Concerning Thursdays

     “It must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. “I could never get the hang
of Thursdays.”
     Sometimes I feel like Arthur Dent. Other times I completely disagree. For, you see, Thursdays are the one day of the week I don’t usually have to leave the house. Monday is class day, Tuesday is violin group, Wednesday is class again, Friday is violin again. Thursday, though, I get to enjoy solitude for a while. Perhaps I am being prepared for an odd adventure, perhaps not.

     Thursday is a degraded pronunciation of “Thor’s Day”. Why we still have a day of the week named after a bumbling god of thunder who rode a chariot pulled by goats, I have absolutely no idea. Traditions die hard, I suppose. We humans hold on to our traditions and habits, I’ve observed. And something is more likely to become well-known or even popular if it is updated regularly. I can name a webcomic that follows this quasi-rule, but shan’t. Suspense fuels me.

     All that to say, is that the Wandering Typewriter will type something up on Thursdays. Hopefully it will alleviate the oddness of Thursdays. While I don’t think this blog will cause an earth-shattering explosion or something like that, I’d keep a towel handy, just in case.

The Trials of Not-so-amateur Photography

     One of the first posts on this blog--goodness, that was a long time ago--was primarily concerned with the trials of amateur photography. Take a look if you missed it. Ah, those were the days…the days when I managed to take halfway decent pictures with a point and shoot and could conveniently blame the bad pictures on the camera itself. Then the glorious Canon happened, and I graduated into a new realm…of frustration.

     You see, while point and shoots are frustrating in that one has little control over the settings, DSLRs are almost as maddening. You have perfect control (well, I say perfect…depends on how patient you are, really) over the settings; sometimes a photography session ends with quite nice pictures, like this one:

     Other times, the setting are horribly off as you try to snapshot something. Sometimes editing can fix it, other times it's so horribly off that fixing it is hopeless. The exposure's too bright or dim, the shutter speed was too slow, making the picture blurry. Sometimes they're otherwise nice enough to keep, but other times it's not even worth the effort to fix them. 

     The most maddening of all, though, is not when something goes horribly wrong; it’s when the shot you captured is absolutely beautiful, but one thing is ever so slightly off. It’s usually not enough to be obvious, at least when you’re taking the photo, but upon reviewing your shots later it’s maddening.The focus may be just slightly to the side of where it is supposed to be, or when a picture that looked perfectly clear on the tiny camera display is slightly but hopelessly blurry on a computer screen, or when a finger gets into the picture where you didn't intend it to be. 

     Some of these frustrating errors can probably be fixed with Lightroom or Photoshop, but those programs are for more serious camera people, not a high school/college student with no money. Perhaps someday…

Sometimes the messed up shots are frustrating. Sometimes they teach you a lesson. And sometimes, they’re amusing enough to make up for everything you’ve experienced. 

     As a parting note, if you wish to see more attempts at photography, I have succommed to the social media craze and now have an Instagram. You can follow me @smaugerellathenotsoterrible if you so wish.

     Signing off,

     The Wandering Typewriter

On Rebellion

     Teenagers are (often rightly so) stereotyped as rebellious beings. I am not usually rebellious, but tonight I had to make an exception. You see, today was National Coffee Day, which made it extremely necessary for me to do the following:

     And there you go.

In Which I...Forget Things

      I seem to have a  habit of forgetting things. Meals, chemical formulas, a radically new method of space travel--well, perhaps not the space travel. But I had a thoughtful, pseudo-philosophical blog post all planned out in my head, and I cannot remember a word of it. Hmm. It will come to me later. Likely late at night when I'm too sleepy to write it down and will proceed to forget it all again. 

      Forgetting a blog post isn't the worst thing I've forgotten. Forgetting breakfast and then trying to concentrate on chemistry is a hopefully something I won't do often. It may be that I am too full of other thoughts to remember such trivial things as "meals".

     There was a point to this...hmm. Well, while I think about it, have a cat picture. 

In which I realize that blogs do not update themselves

     Can blogs update themselves? Simple answer to a rhetorical question (without going on a philosophical tangent): no they cannot. This fact was proven by the Wandering Typewriter's semi-accidental hiatus.

     Well....what to type. Hmm. Studying is a boring subject, I would imagine; as is "writing" (a.k.a. fangirling over one's characters without doing any actual writing). So is photography...

     Wait.

     No it isn't.

(All pictures on this blog are copyrighted by me,
unless otherwise noted.)

     Woo hoo for another selfie on this blog. I should be ashamed. Maybe later. Although that theoretically doesn't count as a selfie, as it's taken by a DSLR instead of a phone. But I digress.

      One of the reasons for this blog's failure to update itself is the fact that I was away at a digital media camp. I have a scene in mind that summarized the week, but unfortunately I don't have a picture, and I don't feel like typing a thousand words at the moment. So I shall attempt to summarize: fourteen teenagers sit in a Mac lab, staring at the huge screens as they try desperately to finish editing their video on time. Then the sleep deprivation hits, the teens lose what portions of their intellect that are still intact, the counselors go insane, and madness intensifies. Another, more accurate summary would be to say we spent the majority of the week shooting at each other, but don't want to seem like more of a psychopath than I can help. 

      Despite the rather terrible photos that grace this blog, I think I can take decent pictures when I have a mind to. Especially if I have a good camera...one of the saddest things of the week was having to leave a borrowed Canon Rebel behind. *looks off into the distance as a single tear trails down my cheek* So sad, in fact, that one of the first things I said to my dad when I saw him again at the end of the week was that I needed a new camera.

     Behold the Canon. *strokes it* My precioussss.... *ahem* Sorry about that. But I do love the camera. 

     It would hardly be fair to write such a long post about photography without actually showing any pictures. So, without further ado...

     Well, I hope you enjoyed the post. I considered posting another awkward selfie with the glorious Canon, but one per blog post is quite enough for me. Farewell for now, and let's hope the hiatus won't be nearly as long this time around. 

Concerning Assassins and Justin Bieber Duct Tape

     Oh dear; I neglected my blog again. *dust off the poor Wandering Typewriter and begins pounding out on the keys once more*

     Many things have happened since last I wrote: I turned sixteen, lost much sleep at a worldview conference, and discovered that dressing as an assassin is very, very interesting.

     I could just publish this post without going into any more detail. However, since I don't want to be taken as a psychopath or almost-sociopath, I shan't.

     Sixteen is supposed to be an important age in American culture. However, my birthday hardly felt special; my brothers were more excited about it than I was. I did get some awesome presents, though: a stuffed Grumpy Cat and Justin Bieber duct tape. (Yes, it exists. Also, I wish there was a sarcasm font; I am most definitely not a Belieber.) The Grumpy Cat shall probably become my mascot as a begin college this month; she will sit there and motivate me by her ever-present frown.

     Next we come to the worldview conference. Every year, many high school and college age students attend the BWSC, which stands for the Biblical Worldview Student Conference. Take a look at their website; they're epic. Last year, I spent much of the free time observing or playing games, and participating in English country dancing. This year, I made a discovery...

Image credit to @shadow.cosplay (Instagram)

...dressing like an assassin and running around in the rain is exactly as fun as it sounds. 

Image credit to @shadow.cosplay (Instagram)

     Mind, I wasn't actually trying to kill my friend Michala in any of those pictures. We were acting as characters from one of her many stories: two (ex) assassins. It's quite complicated; perhaps I shall ask her to write a guest post and explain. Suffice it to say, the two characters never quite got along:

Image credit to @shadow.cosplay (Instagram)

     Many other interesting things happened at the conference, such as when a friend and I went traipsing around the college campus, taking pictures, instead of going to sleep like sane folks. But then, being sane is rather boring, don't you think?

On Camp NaNo and Late-night Poetry

     Hello there, friends and followers. It's been a while...or has it? I lose track sometimes.

     For those of you who've read my previous posts, you know about Camp NaNo and my struggles with that writing challenge. Well, among many other things, I've learned this: don’t post on the Internet about something that one hasn't yet completed. To my shame, I didn't reach my goal. However, I do have the raw beginnings of an (hopefully) epic story, and evil plans for the ending. *masks snicker under an innocent smile*

     Another thing I learned is that an odd piece of writing advice actually works. I’m referring to Mr. S.’s way of creating conflict when one is stuck: doing something completely unexpected. It sends the writing part of one’s brain (and one’s characters) scrambling to figure out what on earth just happened. It’s also known as making the house explode or dropping a body from the ceiling. (I believe I covered that in a previous post.) I opted for the pyromaniacal version and figured out a way to theoretically knock someone unconscious with a sharp edge of furniture and a firecracker. Not quite as useful as knowing how to chloroform someone (though I do intend to learn how to do that—writing purposes only. Well…probably.)

     Now that I've gotten that piece of writing advice and my slightly sociopathic tendencies out of my head and into the world of the internet, let’s move on. The title of this post includes the words “Late-night Poetry”, so I suppose I should elaborate before I forget what I mean to say (which happens too often for comfort). Great ideas always seem to come at the wrong times (see The Marvels of the Human Brain). Sometimes they’re story ideas, sometimes artsy things, and sometimes…poetry.

     Lately I've had ideas for poems right before bed, which usually ends in me staying up far too late and risking becoming a sleep-deprived dragoness the next day. Some of them don’t rhyme at all, nor have much rhythm to the words. Others (some of my favorites) are poems that attempt to be tragic, but probably don’t make much sense outside the context of the story they accompany. (In other words, yes, I do indeed write fanfiction (or I suppose it would called fanpoetry) for my own stories.) Still others are poems about stories not of my own creation. For instance, behold this limerick based off of Sherlock:

There once was a soldier named John

Who was never found mowing his lawn.

He sat drinking his tea

Away from 221B

Until the game was back on.

     I may regret posting that, but probably not. The Sherlock fandom is exceptionally insane; the above poem wouldn't look at all odd among some of the more…interesting…works of the Sherlockians. Perhaps one day I’ll post a proper poem…or not. Showing someone one’s writing is showing them a piece of one’s self that nobody sees otherwise. We have to bare a piece of our souls to the often unsympathetic eyes of our viewers, and sometimes it hurts. Which is why I should be a bit more worried about what people think about my blog, but I’m not. I would blame it on the Perceiving part of my personality type, but that doesn't entirely fit, either. Hmm.


     I shall sign off before I go off onto another long tangent. Mind your head as you go out; there’s a sword hanging on the wall somewhere around here, unless Tin had to go on another dragon-slaying quest. I really should keep better track of what my characters are doing.