As I mentioned a while ago, my workload for the winter term is so lopsided that ninety percent of my lectures fall into the first half of the term. Now, there’s one week left! This time next week, I’ll have a life again! Miraculously, though, I managed to send out the advance reading copies of the horror sf novel I finished editing last month, the accompanying website of which might go online next week. And then, after what feels like ages, I’ll be able to finalize the synopsis and fire off my first query.
Speaking of which—creating advance reading copies, I gotta tell you, was a screaming pain in the ass. Scrivener is the best writing app in existence, but its compile-&-export functions—I wouldn’t exactly call them “features”—are so infuriatingly opaque that I had to fall back on sheer trial & error, which ate up my time like popcorn. Then, for the PDF version, the InDesign CS6 file from my game design textbook that I wanted to use as a template just flat out exploded on import in Affinity Publisher. And the current InDesign CC app wasn’t any better—crashing every time I deleted a chapter, an illustration, even a bunch of text to make room for the new script. Soonish, I’ll have to build a new template from scratch in Publisher, no way around that. I’m not looking forward to it.
Also, during a rare moment of respite last week, I uploaded a new album on Flickr, Beijing V: Fang Cao Di (20 images, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), and one new image on Glass. I’m still contemplating a return to film, even though I ruled that out some time ago for very reasonable reasons…
No game recommendation this week, but a game music recommendation: the Inazuma battle theme “Duel in the Mist” from Genshin Impact, played by an all-star Japanese folk ensemble, which is totally awesome.
And here, as usual, some fun things to enjoy. This caption contest winner for a Lord of the Rings scene cracked me up every bit as much as this take on the history of experiments in psychology, and here’s a baby bear trying to catch snowflakes.
Get your shots, y’all, and keep your masks tight!
J.
Speaking of which—creating advance reading copies, I gotta tell you, was a screaming pain in the ass. Scrivener is the best writing app in existence, but its compile-&-export functions—I wouldn’t exactly call them “features”—are so infuriatingly opaque that I had to fall back on sheer trial & error, which ate up my time like popcorn. Then, for the PDF version, the InDesign CS6 file from my game design textbook that I wanted to use as a template just flat out exploded on import in Affinity Publisher. And the current InDesign CC app wasn’t any better—crashing every time I deleted a chapter, an illustration, even a bunch of text to make room for the new script. Soonish, I’ll have to build a new template from scratch in Publisher, no way around that. I’m not looking forward to it.
Also, during a rare moment of respite last week, I uploaded a new album on Flickr, Beijing V: Fang Cao Di (20 images, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), and one new image on Glass. I’m still contemplating a return to film, even though I ruled that out some time ago for very reasonable reasons…
No game recommendation this week, but a game music recommendation: the Inazuma battle theme “Duel in the Mist” from Genshin Impact, played by an all-star Japanese folk ensemble, which is totally awesome.
And here, as usual, some fun things to enjoy. This caption contest winner for a Lord of the Rings scene cracked me up every bit as much as this take on the history of experiments in psychology, and here’s a baby bear trying to catch snowflakes.
Get your shots, y’all, and keep your masks tight!
J.