My Gaming: December 2012

The plan was to make a tease sort of post; but things didn’t go off as I hoped.  In fact, much of this concept didn’t go off as expected…but I hope it will be a recurring segment.

Since I spend a lot of time talking about (or actually playing) my PSP, I thought this year I’d use my modified handheld to not only showcase some of the silly games I play, but also prove there is plenty of reason not to jump to the “PSV” quite yet (even though the PSVita will have a theoretic life of at least two more years, but I digress…).

With emulators and homebrew, all sorts of things can still be accomplished on a PSP Slim [2k of 3k] such as mine: despite Plagueis the Wise and Palp the Craggy corroborating my firmware being “unnatural” in a word.

Originally I hoped to have a slideshow each month, but flash doesn’t work here.  Then I hoped to do a gallery here, but things weren’t working as I hoped.  Then I planned to make two galleries: one showing my screenshots for that month, and another linking to each game (for deeper investigation) – but ImageShack doesn’t let one image exist in two albums.

Hit the jump to figure out the solution…

2012 in review: Oh, Mesnard via WordPress

I received the following writeup from WordPress about my blog in 2012.  Following the link it provides even gives you a firework show.

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Literary Road to Glory: 2012 Recap

The dorm room is packed and cleaned; which brings my foray into literary ambition to a close…at least for this year.  I didn’t plan to give up after a single year of making resolutions.  The big question is how I fared.

Before I cap things off, here’s a look at the cryptic “score sheet” I scrawled out to help become my roadmap. [click to enlarge]

How cryptic was it?  I tried to decode it on at least three occasions.  The sheet of notebook paper made a lot of sense at the time, but I made alterations as the months rolled by…a bit because the unexpected cropped up, but mostly to make things more challenging for myself.

After the jump is my 2012 progress report.

Rate me Highly (or Lowly) Now!

My latest blog feature is a rating system for posts and pages.

Why now?  I wanted to “branch out” a while.  Writing is still the main focus here; and the “Road to Glory” feature is now a fixture; but an experimental expansion has been in the works.

As Jules Winnfield might ask, “Example.”

Many know I spend time on my heavily-modified PSP.  I thought a while about a monthly visual gaming feature.  I often play in cycles, and most titles fall outside the realm of popularity: especially since many games are imports or via emulation; which could keep things unique around here.

Going in another direction is a sports recap.  I played in various Yahoo Fantasy leagues more than a few years now, and this NFL season I started my own small league; emphasizing on luck and fun rather than aggression or hyper-competitiveness.  Yahoo added automated weekly recaps (which I found highly amusing) of head-to-head team match-ups; which I want to retroactively post.

[Note:  If any of you have a Yahoo account and want to get in on future action, let me know.  I still have a college bowl "pick 'em" league with open slots too at this moment.]

Incorporating other interests can showcase my other facets without perpetuating blogging tropes relying on personal dramatics or day-to-day struggles to keep things interesting.  My goal is to keep this place entertaining above all else.

Other past ideas were things like older album reviews or canceled television shows; but working on novels, scripts, or short stories seem a better way to spend my allocated writing time for now.

Many renovations got made to the blog this year, but I want much more: even if things seem at a standstill for now.

What else for the future?  I wanted more than just a sidebar and the About heading at the top, such as a contact or feedback area; offering an easier way for people to get in touch or ask questions.  One long-in-the-making addition has been a supporter section to thank followers; or paying time and mind to this blog.  A timeline or achievements section has personal appeal, but hinges more on my free time.

Some of the above will likely be incorporated into my 2013 resolutions.  On that note, a Road to Glory tab would be a great addition to help keep me accountable; since those monthly goals play part in a decade-long plan.

Hopefully the ratings addition proves a great way to see where to occupy my time when not writing; or even what to procrastinate with.

As always, comments (and now ratings) are welcome.

Nanowrimo 2012 recap

The 2012 OLL season came to a close now National Novel Writing Month has ended.  I did more than the goal; as quantity was concerned.  My novel is insanely long, but for the moment I sort of like it that way.

Proper tone; cadence; length; narration are all things I can figure out later when I work on a real draft.  My chapters aren’t traditional at this point either, but I like that for the moment as well.

On the bright side, I can safely say the story is past the halfway point.  After this current section gets finished up…there are maybe four major things before the ending.  Rather, four or five locations, then the big ending.  Sorry to all who want to read this while waiting for that Transformers reboot: no explosions at the end of this book.  Maybe a faint trace of saltwater, but the lead doesn’t end up having a day at the beach.

Then again, there is this…

No, nope – never a part of my plan.  I didn’t plan on her leaving Scottsdale in the story.  Then again, anything can happen when writing a novel in the Nanoverse.

Back on topic: here’s an auto-generated chart from the Nano site; showing my daily progress in November:

So close to sixty thousand, I know.  Maybe next year?  That giant bump in my stats was thanks to our Day of Writing Safe and Warm, which is our region’s version of the Night of Writing Dangerously event held in San Francisco.  Ours may not be as swanky, but sure can be a game-changer for a Wrimo’s word count.

My favorite way to keep track of November is with this widget:

This has been my word barometer for a few years now; and this season it was on display in this blog’s sidebar.  The colors can range from red to green, as I recall.  A green box means the daily word count was reached.  All the other colors represent a word count below par, so to speak.

My personal hope was to write two thousand words a day.  Now my plan is to make up the combined difference of all those non-green days with a newer December goal.  This means 2013 will be the time to see if I’ll avenge those orange and yellow boxes.

When I verified my win, I decided to make my forum signature a little easier to see.  Here’s what it became:

In case you’re wondering, all the black print and handwriting were lifted from the project I was writing for November.

Since I’m sharing images, here is something I received at the TGIO [Thank Goodness It's Over] party for our region:

One of these days I’ll open the pack up, but I haven’t had a special enough use yet.

That about wraps up why November is a tough month to keep my attention.  Now maybe one of these days I’ll finally finish one of these novels.  April and July are the Camp Nano sessions for 2013.  Maybe then?  Oh, wishful thinking…

Related links:

• my NaNoWriMo profile
• get a taste of my Nano novel (draft zero)
• my StayClassy profile (OLL fundraiser)

Calling a Sidebar & Update

This it to let it be known I did a little work on the layout again; mainly updating the sidebar.

For the sake of NaNoWriMo, I added a progress bar (with extra tags) to show not only my daily performance by color (green being hitting the daily word count – and orange, yellow; then red if an abysmal word day.  It also displays the total word count and my percentage of 50,000 words complete at the top.
But that’s not all!  I also redid my “Road to Glory” progress bar.  Though not all my true progress has been totaled in, clicking the meter will bring up my original post about my monthly goals – which I updated through November.

On top of that, I rearranged the order of projects displayed in the sidebar also; with at least one updated cover.  If anyone wants to read more of any of them, I can reply back with links.

Sorry for what may seem like a boring post, since I don’t have crazy linkage or any of the usually-expected things.  I’d try to get my sponsorship info up, which is a little bit out there.

As a bonus, here’s the signature I’m using in the Nano forum this year.  Once again, I’m trying for a little bit of the lunatic vibe when I did it.

Lots Happening in my Head (positively)

Weirdness – via jessiisthehizz

The image represents the heading a tad.  Some literary flatlining has been going on. Not in the blocked writing fashion, but more as a recovery effort.  I suppose the blog has become collateral damage as a result…just as my failure to update my writing sites.

In the last thirty days (in no particular order) I was:

• Completing Camp Nano with thirty minutes to spare; breaking my single day writing record.
• Finishing two short film scripts and a “micro-short” story (all contest entries) – while doing Camp Nano.
• Learning of Script Frenzy formally ending, and assisting in an organizational effort to rescue it in some form.
• Creating a new group on Figment to help an overlooked demographic.
• Committing to Camp Nano’s August session; taking a super-rebellious stance.
• Possibly bricked (then unbricked) my PSP again; consuming a few days.
• Joining a new writing site with the hopes of centralizing my stuff and offering perks to those who like my literary endeavors.
• Spending a weekend out of town.  Won’t get into the details; but  random pictures for posting.

Quite a logjam of information!  I’ll write about it all, but it will happen more out of sequence than a Quentin Tarantino flick.  The winners will be those who subscribe to the blog: since they get notified of my posts…no matter what I set the date as.  All the rest will have to keep clicking and checking for anything above which caught interest.  I’ll link as I go, meaning I’ll keep this post at the top until late July, but some things may get lost in the shuffle.

I’m not trying to force anyone to subscribe, but there are perks: especially once I give the layout another renovation.  Hopefully the posts will all be up before camp starts again, but who knows.  I still plan on adding to the “cabin blog” we started before the June session.  Call it moonlighting…but I did make a couple posts very similar here as I had there.

More could be mentioned, but I’ll save it for one of the secretive posts.  Keep checking back; unless you’re a notified subscriber – since you’ll know the minute something is posted; no matter how heavy on the chronitons an entry happens to be.

Save a Kiss for Me: London Screenwriters’ Festival

Love isn’t my question, but I had to answer it.  More specifically, through a prompt posed by the 50 First Kisses competition via the London Screenwriters’ Festival 2012.

Overachieving at an underachiever’s pace, I submitted two entries (which was allowed).

The rules being:

-two page screenplay

-takes place on Valentine’s night

-must have a kiss

Results will be announced July 30th, so it seems.  I’ll do my best to keep people posted – should there be an interesting development.

 

 

 

I know I’ve been off my game due to slacking at camp and trying to organize some Script Frenzy unification.  My apologies, but I know most of you understand.

February Progress Report (off-target?)

I got blown off-task, but that didn’t mean I had a total failure this month.  While writing this, I’m looking at last month as my template…and realized I never updated it.  Too late now I suppose.

Of my monthly goals, I did fifty percent of what I wanted.  That’s actually one of two things, but who’s counting.

The failure was not writing 20,000 words of my Nanowrimo 2011 novel.  The deadline still looms and I want to meet it…and I still have the drive.  We shall see.

What did I accomplish?

The application was sent in to ML our Script Frenzy region.  Here’s hoping…but you never know.  I also got four blog posts up; and followers/likes between February and right now.  I am very happy and thankful for that.

Non-goal accomplishments:

Writing the first draft of my short story.  I posted it online in March, but I’ll credit the pre-critique finish.

My Pitchapalooza entry: the 200 word summary of my Nano 2011 novel.  It certainly helped me get better at writing summaries.

Hopefully I’ll be better at keeping up with my progress more timely.  Maybe I’ll report before the month ends.  Hmmm…

January Progress Report (failure)

Groundhog Day is the perfect time to rehash some of what’s been going on in the first dozenth [if it's not a real phrase, then why not?] of this calendar year.

As the headline reads (on the post, not the newspaper – though the newspaper *does* show an actual January literary failure), I was not a success in my first month as far as reaching my goal.

I failed to write 10,000 words pertaining to my novel this month.  A lot went on, and had been on my mind of course – but I can’t excuse it as much as say I should have dove into it much quicker.  Thankfully I built some failure into my prospectus for 2012.  Better luck next month, right?

Literary Road to Glory: 2012

Mesnard’s “Glory Road” progress:

It’s hard to explain the reason why, but I’m feeling mighty ambitious this year. Maybe basking in hitting my goal from last year; maybe senility – but I decided to try something dangerous.  Creatively dangerous that is…

Instead of a new year’s resolution, I decided to have a month-by-month roadmap: with secondary goals as well.  Maybe I’ll falter- or maybe I’ll exceed my expectations.

For a full rundown of the declaration, hit the jump.