Beckism.com

Since the time that I was intending to spend working in the library on my thesis and an assignment that’s due tomorrow for a class has turned into me messing around with Automator, I’ve decided that I may as well drop an incremental update into here instead of using the fifteen minutes I have to do work. There’s always later tonight for working diligently.

I didn’t do much over four-day, except for try to implement a game idea that Matt and I have been thinking about for quite some time. We working just about the entire weekend on it, but unfortunately the game engine we’re using is being recalcitrant and doesn’t want to render as many enemies on screen as we want. Grrr!

On the other hand, we did manage to get a number of silly-looking rubber chickens swarming around the map chasing the player, and the shotgun that Matt made was pretty cool (if without a model). Maybe someday the game will finally be done; it’s not looking like we’ll get any more time now that Four Day is over, though.

In happy news, this is the only day of class that I have this week since I will be going to Seattle to provide moral support to my fellow dancers at the Men in Dance performance going on. My dance teacher choreographed a thing for a friend, and taught me his part just in case he couldn’t perform (he’s been having medical issues). He’s fit as a fiddle, though, but despite the fact that I will be entirely extraneous she wants to take me along for the ride anyway. I had no problem with this thanks to the fact that any day I get to somewhat legitimately miss class and also get a chance to see my parents is a pretty good day. Also, Seattle is a cool place and the college is paying for meals.

So I’m not arguing.

Bad things: the Idol Bat is now approaching two weeks late, and I’m not sure if I’ll have internet access over the next few days. I may have to buy a hot chocolate or something at a coffee place just so I can steal their WiFi. Ah well.

Worse things: I have a fractured rib, thanks to an entirely innocuous seeming lift in dance. This sucks; I don’t feel it most of the time, but falling asleep has not been fun because the only position that is really comfortable is lying on my back and I’m a side sleeper. Grrr. I’m hoping against hope that it will be healed in time for the dance performance in early November, or things will be Super Lame.

And now I must run. To the Ian-mobile!

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to let Beckism.com lie pretty much fallow for this semester. If I’m lucky I’ll get around to updating some stuff come Thanksgiving or Christmas, but there’s no guarantees. Thanks to school, life is just really, really busy right now.

I am going to try to keep the Idol Bat up to date, but since it is currently running late it seems I can’t make any promises there, either. Major apologies to anyone who is disappointed by this. I truly wish I had more time in my life, but school has finally utterly hijacked me.

Wow, so I haven’t updated this thing in a while. This school year has turned out to be majorly busy for me; I’m really looking forward to second semester when I’ll only be taking twelve credits and six of those will be thesis related.

Speaking of thesis, that’s really what’s keeping me trapped in the library and busy as all get out. I somehow was able to convince the Sociology Department that it would be a good idea for them to let me write a novel instead of doing the standard research-based thesis thing. Thing is, novels are a ridiculous amount of work, I’ve never written a novel before, and it has to tie into sociological stuff. Grah! So I’ve been working on it like a fiend. Luckily, I was able to convince my Creative Writing prof to let me turn in segments of novel instead of the short stories that are due for the rest of the class. Definitely caught a break there.

Sadly, I’ve had to step down as IMG’s editor-in-chief, though. There’s just far too much going on for me to be able to handle editing a bunch of articles as well.

I’m still working for Valley Residential Services, too, which is interesting. On the one hand, I have to stay up for eleven hours every weekend. On the other, it’s prime time to do homework or other work. So it really isn’t that bad. Plus I’m getting a modest paycheck, which is certainly nothing I’m going to argue with.

Other than the freaking novel (that I’m currently procrastinating on by writing this post, actually) I don’t have much else going down. Dance is back to the old choreographer, so it’s a lot slower and more weird. Percussion Ensemble is utterly rocking despite the fact that there’s very few percussionists in it.

And I really should be working on chapter one. It’s due tomorrow, and I think that I’m probably close to done with it, but I have no idea how long it’s actually going to end up being. Plus I’m getting the feeling that it sucks utterly, which is only heightened by the fact that I wasn’t expecting anyone except the professor to read it, but suddenly we’re doing workshops because the prof was so impressed by our journals that we turned in. Damn it. What I’ve got is total first draft nastiness, that I’ve been working on at the same time as I really started understanding what the world was all about, so it’s totally blech.

On the plus side, working on this thesis/novel/Frankenstein monster has given me the chance to find some more really kick-arse software. I just recently discovered a program called VoodooPad which is basically just a wiki for your computer (not as in a bunch of people edit it, but as in you create links out of words and so topics kind of flow together tangentially). It’s surprising how such a simple sounding thing can really help with brainstorming and just getting thoughts together. I also got a chance to download the beta version of the upcoming Avenir 2.3, which is sweet. I’ve had a chance to give the software designer a lot of feedback, thanks to the fact that I’m using the program just about daily. I dearly love Avenir.

And I think that’s probably all I should put down here, because this entry is hellishly long already, I’ve got a chapter needing finishing, and I’m running out of life to talk about (at least in general; there’s of course all sorts of specifics that I’ve had to avoid thanks to having forgotten to update this silly blog for a month).

Sadly, it’s not looking like I’m going to be able to keep on top of Beckism.com, which includes Dirt Man. I’m having a tough enough time with the Idol Bat. This officially sucks; I was hoping at the end of the summer that I’d be able to keep Dirt Man up to date, as well as get the Commentary turned into a regular thing. Ah well. Maybe these things will happen once I graduate. That would be nice.