tychoish, now without a net

I posted something along these lines to the writing list a few days ago, and I kept meaning to write some sort of bah humbag post about new years eves and new years resolutions (because thats my M.O. about holidays.) But then I realized that somehow it was already New Years Eve, and that I’d end up posting my non-resolution at the same time that everyone was posting theirs, so… whatever. Here we are.

Truth is I think the January 1 marker is a sort of lame beginning of the new year. I think August/September is a much better point in the year (at least in the northern hemisphere). I can’t decide if it’s the academic or the jew, but whichever, I tend to do most of the resolutioning then, and often pretty much ignore Janurary 1. Tonight, I’m siting at home doing the same thing I always do. But that’s the way I am.

So anyway, the resolution.

This year, I’m going to create a file called “read.txt” and list the books that I read as I read them. While I’ve been reading more in the last year, and this is a good thing, I still think that I need to read more. I hope that by tracking the books–just the titles and authors, too much work and I’ll loose interest–I’ll read more. What’s more, I think that I often read more than I think I do, I just never seem to remember it in the moment. Having a list will help this.

That’s all. I want to write in the new year, but I’m doing that now, so no use to resolve to do it. So I’m done.

See you on the flip side.

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tagged: Announcements • journal

As my previous post probably indicates, I’ve been reading wikipedia recently about fairly elementary astronomical concepts and facts. While this is an enjoyable project all by itself, it’s clearly in service of the fiction I’m writing.

I’d also take a moment to note that in the biggest web traffic I’ve gotten in a month or more due to a post I made on zimmermania, and the pictures I posted yesterday, I’m going to have a post about science fiction and near-Earth star systems. Sigh

Anyway back to Wolf 424. All this is all well and good, but the truth is, I don’t write hard SF, and to say that I have a somewhat tenuous grasp on mathematics. Nevertheless, reading about stars which are pretty close on a cosmic scale, is something that I find really helpful and inspiring for my writing.

I think because thinking about Barnard’s Star, or Wolf 424, Epsilon Eridani is about leaning into a sort of existential sense of wonder and amazement. I mean. Wolf 424 is moving–relative to the solar system–at hundreds of miles a second. I mean wow.

So that’s what I think science fiction should, in an ideal world aim to communicate, I mean, among other things, of course. I made the point a few weeks ago that, space opera should attempt to make going Alpa Centuari, or Vega being substantively different than going to Montana or Nepal, even if the story is mundane, even if the boundaries of realism are pretty flexible.

My two cents at least.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: science fiction • space

From the Wikipedia page on Wolf 424

Due to its proximity and fast motion towards the Sun, Wolf 424 will brighten by more than 2% over the course of the 21st century. In approximately 7700 years it will make its nearest approach at a distance of about 1 light year.

See ya in 9700.

And here’s a picture for your records:

A light year is pretty darn close, and astronomically, 7k years isn’t that long at all. I’m thinking someone needs to write a story.

As I’ve thought about this some more, I’ve realized (with the help of wikipedia) that Wolf 242 is moving, relative to the speed of the Solar System, at 555km/s, which is almost 2 percent of light speed.¹ Right? There has to be a story in this.

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tagged: science fiction • space

So, I’m really bad at this whole “posting pictures” part of blogging. I don’t have a good excuse, thought I will admit that if there was a good way to manage the Wordpress uploads via XML-RPC, in a standard easy to manage sort of way. Actually, if someone could give me a more clear way of naming and organizing pictures on the server, with points for the fewest steps, and/or greatest automation. Anyway, I’ve gotten off my duff and I’m ready to actually post some pictures.

These are all on my flickr and of course also on Ravelry, where I’m, not surprisingly known as tychoish. Today, we’re going to get pictures of the Morocco sweater in it’s current state. (Hence the title of the post). Lets remember that the name “Morocco” is a sort of inside joke, because although it looks Moorish, the pattern is taken from a Latvian weaving pattern. The design is from Joyce William’s Latvian Dreams, though I must admit that I have not yet really read the pattern, so much as copied the chart and inspected the picture in the book closely. I seem to enjoy it better that way.

Here’s a good picture of the bottom rear of the sweater. Note that the ugly green yarn and the curling will be gone when the sweater’s finished as I intend to undo the provisional cast on and knit a turned hem. I’ve even bought a 60″ Size 0 needle:

(It’s a jacket/cardigan, so the middle front is obstructed at the moment.) Here’s a closer view of the back of the sweater in total. It’s about 30-32″ long from shoulder to lower edge.

You can probably see from that, how the sleeve’s are set it, and the armholes are shaped. I’m not doing it in one piece, but it’s cool none the less. Look at this:

I picked up stitches holding two colors, continuing the patterns on their sides. Also the shaping is occurring the top/sides of the sleeves rather than at the bottom. Here’s a better shot of this from the top.

I’m probably most proud of this. Look how the patterns meat from the shoulder. You can see the “seam,” and I think the half stitch discrepancy that grafting would have provided wouldn’t have been preferable in this situation. It looks good and it’ll look better when it’s blocked. Also the way it shifts direction without much fuss is pretty cool as well.

But as you can see I have a lot to go on this sleeve. Better get to it!

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: knitting

I think I may have mentioned a recent foray into spinning. I got some BFL, and attempted to do some navajo plying, and it ended miserably. Later tonight I’m going to spin up a sample in 2 ply and see how that goes. Also, I’m going to slow down the ratio, because I think I was over spinning the singles as well. This is hearty fiber, but it’s longer staple than merino and I don’t need to twist the hell out of it, I think. It’s damn nice, and pretty easy to get a hold of, so I really want this to work out. Heh.

In other knitting news, having procured the proper replacement needle, I’m back to knitting Morocco. The secondary sweater, code named “turkish tile” is about 15 inches long, give or take, and I’ve officially moved it into the other room and on hiatus. I need to work on this sleeve, and if I need distraction from that there are socks.

You hadn’t heard about the socks. Oh dear. Well, for reason’s I can’t quite comprehend, I have taken this sock back up, ripped out the heel flap which just wasn’t working out for either of us. We’re going to do some sneaky stuff with a thumb trick heel. You know where you knit across half of the stitches with waste yarn and then pick it out later and knit a toe (which is actually a short row shape heel. Wacky). And then of course both boyfriend socks, which I’m uncharacteristically knitting at the same time.

I had a talk with the owner of the store about ordering/carrying a spinning wheel(s). We’re still not sure what the options are. We’re going to have some sort of relationship with this company, but we’re not sure if it’s going to be an ad-hoc or more ongoing sort of thing. I’m going to spend some time tomorrow afternoon working on prepping another spinning wheel for sale, and spinning. It’ll be nice to have my own wheel for real, again.

Anyway, I have something of a deadline (steeking demonstration on the 3rd) and a lot of sleeve to knit before then. If I’m not writing fiction think I had better be knitting on this.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: knitting

Just some thoughts about the writing bandwagon and what I’ve been up to of late.

I had a pretty good writing day yesterday. Not stellar, but I got pretty close to the 1000 word mark, and generally that’s a pretty good thing. Some people, myself included, occasionally brag about 2k or even 2.5k days, and while those days can feel really good and really cathartic, it’s not sustainable (one of the reason’s I’m not a fan of NaNoWriMo) and therefore not a good, realistic, or otherwise healthy goal. My thought is if you need to write more than 1k words a day (on a single project) for more than like 2 days on end, cut something out: switch your days off, alter your sleep schedule, reorganize your priorities. Something.

While I’m preaching, I’d also say that while you need to touch big projects daily in order to keep them active in your mind, if you’re not writing something like 1000 words a week on a project, it’s probably fallow and you should reconsider your priorities and regroup. Clearly I’m being a little prescriptive, there are kinds of writing where this won’t hold up, or it holds up differently. Poets and some short fiction writers, journalists, academic writing all have different thresholds and what not, but I think the general line of even if you can’t write on a project you should give it consideration and thought every single day, and also be sure to make actual concrete process on that project regularly. Your millage may vary.

Today, I haven’t yet done as well, though I suspect there’s time yet to get writing done, so I’m not yet final. When I’m thinking about this, though, I’ve realized that I tend to keep track of one word count. How much I’ve written in the one big project, not how much I write at all, or how other projects fare. Particularly if you count this blog post, but probably even if you don’t, I’ve gotten way way past the 1k goal: I have a knitting pattern that I’ve been working on for a few days that I finally knocked out. Surely that counts for something.

I made a post a couple days ago about boyfriends and how (mostly as a result of heteronormativity) that sometimes it can be hard to be a “single queer.” The parallel to this is writing and writers. It’s hard to be a writer if you’re not writing. I mean clearly there are a lot of things in the world that prevent people who write from getting writing done, but I’m certainly not one to make the point that writers write and authors talk about what they wrote, you can’t be a writer if you don’t write.

I’m not sure how well these models and the analogy hold up, but, maybe there’s something there. Anyway, I have things that need doing, so I’m going to get, but I just wanted to throw this out there.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: productivity • writing