Final weeks

Final weeks are strange. Or maybe it’s just me, and I’m reliving my student days vicariously through my students.

In my experience teachers aren’t horrifically busy in the final teaching weeks of a year. (Unless they’re language teachers and they have to go through the hell of oral exams.) Students tend to be horrifically busy trying to make deadlines and do oral exams and fix things that they postponed or forgot and really need to fix last minute. (Suffices to say, this is impossible, unless you’re good at taking deep breaths and have infinite patience.)

It’s when the teaching stops that things get rough for us. You have to find those marks you put so carefully away three months ago. (Too carefully, as it turns out.) Leftover presentations, leftover assignments, in short: up in paperwork over your ears. (I tend to try and make the paperwork digital. The only advantage to this is that its easier to hide.) There’s thesis checking and the defences that logically follow. And this is all besides trying to get your exams checked in record time. (Or at least in time for resits.) You don’t plan too much and put your life on hold for a bit. (Lunch becomes the most important meal of the day, because there’s the risk of being asleep before dinner.)

Don’t pity us, though. There’s no greater satisfaction than sitting back after the rush and discovering (almost) everything went all right, and the things that didn’t are easy enough to fix. (Relatively speaking.)

But do gives us a thought, especially when you’re about to write an email you probably don’t need to send. ;)

Don't mind the techno-babble, or: choices-choices...

After getting sunburn on two consecutive days (well, I made an effort), today seems to be the day where the evening gets cool. There’s a wind (can’t call it a breeze) starting up, and I suspect we’ll have rain in a little while. I’m not entirely unhappy about that.

I got work done. I’m not done, not even for the day, but I need to get Poe (Edgar Allan) out of my head for a while, and I’m poking at pictures. (Among which, these.)

And I’m reading up on camera reviews, because now that I’ve decided my new camera isn’t going to be the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (because I simply can’t justify the expense), I’m slightly torn between the new entry-level 500D and the semi-pro 50D.

Why am I buying a new camera while I have a perfectly good camera (EOS 400D) sitting right in front of me, you ask?

Because of the Digic 4 image processor and the improved noise reduction boosting the ISO range and increasing shutter speeds, the little girl says, smiling brightly.

All right, I’ll explain.

I’m taking more and more pictures inside (official IBL house photographer, and then consider that once upon a time I was just a lowly nature photographer), and I don't want to use any kind of flash unless it's absolutely necessary, this is where specs start to pay off. Apparently I can go up to ISO 1200 without noise becoming a major problem. (Currently, results in 1600 ISO make me want to cry, though 800 is all right.) Now I'm looking at 1600 ISO pictures taken with both the 500D and the 50D which look fine, and 3200 ISO results that you can get away with, and besides those I've seen 12800 ISO pictures and they're still pretty decent, if you don't try to blow them up. I need fast shutter speeds in dark surroundings.

I am, as said, not 100% sure yet. I'm 80% sure I’ll go for the 50D, because I want to go up a step, which means leaving the hundreds range. (Because when it gets down to it, with the 500D I'd just be replacing an entry-level SLR with a more advanced entry-level SLR.) The semi-professional 50D is slightly heavier, which (strangely enough) makes it easier to hold still, and it's faster and more accurate. I can save custom set-ups, which would be perfect since I hate Canon thinking for me while I’m taking pictures.

But in the end, for me it's all about the light sensitivity, and the video option isn't really a dealmaker or breaker, because if I wanted video I'd buy a video camera.

See you at FOKA Monday afternoon, I guess.

The most magnificent thing in the world...

... is to get home after what can only be described as a rapidly worsening day and find that you haven't sold your soul to the devil after all (only just lent it out), because there's still your old love looking out for you.

We all knew this day had to come.

Despite having subscriptions to several magazines (among them ZOOM and other such hobby-related reading) I will always prefer books, which is probably why I have a magazine backlog of about six months.

One of my more questionable subscriptions (probably the first to go if I have to cut back) is Dutch “Schrijven Magazine”. I have to be completely honest and admit I probably only read it because it often makes me laugh in disbelief. Put two writers in a room and wait for them to disagree, mm? The April-May edition has Dutch author René Appel commenting on dialogue tags (or identifiers), by means of an example in the form of an extract from a Dutch novel:

“Het woordje ‘zei’ wordt opvallend vaak gebruikt. ... Het is net of de schrijfster in deze functie geen ander woord kent dan ‘zeggen’ en voor de verandering ‘vragen’. ... Een schrijver kan mensen ook iets laten melden, voorstellen, suggereren, veroordelen, reageren ... etc.” (14)

Freely translated:

“The word ‘said’ is used remarkably often. ... It is as if in this instance the author can’t come up with anything besides ‘said’ and the occasional ‘asked’. ... An author can also have people report, propose, suggest, denounce, react... etc.”

But wait a minute. I liked Appel (back when I still read Dutch novels), and I rather admired him, which makes it easier for me to take his word on this, but I also remember a discussion on using identifiers in fiction which came to a different conclusion.

The English equivalent of Dutch ‘zei’ is said. Now some people think said is boring (“Writers are supposed to have vocabulary!”): most people don’t even recognise said when it occurs in dialogue, which is why I say: Use It! Said is like the perfect spy: it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Without going as far as becoming said-bookisms, there are identifiers (which some authors use to make things more exciting) that just get in your way when you’re reading.

What are you talking about?" she hissed.
Try hissing that. (You can’t: no sibilants.) Or laughing it. Seriously.

Famously, in a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle uses (in his 1887 A Study in Scarlet):

"I would not have missed the investigation for anything. There has been no better case within my recollection. Simple as it was, there were several most instructive points about it."
"Simple!" I ejaculated.
"Well, really, it can hardly be described as otherwise," said Sherlock Holmes, smiling at my surprise.

Yeah. (Agatha Christie is guilty of this as well, so maybe this is a detective fiction thing.) But let’s just say that’s why you want to avoid overly exciting identifiers. Just for fun, let me show you a Tom Swifty:

"Pass me the shellfish," said Tom crabbily.
(Or my personal favourite: "I might as well be dead," Tom croaked.)

This is part of a bigger discussion, of course, the one about showing, not telling. While I’m not a complete proponent of that one (I always defer to Orson Scott Card, who says it’s best only to use it for dramatic sequences), I do have a soft spot for said. I have to agree with Appel that you don’t have to use it as a dialogue tag all the time, as with everything the rule is: if you can leave it out, do.

Just don’t leave said out altogether.

I've got to admit it's getting better / A little better all the time

I began clinging to planning and schedule earlier this week, which is usually a sign I’m heading for some kind of disaster. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s taking things easier, but I seem to have avoided disaster and managed to sort things out again. Yesterday was all right, today is better, probably also because it’s quiet. (Though that’s a relative thing, here at the Kralingse Zoom.)

And I’m writing. Good things and bad things but most of all things that are helping me get other things out of my system. Let’s hope that this time I won’t jinx the mood and actually get some work done. April was going to be the month in which I finish another chapter, but that was a decision I made in early March, and March was the month in which Sadly Nothing Got Done.

Reset the goals, let go all the things that don’t matter, and let’s get going.
A redesign of the website might be a nice place to start. (When I need a break from the writing.) Getting out with my camera would be an essential part of that, and the weather might make that a grateful mission.

Despite its peace and quiet, I’m very quickly developing a rather deep and dark hatred of Thursdays though. They’re interminably boring, and I bear boring quite badly.

Probably should have gone to Groningen this weekend after all.

That time of year again.

I do being sick really badly.

At LiveJournal, I have an icon that says “I’m sure I’d feel much worse if I weren’t under such heavy sedation.” I picked it because of the general sentiment it relays, but for the first time since I’ve had it, I think it’s also actually descriptive of my physical state. The things that 550 milligram of naproxennatrium can do for you, mm?

The bad thing about this cold is that once you feel that you’ve overcome one of the symptoms, it’s replaced by another. I started with a sore throat and no brain capacity, so I battled the sore throat (mostly with medicine and sleep) and somehow managed to regain some brain capacity, but then got tackled by a tickling cough that’s kept me up half the night, which doesn’t do much for either brain or body. (Too tired to get up, coughing too much to get back to sleep.)

So there’s that, and I haven’t eaten in two days (can’t count marmalade on toast and some soup, really), and I’m sort of but not really hungry for the steak that I got Wednesday evening for Thursday’s dinner, which I never ate either. Plus I’m bored, but I don’t have it in me to either read or do anything else.

Woe is me. :(