Category Archives: Writing

Writing about my writing.

Totally Unknown Writers Festival 2010

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On Wednesday evening, I went to the 17th Annual Totally Unknown Writers Festival. As always organized by the great folks from Life Rattle Radio and originally founded by two of my professional writing professors, Guy Allen and Arnie Achtman. As with every year, great stories written and read by talented authors from around Toronto.

I hoped to read this year, but I’ll get ready for next year’s festival. I did meet up with some of my old classmates from university. And I was able to catch up with them and Guy. If you want to hear great stories of life experiences from the GTA, I highly recommend coming out to the festival.

In the Beginning of November…

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A new month begins and a new twist to life. This is the first day at a new office in downtown Toronto. Not that I’ve changed positions, I’m still working as a mobile developer for Web Impact. For my coworkers, this is nothing new since they all worked at the Toronto office before moving out to Mississauga. Unfortunately the Mississauga location did not provide what we needed and so we are moving back for now.

This morning everything is a little different. Figuring out new schedules, new routes and a new location. Should be fun. Other than that I’ll still get to enjoy working on mobile coding, with all its unique challenges.

One challenge I worked on this past while is writing. Not a lot of progress on the novel. But I did manage to submit two short stories for publishing. One to the Fall issue of the Alexandrian, which should come out soon. And one to 365 Tomorrows, which will hopefully get accepted too.

Other than that I still have load of catching up on work. I still feel a bit behind. Anyways, this next stop is mine. Catch you later.

Now We Return to Your Regular Programming

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Any writer who keeps on promising to write more regularily but doesn’t is a scoundrel and a rascal. I leave it as an exercise to the reader about what that makes me.

So I tried microblogging, like all the cool Web 2.0 kids do. Unfortunately for me I can’t blog about many things for a multitude: legal, personal, client confidentiality. What gets left are random bits and the boring and mundane. Even the little experiment of Day X of 2010, was a fun way of writing good soundbites but honestly I ran out of creative and witty quotes. I prefer long form writing. And only at random time when my muse whispers something interesting in my ear. I know very artsy of me.

Short story long: I’m back to just plain old blogging, on no day in particular and not particularly long. Enjoy.

Out with the Old

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I’m preparing for what I hope will be a new phase in my life.  And one of the things I need for this change is a revised online presence.  I’ve experimented with various ideas and concepts.  And I want to try and implement them in my life.

One of the first to feel the changes, will be my blogging.  I deleted my old Blogspot blog.  All the content exists on this website anyways.   Also I’m planning to make this blog more into a portfolio, than just a blog straight up.  The blog obviously will be accessible, just not on the front page.  Also I’m thinking of doing some ExtJS magic and build a new AJAXy theme.  So if the site breaks, you know what I’ve been up to.

On another note, I’m getting back to developing justCheckers into reality.  And on the side playing around with the newly revived Pyzzle game engine.

Welcome to 2010. Where the Hell is My Robotic Servant?

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Happy New Year to all my readers!  2009 was quite an emotional year: the first batch of my close friends got married, a death in the family, the ups and downs of dating, professional life and all that jazz.  Last year I’ve felt I’ve grown like no other year.  I started work in 2008.  But 2009 was the year that I feel I kicked off the sneakers, t-shirt and shorts laid-back attitude of  a university undergrad, and donned the look and feel of a professional.  I definitely feel the change was for the better.  Also last year I rolled up my sleeves and told myself to do the things I wanted to do, but kept on putting off.  True, I came up with some grandiose plans that I couldn’t of finished realistically.  Still I  managed to tie up most of the loose ends of previous years.  My projects moved forward by a bit.  My organizational skills improved, and I no longer procrastinate on tasks for months.  I still leave things off, but only for a few days.  At most a month, if something is a bit more complicated or delicate.  Come to think of it, most of the tasks that hang around are ones that will take hours to do.

Now the new year, nah new decade begins.  I feel I’m a better professional, writer, programmer, businessman, outdoorsmans and well… man than a year ago.  Ditto for 10 years ago.  So whats next for 2010?  Lets hope no massive shift in society occurs (and that I fear more and more is a possibility to no-one can simply ignore) and God willing that nothing crazy happens in this upcoming decade.  I’d hate to live the life of a Snake Plissken, Mad Max or an Afghani.  Assuming that nothing happens, my new years resolutions come from a modified version of last year’s:  (Which yes stems from goals of 2007…)

  • Become a Senior Software Developer/Consultant
    • 2009:  Learnt the Spring MVC framework, EJBs, AJAX, ExtJS and other Web 2.0 technologies.
    • 2009: Advanced in my skills in databases and Python scripting.
    • Learn and become a Qt/C++ developer.
    • Learn to manage risks, estimates, costs and client expectations as a consultant.
    • Advance my knowledge of Python, PHP and Javascript web frameworks.
  • Become a Published Writer
    • 2009: Started work on a number of novel ideas.  In total wrote about seven or eight separate chapters.
    • Finish and publish at least one novel.
    • Read a finished piece at The Totally Unknown Writers Festival 2010.
    • Publish my university articles in novel or series form.
  • Start a Masters in HCI Design
    • This is a blue skies idea.  But I do plan to go back to university and start working on a Masters degree on HCI (Human -Computer Interface) Design.
  • Become a Libre Software contributer
    • Continue work on justCheckers.  Possibly create and release the mythical version 1.0.
    • Get involved with the KDE or Maemo projects.
  • Build out my stealth mode start-up
    • 2009: Created a business plan and strategy.  Now I just need to execute on it.
    • Build an initial product offering, that will fund future development.
    • Add finances into the mix.
  • Personal
    • Get a full driving license.
    • Date that awesome girl. (Ladies a bit of help with that one? You know who you are.)
    • Get more involved with outdoor sports.
    • Deepen my faith and my knowledge of the world around me.
    • Learn to use a “freaking” calendar, rather than ignoring it.
    • Clean up the mess that is my home computing system.
    • Regular exercise and fitness.

And thats about it… Time to take on 2010.  I’m disappointed by the general lack of robotic servants, flying cars, jetpacks and moon bases.  Still I’m thankful for no nuclear war, giant mutant predatory creatures wandering the streets,  grey goo accidents or human-unfriendly singularity AIs too.  So 2010 probably won’t mean a radically different future for humanity.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t all have something look forward to this year. :)

Taking a Repose

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You may have noticed that my blogs seem to get shorter and shorter.  As you can imagine I’m busy wrapping up things for this year.  In addition to all that, I want to spend more time writing my novels and articles.  Plus I need to catch up on my coding projects as well.  You should still expect to get your daily dose of Dorian, but in shorter form for the time being.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress with my various projects.

Hmm… The Future Feels Clean

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So do you like it?  The theme on the website that is.  I decided to go with a variant of light greys, royal blue-purple and amber highlights.  It does have a spartan, minimalistic feel but I like it.  I considered rebuilding the theme as an ExtJS or jQuery UI powered on.  But honestly, this works and IMHO looks pretty good.  For a theme that doesn’t use any images.  I plan on tinkering with this theme as time goes on, but I think I like this theme as a base.  As promised, I will go through this theme, clean things up and release it out in the open once I’m done.

Whats next on my list?  Well a good chunk of work, and some partying this weekend to celebrate the coming of the end of the year.  :)

A Clean Future

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The future is white?

Bob, the future has been white since the 60′s.

- Autotainment, Big Ideas

The future has been white for a long time, thanks to the likes of Stanley Kubrick and the folks at Apple.  Thats why the theme I’m crafting for this website, is called “Clean Future”.  I took the “Open Sourcerer” theme by Alan Lord, and modifying it until it suits my tastes.  I’m still debating whether it will look like a glass UI or hand-drawn doodles.  Maybe I’ll go all out and create a full AJAX powered UI.  We’ll see.  I’m sure it will remain white and light grey.  And I’ll take it as far as I feel it makes sense to do so.  So if anyone has any suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments below.  I’ll make the modified theme available once I finish working on it.

Writer’s Block – Echoes in the Endless Returns & Totally Unknown Writers Festival

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Last week I mentioned that I restarted writing of my novel.  Well actually I’ve restarted the writing of TWO novels.  Yes, I’m writing TWO novels in tandem.  And while it sounds like  a bad idea, this can work since I can switch between the novels depending on the mood I’m in.  If I’m in the mood for something epic, I’ll continue with A Collection of Shards.  If I’m in the mood for something more quiet and personal, I’ll work on Echoes in the Endless.  In either case, I’m planning to work on both simultaneously.  Also I can not give an estimate of when I will finish writing these books.  My previous estimates and personal due dates came and went, and the book writing did not progress.

Echoes in the Endless will look similar to the earlier variants that I started working on.  However instead of the majestic huge starships of space operas, I’ve taken a liking to the gritty grim spacecraft of today.  I also enjoyed hard science fiction, that involved reality based stories.  Yes authors go into great lengths to explain things and it does make stories less “plastic epic”.  However these constraints lead to more provocative unconventional stories, and I plan on writing those and not another clone of “Battlestar Galactica” or “Star Trek”.  A warning to all readers, neither of these books are meant to be happy.  I’m a realist not an optimist so I tend not include pink tinted glasses with my stories.

Finally, I’ve been initially invited to contribute to the next Totally Unknown Writers Festival.  Everything is still in the conception stage, however with any luck I’ll read something at next year’s show.

And for kicks, I read the flash science fiction 365 Tomorrows a lot.  Here is an awesome piece: EULA by Cesium Artichoke