Adventures in Adventure, Episode 1: Treadmill desk

So, okay. Confession time. Since I graduated high school, I have put on a couple of freshman fifteens. (Which is ironic, because as a dirt-poor college freshman, I actually lost weight. Funny how only eating Campbell’s soup and baked potatoes will do that to you. Also probably why my skin was gray.)

Flash forward (mumble mumble) years. I have a treadmill. And I try to use it. Because I need exercise. It’s so weird, because I really enjoy the treadmill when I’m actually on it. Kind of. I crank up some music from my “current project” playlist and do all sorts of focused daydreaming about my characters and story. The biggest problem is forcing myself to actually get ON the treadmill.

One day, as I tweeted whinily about this topic, my friend and “little sister” Debutante, Joelle Anthony, tweeted me back about her treadmill desk. She sent me a link to a blog post about it and I looked in cynical awe at her workstation: a computer mounted above her treadmill. Awe, because who can do such a thing? Cynicism because, well, I can’t.

But lately the idea has been nagging at me. I am really bad about getting all the exercise I need, and really good about getting more than enough calories during the day. I work out on a semi-regular basis and I’m in decent shape. But why not take it further? And why not get out of the chair so my chiropractor can stop giving me those “but you know you totally asked for this” looks?

So this morning I rigged something up for myself. It’s really hideous and hilariously treacherous looking. I’m sure my laptop is screaming silently.

But it kind of works! As of now, I’ve walked 54 minutes and burned 150 calories. Aside from some technical issues (getting the keyboard up high enough for comfort, getting the monitor close enough to see, wondering if I will have to invest in a new “work” wardrobe of very lightweight walking clothes, accidentally turning the speed up to five that one time), it’s going very well indeed.

I do have some questions. Such as, when am I going to shower? Do I get to wear workout clothes all day? How bad am I going to smell when the UPS man comes?

Overall, though, pretty cool. I know my speed (around 1.5 mph, sometimes a little faster) isn’t going to win me any awards, but it’s definitely better than slumping in my desk chair all day. And it gives me a place to wear my Reebok Easytones, so hopefully I can use them up and replace them with the much smaller and more fashionable ones I found about four seconds after I’d ordered the Large White Whale versions.

Typing doesn’t seem to be a problem. And the weird thing is, I took a break for lunch and thought, “Well, gee, I don’t want to eat too much, since I have to get back on the treadmill.” And then I thought, “I probably shouldn’t drink a Diet Coke now, since I have to get back on the treadmill.” So I’m drinking (gasp!) water!

The cons include the fact that the whole time I’m on the treadmill, I have this vague urge to go do something else (i.e., go slump in my desk chair and surf Facebook). Also, the setup is currently pretty giant and ugly and precludes more intense use of the treadmill.

But the pros… they could be very pro indeed! I am looking forward to finding out.

Just for fun, here is my temporary setup. This is a small wooden bar with a footstool on top of it, with a photo storage box on top of that, with a board on it, balanced on the top of the treadmill, with my laptop sitting on the board. The keyboard and mouse are on a metal shelf (actually a very good fit) that is zip-tied to the treadmill. Then there is a memory foam pillow with a bolt of flannel on it supporting the keyboard and another photo storage box under the wireless mouse.

Add it all up and you get what we call “pure class”!

Cheers!

13 comments July 18th, 2010

Striving for good penwomanship

I’ve realized something lately. It strikes me whenever I go to sign a bookplate or inscribe a book.

I have handwriting performance anxiety.

Ever since I read this article at Slate, I’ve been mildly obsessed with my handwriting. The article links to some images of an italic style writing and gives a basic explanation. That was enough to set me off and running.

I have decent handwriting. Well, that’s partly true. My printing is tiny and perfect and so slow it would bore a sloth to tears. My script is messy and crazy and missing letters all over the place. If I try really hard and pay very close attention, it’s better, but then it looks forced, somehow.

Italics, I thought, would be my answer.

And it was, kind of.

The biggest change is in my journal. The first few entries, written before I read that article, are in my old, precise block print. Then the italics take over. And I have to say–I love writing that way. I love the way it looks, and how fast it is, and how much more accurate it is than my cursive writing.

BUT I CAN’T DO IT IN PUBLIC! I seriously can’t! I have probably signed ten books since I started working on my penmanship, but I can never get up the nerve to use my new, pretty italic writing. It’s EASIER. It’s FASTER. It’s totally natural to me, when I write in a private document. But I just can’t do it!

I don’t understand! It’s not fair.

So anyway, next time you ask me to sign a book and I get a really weird look on my face and my knuckles turn white from grabbing the pen so hard, don’t worry. I’m not freaking out.

I’m just trying to get up the nerve to write pretty for you.

So how’s your handwriting these days? Beautiful? Abysmal? Somewhere in between? Would your first-grade teacher dash off to sob in the bathroom after seeing it?

3 comments May 27th, 2010

Bloglet #4

Are your account passwords safe enough? It’s getting easier and easier for unsavory sorts to hack into accounts. I know how tempting it is to stick with an easy old password that you can type without even thinking about it, but it’s not worth risking your privacy and personal information.

It’s really frustrating to try to think up a password that fits all of the new security requirements–capital and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. So instead of remembering “funtimes” you have to remember “X.91.Ww46r5″?

Here’s a tip: take your old password and just modify it. That way you’ll still have the memory of the password.

So take “funtimes” and make it “fUn.t1mes.”

The more you know…!

2 comments March 14th, 2009

Tweet dreams are made of this…

Okay, so I’m a maniacal DIY-er. I would rather spend eight days figuring out how to change something myself than have someone else fix it for me. I will study and modify code until my brain swims with it at night.

But heaven help me, I don’t get Twitter!

I don’t understand it! I seriously. do not. understand it.

Like, yes, there are a lot of people I like and I want to follow them. I also routinely get emails saying that SouthernMissouriTruckersAlliance is following me, or whatever. And I know people have even been released from foreign prisons because they had the presence of mind to Tweet about it.

I know the process, I just don’t know WHY. Or how you follow people. Do you keep Twitter as a bookmark and check it obsessively? Do you put it with your RSS feeds? Do you get text messages on your phone?

And what do you do with the information you find when you find it?

I’m begging someone to clue me in.

PS – Happy birthday to Alex/Scott. May Bill Gates never kidnap anyone you love. Again.

PPS – Thanks to Caryn’s very nice explanation (in the comments), I am going to be brave and try to stay a-twitter of things. If you want to be my Twitterfriend, here’s my profile.

9 comments March 9th, 2009

I did it.

I am sending this post from my car in the parking lot at work. I just
have to share that after 3 months, I finally figured out how to get
the icons showing every seafood and Thai restaurant OFF the map screen.

What an amazing way to start a weekend.

k.

7 comments January 16th, 2009

Amazon Kindle review… at last!

Ooh, I’m naughty. I have no excuse for my absence except that I’ve become obsessed with sewing quilts for Chinese orphans. I know that sounds weird, but it’s strangely true. Next obsession: find a way to get the quilts to the orphans.

To make it up to you (ha!), here’s a video featuring my favorite puppets… the Muppets! This was produced by someone who is near and dear to me, so spread it around, tell your friends, etc. There should be more coming out at some point, so I’ll post those as well.

Now, shall we begin our Kindle review?

I got my Kindle as a Christmas present, which means I actually put my hands on it in February (that’s a joke… I mean, it’s true, but read it in a jokey voice). Ironically, I had just decided to decrease the size of my personal library and utilize the public library more. I know we’re supposed to support our author brethren by buying books, but trust me–I buy a LOT of books, if given the chance. So one trip to Bookstar down the street will make up for six months of librariness for me.

Anyway, I can’t say no to a gadget, so I didn’t say no to my Kindle.

Digression: when I was growing up, Christmas stockings are opened first and contain things like dental floss, chewing gum, maybe some hair ties, a keychain, a few bags of candy… and an orange in the toe, always. The husb’s family came out for the holidays, and we were planning to do stockings. I bought the requisite collection of small-ticket items, even ranging as high as a new head for his electric toothbrush.

But the husb’s family does things differently–we opened stockings after the rest of the gifts. And as the husb pulled out a pack of orange-mint gum and a bag of Skittles, I found a printed sheet of paper announcing my Kindle and realized that his family puts items of a different ticket in their stockings.

Lesson learned. I actually ended up eating the Skittles and chewing the gum myself, by the way. Don’t tell the husb. He left them on the dresser for a month! What does he expect?

On with the review!

So, Kindle. I was waiting to write a review until I had a real “whole book” experience with it. Meaning, I bought a book and read the whole thing and got a feel for the device. I had thought this would be Eileen Cook’s Unpredictable, but it turns out that after I bought the Kindle edition, I met Eileen in person at a signing in NYC and bought a hard copy so she could sign it for me.

Fast forward to this recent trip: the book? The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory. I downloaded the whole thing and read it all on the Kindle, and as a result, I am pretty much a convert.

The Kindle, for those of you who don’t know of it, is a small e-book (“electronic book”) reader produced by Amazon.com. You buy e-books by downloading them from the Kindle Store section of Amazon.com, and they are sent through Amazon’s wireless “whispernet” to your Kindle. The whispernet, I think, borrows from cell towers in the area. It eats up battery power, so you can switch it off when you aren’t whispering downloads to your Kindle.

The books are downloaded as files, which allows you to read them on your Kindle screen and turn the page using the buttons.

Here are some broad sweeps:

It takes getting used to, but I did get used to it. It’s light and comfortable to hold, and easy to read. The screen is not backlit, which means you can’t read at night without a lamp, but also means there’s no more strain on your eyes than if you were reading any old book.

GOOD THINGS:

* It’s small and easy to pack. This is great for people who tend to load their suitcases, purses, bookbags, what-have-you, with books before taking any excursion. Right before I zip my carry-on, I tend to get panicky and throw books in willy-nilly, which adds about eight pounds of weight to my load. (Meaningless, since I always buy books at the airport anyway.) The Kindle carries many books at once, and until you actually get on the plane and have to turn off your wireless devices, you can download still more books.

* You can download a sample chapter of any e-book before buying it. This is really cool. It’s the e-version of loitering in a bookstore and reading the first few pages before buying the book–heretofore unknown in online book sales. There’s no charge, and once you download the sample, you can keep it or dump it or whatever.

* There’s plenty of file space on the Kindle, but if you need more, you can use a memory card. All of your books are listed on the home menu, and if you want to free up space, just remove the file–but Amazon.com has a record of your purchases and you can re-download any time.

* It’s easy to use. The controls are simple and intuitive.

* The battery life is very respectable, when the wifi is off (there’s an easy on-off switch for the wifi so you can read on planes and don’t drain the power).

* The screen is as easy on your eyes as any book. And you can adjust the text size.

* You can email or upload files from your own computer (using a cord that comes with the Kindle). I’ve seen agents’ blogs where they forward manuscripts to themselves and therefore only carry home a Kindle instead of several hundred pages of submissions. For them I think it’s basically ideal. I have also used it a time or two for my own work, which is fun. (You protect your Kindle from junkmail by specifying what addresses you can receive email from).

* You can also access Wikipedia (but I haven’t tried) as well as read non-Amazon e-books (but not those in a proprietary format, like Sony e-Reader) and even listen to audiobooks (but I haven’t tried that, either).

* You can take notes, add bookmarks, etc. It has a little keyboard at the bottom.

* There’s a very easy way to put the Kindle to sleep, so you don’t have to constantly reboot it if you’re reading in short intervals.

* Bestsellers are $9.99 (even some books that, in hardback, are $25) and many other books are less expensive.

* No more overstuffed bookshelves! A truly minimalist approach to reading.

“MEH” THINGS:

* The minimalism prevents sharing or passing a book along when you’re done with it. I’m a big fan of sharing the lit, but with a Kindle, you obviously can’t pass something on to a sibling or friend, unless you’re willing to part with your Kindle.

* There are no page numbers. I know this sounds trivial, but I like to always be aware of my exact position. Instead, they use “section numbers” (or segment numbers) that can go as high as necessary (a recent book I read was 10,000 sections). There’s a bar at the bottom that shows you relatively how far you are–like a progress bar– but I never realized how much I paid attention to page numbers until I lost them.

* Not every book, old or new, is available on the Kindle. Many are. But many aren’t. I guess that’s where hard copies come in.

* The reading area is smaller than a traditional page. This is mostly distracting when you are just looking at the Kindle, not when you’re reading. When you’re involved in a book, it doesn’t matter. But then you set it down and think, “Dang, that’s small!”

* Although the notes feature is cool, typing is a little tough.

* The screen doesn’t produce light, so if it’s dim, you need a book light. But it is a little shiny, so you need to find the correct angle to avoid glare (like reading a shiny magazine).

* One “previous page” control is right where I keep thinking a “next page” control should be. So I’m constantly hitting that and then getting confused about where I am.

* The case is kind of silly. It took me a little while to get used to how non-functional it is. Like, it looks like it has an elastic strap to hold the device down while you read, but that only works when the case is shut. I mostly read without the case at all.

* Occasionally, on documents you email to yourself, the formatting comes across wonky. Like, it will mash the paragraphs together or get rid of indents.

* Let’s face it–if you like having full bookshelves, or holding an actual book in your hands, the Kindle won’t be your favorite item. Which is to say, if you aren’t into minimalism, it’s probably too minimalist for your taste. Part of the joy of owning it is knowing that it’s a clutter solution.

* The home menu could be better organized, which is to say, could be more elaborate than just a list of your books. But I’m hoping a firmware upgrade will happen along soon that might add a few bells and whistles.

* Searching for books to buy from the Kindle is easy; browsing is a pain. If I know exactly what I want, I use the Kindle to obtain it; if I want to browse, I use my computer.

* The display is nice and readable, but it’s not really any fancier than a plain old book. Your reading experience isn’t more fancy or mindblowing. It’s just more convenient.

OVERALL:

I’m glad I have my Kindle. It’s great, great, great for travelling. The flash that occurs when you turn the page (and the e-ink, or whatever it’s called, rearranges itself) isn’t distracting at all once you get into your reading–you really don’t notice it. And it does have the feeling of reading a book. You take in the info the same way and get into the characters as well.

The price is a little high for something that doesn’t really save you very much money, unless you buy hardcover books non-stop. On the other hand, it can also play audiobooks, so if you don’t have an iPod, it save that cost.

It’s fun and convenient and compact. There are certainly worse ways to spend your money.

Cheers!

I’m off to work on more quilts.

10 comments June 17th, 2008

Ultimate nerd confession bonanza!!! + a little rambling.

(Winston photos dedicated to Tom; please note that they do not reflect the tone or content of the preceding and successive paragraphs.)

First of all, I lied a little, inadvertantly. I did finish the draft yesterday, but then this morning I went back and re-finished it. I figured it doesn’t break the two-week wait rule for revisions because it was the end. It turns out Tom was right, and less leprechauns needed to be squashed than I’d previously believed.

I ended up adding a thousand words, but seriously, don’t ask me how. But now, it’s done. For real. For real real.

The party last night was cool. The young woman being feted was turning 24, and being around a bunch of 24-year-olds reminds me how easy it is to feel old. Like, “when the timer runs out and the kitchen light goes out, everybody scream! AAAAHHHH!” I am young enough yet to appreciate the high-spiritedness that prompts this behavior, but too old to actually join in the screaming.

I ended up leaving rather early, mother-in-law in tow, which worked out nicely. Although it’s so windy here! I hate this kind of wind. It feels spiteful. And Winston spent the night at daycare, because I had no idea I’d be such a party wuss. So I missed him. Apparently I am a pack animal.

Happily, the giant tree next to our bed didn’t crash into the roof (it never does!) and the pieces of destroyed hot tub in the backyard did not fly through our neighbors’ living room windows, so that’s cool.

The husb had told someone I was late coming to the party because I’d finished another book, and the very kind recipient of this information congratulated me heartily, which made me feel like I was cheating. It kind of feels like I’ve finished clearing the rubble at a construction site. “Congratulations! You did it!” It’s kind of like, well, I made this mess, I had to clean it up eventually.

But I do appreciate the sentiment, for sure.

Now I shall confess my ultimate nerd-dom, and for anyone who wonders what it takes to make someone complete a whole novel, I say: make yourself a chart.

What? A chart? Yes, a chart. Preferably with some graphs and some mathematical functions.

Be ready. Put on your pocket protectors.

Here is my chart.

Column A is the date.
Column B is total word count.
Column C is the number of words I wrote on any given day (Excel does the math for me)
Column D is the average number of words written at any point, based on the final daily average word count, which can be found at the top of Column C

The first graph reflects both actual words written and the average slope of words written (column D), and I still don’t totally understand that violet line, but the husb wanted to see it. And I am nothing if not accommodating. The second graph is words by day.

Let me tell you, nothing will motivate you to write more words more effectively than seeing that your word count for the day looks like a ranch house next to a bunch of skyscrapers.

Okay, I’m feeling a little loopy, so I’m going to go now.

19 comments March 16th, 2008

Exci…tations…

My current sewing room configuration is not working for me.

A long time ago, after I had gotten my sewing machine, much to the husb’s chagrin, and started buying fabric, much to the husb’s chagrin, and stated spreading stuff all over the downstairs living room (our upstairs is the main level of the house), much to the husb’s chagrin, I decided to take over the “exercise” room and make it a sewing room (because, let’s face it, not a ton of exercising was happening in there).

One weekend, while the husb was out of town, I went to the office supply store and bought the cheapest desk I could find. It was $60. The guy at the store carried it out to my car, and then when I got home, I had to open the package and carry it downstairs, one piece at a time. I then spent approximately 12.5 hours assembling the thing.

It’s an L-shape, fairly typical of what you might find in any home office anywhere. I like having a keyboard tray because it gives me a place to line up my scissors in an impressive row that screams to the errant houseguest, “DON’T TOUCH ME! YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!”

Other than that, the desk is less than ideal. The little wing that holds the sewing machine is great. The big side wing is not big enough or tall enough to function as a proper cutting table. And the fact that they’re joined together means I can only choose one of two room configurations, neither of which is terribly efficient.

So, after deciding last month that I needed to switch out my L desk for a separate cutting table and sewing machine table, I finally got my wish. (Yes, finally, after twenty whole days. What suffering I endured.)

Better yet, the new tables were free, because we actually already owned them. They were the husb’s old work tables.

They. Are. Awesome.

Ironically, they were designed to be an L-desk, but they aren’t attached. They’re on legs that raise up to a height of something like 36″, which is a great height for cutting, because you don’t have to bend down. The cutting table piece is as big as I could hope to go, AND it has a little curved cut-out where I can stand to be closer to my work.

I am so happy.

All I’m wondering is, (1) how long will it take me to find someone to come get the old desk and haul it away, and (2) how are we going to get the new stuff downstairs? I think we’ll have to take the outside stairs on the side of the house. Ah well.

I’ll post before and after pictures soon… in the meantime, I’m so darn excited. It’s a little sad. It may even be a LOT sad. But I don’t care! I’m too excited.

Happy Monday!

January 14th, 2008

Megan, are you out there?

Megan, Alphaville-loving Megan, are you out there? Have you seen the new Futurama movie?

I saw it last night and thought of you.

(Warning: weird sounds will result from clicking on this link… don’t do it if you work in a cubicle farm.)

That is all. Thank you.

Now I really really really need to get back to revising. Meh.

2 comments December 16th, 2007

Gadget love and film festival notes.

Item #1: My iPhone.

“Sue” (should I say her last name is “Donym”? Get it? Get it? Huh? Huh?) and I left the house Friday at approximately 12:20 pm. We arrived at the mall at 12:40ish. I immediately started worrying because there were SO many cars pulling into the garage. Sue was pointing out how most of them were blue-haired old ladies, or tarts, and trying to calm me down. We went inside to find a pretty long line. Much longer than I had expected. We found a spot at the back, next to a woman with an adorable 9-year-old daughter, and Sue went to count the folks ahead of us — 133.

I have no idea what we did all day. I spent a lot of time anxious that at 5:59 p.m., one minute before the phones officially went on sale, four hundred billion people would join their friends in line ahead of us. My anxiety was quite wasted, though, because not only were mall security peeps on the lookout for people giving frontsies and backsies, but at one point, the police showed up and ticketed lineskippers for disturbing the peace! People who attempted to jump into line also earned the loud derision of the crowd behind them, and a walk of shame down the line after being expelled.

(Did I mention that Sue didn’t even WANT one? She just came with me for support, and to buy two for my friends? What a gal.) So we got the iPhones, came home, tried to hook them up, and encountered the same activation glitches as all the millions of other iPhone users across the country. We told ourselves that it would work soon enough, and left to attend to…

Item #2: 48-Hour Film Festival.

The screening was Friday night. They’d divided the 80-some entries into groups of 10, made up of various genres. I am pleased to report that ours held up very well. The festival producer found the husb at a bar later and was very complimentary. We also had a great showing from our cast and crew, lots of audience support. Here are a few observations, which also function as the advice I promised Miss Scarlet I would post.

* Almost every film, regardless of genre, descended into a kind of slapstick. Our film was Sci-Fi, and very serious from start to finish. I’m not saying the slapstick wasn’t funny, or that the seriousness made ours sooo much better, but it really stood out.

* Cheesy things: Guns (every time). Spy movies that are just about one event, like “stealing the jewel”. Female vamp characters played by women who don’t really know how to vamp. Dream sequences, especially when the locations don’t support it (e.g., the “running to one another through a field of wildflowers” bit, but played at the local playground or in someone’s teeny backyard).

* Stuff I’m glad we did: Had an original score, thanks to a some musician friends. Shot the very first scenes almost last, after the crew and actors were in the groove. Minimized the fake blood on set. Kept all of our shooting locations fairly close to home base. Had people fill out their paperwork early, before things got insane. Incorporated the prop (a bumper sticker) in a way that supported the story — some people just had bumper stickers stuck on shirts or butts, etc. Had a boatload of extras ready to help us. Had really great actors pre-booked.

* Stuff we didn’t do that we should have: spent some time Friday night breaking down the script. Created graphics we knew we would need early on, because you will never ever have time to do it later (we didn’t really). Had more clearly delineated jobs on set.

We went into it with a vague story idea, thinking we would completely (probably) ditch it when we found out our genre. What we ended up making actually was a variation on that original idea. So if we did it again, I would have a set of vague ideas that I felt strongly about — not necessarily all fleshed out, but a germ I know could grow.

Another thing I would do is figure out what “types” my actors could play. We ended up using two of ours as government agent-type people. They did a great job, and it actually works very well (in my humble opinion), but as we were shooting, I found myself wondering how I had ended up writing two such stereotypical characters. I think because in fiction, you have the power to take any stereotypical character and either make him part of the scenery, or give him quirks and lessen the stereotype — I just didn’t think about how quickly a visual type is established when a character is seen onscreen. And had we tried to go for a quirk, in a supporting character, it would have pulled too much attention away from the A storyline. Happily, the actors and the editing elevated the characters above what I had written.

Lesson learned, I hope.

The screening was fun, and I’m all amped to write more scripts for the husb to direct. He is very talented and swoonworthy, if I do say so myself.

Item #3: back to my iPhone.

Saturday noonish I called the Apple 800# that had been out of order the previous night. Shockingly, I got through, and after spending maybe a minute and a half on hold, I spoke to a human who told me he was putting my activation through. Sure enough, the phone started working soon after. I did a bunch of hoodoo to get the husb’s phone working as well, and then I started playing.

Syncing is SO easy. You can choose playlists of music, albums of photos, groups from your contacts, calendars from iCal, email accounts from Mail. I got a Yahoo! address, which is the kind that lets the phone act as a Blackberry, where you get the email as soon as it arrives. I put my zip codes into the weather widget, loaded up a little album of Winston photos, a couple gigabytes of music, and voila…

It’s a really beautiful thing.

Next task — create a bookmarks menu of blogs that are not just the RSS feeds. The iPhone is not necessarily friends with RSS just yet.

But I heart it, bad. Especially for Mac users — if you are about to spend a couple hundred dollars on a phone, and another couple hundred on a Blackberry, just get an iPhone instead. It is seriously fun and cool.

All right, my brother and sister-in-law are in town and will be back from their walk soon, so I’d better go get dressed. We’re going down to funky Melrose Avenue for lunch and boutiquing.

Here’s a photo taken with the iPhone… as you can see, he is not quite as enamored with this new gadget sibling as the husb and I are…

4 comments July 2nd, 2007