Tag: journal

Thoughts on Hydro Power

So, I was doing some research into hydro-electricity… for reasons related to surviving WW3.

Well, well, well… did I learn a few things I had no idea about.

Did you know that every large power grid needs to have some hydro added to it?

This is because coal and nuclear power plants can’t be switched on and off easily. It typically takes two days to switch a coal or nuclear turbine on and off. So the purpose of coal and nuclear plants is to supply the base load of power to the grid: A fixed amount of electricity that’s always in use.

But what happens on a hot summer’s day if everyone goes home and turns on their air conditioning at once? It is impossible for a coal or nuclear plant to increase electrical production on such short notice.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Hydro Power”

Journal: Life in the Age of Pestilence

I can’t believe it is May already, and I am only now sitting down to write about what has turned into one of the most historic years in global history. Considering how significant these events are, I should write something down for posterity’s sake so that those who live in another part of the great cycle of civilisation and get some insight into the fall that happens when a civilisation becomes too prideful. Like most people on the planet, I have spent the last 6 weeks indoors hiding from the visible death machine known as the CCP coronavirus by those who believe in freedom, as Covid-19 by those who believe in statism and communism, and simply as “the coronavirus” by those who don’t think deeply about politics. However, I live in Australia, and Australia is coming out of lockdown sooner that 98% of countries in the world, and with a lot more optimism that we can go back to living our lives as “normal” again. However, I don’t share this optimism. We got into this situation by being too optimistic, I don’t think more optimism is the solution. But I will no doubt get to that topic later on. For now I need to lay some of the groundwork for the story so far. Continue reading “Journal: Life in the Age of Pestilence”

Writer’s Diary: Anxiety Based Decisions

Anxiety and I are on first name basis. See, I have trouble sleeping, or I used to until I discovered that working lots of hours helps me sleep. So last year I started working 50+ hours a week every week, often working on Sundays too. The result was that I was earning a lot more money, falling to sleep far easier than I had ever been before, and just being productive. However, the anxiety hasn’t gone away as much as I hoped it would. Instead, I’ve been anxious in new ways. Ways I’m only just wrapping me head around now that I can understand how they’ve been altering my thought process. Another problem with working so many hours is that I often feel run down, and writing is an intense intellectual task. It might not put much pressure on the limbs, but the brain consumes a lot of energy writing and the level and quality of prose I’ve been producing has suffered with my increased working hours. So something in my life needs to change. Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Anxiety Based Decisions”

Shattered Space – Part 2

Designer Gede Eugen’s Journal

This planet is cold. It doesn’t matter how high I turn my thermal suit up, the cold still gets through. It winds its way through my bones into the marrow. I have been squatting in this cave for weeks now. I ran out of ration packs two days ago and now I rely to the potage the locals offer me. It tastes like boiled snot but I suppose it’s better than going hungry. A shuttle did drop by a few days ago and the crew were obviously bounty hunters so I kept my distance. They walked off with Lucy though. Which means sooner or later they’re going to come back. I just hope my aristocratic pen pal arrives sooner to pick me up. He said he had a lot of wealth and his personal space ship. A beautiful ivory and gold detailed star hopper called the Audacity that he liked to brag about.

Ahhh… star hoppers. Those are neat little bugs. How I wish I had one of those beauties; a space capsule the size of an old fashioned suburban house. Capable of 80 times the speed of light. Not fast really, but efficient. Once a star ship got any bigger than that the power requirements to maintain a warp fissure increased astronomically. Not to mention the bane of all inter-stellar travellers: gravitational flux. Big ships could easily travel a 1,000 times the speed of light nowadays, but they daren’t ever enter a warp fissure within two astronomical units of a star. Good safety protocol was to only ever enter or exit a warp fissure on the outer perimeter of a star system and taxi in on sub-light engines only.

Wow. This is my first attempt at a journal and like a typical space engineer I am prattling about unimportant matters like the basic realities of space travel. It’s hard to imagine now that only five weeks ago I was thirty-seven light years away in the orbit of the moon standing comfortably in my office chewing protein biscuits instead of cowering in an ice cave on an obscure planet in the Gliese 623 System. Continue reading “Shattered Space – Part 2”

Writer’s Diary: Novel in the Pipeline!

Hello readers of my writing blog. I am so sorry for the lack of updates. It isn’t because I have stopped writing or that I have had a terrible accidental. It’s actually because of some good news. In the last three months I have written a complete 78,000 word long novel. I wrote it from scratch and it started out as a short story but quickly took in a life of its own. Because I want to publish this novel I won’t be posting it up here. However, now that I am purely on the editing phase I will get back into writing other pieces and putting them up here. I actually have half a dozen short pieces that some friends have been nagging me to polish up and put up to share so I expect to see some new content in the next few weeks. Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Novel in the Pipeline!”

Writer’s Diary: Biased News Network

Dear readers,

Sorry for my unexpected absence. My working hours vary considerably. Sometimes I’m working sixty hours in a week and then it drops unexpectedly down to twenty five like this week. Which turns not into a productive week of writing but into a recovery week for working so many hours the previous three! That said, I have been working on my writing nonetheless. I have completed 35,000 words for a manuscript but one I won’t be sharing on here any time soon. This is one I will probably approach a publisher about in the future once the manuscript is finished. In the meantime I have been getting quite annoyed with the mainstream media and how obviously biased it is. Now, I don’t actually mind bias as such. It’s part of human nature and I view it as just something we all have to take into account whoever we are listening to. What bothers me is when people pretend to be unbiased when they’re clearly biased or who object to other people being biased as though they never are themselves. This is a hypocrisy that I want to expose! Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Biased News Network”

Writer’s Diary: Dialogue

This week’s theme was dialogue. I wrote 5,500+ words for my three stories this week and in each I worked on trying to create dramatic and captivating dialogue. I think I had varying degrees of success overall. I would like to have some more feedback for my writing, however, I have no idea how to promote my writing blog. While I have about 20+ followers I don’t know how many actually follow any of my stories. I have gotten many likes this week and that’s certainly encouraging, but it’s hard to translate likes into constructive feedback. If anyone has any advice on how to attract people who might be interested in reading my stories please let me know in a comment. For now I just want to reflect on the three sections of dialogue I wrote this week.

The first of these was The Monk and this contained the worst dialogue of the three in my opinion. Not for the content, indeed I have actually won some praise for the content, and I am pleased with that myself. Rather what I was unhappy about with this dialogue was the simplicity of style, it was just questions and answers. It had the sophistication of a public school homework assignment. There was little passion in the dialogue, although I tried to put a feeling of solemnity in it to try and spice it up emotionally. What I would like to do in future Monk updates is have more arguments, debates, and emotive speeches. I don’t like the low energy nature of these dialogues. Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Dialogue”

Writer’s Diary: Religious Sci-fi?

Readers of my story “The Monk” might have noticed recently that the story line has moved into the next phase of development. Key parts of the background for the story are being revealed. This is a bit of a new genre because most stories about religion tend to be about existing religions, while for this story I am inventing two entirely new religions that exist in opposition to each other. The clerics of the two faiths are battling with each other and soon there will be a war of words developing as the two faiths battle for the hearts, minds, and souls of the characters.

Fans of the Star Wars franchise will point out that the Jedi and the Sith reflect two opposing religions. However, in no part of the movie franchise do the Jedi and Sith battle out their differences in a debate or dialectical struggle. They just fight violently with each other immediately on contact. This battle of goodies and baddies was enough for me as a child, but as an adult I find myself disturbed by the mindlessness of their constant warfare. The imperial and the republican forces may well represent the globalist and nationalist political forces that have existed throughout human history, but because the movies never delve into depth about the ideology driving the two factions one cannot easily distinguish the two. Luke Skywalker never once shows any remorse for the people he murders throughout the series with the exception of his own father. We never learn about Luke’s thought process, and it’s bothered me whether or not he is actually a good person. Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Religious Sci-fi?”

Writer’s Diary: Market Facing Author

The age of the Internet has done something to writing that hasn’t been the case ever before in history. In the past writers were extremely limited in their ability to reach an audience. If I had to use clay or stone tablets to reach my audiences then I would need to spend most of my time learning the art of making these tablets and only a fraction of my time on actual writing. Even with paper and the printing press it was still difficult to spread ideas. There have always been gatekeepers preventing writers from sharing their creativity and they’ve mostly been economic: the availability of clay was the gate keeper for the author of clay tables, the availability of parchment the gate keeper for the dark age author, and so on. When the printing press came along it was the publishing company that was the gate keeper. Do you want your writing published? Then it needs to find a publisher who will approve it for you first. With the internet though, this has all changed. For less than a day’s salary you can buy a domain name and publish your own work and it can potentially reach everyone who can read.

However, how am I to earn a living being an author? Patreon is exciting to me because in the past artists needed to either have plenty of money themselves or they needed to have a wealthy patron to fund their creativity. The idea that hundreds of people could each chip in a few dollars for me each month and that I might be able to actually make something of a living from my hobby is quite exciting. Of course, I haven’t actually made any money from this yet and probably won’t for a long time. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained as the saying goes. I enjoy writing and it is meaningful for me to share my work. Now that I have this site, and I’ve decided how I will run it, all I need focus on now is producing good quality writing. Writing that people will actually want to read. Writing that people will think, “it was worth my money supporting that guy!” So what can I do to be in control of this? How can I make this site a success now that I am a market facing writer, not a publisher facing writer, because the only gatekeeper left is the reader. Well, I have a few goals at the moment for improving my writing: Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Market Facing Author”