Jules Jones's Blog, page 2

Hello 2024

I don't have a lot to say about 2023, mostly because one of the things to say is that not a lot got recorded in my diary that wasn't about a) medical issues, b) making a note of dates and times that the day job discriminated against me, in case it should be necessary to take them to court about it. I did actually manage to start writing again, even if it was only a revision pass on the first draft of a novel I'd finished just before medical problems made it impossible to write.

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PicoWriMo final report

There's a comm on LJ for people who like the idea of NaNoWriMo, but know that for whatever reason it's not practical to do 50 kwords in a month. Hence Pico instead of NaNo, where you get the benefit of the daily goal and company on the way, but on a writing project that targets what you can or want to do. Several times I've done the the "300 words a day" target from Sir Pterry's advice on how to write a novel without being intimidated by the idea of writing 100,000 words. I did 100 words a day at a point where that really was all I could do, but at least it helped me get it done. I've done "get x pages of my website updated". It's useful for all sorts of things. For this November, here's my comment from the wrap-up post at the comm:


So my month of Pico:
— Started getting back into using Scrivener, which may make life a lot easier with a couple of projects that were on the go just before I got too ill to write and hold down a day job at the same time.
— Got a novel draft into Scrivener.
— Went through most of it checking the timeline, and checked and tweaked inconsistencies in the setting that were the result of the thing turning into a novel.
— Got a good idea of what bits I still need to fill in from scenes that are currently only sketches (and found there were fewer of those than I thought).
— Failed to check in every day because I was so busy with the above. Sorry I didn't get around to commenting on other people's progress. I had a good excuse, honest.

Pretty successful for me, because it's really helped me start writing again after several years of finding it too difficult. Thank you, Wiseheart, for steering the comm.

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And while I'm talking about mystery stationery boxes

Cult Pens mystery goodie bag So this was being offered a few months ago at £15, or free with an order over a particular value, IIRC £50. I could think of that amount of stuff on my want/need list, along with a couple of "since it's on special...", and one of the reasons the want/need was that long was my not having ordered anything for two years. It supposedly was worth at least IIRC £18 and maybe even more. Wellllll... 

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Ooh, shiny... stationery

I should post more often to reassure people that I'm still alive. In lieu of actual content, have last night's live microblogging on Mastodon of my unpacking a box of stationery shinies. The rascafarians may well want more detailed stationery porn than this, but it is mostly tastefully hidden behind a cut for the rest of you.

So, the shinies. I treated myself to a £50 mystery box from Cult Pens. It's allegedly guaranteed to have contents worth at least double that, although a lot of their prices are significantly higher than from other firms - it's just that they have a vast array under one roof. It's also a gamble on whether any of the contents are what you want. I'm pleased to say that I did actually get £40 of stuff I would either buy at some point or would have to tell myself I don't need any more of.

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latest 5G tweak

Pfizered today. While I was waiting in the pharmacy an elderly gentleman came in and was telling one of the staff all about how he wasn't going to have his Covid vaccine because he'd seen the reports in Parliament about heart problems and excess deaths...

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The latest missionaries are the anti-vaxxers

Every so often I grumble on Mastodon about the noisier missionaries on Market Street as I walk to the bus station. Tonight's nuisances were a little more problematic. They weren't loud, but they had a lot of posters about different people who had supposedly been harmed or killed by the Covid vaccine, and asking frantically when the next mutation was planned for. More worryingly a few people were stopping to talk to them, and as far as I could see not for mockery purposes.

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Eastercon 2023

 Off to Eastercon tomorrow. I got sucked into looking at the relevant tag on my DW - and found something I'd completely forgotten, that I'd been on a Blake's 7 panel with Tanith Lee. I can remember nothing about it, even that it happened at all., although I probably embarrassed myself fangirling. I need to write con reports so that I can remember these things, but somehow they don't seem to happen. I'd better sling a notebook into my suitcase since I'm probably going to spend a fair amount of time in my room hiding from the nasty horrible noise. Which reminds me, I need to sling the earplugs in as well.

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LJ PASSWORDS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED

 Ongoing issues with compromised LiveJournal passwords which are now being used to hack into DreamWidth accounts. If you have ever reused a LiveJournal password elsewhere, go and change it now. (And for good measure I'd change your password at LJ, using something you have never used before and will not use anywhere else.)

https://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/41571.html

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Another one bites the dust

 I shouldn't do this to myself. The demolition work on my former employer is going to be at least two years of slow motion destruction, the building by building dismantling of what once employed thousands of people. But the most iconic piece of plant has toppled now. And I do mean toppled; not the neat folding in on itself of many controlled explosion demolitions, but falling sideways to crash against the ground. Something about watching that video hurt more deeply than if it had just fallen straight down, pancaking as it went. It was an ignominious end to what had once been a giant of its field, full of cutting edge technology. 

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Twitter

 If / when Twitter goes down, I have a shiny new Mastodon account:

https://mendeddrum.org/@JulesJones

Anyone who wants to leave their social media details in the comments, feel free.


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