Bookmarks - Green

Heya~ Got a new segment I hope to run here on the blog.
But please don't get too attached, you know my track record for keeping projects going... Conlanging and You! and the Gooey Browser are still in the works. Just... slowly.

Regardless, this is my new segment, I want to say weekly, but it will likely be a bit less than that at some points (as I have things to do that stop my reading.)

This segment is called 'Bookmarks'. (So named after a pad of bookmarks my stepfather gave me for christmas). It is my way of reconciling with the last blog, Books in My Arsenal. The old blog was started as a way to keep track of things I had read, but I slowly twisted it into something far too formal for me to keep up with. This, I hope, will stay a lot more casual. A book talk, if you will, in text form. Just enough info to get you to want to read the book, but not enough that you know what it is.

So humour me awhile, and lets get this thing going:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First book to come to light is fantasy novel that I keep mistakenly referring to as a teen novel (which it is not).

The book is called Green, and was written by Jay Lake, who also wrote Mainspring and Escapement, two books that I would like to post here later.

Copyright 2009 and published by Tom Doherty Associates.

Green starts out with no real fantasy elements. A girl is bought from her impoverished father and taken across the sea to be educated. She is taught all the things required of being a great lady, as well as some subvert defensive manoeuvres.

Eventually she breaks out of her bonds as a consort-in-waiting for the duke, and it is then that we fall into the major crux of the story.
There are magics and gods loose in this world, and Emerald cum Green is set to squash these powers.

A great adventure that is difficult to pull out of, Green is a novel with no spells or wizardry, but harkens back to a more spiritual and primal force of nature.

There are many sexual scenes, both overt and implicit, mostly lesbian (as well as a semi-interspecies relation, which seems to be a things of Mr. Lake's), and so I would not recommend this book to those who find those things unpleasant.
(I didn't know on picking it up that it was an other-sexual novel, I swear!)

Green is a character of indignant anger, great strength and strong (if varying) values. She fights for what she believes, and protects those she cares for fiercely.
While not the best role model, she is certainly a strong female presence and the novel should not be counted out when looking for a good back-seat lesbian story.

~*~ Apparently there is a sequel! Endurance (fitting title) by Jay Lake came out in hard cover in Novemeber (2011) and the paperback is due August 2012.

A Gooey Browser

Let me talk to you for a bit about my dream for the future of internets.

This is the first part, as there are many things I want to say, and the future part(s) will have pictures (yay) hand-drawn by me(ohmai).

Let us start with one thing thing, that would in the end be two.

My biggest issue with StumbleUpon is that there is no in-between, between thumbs up and thumbs down. And then that there is no way to sort the things I liked.

I want an all-around net experience, either in website or browser form (though browser would probably be more effective and powerful for what all I want from my prime internetting experience.)

I want something that can divide my screen into... lets call them carrels. Customizable configuration and number.
I can do this a bit with Windows 7 and browser tabs. But I want something a bit more... gooey... than that.

Honestly, the only reason I haven't pursued my idea for this thing any further than just wanting it (even with my limited coding and such knowledge) is that I can't think of any way to build a better tagging engine. At least, not without more people on board with a Dublin Core or similar metadata format. Because if no one does the front-end work of tagging things, or classifying them in some system (Dewey, anyone?), at our present level of AI, no computer is going to be able to automatically sort everything and apply tags accordingly.
That's why things stay hidden on Google, I suppose.

Anyway, the vision, I guess.

I want StumbleUpon's functionality, pulling up random sites

(though it would be nice to somehow get things not suggested by users. Truly random websites. That goes back to not having the AI to accurately determine site content. Can't have the program trying random strings of letters/numbers/etc. without some way to determine what it is looking at. (Though, if it were to do this as a subfunction, not directly in the line of use... Forming it's own bank of websites as well as suggestions... Hmm.) Though it would be nice to allow NSFW as a filter so you could 'stumble' porn only, if you were so inclined)

liking and disliking, but I want a third option of 'seen'. Because there are times when something gets pulled up on Stumble that is mildly interesting, so I wouldn't mind seeing more things like it (so I don't want to dislike it) but not so interesting that I want to keep it (so I don't want to like it) but I don't want it to come up again (since I've seen it.) So a third option allowing me to tell the program that I saw the website, and don't want it added to my likes or dislikes would be good.

I would say that I want it to mark every landed page as "seen", but there are times when I skip things on Stumble because it isn't loading well, because I don't have time to look at it long enough yet, or because I think I would like it to come up again sometime, as a surprise, I guess. So I wouldn't want it marked as seen.
Though perhaps something like Google Reader's "Mark Unread" would work instead. Eh.

Anyway. That would be one functionality.

I would also like the option to on-the-fly turn on/off NSFW content, videos, animations and content filters.

I also want a "Challenge Me" filter. StumbleUpon keeps track of what you like and dislike, and formats your experience to you. I once wrote a draft of a post (that never got posted) that touched this. Here is the video I really wanted to show you that explains it a bit:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

I want a filter I can turn on that will show me things that fall outside of those bubbles. Just because I never "liked" anything about Prop 8 being shot down from the conservative perspective doesn't mean I don't want to read it. Or that I should never have a chance to be exposed. It would still only show me new things (unseen), but it would ignore the filters of what I've liked/disliked.

Added to these in-use functions, I want post-use functions. This is where I want to attach bookmarking functions to the StumbleUpon functions (as modified above).

PearlTrees is my bookmarking application of choice. It allows me to organize my favourites into, well, trees.

The desire to set my Tree up in Dewey classification is a constant battle between end-use and front-end work. So far the desire for less front-end work has won out.

Regardless, this is part of why I want a 'seen' button on StumbleUpon, for easier conversion to other areas.

I can't find things I've liked on StumbleUpon. I want to be able to categorize them, or have them categorized for me(preferably). That goes back to the top and AI being unreliable.

Yet I don't know how far I've gotten in transferring my 'likes' into pearls as if I remove the like from the item on SU, it will come up again when I go stumbling. And I can't favourite directly from SU to PearlTrees.

It would be nice to have user-end classification, or tags as well. Because a specific site may mean something specific to me, so I want to give it a tag that I can find it by (say, "showmum"). This shouldn't affect anyone else's classification, just mine, within my "browser".


Now, I'm going to snip this here, mainly because I don't feel I'm making much sense and want to draw up some diagrams and junk to clear my head in order to explain better, but also because I have only touched on two of the many things I want to go into the carrels, and this post would get quite long if I didn't.

GLaDOS is breaking up with you...

Finally got around to listening to the end song of Portal 2. (Yes, I know, been a while.) And this is what I noticed and posted to YouTube, but I wanted to expand upon:

This feels like a breakup song, where the couple have gotten together and broken up over and over again.
If GLaDOS were on the recieving end of a cheating partner.

How to read this: Simple really. The lyrics are bolded, and below them is my continuation/interpretation. Just read down the lines.

I'm going to use the male pronoun for GLaDOS' theoretical partner (TP), just cause I am using the female one for GLaDOS, and I don't want it to get confusing.

Well here we are again

(Kinda obvious, TP is trying to date her again)
It's always such a pleasure
(Sarcasm.)
Remember when you tried
to kill me twice?
(The last two times they broke up, TP was rather nasty, and really hurt her emotionally.)
Oh how we laughed and laughed

(When they got back together, she felt good about it)

Except I wasn't laughing

(But she always had the fear/knowledge it would happen again.)

Under the circumstances
(of TP cheating over and over, as well as being cruel)
I've been shockingly nice
(taking TP back again and again.

You want your freedom?
(TP says she stifles him etc.)
Take it
(She wants TP to have it.)
That's what I'm counting on
(Then TP will leave her alone)
I used to want you dead
(TP hurt her, she wanted him dead.)
but
Now I only want you gone
(She doesn't give a fuck now, she just doesn't want to be with him, or have him around)

She was a lot like you
(This is where things get complicated. She can either be talking about TP's last fling(probably a former friend of GLaDOS'), OR, if TP isn't male/GLaDOS is bisexual, this could be the girl she was with while TP and GLaDOS were broken up, who turned out to be about the same kind of person.)
(Maybe not quite as heavy)
(This fits well with theory 2, if TP was male (if you want literal interpretations here) or if Caroline was a little less serious/deep thinking ("that's heavy, man"))
Now little Caroline is in here too
(Either way Caroline is now in the same boat as TP, with GLaDOS not wanting to see her again.)
One day they woke me up
(Someone other than Caroline and TP finally confronted GLaDOS about this unhealthy cycle)
So I could live forever
(And through this she realised she was worth more, and could have a life.)
It's such a shame the same
will never happen to you
(Probably sarcastic regret that TP will never change/learn/get the happiness of a permanent relationship)

You've got your
short sad life left
(Tiny little man. Your life has little value, as you've never really learned to love.)
That's what I'm counting on
(It gives her a bit of pleasure that he will never get that happiness.)
I'll let you get right to it
(Go on, go continue your life)
Now I only want you gone
(She doesn't want TP around.)

Goodbye my only friend
(Sarcasm, or could be said that GLaDOS still considers TP her best friend in some respects, or a part of TP's personality is.)
Oh, did you think I meant you?
(Fitting with that, she says this to the parts of TP's personality that she doesn't consider her friend.)
That would be funny if it weren't so sad
(It is sad that TP was/is her only good friend, considering what an ass he is.)
Well you have been replaced
(GLaDOS has a new partner, perhaps the one who woke her up.)
I don't need anyone now
(But she has learned not to put all of her self worth into a person's opinion, and no longer needs other people to feel good about herself.)
When I delete you maybe
(From her memory/life)
I'll stop feeling so bad
(She'll finally feel free, etc.)

Go make some new disaster
(Every relationship TP touches gets destroyed, so he is guaranteed to get into more trouble.)
That's what I'm counting on
(Because then TP will try to come crawling back to her)
You're someone else's problem
(But then she can kick TP back to the curb, as he's someone else's problem.)
Now I only want you gone
(Not my problem, go away.)
Now I only want you gone
(Go away.)
Now I only want you...
(I want you....
gone
NOT!)

Three little reviews:`

As part of a school project I had to write some little reviews of some teen books (which, face it, are the bulk of my reading age group). I thought I would share them here, in keeping with that desire to mix in elements from my last blog with this one. (Though I have still not interspersed those posts). Click-through pictures for an Amazon link.

The First Rule of Torching: Cleanse with fire.

Z by Michael Thomas Ford is a fast paced action packed story of life after the zombie wars.

Josh is an average teenager, fifteen years old and loves video games. His favorite game is the virtual reality game of the zombie war, where he can play a Torcher and annihilate zombies.But w

hen another player of the game contacts him and asks if he would like to play for real, he is putting more than his mother's disapproval on the line. People are disappearing and his friends are acting strange. And then there is

the mysterious drug “Z" that he is growing more and more defendant on…

Mitty hates homework...

Especially his biology paper. So when he finds three old medical textbooks in his mother's decorating things, with an envelope of scabs in one, he thinks he is saved. Until he starts reading up on the disease. As things start speeding up and spiraling out of control, Mitty believes he has small pox, and that he is putting his home at risk. But before he knows it, he is more at risk than he could have ever imagined.

A fast and consuming book, Code Orange by Caroline Cooney will have you on the edge of your seat. Interspersed with real facts about small pox and viruses in general, it is also very informative.

Welcome to the Apocalypse…

If you enjoyed the Hunger Games you will love the story of Deuce. In the tunnels under New York tribes of people live, fight and die by rules set out by the oldest among them. Deuce has just recieved her name and has become a Huntress. Given the strange outsider Fade as a partner, Deuce's once easy to understand existence is widened and broken all together. On the run from her Tribe Deuce has to face the notions she once considered paramount to survival.

A steady and engrossing adventure novel, Enclave by Ann Aguire is the first book in the Razorland series.

-------------------

Anyway. If any of those sound interesting, feel free to go pick them up, or ask me about them. I quite enjoyed them all, but if they aren't to your taste no hard feelings.

And of course you are welcome to leave me a comment with the kind of book you like and I can try and recommend you one.

What don't we know?

It is a question going around the Facebooks' of my friends: Tell me something I don't know about you.

And when you stop to think, how well do you know the people you have on Facebook. (Entertain me for a moment, if you do not have Facebook. Think of a phone's contact list, or people you talk to everyday, or Myspace, Twitter, Tumblr et. al.)

If you're anything like me, not as well as one might want.
I break just under a hundred and half Facebook friends.
I have, at some point or another, met all of them. (With few exceptions. I have not met my sister's boyfriend. I have not met my brothers current wife. About five people I have not met, however I am related to them in some fashion.)

School friends... or acquaintances. Work buddies and/or friendlies. Family. People I meet in various other ways.
Not everyone I've ever met, by any means. I've taken people off my Facebook (Because I don't know them that well), there are people I never accept, or never ask.

But how well do I know any specific one of them?

On average I can probably tell you their name when given a picture, and possibly vice versa.
Birthday? No.
Favourite colour/food/airline? No.

Why I know them and/or have them on Facebook? Most of the time.

I don't know what they are taking in school, I don't know if they have pets or siblings, I don't know if their parents are together or even alive or in the picture.

And I can say the same for them. Chances are they know shit-all about me too. (Unless they are much better Face-stalkers than I...).

What scares me about this isn't that I don't know. It is that I don't care.
For maybe... 15% of those people I know the answers to some/most/all of those questions.
For maybe another... 7% I'd like to know.
(20ish and 10ish people respectively)

That is about thirty people that I want to interact with, that I care about past random curiosity or politeness.

This post has taken a real jog from where I thought it was going.

It comes down to the oft reiterated idea that before Facederp and "social networking", people supposedly knew and cared about more people, because it was necessary.
If I wanted to know the gossip, I had to know you. Or at least someone who knows you.
One didn't get that close to someone without a friendship or a restraining order.

Now I say, hey, that person is some random person I have not talked to except that once, but they are in my class. I'll add them to my -media of choice-. And Now I hear/see everything. Without any effort.
And without the effort the caring goes down.

Anyway, these are old ideas. I want to broach the point of this silly post. (If one can call it a point)

What I was going to say before the rant was how there are these people asking "Tell me something I might not know".
And all I can think is "There's nothing there."
Everything there is to me is out there for you to see. Every nuance, every awkward glance, the things I squwee at, the things I do that scare you.
I have no secrets, or, at least, none that would be worth sharing.

What do you want to know? I am the openest of books.

"If you say something often enough, it dilutes it. Turns the poison into wine, the burns into bug bites. If you say something over and over, eventually it will be gone."
If you tell enough people that you are in pain, or were in pain, or that this'n'that happened here'n'there, they take a tiny bit of it onto their shoulders, a pebble from the boulder you are carrying.

And soon telling people becomes a drug, becomes the one thing you find yourself doing.

And the one thing you hate yourself for.

So no, I have no secrets. I gave mine all away. There is nothing you might not know about me, only things you have never needed to ask.
Because I am an addict to sharing, and you are my dealer.

I am the 1%

To clarify, I have been reading random tidbits about the Occupy movement. I do not know all the facts, and to be honest this is only due to lack of interest.
(though if you were to look at the time between the last post and this one might surmise I haven't been interested in much lately. This would be accurate.)

I do however see plenty of signs and notes in the various channels I peruse.

Most go something like "I have this and this and this problem and debt, I am the 99%".
Others go "This and this and this are fortunate in my life, I am the 1%, I support the 99%"

So I thought I would write one. The ending may be spoiled, but I think it may surprise you anyway:

I am in my second year of college.
When I graduate I will be $20,000+ in debt.

My parents are not able to support me as they are as deep or deeper in debt on one side, just above water on the other.

My stepfather regularily disregards several of his medications for diabetes, congenitive heart failure, extreme pain, and other issues because we can't afford them.
I quit my anti-depressants because we cannot afford them.
I worked all summer and saved for years to help pay for my school.

Most of that money has been used to keep my family afloat.

I am unsure of my eventual employment.

I am the 1%

And there are many things behind those statements that could improve or worsen them, make them seem earth shattering or day-making.
At least once a day I wonder if I am going to make it, or if these troubles will consume me.

But then I remember that small fact.
I Am The 1%.
Globally North America is in a much better position than a large portion of the populace.
Canada especially.

In this country, in this economy, with these factors? Yeah, I am the 99%.
But what is the saying? Think Globally, Act Locally?

I am the 1%. I am the 99%.

I support the 99%

Yeah, another life update.

If you're wondering, yes, I do get sick of talking about myself to the internets.

However I need to get back into the habit of trolling (or maybe "strolling") all my favourite sites again so I can post some content.

Anyway, until then, things have happened around here. Most notably, I'm back in my Residence, ready to start school again.
Which is neat, I guess.
But I don't really know how to react.

As you might remember, I haven't been on medication for my depression since about February. This next month is going to be the real test of the validity of my decision making skills in that regard.
There are days and hours where I feel the best I've ever felt. Full of hope, joy and intention. And in those times (and to be honest, they are rather frequent) It feels like the best idea I've made, I feel free and happy.
Then of course are the most plentiful times, where there is just the 'heh, heh, yeah...' normalcy. And that is good too! That time is what I used to count as feeling GOOD.
But then there are moments like now. I wouldn't say I am depressed, exactly. But I am down from the "level" place. It's usually precipitated by something. A big move, meeting someone who surprises me, a bad memory, or (as in this case) a dream. And these things get me thinking about things that don't exactly qualify as happy.
And I suppose that this is normal; ups and downs, right? And that doesn't bother me that much.
What bothers me is how hard it is to pull out of a down time.
I never get down enough to be really upset, I just get this general malaise about me that is hard to shake.

And it all comes down to regret or fear.
Like meeting a friend from last year (Lets call her R. Because if for some crazy she reads this, she'll know who she is anyway.) that I treated wrongly. Not really on purpose, and not horrifically, but still. Wrong. I regret acting that way to her. And I'm afraid that I will again. Afraid that she is worried that I will.
The fact that she has specifically forgiven me for those actions, and never found them that discomfiting to begin with doesn't stop either feeling.
Having a dream about my teacher; a great dream! a connected, feel good dream!, but having that dream reminds me of actions I took, and actions taken... not against me, but it sure feels that way some times... anyway, those memories again spark regret and fear. Regret that everything got kinda f'd up then/there, and fear that it will happen again here/now. And regret that I can't fix it here/now. Can't even try.

But the biggest thing right now is sadness. Remembering her is like remembering someone who was very close to you who is dead now.
And she's not dead.

So all of those regrets, all of the things you wish you had said/done/felt/meant, you haven't done those. But you don't even have the cruelty of death to blame for your inability to correct it.

Mix this random dream with moving to a new/old place to be with a new/old person, and meeting Good Ol' R for the first time in months (and spending those months believing she rightly hated me)... then spending a night playing card with her. Trying to make awkward conversation.

All those things together and it's not surprising that I feel a bit wiggy.
But typing this has made me feel better. So I guess that's something.

Now to go see if I can battle Rogers to give me back all of my internet.

Toodles.

MineCraft and Parenting

So today is Wednesday, and there are only three more days until I move back into Residence.
That being true, it seems logical that I would be hopping onto my keyboard to stomp out an excitement filled post about how much school will rock, and how I wish summer weren't over yet, like my keyboard were some kind of hand-pump train car from a cartoon. And while I reserve the right to do so later, right now this post is going to be about MineCraft.

Yup, I finally bought it (or, more truthfully, my Paypal finally caught up with my desires).

And what I wanted to do for a minute here was try and explain why I, and people like me, enjoy MineCraft to the point of squealing.

Being a sandbox game, there is no win condition. Which sounds really stupid to chronic SHUMPers, because without a win condition, how do you know you are done? How can you get satisfaction?

Some people make their own win conditions, like building a 1:1 scale model of the Titanic. Others, like me, are content without a win condition; we are more interested in exploring, trying new things, and building randomly. We don't want a win condition, because that cuts the play-time.
There is no rush to try and finish because there is no finish.

And yeah, you can play, say, Super Mario over and over, even after you have won. Find a few new secrets and such. But the game doesn't change. You get better at it over time, yeah, but the game is the same, the goal is the same.

MineCraft lets you change the goal as often as you can fire neurons. Every world offers different challenges (to a degree). Mods bring this to a greater point of truth.

And I feel the need to make an analogy here. It's a lot like parenting.
Now hear me out.

There is no win condition in parenting. Yeah, yeah, you could say "getting the kid alive to adulthood" or "raising someone who is not a complete dick, or a murderer, or listens to Rebecca Black" or any myriad of things. But the truth is, those aren't win conditions,

The parents whose child died at seven from a car crash or leukemia didn't lose, weren't bad parents. The kid just dies.
And that's because there is no guarantee.
The worst parents in the world; letting their kid smoke, drink, drive ATVs, encourages mullets -- these people can still have a kid who against the odds becomes the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Likely? Not really. But it could happen.

And the reverse is true. The best parents (whatever that definition is); encouraging reading, school, say no to drugs etc. -- those people can, and do, still raise druggies, drop outs, total dick-wads, and worst of all homosexuals.
Nah, I kid, but the point still stands.

And I guess what I'm saying with all this is that I'd hate the pressure of being a parent because if the kid fucks up, you get blamed for doing 'something' wrong, no matter what you do.

And this does relate to Minecraft, I'm just easily distracted.

Why then, knowing the odds, do people have kids?

Why, knowing their kid is reasonably likely to be a complete asshole, do people continue to procreate?

For the same reasons people play MineCraft.
It's genetically hardwired? Gambling is fun? Who cares if there are more jerks in the world, it's funny?

Okay, no.

It is because people are interested in how things develop over time.

Same reason for plants, pets, stock folders.
I won't say it is a primary reason, but it is in there.

This all made sense as I was typing it, but now it seems a little hard to follow, so I appologise.

Anyway. Sandbox games are interesting to a subset of people who want the ability to control things. You get to see how things grow and mature, but you can control how they grow and mature.
So really I guess I'm saying we players of sandbox games are just control freaks in disguise.

-shrug-

Some favourites to share:

Around when I mentioned The First $20 Million a while back, I thought I'd take some time to think about some favourites I have in the filmographic world. I finally got around to finishing that.
Maybe we have similar taste. Or maybe you just need something to watch and figure my suggestions are as good as any. In any case, here's a list, in no particular order:

Matilda

Based on a Roald Dhal young adult novel, this is the story of Matilda, a telekinetic 6 1/2 year old whose life kinda sucks. How it sucks and what makes it better is, of course, your choice to pursue.

The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest

A young man quits his job as he finds it unfulfilling and goes to school at MIT hoping to make the world better or some such thing. The "coach" of the robotics team doesn't like him, so saddles him with the trashcan project of the PC $99. The young man and a trio of other.... less than desirable guys tries to make this happen, and save it in turn.

What Dreams May Come

A Robin Williams film. The man loses his children, and then dies. As he tries to navigate heaven he learns some unpleasant things about his wife's fate, and tries to rescue her. This film is visually stunning, and makes you want to believe in an afterlife.

Memento

A questionable choice, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is one of the only films I've seen that pulled off the backwards narration thing. A piecemeal film to say the least.

The main guy has amnesia that resets as soon as he is distracted from a thought. He is trying to figure things out and find the murderer of his late wife.

My Neighbor Totoro

An animated movie from Japan, written by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, pretty much every anime movie that became popular over here). A father moves with his two girls to the country side, I think to spare them some of the grief of their mother being ill (cancer?) and probably for cost. The girls meet some forest spirits (Totoro) and have fun with them while exploring the area around their house and school.

Silence of the Lambs

Anthony Hopkins is in this, which immediately makes it watchable for me.

Serial killers, FBI agents, psycho thriller. Yup, my kind of movie.

Surveillance

FBI agents, serial killers, psycho thriller. Did I mention this is my kind of movie? Some FBI agents were called in to help with a brutal murder that happened in the country side. No one is telling the truth, and the murderers are pretty twisted. (But in the way I can relate to, if that doesn't scare you) It also helps that I guessed the killers in the first ten minutes, which made it surprisingly more enjoyable.

Avatar

You've probably seen this, or at least heard of it a half-dozen times.

An alien world is being mined to the degeneration of the locals, big fight, romance blahblahblah.

I wnet into this movie thinking the story would suck, but it would be visually amazing, and maybe I'd hear a bit of professional conlanging.

I was pleasantly surprised, not disappointed and thoroughly disappointed respectively.

An okay story, very good visuals, but not enough dealing with the conworld/lang.

Minority Report

Future-y sci-fi-y. The police figured out a way to catch criminals before they commit a crime (which seems great for emotional attacks like the first one shown. Can you imagine living with that sort of guilt?) Tom Cruise then has to prove his future-innocence.

Lucky Number Slevin

Very neat with lots of twists and retribution. Good if you like figuring out who did what when.

Set in sorta present (kinda past) maybe '99-2000? With some set in the '70s. Some dude is trying to live his life, borrowing his friend's apartment, when he gets caught in a gang war. Then things just get loopy.

Shutter Island

Another one with lots of twists. Some police officer is on a creepy island that houses an asylum for the criminally insane, back in the '50s. He slowly works out more and more odd things about the hospital, conspiracies and plots. His life might be in danger.

The SAW series

It is gory, yeah. But it is less of a horror movie than some. Some guy is trying to mete out justice in the most violent ways possible. But the why and the who keep changing. So lots of twists there too. Eight movies that got compressed into seven (including SAW 3D). Everything is very well planned out, obviously from the beginning. the last few seem a bit rushed.

Rango

Bit different tone here =P

Animated.

This lizard (chameleon, Johnny Depp) finds himself suddenly in the middle of desertville, nowhere. As he finds a place to stay, he also finds trouble and plots and hilarity. It is a kid's movie after all.

Surprisingly enjoyable.

Sucker Punch

The most recent thing I've seen in theaters. About a girl pressed into an asylum by her abusive father, who presses for a lobotomy to keep her quiet.

Lots of good music, though the movie itself is a bit ridiculous. Has a very good ending though.

A more life-y update

As of the airing of this post (Which should be a Sunday, if I've set the advance thing right, and don't think of anything else to post between now and then) there will be three weeks until I head back to school.

As of the writing of this post, I am set to move in on the 4th of September.

Since I don't expect much of the life-changing nature to happen between now (last Sunday) and next (this) Sunday, I figure I'll make a post of what has happened since I left school in April. It's not much.

After exams my mum picked me up from residence. Long drive home, yeah. Once here I spent a few day relaxing, waiting for Queen's to tell me when they wanted me to start working. They didn't, so a week or so in I emailed, got some shifts, and the trudge of this summer began.

I had decided to come off my anti depressants in February, and was fully off them by the time I got home. Combine this with a bit of new-found confidence and self-esteem and a step-father who is... eh, less than all there, and we had problems.

We don't really get along well a lot of the time, through miscommunication and his abhorrence of being wrong. About anything. Ever.

Anyway, a few blow-ups later and things are kinda worked out on that front now. Sort of. As long as I don't say much.

Oh, and it didn't/doesn't help that every time I have an emotion other than cheerful I am told I am depressed and should go back on my meds. But whatevs, right?

I applied for OSAP later than I would have liked because, despite my nagging, my mum didn't remember/had no time to get the tax returns filled out. Yay.

That led to getting my fee deferral forms in at the last moment (Quite literally), raising panic and illness from stress in me.

Not to mention a $1000 fee from residences I overlooked.

But that's all worked out now too.

I saw my dad one weekend, and even got to see Lee and meet her new(not really, just haven't met him since she met him in January) boyfriend. Seems like a nice guy, I guess. Kinda hard to approve of someone in such oddball circumstances.

Upon coming home I was told I would be moving my room out of the basement as it would be becoming a spa for my mum to work out of.

My aunt was going to rent our family room once we made it into an apartment.

Then she was going to rent the basement, but we needed to put a bathroom in.

Then she decided to go move into a seniors apartment complex.

So we started the construction of the spa/clinic/massage therapy rooms in our family room.

There is now no one in the basement, as I moved upstairs in preparation for this kerfuffle.

Yay.

Work was/is boring and hot. I wake up every morning debating the worth of that extra $48 gross.

I missed a lot of work through illness, construction, transport issues and plain "idunwanna"s.

But I've still managed to make close to my goal for this summer.

Last weekend was the Verona Cattail Festival. It was also when a friend came down to Kingston. Brought one of her kids and her new(not really, just never met before) boyfriend (I see a trend here) from Australia. Nice guy for sure. Putting up with kids that aren't yours is a draining thing to do, and he seems to handle it well.

Now I'm practically counting the hours (not yet, though I am counting the days) until I can get back to my home port and be a bit freer to do things of interest.

I have been playing Minecraft (don't tell anyone, I'm still saving the money, so I'm being bad and illegal. Very soon though I will have the total and then I can stop the icky feeling in my gut) and reading. I should have a book review of one of the books up soonish.

Oh oh oh, and, a classmate contacted me about making some hats for her. She does baby (and probably other) photography and wanted cute newborn hats. So I have a bit of money coming my way from that, as well as a possible in to a market. If people ask her, they can buy sort-of through her. This could work out well. -nodnod-

I think that is all the excitement so far, but I have a week to add to this post (through the magic of delay~), and you'll never know the difference!

Story Fragments pt. 2.

Hey thar~ I have a few more for you! I've actually typed up about 14 pages of 11pt. font, so I think I am making headway.

Anywhos, have another two bits:

---

I stand, walk, live in a city that is decaying, crumbling and falling apart. As all cities are. Every city everywhere is in a constant state of ‘fixing up’, regeneration and decay at the same time. Or more, they were.
My name is of little importance, but if you must, you may call me Xell.
That’s ‘Zell’ or ‘Cell’, depending on how you feel like saying it. It doesn’t much matter to me how you say it, I just wish I had someone who could.
Ever since the Descent people have been few and far between.And by that I mean that I haven’t seen any humans since my parents, who likely left me as the sole heir to the human race.
I don’t count the demons below. They call themselves by all sorts of new names, in tongues descendant from the human tongues of old. But I don’t recognize them as human, despite their claims of being the future of the race. However it’s looking like I’m losing that argument, considering how many of them there are, and how few of me there is left.
Night is the worst. They can see in the dark, the Hums. And the Micken’s’. All of them, really. I’m running out of candles to keep the light during the night. The surface raids are coming more frequently now. It seems their ‘civilizations’ never really forgot the bounty of the surface.
But it wouldn’t take them long to steal me. Or kill me.
---
He stood silently against the backdrop of my burning home. I was only seven years old. I walked up to him, his back was to me. The path was steep and rocky, but I pulled my broken bones up anyway. When I finally stood next to him, on the over hang so high above the village I once called my home, he turned violently and tore down the hill. I turned painfully to watch him leave. A solider, perhaps the only one I would ever see cry in my life, for my life.
That’s all I remember from my dream after I wake up. I wake up whole and safe, warm in my bed. Turning over, I pull the covers up higher, trying to recall anything more of the dream I had been having every night for the last nine years. Pulling up the sleeve on my nightgown, I see nothing more than my arm. No branding burn, no scars from hard labour under the hot sun. No broken bones, nothing that would prove that the night in my dream had ever happened.
I wouldn’t even entertain the idea if it weren’t for my one big secret. My Secret, the one even my parents don’t know all the way through is that I died once. When I was seven. The foster home took me in, and I have no memory of any time before that, except the snags I can pull from my dreams.
What I’ve put together is that I was once a child in a small, remote village in a war-torn country. My village was taken by soldiers who branded us as slaves, then burned our village to the ground. My parents fought, so they beat me to bring them to submission, and then left me to die when they would not complied and had to be killed. One of the soldiers regrets the whole things. He still cries at night.
No one would believe me if I told them, because the night I was found, I had no broken bones, no scars, nothing like that. No tot mention I was found in the heart of San Francisco, thousands of miles from where I believe I was born.
I had a psychologist once, when I was twelve. He said that in my hypothetical situation, as I had posed the question to him hypothetically, I could be repressing my actual past and only allowing myself to see a stylised version of it that my mind could accept. Something to do with post-traumatic stress disorder. He didn’t understand. This isn’t a fantasy, a dream. It is the truth. Somehow, I really was once her.

---

There you have it mon amis~ Expect more at some point maybe.

Story Fragments

So here's what's happening:

I am cleaning out my old basement room, and have finally decided to do something with that avalanche of paper I have. Burning the depressing crap, organizing the drawings, marveling at my usage of English.

Annnnd typing up story fragments. Those paragraphs and pages of unfinished, unpolished first drafts. So I figure I'll put some up as I get them typed. This seems a better place than my Facebook notes for some reason. If you see a set of three hyphens (---) it means that fragment is done, on to the next.

I make no guarantee to the quality or length, though I will try to keep the ones that are complete crap to myself. If you get frustrated with my past-self for leaving something unfinished you can feel free to go back in time and yell at me. Also, ask me. I probably can give you the jist of the missing stuff.

Here goes:

---

Fear. Fear. Fear.
Avoid the cities. Danger. Danger abounds in the cities.
Rot, mold, disease. It is all there. But worse, worst of all of it… the people. They stand exactly as they stood for so long. Many had been stripped, the clothing taken for usage long ago, and stood more exposed than any of them would ever have allowed while they were alive. Not that they were dead now. They were just… stopped. But despite the dangers the city exudes, it is where you will find me.
I have lived for far too long, seen far too much, and lost so many to the sea of time. No, not a sea, for the sea is too calm. The storm, the tornado of time.
My life since the Stop has been, in a single word, full. Full and hectic, busy and lonely. Oh, I had many people pass through. And many people stay, for a time. But the dangers and horrors of the city push all on, eventually. And yet I stay.
I made a home in what was once a loblaws, though no one alive today but I would have even the slightest clue what that means. I ate the produce first, and the bread, in the days of my grievance. Then I set to work. I moved the bodies, for I shall ever refer to them as bodies, until, that is, the awakening comes. I moved the bodies outside, using a trolley I found in the hardware section. I was weak then. 150pounds of human flesh were too much for me. I tried to lay them out as well as possible the first day. And then I gave up. I stacked them five high in small pyramids in the parking lot. Then I moved cars. I learned to hotwire on the internet, for in those days the internet was the only connection I had to the world, dead as it was. I set them up in a barricade around the doors, learning to drive as I went.
I was an obsessive apocalypse nut before this all had happened.
I followed the layout in my mind quite subconsciously, using the work to escape my grief. Next were the raids. Still early in the Stop, the other markets had some produce still fresh. That was a treat. I loaded an SUV full of water bottles and trailers hitched ten long to the back. Water was my first concern. Always. Next, every piece of non-perishable food I could lay my hands on. Then I ate through as much fresh food as I could, and started a garden. I had still yet to see any living people. I was scared, scared I was the only human left, until the awakening. I cried every night until finally there were no tears left. The shelves where great for making a room for my bed, my nest.
---
The world around him started to flash, brilliant colours, monotones, high buildings, open fields. All he could do was keep pushing his dream, or have himself wiped away into oblivion by the tides of the world. He heard a loud cracking noise, like an electrical wire on wet pavement, smelt smoke, and saw a blinding flash of light all at once. Then suddenly, all was white. He felt like he was floating, until he hit the ground. Hard. He tucked his limbs under himself and rolled to a stop. Kneeling, and then standing up, he saw a small group of six or seven men and women in white lab coats standing before him. None of them were smiling, and the large black man in front was positively scowling. Behind himself he heard a large shuffling of feet, and some small sobs and sniffles. Afraid to look away from the ominous group of white clad adults, he turned a half turn and saw behind him

---

That's what I've got for now, but there will be more. Poems, sentences, plotlines crudely point-formed. Oh, my, why did I save this stuff?
I guess for the same reason I am now typing them up. Preservation of self.

The Queen's Experience

So as some/all/many/none of you know, I work at Queen's University through the summer. It is the first real job I've had. This summer, as well as last summer.

As you may also know, I am not a student there.
So what I see from work is the view I get of this university.

Which would be great if everything ran smoothly. Of course, it doesn't. But it's not my place to talk badly of my employers, so I leave that there.

No, what I wanted to say is about what I've seen there, and some of the things I've learned from working there.

So, here is a taste of what I call my "Queen's Experience":

1. Humans are packrats. I should know this through personal experience, but somehow coming into the room of someone who is staying for a weekend and seeing the sheer amount of stuff they bring, really drives it home.
2. Humans are vain. Similar to above, how many body washes/soaps/cleansers/deodorants does a person need? I'd say about one of each, not six.
3. People value odd things. They story of a person who called front desk because they had lost 13 cents and thought housekeeping had taken it makes this point for me.
4. People have a hard time recognizing value. Much like above. The number of times things get thrown out as they look like junk, then are called for by students who left and forgot is amazing.
5. People are forgetful when they are in a hurry. Ties once again with above. It seems to me that if you are an international student and you are taking a plane back home in 3 1/2 hours and need to get to Ottawa for that time, the first thing you would check is that you have your passport, ID, health card, and wallet and that they aren't in a drawer or under your mattress.
6. Students are scary. Find one bullet under a bed and it strikes fear in you, lemme tell ya.
7. Students are stupid. Why, why, why is there a traffic sign in the drop ceiling? With 40 pounds of concrete attached?
8. People think they are important. Is it really necessary to sign your name, year and course indelibly into the drawers?
9. Students are crazy. The "hat trick of hat tricks" (three weekends of drinking until blackout each day) is not something you need to write in your desk drawer. Worse is the guy who says he did it every night.
10. Students are awesome. The number of closets with instructions to Narnia...
11. Always ask directions from two different people. What is a simple "down this street, to the left" from one person is "First you take the east doors to, do you know where the east doors are?, okay, take the east doors, wait is it the south door?, well you take the doors and you'll see a statue of a monkey, though it could be a lion, I'm never quite sure... there's a statue, anyway, and..." from another. Learn these people. Avoid.
12. Colour coding is your friend. If one door is Pink, you'll always know where you are. Except when the other three are near-identical shades of blue.
13. Proper signage is a good choice. "A-wing is left. No, right, no, uhm... Directly across?"
14. Elevators will break. I hope you weren't planning on getting work done today, because eleven floors is a lot to climb with a mop and pail.
15. Even signage will fail in the view of stupidity. What is so hard to read about "Shower out of order, please use next shower" written in 2 inch letters? Especially when the only thing in that room is a shower?
16. Transportation is a beautiful thing. Three people, three jobs and one car is not.
17. People are mean. It is hard to know what will tick someone off, and it doesn't help when they over-react.
18. People are kind. Sometimes you'll find a person who will just make your day over and over and over. Cherish them.
19. Being the favourite sucks. Watching people getting put down and and told to do the worst jobs while you are favourited makes you feel squicky.
20. Not being the favourite sucks more. Being put down and getting the worst jobs isn't fun.
21. Getting demoted from favourite to not is the worst. People remember when you held that high seat, and aren't always forgiving.
22. Scheduling's a bitch. 9-1, Monday to Friday is nice, 9-1, 8-4, 9-4, 10-2, 9-1 is not. Not even counting weekend work.
23. Sometimes life is just a calamity of errors. "I won't be in as I am: sick, stressed, rescheduled without prior knowledge, helping with construction, the heat/humidity is too bad, sick, car was being fixed, parents were sick, other people need to work, no way to get home..."
24. Five day weekends aren't that great. I'd rather a two-day weekend where I actually did anything, to a five-day one where I sleep.

So, yes. These are things working at Queen's has taught me. There are other things, I am sure, but this list is long enough, ne?

Here's a question for those of you who have/have had jobs:

What's the most important thing you've learned from them?

Still Alive

No, this isn't a post about Portal, though that song is quite catchy.
Just saying that I'm still alive, despite not posting here in over a month.

Haven't really been in the mood, and haven't really been doing anything worth talking about.

I am re-enrolled in classes for next year, yay. That went through at the very last moment of today.
I applied for my Gen-Eds, with Healthy Living as my first choice. Second is Reading for Recreation, third, Science Fiction.
My roommate to be and I are getting psyched. She and I are in the same class, so decided it would be mutually beneficial for us to share a room.
I just hope we don't end up hating each other.

I picked up bead spriting. Which is basically a means to bring my loves of pixel art and melting things with a clothes iron into one craft.

I have been, for a long time now, rather upset by the number of crafts/hobbies I have.
I can't afford all of them (obviously. I have the time but not the money for anything, really), and I can never really excel at any of them.
So I put a lot of effort into thinking about how to narrow my choices. I never really come up with any conclusions.

Paper making has to go. I know, I've talked about it here several times, and I realyl do enjoy it, but look at it this way:
Soon (in the next two years) I will be moving out into the world on my own (or, likely, with roommates) Probably into an apartment or small house. Where will I put a large 3x5' vat of water? Where will I let 11+ sheets of sopping paper dry?
It is a space thing, mostly.

Knitting and crochet are on a back burner. The wool I have now, I am confining myself to.
Spinning is allowed to continue, and I can then knit/crochet with that. It is a good solitary thing, and stick spinning is also good for doing around people. Transportable. A high Pleasure:Cost ratio, too.
Felting sticks with spinning. I like it too much to get rid of entirely, and the materials pack down into tight places when not in use.

Writing/conworlding/languaneering( I like this term. I may have just made it up >.>) stay, because they take up little to no space (except on a disk drive); because I don't think I can ever stop; because they keep my mind sharp and active; because if I abandon all I have created, in a hew weeks I'll want it again and I'll be cursing myself.

Pixeling and, by relation, bead spriting: I want these to become a forefront activity. Pixeling is art, and I like art. Bead sprites allow me to bring that art into something tangible. I like tangible.
Plus, if I get better, I can make 3D objects. (Better than the one 3D I've made so far, at least.)

My problem with video games is that I don't get enough enjoyment/use time out of them compared to cost. I love playing pokemon, but I don't want a DS just to play them. Some PS3 games interest me, but I know that compared to the cost, they aren't worth it.

What I really need from a hobby is something that is fun, I can do by myself for the most part, but engage in a social side of it from time to time as well.
I thought once that DnD or Heroscape would do this for me.
Then I realised that, while I have friends, I don't tend to have friends who want to do the same things I do, or for the same reasons, or at the same times or....

I don't work well in social mediums I guess is what I'm getting at.

Which is my task for this school year, according to my counselor.
Yay.


Tangent much?
yeah, you should get used to that around here.
Neseta usoma!

A week of no post. I know, unprofessional of me.

The deckle did not work as it was laid out to, however I think this is a fault of my inferior mold. I was able to pull a couple of test envelopes by covering the deckle in screening, thus making it into a shaped mold, but they are not of the quality I require. More thought must go into this.

I have been watch Star Trek. The Next Generation, not the original or any of the more recent ones.

I prefer Picard to the other captains, plus this one has Data, a much favoured character of mine. Perhaps because of a philosophy class in which (while discussing metaphysics) we watched "The Measure of a Man" an episode from the second season.

I started last Monday, and am now half-way through season three of seven.

I crafted some communicator pins out of sculpey, but I believe they are too brittle for the job I wish them for. I hope them to be costume pieces for a friend of mine. She has a greater interest in Star Trek than I, and I vaguely recall suggesting I make one for her.

I need to find a less brittle substitute, or perhaps bake the sculpey longer, I'm not sure.

The construction is coming along well. By then end of today I anticipate the drying of drywall mud precipitating the beginning of flooring.

I have been pixeling. I think that I have made some progress, and that my time away has allowed me the confidence to see that.

The other day (Thursday) I was waiting for the bus (it is to become a common occurrence as a way to bring me closer to home after work.) on the Queen's campus.

There were graduation ceremonies, I believe, going on.

I thought I saw someone who was once greatly important to me.

However this is unlikely, but it stirred feelings in me that I am evaluating. It is a good notch on a stick of reference.

Anyway, I tire of this entry. Another episode is in order.

More Paper stuff

Ugh, yes, yes, I've'nt posted anything since Thursday. Yes it's Sunday.

There just isn't much to say.

I got a piece of MDF-like board to make a deckle out of (A whopping 2.09$).

A deckle, for the uninitiated, is basically a mold for the paper pulp to follow (though there is something else called a mold, so it would be confusing to call them both that, ne?)

My mold (a frame with screen stretched over it instead of canvas) is about 11x14" on the inside, meaning that if I pull it straight (with no deckle on top) it give me sheets with a wavily-flurry-soft... uhm... not-straight/smooth edge that are about 11x14". Which is nice, there are a lot of things you can do with an 11x14" sheet of paper. (Folded in quarters it makes a nice size for a notebook sheet)

But sometimes I want something else. Like an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet (Letter) (Or 8 1/4 x 11 3/4" (A4) if you are not Canadian or American. Though I wonder why the International sizing of paper isn't in metric?)

Or, in my case, ENVELOPES. Yeppers, I'm making envelopes. I hope to be selling paper things, and past notebooks and plain paper, envelopes are a good start.

And for that major project I mentioned, I need about 100 of them.

Yup. Count em, 100.

And do you know how tedious it is to cut an envelope by hand?

Very.

That's all you need to know.

So doing 100 of them? No. Nuh-uh. Not happening.

So by using a deckle I can restrict the paper pulp from covering the whole mold, and pull envelopes out of the vat on their own. Yay.

Now if I could couch(lay out) more than 11 sheets at a time, this wouldn't take shy of a week to do.

I'm thinking I'll get two more boards and a bunch more fabrics (and possibly more clamps) so I can at least couch about 20-25 at a time.

I want to try out some textured fabrics, like canvas for drying on.

Add that to wanting to try denim paper, lint paper, plant dying, plant fibre paper, embossing, additives, and more notebook styles, and you've got a lot of things I hope to accomplish.

My main point of pursuit right now is colour. The way I've gotten colour before is by starting with colour papers.

Which is great.

If you have coloured recycling.

And right now I'm lucky to get any recycling that isn't box card or cardboard.

So I have a lot of brown going on.

But this project (which I swear I will go into more later) requires purple.

I've been trying to find ways of dying paper, and it's a hard thing to research for some reason.

Right now it is looking like I am going to be trying out a red cabbage dye.

I hope to find some kind of commercial dye, or at least something more reliable than my plant works.

I've got mum asking on Freecycle for recycling paper so I can at least have a good amount of pulp going.

I also just did a test of "fixing" paper (making it more water fast, so it won't run as much if you use inks on it) by adding a heap of cornstarch to the water. I don't know how much is needed, but it felt simultaneously like a lot and not much at all. (You use so little in most cooking things, but this vat is about 2 1/2' x 3 1/2' x 1 1/4', and half-full. So to make a mark in that much water?

Whatever.

Anyway, I've ranted enough for now, I've got books to read and a deckle to cut out.

Good luck, have fun, don't die, I'll miss you.

Life, update, yay?

I was trying to think of a witty portmanteau of "Life" and "Update" but I couldn't so you get what you got and you'll be thankful for it, dangit.

Anyway. Life is as life does around here. I've been going to work, coming home, dicking about, sleeping and starting over.

And I'm tired. Not excessively to the point of hypersomnia like I've hit before (46 hours of sleep is not normal, no matter how you justify it!)

Just, worn out from the day. I feel active and good while at work, and then after work rather quickly die down to kinda sore, kinda tired, before going to bed at a reasonable hour.

It's odd. It's so normal, it's odd.

And I'll tell you a secret. I kinda like it.

Now if it weren't for the drive to/from work, and the constant tension between family members, I'd be at a great place.

But as it is, I'm kinda just coasting. I feel good and strong, albeit a bit unhappy. But I'm not depressed like I was. I'm hoping that carries through the school year next year. Maybe I don't need to be on anti-depressants anymore. I'm doing well without them now.

Then again, maybe I just need more instant satisfaction like work can give me.

Oh, I pulled another eleven or twelve sheets of paper the other day; they're flattening out... somewhere. (Oh dear, where did I put them...). I've cleaned the vat out and frozen the pulp; I want to start a more major project... I don't know when. You'll get some updates on that when I know more. However I hope to put pictures of the love-note set I made up soon, I think they are nice.

But moving on; I've been to the library today after work, and picked up a few books. So I've reading. (I finished a shorter novel already- a teen fiction)

And I realised keeping the Books in My Arsenal blog going is silly; so, if I can work it, the old posts from there will be merging over here. If I can't, we'll be getting some updates here of those posts.

As for the conlanging series, don't expect that to be drifting into nothingness; I'm just taking a bit to figure how I want the next part to go.

I've been playing with pixels again, to the detriment of the conlanging work, I'll admit.

Whelp, with that, I'm tired and I have books and pixels to work on. I shall see you tomorrow!

Conlanging and you, part two!

Alright, after that crash course, I'm going to go through how I work with you. This will likely be long, so it'll probably get cut into more than one post.

I am one of those people that usually starts with a phonology, or a set of sounds that I want to put into a language. A basic idea of how I want it to sound. This usually means I start by saying a random sentence like thing out loud, then try to write it down using my dialect of English.

So something like "griskle neff twandr-ikka"

This has the plus (or minus depending on how you look) of only making sounds that I can pronounce available to me.

Another way I've done this is to pound my keyboard and try and pronounce what came up, adding vowels or word breaks where I just can't do it

" dgxfhcgvjhugbm "

becomes

"Dgzf hucgiv jhug bem"

Which I can pronounce (albeit rather haltingly).

A third way is to think of a language (or a couple, though more than three or four would get difficult) that you like the sound of, and mash them together, either by yourself, or through the use of a program to help you.

I used to have links to programs like these, but I rarely do things like this (read: once), so I've long since lost them. If you find one, will you throw it my way?

After I have something that sounds kinda how I want it, I'm going to use that to extrapolate.

I'm going to use my current language in process, Torete, to explain the following things. It will become a major fixture in these kinds of posts because it is my most complete work.

So I start with something that sounds kinda like this:

"ela fokomo de nena eska no fala make. ina feza salopa yutese"

Which, using XSAMPA, sounds almost exactly as it is written.

/el.a fo.ko.mo de ne.na es.ka no fa.la ma.ke i.na fe.za sa.lo.pa ju.te.se/

From there I notice that I have a great affinity for vowels, and I greatly despise consonant clusters. The only one that showed up was "sk" which is a cluster I find every easy to say.

So I decided that words in this language will have no consonant clusters, and that all words end in vowels.

I also get a good idea of what kind of word length I am looking at. I prefer four letter words.

I also prefer words that start with consonants. This leads me to say that words starting with a vowel are being modified in some way, a prefix.

It also gives me an idea of sounds I like:

/f k m d n s l z p y e i u a o/

From there I decided to look through IPA to see if there were any sounds that I don't have day-to-day exposure to that I would enjoy.

I mostly found them to sound too similar or to be unpronounceable, so I left it alone.

Splitting these up into vowels and consonants I have:

/a e i o u/

and

/f k m d n s l z p y/

I don't feel like that is enough, so I'm going to add

/b v r/ to the mix, as I like them too.

A quick way to see if you are getting words you like is to play with Awkwords. Their help button is really helpful, but I can answer some questions if you have them.

Okay, this is long enough. So.... To be continued. Likely tomorrow or the next day.

Conlanging and you!

Alright, yesterday I explained through examples what a conlang can be at some of its highest peaks. If you're still with me you are likely insane or really bored. Both are acceptable.

You see these examples and think to yourself, hey, I want my own language! It'll be great for my book/my diary/confusing the hell out of teachers/profit/etc.!

While I give little hope to the last one, the others are a yes. Other neat things that can come from it are relieving boredom, procrastination, pure fun, the admiration of your peers(again, little hope), and gaining friends.

So let's get started, you yell. And I jump, because I startle easily.

Where, oh where to start when conlanging. It is different for a lot of people, some like to start with basic syntax, others have a random sketch of an intransitive verb combining with a noun in holy matrimony, still others start with a script, and a lot of people start with a phonology.

Wait, wait, wait. What? Intransi-whoey? Synta-what? Phrenology?

Okay, so I think it would be best to start at the top. Linguistics! Otherwise known as More Than Your Average High School English Class!

If you are groaning already and can't stand the thought of spending time on Grammar, then perhaps this is the wrong past-time. Maybe try cryptology? (Not to be confused with the science of crypts) (I hope to cover codes and ciphers another day, but for now that link should do)

So. Linguistics. Where to begin? Well, you certainly don't need a doctorate in it, but it would sure help. So if you think you can do it, go forth. I can wait.

No?

Okay. You don't need to know a lot of linguistics to start with, just a few basic terms and you should be rolling:

Phonology: Basically the set of sounds possible within a language. English allows "sss" "ch" and "sh", but does not allow "sch" (Unless it is "school" but that is more of a "sk") We also don't allow things like "ts" or "zx"

Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit (word or word bit) that has definable meaning. Think "un-" "break" "-s" These are pieces we can tear out of other s=words and hold up as having meaning. I can break "break" into "br" and "eak" but neither has independent meaning, so are not morphemes.

Phone: the tiniest definable sound, such as one possible pronunciation of "b"

Phoneme: the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. So the entirety of possible pronunciations for "b", including "allophones" or sounds that all mean the same thing.

Syntax: The way that all the other things are put together to form coherent thoughts, the rules dictating order of things.

Parts of Speech: Noun, Article, Conjunction and a slew of others, you might want to get re-familiar with these.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): A set of letters based on the Latin alphabet that is intended to be used as a standard representation of all sounds used in spoken language (by anyone, anywhere).

Having at least the ability to know what the symbols are is a great start. Being able to move things back and forth with it is even better.

X-SAMPA: At the most basic, a way to use IPA using ASCII characters. I use it as I find it easier to remember.

Everything else is probably okay to learn as you come across it.

Ugh, that got long quick. Okay, splitting this into two for today.