Monthly Archive: December 2012

Doing the Write Thing*

Twenty-twelve (or two thousand and twelve if you like to be pedantic about the pronunciation of mathematical notation) was a good year for me in terms of writing and blogging.

In total I wrote over one hundred and fifty different pieces for blogs this year, including an eight thousand word epic post on the first twenty-five years of the Perl programming language.

I did start to feel demoralised that I hadn’t blogged enough and then I remembered that I do maintain a large number of blogs between family, personal, company and community and when added together the number of posts is quite significant, about three a week is a good number.

I also managed to fit in two different books and the Nanowrimo, though the two books were a completing of one and a re-edit of another, even still with my busy schedule this was a feat I think. This year’s Nano story is already undergoing an edit and being read in serial form by my wife so there is hope that I might do something with it as it is the first in a short series of linked stories that I am planning on writing.

I am hoping to up my quota for the coming year and I will probably do a short piece like this on what I achieve at the end of the coming year. If you keep watching you may read it. One thing I will be doing is keeping a closer watch on the number of articles I write so I can have a set of figures to present and maybe make graphs and charts with (I like pretty charts). We shall see.

ttfn…

 

* Yes it was an awful pun I do apologise.

Wonder…

I am always surprised at people who cannot find any wonder in their lives at all. I don’t mean people who are suffering, I mean the everyday folk who just cannot see any glory about them.

Every single atom of your being was made in the centre of a nebula. We are all literally made of the same stuff that the universe is constructed from. Each moment that passes sees atoms replaced so that you are constantly in a state of flux and being remade with new ‘stardust’ – we are as the hippies would have it, star children, we are made of stars – what is not wondrous about that?

If you like you can apply this to a theistic evolutionary model, personally I don’t but that’s a preference. I can certainly see the argument and have offerred it to those people who are confounded by the whole creationism/evolutionary argument as an olive branch.

This would only be my first thought about the wonder around me, I can quickly find many others, both natural* and man-made. In the world of man I personally like to think about great architecture, both modern and ancient, and find the wonder that the designers, builders and labourers must have had when they created such magnificent works. There is a glory in ome design that to me is wondrous.

Then there is the natural world, a love of the BBC Nature programs, and of David Attenborough, has instilled in me (and I think almost every other British person) a sense of wonder at the natural* world.

However, to not find wonder in the world at all, to be dour because being filled with amazement is too much like hard work, is to be quite a sad.

* I use the term with caution as I am tired of people who use ‘natural’ to mean ‘good’ and man-made to mean ‘unnatural’ or ‘bad’, specifically in the world of science. I am of the opinion that nature endowed us with the capacity to construct science and from that we create things so how exactly is that ‘unnatural’, it is ‘natural’ to the species.

2012 Christmas Story in 100 Words

On Christmas Eve the miser, Able, declared, “I will never receive gifts. They’re based on reciprocity. Once received you must return, continuing even when the other person does not.”

That night he heard a noise, a fat man in red stood above him, “ah, my replacement,” said the man, punching Able in the face.

Able awoke in a large, icy, cavern. Eleven reindeer looked at him. He was dressed in the man’s red clothes. Beside him were presents, billions of them, one for every person who had lived and who ever would. All addressed to Able by his new name.

Back to the Grind

It has been a while since I was writing regularly to this blog. The world of social media and Twitter seem to have taken me in their grasp and I have left the longer pieces to dwell in the recesses of my mind, well hopefully this will change and I will take the thrust up again.

I have been writing some long pieces, alongside the Tweets and Status updates, I have managed to keep writing to the per.ly blog and the Shadowcat News page, but not so much on the personal side.

This month I also wrote a really long (about 9,000 words) article on the 25th Anniversary of Perl that today made it to the front page of Slashdot, for which I am a little happy – not too much that might crack my modesty circuit and remove me from the Bashful Societies Yearbook.

Screen Shot 2012-12-19 at 16.07.42

Anyway, that’s the few status words updated, hopefully there will be more soon.

Nanowrimo 2012

I didn’t think I could do it…

I know I have uttered those words before about Nano, especially the last couple of years as my life has become super full of things to consume time with. But this year I really had a bad feeling.

This was borne out as November trundled along and I had failed stories, lack of time to write and home/work duites that just mounted up. By Friday 30th November the last day I was 17.2K words down from the target of 50K. I was right, it seemed, I couldn’t do it.

Then Leigh gave me an odd look and said that she was upset because we would no longer have the same Nano stats…

I had only had 4 hrs sleep, I had a busy day, but by the time 11:40 had rolled around I couldn’t get enough work done, or that damned comment out of my head. I also felt that I would be lacking if I didn’t give this the good old Keating insanity rush.

So I poured a lot of coffee into my system, thought about where the plot had to go and how to get there and started. I would make a charge and at least finish closer than 2/3rds…

‘I bwoke my bwain’, my fingers burned, but by 21:30 I had also done the near impossible in my mind, I had made it as the comeback kid. Nano 2012 was done and I was a winner…

Next year I have to do this differently 🙂

(I also have to finish this story…)