Welcome

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog*.  I am Liza Olmsted, reader, writer, and renaissance lizard**.

I blog about whatever catches my attention.  Often it’s food, technology, or my own brain as I train myself to be a full time writer.  But it changes a lot, I never know what’s going to come up next.

I write speculative fiction, but I don’t have any samples for you to read yet.  I’m particularly fond of space, historical fiction, fairies that aren’t as nice as they look, and lately ZOMBIES keep catching my attention.  I don’t know why.

I read a bit of everything, but sci fi and fantasy are my first love.  Also, historical fiction*** seems to press that same other-worldly button in my brain that fantasy does, except it’s the real world and there’s no magic.  Go figure.

I’m fascinated by how the world works and how people work.  Astronomy, linguistics, evolution, philosophy, law, whatever, it’s caught my attention.  I double-majored in Computer Science and History, and then discovered it’s easier to earn a living using the CS than the history.

Also, I have freckles.

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* With footnotes.

** er … human.

*** Including fiction written in the past, which means they were contemporary at the time, but are now historical fiction.  E.g. Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde.  And the poetry of Catullus.

The Day We Didn’t Flood The House (and, going to see Seal in concert)

Funny thing.  It all started because the toilet was leaking water from the tank into the bowl.  So my boyfriend replaced the flapper*.  That didn’t fix it, and it turned out the thing that puts the water into the tank was having issues, that sometimes it leaked out the top (“Is water supposed to be coming out from there?”  “No, I don’t think so…”), and that no matter how we adjusted the floater, it would always fill with water too high, and then leak over into the tube thingy that keeps the tank from overflowing by sending the water into the bowl.  Since the water-dispenser thing was broken, he needed to be able to turn off the water to the toilet.  But of course the valve was stuck, because we have tons of calcium in our water, so he had to replace THAT.  And you know that in order to replace the shut-off valve, first you have to turn off the water to the house.  But at our house, you also have to turn off the pump, because apparently “off” doesn’t really mean “off” on our water main, it just means “yeah, I’m pretty close to off…”  And to remove the old valve, you have to saw through it, because they’re compression thingies that are designed to be used once.  Because obviously no one EVER makes a mistake with plumbing.  (Seriously?)  But of course, when you’re sawing through the old compression thingy, you’re sawing very close to the pipe coming out of the wall that is only so long and isn’t at all easy to replace, so you’d better not saw into the pipe.  Guess what happened.  So we very nearly had a problem with a leaky pipe right next to the wall**, and while he was at it shouldn’t he just replace the valves on both toilets?***

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* No, not a woman from the twenties.

** Also, teflon tape was forgotten.  And, as mentioned before, compression thingies aren’t meant to be taken off and replaced so you can add in some teflon tape.  I’m not going to describe the solution, it’s too painful and I’m still worried it’ll end with leaking.

** Cooler heads prevailed.  The second valve will be replaced some other day, preferably once we’ve forgotten what a pain this was.  Speaking of which, how did people repair plumbing before they had cell phones?  Ben was up at the toilet, and I was down at the valve for the water main^ turning it on and off so he could try things.  And, as I mentioned, whenever I turned the water off, I would also turn off the pump.  And sometimes when I turned the water back on, I would turn on the pump, too.  And whenever we turned off the water and the pump, I would then go water some plants to decrease the water pressure, so that the water that wasn’t supposed to be making it into the house wouldn’t have enough pressure to make it into the house.  Yeah, I was confused, too.  Anyway, so we’re on our cell phones talking to each other, so that if something suddenly started spraying water all over everywhere, I would be able to quickly shut off the water again and not ruin the floor or walls or my nice heels on the floor of the closet right next to the toilet.  I’m not very fashion conscious, but I like my pretty shoes to stay pretty^^.  It would’ve been so much more trouble before cell phones.

^ Is it a water main when it comes from a well, or only when it comes from city water?

^^ Speaking of which, though this is a whole other story entirely… we went to see Seal last night at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.  Fabulous show.  (Bummer that the sound only sounds good in the center section… and bummer that my boyfriend the audio guy has turned me into an audio snob.)  Seal has an amazing voice, and an obvious sense of how to use his seven (SEVEN!) musicians to get the sound he wants, all of whom played at least two instruments (if you count singing), including the one chick who sang, played the trombone, and played piano.  Not at the same time, but sometimes in the same song.  I never did notice how she got from one side of the stage to the other side to stand at the keyboard.  And both keyboardists also played some sort of guitar and sang, and at one point I think there were four different people playing guitar-like instruments at once.  Anyway, beautifully put together.  I thought of this, though, because on the wait out of the concert, going up the brick steps, I scraped the toe of my pretty brown shoe on the step, and now it has a big obvious owee.  They’re not expensive shoes, they were fairly cheap on modcloth, but I’ve only worn them a few times.  And leather shoes don’t heal the way my skin heals!  Now I have to figure out how to make them look like new again.  :(

At least the show was excellent.  :)

Reading Deprivation

Gaaaaaaaaah!

I’m not reading.  Starting about an hour ago, I’m NOT READING.  Anything.  Especially not books or the internet (goodbye facebook :( ), but also not email (as much as I can avoid it) or user manuals or anything.  (Not blogs! :(  Goodbye Robin McKinley, until next week!  Not the awesome book by Tanya Huff that I just started.  :(  How will I survive?)

So far this means that I’ve started writing a presentation I’m giving in a week and a half, which I otherwise might have procrastinated for far longer.  It also means that I found myself scrolling through the MS Word options, just because I wanted to disable spell check!, and technically was reading ALL of the options, looking for ones I might want to change.  Because that was an important use of my time.  *facepalm*

I’m not counting IMing or texting with friends in this “not reading” category, because that’s communicating with real live people who happen to be on the internet instead of a phone or in person.  Also, writing is not reading.  Duh.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve started doing The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron, and I’m up to Week Four, which mandates Reading Deprivation.  Since I haven’t been blogging much, this seems like a good time to resume.  I’m not allowed to read the internet, but I can still talk to it, right?

Fortunately, this only lasts a week.  I can make it.

I’m making a vest

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Noro Vest

Ok, so trying to follow a pattern is too hard*.  First, finding the right yarn to end up with the fabric that matches the pattern is difficult.  Texture, color, weight… there’s a ton of variety in yarn, and patterns are written based on one specific combination of texture and weight.  Second, taking a lovely pattern and then identifying all the ways I want to customize it so that it looks the way I want it to look… it’s a lot of preparation**.

What’s plan B?  Find a yarn I like, and then figure out how to make it into an object of clothing I would want to wear.  On a whim I bought three skeins of this Noro Aya yarn during a sale at my LYS.  I didn’t know what to make out of it, but maybe a vest or something.

Noro Aya yarn
Noro Aya yarn

Continue reading I’m making a vest

Getting my Android to sync podcasts like an iPhone does

The situation:

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I like to keep up with all of the episodes, not just the most recent one, and I like to be in control of exactly what plays and in what order.  (So stitcher is out.)  In my iPhone (and before that, iPod) days, I used iTunes to create Smart Playlists for the different categories of podcast I want to listen to.  E.g. all NPR podcasts go in one playlist, all short story podcasts go in another.  I define them like this:

iTunes Smart Playlist showing MediaKind = Podcast, Plays = 0, and Any of the Following: Album contains NPR, Album contains PRI, Album contains WNYC. Limit to 25 items selected by Least Recently Added, Live updating.
my smart playlist in iTunes

See, it only lists podcasts, that haven’t been played, with certain names.  So if I’m in the mood for NPR, I start at the beginning of my NPR playlist.  As I play each podcast, either in iTunes or an iPod-like device, its play-count is incremented, and it no longer appears in its playlist.  The next time I sync the device with iTunes, it deletes played podcasts and loads on new unplayed ones.

The problem:

I switched from iPhone to an Android (Motorola Droid X), and didn’t want to have to carry several devices in my purse.  I wanted my Android to be a one-stop-shop just like the iPhone was, which meant it needed to sync podcasts.

Continue reading Getting my Android to sync podcasts like an iPhone does

Modifying the query used by The Loop in Thesis, to use Custom Post Types

Let’s say you use WordPress, and Thesis, and you decided you wanted to add a custom post type (new with WP 3.0!), for whatever reason.  Maybe you just wanted a way to differentiate book reviews from other blog posts, with a custom taxonomy called Authors* and no Categories, because they don’t make sense.

You might do a web search and find these helpful links about how to make the Thesis meta boxes appear in the custom post type’s edit page.  That’s awesome!  But really, I want those posts to show up on my home page and in my RSS feed.  I couldn’t find it documented anywhere.  There are lots of examples of how to narrow down query results in order to show only some of the normal post-type posts, but not on how to add posts that aren’t showing up in the default search.  It turns out it’s actually pretty easy.

So, here’s what you do!
Continue reading Modifying the query used by The Loop in Thesis, to use Custom Post Types

Whew, third draft rewritten.

Today being the first day of my holiday vacation, I just finished editing the third draft of my vampire story, “The Organville Vampire”. It’s a lot better now, nearly a real story!

When I type in the changes I’ll call it the fourth draft, and I’ll know how long it is.  And then I’ll print it out for my beta readers!  Should be ready by the new year…

(Now I need to go buy Christmas presents… at least my priorities are in order?  :-/ )

NaNoWriMo 2011 trails off with a fizzle

I’m not conceding defeat, exactly, because that would imply that I’m a failure, and I don’t believe that.  But… I took on a task, and real life came along and bit me.

I set out to write 50,000 new words on THE LAST FAIRY GODMOTHER this month, and I haven’t broken 15,000†.  Being the second-to-last day of the month, I’m not going to try to pretend that I could manage all that before the end of tomorrow.

I’ve concluded several things from this experiment:

  • I can write a lot when I don’t care if it makes sense.
  • I actually prefer it to make sense, even though it’s “just” NaNoWriMo.
  • While I started out with characters and a plot, I missed out on the critical VILLAIN element.  I finally figured out the villain (and also what he does that personally affects my main characters!), but not until the third week, by which time I’d fallen seriously behind.
  • Scheduling something, even something wonderful and fun, that takes up a whole weekend plus two weekday evenings during NaNoWriMo is tantamount to NaNoSuicide.  Especially when I still have my day job, and therefore had no weekend to recover from the week and the fun weekend, and still wanted to be able to keep writing.  I lost over a week recovering from that.
  • Inertia is really helpful, so a disruption in the inertia drags me to a screeching halt, and then it takes me weeks to care enough to speed up again.
  • When trying to avoid writing, I knit beautiful things*.  :-D
  • When trying to avoid writing, I make great progress resolving story issues in other stories that are not my main focus.  (Yesterday I realized I could fix two flaws in my vampire story, and I came up with four scenes for a short story version of my first [winning] NaNo story from 2006 about the invention and QA testing of the transporter**.)

Other wins for the month:

  • I bought a ton of yarn on sale on Saturday.  Including enough to make my Staghorn Sweater.  As soon as I finish making my vest (see beautiful things, above), I’ll start on the sweater.  Woohoo!
  • I haven’t died.
  • I got to see or talk to most of my favorite people over the Thanksgiving long weekend.
  • There might even be some others, but I’ve already forgotten them.  :-/

So, I think my plan is to finish polishing my vampire story, and then decide whether I want to start back in on LFG or write the four scenes for my transporter story.  Or maybe even try to figure out what the later scenes of the transporter story might be…  Hmm.

 

——

† Which brings me to 35,000 total!

* And of course I haven’t remembered to take any pictures of it, so no, you cannot see it.  Sorry.

** I can’t remember if it had a title.  It was wonderful and funny.  I still have the novel somewhere, but it is not worth resurrecting in any way shape or form, with the possible exception of the first scene, which was full of fabulous.  I seem to have only documented it on the internet on Nov. 1 of that year, here: http://booklizard.livejournal.com/2006/11/01/

Last Fairy Godmother Wordle

I’m a little behind on NaNo. This week is kicking my butt, with too many things to do. But I’m not worried, I still have plenty of time to catch up. Meanwhile, here’s a wordle of the story:

Wordle: Last Fairy Godmother NaNoWriMo2011

Detritus of my craft

The detritus of writing
I just noticed these things lying about my living room.

(It’s a bit grainy, because it’s night-time.  And I won’t remember to take a new picture in the morning.)

I know that I’m in the writing spirit because I have many important bits of the writing craft lying around my living room.

From top to bottom:

  • The most awesome, portable, roll of fine-point markers, by Staedtler.
  • My previous LFG notebook, Clairefontaine because I love them, and quad because it’s more versatile than lined.  Cloth-bound.
  • My new LFG notebook, also Clairefontaine, also quad, but spiral-bound. (I just started this one, so the previous one is still hanging around.  It will move onto a shelf once I’m settled into this one.)
  • The stack of pages (held together with one of my favorite pens) that is my Vampire Story printed out.
  • The large spiral unlined notebook I use for brainstorming when the small quad paper isn’t working.
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter*, which I loved the first half of years ago, and which I decided to pick up again this weekend.  I’ve just learned (again, since presumably I learned it the last time I read it) what a canon is and what a fugue is.
  • Very large (ok, “very” in my little non-artistic world) drawing paper, for extra-large brainstorming.  Not often used: but used this weekend.
  • And finally, chocolate.  Duh.

(The picture does not include my laptop, because I am using it and didn’t think to include it as one of my writing-things, even though it is.  I have selective blindness, sometimes, often without explanation.)

——

* I swear I don’t usually have so many^ things with the odd^^ “dt” sound pairing just lying around near each other.

^ i.e. greater than none

^^ odd for English, obviously.  I assume “dt” is German in Staedtler and Hofstadter?