2009 Wrap Up

This is my first post as part of an Absolute Write blog chain.  The site runs blog chains every month, and this month, the topic is “Wrap Up List 2009″ – a chance to reflect on the previous year. At the bottom of this post you will find a list of the other people participating in the chain. I encourage you to take a look at their blogs – there’s some good writers taking part.

I’m pleased to say that 2009 was a decent year for me.  I’m looking forward to 2010, and plan to build on the foundations set this year.

Health

I had some health issues this year, but my doctors have been great.  I think this is worth mentioning because I moved relatively recently, and the doctors at my former place of residence were terrible.  At one point I had to get so sick I was hospitalized – for something that turned out to need a course of antibiotics – because my old doctor insisted all my symptoms were in my head. If you have a good doctor, be thankful!

I took up weight lifting this year, and I’m working towards a weight goal in bench / deadlift.  I’m planning to buy a squat rack next summer so that I can start squatting more regularly – at the moment it’s awkward  and a little dangerous to try to squat heavy weights, so I’m only doing weights I know I can manage easily to get the form down.

Next year I hope to compete in a powerlifting competition.  I’m not expecting to do well, but at least I’ll be able to say I’ve competed.

Writing

In 2008, I started working on my first book, the WordPress-MU Beginner’s Guide. It was published by Packt Publishing in October 2009, and next month I’ll find out how the early sales went.  Initial reviews have been positive, and I learned a lot about the publishing process while working on the title.  I’m looking forward to writing more books with Packt in the future.

I also started working as a proof reader (and I’m sure that mentioning that will mean this post is riddled with typos and other errors).  It’s a job that I enjoy because I get to read interesting books – before they’re published, and get paid to do it!

I’m currently working on a technical review of a book about Ubuntu for tech publishing company O’Reilly, and I’m really enjoying that title too.  My publisher has cleared me to work on a short ebook for O’Reilly, something that I’m very grateful for.  I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about option clauses, so having a publisher that’s willing to work with their authors to maintain a good relationship makes me feel blessed.

Ubuntu Membership

Writing about, and reviewing a book on Ubuntu has made me get more involved with the community.  I’ve already posted about Ubuntu Membership, and that’s something I plan to pursue next year.  This year I started to learn packaging, and I got involved with the bug triaging project, and I hope to continue both of those things long term.

Business

Myth Games – the site I run which offers game reviews and news, moved to a new server this year.  I’m working on ironing out some bugs and adding some new site features which should make it easier to update and to add new content.  The site move and the associated downtime killed our traffic in the short term,but it’s going back up, and I hope it will exceed it’s former traffic levels by the time E3 (the biggest trade show in the industry) comes around again.

We missed E3 last year because of my health issues.  Hopefully that won’t happen again in 2010.

Fiction

I have a lot of respect for people who can write fiction. I’m working on a couple of short stories, but I have a lot to learn in that regard.  I didn’t take part in NANOWRIMO this year, and that’s something I regret.  Rather than delay the whole thing until next November, I think I’ll have an unofficial NANO sometime in the spring – anything to get me writing, and get over this fear of fiction.

Legends Reborn is still in progress.  It’s a mammoth project, though, so I’m not expecting to have much to show for it until this time next year. I have a couple of betas lined up, but I don’t want to pull them in until I know what *I* want to do, because I fear too many changes will burn them out.

Life

I got my provisional driving license recently, and I plan on learning to drive in the spring.  The weather is far too bad (icy / dark / wet) to learn at the moment.  I will be taking an advanced course, assuming I pass, so that I have an idea how to handle such weather.  I just don’t want my first experience of handling a vehicle to be skidding off the road!

That concludes my wrap-up. The other participants in the blog chain are listed below. Please do take a look at them, and wish them all well for next year!

Lost Wanderer – http://www.lostwanderer5.blogspot.com
Claire Crossdale – http://theromanticqueryletter.blogspot.com/
coryleslie – http://corrinejackson.wordpress.com/
bsolah – http://benjaminsolah.com/blog
DavidZahir – http://zahirblue.blogspot.com/
RavenCorinnCarluk – http://ravencorinncarluk.blogspot.com
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com/
shethinkstoomuch – http://shethinkstoomuch.wordpress.com
Lady Cat – http://www.randomwriterlythoughts.blogspot.com
truelyana – http://expressiveworld.com
misaditas – http://misaditas-novels.blogspot.co

collectonian – http://collectonian.livejournal.com/632314.html (PREVIOUS)
beawhiz – http://beawrites.wordpress.com (NEXT)

razibahmed – http://www.blogging37.com
FreshHell – http://freshhell.wordpress.com
AlissaC – http://alissacarleton.blogspot.com
Aimee – http://writing.aimeelaine.com
Forbidden Snowflake – http://www.alleslinks.com

[Via http://lesleyharrison.wordpress.com]

Not so secret Santas

I must have been a very good girl this year because Santa definitely came early! I knew I needed to show my gratitude by sharing these awesome book reviews (and links) for my book “I’m at a Networking Event–Now What???” from this past week:

Matt’s review on his Career Horizons blog.

Randy’s review on his Hire Ground blog.

Who knew I’d have 2 not-so-secret Santas this year?!

[Via http://belladomain.wordpress.com]

SLEEP. SLEEEEP... WHY WON'T YOU SLEEP.

I’m tired and I haven’t written anything in a while so my grammar placements will not be healthy babies. I woke up at 8:30am, normally I wake up at 1pm, I worked from 9am to 11pm, I took breaks of course, but still, I did at least 12 hours and I forgot to eat lunch. My brain is tired beyond functioning properly and I’ve been restlessly rolling around in bed for two hours. I caught myself talking out loud, the cat was in the room so it probably thinks I’m weird, I’m pretty sure I’ve been talking to/by myself for the past two hours I was trying to sleep.

I now think Peacocks have love handles.

Okay okay, think of a Black Line. Kind of like this ——— without the space in between and more bold. Okay. So this line represents sturdiness and thickness and heaviness. This line is stereotypical. It wants to finish high-school and hopefully not drop out, go to a good college and hopefully not drop out of that either, it wants to get married, have kids, hate the kids, retire, and then experience divorce/lover’s death or its own death; probably by heart attack – the lard cakes were worth it though.

Okay now, now the squiggle’s turn. Picture the straight line turning into a wavy line like this ~~~~~ without the spaces again. Okay. THIS Squiggle bends, it bends, and it’s bendy, it wants to retire and then get married, it wants kids and then college….It..I dunno, It eats the steak first and then the salad last kinda deal. Okay, so I hope you get the picture and what my point basically boils down to is – I AM THE SQUIGGLY LINE.

Next subject.

I hate kids. Seriously, I hate kids (I’m thinking of little kids). They scream, they don’t speak coherently, they want sharp objects that’ll kill them and for some reason that’s a bad thing. They are little versions of you and if you don’t like you then opps. They are Spawns of feces and have life-draining abilities. I think if I were to have kids, maybe I would want to have one one day when I’m stupid and feel like I should ruin someone’s life love a mini-me, I’d probably give birth to like 8 children in countries that would give you residency/citizenship for having your spawn there. So that for one, I get extra passports but their siblings can go to their brother’s/sister’s country and apply for residency there which would be most useful if they killed someone in their country and need to run away from the government.

OR. I would have 8 kids in countries where I’d get the citizenship and then I’ll give it up for adoption so that it doesn’t drain my life away. Apparently having children makes you live longer cause you get the new cells of the baby or something along those lines. I’ll be giving my brat away to some needy family, maybe make a buck or two off of them, I get extra life points, get the citizenships, it would work out well for me. They might grow up to hate me and hunt me down and kill me though.

Next Subject.

Anarchy is cool and all, but, it’s rare to find true anarchists and I dislike people who wear the symbol without even understanding what it means or represents. I’m referring to the whatever genre kid who wears it because they think they’re cutting edge and unique, but if you look at it, no one is really unique anymore. People who claim to be individuals are still sheep and followers – they’re still useless. Besides, being unique is too hard, you’re always trying to top/be more outrageous than the next guy that you start looking more stupid than interesting. I’ve given up on the whole ideal of being ‘unique/amazing/whatever’ ordeal and being more, you know, myself.

But, back to Anarchists. I’m not an anarchist, but I like the idea of it. I would think, if people who really are anarchists they would give up all government objects/identity. So they’d give up their passport, for example. They wouldn’t believe in the 911 system and therefor never use it. I mean, if you don’t want government and rules, then you have to give up the ‘good’ things too, eh? Which is why Anarchy doesn’t really work unless you’re in the hills somewhere. For example, you live in the city, someone robs you, you shoot them, the police come (or the police find out you killed them) they take you to trial and bam, you’re in the government system again. So to avoid government is to avoid society – for now at least. There isn’t really a society that’s government free yet or ever.

Next subject.

I’m leaving my job in two weeks, I’ve been there a little less than two years and it’s been too long to be doing shit like that. I seriously loathe people and their arrogance. I seriously loathe this job. So, I’m starting my company. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I have no idea what I’m doing. If my brain was capable of functioning I would go look up some useful information about something related to it and actually take advantage of my sleep deprivation, but NO, it’s probably punishing me for something I don’t remember doing.

People have been asking at my work ‘Where’ I’ll be going, I like how they sort of assume I’ll be at another company – another employee. Though, I don’t like telling them I’ll be opening up my own company soon, they look at me weird and probably assume that I think I’m better than them (I don’t) (or maybe they don’t and I’m imagining their mixture of shock/envy expression), but I don’t like lying to them over nothing, so I just want to tell no body I’m leaving so we will avoid the question/answer session.

It’s one of those things where you’re sooo glad you’re leaving that you almost don’t believe you’re actually leaving and I’m starting to fear the unknown but it’s okay cause I rather dive into the unknown than work at a place that doesn’t get the brain guts moving. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m gonna pretend I do know and maybe it’ll stick – as long as the client doesn’t know, then we’re good.

Next subject.

The dude and I will be making animations..eventually. We’re still kinda nooby at it so it’s taking longer than wanted, but we both want to do this, and god damn if he doesn’t do anything/doesn’t help/finds out he doesn’t want to do it, then I’ll be dragging one iced leg with me and I’ll do it my bloody self. I know I WANT THIS, I just need to find time, I need to organize my time better so that I can get the business going and get clients and be able to draw/manage the animation project all in a seven-day period. Sounds easy enough.

Next subject.

So, I was looking at Craigslist and there was this guy looking for a comic book artist. My foot was injured and so I decided I’d do something fun and new. God, I told him I’d have it done by Thursday. I spent a bit of yesterday working on it until I figured out what I wanted exactly and the overall design and then I spent all day working on it today. I love doing it at the same time I wish I didn’t email him. I hope he likes it at the same time I hope he doesn’t like it; just so I don’t have to do 200 pages of his graphic novel and dread over every page and how sucky I am at drawing things repetitively. Though if he does pick me, I would be happy to do it, I think. It’s a love/hate relationship with my art and drawing people skills. Tomorrow I will be finished with just the example page of five comic panels (he asked for five, but I’m making six cause it’ll be nicer looking that way) and then continue working on the web site and content writing of it. Speaking of my website, it is also a love/hate relationship.

Godd..I hate this, and I hate working all day and not being able to close my eyes and stop thinking. I am tired and all I want to do is sleep and I can’t stop thinking…Stoppp thinking.

Next Subject.

I have KMFDM – Stray Bullet. Playing on repeat. It’s played 50 times today and counting. I love this song.

———-

And I think I just brain dumped the major bits and pieces I had on my mind that was worth talking about and I’m going to try to sleep now.

[Via http://jabberwockyschlamydia.wordpress.com]

Pride and Prejudice and...

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the wonderful (and outstandingly boring) Pride and Prejudice. A book about how the main character, an Elizabeth Bennet, deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. A gripping read as you can imagine.

Of course it is an important book full realism, biting social commentary and free indirect speech by the author Jane Austen.

But let’s be honest, I should describe Pride and Prejudice as : “a 1940s movie staring the beautiful Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier (Greatest Male Stars of All Time) as the Mr. Darcy” because if it weren’t for motion picture only academics and torture English literature students would know of it.

So where am I going with all this? Well I just got a new book for my birthday. And can you guess what it is? That’s right, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies… yes you read that right ‘and zombies’.

According to various reviews this is a book which “takes Austen’s actual, original work, and laces it with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninjas, and ultra-violent mayhem”.

I have no idea what chemicals the people who thought this up were taking but bravo to them. Going to read it tonight and I think I can assume it will be more entertaining than the original work.

[Via http://livingonthecostadelsol.wordpress.com]

Write that book right outta your head - Get your FREE Special Report

Ho ho ho!

As we near the end of the year, I’d like to wish you a very Merry Xmas. I’d also like to wish you a prosperous 2010 and encourage you to write that book, whether fiction, or non-fiction that is lurking within you.

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The inspiration you’ve been looking for to get started, or to push forward is in this Special Report. Make 2010 the year you invest in yourself to add ‘Author’ to your resume.

Enjoy, and have a Writetastic festive season. Ho ho ho!

[Via http://writetasticsolutions.wordpress.com]

To Be Reborn Through Flesh and Blood

Urgh I had a very strange dream last night, it was just like a movie…

It was about some diabolic sado-masochistic underground sect, that made rituals to Satan by making bloodsacrifices, along side sexual orgies and other weird stuff…
Then along comes this weird, fat, computer-geek looking middleaged guy who wishes to partake in a sexually oriented activity, I remember specifically how he said “ I want to feel myself wriggle through flesh and blood, as if being born again…“
The leader of this sect, said that to make this happen, they would need to collect a great deal of sacrifices, and so they send out lackeys to gather innocents to kill.
Among those sent out to find people, is the fat-nerd who unluckily falls in love with a woman whom he must collect… But aroused by her, he kidnaps her for himeself, takes her back to his own place and performs cruel and inhuman torture on her, for the sake of his “love to her“

I think from there on my dream was over, or just my memory fails me…

It was quite creepy, I dont like dreaming about torture and things like that, especially when through the eyes of such a disgusting being like that fat-nerd…

This dream had a strange, subtle resemblence to the book “The Collector” which I read last year in English class.
A very, very good book indeed; about a man who is secretly in love with a young girl, admiring her from afar, he plots a plan to ‘collect’ her and force her into loving him.
He kidnaps her back to a small cottage he has bought and renovated, keeping her in the cellar.
But he doesnt harm her, he just ‘keeps’ her and tries to connect with her through mild gestures and so forth, but seeing as she considers him to be a psycho, all that happens between them is purely trick and treat,over and over she tries to escape, they have ups and downs etcuntil all accumilates into insanity and a very exciting, sad ending twist
-But then again, it is an extremely well written and incredible story!
What I enjoyed alot was to see how the characters develope, and also how the author has chosen to tell the story through their points of view, half of the book is through the man, and the rest through the girls.
It really gives perspective on how one another thinks, reacts and appear to the opposite person.

I recommend you read THE COLLECTOR, very strongly.

But remember…sado-masochism, diabolism and all that = BAD!

[Via http://greatlittlefortune.wordpress.com]

My Favorite Children, part two

The continuation in a series of posts listing some of the books that made the rigorous process in determining which I take with me and the others that must wait in Utah until my wife and I come back for them.

6. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon’s famous book is A Curious Incident with the Dog in the Night-time, which got a lot of press for its unique narrator – a boy with autism. However, my favorite novel by Mark Haddon is A Spot of Bother, detailing a traditional, conservative British family whose only daughter is marrying someone everyone in the family hates. Meanwhile, the son must determine whether he should bring his boyfriend (and scandalize the entire family, especially his parents, still in semi-denial) or not, the mother tries to mop up an affair, and the father slowly begins to go a little bit crazy, convinced he will die soon of horrible disease – but hopes he can hide it from everyone and contain it until after the wedding so that he doesn’t inconvenience anyone. It’s a great book on family and acceptance, but like Then We Came to the End, it’s got some graphic scenes and some good old fashioned Brit cussing, so if you’re easily offended, pass this one, too.

Excerpt:

He didn’t have a problem with homosexuality per se. Men having sex with men. One could imagine, if one was in the business of imagining such things, that there were situations where it might happen, situations in which chaps were denied the normal outlets. Military camps. Long sea voyages. One didn’t want to dwell on the plumbing but one could almost see it as a sporting activity. Letting off steam. High spirits. Handshake and a hot shower afterward.

It was the thought of men purchasing furniture together that disturbed him. Men snuggling. More disconcerting, somehow, than shenanigans in public toilets. It gave him the unpleasant feeling that there was a weakness in the very fabric of the world. Like seeing a man hit a woman in the street. Or suddenly not being able to remember the bedroom you had as a child.

Still, things changed. Mobile phones. Thai restaurants. You had to remain elastic or you turned into an angry fossil railing at litter.

7. A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise edited by Bonnie Tsui

A collection of essays about nature written by writers no older than thirty, this collection puts a new spin on “nature writing,” where young writers products of the late 20th to early 21st century write about their ways of connecting with whatever nature remains around them. The title derives from a delightful essay of a  young man who, broken hearted, decides to move into a tent like Thoreau to Walden to remove himself from his worldly woes and learns a little about himself. Another essay speaks about learning the lesson of growing up from a group of river rafting guides who refuse to do just that. Another author writes of her intense fear of lightning and her conflicting desire to venture around the world. Each essay is more than delightful and makes nature much more accessible again to one who’s grown up in the city all his life.

Excerpt:

But more surprisingly, once I could hold my despair and run a hand along its saggy, tired edges, the woe didn’t seem so boundless. The tent gradually became not a symbol of doom, but a very real refuge, my own pod of stability and control in a world that felt beyond control. Wind and rain could lash the tent and I would stay warm and cozy – as long as I held the walls up and stayed in the middle and had a towel to mop up the mess. So many years later, things really haven’t changed.

8. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson

I first heard about this book from my friend Kimberly, who majored in communication studies. This iconoclastic book defies what conventional wisdom teaches us – that popular culture makes us really, really dumb. Popular culture won’t get you to Harvard, Steven Johnson writes, but it is making the general population smarter overall. If you want to learn how video games and even reality TV shows are helping us become a more smarter generation, I highly recommend this book.

Excerpt:

To get around these prejudices [against games], try this thought experiment. Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: video games were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries – and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they’re all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying – which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements – books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

9. The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In by Paisley Rekdal

Born of a Chinese mother and a Norwegian father, Paisley Rekdal writes painfully honest essays about being of mixed heritage, and what it means to never truly fit in. The most powerful essays for me detail her trip to South Korea, teaching English on a Fullbright contract. Having visited South Korea just a couple summers before, I could understand the almost traumatic experience of facing your Asian heritage head on and feeling crushed by the culture that should (in your mind) accept you with open arms.

Excerpt:

I’ve never seen romantic stationary in Korean. There must be some, I think to myself, and later paw through the notepads in my desk, the fresh packets sold at school supply shops. But the ones I can find are always in English, I see, or French or Latin. And suddenly it occurs to me that this is sad, but because these cards seem to be spoiling something about Korea…I don’t like the fact that, to me, these cards appear like lies imported from another culture, a cheap sentimentality that feeds off the educationally enforced separation of the sexes.

Though I have often accused Koreans of whitewashing the truth about themselves with ritualized politeness, with Joseph at Usok I suddenly do not find this much different from the romantic moves and singers America produces in huge volumes on a seemingly daily basis…Perhaps my students, seeing movies from my culture, buying stationary with my language, have been taught to believe this artificial sentimentality is all that really matters to us. And maybe that makes them sad, too.

10. Jewish Dharma: A Guide to the Practice of Judaism and Zen by Brenda Shoshanna, PhD

For the longest time (and still today), I wished I was Jewish. No joke; I always thought Hannukah was cooler than Christmas as a kid, and it wasn’t just the presents. For some reason, decorating a tree seemed silly – celebrating God’s miracles of oil extension by re-enacting it seemed more real. On my mission, I declared to my district leader and good friend that I would only marry a girl from the tribe of Judah. Sure enough, on news of my engagement, Wolfgramm asked me if I accomplished this goal. I had forgotten about that boast a long time ago, but eerily enough, my wife derived from the lineage of Judah.

On top of that, I’m Asian, and with that come a lot of Asian baggage, despite my American identity. I have a lot of attitudes and traditions my parents taught me stemming from Confucianism and Buddhism. In high school during my senior year, I took a World Religions class from Mr. Prufer, who was Zen Buddhist. During that critical year, I was very close to running away from home and joining a Buddhist monastery.

Fast forward to 2009, and I’m still a faithful, practicing Mormon, though much more mature in spirituality than I was five years ago as a senior in high school. At Sam Weller’s, this book catches my eye – a book about how to be a practicing  Ju-Bu (Jewish-Buddhist)? And if there is such a thing as a Ju-Bu, could there be a Mo-Ju-Bu? I set to find out.

In a period of my life where my religious practice seemed stale and stagnant, this book breathed new life into it. The author writes about her life experiences, of being raised Jewish and finding Buddhism and trying to reconcile her two belief systems into one. Sincerely honest without rationalization or scripture wresting, Brenda Shoshanna demonstrates President Hinckley’s request that all religions bring what’s good in theirs, and see if we can add on to it. Perhaps, my version of Mormonism is less meet-and-greets, funeral potatoes, and college ward prayer meetings, and more meditating and mitzvot observing.

Excerpt:

He [my Zen master] was right, but questions still haunted me. As zazen deepened, I could not avoid the persistent questions that rose up within – I thought about my family, my cousins, parents, sister, brother. Am I abandoning you, I wondered? Have I left my Jewish roots behind? Am I running away from who I truly am? What about all those who died to uphold the Torah? At certain times I felt that doing deep zazen, I was fulfilling the true Torah, actualizing all the commandments. Other times, dressed in my Zen robes, I felt as though I was trespassing, violating my deeper self.

…One day I said to him, “I feel I should go home.”

“Where is your true home?”

I breathed deeply for a moment.

“Your true home. Before you were born! Eshin, calm down. You have not done wrong. You are not doing wrong here.”

“According to my people I must go home.”

“Then stop coming.”

“I can’t.”

“Then sit more deeply, to the very bottom of the well. Finally, when you are ripe, you will see that we are all One.”

[Via http://cohabitationchronicles.wordpress.com]