Category Archives: Writing

Writing about my writing.

A New Voice on the Blogosphere

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One of my friends from my professional writing class, Marika took up blogging.  Yay!  It is nice to see another familiar face on the blogosphere.  Anyways, check out her blog.  I have always found her writing style as fun, thoughts provoking and aesthetically pleasing  And yes, her philosophical posts beat out mine in the cohesive, interesting and well-thought out sections.  Also her audience responds in her comment section more often than mine does. *nudge* *nudge*

Marika’s It’s On My Desk blog can be found at: http://itsonmydesk.blogspot.com/.

A Change of Pace and Style

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In the past I wrote almost exclusively about technology and gaming. The occasional happy accident in time management and organization popped up. In the past few weeks, I decided that such a scope of articles is limiting.

There is only so much one can write on such subjects, before one feels tempted to use other people’s ideas as one’s own. Also one feels tempted to speak on subjects that can get one in a lot of trouble. I’ve resisted such temptations. However I realized that I could not both resist these temptations and blog on a regular basis. At least not without expanding the scope of articles.

So nowadays, I plan on blogging all things that interest me. I’ll avoid the political, the personal and the confidential for all the obvious reasons. Everything else is fair game. This means some of my more technical readers will see a larger span between articles on computing. I apologize for that. But my life does not revolve around technology alone. Everyone else, please enjoy my inane commentaries, crazy thoughts and more artistic stories. 🙂

Writing on a Train

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I neglected to post a blog entry today in the morning.  I felt too tired and uninspired to write anything of substance.  Also I could not relax until I knew I had left Toronto.

Now it is evening.  And I’m on a train, again going the farthest east on land I’ve been in Canada.  I’m going to Montreal again.  Slowly the English Breakfast tea is starting to kick in.  The air feels heavy and tired.  And I can write in peace.

It is amazing how quiet the train is.  Most of  the time I only hear the clatter of metal wheels on metal rail.  The swaying of the car is both comforting and awakening.  In Europe the trains don’t sway as much.  I guess the sway is one of the beauties of the Canadian track.  Everyone else used concrete ties and high-tech rails.  Not us Canadians, good old turn of the century-the 19th century that age of steam, iron and men driving nails with sledgehammers-wooden ties with metal piles.  But this doesn’t bother train, as I hurtle towards my destination.

Now the inspiration comes, slowly.  I will begin on my craft now.  So will be born my book, on board a Canadian VIA train bound for Montreal.

Still Regular But Not Always Public

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As I blogged about before the control of information has become the difficult topic in the 21st century.  Once information becomes public it becomes next to impossible to restrict its flow.  Restrictions and privacy used to be something implicit and natural.  In today’s networked world it must be a life policy.  One of the things I decided that this blog will be excellent for is to document my thoughts.  Up till now, I have documented mostly only knowledge I wanted to make public.  Unfortunately, I suppressed my own private writings or made them uncomfortable to access to even myself.  Only problem is that personal confidential information bubbled out or was hinted at, and most likely to people that I probably shouldn’t of told.  Now I trust these people enough to not air my private discussions with them.  But I can never be sure how far I can put out my trust.

WordPress has this fantastic option to keep certain posts private.  And I plan to exploit this to document more sensitive thoughts.  I am aware that any hosted app is still vulnerable, so material of an extremely confidential nature will not go up.  But then again, I don’t ever write such material on anything other than the surface of my neurons.  So henceforth I still plan on blogging regularly.  Just not all the posts will be for public consumption. You’ve been forewarned.

Blogging Update

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As you may have noticed, I am back to blogging on a regular schedule.  In fact this past week, I got a full five workdays all covered.  And was no easy task.  Now I’ll be the first to admit that not all of my blogs are actually written on a daily basis.  Rather I am liking WordPress’ option of scheduling blogs.  So now I get to make a buffer of the blogs I’d to publish, and I can keep up with regular blogging even if I am not.  That said, if some interesting timely news breaks, I try to make sure I get it out right away.

Still even with the options of scheduling blogs, the amount of writing takes its toll.  Currently I am on hiatus from my novel.  But that is simply because my life is always busy in general.  I hope to keep this regularity up.  And I plan also on more regular updates to my writing and my other projects.

Also I’ve played around with the theme and static content of this blog.  I think I like the current setup and I’ll keep it around for a while.

Moving In…

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I migrated my blog to its new home here a few days ago.  Already I feel a lot more comfortable than I ever did in Blogger.  It feels like a moved from an apartment to a single family detached house.  And yes I am liking it.

Like an new house owner, I am now in the getting settled in and “painting” mode.  I’m experimenting with different professionally made themes.  I’ll probably end up making my own sometime in the future.  I cleaned out the glob of categories created, when I imported my data.  So now I have a bunch of posts that I need to retag and re-categorize.  I’ll work on that part slowly.  I plan on putting up some my articles and setting up a gallery sometime in the future too.  This is quite cool, and I am glad that all I needed to do is buying hosting in GoDaddy, set up a few options, install WordPress as a Hosted App and import my Blogger content.  So painless and honestly a lot more fun then I thought it would be.  Now if I can figure out this Drupal thing, my hosted web life would be total awesomeness.

A Week into the Year, and Back to Writing

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A non-calendar week (7 days) passed already for this year. And I can say that I’m about 1/52 or less than 2% in completing this year’s goals. One goals is to finish writing and publishing my first science fiction novel, Echoes in the Endless. Thanks to my good friend Domenic’s suggestions I am reworking the first chapter again.

I decided to use a more conventional, simpler narrative. I dropped the techno-lingo and I will try using 21st century terminology normal people can understand. Normal as in non-military scifi geeks. 🙂 Overall I have a cleaner plot, and nicer story in mind. And I will avoid sinking the reader with too much background at once.

Anyways, the goal is to edit at least the first chapter this week. Then I plan on reworking in an earlier version of chapter 2.

Oh no! What happened to your site?!?

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If you are wondering about the strange collage of colours on this blog, well, it is totally my fault. Basically while the default Blogger themes are nice, I find them limiting. So I grabbed the thisawayBlue theme from Blogger, and started to replace elements in it. I am still a long ways from getting the right mix of colours. So please expect some breakage and truly zany colour combinations. I promise I’ll find and implement a decent looking theme in the next few weeks.

A Call to Action and Progress in Writing

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I’m disappointed folks. Where are all my comments on my excerpt? Did you even read it?!? Bah!!!

Well so far, one my coworkers mentioned the wordiness of the passage. I know. I’m guilty of wanting to jam pack my sentences. This makes them almost unreadable. I know. I know. I should use terse short brief simple sentences. But where’s the playfulness?

A few lucky privileged people can read the entire work so far on Google Docs. In fact I’ll probably let a maximum of five people to read my current work. I’d like to know your initial impressions.

I’ll admit it. Even that one short passage needs work. Ten rewrites later, it still needs work. But I’m holding off with major editing. I’m write a rough copy of the novel. Then I’ll edit the hell out of it.

Writing chapter 4 right now. Wish me luck.

Echoes in the Endless (A Preview)

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Today brought many disappointments to light. Some trivial, others complicated in their machinations. Then I remembered my todo list for this year. And since a few of you asked me personally about what I’m writing. So I present to you an excerpt of chapter 1 of Echoes in the Endless.

Note that this is an early revision of the book. The end product may be radically different. Enjoy.

Echoes in the Void
By: Dorian Antoni Puła
Chapter 01

Two Ligian Jaguar interceptors tore out of the Magnus Prime Ice Cloud that marked the end of the Gamma Trannes star system. The milky white ice cloud also marked the edge of Allegiance space. Captain Ewa “Hunter” Kruk sighed as her interceptor cleared the last of the ice cloud.

“No immediate threats detected.”, Ewa said. She watched as the sensor mast’s data floated ghostly in front of her forward cockpit monitor.

“Negative on Allegiance presence.”, her wingman repeated. Ewa looked to her right and sighted her wingman’s interceptor. The monitor overlaid a green triangle around the flat triangular hull of her wingman’s spacecraft. The interceptor’s camouflage skin softly faded from a light grey speckled with blobs of white into a uniformly dark grey. Powdery ice dust swirled off the interceptor’s forward swept wings and the high gain transmitter mounted to the belly of the interceptor. The transmitter encrypted and relayed the information to the Sentinel carrier group still hiding inside the ice cloud.

“Acknowledged Alpha Flight. Proceed with sector sweep.”, the deep voice of Admiral Jeremy Nelson boomed in her ears.

Ewa looked down at the floor of her cockpit. The cockpit’s bottom monitor displayed a large hexagonal sensor array hugging the belly of her own Jaguar. Thin long pale graceful ice dust trails streamed off the sensor’s edges. The monitor drew a orange outline around the sensor. Cleaning sensor array – 60%. The message written in large orange font flashed across the sensor. The surface of the sensor pulsated as its membrane tried to throw off the sticky dust. Cleaning sensor array – 63%.

“Permission to clear buffer zone. Particle interference with array.”, Ewa said.

“Granted. Proceed with caution.”

The admiral’s words sent a shiver down Ewa’s spine. Without the standard set of capital ship buster and anti-spacecraft missiles on either her or her wingman’s interceptor, she felt vulnerable. A Jaguar interceptor could outrun and outmaneuver any Allegiance interceptor. But if the Allegiance placed a beacon drone close to their position, it would sense their presence and sent out an alert to the nearest Allegiance fleet. Neither the carrier nor the accompanying Hibernian lance frigate would have time to escape. Ewa breathed deeply and eased her fighter out of the cloud.

To be continued…

All rights reserved. Copyright Dorian Pula.

Update: 200th post too! w00t!