There’s been times when I thought I had completely planned out the book well before starting NaNo - and then it turned out that, as they say, “the difference between having strategy and tactics is that in the battlefield, strategy is the first thing that gets thrown out as unpractical”. Even if I think I have a daily plan for everything, some days I might sit down and write 2000+ words and sometimes do 200 and then go “eeh, my head is empty, what now?”. And then I’d feel really bad. The biggest skill at that point is to learn not to feel bad and instead just accept that sometimes you have to improvise.

I’ve tried a lot of approaches through NaNos. Last year I had a very loosely sketched structure plan which worked okay, while letting me come up with ground-level details on the fly. I’ve sometimes done a lot more clearer plans too. Sometimes I just go “damn it, absolutely had no time to plan anything this year” and go completely wacky. This year it was something different, had ideas on setting and main character and the structure, and at practical level it worked pretty darn okay for generating more ideas for worldbuilding on the fly.

A round of applause to everyone! I’m happy that this year I’ve managed to get back my writing spirit, and this NaNo was a great success. Absolutely looking forward to next year being even better!

Friendly remember to do backups and keep your project stuff in sensible locations! I keep a lot of my projects in private Git repositories and I decided to do a list of my past NaNo projecs. I noticed that I didn’t have my first NaNo project (2010) anywhere at hand. Fortunately, just yesterday I found the git repository for that from the image of my old server. You know, exactly where I left it.

Thanks for the leaderboard shoutouts for yesterday, btw!

…but those aren’t even words. He… he’s not even attempting to… produce words…

This is such a stupid timeline.

Random European extrapolations: Uhh… the novel is about sadness and dark themes, but I’ve felt happy writing it. I’ve been happy getting some of the sadness and unwritten thoughts down to writing. It’s been very therapeutic. I’ve not felt completely stuck, at no point this year I’ve not felt like writing this was a chore to be dealt with. And I’ve not felt alone either, thank you, folks.

Anyway, 50,242 words! I think this is a good place to call it done as far as the project checkpoint goes. As the project is part of an indie game project and I hope to get the design document to some kind of a presentable state by the end of the year, I will definitely be continuing the work on the manuscript very soon.

Is that a Nikkor 13mm f/5.6?

…hmph. Huh.

Looks like it is not.

[Giant big shrug]

NEVER MIND THEN.

/sarcasm

Random Republican, transported through time from 15 years ago: “No no no no no! You see, gerrymandering has everything to do with census data. It’s completely impartial! There’s no way the process will fail us.”

[Gets shown the footage]

Random Time-Displaced Republican: “Excuse me, but… Who the hell is in the power right now?”

[More footage]

RTDR: “Ohhhhh shit I HAVE TO GO BACK TO MY TIME!!! …What do you mean you can only time travel forward in time?”

Me, upon installing Debian KDE distro, and having Dragon Player pop up: I ALREADY INSTALLED VLC, WHAT THE HELL DUDES

Boeing CEO: “We’re always innovating, and sometimes we need to boldly embrace the wisdom of the past if it can be re-examined in light of current technology. From now on, our airplane navigation systems will be based on the Flat Earth model. This makes navigation so much more computationally efficient, guys.”

Probably heading to the city centre to pick up a copy of Skyrim for Xbox 360.

I got home, did my NaNoWriMo writing sprint, and then fired up Skyrim and played like 12 hours straight.

Don’t wake up to be fucking Average

Spoken like a true Average

“A Study in Emerald” by Neil Gaiman (…bflrgh) included a bunch of random fictitious advertisements between the chapters. Doesn’t seem so far-fetched now.

[Random glance at the Krita recent files] [Ponderous inhale] It sure would be weird if someone hypothetically would be doing that, but I’m not sure I would be able to do anything about that.

DREDGE is one of the greatest recent games that actually get Lovecraftian horror.

You have the unnerving sense that, despite all of the minor assurances, the place you’re in is somehow wrong.

And once you start fishin’, you see the major things are Down There. Maybe they have minions Up Here.

And by the time you actually see some actual major real horrors, it’s already too late.

(Me, I’m just happy the game added a Photographer who said, hey, you can always photograph turtles. Because I know in my heart turtles can’t be evil.)

Weird mental health admission thing:

When I read a review of Space Hulk, I was low key traumatised by it showing the tactical display, with one of the screens showing static, with just a caption “he’s dead…”

A few years later, I got a copy of the game, loved the “FOR THE EMPRAH!” sample, and I found the map view hilarious. Oh no, the genestealer is approaching! *dying noises* oh the guy just disappeared. Kinda took the edge off it.

I should try playing the game again, but I hear it’s balls hard (Rory Fingers quote), and I think the CD-ROM is somewhere deep in the Pile.

Fair enough. In that case, the fact that you block them should come as no surprise to them.

Unlike me! No instance shall know whom I place my scorn on! No instance! Never! Muaha ha ha ha ha!!! Will they block me on account of these posts? Well now I have information on some fragile administrators! Haa ha ha haha haaa!

Also, if you’re more into 2010s mood here’s a remake by evony666. And as a relative FL Studio neophyte, I still think this related piece by the same author is aspirational. Because no one can argue it needs more blam. It has blam.

Edit: Yeah, apparently the Amiga version of the same song is a little bit bop too. But I still think the PC version is, like, the definitive version of OPL2/AdLib boppery! Edit2: Also I think the Amiga version’s arpeggiations are even more boppy because the Commodore 64 version doesn’t even have this song. So yeah.

Well shit’s on them. I don’t block instances. I mentally scorn them.

Oh wow, Voyager supports Piefed? Great, I can uninstall these other apps then.

“…Elon Musk will absolutely fight Mark Zuckerberg, if his mom lets him this time.”