It's a Monday
Aug. 11th, 2004 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, it's back-to-work week. The situation isn't nearly as bad as I had feared; all of the stopper bugs turned out to be fixable after all and the minor bug list looks manageable although long. There were 780 emails waiting for me, about a third of which were spam. (This is a remarkable turnaround from my personal account, which gets some 30 spams/phishes/infection attempts an hour.)
I wrote about 500 words, getting some progress on a minor erotica piece. I'm trying to set up three points of pressure with the characters, but the setting which seemed so rich at the beginning is kinda lacking now. I'm hoping that's not a failure of imagination.
I also finished Diplomatic Immunity. I agree with others; there are moments where Bujold's usual crystalline clockwork plot falls apart. Bel Thorne's girlfriend is very badly managed, and the real resolution of the story is handled off-screen. Her usual ability to foreshadow without telegraphing is overwhelmed by her desire to get certain points across, leading the reader to suspicions that turn out to be unwarranted and somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, her characterization is much stronger this time; Roic and Bel especially come across as more personable than in previous novels.
Omaha made a delicious tuna noodle casserole, and then we settled down to an epic game of Sorry!. Kouryou-chan gave up after about 15 minutes, and I think I've figured out why. Sorry! is not a strategically interesting game, not even for a four year old. When it's not your turn, you have nothing to do but wait on the other players and watch your fate play out. When it is your turn, unless you have more than one piece in play-- not always or often a sure thing-- you have only one move anyway. Kouryou-chan can maintain her interest in Sequence or Go Fish because those are games where her hands-- and her plans-- are occupied for the entirety of the game. When it's not her turn, she can look at the cards in her hand and think about what to do next, preparing to play the next round. Not so in Sorry!, where the player's hands and brain are freed to wander. And in Kouryou-chan's case, her feet too.
Oh, and I transferred my old fansubs of FLCL onto DVD but, dammit, the stutter is still there. This sucks. I have to figure out a way to get the lanczos 24:29 framerate handler into the data stream. I'm afraid that may mean taking all of mkdvd apart to figure out what it does (Use the Source, Luke) and re-implementing it with the frame fix filter.
I wrote about 500 words, getting some progress on a minor erotica piece. I'm trying to set up three points of pressure with the characters, but the setting which seemed so rich at the beginning is kinda lacking now. I'm hoping that's not a failure of imagination.
I also finished Diplomatic Immunity. I agree with others; there are moments where Bujold's usual crystalline clockwork plot falls apart. Bel Thorne's girlfriend is very badly managed, and the real resolution of the story is handled off-screen. Her usual ability to foreshadow without telegraphing is overwhelmed by her desire to get certain points across, leading the reader to suspicions that turn out to be unwarranted and somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, her characterization is much stronger this time; Roic and Bel especially come across as more personable than in previous novels.
Omaha made a delicious tuna noodle casserole, and then we settled down to an epic game of Sorry!. Kouryou-chan gave up after about 15 minutes, and I think I've figured out why. Sorry! is not a strategically interesting game, not even for a four year old. When it's not your turn, you have nothing to do but wait on the other players and watch your fate play out. When it is your turn, unless you have more than one piece in play-- not always or often a sure thing-- you have only one move anyway. Kouryou-chan can maintain her interest in Sequence or Go Fish because those are games where her hands-- and her plans-- are occupied for the entirety of the game. When it's not her turn, she can look at the cards in her hand and think about what to do next, preparing to play the next round. Not so in Sorry!, where the player's hands and brain are freed to wander. And in Kouryou-chan's case, her feet too.
Oh, and I transferred my old fansubs of FLCL onto DVD but, dammit, the stutter is still there. This sucks. I have to figure out a way to get the lanczos 24:29 framerate handler into the data stream. I'm afraid that may mean taking all of mkdvd apart to figure out what it does (Use the Source, Luke) and re-implementing it with the frame fix filter.
