We're making mead!

Home brewed mead, mmm mmm! A few days ago when Sam Irving was around, we put together some honey and water into must (he got some cool trickling images recorded on camera somewhere) and added some yeast nutrients and yeast to that honey-water must mix. Now it's bubbling away in the demijohn with a slight fizz in the main part and a gentle rhythm in the airlock.

White Tiger guards it.

Don't worry, we sanitised everything first! Some sanitised drops of liquid even accidentally dropped into the demijohn from the funnel because it was put on before I had rinsed it. Some people get too excited...

17th July 2012, 7.53pm -
The bubbles going fast! like four a second!

18th July 2012, 11.28am -
This morning it is fizzing just loudly enough to make me think the boiler was doing something until i got up and found out the boiler wasn't doing anything. Also there's a slightly sweet smell in the air down there! 

Hope it tastes good when it's done!

Searching for sand paper.

That moment when you've been researching how to cut glass bottles,

and have consumed plenty of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry,

so that you have a nice blue bottle for cutting,

and realise that the rough and fine sand paper you have kept

- in your collection of potentially useful things that never actually see the light of day

(except when you add another potentially useful thing) -

may actually have a use now,

and are searching for it in every place you can remember it being

- while tipsy,

since you've decided you're going to do a trial cut on a spare Desperados bottle

that you just happen to have kicking about although you finished it a long time ago,

- but you are still probably too tipsy to be attempting such things,

when really it would probably be easier to just buy one off the Internet.

But where's the fun in that?

December: Post Nano Plot Reflection

I realised that although I didn't manage 50,000 words in one month, I have managed over 40,000 words over October and November put together. Throughout October I spent some time trying to write a diary entry everyday, mostly of odd trains of thought I was having as I was having them, even the nonsense ones, just to see how many words I would do. I'd definitely like to see if I could combine parts of the two into any sort of entertaining novelish object.

NaNoWriMo has a list of things that you can do once you've recovered from thirty days of novel writing.
December's is all about sorting out the plot arc of the novel:

The Plot Whisperer -- Plot Writing Month (December). Goal: Refine the plot arc of your first draft.


And here are some others they've listed that go on throughout the year:

NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month (Year-Round). Goal: Post every day for a month.

SciFiWriMo – Science Fiction Writing Month (Year-Round). Goal: choose a target word count and reach it in a month, writing sci-fi or fantasy.

750 Words – (Year-Round). Goal: write 750 words a day. Includes month-long challenges.

Wriye – (Year-Round). Goal: Set a word-count goal for the year and work towards it between January 1 and December 31.

There are also 24 hour and 48 hour challenges that you can take part in if you don't fancy a month of writing tonnes of words:

24 Hour Comics Day – (Changes annually, lasts 24 hours). Goal: Draw a 24-page comic in one 24-hour period.

48 Hour Film Project – (Varies; operates via tours around the USA, lasts 48 hours). Goal: Create a short film in 48 hours.

Lots to be doing!

I really have no idea how my novel thing is going to go at the moment. There were some mentions of tea stained diaries being found in parks, so I really feel I have to transcribe those particular diary sections on paper and tea stain them. And then leave them in parks where they can be found. Especially after finding it so fun writing on my little 2x3 inch coptic bound book and singeing the edges with Sam's amazing rocket lighter of blue fire. It's pretty nice, the burned smell I get off it now.

I'm not a pyro.

NaNoWriMo: 2011

For the past month of November I've been a half busy / half not busy little bee, typing away at my very first novel.

It's not going as quickly as it should be. I began on 1st November 2011, like all the other NaNoWriMo participants. Unfortunately, I spent many days away from my laptop in that time and wrote not a word. I ended November with just over 17,000 words out of 50,000. Poor. But never mind. I'm carrying on, with a current word count of 19,458 and rising. If I really set myself on the task, I could definitely hit 50,000 before we reach 2012. Easy. Just so long as I keep typing! I've even begun to write in a little 100page 2x3inch book I made, just to make sure I can write something while I'm away from the laptop.

Novelist Gyseman, here I come.

I've also got another idea in the works. I'm going to spend 2012 making sure I write between 137 and 164 words every single day for a year. Maybe every night just describing my day. I could call it "My 2012", since I'm sure a lot of books are probably already called or are going to be called "2012", what with the universe ending and everything. Perhaps you can buy my first novel before Christmas next year for a loved one, just in case the universe does end. Then you can buy my other book after that, if it turns out the universe still exists and is doing fine with us still here? Best to cover your bases.

Also, I had a nice idea today. You may notice XXX has suddenly appeared as a page on my blog. I'll write more about that another time.

Playing with watercolour / watercolor triads.

Instead of doing any more work on the white tiger last night, I spent nearly the whole day doing this instead:

I went through my entire Daler Rowney [Aquafine ?] 12 half-pan pocket set, sorted them into some experimental triads [using the yellow-green as a yellow in some and the bluer-green as a blue, and the oranges as reds] to see what different colours I could make.

The whole process took me so much longer than I thought it would - literally all day - but it was worth it. It forced me to mix colours I wouldn't ordinarily think of mixing, not to mention use colours I don't normally like using. For example, I always thought of R2 [the fifth colour across the top of the first image, or the middle one below] as far too bright to be used for anything that wasn't going to be super bright. Rookie mistake! It actually makes a really nice peachy kind of colour when watered down. And I've had these watercolour paints how long?*

Silly Char; the clue is in the name.

So in doing an exercise like this, you learn so much about what your paints can do for you. Now I know how to get a pretty peach colour, a dark bluey grey, and which blues and reds/oranges/browns to mix to get different purples and greens and browns and greys. I also realised that the bluer green of the two I have [third from the right in the first image] can probably be used as a blue by itself in some pictures quite happily. See the last two columns in the first image - they feel almost fruity to me, sunny, warm, and maybe even Mediterranean. I can't be sure about that last bit though; I've never been to the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, the left-hand columns using the colder blue feel like they can be used to represent colder climates and northern areas quite easily.

Top and bottom of the left column: I can't not see a forest by a mountain.

One thing I haven't experimented with yet is the black colour in my set. I want to see how it reacts when mixed with each of the other colours in the set, and also what kind of feelings I can get out of it if I replace a colour in a triad with the black. I'd really like to try recreating some of the colour combinations I saw while watching 300 with my flatmates last night. But before I start on that, I really should finish the line work of my tiger!

* Years. Possibly a decade. I don't even know the names of any of my colours; I lost the little tint chart telling me their names a while ago. I'm sure it's lurking around in my stuff somewhere...

Like a Headless Chicken

You may be wondering about the title of this post. Or maybe you're not. In any case, you probably won't be by the end of it.

Gyland: Oh, has it only been a day since yesterday's post?

So, what happened was this:

Which then turned into this:

Which then... uh.. became this...

Which inevitably resulted in this:

That's red biro hand-drawn circles on a scrap bit of paper painted with watercolour paints. Apparently there are only so many straight lines a girl can handle in one go.

In other news, I haven't developed the Morse Code game idea any further since I last thought about it. One of the WOF programmers, Dan Wynne, sent a few of us a message a few days ago about a game he wants to make based on a town like Dudleytown. Not sure what's going on with that right now, I think Dan's on holiday so I'll have to ask Pete what plans is.

I felt a little zap of inspiration today when someone I know posted on Facebook that Tetris is the reason kids drop bricks off of bridges. Made me laugh. I was thinking of a game based on the 'lives of Tetris block characters when they're not busy being dropped', but I don't know how long that idea is going to hang around for.

I also watched this recently:


Reminded me of a request made of me by a friend to make an inspirational martial arts film over summer... Except I don't know how I'd even begin...

I guess I'd have to start with baby steps. Maybe I'll watch some of the old Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for inspiration, since it was a childhood favourite... Or I could use one of my friend's own fight scene films as reference for choreography and recreate it with some snazzy cartoon characters in place of the human fighters. Haha. Ooh! Maybe I'll use some of the old flash characters me and Ben were working on. Maybe Squeak and Headphone Jack...

I don't think this is going to be quite what Mr Ware meant when he requested an inspirational martial arts film.

Gyland: Skylines

I've been searching for a tutorial online for creating your own skyboxes by hand. The results were horrendous. Tons of pre-made [and probably really good quality] skyboxes, plenty of instruction on how to implement them, a few that show you how to make them by taking images within 3D software of terrain you've modeled yourself [but less good due to lack of distortion]... But absolutely nothing along the anamorphic distortion or warping of 2d images to create seamless boxes that don't look boxy.

I even saw someone post on a forum that it was basically impossible. Is this what we've come to? Tools created for the masses to make things easier for them, stripping them of the need to work things out for themselves, resulting in masses who seem to believe that working it out humanly is impossible and that it can only be done by computers? Ridiculous!

Check this out.

Looks messy, huh? But I know it can be done, and I'm not the only one - I'm sure there are plenty of modern artists that understand how to make it work, and it's only a matter of time before I join them... Ooh.

There's that mad-scientist feeing again. Excellent!

Grow my pretties, grow!

During the research for Squeak's desk, I found that plants are supposed to help in the area of creativity. Failing a real nice pot plant on the desk, a tree outside the window is supposed to improve mood.


Two of my cooking onions started sprouting. I've put them in cups of water on my window sill to see what will happen. All I've noticed in the past few hours is bubbles appearing and the water turning very slightly brown.


Perhaps if they live and grow, their presence will improve my mood and creativity. Maybe I'll stick googly eyes on them and make a film about them having a conversation.

---

Day 2: 11:30AM
The water is now twice as brown as it was, the one on the right being a slightly yellower hue. I've taken photos but for some reason the bluetooth connection between my phone and laptop is failing. [Update: Bluetooth now works..]


Most of the bubbles have disappeared, but I've noticed the one on the right developing lots of furry little hairs. I think it's mould regrowth, because it was starting to go a little mouldy under the outer layer, but I decided to try salvaging it because it wasn't really squishy and had the biggest shoot. It possibly won't survive. I put a tiny bit of antibacterial Listerine in the right one to see what would happen...

I feel like a mad scientist.

---

Day 3: 01:00AM
Just got back from AberG, where a massive cookie was made and Father Ted was watched [I now have a song about a lovely horse in my head]. It seems the Listerine hasn't done that much to stop the tiny hairs growing in the right one, as there's now possibly 2 or 3 times as much underwater fluff as there was before. Although it does smell like Listerine, which can only be a good thing. And the water in it has turned a much darker tint, but not cloudy. I wasn't expecting that.

As for the left one, the water level seems to have dropped more than the right one, even counting the Listerine I added [it wasn't that much at all]. I'll take a photo tomorrow morning when it's daylight outside, it might show the fluff better.


12:20pm: I've decided not to put anymore photos up on this post, except for especially interesting occurrences... I will continue to take a picture daily however, and will probably edit them into a video. The right mould-grower seems to be doing fine apart from the mould, I'm fairly sure the shoot is still growing.

---

Day 4: 01:45PM
THEY'RE GROWING NEW ROOTS!! ^_^
And both shoots are definitely growing :D My brother suggested I change the water, so I've given them some fresh stuff.

---

Day 7: 03:45PM
The one with mould on. She's still ALIVE.


As for the other one, I put it into my bathroom to see if the dark would make it grow a bit faster. It hasn't really. Not sure why.


Day... whatever day the 10th of March is: 10:37PM
BEAST!!

I'm naming her "Medusa" after my brother's odd comment on the subject of growing onions. The other onion is sprouting well now, I think I'll name it "Kaa", after that discussion I had with some friends in which we couldn't remember the name of the snake from The Jungle Books. Cheers, google. I think there's another onion sprouting in the cupboard. I might put it in another cup and try a spot of time-lapse filming on it.

Day... whatever day the 27th of March is: 10:37PM
Haha, and I thought they were beast before.

The new addition is doing well. Kaa seems to be quite small compared to Medusa regarding shoots, but has 3 groupings while Medusa has 2 [nice, considering I live in flat KA3]. I'm thinking of renaming them as Kaaa and Metusa. When it comes to roots, Medusa's seem comparatively short. Oh! And I've only just noticed, by the roots on Kaa and Medusa have started branching.