Productive Cooler Days

The sun has departed, presumably it saw what the council was doing and decided not to bake the earth for a few days. Wise old sun.

Wednesday I tinkered with a Cirklon piece, Thursday I tinkered with a P3 piece. Both use weird polymetric stuff and a few indulgent weird scales. If I hammer together a few more ideas tomorrow it might be enough for a spontaneous facebook live thing. I want to try that wired connection and the new webcam in the dark studio. Today did a podcast thing with Pete on Jintzi (or something) which was good except I didn't have my audio sussed - will fix for next time. I rambled on about the P3 and Cirklon I think. Good fun.

Later, because I'm in the mood, I started gathering in a few threads of the novel, aiming all the characters towards their fate. It's a technique I don't use often but here it's necessary if my ending is to stand up and be believable. Amazingly I have been able to remember most of the points I had in mind which are popping up exactly where I needed them - this having a plot thing (then working to refine and redirect it as you go) has helped me do a more normal book. Whether that's ultimately better is beyond me to say today, but it'll have more familiar shapes and therefore should open more locks than the stream of consciousness stuff.

Put a thing on Soundcloud yesterday and replaced it with another today. Tomorrow there will be more :)

And there was
https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/track/unchained-malady

It may be Saturday

Was mum's 80th yesterday. Good to see her. Janet brought loads of cream cake. Jack hyper. I showed him a few things on the old nunchaku but he was more into wildly swinging them around. 

Managed some necessary work on the book these last couple of days. Today I wrote a chapter I'd long needed to write without registering the fact before. It binds together a few loose characters and plot points, while pointing to several future paths. So all good.

I've done little else. Sweet girl. Ho ho. Pat's cleaned the front room and hallway today and I've sat drinking beer, listening to Vangelis and writing more lizard-related material. Have a good handle on the island now and its inhabitants, layout and lifestyles. Just about to drop my monsters with trademark red glowing eyes into the mix, then get ready for some kind of grand finale and post-finale poopy petering out. I must not rush as there's quite a bit of potential in the search for the missing pyramid, the deadly jungle, the mysterious ancient lizards. So even though a few ideas need smoothing out, I'm happy. The few earlier sections I still have to resolve or improve are inconsequential and easy enough. The main problem concerns who is to live and who is to die, as well as how much I leave sticking out for a possible second book to wind up the whole thing.

Sunday came and went.

It's Monday and gloriously sunny again. I went shopping - opted for Sainsbury's rather than the chaos of Aldi. Got easily a week's worth of stuff - will soon be time to chuck some of the greens Pat wanted last week and never used. Too hot for studio again; reading book 3 of the Vorrh. Should pull a few mad garden growths but probably won't. Watched JoJo Rabbit last night, which was excellent, every bit as good as I thought it would be. Bought a Robert Rich album on 'pay what you like'. On first hearing it's fairly insipid - meandering flute in reverb - but maybe its finer qualities are hiding from my uncultured ears. We'll see if they reveal themselves on subsequent listens.

This has been one of my more pointless blog entries. Hopefully nobody wasted any time reading it.

Tempus Forget

Saturday. I did a wordcount on the work-in-progress and was pleasantly surprised to see it's 68,000 or thereabouts. With maybe four or five chapters to go, that's pretty good. I've covered all the ground I wanted and now only have to decide who to kill, who to spare, and how much to leave hanging for a possible sequel. There's no way I can do the 'Walking Dead' type apocalyptic demise of humanity justice without making this into a beast as big as FAF. Fortunately, I've set enough of it in motion so there can be a satisfying ending for this one without too many unanswered questions. Not like me at all!

Some of the other rather splendid pix Tim took on our 'park day'

And one of mine.
A good day today. The USB/Ethernet adapter finally came and was a joy to use - gave me a wired connection exactly as it was meant to with these Netgear things. I did a very quick test and all seemed to work well - played back and it's clear, with no dropout. Haven't listened in detail through phones or owt, can polish sound and plan something more structured now I know it works. Tim has a webcam I can try to replace the laptop one - what a pro!

Also sorted some aspects of novel I'd left until now, with my lizard girl and her hazy motives. All now ready for me to write the grandish finale and then I have my draft #1. With that I can start adding a few flowery bits, throw in a few red herrings and generally tart up the prose to be less 'hey man' stoner shite.

It's all good!

Friday spawned a thing

OK, it needs editing - but I  made a long MP3 of the Facebook Live performance (that went offline but I still recorded), and pasted today's thing on the end. I made it deliberately in sections then threw it all together. Yeah baby! I should make it an mp3 on its own though as it takes ages to get to it. I think there are some decent moments in there...

Thai takeaway tonight, got wine also. Still feeling gutted about Don but it seems people have rallied round, which I rejoice at. Sun still shining and hopefully he comes through OK.

I've written OK twice in this, no three times. Yes, one of those Fridays.

tick, tick, tick...

Thursday, a week later. Tim and I went to the park yesterday, distant but close enough to talk bollocks for a while. Was real nice in the sun, seeing people mostly sensible (there was an inevitable 'orcs on a motorbike' infestation for a while but it didn't last long). Took some photos, had nice walk. Must have done me good as I slept with no Twitchy Foot right until 08:08 when Jasper's arse summoned me.

I think it's been a good week. I've sorted my 'lizard motives' and fortunately it also answers the big remaining questions I had about my mysterious main character. All I need to do now is write it all down. :)

I've reached book 2 of the Vorrh, which is odd but still interesting, perhaps because it's not too much like anything else I've read. There was a point early in the first book when I had incredibly high hopes for its scope but it seemed to back down and diminish somehow, as if afraid to go everywhere it could.

Life eh?

I cooked something

Yeah, that's how desperate it's becoming. I needed Pat's experience with a few cooking basics but the end result tasted as it should. Phew!

It's a veggie lasagne, in case you were wondering.
I'm reading the Vorrh, which is odd but intriguing. It's come at an opportune moment because my heroes have just reached the 'dungeon' section of their adventure, a secret island of the overlords complete with ancient city and alien forest, as well as an endless labyrinth beneath. Weed, plus some of the Vorrh imagery is helping me get in the mood for the strange and unknowable.

Still not quite sorted the live streaming. Have cancelled webcam order for now but have looked at a better network booster which could be more sensible. Testing on Twitch gave lots of dropped frames, which is a pain. The plan is I can just switch on, play, not engage with watchers (at least until I finish playing). If it works and I can noodle without issue for, say, 30-40 mins, then I will try and put a gig together. Or one per studio half. There's much more I can do in the larger studio but the minimal setup one has grown a bit to give more options there.

The spot on my back is a mole being attacked by eczema, apparently. So that's, er, good.

Sunny again and basically Thursday. I can't really get into doing music when it's so nice. And not written a lot either, although ideas are stewing.

Mañana!

If I do turn gear on, it'll probably be in the sunny side...

Gone to seed

Yeah, I just pestered Colin about a bug with MIDI thru reception which turned out to be a feature I'd wanted, enabled, then forgot about. I am possibly forgetting more than I realised, but can't be sure (obviously). Oh well.

This morning's delight has been watching baby sparrows being fed.
Hmm, it's... Thursday. I posted a thing about the Microgranny and my desire for a GR-1, looks like that might bear fruit. So yay!

After yesterday's news about Florian Schneider, I'm going through my Kraftwerk. Just reached the double vinyl with Ralf and Florian up next. They all play pretty well, thanks to Colin's magical restoration liquid a few years back. Can't find my copy of Radioactivity anywhere. Had forgotten I have Man Machine in LP and CD. Maybe Radioactivity was on cassette...

Did a short livestream test from Light Studio. Some dropout apparently. May try moving laptop back but length of leads an issue if I want nice audio from Zoom. Which I do. Dark studio easier and better connection. Don't wanna faff too much. Sorry, rambling. Novel going well. I expanded the ambition of my island, to give me some writey fun. It needs to slow the pace a bit so a lizard city is the perfect place.
https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/ste-043

Sketch of today's idea, starty thing. Roedelius saw a bit of my performance and I crumbled and felt inadequate. Heh. Well, hadn't really planned to perform, guess it's hard to know what people are doing when they go live. Will do a proper one though, thinking about stuff before hand. WHen cooler.

Saturday again. No, wait, it's Monday.

It is. Pat and I had a lovely walk again. It's almost tea-time and I've not had a beer yet, just to prove I can deviate from the norm. Poor old the norm. Novel coming along, needs couple of good pushes and I'll have the bulk of draft #1. I may or may not end on a cliffhanger with the possibility of writing what happens next in a future book. I'd love to think of a happy ending but right now I can't see what that would be and who deserves happiness amongst the weirdo characters.

I put something on bandcamp - the tracks I've done recently in no particular order. Seems to kinda hang together but as I've put loads of stuff out lately, it's on the WilyEPeyote site.

If there's a virtual drinky this week I'm not invited ;)
There was one but it came in late and I didn't respond. I'm sure they coped.
Yesterday (Sunday), I tried out using the Zoom H4n as an audio interface with the laptop and the Facebook 'Live' option. Noodled about for a bit as usual and it seemed to work pretty well - sound was much better than I'd expected. So I might do a performancy type thing, say Friday afternoon, when I'm well oiled. Will look into one of those cameras that are a bit cleverer than the one built into the laptop...