Archive for year: 2017

We left Klystronia central at oh dark 30. Stopped to grab a doughnut and we’re off. Took the back roads from Oxnard California to highway 126. Headed east to the 5 freeway. Turned north and up over the grape vine (the mountain pass from LA to the central valley of California).

Starting up the grape vine I set the cruise control to the limit, 65 miles an hour (and yes I was the slowest car on the road). The old Prius will keep it at 65 up hill and down. The car does make a moaning sound when the battery is fully charged by regenerative braking.

Hit the flat strip in central valley and the speed limit went up to 75. Except for a restroom stop and a Subway lunch we made time till we hit Stockton. I don’t know what the problem was, but it took us 45 minutes to go a couple of miles.

We drove into Weed California where I was planning to stay over night. It was still daylight and my friend said to drive on.

I had my friend dig out the tour book from the glove box. He cell phoned in a hotel reservation in Klamath Falls, Or. We now had a new goal. At Weed we turned onto US 97. The scenic route. It was late when we pulled into the hotel in Klamath Falls. The air was heavy with smoke form a forest fire. The hotel was three times the normal price. It was only the 18th and still days from the eclipse on the 21st, but all the hotels in the town were over priced.

What does this have to do with writing? The car was on cruse control most of the way. Would not be that hard to image a self driving car. Would you trust your car to drive itself safely and take a nap. Sitting in a car for over 13 hours is a pain. Don’t forget to add that to your story. How many characters get out of a car after driving to some remote spot and they’re fresh as a daisy. No stiff legs. No sore bottoms. No exhaustion. Even having someone else drive it tiring to ride in a car. Also the air conditioning is good in my car, but in over 100 degree temperatures outside it’s still hot. The black dash board in new cars radiates heat.

Over 700 miles traveled in one day, and over 100 miles of that on two lane roads. Over 13 hours of driving. There’s nothing like doing it to be able to write about it.

Stay strong, write on.        Professor Hyram Voltage

Amazon is buying Whole Foods. I think they are in for a rude awakening.

Amazon is in the business of selling anything (within legal limits). Whole Foods is in the business of selling green (as in wholesome) food. Walmart is the biggest seller of food and sells only a little green food. There are going to have to be some big changes at Whole Foods to take market share away form Walmart.

Amazon is in to robots. Whole Foods strikes me as a people store. Again I see a culture difference.

Today, I read a blog post that said that there were more libraries than Starbucks. The writer is on to something. There is a library in the city of Camarillo with a built in coffee shop. Every library should have one.

Now combine Amazon with coffee shops and you could have Amazon buy Starbucks. Again they would have a massive culture shock. Amazon doesn’t fit Starbucks’ image.

A better idea would be for Amazon to buy The Coffee Bean and Tea Shop group. They have better coffee, Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. Both companies have shops are all over the place. You could go down for a quick cup and pick up your Amazon deliveries. Amazon could install sets of lockers at the coffee shop to hold valuable deliveries. The coffee shops are open long hours, you could swing by on your way to work or returning from work and pick up your Amazon purchase. And with long hours there would be employees there to keep an eye on the lockers. Of course they could have lockers that could be accessed at any time, just stick in your Amazon credit card.

Coffee goes with reading the newspaper and Amazon owns the Post. Coffee also goes good with a book. They could sell e-books at the coffee shop. I can see the recommendation on the wall mounted black board. Buy a peppermint mocha coffee and get half off on George Orwell. The coffee shops have free WiFi and Amazon could force adds on the free WiFi when you log on. The adds don’t have to be for books, they could be for anything. How about a movie and a headset with your espresso.

This is just what Amazon needs, buyers over loaded on caffeine with their credit card already out.

Stay strong, write on.    Professor Hyram Voltage

The Memorial Day weekend was a big weekend for me.

I had a friend drive 300 miles to help me work on an antenna. Not just any antenna, one that I can use to bounce radio signals off the moon with. It will take a pair of them, and they are each thirty feet long.

During the weekend; we cut metal, welded metal, painted metal, drilled holes in metal. We also machined metal to within a thousandth of an inch.

My friend started out reenforcing the antenna support. He started at the bottom and did things I would never have thought of. I wanted to start in the middle and work my way out. If you start in the middle, no matter which way you go you’re going in the right direction. It’s good to get feed back from someone else and use that feed back. His ideas worked and the support stub tower support is much more stable than before.

Next we needed to get the antenna to hold its position. It was bobbing around in the wind, and I get a lot of 10 mile an hour wind here. Down came the old elevation rotor. Next came the problems with the pillow blocks (big bearing) that will hold the elevation shaft. The holes in the pillow blocks bearings were too small by 20 thousandth of an inch. The elevation shaft was 7 thousandths over sized. That’s 27 thousandth interference. The bearings are harden steel. It’s not going to fit or go together with the equipment I have. I would need a 12 foot long bed on the lathe to take off the material from the elevation shaft or a precision grinder to open up (widen) the pillow block bearing holes. That harden steel is difficult to work.

Compromises were made. Things were put together. Three days of intense work were accomplished. This is a lot like writing.

Then after my friend went back to his place I installed a new faucet in the bathroom and a new reverse osmosis unit under the kitchen sink. The faucet took three and half hours of laying under the vanity and struggling with hard to get at pipe fittings.

The reverse osmosis unit took five hours of laying on sharp edges of kitchen cabinets struggling with corroded fittings.

After that I was in no condition to write a blog post last Monday.

Its taken days to get back to writing. I’m back and writing. I’m sore, bruised and I disliking plumbing more than every.

Stay strong, write on.                    Professor Hyram Voltage

Last weekend I attended the Gaslight Gathering convention at the Handlery Hotel on hotel circle in San Diego, California.

It was the first time for me at a Steampunk convention. I have been to many science fiction conventions including several World Science Fiction Conventions. So this was a different experience for me.

Someone mentioned that the attendance was small. I disagree. This was the first time they held this convention. I was not tripping over people, but I felt that the attendance was right for the space available. I don’t know how the vendors did, but one vendor came up to his friend that I was talking to and told him that he had sold sold enough to cover expenses in one sale. I bought enough brass items from another vendor to make him happy.

I had a mission in attending the convention. I know it sounds mercenary of me, but my goal, or purpose if goal sounds to dogmatic, was to find a process or a place to find Beta Readers for Steampunk writing.

I succeeded. After talking, (more like badgering) a bunch of authors I had one author patiently explain in detail, with links, what to do. I am not a social media type or user. I have a Facebook page, if you can find it, that I look at every ow and then (at least once a month, maybe).

I’m an engineer, that’s an introvert with a degree. Engineer’s have a spirit of self reliance, independence, self-sufficiency (think go away and I’ll fix it). I have been accused of not playing well with others and breaking thing to see how they work.

One author on a panel accused me of looking like an writer. Boy, did I have her fooled. I write, I write a lot. But you don’t put on a 1900s style shirt and un-become an engineer. It’s Dilbert to the bone, just like ugly (beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone).

I liked the convention. I got some important things done. I made friends. I accomplished a goal. I should have been writing (I did some in the hotel room) so you can’t win them all.

If your a writer consider going to a steampunk convention. The panels on writing are not well attended. That makes access to the panel members (they’re authors, they’re experienced) much easier. Makes for one on one communication. That’s what writing is all about, communication. Most attendees are into period clothing, there were sewing classes at the convention. This convention had a knitting class, I think.

The convention had a magic show put on by a chemist. Warning what comes next is gross. One part of his act he drives a nail into his nostril, with a claw hammer. You can’t help but watch. He does wear safety glasses while driving the nail into his face. Then he picked a pretty girl from the audience to pull the nail out. He girl he picked was nick named Squeak. As she was standing next to him holding the claw hammer and he was going through his spiel she squeaked like a mouse and the squeak went ultrasonic. She did not want to pull the nail out. But the crowd started chanting, she had lots of friends in the crowd. She did pull the nail out (with lots of squeaking) and looked thoroughly disgusted doing it.

So, look into attending a Steampunk convention it you’re a writer.

Oh, and one of these days I will fix the link at the top of the web page so you can look at the rest of the graphic novel.

Stay strong, write on.             Professor Hyram Voltage.

 

Last night I attended our local screenwriters group’s meeting. At the meetings we table read  five to six pages of scripts that a member brings in. A table read is where different members play the part of characters as the script is read out loud.

Reading one script (there were three scripts we read last night)  it was obvious that the writer had not read the script out loud. If he had he would have caught a couple of errors and the script would have read much smoother.

Granted it is hard to read your own writing out loud. You got to find someplace where you can do it and no one will hear you.

It feels silly and embarrassing to do. Indescribably embarrassing to have someone finds you doing it.

I do it. I’m wrapping up a book and getting it ready to send it to an editor. I’ve read the book out loud twice. Then a friend asked me to help set up the equipment for a podcast. I hadn’t done anything like that in years. So I dug out the microphones, cables, miscellaneous stuff and set it up. I did a test recording to insure everything works. I had the draft of my book next to the computer so I read a couple of pages from my book. Or I tried to read a couple of pages of my book. I would read a sentence and have to stop to finish marking up the sentence with corrections to make it read better, sound better, smoother.

I was reading pages from the back of the book. I had read those pages out loud and fixed them twice before. Now I need to read the book again out loud, this time reading into a microphone. I’m in the middle of writing another book. I don’t have time for this. Still, one thing you learn, if your going to be good is; don’t fix it in post.

Post means post production, it comes from the screen writing world, but applies to photography, writing, and life in general. Don’t depend on the editor to fix it. Don’t depend on technology to fix it. Don’t depend on your writing group to fix it. Don’t wait until later to fix it. Do it right the first time.

You’re going to have enough fixing to do anyway.

So hang a do not disturb sigh on the bedroom door. Take your manuscript and a folding chair into the closet. Close the closet door and read the manuscript out loud into a microphone while recording it on your computer. The microphone and recording will add the little bit that will bring out errors you would gloss over if you just read it out loud and not record it.

Stay strong, write on.            Professor Hyram Voltage