener to put into Word, while deciding I also had time to watch some episodes of Fringe, so I watched two of those, all the while adding nothing to the whole writing thing.

After that, I strode upstairs with sheer will and determination to get to work. I sat down at my computer, opened up my e-mails and downloaded the documents I sent to myself. Around that point, I remembered that I’d recently picked up a copy of the Inception score, so I put that on, and spent about half an hour just listening to that, really feeling the song and started thinking about NaNoWriMo, although I didn’t actually write anything down, so I can’t really count this as progress, either.

While the music continues, I decided that the blog’s design needed an overhauled, and therein spent four hours tweaking the HTML and CSS of a new blog style (well, technically re-using an old style, but…anyway, it’s the one you see here –>).

Now it’s quarter to one in the morning, and I’m writing a blog about writing exactly 0, that’s ZERO, words, doing not one jot of the organisation that I told myself I was going to do, while watching The Animaniacs.

Looks like I’ll get to work on my organisational overhaul tomorrow.

I can’t remember exactly how I came across That Guy With the Glasses. If memory serves, I saw a friend’s link on Facebook for a funny Twilight review and decided to have a gander. Gander, I did. Laugh, I did. Cry laughing, I…probably did. Anyway, after I’d finished laughing, I decided to check out the rest of the guy’s reviews.

The site is generally a review site, focusing on old (and, for the most part, crap) films, with some highly entertaining videos.

Highlights for me include:

Nostalgia Critic | Nostalgia Chick | MikeJ TV (Shameful Sequels) | Spoony | The Cinema Snob |  Film Brain (Bad Movie Beatdown)

And some of my very favourite reviews:

The Nostalgia Critic Reviews “Batman & Robin”

The Nostalgia Chick Reviews “Labyrinth”

MikeJ Reviews “Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life”

Spoony Reviews “Final Fantasy X” (The rest of this series of reviews can be found here.)

The Cinema Snob Reviews “Troll”

(Now, I’ll be perfectly honest; I haven’t seen the majority of the films the Cinema Snob has reviewed, although I have still watched the majority of the reviews. Why? Well, the man has an incredible voice and an absurdly high level of cynicism that is reminiscent of an American Jack Dee, which makes him more than a winner, in my book)

Film Brain Reviews “Equilibrium”

(Something stupid about permissions means I can’t embed, so click this link to view it instead. Damn you, Internet. Damn you to hell.)

I would like to add to this one that I do like Equilibrium (it’s one of my handful of filler movies [films I can watch without really needing to pay attention to them]), but I can totally see what the guy is talking about.

This site is generally known to me as a way to lose an hour. I’ve probably watched the majority of the reviews more than once, easily. This site is most definately worth checking out.

Second Life and I have a very on-again / off-again relationship; currently, we’re on.

I can’t really explain Second Life in nutshell, because there’s just so much to it. I’ve tried to cover the basic idea of Second Life on another page, but that’s just a general overview. You’re basically a representation of yourself (or whoever you want to be) in a virtual world, granted with the power of creation. You can walk your avatar through a garden one minute and be transported to a post apocalyptic city the next. You can make or buy clothes for your avatar, and you can own land where you can sell your own creations within this virtual world.

It’s not quite as adventurous as it sounds, and for the most part, it’s a fairly lonely experience.

What I spend most of my time doing is wandering around the locations in first-person perpective, trying to get some decent screenshots of backgrounds, then I’ll wander around the various shops looking for animations and poses for my avatars, then I will log into each character (I have 5) and shoot them posing against green screens. Then I mash it all together outside of the world and create something akin to the image to the right.

Is it a productive use of my time? No.

But then if it was, it wouldn’t be procrastination, would it!

I have just finished it now.

This was the last day of the bank holiday, surely I should’ve been spending it doing something more constructive?  Well, you’d think, but you’d be wrong!

Some would call this a waste of time, myself included.  Others would call it sad, and again, I’d have to agree.  Not that I care.  And not that it will stop me from undoubtedly making more.

For anyone who has been intruiged as to what I made, here it is:

Yes, it’s far from perfect; the edges are jagged and I can’t be bothered tweaking them any more (not yet, anyway). But come on, admit it; that’s just schmexy.

And that is what I’ve done today. That’s it. I feel so bad.

Also, the last thing I would want to do is rile up a horde of Twi-hard (Twi-Hard = Twilight + Die Hard — Bruce Willis would be rolling in his grave, if he was dead.) fans.  And they will call me jealous.  Not that I could argue that; of course I’m freaking jealous.  Do they not realise how difficult getting a book, any book, published is?  And Meyer has swooped down and just plucked it right out of thin air.  I’ve read her bio about the first book’s journey to publication, and even she herself admits it is largely down to luck. I am jealous of Stephenie Meyer’s luck.  There, I said it.

So I don’t comment on the quality of the book because everyone is entitled to their own opinion, everyone has different tastes, and no, Twilight is not to everyone’s (Yes, I have read it. No, I didn’t like it). Before Meyer’s work came under scrutiny, the big one that came under attack was Rowling with Harry Potter.  At least no one is trying to claim that Twilight is a book for everyone, like they did with Harry Potter.

So what’s all this “commenting” worth?

Well, this week, I have mostly been distracted by the YouTube video series, simply called “Alex Reads Twilight”:

Alex Day, a musician and one of these “YouTube Sensations” has decided to provide us, the viewer, a running commentary on his experiences reading Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. Before I even started watching them, I had a feeling they would be good.  I did not imagine they would be head-in-your-hands-while-simultaneously-crying-and-choking kind of good.

Suffice to say, I have watched all those that are available (takes about half an hour), and he’s not even finished yet.  I would suggest you not only watch them, but also check out the whole series, and don’t forget to subscribe, so you can catch the rest when they’re out.

Also check out his other videos. He’s a series vlogger, and his editing style is choppy in the way that is very easy to entertain even those with the shortest attention span.

His music’s not bad, either.

This week, I have been mostly distracted by Adult Swim’s Robot Unicorn Attack flash game.

While simple in essence, this game becomes more frustrating the further along you progress.

It is ridiculously addictive, so…go get addicted!

Game Link

I don’t proclaim to be much of a techie, although it’s generally assumed that that’s what I am.  Family from the four corners tend to call on me when they need an e-mail setting up, when their internet is down, or they want to learn about “this ‘ere Facebook”.

I don’t know the first thing about the Internet, or much technology in general, other than “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”, and I don’t particularly want to.  But god damn if I don’t like to tinker.

No, scratch that, I love to tinker.  ‘Effing LOVE to tinker. Web sites, HTML and the other jazzy bits that go into web design (but not Flash, no, no, no, no, thank you), learning how the codes come together to create a ballsy site, I love it all.  That’s why my site’s never the same for longer than 5 minutes. I’m a mega nerd like that.

So yeah, back to tonight. I decided I wanted to be able to have image galleries for my blog.  That is, you click on a thumbnail picture or a text link and it gives a bigger picture. Sounds simple, right?

I started at 17:30. By 19:00, I’d cracked open the wine. It’s now 20:00 and I finally have it right. It’s still not right, but I’m not going to tell you exactly what’s wrong with it, because you’ll never guess unless you’re an absolute pedant, which I’m going to guess you’re not.

And to be mega nerdy, today I learned:

• There are different types of permalinks within a blog. The ones I am using now are commonly known as “Pretty” permalinks.
• A .htaccess file can be copied from a subdirectory to be used to make adjustments to permalinks within a blog when they’re misbehaving.
• Site cookies tend to reset and cause all kinds of hubbub if you reload pages too quickly while making adjustments.
• Smultron is actually a very powerful little HTML editor for the Mac, and is far superior to that NVU thing.
• The WordPress Lightbox plugin is ridiculously easy to setup for image galleries, unless the theme you’re using at the time happens to have a conflict within the Javascript.
• I never want to learn Javascript.

That just about covers it.  Think I’ll finish my wine and retreat back into the hole I crawled out of now.

Twilight Plasters or 'Band-Aids'

I don’t even know where to start.

No really, I can’t, I just…nothing even comes close to…words escape me.

It does make you wonder what might be next:

Who's for Twilight Toilet Roll?

Or how about Twilight sanitary towels, maybe?

Oh, the possibilities! Doesn’t bear thinking about, really.

Still, all the fangirls would probably go apeshit over the towels, especially if his face was on the pads….EW EW EW, totally just grossed myself out there.

I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

I am ashamed.

A few years ago, I decided that a PC wasn’t doing what I wanted. I actually suspect (and blame) Scrivener had a large part of my decision to finally invest in a Mac. Plus one of my student friends had a Mac, and it was an all-singing, all-dancing, display of everything I ever wanted and would ever want out of a computer.

I took the plunge and bought my MacBook, installed Scrivener and sat there, gloated, for weeks at how amazing everything was on it. I could make web sites on it! Never mind that I could already make web sites on my PC, shush, this was something else. I could do everything I wanted to do on my PC, and it was just so much prettier!

About two, maybe three months into the honeymoon period of said MacBook, I started to get my first problems. When I booted it, occasionally I would get a folder with a question mark in it. This is supposed to be a very bad thing within the Apple Circle. Basically, it’s like something’s wrong with your brain, that kind of serious. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. That was about it. So after a little while, I sent it to the Authorised Apple Repair Center, where they fitted it with a shiny new hard drive. I lost a few chapters of Divided They Fall I was working on at that point, but it wasn’t the end of the world. And everything was great again. For a bit.

You would think that at this point, having seen how unstable a platform this machine was, I would have taken precautions and set up some kind of (or any) backup routine.

I didn’t.

I continued happily for a while, until eventually, about 18 months ago, I started to get another problem with my MacBook, which I now call the “Confused Restart”. Basically, whenever I booted up, it would get to a point and then tell me it needed restarting. In the beginning, it would do it about 3 times then come on. I learned all kinds of useless stuff about Macs at this point, the fact that you could reset your RAM by hitting a key combination the main hallejulia at this point, since it seemed to work.

In any case, it came to a point where it wouldn’t boot at all from the drive, and I had to take it back to the repair centre (out of warranty, this time), only to find that their official diagnosis was “we don’t know what the hell’s up with it”.

They replaced the hard drive again. I lost a large amount of Divided They Fall this time. I whined a lot about this at the time, but of course looking back it’s only a reminder to how important backups actually are, so in hindsight, it was still my fault.

You cannot rely on technology to do anything on your behalf. You have to have something set in place for if when something goes wrong.

In any case, the repair centre charged me close to £100 to “repair” the MacBook. Within a month, the problems were back, and me–being a pussy–didn’t take it back demanding that they look at it again without charging me.

So I abandonded the MacBook and looked into eBaying it. I also bought a MacMini ( I still wanted–and by this point was quite addicted to–Scrivener). Then, one evening, I was going through my boot up routine (consisted of boot up, restart, restart, restart, RAM reset, retart, restart, boot), when the cat, Neo, decided it would be fun to sit on the MacBook. By this point of course, I had learned the importance of backups and invested however much it was at the time for a USB hard drive, so I didn’t care of whether or not the cat (wet from the night out chasing field mice or whatever) sat on it.

To my surprise, the MacBook came on the first time, with the cat sat grooming itself with its furry backside rooted on the keys. After pushing Neo straight off, I turned the machine off and tried it again.

Same message, “You need to restart your computer”.

I rested my arm on the keys and rebooted.

It came on, starting with its usual chirpy “I’m alive” note and starting into the operating system.

I was practically crying at this point, I’m sure.

So now, I have to start my MacBook (the machine that, through it all, is still my machine of choice when it comes to anything writing or anything vaguely resembling writing) by leaning on it.

Yes, quirky isn’t the word.

Oh, and PROGRESS! Yes I’m not just babbling on about my lack of technological prowess.

This is what I have stopped doing in order to waffle about my writing tools.

I’ll get back to it now.