Category Archives: Cyberspace & Technology

Scratch Pad May 11

13:16:

The metro was delayed at an early station this morning; I got into work at 9:15 and didn’t even get to sit down before being told that the recording session I was consulting on was beginning right now somewhere else, not on-site. So I was escorted there by a cheerful guy whose name I didn’t catch, got there for 9:30, and four hours later I am free once more. Starving, because I was planning on grabbing breakfast here, and I dropped my satchel with my Thermos of tea in it before I hurried off, so I had nothing with me.

Regretfully, our recording session was told to go with US pronunciation, which saddens me because I have spent so much time making this dictionary as neutral as possible as regards spelling and region-specific words. Pretty much everyone agrees that it would have been ideal to have NA and UK specific versions of the product, but we have to make compromises.

Also, this morning I was sad to discover that playing the DS on the metro makes me very motion sick. Argh. And before that, I discovered that when Liam ran off with my watch last night I hadn’t paid attention to where he put it, and so this morning I couldn’t find it at all before I left.

Our room is currently empty except for four other people, because it’s the project party today. I’m going to be able to concentrate really well.

13:48:

No use; I’m past my hunger now. I got a big panini sandwich from the downstairs cafe, but I could only eat half of it. Sigh. The heavy hard crust is hurting my chapped lips, too, and they put mayo on it instead of dijon mustard. Alas.

14:17:

Wow, do I ever want to be home. And it would be so easy to go, too, with everyone gone. Except I have a pile of work to do. So much for concentrating well.

14:20:

Heh. The guys who stayed to work are currenlty playing Guitar Hero. Hey, what can I say; it’s a summer Friday with no one around. I think we’re all in that kind of headspace.

14:46:

I have absolutely zero focus. This is a bad thing.

15:23:

If lexicography is the activity or job of writing dictionaries, how does one define the editing of a dictionary?

15:24:

I’m sorry, the brain you require is not available at the moment. Please call again. (I am beginning to see the usefulness of handhelds. I couldn’t research or read like this either; I’d retain nothing. But I could play.)

16:16:

Just came back from a quick hello to Darroch and Ann on their way out. I can tell that I’m out of it; I was wandering conversation-wise with little awareness of what I was saying. If this were to occur regularly it would be a bad habit.

16:39:

Illusive allusion. Heh. Wordplay resulting from proximity in the dbase.

Yes, I am tired. Ironically, I’m beginning to settle into a rhythm.

On the way home:

Me: So the guy taking me to the recording session asked me what my French accent was.
HRH: Did you tell him “enunciation”?
Me: *dies*

(My escort thought I was francophone like him, and we were conversing in French, which is what makes this all the more amusing.)

Me = Geek

Working where I am working, on what I am working on, has clearly done something odd to my wiring. Specifically, over the past two weeks I’ve deliberately been researching the world of casual gaming, which has in turn led me to reading and talking about the subject to people. I’ve been making private posts to myself, which I will now collect here for your amusement.

May 4:

9:47: I can’t believe I’m actually contemplating buying a DS just so I can mess about with this game and others (read: things that make me think, involve words or self-exploration) in development when they’re released. I’m hoping it’s a positive trend and I would be able to play others in the future. I’ll try to find one secondhand. It probably qualifies as a tax write-off as job-related equipment too, now that I think of it. Hmm.

9:49: Good lord — you can read ebooks on a DS, watch movies with the right adaptors — wow. Not quite as use-specific as I thought. More of a chance I’d use it.

May 6:

12:47: Blade lent me his DS Lite to mess around with. This is very useable indeed.

8:22: Did my research on eBay, bid on a used original DS that has a broken hinge but otherwise works perfectly. Ended up winning it, too. Including shipping, I’m paying about forty dollars for it. Ha. Even if I never use it after playing it a few times over the summer, that’s no more expensive than two CDs, or three and a half trips to the movies.

Good gods — I own a handheld gaming system. Who am I, and where did the real me go? This is completely unlike me. I blame the workplace.

May 7:

13:27: I told Scott as we walked back from lunch that I bought a secondhand DS yesterday. He stepped sideways in surprise and beamed, then put his arm around me and said, “That’s awesome! Congratulations! Now I can bring mine and we can play together at lunch!” It was very cute, and really made me feel like a kid again.

May 9:

There is a package for me at the post office!

May 10:

3:15: Scott and I have been IMing back and forth about music games for the DS. There’s a NA version of M-06 coming out next month, Jam Sessions, which is not a exactly game but more of a music work package to recognise chords and mess about with composition, and I’ll definitely be picking that one up. There are more, too. And he’s pointed me towards review sites and othe nifty places. I am being enabled.

8:15: Got home and the package was waiting for me on the kitchen table. I opened it and pulled my very own DS out. It’s blue. It is mine. It was even all charged up. I slipped in one of the games Blade lent me, and voila, it’s functional. Liam finds it fascinating, and figured out immediately how to move my stylus hand to make the characters walk around.

Here is my new toy:

My new toy, May 11 2007

I can’t remember the last thing I bought that was a toy and intended to be such, something to just mess about with for entertainment.

Also, in case it hasn’t been clear, I’m not a gamer. Not video games, anyhow; RPGs were my game of choice, and I slipped out of doing that regularly nigh on sixish years ago now, with only the occasional half-hearted foray back once in a while. Looks like that’s changing. I’ll never be a hardcore gamer, but I’m interested in the phenomenon of casual games based on music and language, and there’s a growing market of those out there aimed at people exactly like me. This is a trend I’m happy to support.

Tired Professional Editor Girl

Day Two: many words have fallen to my pink highlighting bar of doom. If only I was permitted to edit to the extent to which I wish to edit! Then I would be in heaven. But there are rights issues.

We did a beautiful full moon ritual tonight. I have missed group ritual.

In other news, I have a new (secondhand) cell phone. Of course, since the provider website won’t recognise my credit card because it claims I’m not typing in the correct address registered to the card, I can’t do more than activate it until I go out and buy a top-up card. Sigh. At least now I’ll know what time it is when I’m on public transport. (I lost my Eeyore watch! I cannot find it anywhere! I am very sad indeed.)

Very tired. Going to bed now.

Blissful Ignorance

I just discovered the Autosum button in Microsoft Excel.

I have used this program for over ten years, and only just found this function.

I am speechless.

(Well, all right, so I’ve been using it for databases of words and sentences all that time, not numbers. But still. You think it’s something I would have tripped across before today, when I needed to add a column of figures and didn’t want to pull out my calculator.)

Tuesday

After an entire frustrating morning of having my Owldaughter server down, it’s back. A slew of spam has just been released through my site-related e-mail accounts, but not a single bit of e-mail I was hoping for — namely, shiny and effulgent messages of “We loved your editing test, please work for us!” from at least one of the handful of jobs I’ve applied for over the past two weeks.

Teh Sicque is still dogging our steps in this house. After dealing with HRH being under the weather for the past handful of days, and Liam dealing with whatever it is that almost-twos deal with (like molars you can’t yet see and frustration with limits and the desire to brush tiny teeth seven times daily and disinterest in food other than crackers and the need to watch a movie over and over and over again when we’re limiting TV time), I find that today I’m quite tired. Liam’s regular Monday with the caregiver was switched for today, and I’ve done some writing, but it’s going so very slowly and I’m fighting deep physical exhaustion. I’ve eaten twice since breakfast, but I’m still flopsy. I’m loath to go curl up under the afghan and doze because then I’ll feel like I’ve lost the day. I don’t even have a good book to read, although last night I pulled Patricia Wrede’s Snow White Rose Red off the shelf to be reread when I finished the latest Nora Roberts fluff with which I was distracting myself. Actually, I don’t really want to read, which alarms me.

I’m also experiencing stupid little crises centered around how I feel like I’m only pretending to be a real writer, and if I’ve published three books shouldn’t I feel different, and have more to show for it? And if/when my fiction gets published, will that better validate my work in my own eyes? Who knows. The mice in the wheel that powers my brain can take a break, though, because I feel like I’m chasing my own inadequacies in circles today.

If it weren’t minus 33 with the windchill out there, I’d go for a walk to clear my brain, get a drink, and perhaps treat myself to an Easter Creme Egg.

I have no idea what to do for dinner this evening. My meal creativity ran out last night.

Back to work. I’m going to start skipping scenes in Pandora and expanding the ones that exist in note form. I’ll go back and bridge them later, when I have the energy to write transitions properly.

Enabled

There is an astonishingly large amount of “you need this unused bit of electronic stuff that I have lying around, pay me a pittance when you have the money free in a couple of months” going around in my life right now. As a result, I have my first real grown-up stereo set-up after buying a CD deck as my treat to myself for delivering the pagan pregnancy book (how have I, a bass-loving cellist, survived listened to classical music without a subwoofer until now?), and as of last night I also have a replacement ’03 Latitude laptop for my well-loved and well-used ’94 Lifebook (interestingly enough, also a gift from a friend a five years ago). The Lifebook is too slow for me now, won’t recognise USB flash drives no matter how many drivers I download, only functions on dial-up, can’t read CD-Rs on which I store files, and is just not up to what I need it to do for me these days. It saw me through five books, two published and three unpublished, as well as plenty of articles and short fiction. The Latitude is pretty much equivalent to my own desktop, which is yay, because now I have an alternative place to go to work/play when I need to get away from where I’ve been working on the desktop in the office. I wonder what I’ll write on it first. Other than Swan Sister once I get back to it next week, that is.

So heartfelt thanks to those of my friends who think of me, and who believe that things like music machines and computers ought to be used instead of gathering dust.

And I perpetuate the passing-on karma: yes Mum, you get the Lifebook when we come down to see you this month.