A new short story

After my math exam tonight, I found an old short story I had started on my computer. I finished it up and now I’m not sure what magazine to send it to. It’s not science fiction, it’s sort of contemporary fantasy… much like the movie Stranger Than Fiction, but better because that movie was sort of dumb.

I really want to try my hand at writing a fantasy short story, all my ideas for science fiction end up having been taken… I have two science fiction short stories that I started, but they’re incomplete. One of them I will scrap completely, and I’m not quite sure about the other one. On the one hand, I think it would be interesting to finish, but on the other, the ideas in it are probably already taken. Oh well.

Oh, I also have a flash-fiction piece that I could try submitting somewhere. It’s only about 300 or 400 words.

I wish I had more time to dedicate to my wonderful creativity instead of devoting it to useless test-taking and homework and lecture-hearing. (How arrogant!) I believe high school and college, as they are now, should be completely abolished. After middle school, teenagers should begin part-time work, and making real money, while getting a useful education that links with their work. (In other words, writing an essay on Shakespeare or Huckleberry would never be done again because it is utterly and completely useless.) This useful education should be focused on actual education and not an attempt to have the students prove how well they know something (no grades)… what they know and don’t know will emerge in the work habits which will determine their salary, so they’ll be a greater incentive to learn (and they won’t be wasting time being taught useless crap that they’ll never use). This sort of system would work much better, and teenagers would be much less moody and depressed, which is most likely caused by the older people (teachers) wasting their time.

Argh.

What a fun rant! You agree with me, don’t you?

Time to read The Moonstone

I finished Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke yesterday. It is nothing special, I wasn’t too impressed. Oh well, I’m going to move on to Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone now, a classic mystery novel from the 1800’s.

I also checked out some virtual music books by David Cope from the library. I doubt I’ll have much time to spend with them, but perhaps just skimming through the pages will give some good ideas about something.

Hmmm… not much else going on. I’ve got a math exam today, so I better try to sleep before studying as much as I can… wish me luck!

Wait a second, here’s a thought that just popped into my head. If you have three points, to make them all equally distant from each other you’d form a triangle. If you had four points, you form a pyramid. What about five points? I can’t visualize any solution… do we need another spacial dimension? Hmmm… something to sleep on.

Oh, wait, duh. That’s the touching spheres problem.

Book Quotes

I started a fourth (or fifth, I’ve lost count) blog last night. The blog is dedicated to book quotes, thus I am calling it… “Book Quotes”. It shall basically consist of quotes that stood out to me from books, both fiction and non-fiction (though probably more non-fiction will be mentioned since it tends to be more thought-provoking). Here is a link to the blog, and they’ll be a link on the side bar as well. Think that’s enough blogs for a while? I don’t think I have anymore unique templates to use. Only this blog, the main blog on the main page, and the “Stuff I Found” blog will be updated regularly, the others are dependent on my whim.

Well, I’m going to go read about pattern recognition or something… bye.

Arthur C. Clarke disappoints

I am almost finished Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and it seems pretty stupid, so I am a bit disappointed. Maybe something exciting will happen in the last fifteen pages, but so far the revealed explanations for things are way too supernatural for me to go “oh, wow!” and the ideas presented seem cliche nowadays. Somebody had told me that this book was one of Arthur C. Clarke’s greatest stories, but I sure hope not.

After this book, I’ll have to go back to some Orson Scott Card for a while… I still have four or five books left to read in the Ender’s series. Or perhaps I’ll go to a mystery novel, the classic tale of The Moonstone. Yeah, I’ll probably do that and take a break from scifi for a few weeks. And then I can turn The Moonstone into a musical… actually I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already done that.

Finished planning musical’s story

It was a bit of an arduous day, but I did manage to finish planning out The Kidnapping of Belmount story. There are eighteen “chapters” or “episodes” in all, though that could of course change. If each of these episodes translates into at least five minutes of music, then the entire musical will be at least 90 minutes long, which wouldn’t be bad at all for a first musical composed with no financial incentive!

I must finish composing my “Hour By Hour” orchestral piece first, though.

No crash!

I’ve had quite a lot of homework lately, so haven’t had much time to do much else. However, I did think of a good ending to The Kidnapping of Belmount, so perhaps I can finish planning out that today.

Obviously my computer did not crash, so I’m somewhat happy about that…

I still have a bunch of homework that I must finish by tonight, so it probably won’t be an exciting day.

Please computer, don’t crash!

After classes today I spent a few hours working on my latest piece of music, currently called “Hour by Hour” … I am almost finished with it, perhaps only a few more hours of work are needed. I am quite pleased with it and I look forward to adding it to the site when it is finished and polished. I think if you count all the original melodies that are in it, this piece may indeed have the most. I’m not sure how long it will end up being… right now it’s about six minutes.

I got those classical music CDs in the mail today, so I’ll have to listen to those when I get the chance… woohoo! I also got the full score to Holst’s Planets! A very kind and giving member of the Northern Sound Source forum mailed it to me after a little contest he posted on the forum. This score is awesome! Holst’s orchestration is brilliant, I can’t wait to study it more. Within the coming months I hope to perhaps render a demo of Venus or Mercury with GPO. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Last week my computer almost crashed when Windows wouldn’t start up. I finally got it working again, and quickly saved my important files (30 GB worth) onto my iPod. Isn’t it awesome that an iPod can be used like that? Good thing I’ve got the 80 GB model… it would be awesome if they came out with 120 GB model… I’d have to buy it… maybe… then again, it would probably be too expensive.

Anyway, I’m going to shut down my computer tonight and keep my fingers crossed that it will boot again tomorrow without any scary flaws… otherwise I’ll be quite in trouble (unless of course I can fix it the same way I did last time). So… good luck to myself I suppose.

Until tomorrow (I hope) …

Different Wizard Walk main page?

Whew, I did math homework (and sleep) almost all day!

Joshua Bell, the violinist, did a little experiment in a metro station in Washington, D.C., which I blogged about in the “Stuff I Found” blog, so I sort of did a little rant about its snobbishness.

I’ve been thinking of changing the main page of Wizard Walk to some sort of site map, so that instead of being thrust onto the first page you’d see a web of options on what I’ve got on my site, such as the blogs, the music pages, whatever. It might make everything more easy to navigate for newcomers… I really don’t want to confuse everyone with a big main blog and then all these links on side menus that people might not even notice. I’m just not sure how intuitive it all is. So… a site map on the first page might make things easier to see.

Forget the whole “until I doth blog again” … that’s just stupid. Let’s keep it simple.

Until tomorrow…

A Musical Perhaps?

I’ve been planning out a story which I imagine being a musical… it’s called The Kidnapping of Belmount and the draft outline is about 60% complete. It is about a prisoner who is released from prison by a wizard who hires him to kidnap the princess.

I really need to get back to work on my novel though, The Game of Gynwig. I’ve been taking a nice long break on that, haven’t I? I can’t even remember what exactly is supposed to happen next, I’ll have to find my notes.

I’ve been putting some music videos on my YouTube channel. The whole notion of music visualization is quite suddenly captivating!

I finally did get my hands on Hofstadter’s new book, I Am A Strange Loop. I’ve only finished the first two chapters, but I’m considering starting another “Book Quote” blog because I keep making notes on interesting points I come across while reading that I’d like to comment on.

On the fiction side of things, I’m about 66% percent through Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a very thought provoking science fiction book, which is a great contrast to the pathetic horrible torture I endured while reading Time’s Eye, which he wrote with Stephen Baxter. Time’s Eye is quite possibly the worst book ever written and it made me fantasize about book burnings. Childhood’s End, however, is way on the other end of the spectrum… at least it is so far. The ending better be good… it’s one of those books in which many things depend on a well thought out ending.

On the music front, I’ve been listening to my library’s collection of Sondheim musicals, and tonight’s treat was Follies while I labored away on some Computer Science homework. It’s not a bad musical, but it’s not nearly as catchy as some of Sondheim’s other work, like Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, but I do remember hearing some nice tracks, though there names are not yet ingrained in my memory. Next up, I’ll try listening to his musical called Passion. Then again, I am expecting some classical music I ordered from Amazon to arrive some time this week, so it may have to go on the backburner as I rock out with Mozart or whatever I ordered… they were having a sale, $3 a CD for some of them… one CD I ordered was Carmina Burana by good old Carl Orff… fantastic choirs in his music! I also ordered the infamous Symphonie Fantastique, which I remember enjoying but haven’t heard for a loooong time, and some French symphonic poems, including the infamous Sorcerer’s Apprentice! Woohoo! So I guess I have to give those a listen sometime.

Wow, I didn’t mean to blather so much. I think what I’ll do is try to blather on this blog daily, and then do a weekly briefing on the main page. Good idea, no?

Over and out. Should I keep saying that? Let’s try something else for this blog… how about: Later. Hmmmm… that’s overdone… how about: Until I doth blog again… ooh, that sounds nice, especially since it’s grammatically incorrect, isn’t it? Yeah, let’s use that…

Until I doth blog again…

Another blog

Hope you don’t mind yet another blog… not many people read my blogs anyway, mostly just me.

Anyway, the point of this blog is for when I have a little thought or update that’s just not important enough for the main page. The “Stuff I Found” blog will be totally dedicated to links and videos I come across that seem interesting, while this blog is totally dedicated to my own blather about myself.

My hope is to update this blog at least once a day… let’s see how long that lasts. Well, obviously when I don’t have access to a computer it won’t happen, but otherwise I should be able to find at least one little stupid thing to say!

I can’t wait to blather!