The Bog of Lost Scholars

30 August 2003

Clandestine Project Done

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 18:16

Finished the Clandestine Project today! (Note: If you gave birth to me, and today’s date is before Christmas 2003, don’t read the rest of this post.)

A general appeal to all needlework designers: It’s okay if you want to use random musical symbols in a stylized design that’s clearly not supposed to be an actual piece of music. However, if you are designing a pattern to look like actual music, get a fricking musician to look at it and tell you if it’s reasonable! The people who make these patterns are likely to give them to musicians, and musicians who read music will laugh their heads off at music prints that look like atonal music with wild metrical experimentation.

As for this piece, I just threw out the notes they had and replaced it with the notes for Engleburg, an appropriate hymn tune for the theme. In retrospect, I should’ve checked the music first because I have the measures starting on a different beat than most arrangements have it, sigh, but at least you can tell what the piece is!

Pirates of the Caribbean

Filed under: Film and Media — Castiron @ 18:10

Well, I’d thought I wasn’t going to see another movie in-theater until Return of the King (and when, when are they going to have trailers for the thing?), but it occurred to me while trying to decide what to do with a kid-free vacation day that seeing a movie is one thing I can’t do with my son around. So, since so many people whose movie opinions I trust raved about Pirates, I decided to see it.

Yep, it’s reasonably deserving of the hype.

I don’t have any detailed comments on it, other than that it took me a while to get into it, and there were a couple places where I was thinking “okay, enough fight scenes, can we get back to the PLOT, please?”, but overall it was witty and humorous and greatly entertaining. I don’t know if I’ll buy it for home use or not (it’s definitely NOT one I’d want to watch with my son around before he’s, oh, sixteen), but I do want to see it again eventually.

(Good thing there wasn’t a shield in any of the fight scenes, though, or I’d have been shouting “okay, elf-boy! surf’s up!”)

28 August 2003

One Way to Sell Textbooks

Filed under: Publishing and Writing — Castiron @ 12:01

An Omaha, Nebraska bookstore has ended its free beer with textbook purchase offer, after complaints from university officials.

(Now, wouldn’t that be a great way to boost book sales? Maybe the Press needs to open a brewery. “Order any Latin American literary criticism monograph, and get a free bottle of Old Longhorn Ale!”)

A Sudden Insight about Trim

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 10:36

The true purpose of those ribbon trims isn’t just to make the outfit look interesting; it’s so you can firmly sew down the facings without advertising the seam.

Or at least, wearing the purple batik vest again, I’ve realized that this is the one reason I’d use the stuff! Dratted facings turning inside-out….

26 August 2003

Big Hunk o’ Crockpot Beef

Filed under: Food — Castiron @ 13:08
  • One slab of beef roast (what kind? I dunno. I just grab whatever’s cheapest, and it’s all worked so far)
  • Some quantity of sliced-up onion (sometimes I use one big one; sometimes a bunch of little ones; depends on what’s on hand)
  • Wine (or sherry, depending on what’s on hand)

In the morning, put the beef and onions in the crockpot. Glug the booze over it. (I’m probably using about half a cup to a cup.) Plug in the crockpot, set it on “low”, and go to work.

In the evening, eat part of the roast and some of the onions. Put the rest of the roast in the fridge, to be used in roast beef salad, and pour the onions and the broth into a container, to be nuked later with a slab of bread and some cheese for quasi-French Onion Soup.

Bad Billboard Design

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 11:07

A general notice to all organizations who try to get their message across via billboards:

Make the damn thing readable!

When I am driving by your billboard, I do not have the time or the attention to try to make out what that closely-spaced small font says. (That’s for you, fatherhood support organization — the slogan was really nifty, but the only reason I was able to read it was because I drove by it thirty times, and had to wait at a red light pretty often.) And red on black is really a bad idea. (Hear that, group sponsoring what I assume is an anti-child-abuse ad but can’t tell for sure because I still can’t read the text?)

Folks, you cannot take your magazine ad and just blow it up to billboard size. The font needs to be reasonably large and well-spaced. The font color needs to contrast with the background. You have about two seconds to get your message across before your audience has passed, and if I, a speed reader who can finish HP5 in less than six hours, have trouble reading your sign, I can guarantee you that any non-recreational-reader (not to mention anyone with a reading disability) isn’t even going to bother.

20 August 2003

On My Writing

Filed under: Publishing and Writing — Castiron @ 20:16

It probably says something about me that I spend lots of blogspace talking about my crafts, my random opinions, and so forth, and very little talking about my fiction writing. Yeah, most of the Internet population doesn’t give a damn, but most of the Internet population doesn’t give a damn about my hand-knit socks either, and that doesn’t stop me. And unlike the crafts, the fiction is actually intended to have a wide audience eventually!

(But it’s currently unpublished. That may be why I’m hesitant to talk too much about it. I’m not Bujold or Brust or Kay, with crowds of fans eager for news of what’s coming up.)

So, what can I say about my writing projects? I’ve got one novel sitting in a slushpile; I need to query some agents about said novel and its sequel. My writing gravitates more towards novel-length than short-story length; I think it actually takes me longer to write decent short stories than decent novels. But I’ve got a finished short story starting its rounds, and another one that I’m wavering on whether to revise before sending about again, and a few more in various stages of incompletion.

Heck, this is boring me.

Or I could ramble about my characters, but until the stories are published, y’all can’t exactly meet any of them, and in spite of John Scalzi’s example, I’m not ready to post my novels online for general reading while I still have a decent hope of publication. (I suppose I could try it with some of the short stories, though. But if they’re not good enough for publication, that’s not going to help me with the pros, and if they are, well….)

Okay, take Veikko Amundsen, a character in one of the short stories, mentioned in slushpile book, and will appear in Book 4 once the collection of scenes merges into a book. Interesting guy, in my opinion; snarky sense of humor, tempered and exacerbated by a neurological disorder that’s ultimately going to kill him. Good at translating what’s said into what’s meant, at least in the cultures he’s familiar with. Dual citizen of two worlds, and tries to make it mean something besides an extra passport. Minor noble on Concordia, though he doesn’t inherit the title until he’s in his fifties. He works for the Concordian Ministry of Trade in their External Affairs division — essentially, he’s a spy, and if I can drag out enough plots, I’d like to write a mess of SF mysteries featuring him. He’s part of a major social scandal that wreaks havoc on his marriage and costs him his job at Trade and his long-running friendship with his father-in-law; eventually, he’ll think it was almost worth it.

But I can’t really talk about him and make him sound interesting. That paragraph’s just a collection of facts. I hope I do a better job of making him interesting in the actual manuscript….

Happy Birthday J.D.!

Filed under: People, Culture, and Society — Castiron @ 19:08

Today’s the birthday of my good bud from middle school and first writing critic, J.D. May her cats be happy, her cases entertaining, and her cactus ever healthy.

Magic, Austen, and Austenesque Magic

Filed under: The Castiron Reading Journal — Castiron @ 18:43

Recent reading:

  • Robin McKinley, Beauty. Given the choice between Beauty‘s castle and Rose Daughter’s, I’d much prefer Beauty‘s; it seems much friendlier, and I’d love to visit that library and see if they’ve got the long-awaited third Damar book! (I have the sneaking suspicion that if I were in that castle, my room would be full of shelves of funky yarns in bright colors, needlepoint and cross-stitch frames on the walls, a window seat with a frame stand…. And of course the magical CD player that produces Scandanavian folk rock, Celtic music, classical, or 80s hits depending on my mood, and lots of books, and lots of writing materials.)
  • Jane Austen, Emma. Not sure if I’m starting a full Austen reread yet, but I figured that if I did one, it’s about time I started with Emma instead of delaying it. Emma still isn’t one of my favorite Austens, but that’s sort of like saying that the liqueur-filled Leonidas chocolates aren’t my favorite Leonidas. The book definitely grows on me as I reread it, though I have to grit my teeth up through Mr. Elton’s proposal; after that, I like it much better.
  • Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Sorcery and Cecilia. This book’s been on my Alexlit recs list since I started using the thing in 1996, and I like many works by these authors, so now that it’s back in print I of course had to buy myself a copy. It’s well worth it. Yeah, it’s not a deep story, but it’s a wonderful piece of chocolate with a whipped truffle center. The cousins’ voices are entertaining, the love interests are intriguing, and the villains are suitably villainous.

15 August 2003

Surrounded By Fabric

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 17:37

One fourth of the Clandestine Project’s border is done. I haven’t done much with any of the other counted-work projects; a few stitches on the Crane, and that’s it.

I’ve knitted a few more inches on the sock; I’m nearing the point where I start the toe. (And then I have to make the second sock! Argh! Next time, I really should get out the other set of #2 needles and make both socks at once; makes it a lot easier to keep track of the counts!)

Slowly, I’m wading through the results of the Great Pattern Cutout Frenzy. The two Simplicity 8878 vests are almost done — one’s at the wearable stage, and the other just needs the sides joined to be there. (Then there’s the inside lining seam to be finished, but if I’m lazy I can go for months before I get around to it. I still should find some way to make pockets of it.) The vest from the new pattern is coming together; it’s taking longer to deal with the facings than to do all the rest of the sewing, I think. (And in a stunning example of how you can get anything done when you’re not supposed to be doing it, I cut out a second vest from that pattern and have already finished it. Now I’m thinking, as long as I’ve got purple thread in the machine, why not go ahead and sew the jumper together as well?) I’ve finally cut out and fused all the blasted interfacing for the shirts, so once I’m done with the vests, I can load up the blue thread and start sweatshopping.

Meanwhile, the poor quilt sits in an unhappy lump saying, “Wait, what about me? Weren’t you just a few days away from finishing me? I’m sad and lonely here! I want my quilting to be finished! I want my edges done! I want to sleep on a bed!” And I’m nodding to it as I move it from chair to floor and back to chair, saying “yes, I know, I know, just as soon as I figure out how in the heck I’m going to quilt the rest of you, I’ll get around to it….”

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