Archive for November, 2007

This article on the BBC web site intrigued me earlier Boys of 12 ‘abusing asteroids’. Turns out I’d miss read it and it was Boys of 12 ‘abusing steroids’ serious but no where near as intriguing.

Angel wings ‘unsafe’ for nativity. Political Correctness not the same as Health and Safety. Plus isn’t the BBC giving allfairythings.com store owner a free advert- one that they couldn’t buy? I find the person-in-the-street saying it’s Political Correctness gone mad line an anoying bad cliche but someone who gets free publicity for their business saying it – thats sloppy journalism. It’s Friday, it’s raining outside some BBC journalist couldn’t be bothered to go out in the cold for the quote just e-mail someone pretty much guaranteed to say it instead.

And finally Postman leaves DVD package in bin: Hope she gets the full refund and not just £34. Does make me wonder if this is what happened with a phone book that was "Left in a hidden place" by a postman for me a few years ago. I’ve been dreading suddenly discovering it ever since.

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The first thing I remember reading of Kim’s was the start of 7% and Rising. She’s finally finished it and it’s out now. I’ve not had a chance to read the whole book yet but I’m looking forward to it. If you can learn more about 7% and Rising at Kim’s Blog or buy it from My Bookstore and More.

I started editing Mrs H’s Knitting Circle last night. It was so far over the word count I realised I needed to do something drastic. It was ending on a long bit of dialogue that I liked after an unseen action sequence. So, thanks to the joys of word processing, I’ve rewritten it to put the main character right in the middle of the action. The dialogue has moved to become the structure for another story the follows on from a cliff hanger ending to Mrs H’s Knitting Circle. I don’t have a title for it yet but something will come to me.

Tonight’s Theatrical lighting rigs is one of the most commonly used solutions to the question of how to light an actor. It has been in use for at least seventy-five years and was first described by Stanley McCandless in his 1932 book A Method of Lighting the Stage.

Even the best funded production has a limited number of lights available. So a rig which is effective and only uses two lights is extremely useful.

Two lights are placed so that they light the whole of the actor. They are placed to the front and the side of the actor.

With this rig you get visibility from the light coming from the front. With the lights being to the side you also get modelling. So long as they are high enough above the actor the shadows cast don’t become too large and don’t fall on to scenery or the cyclorama. They must however be mounted low enough so that light reaches the eye sockets, mouth and teeth.

All of the above images were made using Poser 7 and Vue 6 Infinite. They could have been made using any version of Vue 6 including Vue 6 Pro or Vue 6 Easel.

When it was quiet late on Friday night I recorded the first half of myself reading The Electron Jockey. I’ve spent some of today editing the first Planet of Danger cast which will eventually be a part of the, yet to be launched, Dirk Dangerous web site. So far I’m about half way through the recording and editing of the PoD Cast. I also need to turn the design for the site in to a template for Word Press so I can get the site up and running soon.

I got inspiration for the Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle tonight and pushed on through the next scene and past the 3,500 word limit which is a problem as I’m not close to the end yet. However I scrimped on a couple of earlier sections so I’m thinking I could expand them and move some of this story off into a second 3,500 word story. However that would push back introducing Dirk Dangerous by another story. Since Dirk is really the hero of the piece I ought to bring him in sometime. I’ve run across off screen villains before but never an off screen hero…

I’ve been using Technorati for 18 months to keep track of my favourite blogs but of late the service has been unreliable. Fortunately Google Reader has now come out of the Google Labs and so tonight I switched all the feeds I follow over to it.

I’ve been using the wibbly wobbly web and associated Internet thingy for well over a decade now. In that time I’ve made friends all over the world including America. Funny thing is that today is the first time I can remember being wished happy thanksgiving. Its not just happened once though but several times.

Anyway when I wrote The Electron Jockey I was planning it as a one off so I didn’t think a lot about continuity, setting or well much other than the story itself. Then Tim at Astonishing Adventures Magazine! suggested I might write something else with the same characters so I knocked out The Steward, the Kriegsherr, his Femme Fatale & her Brother (tStKhFF&tB)which has been picked up for issue 2. Still not a lot to worry about – when a plane first came into use and a period of China’s history. Now I was starting to plan longer term so I found another hook in The Electron Jockey to hang Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle from and one at the end of tStKhFF&tB to hang another off that will also need to follow on from Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle – Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom.

But me being me I started to think if this is going to turn in to a strange series of short stories all hooked up in a vaguely serial form and with a common background I need to start keeping track of things. I need to fix the chronology a bit better than sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Now Mrs H.’s pushes the setting in to being alternate history because its premise and its title require two prominent historical figures to marry who didn’t. That doesn’t bother me too much. However it also means that these stories have to be post prohibition and I had a nice idea for a story featuring one of the characters in a prohibition era situation.

So my dilema is do I do unto US history what Hollywood has done to the rest of the worlds history for years or do I at least vaguely try and keep within some sort of reasonable chronology?

Trust me to do it on Thanksgiving. And to all my American friends have a happy thanksgiving.

I’ve decided to cut back on the number of Thursday Thirteen and Wordless Wednesday posts. Partly because I’m spending too much time on them each week, partly because I want to look around for some different memes to try and partly because I’m finding it harder to come up with good ideas for them each week. I hope that when I do take part I’ll bring something to the table that is worth other people bothering to read.