Tag: darths & droids

Blurry days

The last several days are starting to blur together in a melange of restricted left hand mobility, taking Scully for walks, and mostly working on Darths & Droids. We’ve done a lot of story planning in the past week, and I’ve written thousands of words of notes. Today I switched to actually writing scripts for comics and assembling comics, which are needed for the next week or so of publication.

I also spent a bit of time updating one of the old Sydney walks I did with a couple of new photos of an historical building. I only learnt about this building while doing research for the photos that I had taken earlier, and I decided I had to go back and find it and get some photos. It’s an old stable that was part of a 19th century estate – you can read the history and see the photos here (scroll down near the bottom for the “Valetta” stables).

Valetta stables, Artarmon

My hand has been giving me some pain today, and last night while trying to sleep. I keep trying to do little tasks using my left hand, and end up with some sort of muscle twitch that aches for a while. I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have full movement or strength in it yet.

New content today:

Evil plots

Sunday morning saw another sleep in. I slept with my bandaged hand tucked under the quilt for the first time – it felt a bit weird but was okay. Better than resting my arm on top where it was cold all night the last few nights. The fingers are getting more flexible and stronger, and I can now type with two hands, although only using one finger on my left hand.

My wife and I went for another big walk with Scully this morning, though not as long as yesterday.

Scully on Berrys Bay

Well, that photo is actually from yesterday, but it’s nice so I thought I’d share it today.

This afternoon I spent dedicated to brainstorming and plotting more Darths & Droids story material, with some of my co-writers. We wrote almost 2000 more words of story notes, and now have a significantly better plan for how the story progresses through Episodes 7 and 8.

My wife cooked dinner again tonight. Pea soup, with fried halloumi as a vegetarian substitute for ham/bacon. It was delicious… and I’m not just saying that because I didn’t have to do any of the work. 🙂

New content today:

Star Wars day

More Darths & Droids plotting today. I watched some more of The Force Awakens and came up with a question about one of the scenes in the film that is not particularly well explained. In discussion with co-writers, we wrote over 2000 words of story notes to explain this one scene in the film – maybe 5 seconds or so long.

I also converted another Imgur album of a suburban walking photo essay to a web page hosted on my site. I enhanced it with some additional research into historic buildings that I’d photographed along the way, learning a lot of interesting stuff about them.

New content today:

A very rainy day

Yesterday was very windy, today was very rainy. It’s been raining more or less all day, and has become steady and heavy during the afternoon and into the evening. It was light this morning, and I took the chance to take Scully for a walk up the street to the shops and back.

Last night when I took her out for pre-bedtime toilet, I was fortunate enough to see a meteor! I was only outside with her for a few minutes, but I habitually look up to observe the stars while outside and waiting for Scully to toilet. At the moment Scorpius is high in the sky around 10pm when I go out, and I’ve been observing it slowly climbing higher each night for several weeks as the stars wheel about the sky slightly faster than the sun. It’s one of my favourite constellations, with the instantly recognisable claws and spiralling tail, with the red heart of Antares at the centre. It’s beautiful, and it makes having to go out into the cold autumn/winter nights a bit more bearable.

Anyway, last night I looked up, as usual, to take in Scorpius above, and as I was looking, there was a brief flash and streak of white light, running across Scorpius from roughly north-east to south-west. I’ve seen meteors before and know what they look like (and I have a degree in astrophysics), and this was definitely one. So, cool!

Today I spent a lot of time going through Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, not quite frame by frame, but at least shot by shot, transcribing a list of scenes and shots for reference during story planning for Darths & Droids. I didn’t get through the whole film… I got through a bit less than an hour of it. But I noted several things relevant to our story, and had a big discussion with my co-writers via online chat, which led to some significant ideas and plotting notes. It was a day very well spent on the creative front. Now I just need to repeat that much productivity again, to complete a full scene by scene breakdown of the whole film. (I’d previously done the first 20 minutes or so prior to starting work on writing for the film.)

New content today:

Long slog

So yesterday I intended to write at least three Darths & Droids strips, and got zero done. Rinse, repeat. I did however, get some story planning done, and discuss some plot points with fellow writers. So that wasn’t a total loss.

What did I get done today? Hmm. Oh that’s right, I played golf this morning with a friend, at the pitch ‘n’ putt course (all holes par 3). After last time I lost badly with a matchplay/skins handicap of 16, my friend granted me an increase to 17. But today I played a lot better, and ended up winning 12-6. So next time we play there I’ll go back down to a handicap of 16. My total round for 18 holes was 79 strokes, which was 2 better than my previous record of 81. So I was pretty pleased with that!

I didn’t get home until after lunch, so that’s where half my day went. I spent some time dealing with housework stuff – we had to buy a new vacuum cleaner because our old one broke the other day, and I had some unboxing and then discarding of packaging and the old vacuum cleaner to do.

And there was some Scully walking… in the rain, as the weather closed in a bit after lunch. Walking a dog in nice weather is fine, but having to do it in inclement, cold weather is a bit of a chore.

This evening I’m playing some Codenames online with some friends. My team-mate just clued “LINUS 2” and I guessed the words PUMPKIN and VAN (from the grid of 25 words), and got them correct. And both of our opponents were absolutely mystified as to how I managed to guess the correct words!

New content today:

Howling wind

This Saturday evening I’m sitting inside, happy not to be outdoors as the wind howls outside. The forecast was for high winds today, and it was right. It was warm in the middle of the day, but blustery. Now it’s cooled down a lot and the wind has picked up even more. I can hear trees bending and rustling.

I spent a lot of time today trying to compile an old program that a friend of mine wrote some years ago. He tried to help me in an online chat, but we’re still stuck at sorting out some library dependencies. Ugh… this is why I hate programming.

The other thing I did was make a couple of new Darths & Droids strips. I’d hoped to get more done, but got stuck in that mire of compiling code.

New content today:

Working from home means less work

My wife had a hard morning, with her work-from-home setup having technical issues for several hours, resulting in a lot of frustration and lost time, which spilled over to me not being able to concentrate on much. I worked on some more Darths & Droids comics, but didn’t get as much done as I would have hoped.

I took Scully for a walk. While letting her run up and down the grassy area across the street, one of our neighbours walked past, and we had a semi-shouted conversation from several metres apart. He said he’d gone down to the golf course this morning, only to find a big “closed” sign there. All golf courses across Australia have been closed from midnight last night, as part of the country’s coronavirus suppression strategy.

The restrictions put in place here are pretty limiting. It’s basically nobody is allowed to leave their home except for (1) buying essential supplies, (2) medical or safety reasons, (3) to go to work if unable to work from home, and (4) for exercise. And a few other sensible things like children visiting separated parents which don’t apply to me. And there are severe penalties for violators – fines up to $11,000 and up to 6 months in prison. Police have been patrolling areas such as beaches and have been handing out (lesser level) fines to several people today. So this is not an order to be messed with for frivolous reasons.

So I’ve been getting out for walks around the neighbourhood for exercise, both for me and Scully. But apart from that it’s been confinement, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

New content today:

A new week of work from home

The morning began with a dash to my wife’s work to retrieve her office chair. After last week working from home, she realised that using a dining table chair wasn’t good for her posture, so we had to go in and get the office chair. The rain complicated things slightly, as did the fact that we couldn’t fit the chair in the car without leaving a passenger out, so she had to walk home with Scully.

Once home, I dedicated the day to writing and making new Darths & Droids comic. And that was about it, really. I made pasta for dinner, wth pumpkin and walnuts… that was good.

New content today:

Darths & Droids: Episode VII

Today’s the big day! After a considerable delay, the first comic strip of Darths & Droids‘ treatment of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens begins! We’ve been working towards this for literally years now, so it’s good to get it underway.

But that comic strip was produced a couple of weeks ago. Today mostly I did two things: house cleaning, and keeping up with the multiple press conferences by the Australian Prime Minister and New South Wales Premier on updates regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. Firstly, though, I got a nice sleep in as Scully slept through the night without any sneezing waking us us. So that was good – I needed that sleep.

I cleaned the garage a bit, to make room for all of my market stall equipment: stock of greeting cards, large mounted prints, a couple of easels for displaying prints, and various miscellaneous gear such as receipt books, string, display stands, crates, and so on. I figured with no more market stalls for the foreseeable future, there’s no need to keep all this stuff handy, and I could pack it away for a while to clear up some room in the house. I cleared away a bunch of other clutter as well, and also washed down the balcony, allowing me and my wife to eat dinner outside tonight.

In news terms, it’s been a big day here in Australia, with the most drastic measures now being announced for shutting down businesses and movements of people to attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus. Basically all non-essential services are shut down from midday tomorrow, including: pubs, clubs, gyms, cinemas, theatres, church services – and restaurants and cafes are restricted to take-away service only. Schools however remain open, which is attracting growing criticism from pretty much everywhere. It’s going to be a long and interesting week.

New content today: