Happy New Year!

It's till few hours to midnight in my part of the World, but in other's the new year is already there. As I will be on a party let's start early then: HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!

I hope that this year will be spend more on writing than the year before... 2011 wasn't my best year, but in writing topics was quite successful. I finished NaNoWriMo - writing 52K of words, second longest fic I ever wrote (not finished yet, but soon). I got some drop in ideas after that, going back to "Peter's Pan Shadow" trying to salvage as much as possible and write new parts. I was partially successful, and then I was hit with something and produced "Home for Christmas" and "Toddler in (stolen) tiara", oh and I put my work on AO3 (yeey got invite early!)... let's add to that "Whiskey Barrel" my NaNo story is slowly, slowly getting some updates - in my head for now, but it's starting to get some more shape, better shape, I hope.

"Peter's Pan Shadow" is shadowing my thoughts, it's also slowly getting new shape, and I really, really should start writing them down... I started writing another piece of "Neal by any other name" verse, and some other new fic, with a temporary (or not) title, we'll see how well that will work.

So Happy New Year - I wish for you and others health and happiness. For myself so many things... but most important health, happiness and writing muse ;)

Template

New template on the blog. As blogger change something and I can't apply the reviewed last template I will temporary use one of blogger designated ones. We'll see how long that will take... as temporary solutions are usually those that keep longest...

The lost message

I was sure I wrote a post about finishing NaNo...

I was sure the template I use will work without problems...

Seems me being sure wasn't enough - I think I lost the WriMo post... and I have no idea when the template just got loose... I'll fix that, promise as soon as I figure out why it's not working anymore and how to fix it, eventually I will find an updated template.

About NaNo.. I did finish it with over 50K on 27th November, and let me tell you it was a very elevating experience. Of course now I have absolutely no push or pull to write, which is bad as I just published first chapter of my new fanfic... it was in the works before November, and as usual over few writing blocks, but now it's out in the open. It's  not my best work, but I think it's decent. Well see as I have only part one from three parts done, and some of part two is ready too...

Till later!

NaNoWriMo Update

NaNo the ultimate challenge for anyone that like to write and decide to take it on is exhausting, really. The longest story I wrote so far had around 20K of words.... and it took me over four months to write, with several writing blocks in between.

For NaNo the challenge is to  write 50K words in maximum 30 days... impossible? Actually not, I'ts day ten and I wrote yesterday less than the NaNo standard expected 1667 words, but still I'm ahead of the average plan. Why? Because I planned to write 2500 words a day and till now skipped only four times, two of them were recovered during the weekend when I simply wrote whatever count I needed to hit my goal. As I wasn't able to do it also for the last two days it seems there will be need for some recovery during the weekend.

Current lessons from WriMo...

1. Having an outline is helping a lot
2. No problem that I had gaps in the outline, my story decided to write itself a little and suddenly something that was in the outline in Chapter 3 was written as late as in Chapter 5
3. If you let your mind wonder and just write the story and characters will come to you - like a pair of detectives that I never through about when making an outline and characters list
4. It's possible to write 2500 words daily on normal working day
5. It take's more to write the words than I through it will. Taking into consideration I was practicing on 750words.com for three months and I knew how fast I write, it's still slower... maybe because I think to much?
6. Thinking about your story is good, editing it right away - nope. For NaNo you need to squash or even kill your inner editor to survive. For now I allow my editor to just mumble around and fix some obvious mistakes when I make a read a day after. And allow to think that some scenes will need to be moved, but only after I have everything written.
7. I'm on 18K words right now almost 19K, and still 31K to go... and I still believe I can do it! 

Writing challange

This year is writing year, since February when my attention was stolen by "White Collar" I wrote six fanfics going from 340 words to little over 20000... all in English, yeah that's strange. Then I discovered the 750words.com site on which you write every single day your 750 words... I started in July, struggled in August and took up on a challenge in September - writing every single day, yay! And of course I flunked October just right in the beginning. Most probably cos I got huge writers block and half of September spent on rants instead of writing the fiction. Well that happens and just sometimes you should take a break from writing, so I did, and I'm back at least partially - not to writing itself but my muse starts to push some ideas in my direction.

Also in August I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo in November - it's National (International already) Novel Writing Month - you got one month to write a 50,000 words novel. No matter the genre, original or fanfiction, plot or no plot just sit and write.. oh and correct mistakes later. That was one of the reasons I started  writing every day to get the feeling if I can do it. To meet the goal of 50,000 words it's approximately 1667 words to be written daily, totally doable - it take's me around two hours to do it when I write in my "think about story speed" which is currently somewhere between 20-26 words per minute (yes, yes I'm numbers maniac). So not so bad as I also fix the most important things at the same time, I figure that I should be able to write the daily goal of 1600-1800 and hit some more at the weekends.

The only obstacle in my path is as usually the idea, I got something. Since I saw my brothers photo I knew I should write a story to it and decided it should be for NaNo. I allowed the idea to brew a little and came to conclusion it has to be a fanfic... well yes it's an easy way out but I do know that writing original story will be to challenging for that one. So I got that, few days ago I came up with the title "Whiskey Barrel" and now I have to go on with the plot, that is still in the works. To get 50,000 the plot has to be complicated and at least had two-three additional plots to run the story - there is something I learned from writing "The Hot Cold Case" there has to be something more. Of course jumping between plots, relate them and so one is difficult but hey no one says writing itself is easy.

Plus the additional characters, oh my I totally forgot about them, ech yes and writing a short script of what should happen and when, it helped with THCC and should help here, no matter that in the end it was somehow different. The point was to have a frame of the story and that was helpful - for short fics I don't need one, for the long ones it's very very good to have it.

So the title is there, the cover is there, the main idea is starting to raise it's head... now to work on some details and I should be ready to start writing on 1st November. Which me luck!

Cyber life

Today news spreading all over the world is dead of Steve Jobs. Visionary  of current mobile business, and not only phones but also tablets and overall way we look on communication between people. Who, beside him and few other people that now create things, would have imagine that we will all have phones in our pockets, able to make photos, calculate complicated things faster than space shuttles and able to surf the invisible network. We live in fast pacing world, going faster and faster with every minute - so lets stop for a moment and look around.

Stop.

Google offensive

Long awaited, at least by me, changes to Bogger have come. Google is re-designing all of their tools to follow the same design as Google+. Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Translate, Search all already followed with the experimental switch - for all those that want to test new design a link shows up to switch. If you don't like it you can go back to traditional view.


I like the new ones. Smooth, easy, clear. That's what I like. It's little big - designed more for big screens that my small 12" laptop but it's not something that interferes much. When I started to use G+ I read quite quickly that there will be also change coming to Blogger, and finally there it is!


It's follows the sleek look that other products now have, uses the same clear types, options and settings. Cool stuff. Stats now are easy to see right away on dashboard, but the screen to write your post start incredibly small... 


Oh..I just wrote enough for the "page" I started writing on to automatically extend to a "full page view" - cool!!


The posts settings are on right hand column easy to access without need to scroll down the screen you are writing on. And the automatic change of the page is fantastic, I like to see what I'm writing without need to have to move back and forth. What I would like to see would be a word counter that shows also on the settings how many words I've produced... but hey for that I can use 750words.com page that I use anyway for my daily writing exercise. 


Playing around with options - most have the new look, some not yet - I clicked something in statistics page and found myself back in the old blogger view. Otherwise seems that first day of launch was quite stressful. 


On other Google news the Offline Gmail, Docs and Calendar are back! Google announced yesterday that they are rolling out the functionality back based on HTML5. For Gmail you will need an app from google web store, but it seems calendar and docs can work without it. I will see cos for now I can't find either the app or the option in the docs to use them offline. In the past there was a tool named google gears that allowed to work on some of them offline, now there is an app to install into Chrome. Need to research if it's also available for other web browsers.

Straw enthusiasm

Straw enthusiasm is probably my biggest flaw. I often find thing's I like, got all my attention into it and burn and crash some time later completely forgetting, or coming back seldom if at all. 

What we call civilization

In old beautiful days of my childhood my father took us (my brother and I) on bicycle trips across Poland. I don't remember much from the earliest trips as I was from four to seven years old, but I do remember the later trips when I was around twelve. That thing western countries call civilization looked completely different on this side of the Berlin Wall. 

Million bookmarks management

In the normal using of internet you see interesting stuff and want to keep it in your sight - be it a blog, a news clip or something you want to read later. What you will usually do is to add the page to bookmarks, then another one. Then another and suddenly there are so many of them you loose orientation what did you add them for, and in most cases you can't find that one you really need right now.

Strange friday

That was one strange day - all day... first, since we moved to 5th floor it's so silent in the office that I almost fell asleep, the strange weather and not much to do didn't really help.

Internet stuff - save youtube video

As home "go-to-IT-guru" I find myself often searching internet for useful tools that help the overall internet usage experience. My favorites are add-ons to web browsers and sites that make available some of locked content.


Newly discovered tool is - savetube if you want to have one of youtube movies on your desktop or just the music from it, this nice and easy in use site will help you to do the magic trick.

Cultural Thursday

Thursday the magic day of "museum entry free" will be another part of do something outside home program. Which works quite nice for me as I have exactly 1 hour to visit a chosen exhibition before the museum closes the gates.

Today it was the "Amber - Baltic Sea Gold"

Enter....

There is a family expression that describes a moment in which you have a lack of understanding of obvious steps... to explain it better let me use an example from which the expression came from.


My genius mom was the first one to have internet at work, she used it quite well till one moment... she is writing to me on gadu asking why the hell some site is not opening... to minutes later she writes again "I forgot to push Enter..." 


So now, when we forget something completely obvious we call it "enter!". 


I used it also to name one of my late blogs - 40+Enter was supposed to be a blog to help people over 40 to work with internet and computer (okay for younger ones too). Unfortunately it was a classic example of straw enthusiasm (quite typical for me... so let's hope this blog will not end the same way). The blog didn't survive long, but hey I have a new blog and I can actually just add the computers/internet topic in. So from now on the tag: enter will be added to all computer/internet related posts.

Slow me down

There is something seriously wrong with network for the past few days. At work surfing lately is composed out of: go to the site, see error message, click on refresh, tadam the site is working - weird. Internet aside, local network (if you can call EMEA wide network local) also has it's humors, one of the files opened for over 10 minutes! Slow internet I can live with, slow company network not so much!


Strange thing is internet at home is doing exactly the same thing - go to, error, refresh, read... hmm need to test a theory that maybe it's Chrome fault and not Internets... but that would be so wrong on so many levels...

"Your mom will not use it...."

Since Google launched their social platform Google+ (or G+ as I saw in net), I'm curiously reading blogs and internet news to track the revolution. One of articles used the above sentence, I don't really agree. 


My Mom is a Genius :)

Eye catchers

Window shopping is great past timer if you are bored out of your mind, have no money, or frankly when you just pass by on some other business.
New category of fun: eye-catchers!! You know you will never buy it, but it looks: fantastic, hilarious, funny, awful, cute, kawaii etc. 


It's also another way to use the photo camera you have in your phone... cos for what else could you use it?? huh?

Od Odds and ends

Od Odds and ends

Hunting the cat - Reika

Od Kociaki u nieseryjnej

Saturday lazy day

Saturday started unusually early. After exhausting week, I fell asleep on the couch at Friday evening instead of writing another part of fanfic. After waking up I decided bed is much more comfortable and simply changed the places, with no real conviction I will sleep again soon. You know how it is, you fell asleep during the day and then toss and turn in the night. This time I just slept, quite long, but still waking up at 7AM. I did standard home cleaning, cat caring, and personal fun and by 12PM I was done with everything including stocking the fridge and drinking coffee.

Then was time for “dolce farniete” which lasted only two hours as I decided it’s time to get myself out of the house.

Secesja Cafe

Thursday marked a day when we finally found time to go for a coffee with Syl. It took us almost a year to agree on a moment when neither of one was working. Syl has moving work times, and in the past year I was in the office for 10-12 hours a day, neither setup was promising. That’s one of the problems in today world, you never have time for anything! Anyway finally we were able to match our calendars and have some free time to talk.

The Secesja Cafe is something new I spied on my way through city. Hidden a little bit on the way to City Hall in one of old townhouses, decorated nicely have not only chairs but also comfortable sofas? (not sure as it’s something old, like a bench but with pillows...), plus nice ladies behind the counter. It also doubles as a restaurant with “sale” prices between 1 pm and 3 pm, so if you seek a new place for lunch take a look, oh and it’s on Jana Pawła II street. Prices are not so reasonable, but the coffee and cake I tried were worth every penny.

We talked for hours and I hadn’t so much fun in ages - one of the topics was writing, cos I’m thing bad person that really needs to hear about opinions about my creations. The strange thing is I still can’t write as good as I could tell the stories in person. One of the ideas for this blog is to tell the stories in writing that I can tell in words and have the same effect. The strange thing is, it works also the other way around - I’m not able to tell the same stories I wrote...

Daily craziness

Yesterday evening I had fantastic occasion to talk to a professional jewelry maker - not your girl friend playing with some ready stones and clips, but real professional working in silver and gems etc. Friends of my parents came for dinner and John was very kind to answer all of my crazy questions - especially as I asked about forging gems, creating artificial ones and forging jewelry :) I made million notes and it will be extremely helpful for future fanfics, plus I have his email and can ask whatever I need more.

I’ve also got this lovely tin of Catbury chocolate fingers - I love tins! And first through was... “Neal is of course stealing the chocolate fingers...”

And today was finally - Move day! Hurray... till I packed all my things in a neat package - cabinet filled with all precious office necessary stuff... computer on top and I’m ready to go. Small struggle by the entrance as the mud mat is great for mud, bad for the cabinets wheels, it’s always stuck. And then waiting for the elevator, only one as the other was broken for the past week (yeap that’s our fantastic office building). And waiting, and waiting, and.... when the door finally opened I had a unique opportunity to view the top of elevator with all the equipment and two guys working on it. Resigned I come back to my place and moved the computer to work a little, five minutes later the facility guy come back and complained I didn’t move yet... and that the elevators are working, d’oh!

New office is very nice! It has big windows, gives lots of light and the boss agreed to let us use his terrace as “break terrace”.

And with the all movement, excitement and additional work I forgot about a call I was hosting, thank programmers for Outlook reminder option!

Morning rant...

Seriously? It’s July! Summer, hellooooo it should be warm in the morning, not freezing my fingers off. And the heat attack that will come after eleven, really? That’s how it will work this year? I don’t agree, nope, not at all...


Ooo and the facility guy at work just told us we are moving, tomorrow, again. Yay finally, we just moved two weeks ago to other floor and I was waiting impatiently for the final move - fifth floor will be ours (well 1/5 of it, but hey it's something...)

Catch the cat - with camera

Od Kociaki u nieseryjnej

Od Kociaki u nieseryjnej

As usual catching the cats with camera is a challenge - this time the mini camera in my phone was used.

Accounts fever

I’m usually quite happy with google tools - but few days ago I made a gigantic mistake of allowing myself to use ‘Multiple-sing in option’. I have few google accounts, for reasons not needed to be explained - yes I’m a spy... anyway.... to ease my life I decided to use a multiple sing-in and only switch accounts when needed.

Disaster number one: although google provides notification - in red so you don’t miss it - that only some of services will work, I happily marked everything “yes, I’m aware” and then cursed when docs opened always on the wrong one, as for some reasons it was marked default. Even when I logged in first with the other one, and following logic it should be the default... right??? HELP! I love google but really it’s not like them to make it sooo NOT intuitive.

Disaster number two: the option to sing out should work only on the one account I didn’t want to use... in theory. In practice every time I used sing out (instead of sing out of all accounts) I landed on the lovely page - to use google services please sing in. Agggrrhhh!!!

Before I’ve been using three web browsers to keep the main accounts separate and logged in always. Now when I use only Chrome I’m back to sing in/sing out dance that I just limited to two accounts to spare myself some headache.

Having several accounts is cool, as long as you don’t have to switch between them every day - it helps to direct most of email to only one of them, but it doesn’t work with other google tools. Pity.

All in all with Google implementing lots of changes due to Google+ campaign I hope they will fix some of this strange things - like why the links bar is not the same everywhere, or why blogger seems to stop in design in pre-beta-era...

The weather from hell is good for reading

While I was obsessed with weather for the past few days, just after the concert I completely forgot that they still forecast rain for weekend. It was actually pouring when I woke up, unusually late for me (well unusually for my new habit of waking at 6 AM, but normal for my old habits of sleeping till noon), but I still think it's only fair in that weather. 


Deciding I'm too lazy to move around I took a book to finish reading - Fuchsia Dunlop " Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper" was brought to me by mom last week. It's not only a cook book, hmm it's more like a dairy, story about China and Fu Xia (her Chinese name) adventures starting from early '90. Through her eyes you can see incredible amount of kinds of food that do exist, and how the country changed through the years. It's kinda sad that with so amazing culinary history the country is slowly going the same way as most European countries do - into full McDonalysation. Fast food, without taste, completely unhealthy, and filling only temporary. 


The book despite describing tone of foods I would never, ever even try made me hungry!! Very, very worth reading also for amazing number of historical information about China and really unique view of someone that is currently "half-Chinese" (after spending fifteen years on and off in China, and immersing herself in culture so much that she is speaking about Sichuan as hers)


Read it!!

Live Concert - Chris Botti

Wow! That was amazing, simply amazing. I was exited for a whole week before the concert, watched youtube movies, listened to the music on my ipod and fell in love with the interpretations of Chris Botti. The ticked was a surprise gift, as my aunt asked if I wanted to go I didn't even understood exactly who will be playing. After browsing all available concerts I got only one favorite - and that was IT! All exited I kept my fingers crossed as the weather lately is playing games and you never know what will happen sun, rain, thunderstorm... all three?? 


Thursday luckily wasn't rainy, although little bit cold and windy. The queue to enter the Duke's Castle - where the concert was - looked like a snake, looooong but quickly going. The main courtyard was full of people - and then the magic started. Chris with a band and two guests, what an evening.


The first guest was violinist Caroline Campbell. WOW. She was fantastic, never I have seen someone that worked violin in such way (hmm May something doesn't count it was in TV and this was LIVE! oh let's not forget Nigel Kennedy, but he is now our treasure so hands off :P). I took a look on her site and my heart fulled with even more pride for our city. She played with best orchestra's in the world, in famous Carnegie Hall etc. etc. And there she was playing in Szczecin. Nice, very, very nice.


The second guest was Lisa Fisher - amazing voice that was fantastically in tune with the trumpet of Chris. There were few funny moments - first when she very flirty lost her shawl on the beginning. Second personally for me - when she was singing "Italia" in Italian with american accent... sorry but after listening to original Italian and Italians for past five years I couldn't do anything more than smile.


I could go, on and on what a magical show it was, but well get yourself a ticket for one of Chris concerts and you will get it too (He is back in states next week). Or maybe not, as he one admitted that Poland is his favorite place to play. There was one additional funny moment, that also showed how really good person he is. With Caroline on scene he told a story about her violin and how much it takes to play it on such world-class level. He asked a reporter he spoke with before to translate what he will say to Polish. When he explained that Caroline plays normally on a very expensive violin 1-5 million of dollars worth - the translation was "that kind you have to sell your kidney for" the public exploded with laughter, I have to admit he almost kept his head cool as his next move was to ask her "okay now you have to translate them to me". It was coool.


Yep if he is in Szczecin next year I will be there. I even want buy the "Italia" CD - just need to wait to fill my list for shopping from Amazon, as really Poland is strange country, it's cheaper to buy in UK Amazon than in our local AND internet shops....

Social Media Google+

Google starts marketing on their new social page attempt, I will say that I'm intrigued (more than I was with buzz or wave). I especially like the idea of circles that you choose to distribute content too, how many times any of you had to moderate your Facebook post to make it "appropriate" for everyone in your friends list? How many things you had to omit, or simply not share as choosing only few recipients was too difficult. Let see what the new attempt will bring. 


Google+ review on wired.com

Overall changes to look and feel of google changes - they added new look on the link bar (it's now black) and I love it, the search navi pane changed from colorful to gray, which I like too. All in all yes I'm google enthusiast, and I keep my fingers crossed for their success.

I'm back!

Nieseryjna is back - in English this time, let's see what will be the end effect.