Happy New Years Eve 2011!

Here is a To Do list of odd projects for 2012:

Spreadsheet   

Continue sleep diary for the entire of 2012. Work out averages as I go along. 

Continue googling "charlotte gyseman", "chargyse" and "geezmun". Put the number of image results onto a spreadsheet and graph them. 

Continue graphing finances. 

Word 

Continue work on NaNoWriMo2011 novel.FINISH IT. 

Begin around 140 word summary of day, per day [twitter?]

Image 

Recommence 1 photo of self, per day. 

Begin and complete 1 painting per week. 

Each week 

Collect the 7 photos, 7 daily diary entries, printscreens of sleep diary data, financial data and Google image data of 7 days, and photo of the weekly painting.
Compile into one folder.
Blog the contents of the folder. 

Every four weeks 

Compile completed Weekly folders into "Monthly" folders. 

End of the year 

Figure out what to do with it all. Get printed into one big page per day scrapbook? 4 weeks per chapter, 13 chapters?

I expect some of you will think I'm barmy. It's okay. I'm currently doing some of these things and have already tried some of the others in the past year, so I know what I'm in for. Others of you will want to join in with a few of these things. If you want to do this for yourselves, go for it!

To Do Lists: Because sometimes this stuff doesn't just happen.

Here's my current To Do List. Usually the things on my To Do List aren't actually things I have to do, and are more like things I've considered doing, thought would be good if I did do them, and hoped that I actually do get around to doing them. I probably only get round to half of the things before deciding, "Another time," or "...nah, I changed my mind." It's not a very good system. I highly recommend working on the things on your To Do lists instead of just hoping you end up getting them done.

To Do.


Christmas presents for family and boyfriend. All done!
Bought. Sometimes I like to start with things I can strike off straight away.
Wrap Christmas presents.

Sort out Digital Files and Folders. Half done...
I've been meaning to do this for years. I've just found out you can get some nice desktop backgrounds that look like rooms, which you can arrange your icons around on. I may have to make one for myself one day, but this has done for now.
As for the actual Files in the system.... well. That is going to take a little longer. But once I've done it, I'm sure life will feel a little clearer.

Learn how to do a Self Assessment.
I downloaded all of my transactions for the past 5 years yesterday and put them into a neat little graph. I'll learn how to actually do it properly after I've sorted out my Folders though.

Work on First Novel
First Draft of more than 40,000 words done thanks to NaNoWriMo. 
Need to follow the steps on The Plot Whisperer to refine the plot arc.
And then... See what happens next after that.

Sell artwork.
Make more artwork.
Be less attached to artwork made.
Set up gallery of artwork, on or offline. Preferably online to begin with?
Actually start cataloguing artwork made.

Blog More.
I'm currently in the process of that...
Sell advertising space. By the way, if you have a site you think I'd like to link to, do let me know :)

Sort out Online Presence.
I did that less than a year ago, but I think I need to do it yet again. I have more than one blog, more than one email account, and those email accounts need sorting or deleting too. And I think I want to sort out my blogs too, add in some proper labels etc.

Do Laundry.
Sigh. Done?

Alright, this list is getting a bit cumbersome now. Better stop now and get on with the decluttering.

December: Post Nano Plot Reflection

I realised that although I didn't manage 50,000 words in one month, I have managed over 40,000 words over October and November put together. Throughout October I spent some time trying to write a diary entry everyday, mostly of odd trains of thought I was having as I was having them, even the nonsense ones, just to see how many words I would do. I'd definitely like to see if I could combine parts of the two into any sort of entertaining novelish object.

NaNoWriMo has a list of things that you can do once you've recovered from thirty days of novel writing.
December's is all about sorting out the plot arc of the novel:

The Plot Whisperer -- Plot Writing Month (December). Goal: Refine the plot arc of your first draft. 


And here are some others they've listed that go on throughout the year:

NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month (Year-Round). Goal: Post every day for a month.

SciFiWriMo – Science Fiction Writing Month (Year-Round). Goal: choose a target word count and reach it in a month, writing sci-fi or fantasy.

750 Words – (Year-Round). Goal: write 750 words a day. Includes month-long challenges.

Wriye – (Year-Round). Goal: Set a word-count goal for the year and work towards it between January 1 and December 31.

There are also 24 hour and 48 hour challenges that you can take part in if you don't fancy a month of writing tonnes of words:

24 Hour Comics Day – (Changes annually, lasts 24 hours). Goal: Draw a 24-page comic in one 24-hour period.

48 Hour Film Project – (Varies; operates via tours around the USA, lasts 48 hours). Goal: Create a short film in 48 hours.

Lots to be doing!

I really have no idea how my novel thing is going to go at the moment. There were some mentions of tea stained diaries being found in parks, so I really feel I have to transcribe those particular diary sections on paper and tea stain them. And then leave them in parks where they can be found. Especially after finding it so fun writing on my little 2x3 inch coptic bound book and singeing the edges with Sam's amazing rocket lighter of blue fire. It's pretty nice, the burned smell I get off it now.

I'm not a pyro.

NaNoWriMo: 2011

For the past month of November I've been a half busy / half not busy little bee, typing away at my very first novel.

It's not going as quickly as it should be. I began on 1st November 2011, like all the other NaNoWriMo participants. Unfortunately, I spent many days away from my laptop in that time and wrote not a word. I ended November with just over 17,000 words out of 50,000. Poor. But never mind. I'm carrying on, with a current word count of 19,458 and rising. If I really set myself on the task, I could definitely hit 50,000 before we reach 2012. Easy. Just so long as I keep typing! I've even begun to write in a little 100page 2x3inch book I made, just to make sure I can write something while I'm away from the laptop.

Novelist Gyseman, here I come. 

I've also got another idea in the works. I'm going to spend 2012 making sure I write between 137 and 164 words every single day for a year. Maybe every night just describing my day. I could call it "My 2012", since I'm sure a lot of books are probably already called or are going to be called "2012", what with the universe ending and everything. Perhaps you can buy my first novel before Christmas next year for a loved one, just in case the universe does end. Then you can buy my other book after that, if it turns out the universe still exists and is doing fine with us still here? Best to cover your bases.

Also, I had a nice idea today. You may notice XXX has suddenly appeared as a page on my blog. I'll write more about that another time.

Cereal box doll houses, the Desperados Dojo Mansion, and zombie survival simulators.

So here's the story.

Yesterday, I heard something post through the door after I had already been down once and signed for a parcel for one of the guys living downstairs. I don't know why I thought this second thing would be anything interesting, but lo and behold, there was a brand new Ikea catalogue, addressed to no one in particular. 

I nicked it.

Mine now.

I spent the rest of the day thinking about how when I was little I liked making little environments for woodlice out of sand, and a paper house with an amazing special thread operated lift for my Polly Pocket figures [I surprise myself with this memory. Perhaps I'm remembering it better than it was... no, it was definitely as wicked as I remember it], and totally loved watching Art Attack and Blue Peter when they made little rooms and models for toys to live and play in. 

And then I wondered. Now that I'm adult enough to use a pair of scissors without a guardian present and childish enough to still love this stuff... Why haven't I actually made a sturdier one out of cardboard yet?

In my second year of Computer Game Design I thought about modelling my bedroom in Maya for practice, and got part of the way there. Ever since, I've been thinking about recreating the main areas I liked to spend my time. Didn't quite happen. And now I have five empty cereal boxes beginning to clutter up my bedroom floor because I haven't decided what to do with them yet. 

My original plan for this cardboard was to go around measuring my room to recreate it to scale out of the cardboard, and do the lounge and kitchen and bathroom after that. Even make little mini-us's to live in it.

Except while I was measuring I had the idea to recreate our flat in Unity 3D, and add zombies or monsters and turn the flat into an FPS. Or a zombie survival simulator. Exciting idea.

In the end I decided to use the cardboard to make a Desperados Dojo Mansion for my Lego Man. I got about this far before I decided I wanted to make the FPS/zombie survival sim of my house more.

Three walls, a floor and a bridge to fight on. But nobody to fight. Hmm.

I think maybe if I had done some solid pre-pro on it, I might have been more focused. Oh well. It's currently sat on my windowsill, along with my purple should-sort-through-but-haven't-yet folder of.. stuff, and green bag of old journals dating from as far back as a decade ago [probably]. 

I haven't decided if I'm going to keep working on it or dismantle it for the cardboard to make the cardboard version of my room. Although I am going to finish another box of Maple Pecan Crisp by tomorrow, so the Desperados Dojo Mansion is probably safe for now. 

Unless it falls out of my window. 

It's not going to fall out of my window.

Cyfarthfa Street, Plasnewydd, Roath, Cardiff

Here are two photos of Cyfarthfa Street, looking very different in both. The second one here is from the day of the previous post about colours, when the pink/orange cloud reflected warm light onto the shiny wet roof tops. The first one was taken today to show you just how different the place looked a few days ago compared to today's ordinary cloudyness. I will paint this street one day.

21st September 2011 - A typical grey cloudy day, with street looking fairly dark and subdued.

         17th September 2011 - With shiny pink rooftops and deep dark clouds further away, the street itself looks brighter.

Side by side. I flipped one to make the comparison a little easier on the eyes.

Colours - Do you see what I see?

I just saw a very interesting episode of Horizon on BBC iPlayer all about colour and the perception of colour. I found it particularly interesting how the colour terms we learn can affect how easily we perceive different shades of a colour, quite drastically in some cases...

I also finished my second page of colour mixing experiments the other day:

And before that I was reading all about fashion and the colours that suit a person. Haha. I can't quite figure out if I'm a Deep Autumn or a Deep Winter. I suspect I'm somewhere between the two, like Miss Kardashian in the example on the page linked.

And wow. There was some crazy beautiful lighting going on outside just now. It has been on and off showering today, so the rooftops are shiny, reflecting pink light coming from a big cloud that was just above. I took some time out from typing this to attempt to take some pics.

The rainbow from earlier.

This is a different rainbow picture; the first rainbow I saw after moving to Cardiff, shown here for the contrast with today's pictures.