Last night I finally sat down to resume work on the rewrite of a novel I've been working on. That interview with Sanderson left me feeling inspired and motivated. I was able to write almost 3,000 words. In addition, thanks to some help from Claude.ai, I was able to throw together a new tracker which I can use for recording progress on my writing.
I had a version of it that I had previously written and integrated with this blog, but the UI was very rough and I had some core feature updates I wanted. The biggest of which is now it more elegantly will record progress for both new writing and when I go back and edit to change things. The way it does this is I can now upload a copy of the document I'm working on, and it parses the file and compares it to the most recent version, counting new words and words removed.
I'll share more about it after I've been using it a bit longer, and I make sure it's all working how I want. This is the sort of project where I do think AI coding support is useful. It wasn't perfect and I've had to chase a few random bugs, but it is a promising new tool for me.
| Share to:February 12th, 2025
Automated Archives for February, 12th 2025
This post was automatically generated.
Articles To Read
The following are articles that I saved today. Substance and quality will vary drastically.
- The Untold Story of a Crypto Crimefighter’s Descent Into Nigerian Prison
- A Starter Guide to Symbolism & Storytelling in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Chess For the Day
Record: 3-0-3
Net Elo Change: 0
Games Played
Blog Posts On This Day
- February 12, 2024 (1 post)
- February 12, 2023 (2 posts)
- February 12, 2021 (1 post)
Tim Ferriss with Brandon Sanderson
Really enjoying this interview and the insights Brandon shares here. Around the 57 minute mark he is discussing how he approaches writing and figuring characters out, and he talks about writing 300k words of a novel and then deciding the personality of a character was wrong in it.
I feel this as I'm working on a rewrite of a novel I wrote (granted it's 100k-ish in words in the original form) and I'm starting from scratch porting over characters and some plot, but in writing that first version I wasn't thrilled with it. I kept thinking, "this feels like half a story" and as it turns out - it is. Now, I don't think the next version will be twice as long, but I really learned a lot about the story by writing it out. So now I am going at it again.
| Share to:I cannot remember my high school sophomore English teacher's name and it is really bugging me. Getting old sucks.
Update: Found it through some clever googling.
| Share to:February 11th, 2025
My annual tradition is to do my taxes while watching the Superbowl, sadly I wasn't feeling well so I literally slept through the game. From what I saw it doesn't look like I missed anything aside from Kendrick Lamar's halftime show.
But, I was sad to hold off filing my taxes until tonight. But, they got filed.
| Share to:The Drain Pump Filter Needs Clearing
Home repair continues to be a fascinating journey.
This weekend we've been dealing with our washing machine giving an OE error and not draining. Online research revealed it was likely something to do with the drain pump, or possibly a clog relating to the drainage system.
Howver, as I've been a bit under the weather, it didn't really get addressed until today. I was finally able to finish draining the washer and get access to the drain pump filter, where we discovered it was indeed very very clogged. (No pictures, but imagine enough lint and dog fur that had accumulated to simulate a dead rodent.)
(It wasn't a dead rodent. It was just gunk.)
So I got it cleaned out and back in place and we're running the machine again, hopefully, without issue now that I've cleaned that filter. (Again, not a dead rodent, that was a bad analogy.)
Last year I did a minor repair to our dryer, and between these two events - I have come to believe that of most household devices, the washer and dryer remain simple enough that many people can manage to repair them on their own if they have the desire. Online tutorials have truly become amazing.
I yearn for more home appliances to stay in that level of complexity, rather than unnecessarily adding more computerized controls which remove the layperson's ability to repair their own equipment.
Now, here's hoping that cycle finishes without issue.
| Share to:Glowbugging While Sick
I've been fighting a bug and slept the majority of the past two days. I'm back mostly functional today, but I can tell I'm still less than 100%.
One thing that came out of the past day was I managed to make progress on two things on the blog:
First, the tag specific archives now (partly) work. I haven't linked to them anywhere yet, that is still coming. I also added the ability for me to choose which tags get archives. The archives need a bit more tweaking, and I want to add pagination to the tags which are larger (for example, there are 200+ posts with the programming tag currently.) But we've made solid progress.
I also want to add the ability to do combined tags. For example, the system currently recognizes 'review' and then a medium such as 'tv', 'movie', 'book.' But that is hardcoded, and I will need to find a way to streamline making those into special archives, etc.
Second, I upgraded the admin-side search functionality of posts. It was previously very simple and now it includes logic for handling and/or/not, as well as more. I've found a few bugs still to work out but excited to have gotten this far.
So, it's progress.
| Share to:February 10th, 2025
February 9th, 2025
Love Hurts (2025) - 2.5 of 5 Valentine's Day Cards
I posted on Bluesky yesterday after seeing the movie that it reminded me of Bullet Train. Not as good, but in the same vein as an action movie with absurdist humor interspersed.
| Share to:February 7th, 2025
I was in a very bad mood for much of yesterday. I knew I had not slept well, but I think I underestimated how much that poor night's sleep had impacted my day yesterday. After a good night's sleep I woke up feeling refreshed and in a far better mood.
Usually, I aim for 6ish hours of sleep. And I know my body struggles if it has less than 5 hours, of which yesterday was a day, but most of the struggling yesterday was mental where as most other days it is more physical tiredness. I can only attribute this difference to the inevitable march of time.
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