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I am now up to over 4300 words in my novel! I got into the 16th page last night in my writing as my creative genius took over and kept me up until after midnight, a full two and a half hours later than I had intended. My novel has been an ongoing project for a couple of years already, and the progress is slow, but for the first time, it is working. I did take a longish break recently while I took a fiction writing class, and although the class mostly applied towards short stories, I learned enough from the class that I decided to hold off on the novel until after the class was over so I could apply lessons learned. Last night I did a thorough re-edit and added some more pages.

For an idea of how big it is for me to have 16 pages... I have never gotten past 10 or 11 before, not because I did not have an idea, but because I would have this "master plan" for a story, but no idea of how to go about it. I would think of an epic plot where the main character goes from Point A to Point C, except I never really had more than a vague idea of what Point B was, much less what happened during Chapter 2 or 3, so while the first few pages were (at least I supposed to be) great, writers block and inexperience always trashed the rest of the story. Not this time! Besides having notes equaling the length of the story so far, I have literally spent hours going over the plot and character development, changing and tweaking it and fixing problems with it. I am finally getting somewhere.

Christmas Cookies

During our first Christmas, we started a tradition of making Christmas Cookies. Apparently this is a tradition that goes on all over the place, but it was a new tradition for me as I did not even know the exact meaning of "Christmas Cookie," other than that it referred to a cookie maybe cut in the shape of a tree or candy cane.

This Christmas, we added tools to our arsenal from last year of just a butter knife for each color of frosting. Since then, Deanna's intereste in baking, and subsequently cake decoration, has increased, so we decided to experiment with a pastry bag. We only tried it on one color, so it turned out that Red was the only color used with any great detail. It obviously worked, so next year we will hopefully have another color or two to add to our tool box.

My favorite cookie? The Oregon State "O" which was carefully shaped by hand!

Fiddling with my Computers

This weekend while in Vancouver for the Army Reserves, I was working on my personal computer. I had already spent several hours on my own formulating a spreadsheet in Excel and getting our unit up-to-date for the first time in over a decade, when tragedy struck. Don't worry, nothing happend to my file... but when I popped in a CD to make a backup at the request of our Unit Administrator, it start making this horrible clicking sound. Immediately I figured it was my computer's fault--after all, the panel on the end of my CD-ROM is broken and only connected in one of the two spots it should be--but I also thought it might be the disc's format.

I was wrong.

It was confirmed today when I tried to put my Fiddler on the Roof Soundtrack into iTunes. My computer still reads CDs just fine; it just is no longer capable of transferring data on to the harddrive. Some quick thinking got the CD ripped onto my PC's Window's Media Center, and from there, onto a thumbdrive, though not before a temporary longing for a Mac because the whole process would have been user-friendly and not like pulling teeth, like any media is for Windows. Don't worry, I recognized the error in my ways and stopped longing for the Mac within seconds, though I was still annoyed with Windows, as improved as Windows 7 might be. Anyways, a long story short, I used the thumbdrive to get it to the laptop and on to iTunes in a very long way around what is supposed to be a simple task. At least my iPod is updated now--I had lost the cord and misplaced my iPod, so needless to say, it had been a while. It is nice, though. Now I can listen to songs from somewhat of a tragic musical which can remind me of a sad plot involving a ruined wedding party, choosing between home and love, choosing between family and a lover, and losing a home altogether. Fitting title, considering my dad used to always play the world's smallest violin in a sweet song of sorrow when I didn't get my way. Pretty upbeat, huh? I think so. 

I'd Like to Solve the Puzzle

While doing jig-saw puzzles, I like to look at the box. What is wrong with that? According to my family, everything! They complain that I am cheating, but I heartily disagree. To me, using the box does not bypass a hard skill in puzzle-solving, but instead it bypasses the boring factor. I like putting together pieces of the puzzle that make a fun picture, and using the box lets me have an idea of what that picture is so I have a vision of the masterpiece I am creating. It is similar to a painter sketching a picture on the canvas or on another piece of paper to use as a reference while painting the real thing. So while to one person it is cheating, to me it is a way to make the puzzle more enjoyable.


While on the topic of puzzles, I am reminded of a recent Wii game purchase: Wheel of Fortune. I got it for Deanna for Christmas, and after playing it and watching a couple of other games, I have enough for a quick Review. Check out my Review Guidelines if you do not know what my categories mean.

Wheel of Fortune (Wii)
Overall Game - B
Game Play - B+
Visual Design - B-

The game is really fun to play, though the quality is a lot better when playing multiplayer. The computer opponents are fine, but we noticed that besides adding a better competitive atmosphere, it was generally more fun and balanced with human opponents. The Mini-Games between rounds are entertaining, although they are not really very necessary as they only impact a contestant's popularity with the audience, which cheers for everyone anyways.

The graphics are of typicall Wii fasion (that is, cheap to compensate for the Wii's weaker graphics abilities, but friendly enough to work) and enjoyable, although it would have been really easy to improve the lip-synching with Pat Sajak's Mii character since the lips could have been done better by a five year-old doing clay-mation. It was not a huge setback though, but it was distracting enough to bring the Visual Design down to a B-, although the rest of the animation was either decent or cute.

The Mii characters are also used, allowing the players to use their own faces. Their vocal sounds are also fun and interesting. The characters are very excited when they guess a letter. Also, if you have the Wii Speak feature on your Wii, you can record your own sounds for good and bad events! The puzzles are fun and have difficultly levels to choose from, so it will never be too easy or too hard if you adjust the difficulty.

Overall Verdict: B. It is not my favorite game I have ever played, but it is a great addition to the Wii's list of games catering to the non-gamer, and is a great family game that I can easily get my mom to play!

Game Review Guidelines

Since I have lately been continuing a trend of reviewing movies in my blog, I thought it might be fun to also review games as well, to include electronic and board games alike. In each review, I will give a letter grade to several game categories, as well as to the overall game as a whole. For your reference, here are the various categories and a brief explanation:

Video Games
Overall Game - Overall grade of the game based on the below qualities
Game Play - How well does the game work? Are the game mechanics done well, or are controls awkward? If a plot is involved, is it done well?
Visual Design - Quality of graphics and how well they are utilized?

Board Games
Overall Game - Overall grade of the game based on the below qualities
Game Play - Is the game fun, or tedious? Does it seem balanced, or are there rules that make game play unbalanced?
Visual Design - Are the compenents good quality, or are they cheap? If they are cheap, do they detract from the overall quality?

Tangled and Dawn Treader reviewed

We recently we to see two movies, Tangled and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, over the last few days. (In case you are my family reading this and are expecting to see these over Christmas, don't worry; I don't mind a repeat.)

Tangled- A+
In Tangled, Disney managed to take a very short and uninteresting fairy tale, and make it their own fun adventure, with the actual fairy tale really being told within the first few minutes, but still maintaining its relevancy throughout the rest of the film. To be honest, I was skeptical of their abilities to transform Rapunzel into a full-length feature film, but I was blown away its high quality. Disney took the idea, and made it their own. In typical Disney fashion, there was comedy, action, adventure, and romance in this digital masterpiece.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader- B
In Narnia, the franchise seemed to partially rebound from a disastrous second installment. (I would rate Lion Witch and the Wardrobe as an A, with Prince Caspian as a solid C.) The film was forced to deviate from the book due to the book's lack of an actual plot as it is instead formed by a series of independent scenes strung together with no driving force behind it, but the changes were as well-done as they could be. Where Prince Caspian lacked in believable characters and in wise plot-deviations, Dawn Treader improved in both categories. The only detriments were from my favorite scene being omitted (which could be caused from the needed plot-alteration) and a few scenes that could have been directed better and with smoother transitions. It was a very difficult film to pull off, and I am confident that it will allow for The Silver Chair to follow, which has the potential to be the best in the franchise since Wardrobe. Even better, Eustace was cast extremely well and will be great for the next installment. I was also thrilled that Aslan's line about being present in our world, but with a different name, was left intact.

My Latest Project

While I have never participated in Black Friday in person, this year halfway broke that trend thanks to my computer and the wonder that is called Amazon.com. During their "Cyber Deals" I bought some computer animation software. It is most definately on the low end of things as it is ended for 2D animation only (some anime or animation in the style of South Park), but it is still fun.

Here is one of my first sample animations (still currently a work-in-progress):

My next step is to insert a space-ship. It would be fun to have a bit of some trekkie fan fiction out of this, but I am still in the process of deciding what will come next.