Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Sector of Interest : Wrap Up

Well, I've managed to write all six of my planned sketch stories. I'm disappointed it took me so long to do what was supposed to be a few days worth of work basically, but it's done. Hopefully I'll revisit a project like this soon and maybe do it a little more like I was originally envisioning. In the mean time, however, I'm really happy to say that I've finished Project 14.

Sector of Interest

“Sector Control, this is Bulk Hauler TMS-M884MXHQ. I am exiting jump-space from gate 5417-a into your zone of control."

"Good morning, Hedge Queen, we have your on our boards. Good to see you again.”

"Thank you Control. My Nav-model has synced, can I get a course to the Loading Station Six?”

"Confirmed, HQ. Sector-Nav will transmit."

“Thanks, control. Anything interesting going on out here?”

“Nope, HQ, you’re not that interesting and neither was the hauler eight hours ago. I’m guessing the hauler in eight hours won’t be that interesting either. Mail courier might be interesting at least.”

“Oh that’s right, I almost forgot. The courier had some engine problems and the Station Master at Hai Shen gave us the mail packets to pass on to you guys here.”

“Huh, good to hear then HQ. Data or physical as well?”

“Both, Control. I can transmit the data once we’re in one-hop range and I’ll get Johny to run over in the tender and pass the physical packet over to you guys. Looks to be about 6 cubic meters.”

“Rodger, Hedge Queen. Sector-Nav will transmit a solution for the tender too. Stand by.”

“Thank you, Control. I’m glad we get to be interesting after all.”

“Don’t hold your breath, HQ. We have a pretty high standard of interesting out here.”

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Neighbours

This is the fifth of the six sketch stories.

Neighbours

They sound that fucking klaxon whenever a ship is going to drop. All it does is scare the cows, and let me know that the cows are going to be even more scared in about a half an hour, when a damned space hulk drops on our heads.

The land was dirt cheap. Is dirt cheap. All for 0.8% chance (per landing) of falling debris hitting the farm and just a 0.00013% chance of catastrophic explosion. So now I’ve got a great plot of land, with neighbours that pull a spaceship out of orbit twice a week and then smash it to bits.

Usually they’re pulling down ancient bulk haulers, giant asteroid cages with jump drives that basically fall apart on their own as soon as they’re down well. Sometimes it’s something more interesting, like a tug or  a guard cutter. Every once in awhile they drop something really interesting like a deep space survey ship or a yacht or even a bombardment platform once, but usually it’s just the work-a-day stuff.

It’s more interesting to watch at night, where you can usually see a star come to a stop in the sky and then start getting bigger and bigger. In the day, I just get to wait for a little spec in the sky to grow until it looks like a bird and then a shuttle and then suddenly a giant, hulking, behemoth.

I think it’s the grav-mirrors that upset the cows, but I don’t know why. The mirrors make a high pitched noise that bugs the dogs, but most of the other animals couldn’t care less about them. It’s just the cows. Maybe cows are just adverse to physics defying monstrosities floating in the sky.

If I have the time, sometimes, I’ll walk up to the top of the ridge to watch them. The ship floats down on the grav-mirrors. It’s a little surreal to watch this giant thing that used to move effortlessly through space drop slowly through the air until you’re standing on the ridge above it.  Once they have it positioned, they drop it the last few meters, then they pull the grav-mirrors out and send them back up to hook up to the next ship.

As soon as the ship’s down, they swarm all over it. They run three shifts a day, twenty-four hours-a-day. Whenever they drop a new ship they’re working on it right away. As soon as the last entrails of the last hulk are gone, the next one is dropping right to the sound of that klaxon.

They’re very polite. They’ve dropped “significant’” spaceship bits on the farm four times now. Each time then send a crew right away, hauled off the junk, decontaminate the area and paid me for the crops or the animals killed. Then, six months later, I can go back to using the land again.

That might be the problem actually, herd memory. Sylvie was killed by space junk, heralded by klaxon, so we should all be wary. Mountains shouldn’t float, why doesn’t the human panic? That, or maybe they just really hate the fucking klaxon.

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Home

This is the fourth of six sketch stories. It's unrelated to the others.

You can expect the next sketch story when I damn well post it. (Which is to say I've kinda given up on deadlines here, but I'm still trying to stick with creating cool things.)

---

Home

The spar was warm from the sun and there wasn't much that needed done, so she sat and sang idly. The sea was light and the ship surged, pulling for home, same as the crew.

As she sang, a song of harbour and home, the crew calmed.  Hauling wasn't a bad life, better than some courses you could sail, but still, nobody wanted to sail the last stretch, everyone wanted to be home.

The was a fuss down on deck, those two sailors they'd picked up at Stoneille. She made to go down, but Jerin was there and knocked the two of them clean out. She shook her head, first job back home would be to make sure this was the last they saw of the sorry louts.

The crew on deck cleared the two trouble makers out of the way, dumping them on one of the coils of rope. Jerin trussed them up, then stalked among the crew. 

They rounded the headland and the light changed, suddenly brighter, warmer. The city surged down from the hill, a riot of colour, blue and green, down into the plain, yellow and red and crashing white up onto the mountain. The roofs blended together as they poured down to the sea from there, mixing together and meeting at the docs.

"Ahoy," she shouted down, "It's home again."

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction: 46616-C

This is the third of six sketch stories. It's unrelated to the first two.

You can expect the next sketch story on March 29, 2016.

---

46616-C

Transcript - 46616-C

House: "Are we recording?"

Communications: "Yes, Sir."

House: "Very Good. Sit Rep 46616-C, is called to order."

"Package A is inbound from Incident 46616. Estimated time of arrival, T minus 35. Package A includes, Agents Blue, Red, Green, Black and Violet. Primary mission objectives were achieved with minor complications. Medical, can you give us an update on the members of Package A?"

Medical: "Yes, Sir. Agents Red, Green and Violet are all nominal and teams are standing by to provide standard medical debriefing for each. Agent Black has received minor injuries from physical projectile weaponry and received field treatment. Agent Black will require minor surgery to repair damage to the right shoulder.

"Agent Blue was struck by a non-standard energy weapon. This weapon has caused negligible physical injury, but does seem to have caused Agent Blue to speak in an unknown language. Agent Blue will require a full medical examination, as well, we suspect, as significant further investigation from both medical and science branches.

House: "Very Good. I believe Communications has secured assistance from our partners at Organization F to assist in matters with Agent Blue."

Communications: "Yes, Sir. A linguistics team from Organization F will arrive by 0800."

House: "Very Good. Security?"

Security: "Yes, Sir. The external security indicator is low. Given that Agent Blue is demonstrating unusual behaviour, internal security is being stepped up to manage a rogue agent situation."

House: "Very Good. Housekeeping?"

Housekeeping: "Yes, Sir. Catering and laundry services are standing by. Rooms are made up for all non-resident agents arriving. Resident agents' domiciles have been prepared. Staff are standing by to assist all agents. "

House: "Very Good. Science?"

Science: "Yes, Sir. A lab has been cleared and prepared to investigate Agent Blue. Funding has been established under the project code S-46616-B, and the project has been codenamed "Surprise Translation". We are ready to proceed as soon as the Agent and the linguistics team have arrived on site."

House: "Very Good. Then finally we can receive Transportations report."

Transportation: "Yes, Sir. Envelope A received minor damage during the incident, although none of it affected flight-worthiness. We have teams standing by, and believe Package A should be fully operational again in thirty-six hours. In the mean time Envelopes B and C are ready and on standby."

House: "Very Good. We seem to be operating by the book and, in good order. Please ensure that all staff are prepared for the returning agents and in particular not to react unduly to Agent Blue's condition. Emergency Sit Rep 46616-C is now closed."

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction: A Morning Disrupted

This is the second of six sketch stories. It's totally unrelated to the first, except that I wrote it and it's supposed to be short and simple.

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A Morning Disrupted

He came out of the dark smithy stretching and brushing out his beard. He looked up the road as far as he could see, finding no sign of Stera and breakfast.

He ducked his head back in the smithy, "Don't rush boys, no sign of the hot-cart yet."

The air was crisp and clear, and the sun was glinting off the city's colourful roofs. He took a drink from the water barrel, and sighed as he sat down, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face.

He pulled out his pad of sketching paper and started roughing in a sketch of the smaller lamp fittings Green Marlin had ordered for the new fishing boats.

He heard unhurried hoof-steps and looked up to see a young woman wearing blue courier leathers riding down the road. He shifted a little to slide the sketch under his apron, and nodded at the woman as she went past. Once she was out of sight, down the curve of the road, he pulled his paper back out and continued sketching.

He lost track of time as he sketched, but was suddenly called back to reality with a crash and raucous yelling. Jumping up, dropping his paper, he saw two young men on dark horses canter past, while up the road Stera's cart was tipped over, with her gear spread out all over the road.

Old Korin was standing in the middle of the road waving his cane at the the retreating riders and shouting "Ruffians!" while Stera was looking over the mess of her cart.

"Damned fools," Stera shook her head as he came up the road to them, "Not sure where they thought they'd get in such a hurry. The one of them turned his horse right into my cart, trying to get around Old Korin here! Knocked it clean over! And not a glance back to see what they'd done even! The poor horse!"

Several other neighbours had gathered by then and there was enough muscle to set the cart upright and gather up the mess.

"Ah well," Stera said, shaking her head again as she checked over her equipment and supplies, "Nothing's a day but challenges, I guess. Doesn't look like anything's too much the worse for wear. Glad I wasn't carrying fresh eggs today. Give me a minute to straighten up and then I'll get back to feeding you all."





 

Project 14: Sketch Fiction - Update

So again, I'm past a project deadline and I don't have five stories to post.

I'm still struggling to sort out how to keep myself productive creatively and still manage my actual work for my PhD at the same time. In January I started by cutting down on my giant list of projects and focus on one thing at a time. At that point I started to focus on my sketch fiction project and hoped, at a pace of one a week, to get five out by early February.

While I definitely haven't pumped five stories out over the last two months, I have at least been a lot more focused on writing. I think over all that's been a good thing for me. In my last update, I said I had progress on four stories, and while that's true, I want to do some more work to make sure they're good. At the same time a lot of the point of the project is for me to JUST ACTUALLY GET STUFF WRITTEN AND OUT THERE, so there's a push and a pull.

I have one story finished and in a state I'm happy with. That will go up in the next post.

The rest I'm going to take my time with, but try to keep myself on a deadline of one every two weeks. The goal is to have something that I can put out, even if it's not perfect. Two weeks feels like a really long time to take to write a few hundred words, but given that I've taken months already it may not be that unjust an estimate. And as an added bonus, if I feel like I've finished early then I can be ahead of schedule rather than behind it (what a weird idea).

So my next project is to put out another piece of sketch fiction by Wednesday, March 15, 2016.

Project 14: Sketch Fiction - Update

You may or may not have noticed, but I haven't uploaded any sketch fiction since my last project update. That's not great, but I am pleased to say that I have been writing and you should start to see new fiction posted pretty soon.

Of the five sketches I still have to finish I've mostly written 4 of them. I still need to finish and edit them, but I expect to get them up fairly soon now. The last one, well I haven't been too sure what to write, but I guess it's time to make the iron hot by striking.

So, I hope to post most of the sketches in the next week or two. I'm going to push my deadline to February 23, 2016.

January 2016 Project Update

Somehow, it's been six months since my last project update. I've been pretty busy for the last six months, but mostly on things for the PhD and teaching. Around here I haven't managed to get much done.

As far as the "actual job" goes. I'm hoping to finish the PhD this year, although it'll be December if I do get it all done this year. I'm getting closer though and I've reach the point where I really just want to get it done and and get on to anything else.

The teaching has also been interesting, since my last update I've been working primarily on new ways to teach new computer scientist the basic tools that we expect them to be able to use (like text editors and the Unix command line). That has been a lot of work but I think may also lead to some things that I'd like to do in the future. You may even see me talk about it more here in the next little while.

As far as getting projects done, I haven't. I've managed to do a little work but really haven't managed to put anything to bed. Finishing things is definitely not my strength.

Granted finishing things is never easy:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.^[1]

— Tom Cargill, Bell Labs

(Stolen ... borrowed ... excerpted ... from Wikipedia)

I think I also sometimes distract myself by giving myself too many options about what to work on *looks at the two page todo list*.

I'm going to try for the next little bit to focus when I'm working on my project stuff. I'm also going to try to make sure that I put the bulk of my time into getting the PhD done.

To manage that I'm going to try to have one active project at a time (well two, but hold onto that thought). For now, I'm going to focus on finishing the sketch fiction first. I'll get to the perler projects (coasters and sprites) when I have a little time, but for now we can call them "on hiatus".

Also I have absolutely no idea what those other two and a half projects were going to be. I should really consider writing things down. On that note, if I come up with more brain crack*, then you might see a project post for a project that I'm not really going to start on.

The "other" project is going to be "blog as blog project". For the last year I really tried to get two posts out a week. Over all I haven't done too badly, but I feel a bit like I use the blog as an excuse to not work on other things (like my PhD and other projects). I'm going to scale back to only one "YouTube Favourites" a week (on Friday). This was always technically the plan with the assumption that I'd be filling Tuesday and the other days with other posts, but that hasn't been the case and that's okay.

I'm going to set the deadline for the sketch fiction for February 9th, 2016 and in the mean time you'll have a fresh batch of favourite videos on Friday.

* he says if as though he didn't have another page in the todo list of "long term" projects in the book with the todo list.

August 2015 Project Update Post

Once again I've been slow getting things done, although I did at least manage to take a vacation and am now involved in "serious business" redeveloping a course for my department. That's taken up quite a bit of time from everything in the last little while. So taking that into account it's time to reset the project goals and see where things stand. Mostly right now, I'm trying to keep my energy up and get excited and make things.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters
• I still haven't put the backing on on the new, larger, test coaster. Once I get that done then it's just a matter of testing it out and seeing how it compares to the older ones. Getting the backing on will be a little effort but once that's done it's just a matter of using the thing for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to post a full update on October 2, 2015.
• Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've done most of the planning for my next sprite. I need to check I have enough beads, and then it's just a matter of putting those beads together. Hopefully will be done the next phase on September 18, 2015.
• Project 14 - Sketch Fiction
• I haven't written much in the past couple of months. I'm going to try to push myself to write a little each day which should make it easy to push through 5 more quick sketches. Hopefully I'll have all five up by, October 30, 2015.

Project 14: A Walk Through the Station

This is the first of 6 sketch stories, where I write a very short story that briefly describes a scene or a feeling. It's the first time in a very long time that I've published any writing, so please be kind.

Project Update Post

As always I seem to get behind on projects, but in the last few months I've managed to start picking things up again. So I'm going to reorganize my deadlines again today and reorganize a few of the projects.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters
• I have actually gotten as far as beading and fusing my new larger format test coaster. Now it needs a backing and then I'll give it a test for a little while to see if it develops the same cupping that the smaller ones. 
• I'm going to try to get the backing on in the next week and then I'll test it for a month or so.  I'm going to set the deadline to see if I make more / bigger ones on July 17, 2015.

• Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've finally made some progress. Last night in fact I actually spent about 2 hours beading the beginning of a 1x1 Chrono sprite. This is giving me a chance to see what works and how the colours look (little problem there, but I'll give a longer update once I get everything done).

Coming together.

• Progress is happening so I hope to have the 1x1 sprite and update done by June 23, 2015.

• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I'll get back to it and I'm putting it on hold for the time being.

• Project 14 - Sketch Fiction
• I originally was calling this flash fiction, but based on the lack of ... plot in the stuff I've been writing I wasn't sure if flash fiction counted. I ran across an article on "sketch fiction" which I'm repurposing as a term for what I'm turning out.
• As you might have guess from the above, I have actually written a bit. I have one sketch done and ready to go an others "in the pipeline". I'm going to try to do six sketches in the next little while, rather than one a month like I'd originally posted. I'd like to try to have all six posted by August 1, 2015.

• New Projects
• I have two (and a half) new projects I've either started or would like to start. I'll put up proper posts for them soon. 

Project Update Post

I've managed to get behind on projects again, mostly due to having research and teach commitments that need to get done with a higher priority. Still I've managed to get a bit done and in this post I'm going to update my deadlines to give myself something to shoot for again.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters and Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've had to hold off a little on working on these due to house sitting and wanting to make sure that I'm using the same iron while testing.
• The SNES Coasters have been holding mostly steady, but I've decided that I want to build and test one of the bigger size before making others since that way I don't waste quite as much if I don't like the size. 
• I'd like to finish and start testing the test SNES coaster by November 15, 2014.
• I spent a long time going through the Perler bead colours and discovered that I actually DIDN'T buy all the colours and I'm missing a few that might be helpful for the sprites. However I think I have enough on hand to make it through the small scale test.
• I've also done all the colour matching and think I have a plan for which colour of beads I'll use for each of the colours in the Chrono sprite.
• I'd like to finish a test block (just the colours) by November 15, 2014 and the small scale Chrono by November 30, 2014.
• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I haven't had time to start on this one at all yet, so I don't have much to report other than that I've decided to do a test with Unity that works well enough to shoot bubbles at other bubbles.
• I'd like to finish this Unity test by December 31, 2014
• Project 14 - Flash Fiction
• I also haven't made much progress on this one either so I think given that I'm still fairly early in November, I'm simply going to slide this back a month and hopefully put up my first piece by November 30, 2014.

Project 14: Flash Fiction

A little while ago I had the please of listening to Neil Gaiman speak and read at my university. Unsurprisingly, this was really good and it was also inspiring.

I want to write and I don't write, which tends to be an impediment to getting anything written. So given this inspiration (months and months ago, remember we're fighting the procrastination here), I decided that I wanted to write a handful quick things to get myself going.

So Project 14 is a handful of Flash Fiction things. Basically, short 500-100 word pieces from some of the worlds that float around in my head. I'd like to do six of them and I'd like to do one a month for the next six months.

The first one is set on a space station and I plan to put it up here by October 31, 2014. (Sorry, it's not spooky).