ingy.ca

Motivation lost to Minecraft

All Minecraft and no writing makes Matt ashamed of himself.

:(

This is temporary.  Good news is that I’m thinking of my ideas….bad news is that I’ve started reading Hunger Games and there are some similarities to some fictional locations I had come up with.  I’m going to press on with my development though.  I’m sure Hunger Games isn’t the only book out there with some similarities. There’s only so many stories, after all.  My plot and characters are different at least.

I’ve been on a huge Minecraft kick.  I dream of Obsidian Blocks and Creepers.  I will write more when I can get off my habit long enough.

First Ideas

I’m starting to form an idea for NaNoWriMo.  I have no clue what would be a good starting point to develop the idea having never taken on a writing project of this size before, so I think I’ll just start by making notes about the main characters, settings, etc.  Really that’s all I can do until November as the rules state you can’t begin writing the novel until NaNoWriMo actually begins on November 1st.  Maybe I’ll write one or two very short stories about periphery characters set in the world I intend to use.

Something that’s been bugging me is my reluctance to research.  I wanted to try and do as little as possible, instead basing as much as I can on my own knowledge.  I’m starting to realise that it’s just not going to work that way and research into plot devices I want to use will be unavoidable. I’ll add “research material list making” to my pre-November tasks.  I’ll need a few little tidbits of information on things like bicycle maintenance, radio transmission technology, guillotines and other things that play a part…I’m also going to try and say very little about the plot here though, so I’ll shut up about further research topics for now.

I’ve been sharing the odd blog post on Facebook and Google Plus but I may stop sharing on one or both of those until November.  People may get sick of seeing links to my blog posts in their stream.  The blog is more of a way for my to think out loud and stretch my writing muscles more regularly.  If you’re interested then you can check out this site every now and then or follow me on Tumblr or even subscribe to the rss feed by clicking the link at the top.

That’s all for now.  I’m off to research feral dogs….ack! I’ve said too much.

:p

What happened to my vocabulary/concentration/focus?

Yeah, I know I haven’t posted 3 times a week but I’m going to fall back on the excuse of not having started yet.  This post marks my first post since my announce to participate in NaNoWriMo so I can give myself grief if I fail to write regularly from this point on.

For my blog posts I won’t be submitting any fiction.  This is purely a way for me to exercise my writing muscles which I’m going to kick things off with a post about how they’ve dwindled over the past decade.  Back in my teens and early twenties I’d write whenever I had the chance it seemed.  Just after Liam was born I wrote him a letter to be opened when he turns 20.  I wrote at least one entry a month, usually consisting of 3 or more paragraphs. It was a journal of sorts from me aged 23 to him aged 20.  After moving to Canada I found I less time for writing and I also took a job at a Call Centre responding to emails and item listings from eBay users.  I don’t mean to sound incredibly arrogant but the average level of literacy of these users was probably grade 5 at best.  I think it had a real impact on my own vocab and writing skills being exposed to this kind of nonsense day in and day out.   Then came the age of social networks and increased usage of text messaging.  I’ve noticed a distinct drop in my level of concentration since being exposed to such things.  I’ll skim read news stories more often than not, only occasionally reading articles in their entirety.

Will the side effects suffered by a fast paced, social media driven generation worsen over time?  Maybe this exercise in writing will prove beneficial to me.  Maybe I’ll look back in a year and re-read (not skim) these posts and see a Flowers for Algernon type story unfold.

NaNoWriMo Workouts Start

So for those of you who know about NaNoWriMo I’m going to take part this year.  For those of you who aren’t aware of it go check it out and join me if you want.

I used to write a fair bit years ago and have a couple of story ideas floating round my head.  The rules of NaNoWriMo state that you can write as many notes before November as you want but you can’t actually begin writing until the kick off date of November 1st.  I’ll be using the time between now and then to give some thought as to which story I want to go with and then I plan to develop the hell out of it - Character backgrounds, plot outline, etc.

Another thing I’ll be doing from now until November is blogging as much as I can.  I’ll ramp up but I’m shooting for 3 posts a week of about this size just to get in the habit of writing and getting some practise in.  I’m not after a readership, more just somewhere I can publish something and commit to keeping up with it.

I’ll try to post a blog entry once a week during November to update on my progress.  I won’t be posting any of the novel here as I’m going to put it out in Kindle eBook format afterwards at very low cost or $0. If you fancy joining me on my writing adventure check out NaNoWriMo’s website, leave a comment here or contact me via one of the social media links to the right.

Trixbox PBX System

So after finding myself with not too many consistent periods of free time to devote to reading/developing for Android I decided to take on a different project.  My profession has seen me dabble in the world of automated dialler systems.  A company I do some work for is beginning a transition from a traditional phone system to a VoIP system for their live rep and IVR call centre business.

A Linux installation has been setup onsite running Asterisk and FreePBX.  I decided to take a look at this technology at home and set up a VirtualBox installation with everything required to run the PBX. All attempts to get connected to the PBX server from a windows client softphone resulted in timeouts. I tried with an Ubuntu Server + Asterisk Setup and also with just the FreePBX distro.  I was ready to throw in the towel until I tried Trixbox.  It’s very lightweight, able to run on just 256MB RAM in a VM on my shitty little low powered Linux laptop.  Within an hour or so I had the OS installed, the extensions setup in the PBX dashboard and was dialling a softphone on my Windows laptop from Sipdroid on my Android phone which I was able to easily connect to the PBX.

I’ve been looking into acquiring a DID number and have stumbled upon a company that offer free UK DID numbers with no charge for incoming calls.  This will work very well for friends and relatives from the UK to call me using their landlines.  UK rate call for them and no charge for me!  I’ll update here should I get that running.

And Then I Decided To Learn How To Code For Android

The other day I was getting some paperwork together and needed a scanner.  My father in law has one and so I thought I’d have to remember to use it next time I’m over there.  But, knowing me I’ll likely end up visiting one weekend and then only remember on my way home.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was a location based reminder app that could remind about things I need to get done at certain places when I arrive at those places?  Maybe I should I write one, I thought.  Great idea but two issues:

1. I realised I wouldn’t have a clue where to start

2. Someone has already written that kind of app.  Well, actually a few people have as it turns out.

Never mind, I’ll learn anyway.  In the past I’ve tried to dabble with programming languages like PHP or Ruby before but never had a project in mind so would lose interest without having any  actual practical application to apply it to in order to play around.  So I’ve downloaded the tools necessary and over the next few weeks I will read up and muck about with Eclipse and the Android SDK to cobble something together.  I’ve been thinking of some other little apps too.  My only background is a few years spent writing with VB6 and Access.  That was quite a while ago - the only recent stuff I’ve done is some simple little windows services and scripts.  Still, that experience is better than nothing.

As I learn I’ll post my progress - code snippets, links to good learning material and maybe an apk or two when I finally complete a project.  If anyone has any recommendations on reading material please let me know.