McAdam Station
Update on all the Stuff in My Life
I have to come clean: I haven't written any Phillip
Gold in three days. Okay, there, I said it. I
admitted my fault. Work has been extremely busy and
so has life in general. Add that the constant rain of
the past few weeks has finally broken out into
glorious sunshine (and the resulting golf game) and
you'll see why I haven't been able to get back to
The Silent Goodbye.
My subconscious has been working on it (or is that my unconscious?) and I expect to be able to get rolling again when I next sit down. Too many things have gotten in the way.
By way of update on other things, however, I still have not heard from the publisher about my Abigail Massey submission. I have also given up trying to figure out what that means: they don't review new submissions very often so they simply haven't taken a look at it; they have looked at it and rejected it but figure bad news can wait; they like it but it has to go through the channels for approvals before they contact me again.
I"ve heard all the possibilities and have no clue which is true. I don't want to give up but I'd feel a lot better if I had heard one way or another.
My vegetable garden is coming along surprisingly well. Although we have little critters that seem to go after certain plants, the whole garden plot (so brown and barren two months ago) is alive with varying shades of green. I even had to go out and do some heartless thinning to most of the rows of veggies but learned from the way the remaining plants suddenly exploded in growth thereafter that thinning is a good and kind thing for plants. No actual, edible vegetables yet but we're getting there.
With regard to backyard birds, I made the mistake of buying the really cheap seed and ended up, perhaps not surprisingly, with a yard filled with grackles, crows, doves and pigeons. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't come to complain. So I took the main feeder down and put it in the shed. Within two days, most of the undesirables had disappeared and, for the last two days, we've enjoyed the company of gold and purple finches as well as chipping sparrows and chicadees at our finch feeder. Much better. Lesson learned.
In the area of reading, well, I've gotten myself caught up in Harry Potter again. In preparation for the disappointing film that came out a couple of weeks ago, I re-read The Half-Blood Prince, then followed the natural course of things and read The Deathly Hallows. Now I'm whipping through the first three books, reading the novel and watching the movie in rapid succession to see the changes. I can't believe I never realised how different the ending of the first book was from that of the first movie: in the book, Harry's battle with Quirrell/Voldemort is killing both of them when Dumbledore intervenes to save Harry; in the movie, Harry is victorious over Quirrell but knocked out by Voldemort's escaping spirit and wakes in the Infirmary. Very different.
And, still on the video front, I am now watching the third season of Star Trek: The Original Series again. You can feel the change in quality from the opening moment. For one thing, Kirk and the rest have been allowed to grow their hair out from the military cuts of the first two seasons to hippie styles of the sixties. It just looks bad.
Anyway, that's the update. Off to the golf course now!
My subconscious has been working on it (or is that my unconscious?) and I expect to be able to get rolling again when I next sit down. Too many things have gotten in the way.
By way of update on other things, however, I still have not heard from the publisher about my Abigail Massey submission. I have also given up trying to figure out what that means: they don't review new submissions very often so they simply haven't taken a look at it; they have looked at it and rejected it but figure bad news can wait; they like it but it has to go through the channels for approvals before they contact me again.
I"ve heard all the possibilities and have no clue which is true. I don't want to give up but I'd feel a lot better if I had heard one way or another.
My vegetable garden is coming along surprisingly well. Although we have little critters that seem to go after certain plants, the whole garden plot (so brown and barren two months ago) is alive with varying shades of green. I even had to go out and do some heartless thinning to most of the rows of veggies but learned from the way the remaining plants suddenly exploded in growth thereafter that thinning is a good and kind thing for plants. No actual, edible vegetables yet but we're getting there.
With regard to backyard birds, I made the mistake of buying the really cheap seed and ended up, perhaps not surprisingly, with a yard filled with grackles, crows, doves and pigeons. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't come to complain. So I took the main feeder down and put it in the shed. Within two days, most of the undesirables had disappeared and, for the last two days, we've enjoyed the company of gold and purple finches as well as chipping sparrows and chicadees at our finch feeder. Much better. Lesson learned.
In the area of reading, well, I've gotten myself caught up in Harry Potter again. In preparation for the disappointing film that came out a couple of weeks ago, I re-read The Half-Blood Prince, then followed the natural course of things and read The Deathly Hallows. Now I'm whipping through the first three books, reading the novel and watching the movie in rapid succession to see the changes. I can't believe I never realised how different the ending of the first book was from that of the first movie: in the book, Harry's battle with Quirrell/Voldemort is killing both of them when Dumbledore intervenes to save Harry; in the movie, Harry is victorious over Quirrell but knocked out by Voldemort's escaping spirit and wakes in the Infirmary. Very different.
And, still on the video front, I am now watching the third season of Star Trek: The Original Series again. You can feel the change in quality from the opening moment. For one thing, Kirk and the rest have been allowed to grow their hair out from the military cuts of the first two seasons to hippie styles of the sixties. It just looks bad.
Anyway, that's the update. Off to the golf course now!
Film Projects
08/06/09 22:10 Filed in: Films
So now I've gotten into movie making. With iMovie on
our new iMac, our digital camera and other stuff, I'm
starting to enjoy working with moving pictures and
sound, creating interesting effects.
The only problem is, it's really time consuming. A file of my writing takes a second or so to save or print or travel by e-mail. A movie file (especially one that's in reasonable quality with sound) takes forever to do anything. Just moving a two-minute movie from our camera to iMovie takes several minutes. E-mailing it takes even longer. I'll have to learn patience, I guess.
I've even created a Youtube Channel for my creations: I'm "markwwnb" and I hope soon to be uploading little bits of film for people to enjoy. I am planning to make a trip down to McAdam soon to film a tour of the station and hotel there, for example, and I'm also thinking of creating some fun short films using clips from existing movies and TV shows.
For example, I was watching the Star Trek episode, "Who Mourns for Adonais?", and I realised it might be fun to package up all the ridiculously sexist things characters on the original series say about women. In that particular episode, Kirk bemoans losing useful female officers when they decide to get married and (of course) leave Star Fleet to take care of their husbands and babies. Later, the god Apollo says a female lieutenant is very intelligent "for a woman". And then there's "Turnabout Intruder", an interesting episode that centres on Janice Lester's frustration at being denied a starship command on the basis of her sex: a seemingly pro-woman plot is undermined by the insulting portrayal of Kirk's body as inhabited by Lester's soul.
The problem is, this new fascination with film-making is taking time away from my writing. And then there's gardening and birding.
So much to do with so little time!
The only problem is, it's really time consuming. A file of my writing takes a second or so to save or print or travel by e-mail. A movie file (especially one that's in reasonable quality with sound) takes forever to do anything. Just moving a two-minute movie from our camera to iMovie takes several minutes. E-mailing it takes even longer. I'll have to learn patience, I guess.
I've even created a Youtube Channel for my creations: I'm "markwwnb" and I hope soon to be uploading little bits of film for people to enjoy. I am planning to make a trip down to McAdam soon to film a tour of the station and hotel there, for example, and I'm also thinking of creating some fun short films using clips from existing movies and TV shows.
For example, I was watching the Star Trek episode, "Who Mourns for Adonais?", and I realised it might be fun to package up all the ridiculously sexist things characters on the original series say about women. In that particular episode, Kirk bemoans losing useful female officers when they decide to get married and (of course) leave Star Fleet to take care of their husbands and babies. Later, the god Apollo says a female lieutenant is very intelligent "for a woman". And then there's "Turnabout Intruder", an interesting episode that centres on Janice Lester's frustration at being denied a starship command on the basis of her sex: a seemingly pro-woman plot is undermined by the insulting portrayal of Kirk's body as inhabited by Lester's soul.
The problem is, this new fascination with film-making is taking time away from my writing. And then there's gardening and birding.
So much to do with so little time!