Tag Archives: life

general posts about my life

Not much to say

It’s been a busy and stressful day at my paying job and that has cascaded into a tired and not very motivated host here.

My sweetie-wife and I also looked at re-finacing the mortgage but decided against it. The goals of re-fi and our long term goal simply do not sync up.

The Station On The Edge got another rejection and I am thinking it is time to retire the story to the truck.  The most common feedback has been that the characters are too unlikable, but they were the characters who reported for duty when I wrote it. I have sat down to try re-writing it and never typed a word. I like the characters and the story as is. Perhaps I am the only one.

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No Sunday Night Movie

I was simply too exhausted to even watched a TV episode last night much less a full feature film. I will return to the Sunday Night Movie next weekend with either The Mist or We Were Soliders.

Sunday was a pretty good day overall. I saw a good movie — Zombieland — nearly won at Scrabble with my sweetie-wife and had a pleasant time hanging out with my pal.

Working is coming along on world-building for Cawdor. I’ve making tons of notes for a new human culture and new human religion. This will be the basis for one faction of the novel, the TANS. A lot of what I am putting together will not appear directly in the novel but it will inform how characters act and react to each other. The fun part will be presenting each culture truthfully with pluses and minuses. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decided which side is just and right in its war.

I do think life is messy and novels and arts shouldn’t be too cut and dried with good and bad guys.

(That was the biggest weakness in Eric Flint’s 1632 novel.)

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October Fest

It’s a shame I am not a beer drinker. (Given my current medication I’m not supposed to drink anything at all.)

This weekend is Octoberfest in San Diego. Today my sweetie-wife and I went out to the fest, paid too much for food and walked among the booths. I throughly enjoyed my braut covered with grilled onions and mustard.

In the evening we had friends over and played many a vicious card game.

All and all a fun day.

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Gail’s Book hits the shelves today!

SoullessMy friend Gail Carriger has her first novel, Soulless, hit the stores today. I am so very happy to see this happen. I met Gail — a pseudonym but one I shall honor here — five years ago at a Science-Fiction convention at a panel on writing. She’s a woman with brains and talent and a wicked sense of humor. All of which she has put into her novel.

I am not jealous of her success, but I am rather encouraged by it. You hear tales about how the industry is closed and the way to break in is to know someone. To network at conventions and thereby get an editor or someone else to notice your work.

Yes, it can be done that way, but it’s not the only way. Gail’s book went into the slush pile without any agents or networking. In the end it is always the writing that sells the story and nothing else. If my stuff isn’t selling either I haven’t found the right editor — and that is a component as well — or my writing simply isn’t good enough, yet.

I’m not normally a fan of fantasy. I’m much more of an SF kind of reader, but I do like funny fantasy and that’s why I feel perfectly fine in recommending Soulless. Gail brings her unique wit and viewpoint to tropes that other simple noticed and Gail shows you the other side.

You can find her website in my blog roll, and it’s worth a  read as well.

Gail, congratulations! You go girl!

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A Good Day (Part 6)

No photographs this entry. We ended the tour with the Warner Brothers Museum. Sadly it was a no camera zone so I have no pictures of any of the items in the Museum. I did see many costumes and props and artifacts from the long history of WB films.

I saw the original prop for the film The Maltese Falcon. And I was shocked to learn that the prop Falcon weighs 43 whopping pounds. The tail feathers are bent from where it was dropped between takes.

There were also costumes from a number of recent films like Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Watchmen. For The Watchmen costume all they had was Rorschach and the blue light suit worn to help create the character of Dr. Manhattan. (The rest of the main characters had their costumes on display in the guest center where the tour started.)

The second floor of the museum is dedicated to Harry Potter artifacts, including a sorting hat. An attendant holds the hat over your head and a random house is mentioned. Strangely for the second time this sort of thing has placed me in house Slytherin.

After this were returned to the Guest center and the tour was over.

If you love films and have the $200 to blow and a free day this tour is well worth it.

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A Good Day (Part 4)

In the afternoon we were taken to the vehicle room. Here they had on display ‘hero’ vehicles used in WB productions. By hero vehicles they mean the car and such that were used in normal shots, not in stunt photography. These vehicles were the actual ones. not reproductions.

Cars From AI Here is a car and a flying vehicle used in the movie A.I. I’m a genre fan but it is a film I have never seen.

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Burton BatmobleHere is the Batmobile used in the two Tim Burton Batman movies.

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Get SmartThe Sunbeam convertible used the feature film version of Get Smart.

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Nolan BatmobileHere is the Tumbler used in Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins and again in The Dark Knight.

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BatpodAnd the Batpod also used in The Dark Knight after the Tumbler is destroyed.

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Gran TorinoHere is the Gran Torino from Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino. Beyond you can the General Lee from the film version of The Dukes Of Hazzard, and beyond that a hint of the sedan from the Matrix films.

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Harry Potter Our tour guide in front of the flying car — it doesn’t really fly of course – from Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets.

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Mach 5.

The Mach 5 from Speed Racer.

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Hugo

Hugo Weaving was filming some Matrix related materials and showed up in the vehicle room. No, he didn’t – this is a Hugo Weaving dummy. They made a lot of these for the duplication scenes in the recent Matrix films, but it looked too good not to get a picture of it.  There were more of these in the museum, but I discuss that and the prop and costuming departments in my next post.

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A Good Day (Part 3)

As I mentioned before there were plenty of area where no camera were allowed on the tour. Included in those area we the sound recording studios. We visited two sound recording studios.

In the first, and smaller studio, we watched a audio technicians laid tracks for an upcoming episode of the TV show, “Crash“. We stood in the back very quietly watching and listening as track upon track was melded together working towards a final mix. Of course we didn’t see more than a few minutes of the work and that represented a tiny fraction of the work that would be required.

After that we were taken to the Eastwood Sound Studio. It’s named after Clint Eastwood who championed its restoration about a dozen years ago. Beyond film scores — the room will hold a 124 piece orchestra — this studio is a favorite of the music industry. It boasts superior sound qualities and design. The studio itself goes back to the 30’s and it was there that Max Steiner recorded the music for Casablanca.

Tomorrow more on my trip and more pictures, a couple of props from the Prop department and some famous cars preserved on the lot.

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