NaNoWriMo

I am participating in the NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. the idea is to write a (short) novel in November by brute force, namely by pounding out at least 1667 words each and every day, to get up to 50010 words on the 30th. The reasoning behind is that the hardest part of writing is actually forcing yourself to write, and I am certainly finding this so. Right now I am already nearly three thousand words behind schedule, although I have been catching up.

Also, it really should be called International Novel Writing Month by now, or INaNoWriMo, but I guess that is too inane for the organisers.

Sorry about that, on with the show:

The novel I am writing is fantasy, and has the very cliché working title of Necromancer: Apprentice. But then again, Feist did get away with his Magician: Apprentice, so why shouldn't I? Except for the part where he is a successful author, and I, well,  not.

I hope to eventually post the novel here starting from mid-December or so, after I have had some time to revise it a little bit.

What is it about?

At first it seemed so innocuous: Sacrifice a chicken to make the water-pumps turn by themselves. Kill a piglet to heal your dog. But where does it end? Where do you draw the line?

Jack doesn't know - but he has no time to think. His master taught him the forbidden Art, and now he is on the run from the church, with a price on his head and a quaestor on his heels. What is he willing to sacrifice for his freedom?

 You see, I already wrote my own blurb!

Will I publish it, and get filthy, filthy rich?
No. I'll give it away for free, because I am just generous that way.  Also, I suspect it will not be that good. But who knows? Maybe I'll get discovered by an editor desperately trawling the far reaches of the internet for some prose to publish, and then I'll live the rest of my life in luxury! If so, I'll let you know where the party is ;)

Oh, and in case you are just bursting with curiosity, here you can see how many words I've written so far:



The same widget is also up on the right side-panel.

Up and about in Javerne

Well, autumn is here. After waking up to a lovely 15 degrees centigrade a couple of days ago even I had to concede that the seasons have turned, and switch on my heating.

At least autumn is good for hiking: Here are a few photos of my recent trip to the Cauldron de Javerne:

A most lovely and clear day. To begin with, the air was quite crisp, but the sun still retains a bit of heat around midday.

The cauldron is down on the left (and climbing up directly to the ridge was not as fast as I thought it would be):

Then, the fog came.  Of course.

But contrary to last time, it cam, and went. Soon the sky was all blue again, as I am pointing out here.

And I was treated to this most excellent sea of clouds (click to embiggen):

Last but not least, here is the GPS-track. Because I need to justify my electronic toys.

Javerne

EveryTrail

Cumulonimbus

It's true: always take your camera. This one was taken with my Canon Ixus 870IS. Had to do a panorama to get the whole thundercloud in. Unfortunately I tilted the camera a bit while taking the photo - I was perching precariously on the roof of a bicycle stand at the EPFL - hence the distortion at the bottom.

The colours were brilliant, so brilliant in fact: I desaturated the photo a bit in Picasa, it looked too kitschy.

Addendum 7/11/2009 1105h:

Thanks Armin for telling me about Panoramastudio, a much better stitching software than Photostitch. It has built-in distortion correction, and came up with this:

This time I left the colours as they were, so you can see it in all it's kitschy glory. Makes you wonder why there is no unicorn...

Watercolours

I've finally finished this:

"At Willy Wonka's"

Watercolour on Paper, A3

It's supposed to be Willy Wonka and Charlie of Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". It was an assignment from my art course - my prof handed me an excerpt and told me to draw and then paint an illustration.

It was the first time I'd painted anything since high school, and I guess it shows, especially at the top - the roof of the tent was painted first. I wanted to go for the kind of naive style often used in children's books, hence the weird tent and the exaggerated features of Willy Wonka.

In the future I'll probably stick to acrylics until I feel I can try and tackle watercolours again. Also I need to come up with another way digitalise my paintings - the stupid scanner at the office refused to use the same settings twice, so you can see the scan-line in the middle of the painting, where I stitched the two parts together.

Café wall illusion

This optical illusion hurts my brain:

All lines are straight, and either horizontal or vertical, even if they don't seem to be. Also, if you stare at it too long, some unnamable horror from the beyond will emerge from it and devour your soul. You have been warned.

Goodbye to Summer (Losinj V)

Dad, back-lit.

Eia

Recently got a letter from the service des automobiles - the biannual control of my car is due. I knew this meant new winter-tyres at the least, so I was prepared for the worst when I headed to a mechanic for a pre-control check-over, but then...

Eighteen hundred Francs? Ouch. That's about a fourth of what I paid for the rust-bucket two years ago!  But I guess it's either that or write it off, and the mechanic was quick to assure me that the really expensive parts should all be good for another two years or three. Right. I guess we'll see...

Awesome beer can chicken

Yesterday I prepared a dish I have been lusting after for a long time: The awesome beer can chicken (also known euphemistically as "Chicken-on-a-throne"), which is a grilled/roasted chicken, made with the help of beer and awesome. I have no idea why it took me so long to try this, since it is super-easy and takes almost no preparation. I think I had to gather my courage to confront the awesome of this recipe - but it was worth it.

The idea is that  grilling or roasting a whole chicken tends to dry it out, something that develops a delicious crust on the outside, but will lead to the horrifying spectre of a dried out chicken breast. To prevent this and the resulting food fight while preserving the crust you have to moisten the chicken from the inside. Now, when thinking of moistening parched things thoughts will naturally turn to beer, so the solution to the conundrum is easy - ram a half-full can of beer up the chicken's butt:

As a rub I used

• 1 1/2 Tbsp salt
• ~ 2 Tbsp of pepper 
• 2 Tbsp of honey 
• 3 minced cloves of garlic
• A handful of basil leaves, chopped
• 3 sprigs of rosemary, chopped
• ~1 tsp of ginger
•  1 tsp of dried thyme
•  some olive oil

Of course you can mix and match, all woody herbs should be fine. Rub the rub over the chicken and in the cavity. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 centigrades. If you can, you might want to use only bottom heat, or else loosely cover the top of the chicken with a piece of aluminium foil. Half-empty a beer can. Take another one and retry, this time making sure you don't drink all of it. Continue until you have a half-full one, and stick the chicken on it (you can add a couple of holes to the top of the beer can to ensure optimal moistening). Stand it up in a metal bowl or roasting tray and put it in the oven (you can just put it on the floor), making sure the #%!@$ slippery chicken doesn't fall over and leaks beer all over.

After about half an hour or so add potatoes, carrots and/or whole onions to the bowl. Remove the tin foil from the chicken, and roast for another half hour to forty-five minutes. And then:

You can add some of the beer left in the can to the gravy, if you think you can stand even greater awesomeness.
Enjoy!

More Lac de Dix

Was up at the Lac de Dix again last weekend. I wanted to take the tour through the barrage, something I missed the last time, but unfortunately there are no tours in autumn and winter.

Fortunately the weather made more than up for it, although it was very crispy:

Despite it being Sunday, there were nearly no people around, especially once you left the cablecar:

Unfortunately I have been fighting a cold recently, so I did not go very far - there is a glacier you can reach in three hours walk or so. Well, next time, maybe.

Further adventures in acrylics

or: Sketching does not help your tableau (too much).

As an absolute beginner in painting, I have to rely on good sketches to get somewhere near the result I want, or so I thought. Last week I was doing a few sketches of one of Franz Franzetta's excellent paintings in "Rough Work".  Starting from a basic line sketch

to sketches with shading

which took me all week. On Saturday I finally felt I was ready to paint - so I did, with results I feel very ambivalent about:

There is something wrong with the poor girl's shoulder and hand, not to mention her face, as my mother was quick to point out (thanks mum ;). Also, I might have bungled the proportions a bit - her head does look a bit too big in comparison with her torso, I think.

But I did learn a couple of new things: First of all, when shading with the pencil you have to pay (nearly) as much attention as when you do line-work. I still tend to be too hasty, and it shows. Second, sketching a difficult position a couple of times really helps - the girls head is inclined slightly downwards (at least in the sketches, didn't manage that in the painting), which looks cute but is a bitch to do right. Much better to do a few studies of that position than to keep at one until it looks right by accident, and you don't have any idea why.

And last but not least, the way to get better at painting is to paint. Astounding conclusion, isn't it? If I'd painted the girl four times during the week I spent sketching, the end result might have been much better.

Empty beaches (Losinj IV)

The reason why it is nice to be in Croatia at the end of September:

No tourists. It helps further if you are willing to move more than five metres from your car.

Sweet, sweet graph of confirmation

Of course, in science there is no such thing as confirmation. Only supporting evidence or falsification. So here is the supporting evidence that made me weird out my colleagues with a protracted happy-dance:

Unfortunately I can't tell you what it is about, because it most likely is publishable, and therefore sekrit until actually published. Suffice to say that I have had a pet-theory for about a year or so, and this theory requires that the two graphs above are the same - which they are. Hence - happy dance.

Brodetto (Losinj III)

One most excellent thing about a holiday in Veli Losinj is the food: seafood, of course. In nearby Mali Losinj there is a fish-market each day, where you can get fresh catch, for example those unhappy guys:

Of course, I'd be unhappy too if I knew how I'd end up pretty soon:

Tasty, tasty brodetto (i.e. "little broth"), or fish-stew. It's mainly called brodetto and not the Croatian equivalent (brudet), because the local dialect still has many, many Italian words in it, back from the 18th century when the isles were part of the Republic of Venice. In fact, many people of Losinj still speak Italian regularly.

Charon (Losinj II)

There Chairon stands, who rules the dreary coast -
A sordid god: down from his hairy chin
A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean;
His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.

Virgil

Even old Charon has to go with the times - and with the increased population. A car ferry might be less romantic than an old, creaky wooden boat, but it gets the job done.


Photo taken in Valbiska, Krk, while waiting for the last ferry going to Cres.