Longform
- Become for financial stable, through better decisions. — I’m not terrible with money, not at all, but this year I’m going to be decisive with my budget and get the last of my historical debts paid off.
- Read more. — I read. I read a lot, but this next year I want to make it my default pastime when I am in that ‘what should I do’ mood. Reading more is never bad, not for any human. I would like to read more of the Bible too, maybe I’ll do one of those daily reading plans.
- Walk more. — with or without dog. As soon as my knee feel better (hopefully in the upcoming weeks) I’m going to try to log more steps each week. Doesn’t have to be massively more, but I want my average step count to go up each and every week for 2025. I may even buy a cheap step counting watch. Hopefully, Casio sell something super cheap that doesn’t need to be charged a lot.
- Write more. — I mean, there isn’t a lot to say here. I write more, and I feel better in my soul. I should write more. Likewise, I think I could do more on my website too.
Digital Minimalism?
I have spent some time reading the Cal newport book ‘Digital Minimalism.’ I’m not that far in, but I picked it up because I was feeling a ‘thing,’ the book, so far, has made me double feel that ‘thing.’ I need to write a full post about the ‘thing.’
The ‘thing,’ if anyone is wondering, is the realisation that I am unhappy with the amount of time I spend attached to the internet, and to my screens. I don’t even think I spend that much time on here compared to most people. I read a while back that the average screen time per day is about 6 hours. Which seems mad to me. My average is about 2 hours, and that feels excessive!
My laptop probably gets more, but that’s when I’m writing. I enjoy writing and don’t really think of it as screen time, despite it literally being that. I think of it as keyboard time.
the paradoxical thing is that I have been reading the digital minimalism book on a Kindle, which is a screen. - I suppose wen I tlak about ‘screen,’ I actually mean ‘internet’
Christianity: Bible translation comparisons and thoughts, from an interested reader.
Recently I was reading the translation notes in my NLT bible and there were a few lines which made me raise an eyebrow. This led me to go on a bit of a deep dive into all the translations which I read.
I am not an expert and all information provided can be found online with ease. All I did was read and collate it with some thoughts.
To be clear, despite this information, I believe all the listed translations are reliable enough to be inspired. This is a narrative on translation philosophy, not an attempt at critique. It is intended to be a research session in which I educate myself and share my findings. I believe they are all good translations for different purposes. However, I have preferences, which I will summarise at the end.
My 2024, in review.
The end of the year is looming, and we approach the dark, melancholic week which sets its home between Christmas and the new year. Like a troll on a bridge, the week of limbo must be defeated to pass into the glorious bastion of twenty twenty-five.
Which, is an overly dramatic way of saying that it’s the time of year when I reflect on where I am and how I got here. Nothing too deep, but I like to check in and think about some things.
Tagets?
I don’t believe that the tradition of “New Year’s resolutions” is healthy, useful, or enjoyable but these are the personal points of importance which I set myself in 2024. These were set at various points rather than on January first.
Write more.
This is the eternal goal. Write more. Then write some more, and, then, a little more. This year I have released two novellas. The Chronicles of Ned: Space to Breathe, and Denouement: Of Gods and Vampires. I have also partly written Denouement 3. I have to admit though, I could have written more. I have found myself distracted by many things over the last couple of months.
I think part of it maybe my workflow and tooling. While I enjoy Scrivener, at times I sense that there is a lot happening with the UI/UX which pulls my mind out of the actual writing. Not least of which is the fact that its typewriter scrolling is a strange, unpredictable beast. That’s not to say in any way that Scrivener has worked against me. I wrote plenty this year and I genuinely think that my writing has been, well, pretty good. But, ever since ‘Literature & Latte’ announced that they were working on a new writing application, I have been more willing to acknowledge Scrivener’s flaws. I don’t understand why that had any effect on me really. The result, though, is that I have been a little distracted by the flaws in my current application. I think Scrivener is actually, maybe, a little ‘long in the tooth’ in some ways. Also, I am dreadful at remembering to use the distraction-free mode, and that’s on me.
The main issue that has bugged me with Scrivener is that switching devices is harder than it should be. If I use iPad or iOS, I get a scary popup when I return to laptop, and it raises my irrational writer’s dread about losing words. It has never lost anything, but I have had to manually intervene with the sync. It just feels absurd that I have these problems with an application that has been around as long as Scrivener has.
Outside of Scrivener musings, I have had a lot going on this year with work. It has left me, on many occasions, too mentally drained to write with any gusto. That can’t be helped. And again, as I have said, I did release two things this year, so it’s not like I’m slacking. My personal aim to write more and write better, has simply not been met.
I think there have been at least a few months when I have been a little ‘down,’ generally. I don’t like writing when I’m not feeling ‘up.’ Actually, I should probably be a little more honest and say that I have been quite emotionally low, for at least a half of this year. I got out of myfunk, and it was nowhere near depression. Not at all what some people have to deal with. My ‘sad’ was not clinical or in need of professional support. But, I have been less than myself at times in 2024, and it affected my writing in ways I didn’t expect. I think it has to do with being quite lonely, over all, in life.
Have fewer subscriptions.
I set out with the goal of not subscribing to non-entertainment services in 2024. I know this is a convoluted way to say it, but I can’t get away from paying for streaming video services. I don’t have broadcast television, and I do want to watch TV shows from time to time. Paying for streaming services is just something I want to jettison from my life at this time. I probably will at some point, but right now, no.
I did however manager to not pay for Notion, Obsidian, task managers, storage solutions or other services for most of 2024. I jumped back onto Todoist as my task manger about three months ago because it made my job easier. After some reflection, I realised that Things 3 was fine for my personal life, but not ideal for work.
My solution to this has been looking at services like Craft/Notion/Click-up. Basically, if I can make a work dashboard, I can approach each day as a ‘task sheet’ rather than a task manager category. I am explaining this badly, but I want my task manger to be for my life, not my job. I want to look at it and see tasks that exist outside my work. This, in reality, means I have to subscribe to something specifically for work. I think it’s worth the cost to separate my two personas. I wasn’t too fussy which service and Craft had an excellent sale recently, so I went with that. I hope in 2025 I can be more clear with my life/work concerns and draw that proverbial line in the sand, mentally speaking.
While Todoist has made me more productive, over all, I have ended up thinking about work more than I care to, of an evening. This has been because I can see those tasks lined up for the following day. There is no profile switching in Todoist and it hasn’t been great to have it all in one place.
I think I have been more selective about subscriptions overall, and this has been good for me.
More exercise
In the summer, I walked my dog at least a mile every day and picked up heavy things before my evening shower. I did well. I lost weight and felt better. Winter hit me hard, though. He’s a short-haired Chihuahua, and they don’t do well in the cold. Without the habitual daily walking, my desire to pick up heavy things has also faded. I have a home treadmill, but for the last two months I have had a knee injury which has prevented me from using it.
I hope to get back to good eating and regular moving in the next month or so. I would rather not screw my knee up any more than I have, so I am being cautious as all heck.
Still, as soon as the cold goes, the dog will be back to his daily marching, and I’ll get a lot more steps in.
Simplify life.
I have had a year-long drive to simplify life. This was first evident in my desire to jettison subscriptions, then, became even more intentional when I started simplifying my physical space by aggressive decluttering my home.
I have even stopped using my computer monitor and external keyboard. My personal tastes are trending towards simplicity and minimalism. It has been really good for me and, I think, a large part of what pulled me out of that funk I spoke about earlier. Feeling more intentional has really made me happy.
I also have to accept that simplifying has taken time. Every aspect of my life has become more streamlined, and the physical decluttering took time. There is still more to be done, but I have come a long way. I have spent many hours packing boxes and cleaning cupboards. This is all time which could have been spent writing. The decluttering work is actually how I injured my knee, so it’s hilarious to me that I call it out as a source of joy.
I still want to jettison the last of my physical books and remove some other items from my life. This includes a plan to change my wardrobe contents and further clear my home office.
Religion.
For clarity, I attend a Pentecostal Christian church (an Elim Church.)
My time with the Bible has been the single biggest source of joy in my life this last year. It sustained me through the ‘sad bits’ of the year and gave me inspiration, resolve, and motivation to keep improving my life and myself as a person.
I have become closer with my church friends too, which has also been a source of joy. I look forward to our group meetings on Wednesday nights and always take a lot away from the time.
I know some people will eye role hard at the next paragraph but I feel like saying it is important to me because I wanted this post to be honest and clear.
I love God, and that is the simplest way I can say it. Jesus is the single most influential person in my life, and that should not be taken as a statement which is devaluing to the rest of the people. Jesus is the direction which I strive, and I am certain that it has made me a better man. It has certainly got me through the tough times, and no doubt, will continue to do so when required.
The unplanned persona change.
When HexDSL started the year, he didn’t intend to finish it as Dandelion-Utilitarian. It wasn’t planned at all, but as part of the funk clearing, I needed to make a change. Feel like the online persona alteration has resulted in a clear message that I am who I actually am. I think there was an expectation by many historical YouTube viewers that I would behave in a specific way and I disappointed them. I never made any promises, but the name change seems to have made it clear to them that I do not intent to behave the way they wanted me to.
Was 2024 a success?
Honestly, there have been some high points on this year, as well as some notable lows. The truth though has been that most of this year has been ‘bland’ for me personally. I have felt aimless at times and especially in the early part of the year, just not very ‘good,’ generally.
I think part of my overall ‘meh’ about the year has been that my daughter went off to university and that took quite a lot of my general routine and threw it away. This left me thinking hard about what I wanted, sans child and I don’t think I had a good answer for a while.
Now I’m approaching the final death rattles of the year, I can say with honesty that I currently have motivation, drive, and targets. I know where I’m going, it just took me a while to find the right map for the stars I was looking at.
2025 plans and declarations!
This is easy. Here is the plan, it’s so simple I can bullet list it for you!
There we are. Four bullets for a better me.
I also hope that in limbo-week next year, I will be in a position where I can talk about how I am finally ready to buy that camper van/motor home I have wanted for the last five years. I would rather not make ban financial decisions either, so I have told myself that I’m going to wait for a year. But, I think it maybe in good position to start shopping, this time next year.
Please tell me about your 2024, and plans for 2025, in the comments. Or shoot me an email.
Thanks for reading.
Dandy.
Towards the light.
Recently I tried the dark mode on my Kindle for the first time since I have had it. It’s strange that I ever tried it at all, give that in the decade or more I have been using Kindles, it has never before occurred to me that dark mode maybe a viable option.
My verdict after an hour was this: Dark mode is awful. It’s a horrible way to read. The light text on the black backdrop makes the words lack definition and the whole thing feels oppressive.
Now, A Kindle is essentially a device with one purpose. It shows you words. If words are far, far worse in dark mode on the device which has one task, and its good at that task, then is there a chance that perhaps I have been wrong in my assessment of dark mode everywhere else?
As you know, I am a man who is not afraid to try new things. I went directly to my MacBook and pressed that ‘light mode’ button, for the first time. I then went to my phone and both my iPads and pressed the button for glorious sunshine! (Yes, I have, and use two iPads, don’t judge me!)
Obviously, I hated it instantly. My computer didn’t feel like my computer and my phone felt like it had been factory reset. It just felt like things were failing to load correctly. It all felt wrong.
I ignored my inner petulance and kept on changing my applications to sunburn mode.
I sat all of yesterday morning feeling annoyed with my computer. It was like it had betrayed me somehow. I felt like I had taken a step back in ‘coolness’ and was betraying my cyberpunk dreams for a vista of white oppression.
But then, as the day went on, something happened.
I was feeling less eye strain and I didn’t even know I was getting eye strain before I changed! As the day went on, and I began working in lower light, it just felt more comfortable generally. I was still repulsed by the visuals, aesthetically. I just hate it. However, I have to admit, the light UI feels like less of focal point and the content feels like it just pops more. When I was writing I felt like the words were the main attraction, not the application assets.
I stuck with it and am now a day into my experiment.
I have no idea if it will ‘take’ long term, but I have to say, it does feel like it’s overall just easier to see, which makes me smile because I would have bee complaining about it being too bright a few years ago. Maybe it’s my 44 year old eyes and smaller screen size doing tricks. And, to be clear, light mode Discord looks literally broken!
I have always felt like people who use their computer in light mode were leaving it ‘stock,’ or didn’t know there was an option for something else. Now though, I have to re-evaluate this bias because they may be right to leave it the way it comes. Perhaps this is even why the default mode on most devices is the light mode. The manufacturers know, and, have been trying to tell us this entire time.
This isn’t to say I’m bashing dark mode in any way. I love the way it looks; dark mode is cool. I did some web searching (via DEVONAgent, because the web is dead to me… thats another topic though) and it does appear that there is no general medical, or specifically optometrical benefit to dark mode, there is a real benefit to correctly using brightness controls, but that seems to be separate to your preference in themes.
My plan at this time is to keep all my devices in light mode until the new year and then switch back and see if a major preference emerges. Honestly I’m rooting for darkness because I really like it, that said, if I can see more with less eye strain in light mode, I’ll use it.
Give light mode a try. Or, if you are already an advocate of the light side, drop a comment and let me know why. I would like to see as many opinions as possible regarding this.
I’ll update you in the new year.
Writing a novella – ‘Of Gods and Vampires’ (coming soon)
I wrote a thing. For Christmas. It is not ‘Christmasy.’
When I say that I write it for Christmas, that’s not entirely true, it just happens that it’s basically finished, and it also happens to be mid-December.
‘Of Gods and Vampires’ is a short novel following the adventures of two characters from Denouement (the first one.) It’s a pop-SCIFI adventure novel which is episodic and at times high action. If you have never read a Denouement story, then you may not ‘get’ the setting but hey, give it a go, you may like it.
Dandelion-Utilitarian has a NET & a COM
I wanted to take a moment to than explain something which I have only recently realised maybe confusing. Both Dandelion-Utilitarian.com and Dandelion-Utilitarian.net exist.
The dot com, is my main public facing WordPress site. It is where you will find my curated articles and my Niceferatu comic posts. And, of course, my more long-form writing releases.
The dot net however, is a Micro.Blog powered feed. It contains all the main page posts from the dot com, as well as anything which you may consider ‘a stream of ideas.’ This includes photos, sketches, half written ideas, paragraph vibe tests, and lets face it, fully loaded nuggets of nonsense.
There is, of course, also my even less ‘sharable’ content over on Void. Which is mostly not designed to be read.
This has been your internet awareness update.
With love, Dandy.
The Hex has been lifted.
We all move on from things, and it often feels like a good move, it feels liberating and enchiching. I have had a lot of that feeling of liberty recently has I have been doing a very utilitarian decluttering of my home. Moving on from an online persona, however, feels like a death, more than a purge. I have been known socially as ‘Hex’ since college, when the movie Hackers was the greatest thing my friends and I had ever seen and we were all very edgy witchcraft obsessed teens. In part the movie ‘The Craft’ is likey as responsible as ‘Hackers’ was, for the cyber-gothic ’90s brew we had fermented into.
I have vivid memories of being a teenager, sitting alone at night screwing with under-powered computers, playing Quake and listening to talk shows, on the actual radio. Whether or not I would hold these moments in my memory so lovingly if I had been more of a social critter, I don’t know. As it is, however, when I think of how I became the man I am today, it’s the combination of tinkering, thinking and desperately wanting to be as cool as Dade Murphy which forged me.
Later when I had my own house, I had been Hex for years. But I had taken a break from the internet, due to having a gown-up life. Those early adult years were hard and after a few false starts I was ready to return to my online life. Finally with the daughter sleeping through the night and enough money to pay the important bills, bills which included, fabulously, my first aDSL internet connection, I was back.
The BT Voyager 100 arrived in an unassuming brown box. I plugged it in to my cobbled together computer which was sat against the wall on a coffee table, as I didn’t have a desk. After poking at it for a few minutes I got the lights to flash a promising, healthy, green. I realised I would need a new email address. I knew I was ‘Hex’ but sadly that hotmail account was long since taken. I Looked at the little box on my coffee-desk and in that moment HexDSL was given life.
The bricks that made him, made me, filled in over the next few years. Hex liked to believe he was a free thinker while scooping up conspiracy blogs like they were pop-tarts. He also loved 80s movies and never actually stopped playing Quake
He was never very good at video games, he wasn’t able to think freely from his conspiracy laden RSS feed and he had thought ‘A New Hope’ was the best Star Wars movie. Which all proved that he was an idiot. I would like to point out that we are all idiots in our twenties, so please don’t judge him too harshly.
The years rolled by, and the baby turned into a teenager, the wife turned into ‘the ex’ and the coffee-desk turned into a home office with more technology than a Borg cube after a fresh assimilation mission. I loved Linux, I loved comic books and I loved ’80s movies… I guess that one stuck for a lot longer than some of the others.
By this time I was pretty sure that ‘Empire’ was the best Star Wars movie and my distro of choice was Arch. I took these opinions and insights along with me when I started my YouTube channel. I was under qualified to make a technology channel and not skilled enough to be a gaming channel. I talked about comic books for a bit, before I started asking the question, ‘does this run on Linux?’
The next few years were spent certain that Linux was the future, everyone would be better off leaving Windows behind and actually, the prequel trilogy was criminally underrated.
The final form of HexDSL thought Debian was the best distro. He thought Star Wars was mostly crap and was happy to book a day off work to play Stellaris with his friends and then talk about it on his YouTube based podcast.
Then one day, HexDSL died and he didn’t notice.
I started writing, and as I did, I realised that I needed a Windows computer to do that without any barriers. I started talking about things I had read rather than things I had played and I was pretty sure that Casablanca was actually far better than Star Wars.
The next two years rolled by as the corpse of HexDSL rotted away.
I didn’t care for YouTube anymore because the more talked about writing, writing-tools and systems, the more the HexDSL viewers complained. Sure, I picked up a few writing hungry viewers and even some people who wanted to know my thoughts about plot structure. But, most of them kept ‘subscribed’ for one simple reason – people rarely clear out their YouTube subscriptions list.
I got one particular comment, by email, if I recall, which was softly complaining about how I had changed and I think that was when I actually realised that HexDSL was dead. It was his funeral emotionally speaking.
I spent the next few months wearing his corpse.
I wanted to honor the persona of HexDSL, so I kept going longer than I should. I once told someone that I used to be HexDSL and it rang true in ways I didn’t expect.
I had known the term ‘Dandelion-Utilitarian’ was rolling around in my head for months. I had used it repeatedly in conversation and as a temporary discord name. I liked it and the images it conjured up. I really am quite utilitarian but anyone who has read this far into one of my posts also knows that I am something of a literary dandy. It fit well but I hadn’t realised it was more than an amusing nugget I liked.
Wing, my good friend, and Trendy Talk co-host, created a micro blogging platform called Void and as part of some friendly banter one of my other friends set-up his account in the name of HexDSL. He impersonated me for a few amusing posts and then offered to hand over the name to me.
I was surprised myself when didn’t care. It wasn’t that I had no attachment to the name, it was actually a relief to not be forced into that particular corpses clothes.
On Void I had picked up the quill and hat of the Dandelion and I liked it. I was Happy not being HexDSL. Dandy didn’t have any self imposed expectations. He didn’t have an agenda, image or opinion on things. He was just me.
A few more months rolled on. I had almost entirely stopped playing video games even socially and was happy plugging away at some project or another while my friends played games and we hung out in discord voice chats.
A few weeks ago now I decided it was time to stop pretending to be HexDSL. Hex liked games, and movies and tinkering with things. Dandelion likes writing, thinking and cares about his Kindle for more than his movie collection.
At some point I turned into someone else and because I had been dragging the corpse of my old self around the internet with me, I was starting to resent him. The truth is I cherish my time as HexDSL. I reflect on all the people he allowed me to meet, all the things he taught me and all the late nights fiddling with code.
I can no longer fulfill the implied promises HexDSL made to the people he touched through is videos, discord rambles and Steam library adventures. I have now filled in his grave and all but killed the HexDSL persona/brand and mission.
Who is Dandelion, thats the question which I now need to answer for myself. I know the following things about him.
He likes books about theology, adventure, detectives, and thinks perhaps he judged fantasy novels too harshly.
He has seen enough eighties movies and doesn’t think Star Wars is very good. His favorite movies are Mean Girls and Casablanca but he refuses to acknowledge the irony of that in the way HexDSL used to.
He likes to keep his desk, office and life as simple as it can be. He has a laptop on a desk. not an RGB gaming powerhouse.
He doesn’t care about the expectations that people place upon him. He is no longer seeing approval from strangers.
He likes to write his novels, stories and articles. But, where HexDSL asked you things and warned you that he was going to ramble. Dandy tells you things about himself, and the things he has noticed. he is aware that you are free to stop reading. He really doesn’t mind.
HexDSL dreamed of ‘making it’ in some way. He wanted to be a writer, a YouTuber. He wanted to be someone. Dandelion wants to enjoy life, and plans on retiring into a van with a small dog, he will fill his days writing, drawing and reading. He hopes he can meet some nice people along his travels.
Drawing, writing and sitting in the garden with his Dog are things that HexDSL did too, but Dandelion basks in them, enjoying the small things. He isn’t waiting for anything anymore.
All those people who are mad that HexDSL isn’t making gaming videos should move on now that I have made clear that HexDSL is over, dead, expired. They are welcome to stay if they care about the things I do now. I hope they do.
Up to this point this article is over 1600 words long. All these words are probably the least utilitarian way of saying this…
Hello,
It’s nice to meet you.
Call me Dandy.
Static, in motion – The formation of a man with terrible taste.
The Outer Limits opening contains the now legendary words, “we will control the horizontal, we will control the vertical.” Like many kids, watching the scary black and white episodes through a half broken television, on a raining evening, the words were seared into my mind, along with pregnant tonal whistle which accompanied it.
This struck me as something magical as child, in the same way that the opening line of Neuromancer hit me as an adult, “The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.”
Both of these play with the idea of television as an allegoric representation of control. With the Outer Limits we see absolute control by a nameless, faceless, force. Meanwhile, William Gibson conjures the random, wild field of static. Offering infinite possibility awaiting form. Though, as I said when I wrote about the opening line of this book, the modern world a television tuned to static is probably a solid blue screen, for some reason. But, if I accept that here, my already stretched simile falls down like the rain falling on the sprawl in the middle of the neon glowing night.
I think the reasons which these ideas resonate so much with me is that I have always been fascinated by control, by forces which pull the fateful strings that may weave my own life. This idea has manifested over and over in my tastes, in my selections of entertainment and in my writing.
Words with a way
The first example of this I can think of, save for the Outer Limits on that old television, which sported a wooden veneer shell, which somehow fixes the memory in time an space, was the narrative spaghetti of the ‘choose your own way adventure’ genre if book, which I loved as a kid. I never had my own books, I had to explore them exclusively at the school library, which thinking back, was really a small room with a few book cases and long curtains, never the less, that was where I first learned that stories can be lies.
Flicking through one particular book I realised, that the unwritten rule of following the story, starting over with each failure, was a in fact a nefarious ruse. I was quite able to stick my thumb in one page while doing reconnaissance deeper into the book, seeing if my choices ended in death or another jump in the chessboard of chance.
This bending of the rules became outright breaking a few visits later when I learned that I could chart my path through, noting down all my choices. Fast-tracking my next adventure to avoid the endless chain of deaths felt like a miracle to me. It was only later that I discovered a new layer of complexity when the ‘fighting fantasy’ novels forced me to track my own health points and items.
The lesson I learned that day was probably the reason that I have always found cheating in video games to be a consumingly pointless endeavor. It’s the chance of loss which adds meaning to a decision. Once my choice to fight the dragon became an option, rather than a commitment, the dragon no longer cast its terrifying show across me. The enemy was a test of logic not a test of steel. Which path did the writer of the book except me to take, and which did that writer want to lead to success.
The next phase became reading the book and trying to glean the writers personality. What would they think was the coolest thing to do? could I use this to predict a safe path. Now even with cheating, I was doing battle. Learning how my adversary fought. It was only the final decision which really mattered. Was I right in my assessment of the wordsmith, or was I always to simply err on the side of awesome?
The books eventually felt like maps rather than narratives, but, a pattern was forming in my wants, even then.
Pulp Fiction fantasy
As I grew, I began developing a taste for a specific kind of fiction. Be it television, books, short stories or movies. I wanted to see the impossible be beaten. Science Fiction became my poison of choice and the things I loved, were universally the most trope steeped, Deus ex Machina fueled tripe that I could get.
I didn’t care how bad the effects were. I didn’t care how bad the acting was. I was there for the writing. And, there was a specific type of writing I was hungry for. I wanted something which let me see a little of the person behind the keyboard. Sadly, most of the stuff that my nascent brain found satisfying was commonly considered to be ‘shite.’
One film which I loved as a sixteen year old seeker of sci-fi satisfaction was the Rutger Hauer driven epic ‘Crossworlds.’ The plot of this movie was sheer pulp. At times is didn’t even make sense. The bones of it are as such…
Multiple dimensions existed along side our own. To traverse these dimension one simply needed to follow ‘paths’ between worlds. One example is that when we burst into our heroes ‘barn’ (I don’t remember, it was like an aircraft hanger, if I recall) you would find storage crates and dust. However, if you stepped between two oddly placed trees before opening the barn you would find him, in his own little pocket of reality. The movie then took this idea and added the time tested trope of a chosen-one who needed to perform menial tasks which led him to win a ten thousand year long war which had been raging between dimensions… although no one seemed to think it was that important until that moment… Also, there was a desert scene for some reason. I am likely, totally misremembering this masterwork.
The more well known movie Tron, also sated my desire for this cross reality story telling. As well as the TV show Sliders and load more movies you could probably list yourself.
I used to think I liked stories about dimensions and other worlds. But, as I said earlier in this confession, I think now that I was really just aware that stories were a patchwork of ideas, imagined places a writers tastes. These movies and shows about reality hopping heroically handsome hippies just sort of, hit me, in the soul.
As my tastes became refined further, I began to notice my own ‘narrative kinks’ and found media of higher quality to sate me. It was this thread which I realised was the reason I enjoyed anthology shows like the now repeatedly reviewed Outer Limits, the Twilight zone, and even monster of the week shows like Doctor Who was that they allowed the writers to write new and different, exciting things as and when they wanted.
As I got a little older I really go into Star Trek. At its core, its an anthology show with consistent and repeated framing devices as narrative shortcuts, to allow them to no- explain the entire of the setting every time (something Twilight zone really suffered with.)
Grant gets it
The comic-book writer Grant Morison has been telling the same story for years now. Flex Mentallo, Animal man, The invisibles and even his Final Crisis run are all examples of the exact same idea. That idea being that fiction is a place. Because of this Grant, if you don’t mind me being so informal, is doing what I love in his Deux Ex Mechanistic marvels. He is allowing fiction to be fiction. He writes himself into the story in Animal man. In Flex Mentallo he explored the nature of reality, and, in The invisibles he proposes that time is a result of will applied to narrative. He wrote a book called Zenith where he traps an entire culture in a crystal that tells a story (Something I’m certain Star Trek just stole from him to house a Sherlock Holmes themed homicidal hologram.) He nailed it for me, but most people find some of his more intense works to be nonsense. For me, the nonsense is a result of treating fiction, as, fiction and using to to explore ideas that we really can’t in real life. I know, all writers say they do this, but Grant was willing to bend the rules by shift genre and allow the reader to be as confused as his protagonists. I adore his work because of this ballsy madness.
I read a series of books called Magic 2.0 a while ago which posed that all of reality was a simulation (original, I know) and the best option once you are ‘in on it’ is to move to medieval England and pretend to be a wizard. While only tangentially related, this is, for me at least, an example of a writer using fiction to ask how life would be, if life, was a fiction.
When I set out to write my own fiction, without even realising my kink, I added these tropes to it. In my first novel, Hunters Garden, I gave my characters a place to rest, the titular Garden. The Garden passed time only when it was convenient for the narrative. Something which the characters themselves knew, though, they didn’t frame it like this. It was something akin to the proposal by CS Lewis, that the characters continue on even when the writer goes on holiday, because for them, time only passes when the writing is happening. The author is free to move around time in a way which they are not. This includes the super power of revision.
When I started on my first real series of books, Denouement, I wanted to explore the idea that reality was new, though it seemed old to those living in it. I then inserted a character who was simply observing in the same way the reader was, who was able to see the odd errors in the logic and history of their normal. This led him to declare, ‘hey, this doesn’t make any sense!’ – Where would the story go from there I mused. Three books or so later, I have my answer.
The reason I am so able to see the thread that binds my tastes is because I have intentionally spent a lot of time thinking about writing, reading and reasons. I know why I like one story and not another. I know why I like things that lots of people don’t and I know this because the muscles I developed writing have allowed me to be thorough in my self-analysis. I also truly believe that most people don’t know why they like one thing and not another. I think in part this is why a lot of people enjoy things that are narrative turds. They don’t actually know what makes a satisfying story, they just know that the story on offer is presenting in a high quality framing. In part this, I think is why crap like Knives Out, Star Wars and a great many Marvel branded offerings do so well. No one realises that they are rubbish because they are so well made.
I don’t say this because of some pretentious desire to claim I know better or can sniff out art where others cannot. Not at all. Actually I’m pretty sure I have terrible taste in media. But, I know what I like and why I like it. I have spent time thinking about it. I watch some total crap. Things I would never recommend to anyone. But, I truly enjoy this junk. I am happy with this junk. The junk defined my love of junk. I am a product of exposure to ideas that are, trope driven shite. But, I know why I like the things I do.
Do you know why you like the things you do?
Kindling, Copyright, Catastrophe
I’ve used a Kindle as my main book-window since the Kindle Voyage was launched in 2014 and since that time I’ve read many a controversy about the way Amazon manage the platform. Most of the reports are actually about copyright law, not Amazon, not directly. I thing which most anti-eBook/anti-Kindle crusaders point at is the time that everyone had their copy of 1984 taken away, one morning in 2009. Rarely does anyone bother asking why Amazon did this, they usually just point and yell. If you’re interested in the minutiae that surrounded this then I suggest you read more than one article as most people are still outraged about it.
The reality is that someone who didn’t own the copyright was selling the book and because of the law around the selling of stolen goods, when the problem was identified it has to get removed. I am all for using this event as a platform to debate the usefulness and fairness of copyright law but the reality is that Amazon didn’t have a lot of choice. They had already given the money for the purchases to the dicey dealer of dystopia, so it was not legally their responsibility to refund anyone. They absolutely should have paid everyone the couple of dollars they spent, I agree. As the business responsible for not checking copyright, they really should have held themselves responsible, yes. But they didn’t, and didn’t legally have to.
Since that time they have been actually pretty careful about copyright. I once had a problem having them list one of my own books because they thought I stole it… from my own website… which was confusing, for me, mostly.
I am no Amazon defender but I have used a Kindle as my main platform for eBooks since that Voyage, which by the way, was at the time, simply the best eReader on the market.
The reason I have always stayed with kindle has been because they have the highest quality devices, and have the most well stocked digital shelves.
It is rare that I have to go outside of the build-in book store for a purchase and when I do, it’s trivial to get the file to my device.
When I looked at alternative hardware in the past, it usually costs about the same and offered a less premium experience. This is less true in recent years if course, there are a lot of options out there now that are all very good, but now I have a large Kindle library as well as being exceptionally familiar with the platform, I don’t want to leave anymore. I know, thats on me.
The DRM debate has always been an abstract argument to me. I read on Amazon hardware, and I use the Amazon store. I have never had to think about DRM in functional, real world terms. I only want to read my purchase on my device and it’s been fine, forever.
But, like all things which are ‘fine’ they are only ‘fine’ until they are not. The kindness of my Kindle finally expired.
I couldn’t figure out why I kept pressing the button to download the book I wanted to read. It kept going ‘dark’ as it does a moment before it begins downloading but then it would flash as if it was done, a moment later, without downloading anything.
I tried on different wifi connections, restarted my device and searched the storage list on the off chance there was a ‘bad’ download half finished or something.
It was only when I finally searched for it in the store, and clicked ‘read now’ that I got an actual error message. This message informed me that I had reached my device limit. To be clear I own two Kindles. A paperwhite and a Scribe. I also use the Kindle app on my iPad mini, from time to time.
I know, opulent!
The really frustrating thing here is that the platform has no capacity to actually expose this information to me outside of the store page. Something of an oversight.
I went to the devices page on the web and removed everything but my two Kindles and tried again. It would appear after some investigation that it was the iPad which pushed me over the license limit for this work. What is extra annoying is that of my large library, no other title has had an issue with my habits.
Now, I don’t know how astute you are, but it’s somehow worse to me that the book in question is the NKJV Bible, printed my Thomas Nelson. A book which is a modern translation of a public domain document, which was released in 1979, and is freely available to read online in at least five places I cant think of without Googling for more. Add to add to that, it’s the Word of God we are talking about here. You can see why I growled at my Kindle, I assume.
As much as I wanted to bark at Amazon, in the moment, I have to remember that it’s the copyright holder who has all the power here. But, before we shrug and blame old Tommy Nuisance for all the problems I had, Amazon make no effort at all to tell you there is a license limit when you buy a book. Actually you are not buying a book at all, you are buying a license to read a book. I am someone who basically understands this principle and doesn’t really object to it, not really, however a great many of the people who use Kindle don’t know or understand, and, that’s not their fault. Amazon doesn’t explain it at any point during the process of setting up a device, or pressing checkout.
Just because a purchase is digital it should not automatically be transient. Any ‘license’ or ‘rental’ or ‘limited access’ is essentially a subscription and we should expect organisations offering subscriptions to make it clear that you are buying access not ownership.
The scam here is the same as it’s always been. Sooner or later if there are enough copies of book in the physical world, everyone can get one for free by asking someone. But if you have a license, then every person who wants the book has to pay for it. You can’t saturate market when a product is tied to a person, and new people keep getting born. You can saturate a market when they can just read their mates book. It really is a scam.
I’m personally okay with this because I just want to read the book, not get involved in political discourse, but… Just because we live in a world where this is normal we should not act like it’s ‘fine’ because eventually its not going to be. That activation limit will lower as companies try to squeeze more money out of us all.
People should be given the chance to understand this before they can’t read their Bible anymore.
Time can’t split. Projects eat time.
No matter how productive I can become, and no matter how skilled I become, I still have twenty-four hours in a day. Much like nothing exceeds the speed of light, no productivity pipeline will break the time barrier. This has never been more evident to me than when I started drawing.
I have been in the habit of writing for a few hours every day for a few years. While I don’t manage to actually accomplish this every day, the habit is formed. If nothing comes up in my day, if no events are happening, at around half six, I’ll start writing. On a weekend, I tend to write from around two in the afternoon. This is my default and I find it calming, productive and rewarding. I think my consistency has made me a better writer and I have, so far, managed to publish/share five (5.5?) books which, I feel, are of a reasonable and increasing quality; each better than the last.
Drawing, however, has been something which, over the past few months, I have greatly enjoyed. Drawing replaced video games as a pastime for me and slotted neatly into a timeslot which was previously for watching TV and playing games socially. I find drawing rewarding. It’s fun, I have progression, and I like it as a potential story telling platform, with my end goal to be one day making my Denouement novel into a comic.
This hobby was all going really well, then, like the goon I am, I started working on a little comic which was intended to be a ‘test’ of how to make a comic. Nicerferatu was birthed. Again, this was, at this point, totally fine, reasonable and enjoyable. I produced a few pages, which are of, I think, increasing quality.
Sounds great, what’s the problem?
Well, the problem, is that the other week, I had a terrible idea. I had the idea of making a multipage comic, something which extends out across around twelve pages in total. There’s no rush to get this finished, right… right? Nope. All I have to do is work on one page at a time, follow my storyboard and script, and receive joy at the end when it’s done. Great… easy.
Did you notice it?
Yeah, I missed it too…
All I have to do is follow my script and my storyboard.
I’m a writer, not an artist, and certainly not a comic-book artist! Having a version of my story framework in my head is not something which works for a visual medium. I needed to think in images now words.
It took me a while to figure out how to make storyboards. An easy theory, but why not use the storyboard as an initial sketch layer? Well, then I needed to have a storyboard with proportions which match the final work. So that took time.
Okay, what goes on each panel or page? I have a vague idea what I want to accomplish, I should do what I know best and write something, ah, yes, a script! I know how to do that… For the following week, after this revelation, my writing time was not spent working on my current project, but on Niceferatu scripts. (For those who asked, yes, the current writing project is Denouement 3, with the working title, ‘A thousand years north.’)
Shockingly, my twenty-four hours did not stretch with my projects. One project suffered at the polite but merciless vampiric hands of the other. I am in a fortunate position of being someone who creates things as a hobby. While I would like to think I produce good quality writings, I don’t have a publisher to sate, or a release schedule to hit. But, the lesson is there, despite the aim of my drawing being to fill a time-slot, as soon as it became something I enjoyed, it leaked out of its temporal container and ate its sibling.
Much like entropy, no force can fight the universal rule of content creations:
Projects eat time. New projects eat the time of more established ones.
The reason for this, in this case, is simple – a new thing feels more pressing than an old thing. My writing is an established habit that has a constant satisfaction and progress. This new project is about learning things and will only take a few weeks to have a sharable thing, something to show for it. Whereas writing takes months. Each project probably only see the light of day after six to eight months of thoughtfully tapping buttons at my desk. The appeal of a shorter term project is appealing.
The darnedest thing is, though, that amidst all this lost writing productivity, I am not mad at my drawing project. I have learned a lot, brushed up on script writing techniques, thought about characters in more visual ways and had a loverly time watching movies while I drew my silly cave rocks and goblin cats.
Making things is fun. While I will probably always consider myself to be a writer first and foremost, learning to draw has been hitting a different creative urge, and I am finding it immensely satisfying, even if it has slowed my writing down a great deal.