Bookmarks for January 5, 2012

  • The phone game
    This is a brilliant idea – during meals with friends, everyone puts their phone on the table face down, and the first one to check theirs pays the bill. I'm absolutely as guilty of this as anyone else, but I am increasingly of the view that basically, phones are for when you are alone, and that checking them in company, outside of when you have received a text or call is Not On. Hypocritical, maybe, but I'd like to be better, and will attempt to do better this year.
    Tags: phones, manners

Bookmarks for January 4, 2012

  • Dirty 30s! – The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot
    Lester Dent sold a lot of books in his day. Writing a series of modern day stories that ultimately follow this formula might be fun. 10 or 12 would make a nicely publishable volume, too.
    Tags: writing, fiction, advice
  • Paypal orders destruction of antique violin
    I'm not sure what to say. This feels very like something that ought to be a crime – the seller had an authenticated antique violin, worth $2,500, and sold it. The buyer disputed the purchase. Paypal required proof of destruction before they would refund money. Buyer destroys antique, seller is now out both an antique violin *and* the money. Surely Paypal could be held to be complicit in a theft, here?
    Tags: paypal

Bookmarks for January 3, 2012

2012

OK, the end is nigh. Now we’ve got that bit out of the way, it’s time to think about the coming year. I actually wrote this back in mid December, but then life took a sharp turn sideways, and I’ve only had the time to get back to it now. In my ususal tradition of this sort of bollocks, half of what I’m currently planning won’t happen, because I’ll get distracted by something newer and shinier, but that’s OK.

So this year’s list:

  1. New LARP. The experimental (read: small) LARP of the last couple of years taught me quite a lot. So now it’s time to apply what I’ve learned to something a bit larger.
  2. Finish that novel. I’ve had to set it aside for the last couple of months, just because of the level of prep work I’ve needed to do for the new LARP, but I’m looking forward to getting back to it in February. Before you ask: no. It’s drivel. I’m writing it for the sake of writing it, at the moment. I’ll see about turning it into not-drivel once I’m done. Then, maybe. More likely, I shall simply get on with writing #2, and hoping it’s slightly less like drivel.
  3. I need a few new projects. Thinking about a “cook one new recipe a week and blog about it” sort of thing. Would certainly like to cook more, and do new things. May or may not blog about it.
  4. I’ve been saying I’ll do it for years, but I really would like to learn Objective-C/Cocoa so I can make apps for Mac/iOS. Maybe this year will be the year I finally do.
  5. I want to do a course, or a class of some kind. I’d like to pick up some new skills. Not sure what.
  6. Lifting up heavy things, then setting them down again. I’ve been out of the exercise habit for a while now. I’d like to get back into it. This means sorting myself out a program, and sticking to it.

That’ll do for now. Come back in a year, if we don’t all perish in fire, and we’ll see how I did.

Happy Holidays

Just wishing everyone a very happy mid-winter festival of choice, and to those who don’t celebrate anything at all, I hope you’re enjoying however you’ve chosen to spend the period, and that the rest of us haven’t been too annoying this year.