Category: Journal
Journal

Buskers, Daily SF, and a 2012 Challenge

Yesterday evening I was walking from work to the train-station, taking the long-cut through Southbank so I could enjoy the afternoon breeze and the Brisbane river, and I came across a pair of buskers playing a version of the Beatle’s Norwegian Wood as a duet on violin and banjo. They were kind of phenomenal, I think, considering they were utilizing a banjo, but the best part of it was the surprise of finding them there, just doing their thing, while the rest of us ambled to and fro, getting away from our dayjobs and heading into the evening. Had it been a different kind of evening I would have stopped and listened for a bit longer. I probably should have, but my mind kept drifting to other things, and I was hurrying home to pack and clean and get some writing done. And somewhere amid all that, it occurred to me that I should blog, and here we are, trying to figure

PeterMBall 23/11/2011
Journal

Lessons from the Day Job

I’ve come to the opinion that migrating a website from one host to another is rather like being in charge of the Death Star firing controls. You sit there quietly, doing your job, counting off the minutes until you unleash the awesome power of some technological masteripeice capable of destroying planets, and in your moment of triumph – right as you count down to one, in fact – it all goes to hell and your space station is obliterated in a fireball. I have all sorts of sympathy for Moff Tarkin this week. Poor dude was just trying to get shit done, you know?

PeterMBall 08/11/2011
Journal

Things

I’m drinking coffee with my breakfast this morning. This is worth mentioning because, quite honestly, for the last three weeks I’ve been sufficiently under the weather that the very thought of drinking coffee with breakfast was enough to induce nausea. Huzzah for good health; you always miss it when it fails you for a time. Today I’m going to write things. Like the coffee, it’s been a good three weeks since I last did that as well. Wish me luck.

PeterMBall 07/11/2011
Journal

Busy week is busy

Things I’ve been doing instead of posting on this here blog: Writing things. Mostly this thing, but occasionally other things. Yes, that’s very vague, but that’s pretty much the way my brain works at this point: Writing! Things! Woo! Reading things. Specifically: reading Dashiel Hammett’s Red Harvest (pretty good), the Bloodshot/Hellbent tandem from Cherie Preist (also pretty good), the new Christa Faust novel, Choke Hold (awesome), and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem (very good, but I’m a sucker for essays). Going to things. Specifically: AusCon 2 and the EWF Digital Writers conference Working a day job which, magically, does not suck and continues to be awesome. Doing my washing. Preparing to move out of my current abode in December. How about you guys? Anyone up to anything interesting?

PeterMBall 16/10/2011
Journal

28th September 2011, 7:15 AM

There’s something rather pleasant about writing in hotel rooms. For starters, there’s nothing to distract you, especially if the room you’re renting is marked by a list of things that don’t work: lights, television, the hotel’s broadband network. Hotel rooms endeavour to be pleasingly utilitarian at the best of times, and once you remove those little creature comforts there’s really nothing to do but go out, sleep, or write. And I’m in Rockhampton for work at the moment. Fritz the Laptop is getting a pretty good workout as a result. It’s kinda odd, ’cause I feel like I should be complaining about the various things that aren’t functioning in the room, but mostly I’ve just found them to be a pleasant surprise. It meant I did things I wouldn’t ordinarily do, like take a bath in the hotel bathroom and dance to the light of the laptop screen, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. My only complaint is the hotel

PeterMBall 28/09/2011
Journal

Just a Peaceful, Lazy Friday

It’s been a particularly lazy morning around these parts. I woke up, I read things, I dozed. I repeated the process until I’d read the latest installment of Trent Jamieson’s Death Works series, whereupon I emerged and ate breakfast and generally started pottering on the internet. In a couple of minutes I’ll head off to get some lunch and do my washing, whereupon I’ll write some things. Later, I’ll pack some books ahead of the move, then go across town to catch up with the Cthulhu peeps and play Space: 1889 a few days ahead of our usual schedule. So it goes on Fridays, where I have the option of being lazy and engaging in crazy rescheduling shenanigans. Thursdays are writing days, the one where I blow out my wordcount in a manic enthusiasm. Fridays are about respectable, reasoned levels of wordage. They’re about reigning in my impulses and saying “yes, I know there are two more days of this to

PeterMBall 16/09/2011
Journal

Three Things

WRITING RACE I’m going to be the guest racer at tonight’s Australian Writer’s Marketplace Writing Race, an online gathering where a bunch of writers…well, write. *Waves hello to any AWM Writing Races that drop past* I last guested at one of these back in 2009, just after Horn was released, and it proved to be a lot of fun. Kind of like Write Club, only online and with people who aren’t the inimitable Angela Slatter. If you’re a writer at a loose end this evening, why don’t you strap on your writing pants, fire up your keyboard, and come join us on the AWMforums around 8 o’clock. THE DALEK GAME I know I’ve said this before, but if you’re not following Kathleen Jenning’s Dalek Game illustration, you really are missing out on one of the most charming series of illustrations on the internet. I recommend Daleks Can Jump Puddles, the flappereque Roxie Dalek, The Dalek in the Rye, and…and…and…look, just go

PeterMBall 13/09/2011
Journal

The Day After the Unity Walk

A few weeks ago my sister signed up for the Unity Walk to raise money for Parkinson’s Queensland. Her initial goal, quite modestly, was raising $500 in sponsorship. By last Sunday, when she started the walk, she’d raised $2185, most of that in the seven-day period between her first putting the link up on Facebook and now. According to the Unity Walk website, she was the second highest individual fund-raiser in the state. I know a bunch of people donated after reading about the walk on this blog. Some did it openly, some anonymously, and everyone did so generously. We wanted to say thank-you. You people, you all rock in the hardest and most rocking-est kind of way.    

PeterMBall 30/08/2011
Journal

Unity Walk Redux

My sister’s posted a short blog about the reason she’s doing the Unity Walk for Parkinson’s Australia. It goes a little something like this: My Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2003, although in hindsight, he had probably been suffering some of the symptoms for about fifteen years before that. Since the diagnosis came through, Dad has accepted this condition that life has chosen for him. He’s never once asked ‘Why me?’, I’ve never heard him complain, he accepts the physical limitations imposed on him, and while he doesn’t often ask for help, he does accept it gratefully when offered. Parkinson’s Queensland have been an enormous help to Dad, and Mum, who is inevitably his primary carer. They were there to offer advice on what medical staff in hospital needed to know when Dad had his heart operation last year. They provide visits to centres to show what little devices around the home are going to make life just

PeterMBall 25/08/2011
Journal

My Sister is Walking For Parkinsons Queensland

My father has Parkinson’s disease. It’s one of those things I don’t talk about here, but the short version is this: as a disease, it sucks in a pretty major way. It sucks for the person who has it, and it sucks for the people who care about them. It’s a degenerative disorder of the nervous system that causes a reduction in the dopamine levels, and it causes tremors, slowness of movement, muscle rigidity, instability and has associated affects that are even less fun. This Sunday my sister is planning on doing the Parkinsons Unity Walk to raise money for Parkinson’s Queensland and she’s currently collecting donations from supporters. If you’re in a position to sling a couple of bucks her way between now and Sunday, please consider doing so. Not just because it’s a good cause – there’s lot of good causes – but because this is a pretty damn personal cause for me, my sister, and my family.

PeterMBall 24/08/2011
Journal

Rain

More rain, today, and I do love the rain. Last night I turned off all the lights around nine o’clock, trundled off to bed with Fritz the Laptop, and wrote things while it was deliciously cold and wet and almost rainy. There were houses in the neighborhood who’d lit their wood fires, filling the air with a piney-smokey scent. It was…kinda awesome really. A deeply satisfying end to the evening, and one where I felt utterly justified in finishing my writing stint after hitting the thousand word goal I’d set myself. Completely satisfying days at the keyboard come along so rarely that I celebrate them when they happen. My default state is…anger, I guess. Desperation. An incessant need to do more. Doing *enough* is a foreign concept. There is never enough, really, just nights where I feel like I’ve reached the outer borders. This morning I’ve been plugging dates into calendars, marking off deadlines. I’m plugging in things I’d like

PeterMBall 23/08/2011
Journal

Two Short Thoughts

It’s a cold and blustery morning here in Brisbane, and after I get home from work this evening I’m going to need to disappear down the rabbit hole and get some writing done. The entire week is something of an experiment in that front, figuring out a new routine that works around the dayjob. I’m experimenting with getting up earlier, packing an extra hour into my pre-work routine so I can tend to my email and the website and get some reading done. It seems to be going well, although by “going well” I really mean “I have time to write this here blog post and might do it again tomorrow, if only so people don’t keep assuming that I’ve been kidnapped by ninjas and sacrificed to great C’thulhu.” My curse is to spend my life wandering the earth, bemoaning the fact that I do not write enough. And it occurs to me that. as curses go, that’s probably not

PeterMBall 22/08/2011