As you can most likely tell from the title, I got me a MacBook Air, it is the 2013 13 inch model, coming with 4gb ram, 256gb SSD flash storage. It's pretty cool, we did spend most of our afternoon setting it up and making it work with everything, we being my dad and myself, but we eventually got it there and it's all working and it's how I'm typing this blog post to you.
Not much more has happened, I've survived another week of school, and as I've said, I spent today playing with the new macbook, transferring all my word documents over to Pages documents to work with them on the Mac OS, which was as easy as saving them as a .Doc file, having opened them, so that's good. I may spend the weekend catching up with draft 2 of my Alone book, which is my Zombie story which I may share with you guys reading this in the future, I'm also considering trying to do vlogs again, not sure how that will work out, but I might try it, since I now have the isight camera on the macbook, since I have a free house Sunday evenings, I may be able to get something done, if I know what I'm saying and things and not just rambling, although I prefer rambling, it's essentially what I do here, just in a non spoken format.
But still, that's it for this post, just a little update, if I get anything posted on Youtube video wise, I shall link it in a post that I do probably Monday or Tuesday
-Craig
Friday 31 January 2014
Sunday 26 January 2014
Review #1 Paper Towns by John Green (Spoiler warning)
Hullo :)
This is the first 'installment' of my review series, in which I go through the lesser known books in my 'library' and review them, this first book is relatively lesser known to people who aren't fans of the Vlogbrothers, but if you are, then you should know this book, it's Paper Towns, by John Green, and this review may have Spoilers, so, be careful, if you wanna read it, go read it, and then come back.
Paper Towns is John's 3rd solo book, they are all stand alones so there's no need to read the other 2 before you read this one. The book talks about imagining others complexly, with some banter, some jokes, some pranks and a very detailed character backstory, right the way through until a road trip scene which takes up most of the latter half of the book.
The story focuses on 4 main characters, all of whom are friends and go to the same school together, they could all be considered protagonists, but the main two are Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman, who spend a lot of time together in the introductory chapters, they go on a pranking spree, something that Margo loves doing, and Q is a little rusty on, shall we say. The story progresses through their last year of highschool, with last year high schoolers getting up to stereotypical antics, until suddenly Margo disappears, leaving cryptic clues of her whereabouts, forcing Q and the others to go on a hunt around America to find her, with time running out they resort to a road trip, with calculated stops, and driver swaps and such (spoilers) They get to Margo with just the last bit of time left, whilst she was in the hideaway that she was staying in, when she decided to run from home.
This story is a really good YA read, it's funny, it's sad, it's all around fun, very well written, with great character interactions, a very good storyline and all in all a great atmosphere, would highly recommend reading this, although it would help if you are at least over 13, as some of the topics aren't for those under 13, if you are, ask for parental permission and I'm sure you'll be allowed to read it, it's a very good book
-Craig
This is the first 'installment' of my review series, in which I go through the lesser known books in my 'library' and review them, this first book is relatively lesser known to people who aren't fans of the Vlogbrothers, but if you are, then you should know this book, it's Paper Towns, by John Green, and this review may have Spoilers, so, be careful, if you wanna read it, go read it, and then come back.
Paper Towns is John's 3rd solo book, they are all stand alones so there's no need to read the other 2 before you read this one. The book talks about imagining others complexly, with some banter, some jokes, some pranks and a very detailed character backstory, right the way through until a road trip scene which takes up most of the latter half of the book.
The story focuses on 4 main characters, all of whom are friends and go to the same school together, they could all be considered protagonists, but the main two are Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman, who spend a lot of time together in the introductory chapters, they go on a pranking spree, something that Margo loves doing, and Q is a little rusty on, shall we say. The story progresses through their last year of highschool, with last year high schoolers getting up to stereotypical antics, until suddenly Margo disappears, leaving cryptic clues of her whereabouts, forcing Q and the others to go on a hunt around America to find her, with time running out they resort to a road trip, with calculated stops, and driver swaps and such (spoilers) They get to Margo with just the last bit of time left, whilst she was in the hideaway that she was staying in, when she decided to run from home.
This story is a really good YA read, it's funny, it's sad, it's all around fun, very well written, with great character interactions, a very good storyline and all in all a great atmosphere, would highly recommend reading this, although it would help if you are at least over 13, as some of the topics aren't for those under 13, if you are, ask for parental permission and I'm sure you'll be allowed to read it, it's a very good book
-Craig
Possible future ideas
Hullo
This won't be the longest post, but I may have some more later, which will be slightly longer for you
So, I've been thinking about posts that I can add to this blog. Since this is primarily a book blog, with a focus on writing and such, I was thinking of doing some book reviews. Reviews of books that I've read, which is good because I've a large backlog of books that I've not reviewed anywhere, which will mean a lot of posts for you guys and a lot of easy posts for me, which I could bring out daily, bi daily, weekly, bi weekly, however it is easiest for me.
I think that might be quite fun to do, may post a little one later, not sure what book I'd review first though, so many to choose from
- Craig
This won't be the longest post, but I may have some more later, which will be slightly longer for you
So, I've been thinking about posts that I can add to this blog. Since this is primarily a book blog, with a focus on writing and such, I was thinking of doing some book reviews. Reviews of books that I've read, which is good because I've a large backlog of books that I've not reviewed anywhere, which will mean a lot of posts for you guys and a lot of easy posts for me, which I could bring out daily, bi daily, weekly, bi weekly, however it is easiest for me.
I think that might be quite fun to do, may post a little one later, not sure what book I'd review first though, so many to choose from
- Craig
Saturday 18 January 2014
Writing
As you guys should know from my posts up here, I'm a wannabe writer and storyteller read my previous posts for more info, I thought I'd talk a little about what I'm doing, for those who are interested and for me to look back at in the future to see what I was up to as a 17 year old wannabe writer.
Last month I discovered the writing application called Scrivener, it's a little on the expensive side, but it's for Windows and for Mac, which is good as I exclusively use Windows but I do have the option if I want to swap.
It's sort of just changed my whole process with writing, I'm a lot more of a planner and an outliner than I was just using good old Word and it's a lot more fun for me using Scrivener. If you don't know about it, I highly recommend watching videos about it, and getting the free trial if you're into writing or if you've got a long school project to do, I wrote a History project on it, it needed several chapters, so I figured it'd be easier on Scrivener than on something like Word, which does not have the same ability to plan and to have outlines as Scrivener.
The main idea of Scrivener is to have all of your writing resources at your fingertips, having the basic word editor, with an outline window, which shows all of the chapters, all of the text documents etc, there is also the corkboard, which shows text boxes for each of the folders or text documents you have and can look at in the default viewer, and there is also a continuous viewer as well which allows you to scroll through everything you've written, despite it being in separate folders.
For this new project, which I am calling Fires of Industry, I am using a plan that I've come up with a 3 act plan, with 5 chapters per act (although in this case act 2 has 6) with 3 scenes per chapter, which is how I've set it up, it's how I've planned all of the titles and content and things and it's going well, I've written the first chapter, and I'm half way through chapter 2 of act 1, anyway. I'll post a little about the story in future, but I just want to show and explain this glorious software that I've found.
-Craig
Last month I discovered the writing application called Scrivener, it's a little on the expensive side, but it's for Windows and for Mac, which is good as I exclusively use Windows but I do have the option if I want to swap.
It's sort of just changed my whole process with writing, I'm a lot more of a planner and an outliner than I was just using good old Word and it's a lot more fun for me using Scrivener. If you don't know about it, I highly recommend watching videos about it, and getting the free trial if you're into writing or if you've got a long school project to do, I wrote a History project on it, it needed several chapters, so I figured it'd be easier on Scrivener than on something like Word, which does not have the same ability to plan and to have outlines as Scrivener.
The main idea of Scrivener is to have all of your writing resources at your fingertips, having the basic word editor, with an outline window, which shows all of the chapters, all of the text documents etc, there is also the corkboard, which shows text boxes for each of the folders or text documents you have and can look at in the default viewer, and there is also a continuous viewer as well which allows you to scroll through everything you've written, despite it being in separate folders.
For this new project, which I am calling Fires of Industry, I am using a plan that I've come up with a 3 act plan, with 5 chapters per act (although in this case act 2 has 6) with 3 scenes per chapter, which is how I've set it up, it's how I've planned all of the titles and content and things and it's going well, I've written the first chapter, and I'm half way through chapter 2 of act 1, anyway. I'll post a little about the story in future, but I just want to show and explain this glorious software that I've found.
-Craig
Thursday 16 January 2014
Aren't I terrible
Well, then again, I never really set out for it to be a daily thing, I just thought it was good for me to try and do it daily, which I knew from the get go would be difficult, and I need to get back into the mind of the blogger, and what it is exactly that I share, and things like that, somethings I can't share because I don't know who will be reading this, and other things I can share because I don't give a damn who's reading this.
I haven't really been active much lately, which I'm sorry, if you are reading these, then I am terribly sorry, but I've just not had much to say about things, I've had some good days and some boring days, and some busy days, but they've all made me think, about nothing particular though, just thinking, thinking about life, and what it is I want out of it. Many of my friends who know me well enough would tell you that I would want to be a published author, if you ask them nicely, and that's true, but in essence, I don't really want to be am author, an author restricted to books, and novels, no. I want to be a storyteller, someone who tells the story it is they want to tell, through any means necessary, whether a Poem, novel, script, play, film, short film, whatever, I want to be able to tell the story I want to tell, and not have a restriction put to my name, and have people say 'oh yeah, Craig only writes Novels' Which isn't a bad thing, a lot of people are published novelists, and they enjoy it, and yeah I think I would as well, but for me, it's more of the case that I want to do more than write novels, I want to tell stories (duh, every novelist does) but some stories I've tried to tell, do not fit in the the novel criteria, they're more suited for a poem, or a short story, or even comics, when I was younger, drawing and writing and all of that.
I think that's why I'm more interested in storytelling than just novel writing, I want to be able to tell a story through any means that I know of, and have people still read it, and recognise who it was that was telling it, without looking at the author name.
- Craig
I haven't really been active much lately, which I'm sorry, if you are reading these, then I am terribly sorry, but I've just not had much to say about things, I've had some good days and some boring days, and some busy days, but they've all made me think, about nothing particular though, just thinking, thinking about life, and what it is I want out of it. Many of my friends who know me well enough would tell you that I would want to be a published author, if you ask them nicely, and that's true, but in essence, I don't really want to be am author, an author restricted to books, and novels, no. I want to be a storyteller, someone who tells the story it is they want to tell, through any means necessary, whether a Poem, novel, script, play, film, short film, whatever, I want to be able to tell the story I want to tell, and not have a restriction put to my name, and have people say 'oh yeah, Craig only writes Novels' Which isn't a bad thing, a lot of people are published novelists, and they enjoy it, and yeah I think I would as well, but for me, it's more of the case that I want to do more than write novels, I want to tell stories (duh, every novelist does) but some stories I've tried to tell, do not fit in the the novel criteria, they're more suited for a poem, or a short story, or even comics, when I was younger, drawing and writing and all of that.
I think that's why I'm more interested in storytelling than just novel writing, I want to be able to tell a story through any means that I know of, and have people still read it, and recognise who it was that was telling it, without looking at the author name.
- Craig
Monday 13 January 2014
Was meant to do this daily... whoops
I apologise for my absence of posts, I know that not many people are reading this, but I do hope for it to grow, and which I'm sure it will, but I was mainly apologising to those who do read this, and I was mainly apologising to myself, letting myself down again.
A lot's happened really, a lot has happened since I posted my piece of writing which is titled 'Remembering things' which you can go and have a look at, once you've finished reading what it is that I'm typing up at the moment.
Christmas is a thing which has passed in my absence, and New Year's, so I shall talk about those as they happened and in the order in which they happened.
Christmas was somewhat eventful, I don't mind christmas, being a 17 year old, I still get gifts, not as many as my younger self did, but I asked for things and I got what I asked for, which is always nice, able to tick off (metaphorically, mind you) everything that I had asked for, this list includes CDs and books, and money, which I used to buy myself a larger gift, expense wise, an iPod Classic, seeing as my only other way of listening to music on the go was through my iPhone, which was smaller in memory and I could only usefully store half of my iTunes library on my phone, keeping space spare for emergencies, or whatever, other things I needed to download, now, with my new iPod, I can store 100% of my library, onto my device to listen to on the go, I may be a little late to the iPod bandwagon, but I don't mind.
I also got the first 3 collections of Sandman, the comic book written by Neil Gaiman during the 80's and 90's and even some written in the 00's and 10's of this new century, they are releasing the older ones in omnibus form, 10 of them, I need 7 to get the full collection, I also got some other musical collections, the essential Judas Priest 2 disc collection, which is very fun to listen to, I also got Painkiller, by the aforementioned metallers, and the last main thing that I got, was 'Who killed Amanda Palmer' by, Amanda Palmer, a very nice CD, with my new favourite song on it, by the name of Ampersand, to which I am writing this blog post.
After christmas of course, came New Years, which I spent mainly on my own, although we did spend that day, the 31st of December, bowling, with some friends of my families, 2 adults and 3 kids, plus my 2 adults and 2 kids, it was a fun game, a competitive, but fun game, I ended up coming 4th out of everyone, which was good, I'm not a strong bowler, but I like it, and then we went back to theirs for dinner and things. One of their kids and I are of the same age with relative same interests, and we started playing Guitar Hero, the 3rd one, Legends of Rock.
I have always been good at that game, playing on Hard and Expert mode for most of the time, I felt as if I was showing off, but I was just having fun, having eaten dinner, we played the longest game of Monopoly I've ever had, it lasted for ages, but neither team wanted to end it, we kept finding little ways to pay off the debts we owed, or the transactions we needed to make. before we finally caught the opposite team on a hotel costing m800.
We got home at about 11, and I finished watching a Deadmau5 live stream, going to bed at about 1:30 in the morning, seeing in the New Year on my various social networks, not much has happened since then, gone back to school, still writing, I started chapter 2 of draft 1 of the new story I'm writing, it should be going quicker, but I'm feeling uninspired at the moment, will catch back at a later date
uploading in three... two...
A lot's happened really, a lot has happened since I posted my piece of writing which is titled 'Remembering things' which you can go and have a look at, once you've finished reading what it is that I'm typing up at the moment.
Christmas is a thing which has passed in my absence, and New Year's, so I shall talk about those as they happened and in the order in which they happened.
Christmas was somewhat eventful, I don't mind christmas, being a 17 year old, I still get gifts, not as many as my younger self did, but I asked for things and I got what I asked for, which is always nice, able to tick off (metaphorically, mind you) everything that I had asked for, this list includes CDs and books, and money, which I used to buy myself a larger gift, expense wise, an iPod Classic, seeing as my only other way of listening to music on the go was through my iPhone, which was smaller in memory and I could only usefully store half of my iTunes library on my phone, keeping space spare for emergencies, or whatever, other things I needed to download, now, with my new iPod, I can store 100% of my library, onto my device to listen to on the go, I may be a little late to the iPod bandwagon, but I don't mind.
I also got the first 3 collections of Sandman, the comic book written by Neil Gaiman during the 80's and 90's and even some written in the 00's and 10's of this new century, they are releasing the older ones in omnibus form, 10 of them, I need 7 to get the full collection, I also got some other musical collections, the essential Judas Priest 2 disc collection, which is very fun to listen to, I also got Painkiller, by the aforementioned metallers, and the last main thing that I got, was 'Who killed Amanda Palmer' by, Amanda Palmer, a very nice CD, with my new favourite song on it, by the name of Ampersand, to which I am writing this blog post.
After christmas of course, came New Years, which I spent mainly on my own, although we did spend that day, the 31st of December, bowling, with some friends of my families, 2 adults and 3 kids, plus my 2 adults and 2 kids, it was a fun game, a competitive, but fun game, I ended up coming 4th out of everyone, which was good, I'm not a strong bowler, but I like it, and then we went back to theirs for dinner and things. One of their kids and I are of the same age with relative same interests, and we started playing Guitar Hero, the 3rd one, Legends of Rock.
I have always been good at that game, playing on Hard and Expert mode for most of the time, I felt as if I was showing off, but I was just having fun, having eaten dinner, we played the longest game of Monopoly I've ever had, it lasted for ages, but neither team wanted to end it, we kept finding little ways to pay off the debts we owed, or the transactions we needed to make. before we finally caught the opposite team on a hotel costing m800.
We got home at about 11, and I finished watching a Deadmau5 live stream, going to bed at about 1:30 in the morning, seeing in the New Year on my various social networks, not much has happened since then, gone back to school, still writing, I started chapter 2 of draft 1 of the new story I'm writing, it should be going quicker, but I'm feeling uninspired at the moment, will catch back at a later date
uploading in three... two...
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