Thursday Photo: enter the dragon

Downtime

The site went down for quite a bit of time today. Don’t worry, the Web Walrus has since fended off the alien invaders and everything is back. Apologies for the disruption.

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Medicine Books

School

School is… busy. And not particularly exciting.

Thematics

I thought a bit about my current project yesterday, which is a novel in first draft, and which I ought to tell you about soon. Some themes just didn’t seem to work out as I wanted them to. Crucially, a few things stayed too well-hidden (needing a smart, obsessive conspiracy theorist to ever dig them out and believe in them) and a few others became far too obvious (which means that I thought too little of the reader, a point that I am in fact quite embarrassed to admit).

I ought to work these out soon.

Books

I’m reading Orhan Pamuk’s Other Colors right now (and quite enjoying myself). One of the things that’s mentioned in it has to do with the nature of books. Now, the memory isn’t exactly sharp in my mind now (I read this bit last Friday), but I seemed to recall him mentioning how there tended to be books we liked and reread in an attempt to remember that first experience, why we liked it and how it was back then; and then they are books that we love in an entirely different way, books that we go back to and discover again, books that we depend on and visit but never revisit. He describes these as being like “medicine” as I remember it.

And I started to think back to my shelf, and thought about which books fell into which category, like I was sorting out socks or something. It’s an interesting exercise. It helps you realise which books (or more specifically, which stories) matter most to you and which ones are confined to just being good memories. Despite loving a great bunch of books, the selection did reduce it to the daily-bread ones, the ones I had clearly to depend on so far and probably will for the rest of my life.

I’m sure you’ve got books like that too, not necessarily in a writer sort of way, but more in the way of being, of a person, of living. Treat it as a little exercise. Figure out which books matter to you. It might be interesting.

Opus

It was with more than a hint of sadness that I noted how Berkeley Breathed will have to stop work on his comics as he battles with Spasmodic Torticollis. I’ve always enjoyed his work, and my heart sinks a little to know that I won’t be seeing any more Opus or Bloom County. Still, all the best, Mr. Breathed, and I hope things get better for you soon.

[via Salon.com]

Formats

Some things still aren’t quite ironed out here, so don’t worry if things look unusual around here. We’re sorting it out.

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Tuesday Photo: sepia roof

Business As Usual

Ordinaries And Joy

Strange how it can seem to be such a big thing one year and such an ordinary thing the next. I must be getting old; but in any case, my birthday went by me very quietly, like a ninja who popped by just to remind me that I was about to get older.

The night before my birthday, I went out for a simple dinner with my family. I received a couple of birthday gifts, including some James Joyce to add into my library and this site, all of which made me rather happy. (I suppose I should say that the site is a rather unique sort of gift and if I had to play favourites then this would be the leading contender. Not to belittle the others, of course. Certainly not in any imaginable way.)

Birthday morning, and I received a few well-wishes. Then I started work on some paper that’s due in a couple of weeks. Read some things in preparation for my labs as Colin Meloy sang on my iTunes. Had a birthday cake in the afternoon, but everything had really settled into the rhythm of the ordinary over the weekend.

Now the point isn’t some soap-opera philosophy that there’s gratification to be found in the mundane and ordinary, even as I tell you now that I didn’t mind how normal it was and in fact was quite happy to let it pass in this way. I think it’s more of a contentment thing, being comfortable with what I know and do (whether it be the writing or other little things). There isn’t that urgency that compels you to affix some sort of meaning and worth to these occasions, except that you’re older, of course.

These days, birthdays are deadline days to me, for writing projects or otherwise. That gives it an unusual workman quality, doesn’t it? =S

Some Adjustments

While polishing his razor-sharp front teeth and playing chess and Sudoku on the same grid, the Web Walrus put in a bunch of changes to the format of the page, and I think things look better now, without much of a compromise on the interface. The format changes were made after messing around with the theme a bit, keeping in mind what tiny morsels of feedback I’ve received. Some changes were put in place to suit the needs of the journal. You’ll probably see what I mean as we go along.

Some things haven’t exactly worked out as planned, but I’m sure there’s space for that in the future, when the need arises. Otherwise, it’s looking good.

Speaking of these things, I was poking around in Google Analytics yesterday. It was inexplicable fun.

Weak And Weeks

These couple of weeks will be a bit taxing on me with the school work. Tutorials, a couple of tests, some papers, lab sessions and all that school jazz. On top of that, I’m balancing it a bit with the writing, some reading, a couple of side projects, and… uh… personal relations. (Managing friendships, so to speak.) So it’s looking a bit bleak, but it always does.

I also began coughing yesterday, which I guess is Heaven’s happy way of confirming my hypothesis that the weeks ahead are not going to be pretty. Grah.

In any case, I’ll be looking to talk about some of the things I’ve been doing, my work, and a variety of random things over the next couple of weeks.

If You Found This…

Hey, if you’re a regular, do drop a comment or two to tell me what you think of the new place. And if you’re new, do say hi too.

Right, I guess I better get going. I’ll be testing out photo-posting tomorrow, and we’ll see if that works out.

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P.S. While it’s clear a chessboard does not resemble a Sudoku grid, if anyone can make it work, it’s the Web Walrus.

Sunday Night Updates

Some format changes have been made and things should look better now. Still, do chime in if you’ve any suggestions.

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In the meantime…

A couple of things still don’t work quite right (like page-printing and stuff) but we’ll have that ironed out over time. Meanwhile, if there’s anything else that doesn’t quite succeed, or if you’ve got suggestions, do drop us a note.

Thanks!

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(Just Like) Starting Over

(Hmm, I’m sure I used this title the last time this happened.)

Another Ticket

Here we go, all over again, all afresh, all anew, all so familiar. It’s the second time I’ve moved out my journal, and a time to renovate and revamp a little. With some commitment and some luck, this place will be my comfy new home very soon.

The funny thing about introductory posts is that it’s all a little awkward. This is a bit of a problem too because of how I’ve to address new folks and old folks alike. It’s compounded by the fact that this shift will involve a bit of reorganisation as well. And speaking of new folks, I’ll have to do that introduction thingee here. Grr, I’m not good at these things.

In any case, I’m Daryl (which you no doubt already know from both my user name and the sub-heading on the top left), Engineering student, aspiring writer, hobbyist photographer, half-hearted music conoisseur, book-lover, and generally a geek. Or a nerd. I think nerd fits better. Oh, and I watch plenty of football. I don’t drink much coffee. Passing interest in the sciences that are not in my field of study.

If I had a tag cloud, I imagine that these are some words you might see: Dylan, noir, Beckett, Joyce (as in James Joyce), Beatles, Kubrick, Feynman, The Sandman, Grant Morrison, swing (and actually, just jazz in general), Allman, blues, Radiohead, Murakami (of the Haruki variety), Miles Davis, zombies, Larkin, Kurosawa, cats, Heinlein, Doctor Who, splatter flicks, Lovecraft, T.S. Eliot, Cormac McCarthy, Scorsese, Kojima (and keeping you waiting), Nikon, Ezra Pound… and, well, you know, these things, can’t be impressed upon people immediately, but just to give a vague, cloud-like idea of my interests. I guess this really needs time. But just to get started.

Oh, and I’m in Singapore. And about that writing thing, it’s been an interest for a long time, but now it’s really more of a job. I think I’ve accepted it as my work, in some sense. I write mainly prose, though I’m looking to pick up the other branches as I develop. My current project is in first draft, and I’ll probably be talking about that quite a bit in the future.

Great, I suppose that works as a sort of awkward-handshake introduction. Well, it’s better than nothing.

Just Like Old Times

Things will look basically the same if you’re a regular. For a start at least. I’ll be looking to keep some things in place, such as the bulletin style that I was using most of the time back at the old blog. For the most part, it’s been figuring it out from the experience that I’ve gained the two years and some months since I started blogging.

Change It

That said, things will be changing quite a bit too. For one thing, I expect to actually have a reduced blogging volume, which isn’t actually such a bad thing considering how much of the old blog was filler material and really an exercise in discipline more than anything else. I intend to go at a post a day, with breaks on the weekends, possibly Sunday, and there will be a reduction of photo features. The temporary set-up goes in the way of a Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing, with Tuesdays and Thursdays being photo features. Saturdays will probably involve a different type of content, though I haven’t exactly got that figured out yet.

The focus will also be changing. I’ll be concentrating more on my work (that is, the writing and literature in general), and a couple of my interests, for a start (such as photography, technology and music). Whatever it is, though, it’s still a journal at heart, not a business venture, so it’ll wear the personal element on its sleeve. Still, fewer random distractions. There might not be discussion on football, for instance, or anything too in-depth with regards to music. Not as many links to random science or technology. In some sense, it’s a funnelling of the content and a concentration on a few areas that I feel I ought to be focussing on. My work from a personal perspective, with a few side orders. I suppose that might be a good way to think about it.

Over Time

And–this will take some working out–the idea is that this might be something more than just my journal in the future. Things will evolve. It might incorporate news, or something on my personal library, or my (currently primitive) book club, some random writing content, or, well, there could be anything here. The concept is to grow it from a journal into a personal site.

Finally…

So, over the next few days (and weeks, and months), I’ll be setting up the place little by little. Everything’s sort of sketchy right now, so it’s all a bit experimental in nature, a sort of one-step-at-a-time thing. It doesn’t help that running my old blog was nothing like what I hope this will be in the foreseeable future.

So, here we are at the end of my introduction. If you’re new here, just hang in there as I start filling out the content so that you get a better feel for things. In the meantime, you might want to drop by at my flickr page [via flickr] or my Shelfari shelf [via Shelfari].

If you’re a regular, then rest assured that normal service will be resumed soon, and I hope the new place will be even better than the old one.

In any case, make yourself comfy. Things are, well, just beginning.

And that’s that. Phew. I was never good at intros. I’m glad I got that over with. Without embarrassing myself. Too badly, anyway.

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