Yet again I return after a long absence. I truly intend to post to this thing, and then things come up. Lately it’s been work which has been busy, and other things, which I may go into at a later point.

Work, however, has been a bit of a shock to the system after taking it easy for a few months.

One of the most frustrating things, however, has been the return to Microsoft Windows. I’ve been a Mac user at home for years now, and I suppose I’ve become used to them. They still freeze up from time to time, and I have application difficulties, of course, but they are generally infrequent.

My work computer, however, is a Windows machine. And it’s fair to say that I have issues on a daily basis. Issues with web pages, issues with applications freezing, issues with the OS not loading right on startup. I realize that some of this may result from the way work set up my computer, but it’s incredibly frustrating.

I recently installed Windows on my Mac, so it will be interesting to see how that stacks up against my experience with the work machine. I mostly use it for single programs that don’t work on the Mac. Or for old games I have, so it won’t get a workout, but I wonder what the comparison will be.

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I seem to be going through a nostalgia period. Because of a conversation that I had on the writing retreat, I dug out my Dragonlance Chronicles books and I’m reading through them. It’s a bit tedious – there are chapters that I end up skimming because there’s nothing really there to draw me in, but I’m determined to go through the whole thing. I think I read them originally when I was 11 or 12, and while my adult eye finds a lot wrong with the writing, the worldbuilding and the story still has a certain something for me, despite the fact that it was based on D&D adventures and is hopelessly derivative of Tolkien and other works.

I’m also playing older games. After installing Windows, as mentioned above, I found my old PC games – stuff like Baldur’s Gate. A lot of the older games don’t work with the new, update operating system, but some do, and I’m enjoying going back and playing them.

I’ve realized that while I enjoy games in general, it’s the story behind the games that draw me in. I seem to be happiest when the button smashing is kept to a minimum and I am responsible for higher level decisions. That’s one of the things I appreciated about the Knights of the Old Republic series. I could direct the characters to do certain things, but then they did them on their own.

On the other hand, I don’t like strategy games that much. I guess I’m full of contradictions.

Of course I rarely play just one game all the way through. Over the last couple of weeks, I have played Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Super Metroid, Gears of War, Jade Empire, Baldur’s Gate and possibly one or two others.

It’s a great distraction.

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Writing-wise, I haven’t done much lately. Just can’t get my head into it. Aside from some future novel scribblings and some revision, I haven’t really submerged myself into any stories. Hopefully I’ll get over that hump this weekend.

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For various reasons, I’m going (and I know I’ve said this before) to try to post more regularly. I want to get into the habit of posting more often, if I can.

So – more to come later…

I haven’t done a writing post in some time, so here goes.

I am currently in the process of revision on a number of things. I have at least 6 stories that need revision and 2 novels. That means that in about a month or two I should be sending out a lot. Which is nice. But I need to get there.

I feel that I made some kind of breakthrough recently in the revision process. The writing groups have really helped, helped me to identify some of the weaknesses in my writing, helped me to address them. It took a little while, though. To see the patterns. To internalize the comments. Now the key is to make those lessons part of my writing technique and move forward.

Today I was supposed to leave for a writing retreat where I would be able to spend some time on these things. That didn’t quite happen due to the weather in NY, but tomorrow – tomorrow we will go.

I’m looking forward to it

Over the last year or so I began the process of reading through Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. I have been a fan of the movies for a long time. In fact, when I was younger, when I had to pick “a hero”, I picked James Bond. But I have never read the books. Motivated by the release of Casino Royale, I decided to start at the beginning and work my way through them.

I’ve read three so far – <i>Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Moonraker</i> and I have been enjoying them. Well, I enjoyed the first and third so far. LaLD is plagued with problems of racism which detract from the narrative, and I found it the least interesting of the three. But <i>Moonraker</i> excited me enough to continue with the series.

The books differ quite a bit from the movies. They take place earlier, for one. The novels take place in the post WWII period and that is very much a part of them. Bond is also less of a womanizer in these novels, and indeed seems to fall in love with one woman. He’s also more damaged. More of a brute at times. And yet utterly civilized.

But all this is a sidetrack to the main concern of this post. The new movies. I was really pleased with Daniel Craig and Casino Royale. Though I never minded Pierce Brosnan as 007, Craig really nailed it for me, with an intensity that was missing since Connery. So after seeing that, I was looking forward to the new movie.

It now has a name. <i>The Quantum of Solace</i>. It’s a bit of a strange title for a Bond movie, in my opinion, but since it is an Ian Fleming related title, I guess it works. Frankly the title doesn’t matter as long as the movie is decent.

More information at the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7206997.stm

Let’s try this again.

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted – either here or elsewhere. I actually wrote a long post about the reasons for that and recent events, the end of 2007, the beginning of 2008, and somehow, due to the vagaries of technology, the post disappeared into the ether without ever appearing anywhere other than my own mind. This was some time last week, or perhaps the week before, only I didn’t realize it until the other day.

Which is ultimately depressing because I no longer feel the need to explain all that again. That was last year. Once expressed, all of the need to speak of it disappeared. Suffice it to say that there were ups and there were downs, but thankfully things seem to have ended on an up note and 2008 has so far exceeded my expectations.

Now that I’m back to work, I expect my posts will become more frequent, and I’m starting to feel that familiar urge to spit my comments out into the world, so hopefully things will be more regular here.

So rry to those who I’ve lost touch with over the last few months. I hope to catch up (as best I can at least) with you soon.

Hope everyone out there is doing well.

Later…

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