Monthly Archives: November 2017

Back at writing, for a while

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I did not do much when it comes to writing since some late October. The reasons were mixed, ranging from lack of inspiration through lack of time to problems with computer. Even my thoughts aimed at the story were utterly unproductive.

That finally changed in the last days. I wrote a bit – a page or so – the last week in a short while. What helped me more was the last Saturday, the walk through the misty and gloomy November forests and visiting a museum when reaching the destination. I had some ideas during the walk, which I wrote down shortly after I returned home, just in case.

Today, I hit it hard. After a month of pretty much nothing, I finished the chapter I started writing in late October and two more right after totaling almost 7000 words in some 6 hours. I guess it’ll be a pain when I get to revising it as I tend to make typos in these situations, but I can deal with that. With a bit of luck, I should be able to write a chapter or two tomorrow and have a bit of time for it two days in the next week. It gives me good feeling, and hope that I’ll be with it where I’d like to be at the end of the year.

And if someone would think that my thoughts were organized and focused only on the part of the story I am just writing… NOPE. Some of them (fortunately, most) were, but as it tends to be, some were about what happens much later and some regarding the backstory that happens much earlier and is classified as ‘potential prequel material’. Curse me, right?

The picture of Dorian Gray, perfect November read?

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I don’t even know why I remembered this book, considering I was never too much into classics. But I thought with its content, it might be good fir for the gloomy November days. It was. I took my time with reading it, but enjoyed it all the same. There’s no better time in the year for reading a book about vanity, sinfulness, guilt and regret than it was now.

Since I doubt the point of doing reviews of classics that are well know, this is going to be more like a jumble of highlights and thoughts.

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Look back: A place nice in any season, but best in autumn

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This time, I’ll write a bit about a place I like to visit, and one that I found to be great for seeing the seasons change. But as with any mixed forest, it’s autumn when it truly shines. This post will be about the southern part of ‘Rychlebské hory’ mountain range on CZ-PL border, near the Jeseník and Horní Lipová spa towns.

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Seeking the first snow

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Autumn is quite diverse season. It starts as slightly colder summer, then moves into colorful art for a while before fading to gray. And in the end, it gets a bit white as well. November, by my experience, is one of the worst months for hiking, at least here. Most of the time it’s cloudy and it lacks the color of October. In fact, those are the months I end up returning with my clothes wet and (almost) no photos taken the most, the only decent competition was April 2017. But sometimes it’s not so bad.

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Fantasy thoughts: warrior’s weight

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A few times, I found myself thinking about what would be the total weight of a warrior. People that are deep into history know how much does a suit of armor weight, and same for the weaponry, but what about the character itself?

So, my first thought was, what would be the figure model? Of course even warriors can be different, with more or less muscle mass or density or whatever. So the main thought was what is the figure model for the main character of my future fantasy story? Eventually, I decided that with his less muscle mass and more athletic than bodybuilder figure, hockey player would be good.

As the character in question is two meters tall elf, I was then thinking and searching who is one of the biggest hockey players, my search eventually leading to the Slovakian defensive player Zdeno Chára who is said to be the tallest player in NHL ever with 2,06 meters. Said player is at 116kg, which made me estimate that the slightly shorter fantasy character would be somewhere between 110 and 115 kg of body weight, and ending up somewhere between 140 and 160 kg when fully geared, depending on armor and weapons.

Now, there’s one mentioned character, a legend of the past, that was at 2,2 meters and had the barbarian body, which is closer to bodybuilders, and thus have more muscle mass and thus weight. Now using bodybuilder’s BMI instead of hockey player’s, said character would get to almost 150kg without gear, and close to 200kg with. For someone using full strength for his strikes, someone like that was truly a menacing sight on the battlefields.

Creator’s FAIL update…

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Okay, so after some time, which was much less than I expected, windows offered me (okay, not offered, it started downloading the moment I did “check for updates”) the Creator’s fall update (or what’s the exact wording).

Now before I go on about how that went (though the title gives it away), I need to mention that I was waiting much longer for the spring update, which made sense. My PC is getting close to its 6th birthday (bought after Christmas 2011) with a help of friend as mix-and-match of components to give me stronger where I would need it and save where I would not (student’s budget…). It included said friend’s used HDD (for him, 1TB+ was necessary while for me the old 750GB was at least two times more than enough). Said HDD was the first to be replaced, over time followed by power source and graphic card, so now it’s a mix of components of varying age, up to 6 years.

For that very reason, I expected it’ll take months before the Fall update is offered to me, but it came quite fast. I let it do its thing and as my father was home, I just went to Uni as usual, hoping that when I come back home, it’ll be finished.

Well, it was. But even the very basic functions were failing massively. First, it somehow splintered the account settings, adding a Schrödinger’s copy of my default account that was not visible in settings, but was active, with all my settings now on default for this ‘new’ account. So, I started to put things back in normal, and in time, Start button (including through the Windows key) stopped reacting. Eventually, even folder browsing was starting to behave weirdly, and so I decided to use the restore to roll back the update.

NOPE!

The Schrödinger’s account thing completely blocked that. It asked me to remove the newly created account, sending me to settings – where it could not be seen.

Long story short, three hours later I decided that there’s only one solution: Format the whole C: drive and make clean W10 install, only getting to the spring update and then blocking the Fall (from now on to be called Fail) update. I am now sitting here, installing some essential programs and drivers while waiting for W10-1703 update to download (Not sure which big pack it was, but I know that FAIL is 1709 and I believe the working one before is 1706).

Oh, one thing: before I started the reinstall later today, I went to the hills, my favorite ultimate solution. It cleared my mind, which is nice.

With that, I end this post and go back to installing stuff.

Storytelling thoughts: sacrifices

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Another post when I am thinking about memorable moments from books and films, both fantasy and science-fiction. There are few things that bring strong feelings like character that sacrifices himself or herself, for whatever reason – to allow the others to escape, to take the bad guys with him or any other reason. Sometimes, the character even goes through.

I am now going through some cases that were memorable for me, this time mentioning three from films I saw and enjoyed. I’ll cover books and games in future.

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November daydreaming

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Oh, it’s this time of year again. The wet and dry November, not cold enough for snow, but cold enough to make rain feel more unpleasant than ever. Luckily there was not that much of it. But these darker days tend to take my mind away from the reality.

For the past days, before Blizzcon, they were occupied by speculations about what will be announced, for me especially about World of Warcraft next expansion. Now, a week later, the speculations are dying down, limited to thinking about some more vague statements and what could be true (while there’s still the possibility that it’ll change anyway before beta).

So, my mind moved back where it usually is: my own world. Since the decision I made some three weeks ago to completely change my approach to the beginning of the story, I finally wrote another chapter, and quite a short one. My visible progress is now close to zero, something I don’t expect to improve much in the coming weeks. I am in the stage where more progress is done thinking about how to solve the troubles and plotholes that appeared. I guess I might look even weirder than usually, with the gloomy weather, my wild facial hair and absent-minded neutral face.

I guess that contributes to the fact that I might get to revisit some darker stuff in the coming days, starting with re-read of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ which I plan for the next week. I think with the theme the book has, it’ll be quite nice match for the darker November weather and the brooding mood that comes with it.

Book review: Numen the Slayer

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This is the first time I took part in the “free copy for review” thing. Apart from that, I was reading the author’s comments on creating the book on Goodreads and eventually on his own blog. So, it was slightly different, both because I watched it being written, even if from great distance (curse me for this metaphor).

Yes, I broke my own plan to only do re-reads in the rest of the year within less than two weeks. Anyway, let’s get to the review.

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