Six random topics make a post.
Jan. 27th, 2009 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseSo, since my post January 8th about Murdering a Big Darling, it took until *yesterday* to get That ONE scene right. I started it three times. Twice dreadfully. Then, after having screwed it up the second time, i got the opening dialogue down in my brain, but had no chance to do more than scribble the bare bones of the first exchange in my notebook on Saturday.
Great progress. A whopping 1100 words.
(Small consolation: the scene it replaced was only 1200. I thought it was longer.)
I wish I knew how the next big confrontation was going to play out, but aside from knowing someone loses an ear (Well, a big piece of cartilage), and it won't be fun and games for anyone, I have no clue.
___________________
I have three teapots. They just got mostly-good response in Critique. They are at leather hard stage, however, and one is unfinished (I have decoration to do). One has the handle in slightly the wrong place, but not so wrong it can't be used.
I should be finishing it now. I seem to prefer sitting at the computer today. Finno wants me to try and get going on the *next* scene. (Even though, see above.)
I also rolled out mammoth tusks on Sunday. In both cases, I think they're a little long even for a mammoth. But they needed to be done.
I love it when the professor says things like "You can tell soemthing's been scratched with a pin tool" then praises my convoluted carving. Hee, and what do you think my main tool is? Okay, besides a wheel. (Most of the detail work even on Fetch, Sher, and Nessie was done with the classic needle-on-a-stick pin tool. There's a reason i have one darned weird callus on my middle finger.)
Still, not wanting to work is not terribly helpful.
___________________
I've now had two different people tell me my mandolin teacher thinks I'm making really good progress. Say WHAT?
I don't think I have *once* made it through a song without some kind of a flub, many more obvious than others. I have made it through whole verses and choruses, often enough to know, intellectually, that I can, and even will.
But. There's the song where I can't keep a singular strumming pattern to save my life. There's the chord I've transitioned to smoothly about five times ever, and never twice in a row. There's the new song where the tricky chords seem to also mean I stop being able to play the easy ones (I screw up Gs in that song, the first chord I learned. Even when they follow other familiar chords.) Oh, and whose hardest chord I can barely sound at all, and never without some pain (This is muscle training, at least, and temporary. That used to be true of chords I can hit better now; I still miss them too often, but not with pain.)
I've made a few attempts to learn songs he isn't actively teaching me, to extrapolate skills, since that's the *point*. And, well... the results aren't even mixed. They're mostly clumsy. I might have the strumming pattern to one. Half of one. (I don't have the finger-picking pattern, quite, at the point where the song consciously changes over.)
If this is knowing something, or making progress... it feels slow. It feels like it will be another year before I'd want to play anything in front of people, and two or three before I'd be willing to try and play along with someone else.
The good news is, this is making me want to keep practicing.
___________________
On the other hand, archery is only frustrating me. I'm in one of the downturns where I'm doing badly, and doing badly is frustrating me, and the frustration makes it harder to do well.
Also a case of need to practice more, but with what time?
___________________
One positive result of the (Apparently still ongoing!) Internet craziness* that has been running through LJ is that i have found and friended a bunch of other journals. Some are people I've been observing for a while, some were people who seemed to come out of the woodwork, linked to journals I knew via journals I didn't.
A sad result is two people on my friends list deleting their Ljs entirely. I am hoping both will change their mind (They have a month), or, as someone suggested, undelete long enough to save the data elsewhere.
___________________
Weird thing about my new MP3 player. When it's set to random, it starts up with a brand new song each time it comes on - not the song that was playing or cued to play. Okay, not so odd; except that if it's turned off at the 2:10 mark in a song... it will start up again at the 2:10 mark of a *completely different song*. I think that's strange, anyhow.
The Police's Wrapped Around Your Finger seems to come up disproportionately often when this particular playlist (Rock/pop) is set to random. Every time the thing gets switched of and back on, so far. Yup. Every. There are 280 songs and it doesn't run more than 10-20 at a stretch most of the time.
___________________
* At this point, I feel like there are TWO conversations going on, because there are several that seem to be buried in personal attacks and invective, and places a very intelligent, if oft frustrated (Because some points have been oft-repeated) discourse on Cultural appropriation and othering are happening. Sometimes in the same lj entry, if different comment threads. Sometimes with the same participants. Please not, then, that when I talk about craziness, I am not talking about the latter. And if i just friended you, or have not unfriended you, chances are I think you're trying to make light, not heat.
Great progress. A whopping 1100 words.
(Small consolation: the scene it replaced was only 1200. I thought it was longer.)
I wish I knew how the next big confrontation was going to play out, but aside from knowing someone loses an ear (Well, a big piece of cartilage), and it won't be fun and games for anyone, I have no clue.
___________________
I have three teapots. They just got mostly-good response in Critique. They are at leather hard stage, however, and one is unfinished (I have decoration to do). One has the handle in slightly the wrong place, but not so wrong it can't be used.
I should be finishing it now. I seem to prefer sitting at the computer today. Finno wants me to try and get going on the *next* scene. (Even though, see above.)
I also rolled out mammoth tusks on Sunday. In both cases, I think they're a little long even for a mammoth. But they needed to be done.
I love it when the professor says things like "You can tell soemthing's been scratched with a pin tool" then praises my convoluted carving. Hee, and what do you think my main tool is? Okay, besides a wheel. (Most of the detail work even on Fetch, Sher, and Nessie was done with the classic needle-on-a-stick pin tool. There's a reason i have one darned weird callus on my middle finger.)
Still, not wanting to work is not terribly helpful.
___________________
I've now had two different people tell me my mandolin teacher thinks I'm making really good progress. Say WHAT?
I don't think I have *once* made it through a song without some kind of a flub, many more obvious than others. I have made it through whole verses and choruses, often enough to know, intellectually, that I can, and even will.
But. There's the song where I can't keep a singular strumming pattern to save my life. There's the chord I've transitioned to smoothly about five times ever, and never twice in a row. There's the new song where the tricky chords seem to also mean I stop being able to play the easy ones (I screw up Gs in that song, the first chord I learned. Even when they follow other familiar chords.) Oh, and whose hardest chord I can barely sound at all, and never without some pain (This is muscle training, at least, and temporary. That used to be true of chords I can hit better now; I still miss them too often, but not with pain.)
I've made a few attempts to learn songs he isn't actively teaching me, to extrapolate skills, since that's the *point*. And, well... the results aren't even mixed. They're mostly clumsy. I might have the strumming pattern to one. Half of one. (I don't have the finger-picking pattern, quite, at the point where the song consciously changes over.)
If this is knowing something, or making progress... it feels slow. It feels like it will be another year before I'd want to play anything in front of people, and two or three before I'd be willing to try and play along with someone else.
The good news is, this is making me want to keep practicing.
___________________
On the other hand, archery is only frustrating me. I'm in one of the downturns where I'm doing badly, and doing badly is frustrating me, and the frustration makes it harder to do well.
Also a case of need to practice more, but with what time?
___________________
One positive result of the (Apparently still ongoing!) Internet craziness* that has been running through LJ is that i have found and friended a bunch of other journals. Some are people I've been observing for a while, some were people who seemed to come out of the woodwork, linked to journals I knew via journals I didn't.
A sad result is two people on my friends list deleting their Ljs entirely. I am hoping both will change their mind (They have a month), or, as someone suggested, undelete long enough to save the data elsewhere.
___________________
Weird thing about my new MP3 player. When it's set to random, it starts up with a brand new song each time it comes on - not the song that was playing or cued to play. Okay, not so odd; except that if it's turned off at the 2:10 mark in a song... it will start up again at the 2:10 mark of a *completely different song*. I think that's strange, anyhow.
The Police's Wrapped Around Your Finger seems to come up disproportionately often when this particular playlist (Rock/pop) is set to random. Every time the thing gets switched of and back on, so far. Yup. Every. There are 280 songs and it doesn't run more than 10-20 at a stretch most of the time.
___________________
* At this point, I feel like there are TWO conversations going on, because there are several that seem to be buried in personal attacks and invective, and places a very intelligent, if oft frustrated (Because some points have been oft-repeated) discourse on Cultural appropriation and othering are happening. Sometimes in the same lj entry, if different comment threads. Sometimes with the same participants. Please not, then, that when I talk about craziness, I am not talking about the latter. And if i just friended you, or have not unfriended you, chances are I think you're trying to make light, not heat.
