Geek Experiments: Writing Challenge Update #4

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 23rd, 2013

Holy crap I was really really lazy this week. For the first half of the month I was doing amazing to keep up with my writing… the past week has been abysmal. Between the 16th to the 20th I didn’t write at all.

What the Fuck Danny?

Honestly, there were a lot of errands I had to run and I had one of those emotional rollercoaster weeks which basically means, um, I just didn’t feel like writing.

This is not a good report for where my writing is since it’s basically, “oops, I messed up” but I did learn somethings.

How To Write Everyday

While setting a goal is great and all there is the one big problem that you’ll come up to. Writing isn’t difficult, developing ideas to write about is very hard on a daily basis. I suffered a 4 day drought and kept thinking, “I’ll make it up tomorrow”. Now I have to make up a few days of not writing really quickly.

A place to write is incredibly important. My favorite place to write (and where I’m writing this now) is the CSI Coffee Pub in Toronto. Ever since I’ve found this place I’ve written every single time I was here and it’s become fairly Pavlovian. If I don’t write when I’m here I feel… off.

The downside is that if I’m completely broke, I can’t afford to pay for transit to get out here and the coffee which I feel I must buy in order to sit here. I doubt they’d kick me out, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t have one.

All in all, I’m behind in my words and I still haven’t got a good enough idea on how to consistently generate ideas. At least today I’ve written quite a bit but now I just need to keep up with that. Currently at 8903 words total and I should be at 10500. Fuck.

Geek Experiment: Writing Challenge Update #3

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 15th, 2013

I’m half-way through this challenge! So far, so-fucking-good. Sort of.

Rules of the Game

I should have covered this before, but the 500 words a day is the average words I want to write per day. Or to put it another way, if failure was to not hit 500 words on a given day, I would have failed a few days into the challenge. But because I feel the need to add to my word-count every day, I sit down to write every day, and that’s the key to keep writing. Just sitting down and doing it.

The other thing is that writers can be very lazy. Yeah, writing is nice and all and kind of calming once you start doing it, but most writers don’t want to sit down and face that stupid blank page.

At least I don’t.

Binge Writing

There are several days where I’ve written like 35 or 50 words the entire day which puts me significantly behind where I want to be. So every few days I freak out and binge write when that happens. The worst part isn’t writing, it’s figuring out what to write. I’ve cracked open the laptop and just sat there, slack-jawed, thinking “shit, I have nothing to write about.”

This is the worst thing that can happen and there’s about 600 words that were just a stream of consciousness writing a few days ago. Nothing publishable came from it but it did help me organize some thoughts.

All in all, I’m surprised I’m keeping up with this as well as I am. I didn’t think I could really keep up.

Elf Girlfriends, The White House and the Deathstar #randomgeek

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 14th, 2013

CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

I nearly spit my coffee onto my laptop laughing so hard!

The White House officially responds to the “Build a Death Star” petition. The following is the tl;dr version

The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: R’ha

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 12th, 2013

Maybe a bit serious for Saturday morning, but it’s pretty awesome!

Lord of the Rings and Robot Metal #randomgeek

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 10th, 2013

Want a 25 minute tour of the International Space Station? BAM! You’re welcome!

This band is so metal it’s made entirely of robots.

And Legolas saves the day. Again.

Poor C’thulhu. All he wants to do is bring about the end times but the stars just aren’t right.

CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

How to make lost better? How about turn it into a 16-bit game about the stupidity behind it.

Geek Experiment: Writing Challenge

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 8th, 2013

I’m choosing Tuesdays as a great day to update all of ya on my geek experiments. If you’re just joining in, I decided to run a weird experiment on my life every month. I figure since I’m a geek, I should be able to hack myself a better, fuller life.

This month is my writing challenge. I would love to pull in a full time income via writing, it’d be exciting and awesome and I could work from anywhere in the world! Including at home in my boxer briefs, scratching my ass being unsure what day it is.

Where Am I?

So far I’m ahead of schedule and no one is more shocked by this than me! I generally classify myself as extremely efficient. Most of my friends translate that to “Danny is a world class slacker and really fucking lazy.”

I need new friends.

Well, ok, they’re honest. I love doing nothing, but I put a lot of effort into doing nothing. Case in point, I’m typing this in Dvorak touch-type. I know what you’re thinking, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

A Higher Form of Laziness

A few years back I decided that I needed to finally learn touch-type where you type without looking at the keyboard, so I did a bit of research. There I came across why the letters are all mixed up on the QWERTY keyboard which was typewriters would jam when secretaries typed to fast. Years after they learned to touch type and typewriters stopped getting jammed, a man named Dvorak devised a new keyboard layout that would be better for your wrists and allow you to type faster.

Enter the Dvorak layout.

So not only did I decide to learn to touch-type, I learned to touch-type in Dvorak–but I still can’t touch-type in QWERTY. While I really enjoy typing this way, there are some downsides such as my Mac’s login screen is hard-set to QWERTY and not being able to really use anyone else’s computer efficiently.

The upside is when someone tries to use my computer their face screws up and they lash out with “what the fuck is wrong with your computer?!”

Heh.

Learning to Type in Dvorak

If you want to learn to type in Dvorak, it’s pretty easy to start. On a Mac, in System Preferences, it’s under Language & Text in the Input Sources tab. On a Windows machine it’s in Control Panel under Regional and Language Options.

To actually learn to use it, well, just start using it! It’s a pain when you start and I kept a print out of the keyboard layout to hunt and peck to start. After a while you can retire the paper, I kept the layout as a desktop image for a bit after if I forgot where some letters were. I wouldn’t suggest popping out keys as login screens still use QWERTY.

Total word count is 4289 which is 789 words over where I should be at 3500. Booyah!

Electrostatic Discharge and Row Row Row Your Office Chairs #Random

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 7th, 2013

Learn all about Electrostatic Discharge. Also, learn how to swear when you electrocute yourself.

I’ve worked in many offices. None of them were like this, I feel fucking gypped. On a side note, I just realized where the word gypped comes from and I feel like a total moron.

Bitch-ass-sweet Jurrassic Park Half Life 2 mod!

Writing Stuff Challenge

Posted by Danny F. Santos on January 4th, 2013

My poor, poor blog. I’ve let it go and it’s stagnated and hasn’t really been doing much.

I’ve been thinking of taking it in a bit of a new direction anyway. I mean, I’ll still post my Saturday morning cartoons which I love and eventually start doing my FMLFTW Videos again and maybe even restart the webcomic.

All that is fine, but I’m adding a new angle to the site which stems from a question, “if geeks are so smart, why is it a lot of times we’re so messed up?”