Yesterday was Father’s Day. As terrible as Mother’s Day was, yesterday wasn’t bad. We got to see my father. We got to eat some good food (they grilled steak and had corn on the cob and potato salad). We got to play cards and laugh while we played. It was a lot of fun but that was really the extent of it.
I think I wanted more. Part of the issue was me not for anything. Not asking for anything to be done or gifted or anything. We got back from seeing my father my daughter essentially disappeared into her room. I didn’t see her again that day. Disappointing, but not the end of the world. I get to see her again today and have dinner together.
I was talking things through with a women I’ve recently met. Her husband passed away recently. In much the same way that Mother’s Day was rotten in our house, Father’s day was extremely difficult at her house. She said a solid cry is always good for you. I think I’ve done quite enough of that without the help of the media or marketing. While I intellectually understood how it was before, I viscerally know now that not everybody enjoys every holiday the same way. Intellectually understanding and knowing are two very different things.
I have always tried to be respectful of others on holidays for that reason. I’m not offended by the holidays of others and expect that not everyone celebrates like I do. Something that has bothered me lately is general push of “special day” related crap. I guess the right word is marketing. I haven’t paid it much attention in the past. Marketers and salespeople work (generally) with the assumption that this holiday simply applies to all. This is nominally true, but individual cases may vary.
Case in point ~ my daughter is a much better person than I am. As she was out shopping a number of people accosted her (accosted is a strong word a number of sales people endeavored to get her attention to get her to come in and spend her money) and their sales tactic was, “Don’t you want to do these things for your mom?”. Well yes she would love to be able to do those things for her mom but that’s not our situation anymore. It was really crushing to her. If it were me, I would have answered, “I’d love to but she just died”. She is not that person. She’s clearly a better person than I am because she was not mean. She did not lash out. She kept it all to herself and the salespeople went about their day without having that negative interaction.
The point is try to be a little bit thoughtful about how you approach things with people. Your point of view may vary. It matters. Little gestures can make a world of difference. Try to take care of other. Do the best you can and enjoy whatever holiday works for you – even if it’s one you make up.
I grabbed a new tool. I set it up and tested it out on the drive home. I thought about just posting the raw words, but it’s a rambling mess. What I did get though, was around 1,800 words of raw, rambling mess – so this looks like it might help me keep moving posts like this forward more efficiently. There will be some edit needs, but this might actually work this time.
So here we go for test number three! I tried out a different app yesterday, rambled on mercilessly for probably 15 or 20 minutes. When I went back to look at the text from that particular app – it had stopped recording as soon as the screen shut off. That rambling mess – almost all of it went away. I hope to get the little piece of that posted in the near future. That’s the point of this. I want to be able to put together some thoughts in a more timely manner get things out for blog posts. Move things forward. There are a lot of times when the moment I sit down and I think to myself, “Okay, here it is. I’m going to… I’m going to write!” and I end up knocking out a blog post when what I should be doing is working on one of my stories.
That was as far as I got before this thing errored out.
I think that’s going to be a big problem. I’m trying to do this while I’m driving. It allows me to use the drive time usefully.
This thing has errored out like twice while I’m driving and that’s really sort of the point. It needs to be working while I’m driving. I need to not pay attention to the app and focus on driving. That is the primary thing I should be doing. The app should allow me to use my drive time in a more productive manner.
I mentioned the drive time to a friend at a convention recently and he suggested it. He suggested a different app, but that different app uses AI. I don’t know if this one uses AI or not cuz maybe it doesn’t. I will check it out. I am not a fan of using AI. I had a whole rambling thing about AI yesterday and I hope that this one doesn’t go away. If I see the error message pop up out of the corner of my eye I’ll just stop and then we’ll come back to it later. Until then I’ll just keep going.
So – drive time. I want to use this drive time productively. I want to use it for getting thoughts out. Stuff that I can use for quick edits to send into a blog post. If I can get the blog post put together quickly, that saves me time. I do want blogging to be a thing that I continue to do. I do want to continue. I’ve done it for years, but have fallen off a lot after recent events. I’ll start working on stuff and fall off because time, then I’ll start working on stuff again. I put forth a lot of effort in just starting and stopping. I’m throwing opinions out there and keeping the ‘publicity’ going, but what I should be doing is writing more of my stories. I need to get my work out there, so we’re going to start with the blog post and see if I can move forward faster.
Moving to the stories as far as using this speech to text thing won’t be as easy. The first thing that I noticed after yesterday’s attempt is that speaking for number of minutes continuously not an easy thing. Particularly if it’s on scripted. I was all over the place. I was throwing thoughts at this thing yesterday from all over. I should probably be thankful most of it was lost, but even today I can tell already – this is going to be super stream of consciousness.
I don’t know, or I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. The most important thing is to make sure it works first. I will just chatter on as I’m on my drive home and we’ll see when we come up. The app says ‘unlimited length’ for posts and I’ll put it to the test.
Another part is I want to be traveling with purpose. So many topics have slid past just based on my ability to get to the computer and type. I want what I have to say to have some kind of meaning as well. I say that because I’ve discovered that I’m still very upset about something that happened (many years ago) with a local news source. I went on a rant yesterday about this and I got caught up calling it a newspaper and describing a blog in column inches… it wasn’t great. The incident was that this news source had a columnist that they paid – yes, an actual live human – and actual live human was in a columnist position getting paid and you are potentially blocking somebody else out of that position doing actual work. What bothered me? This individual went on at length saying, “well… I’ve got nothing.”
I was angry then and I’m still annoyed now. IF you don’t have anything to say anymore, get out of the way! That person got paid! It just… it bothered me. I saw a story recently that said she was still that person until she recently retired. I shouldn’t be so upset about it. I suppose that’s pretty much any channel these days. If you turn on any media source there are a whole lot of people with nothing to say.
Having this time should help me add words.I did some rough math in my head. Even if I’m only throwing down… keep it to round numbers here… I manage a thousand words three times per week when I’m driving back from the office. That’s 3,000 words that I didn’t have before. 3,000 words a week for a month, there’s another 12,000. Hopefully keeping things moving. Trying to do the math in my head that’s like 72,000 words or so in half a year. A pretty good chunk of a novel right there. With edits and formatting, I think I could put together a book in a year. That’s if it’s only the words that I use while I’m using the speech to text. That sort of thing is a huge boost, so fingers crossed.
Doing this will mean, vocal chords warming up. It takes effort, it takes time, and if I’m going to do anything with a story I can’t just off the cuff throw Story Stuff down like this and have it be successful. Side note – talking about hundreds or thousands of words is great, but that’s if they’re good words. There’s no guarantee that the words will be worthwhile at all. There’s the very real chance that it’ll be half that amount just because most of it, the majority of it is simply garbage. I’ll be interested to see how that was typed. I pronounced garbage with a bit of an accent. A person who’s speaking doesn’t always translate directly to text. What you’re saying, the emphasis, the hesitations… those sorts of things don’t automatically come through.
I have always struggled with moving a story told to the written word. I think that’s part of the explanation of why my writing is so slow. If I’m talking to somebody and we’re having a conversation and I have emphasis and I have sound effects and accent and I can tell a really good story. That doesn’t always translate directly to text. While I may be a decent storyteller that doesn’t make me a good writer. It’s a really hard thing to translate from one to the other.
So I’m testing out my stream of Consciousness here to see how it looks, how it works. I’m certain that I repeated myself probably three or four times within the context of the last 10 or 15 minutes but that’s the other piece of this. When you don’t have a plan, when you don’t have an outline, when you don’t have a goal in mind, then you just go you ramble and sometimes you get repetitive and sometimes end up with the similar word creeping into your text over and over and over again. I might need to find and replace, or just a word search in general to find that word that you’ve used again and again and amusingly enough again should probably be one of those words.
Having said all of that before this, I do intend to research whether or not this tool uses AI. Part of that is I am not a fan of AI. My background in science fiction has shown AI as the bad guy so much, for so long, it’s difficult to escape from that mindset for me. I have a minimal understanding of large language model training and that sort of thing. It’s certainly not enough to say I understand it. All I could really say is that I’m vaguely conversational about it. It’s emotional for me. It’s the feeling portion of it I’m not comfortable with. If I don’t feel comfortable with it then I’m not going to want to use it. There’s also a part of me that wants to do the background research because all of the news lately shows the amount of resources that AI is consuming in terms of power and computer chips and water resources. All of that sort of thing along with the massive number of data centers that are being put forward in planning processes right now… that feels like the sort of thing that could very easily get out of hand. Far too easy using it and not being aware of how it’s going to affect our environment.
For my purposes, tools that I have seen so far that companies have put forward for AI do a lot of things very poorly, very quickly. I can get you a lot of wrong answers in a heartbeat. If we are going to depend on them then we definitely want to make sure that we are prepared. Correct answers for things that we want to be able to have a level of confidence in. When we say “AI did this and I’m pretty sure it’s correct” it’s not always enough. I don’t want to say “hey AI did this and I never checked it out” and then find out at some point later it absolutely didn’t work, was wrong, and now the stuff that I’m working with is wrong and that, that really bothers me. Do I think AI is going away? Absolutely not. There are too many companies that have invested too much money. They’re putting AI in places that it absolutely does not belong. Eventually the market will find an appropriate level and straighten itself out. When we know the appropriate tools, the appropriate use cases of those tools, then we can deal with it. It does NOT need to be in everything. In fact it bothers me that it has been forced into my email account already. I don’t want it there. I don’t need it there. I don’t need some computer telling me ‘hey I can help you write that better’. No, you really can’t. You’re going to use generic terminology that doesn’t fit my voice. My stories, my voice. That matters. Not enough people get that.
There it is. My massive, rambly, on my way home piece. I am now actually within probably 5 or 10 minutes of the house and I have just let all of this go~
And it errored out again. A fine point to wrap up at.
Far more editing time than I wanted (close to an hour). More words than I thought (final count just over 1,900). A successful test. More rambly words to follow!
Just imagine the little movie clapper thing making that snapping sound… because imagination is about as far as I got. Here’s the text:
As I am on the road home for testing this out for the first time and I have no idea well I have no idea number one how long I’ll be able to just speak at this thing number two I have no idea what exactly I’m going to speak about just trying to test it for the sake of testing it and number three I suck an indexing and I didn’t have a third thing so now comes the real test because the screen is about to shut off and I’m not sure where exactly the whole thing ends or starts or how long a pause I can have if I don’t have a actually stop doing this see if it actually picked up all these words that’s it for now post the results of this test up to my blog and then we’ll try it again later
That is the rambling result of more than twenty minutes of talking. Turns out the mic shuts off if the screen goes off in that app. I have to consider that a complete fail. I have no use for a tool meant to keep my hands free if I have to keep paying attention to it and poking it every couple of seconds. It didn’t keep up well with my speaking pace, nor did it catch everything.
I’ll look up and try another one here over the next day or so. This one is getting uninstalled.
I recently changed firms at my day job. The new place is a much further drive than I have had in some time.
I was talking with a friend about my current place of employment that I when I have to go to the office, I need to drive more than I have in a long time. It seems to be a real waste of time. To have this 45 minute period each way that I can’t really do anything with is wasteful. To be fair, I have listened to more news and more music, but there are days when I need more time and that seemed like a usable spot. He suggested that what I needed was a way to talk to notes – use a voice to text transcription tool of some sort. I could use that time driving productively by taking notes from my train of thought, then quickly editing the notes so that I could keep my stories and my blog moving along at a better pace.
Even if I only got a few hundred words, that would be a few hundred more than I had before.
This is not the fist time I’ve tried a tool like this – but this is the first time I’ve had specific time when I couldn’t do other things, or type at all. This was my first attempt with an app called Voice Notebook.
As with any voice to text app I’ve encountered in the past, the editing it the real challenge. I have managed to move the notes to a cloud drive and clean them up. We’ll see how this goes when I need to use it in the car (I cheated and tested this one while I was sitting at my desk in the office).
At first I was a little bit upset. When I went to pick up the first book (online shopping) I got the second one by mistake and had to go back for the first. I was prepared to try to figure out some kind of return.
I am very glad I did not! This was an excellent follow up to the first book. The explanation of the abilities, the character connections and the world building get deeper. The mystery is still a good one (locked room murder and go).
Moving to another, deeper place in the world was just fantastic. The abilities of our characters were challenged. This was not a formulaic ‘next step’ kind of thing. I enjoyed it very much. The biggest thing I did NOT like is that it skipped past the meeting that was mentioned at the end of the first book. I wanted to see that meeting. I wanted to know more about that!
I do recommend this series and I am looking forward to the next one coming out!
This is actually the third book series I’ve started from this author. I think that alone says something about the quality of his writing.
I might not have picked this one up, but it was a book club selection. I’m glad somebody picked it.
I don’t remember if there are spoilers in here – be warned! The characters were very believable. The world building was excellent (more on that in a minute). The ‘magic’ system was actually really interesting. Altering a person genetically via the blood of a dead kaiju is a super neat idea. There’s no real explanation of why the kaiju come or why they are battled, but it is part of the world, and accepted by the characters. Tying perfect recall memory to the sense of smell makes so much sense! I particularly enjoyed that it was something that got an explanation and then the continuation of noting it. Not a small detail to be lost as the story moves along!
Back to the world building. In the book club discussion somebody suggested that this world might be tied to the world of Foundryside. This is just later, when people have actually figured out the way to alter bodies and make it stick (and function). I have my doubts that this is the case, but I won’t rule it out.
I’ll be getting the second book to see what’s up next!
As with the first two books of this series, the format and snarky text remains very similar. The story continues…
Only the railroad stuff was just a slog really. There’s a disclaimer about not trying to puzzle it out at the start of the book and I thought it was something I would just shrug off. It was not, it was the whole book. I wanted this one to be better and it felt like a slump.
Did I still cruise through it faster than anything else I’ve read lately? Pretty much. Will I go and get the next one? Probably, but I think Carl is going to get a break for a minute. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.
It’s odd to be part of a trend as it’s trending, but here I am. I was hesitant to dig into this one. I thought maybe after the first crawl I had seen enough. Incorrect.
I zipped through this book at a startling pace and polished it off very quickly. It is not significantly different in form, context or wording than the last one. If you read and enjoyed the first one, this one will be a quick addition to your finished pile of books!
I wouldn’t say I ‘crawled’ through this one, more like ‘ran’!
I don’t want people to be put off by a 1 star review here. There are times when something is simply ‘not for you’. There are a lot of people out there that can’t accept that, but it’s true. Some things don’t relate or aren’t a shared… anything. I felt (a little bit) the same way about Black Panther when that movie first came out. There are parts (maybe the whole thing) that simply aren’t for me. Never were.
I suspect this is part of the reason I couldn’t struggle through the book. It might be an important book. Some people might find it to be the most wonderful or influential or whatever thing… but I am not one of those people.
I could not muster any relation to, nor any positive feelings for these characters. The situation may have been ‘real’ but it didn’t feel right to me. I just stopped because it did nothing good for me. That does NOT mean it might not be for you. Maybe it would be? Dunno – but I have other books to get to.
Given the title you’d think this was attached to John Wick, but it’s decidedly not.
My last panel of the weekend was about running a game that includes “that guy”. I was moved up to the moderator position for this one, so I had limited chat time, but did get to (try) to guide the conversation. I put ‘try’ in there because we had a really excellent panel of creative and sharp people. As we were sitting and chatting before the official panel started we were covering various topics in a startlingly inattentive way. Somebody said, “train of thought derailed… no survivors…” and that was immediately met with “Oh No! All those poor, theoretical thought people!”
Theoretical thought people sort of became an unofficial theme as we rolled into our discussions. It was a whole lot of fun and I was really happy to have such a great panel of folks to work with. Below are my panel notes. The fixes listed are mine alone. The rest of the panel had some great suggestions as well.
Panel description:
One of the biggest problems that can be encountered with running games at events is That Guy. Everyone has heard of a That Guy. They’re the Murder Hobo, the Horny Bard, the one player who doesn’t care about the story or progression or the rest of the party. Our team of Game Masters will share their stories, and discuss tactics to curtail these behaviors.
Loose Outline:
Introductions ~ include: are you currently running a game? Are you currently playing a game?
Definition – what is your definition of “that guy” (or girl – let’s not narrow it too far).
Connected to above – Are there specific types of or styles of “that guy”?
Do you believe in session zero? Will it stop “That Guy”?
Do you have, use or are familiar with player consent question lists? Should GMs use those?
What about personal connections? Does the DMs boyfriend always get special treatment?
Ask the audience for (short) specific examples and see how the panel would handle it?
Example types of bad players:
Rules lawyer(s) – Rules as written OR rules as DM says that’s how it works… Fix – ask them to help you, and track all the rules (and changes) you make and use.
Instigator – Rogues stealing party treasure, fighting internally, “Leroy Jenkins”!
Fix – actions and consequences, set the tone to your own game, DON’T ROLL – make rulings
Spotlight Hog – player talks over everyone else, jumps onto doing the same action as others
Fix – sandwich compliment(s) around issue. Often just excited~
The Cheater – Faking rolls, “fixing” the amount of gold they have… etc.
Fix – Don’t tell them if they need to roll high or low
The Power Gamer – trying to be super powerful, stretching the rules, pushing limits. Hard to DM
Fix – Use them OR ask them what they’re goal is and then put the next steps on them.
Also – The bad guys learn… how will they grow the character if combat isn’t a challenge?
The Immersion breaker – pulling people out of the mood IF you’re hitting on all the wrong notes
Fix – land
The Meta-gamer – can’t make the separation between player and character knowledge
Fix – ask the player if they think they would know something
The Boss / Critic – who thinks they know it all and tell everyone else what to do or tell them it’s wrong
Fix – direct, call out the behavior
Flippant – Just not paying attention, constantly on the phone, don’t really seem to want to play
Fix – try to engage them a little, see how they respond
IF it doesn’t work, give them an option to leave (and talk it all out) {EPIC DEATH EXIT?}
Communication is key!
My personal house Rule #1: It’s just a game.
We’re here to have fun, and if we’re not having fun, then why are we doing it? Get out there, play games, have fun!
