Non-writing post: the immediate aftermath

So, after all that, I got a NaNoWriMo winner's t-shirt, and gave my data a transplant to a shiny new MacBook Pro chassis.  Now, I can finally play these games that I installed a few months back!

Hello, GLaDOS.  I've missed you.

PrEpArE tO dIe ^_^

EDIT: There is a pair of buttons dedicated to adjusting the keyboard illumination brightness what is this madness

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-Six: 50011. But the story is not yet ended...

In fact, it's kind of a mess ^^;

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-Five: 46077/41667

dkjghkjdhklhsdfvjbhkhgdf

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-Four: 42008/40000

ZZZZZZZZ

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-Three: 40181/38334

Keeping good pace.  Good pace.  Good.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-Two: 38504/36667

I'm kind of avoiding stuff that needs to happen.  Huh

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty-One: 36817/35000

So, I guess this was an okay day.

I like how, by the end of this, most of my posts will be NaNoWriMo progress posts.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twenty: 35127/33334

I AM A WRITING GOD

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Nineteen: 33,063/31,667: wheeeee *pass out

fwump

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Eighteen: 30055/30000

I think maybe I should take the time to work out all the dangling plot threads.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Seventeen: 28358/28334: guess I'll just hover over par, then.

Bleh.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Sixteen: 27,503/26,667

Whee!

I have an exam tomorrow!  Fuck!

Whee!

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Fifteen: 25476/25000: I LIVE

HA!  In your face, sleep deprivation!

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Fourteen: 23430/23334: goddamn paper

fucking paper

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Thirteen: 23,174/21,667: fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Twelve: 23062/20000

HA!  That is what you get, writers' block!

No pdf for the rest of the month, probably, due to... stuff.  And things.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Eleven: 20102/18334 (an inconvenient truth)

So, it turns out I'm at my best when I have someone to ignore.

Fuck, what's the point of even posting today's pdf.  It's almost yesterday's, just another paragraph.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Ten: 20043/16667

Sometimes.  Sometimes you just have to write really fast.  And really stop caring.

Somehow, I always find a way to care less.

iapetus's last hurrah

It looks like finishing NaNoWriMo will be the last thing I do with this laptop.  After almost three years of service, parts are starting to give way.

Of course, my plan is to transplant it right into a shiny new unibody macbook with upgraded RAM, so pretty much everything I care about will be the same except the MAC address, which I don't really care about much.  In any case, here's to the next two weeks and change.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Nine: 18093/15000

Well, I suppose some of this was inevitable.  Also, I am totally panicking, schedule-wise.

/f/

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Eight: 16047/13334

Every day I look back on what I've written, I feel like those words, in particular, mark the moment at which this enterprise utterly jumped the shark.

Fractal Fonzie madness.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Seven: 14021

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH

link

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Six: 12262

I think what's really strange is, I still haven't revealed some of my planned information (like Agent Z's middle name), yet I keep on making things up that happen to tie into the established plot and give me motivation to fill in scenes that always had to be there.

My fight scenes still utterly suck, though.  I blame the fact that I keep on sticking Utahraptors everywhere.

Latest draft.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Five: 10176

I am a day ahead.  Woot woot.  Maybe I can use that extra time to figure out what the hell is supposed to be going on, because I am way in the dark.  Get confused, right here.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Four: 8123

Those who do random arithmetic to numbers they find online will notice that I'm increasing my wordcount each day.  Anyway, here is draft.

Looking at that, I just realized that I'm probably going to end up with a really low pagecount.  I guess that's what happens when a bunch of the words are in really tiny font?

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Three: 6075

I like how I just started using random concepts by this point.  And I introduced six characters that I hadn't planned on as of three days ago.  Or, indeed, yesterday.

Have a look at... THE INSANITY.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day Two

Amazingly, I still haven't shoved in all the scenes I want to have.  It's nice that I'm getting a consistent 2000+ words a day thus far.  Anyway, feel free to goggle at this train wreck in progress, even if you can't see all the scene boundaries because they, um... don't show up.  4035 words thus far.

NaNoWriMo '10, Day One

I'm off to a good start.  Couple things to note: it probably takes extreme masochism to enjoy this if you're not me; there are spaces I can see that you can't, because TeX renders them out; and this is only going to get more pretentiously ridiculous, as I wallow in my own self-absorption.  Hyar is link.  It turns out Google Sites will overwrite attachments with the same name, and not use a confirmation dialog or anything.  UI principles, woohoo!  (For the record, I was expecting a "do you really want to do this?" prompt, ideally with an option to change the name.)

For the record: 2014 words.

A thought about VR

Hello, blog!  Remember me?  I am your author.  It's completely understandable if you forgot.

Anyway, I had a thought about... a bunch of things, but it manifested as a statement about virtual reality.

Now, to get this right up front, I'm thinking of fully immersive stuff, typically mental uplink.  In other words, what brains do when you replace a physical body with a simulacrum.

Virtual avatars.  From what I remember, they're typically just the physical body for some reason (The Matrix) or dictated by whim (The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect).  However, consider what is known about our mental maps of our bodies.  In the absence of a body part, the brain will still act as if that part is there.  This is "phantom limb".  However, it's not a perfect match for what would "look right", if we could actually see it.  Often, phantom limbs are a confusing tangle of sensations, with duplications at multiple points in space relative to the body.  A prosthetic limb that conforms to what looks right (or makes sense) can feel uncomfortable if it doesn't match the mental map.

If people can perfectly manipulate the structure of their avatars, in the end, they would gravitate towards comfort rather than fashion.  (I am psychologically incapable of believing otherwise.  I have hardwired optimism.)

However, the structure of the feedback loop would be fundamentally different.  Because the body would be beholden to the brain's desires, completely, instead of the laws of physics (as they apply to bodies, I mean), there wouldn't be a damper on the loop, in essence.  People could end up looking like the other side of a funhouse mirror, and feel perfectly comfortable.

Actually I guess it could turn out a lot like Homestar Runner.