And Finally, Games

 Alright, Happy New Year everyone. May it be better than DumpsterFire2020. Here is my games stuff, which required more graphics! First, the completed 2020 overall report:

But just counting games isn't enough, we need to do now many different games and all that! So yes, 

But of those plays, we have different games as well as games that were new to me this year:

And, here is how I did with my 10X10, which is a thing some baord gamers do to try to get some games played ten times. I failed badly:

And finally, here is the most played games of 2020:

Yup. I spent quite a bit of time on this, lol. But it was fun. I got the maple vectors from Boardgamegeek, btw.

Comics 2020!

 

I read a lot of comics this year! Probably a record, although 2017 came close:

I think last year I closed out my file at Happy Harbour, which resulted in an immense monthly savings- comics are expensive- and more of a focus on Marvel Unlimited. I still have a pile of floppies I need to read but for the most part I am doggedly trying to read every Marvel Universe comic ever. Just 50,000 more to go! So I will need to live another century, please. Most years I was pretty scattershot, reading a Fantastic Four here, an X-Men there, now an Amazing Spider-Man, and what about the Hulk what is he up to... but this year I decided to try and get all the comics synced up in time. That will be an ongoing project, as all the previous years' random issue-hopping left me with a bit of a mess. But I have Avengers, Iron Man and Captain America synced up in 1968:

Captain America actually started with issue #100, which was a name change from Strange Tales, I think. I didn't read too many of those. The early Lee/Kirby stuff is a little harder to read, stock plots and not much characterization, but later Thor stuff by Kirby sans Lee is absolutely amazing. He was definitely the King.

Have Some More!

 I know, this is only of interest to me. But it is very interesting to me! Here's the updated chart with movies and workouts added. With movies I started including completed seasons of TV shows in the number, but probably started doing that in 2018, which might explain why 2017 is so low compared to everything else. And I am assuming we will finish our Lord of the Rings marathon tonight and tomorrow that we started last night. Tradition. 

Of course this pandemic year we probably all watched more movies than normal, just not at the theatre. Oh, and I counted watching official concert YouTubes from bands like Metallica and Gojira. Those were greatly appreciated as well in a year with no live shows. Gojira's show at Red Rocks especially was amazing, like on another world. Which is a good Gojira joke if you know.

My workouts would have been really exceptional this year but when Ahsoka came I stopped dead, pretty much. Worked out once since she arrived. Hopefully that will change in the new year. My Apple Watch recorded all our walks (including walks to school) as workouts so it is very happy with me, but I am not counting those. But I did record my outside run KM total- 163.88 kms! Pretty good. I also did a lot of running on my treadmill but that's in miles and I don't know what that means.

InfoGraphstravaganza!!

 

Alright time to show my true nerd colours. I made an infographic! Two, actually. Both by copying exactly what Nick says, of Logos By Nick. That guy has taught me so much. He's like Yoda. 

Yeah so I've been keeping track of a bunch of stuff over the years in a notebook. Actually I have many notebooks, each for different purposes. One notebook I originally started keeping track of which comics I'd read, kind of with an eye to making sure I was getting my money's worth out of my Marvel Unlimited subscription. From there it was easy to start keeping track of other stuff too, and nothing is funner to me than writing in my notebooks so. Sadly, my original notebook was lost so although I would have had data going back to 2011 I think, we are instead limited to 2017. Oh well! Makes making the infographic easier. And to be clear, I don't actually expect anyone else in the world to care about this. I just like geeking out and making these has been both fun and informative.

2020 is kind of an anomalous year, for all the reasons we are only too well aware of. Even so, my National Geographic-reading has gone way off the chart, as you can see with this infographic here (I am pretending I am giving a presentation to the board of directors of my life lol)

A major reason was actually not that I was unemployed, but rather, in the time before I was laid off I was able to read a ton of back issues I had laying around at my Grandma's house while at work. Going to work on the  bus but also sitting there in a shovel, waiting for the coal trucks to return. I think one night I had one or two trucks, got maybe 8 loads all night, and read two whole issues of NG in between. Since being laid off my numbers dropped back down to like 2018-levels. Even so, I recommend the board buy stock in NGC. Just kidding I don't know anything about stocks.

Books are a steadier statistic, as we turn our attention now to this:

I guess I'm a pretty slow reader. 2017 was a good year, though! I no longer recall why lol. I can say that last year my favourite book was unquestionably Gideon the Ninth, which I loved so much I reread it this year prior to diving into the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. It is possible I named my CX-3 after Harrowhark. It is also possible I will need a whole nother infographic to keep track of the number of times I read both books, as well as the third coming in 2021.

I know, there are still a few days left in 2020. But at the rate I read now, with Ahsoka taking up a lot of tie, I am confidant this number won't change. But that is why I left the other fields blank for now. Over the next few days I'll fill some of those in. Exciting! Tell your friends! This might be what finally makes me go viral!!!! 

 

All The Ends of The World I've Known

Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction

Look out at the night sky and you'll see

A Christmas Star atop this awful year

that was the end of the world, again

It was another conjunction of planets

that heralded my first end of the world

back when I was five years old and

which I can find no evidence for, now

But my dad's friend said it was so and 

I believed him- you would have too-

with his moustache and doberman pinscher

and a telescope he got from a Sears catalogue

He said all nine planets were about to align

and that sadly, this would destabilize the gravity

of the entire Solar System, and you can see how

the Earth therefore is doomed, utterly doomed

My dad said it was fine and I didn't need to worry

But what kid ever heeded that advice?

So I looked out at the night sky

and waited for the end of the world

Eventually nothing happened and we moved on

to the next inevitable end of the world

of which there was no shortage in the era

of acid rain, ozone holes, Chernobyl and Reagan

The end of the Cold War was so close but we thought 

it was actually much closer and that it would end

in nuclear fire today, or tomorrow at the latest

No one expected the Iron Curtain to fall like it did

Y2K came and went, and 911 was bad

But we weathered it and 2008 and even

the Mayan Calendar reared its head in 2012

And the lesson is, eventually nothing happens

I passed this lesson on to my kids not quite a year ago

when we kept hearing about this novel coronavirus 

Don't worry, I said, eventually nothing happens

and we will forget about this and life will go on

And damn, if that wasn't the worst advice 

I've ever given as a dad. I beg forgiveness-

All the ends of the world I've known 

didn't prepare me for this one, or the next.

 I'm pretty excited- my proof for Volume 1 of The Ursus Verses arrives tomorrow! I'll be honest- there were some red flags in their system when they set up the file and told me how it looked. But I did the best I could, with the tools I have. Hopefully it looks fine- something I can be proud of. I'm nervous too, and it was way worse earlier today when I was sure I'd made the hugest tactical error I could make.

See this die? I made it! By doing exactly everything Nick does in a Logos By Nick tutorial. But even so, pretty proud!

I had no idea you could do this stuff without artistic skill. I'm not being falsely modest- even artists who have immense skill wouldn't actually have to use that skill to create this! It's amazing, really, and maybe every school kid knows this already but for me I am amazed. I just want to increase my competency at InkScape, to help with future volumes and different stuff. So I thought why not be productive while I learned:

Ok, so, the trees aren't mine, I didn't make them. I got them at Vecteezy where you can use tons of stuff for free with attribution. But the xmas balls are mine- again made by following Nick step-by-step. Though I added the amateurish meeple in the middle and the thing that holds the hook. It's a worker placement spot! Pallas and I designed a boardgame years ago, and it has sat on our game shelf ever since, where we occasionally take it out and playtest it. The board was just ugly ugly sketches by me, so I decided to use my newfound skills as well as existing assets to make some nicer art. In game prototyping you don't want to get too fancy with the art, since it is never final, and should a publisher pick it up, they will change everything anyway. So all I want is a playable prototype that doesn't look like ... well, like I drew it.

Fun right? I went to print it out and this was the alarming result:

I knew InkScape had issues with CMYK, (printers need a CMYK colour profile rather than the RGB profile of screens, since print doesn't quite have the same range of colour as pixels) but I didn't expect it to be this bad! No big deal, right? Except... I created the cover for my chapbook in InkScape! What horror awaits me tomorrow when the proof gets here? I felt that knot in my stomach, and even though they said it looked alright and they could work with it, I had a doubt. Urg! But proofs exist for this very reason- to correct problems before the print run is made and you are stuck with it forever.

Still, though, that little guy yanking on my guts wouldn't shut up. I tweeted the two pics above, sort of to show how much I have to learn, not to complain or anything, and an InkScape programmer saw it and replied with some helpful advice and to also say, basically, "looks like you're out of blue ink, dude" and sure enough, he was right. Lol. The new page looks way better.

Alright. Worry Guy is silent. Excited again!

How to make a chapbook and destroy the universe

"The first transport is away. The first transport is away!"

Except in my case it is the first Volume. And there are no rebel pilots to cheer me on and also try to draw AT-AT fire heroically upon themselves. But that's ok, Ahsoka is snorting in her sleep so that is all the applause I need...

I have sent the files for The Ursus Verses Volume 1 away to the printer. If all goes well- and I've already had to do a second try for the text pdf- I should have the shipment in late January. Which gives me just over a month to learn how to make an online store! This whole "making a chapbook" thing has been one steep learning curve after another. Learning mountain, more like. And this post today will be a design diary, sort of like boardgame designers do on boardgamegeek.com all the time. Those are really cool, I think. Hopefully it will be helpful to anyone embarking on a similar project.

In the beginning, there was ignorance. No light whatsoever. I didn't even know what a chapbook was! I was freshly laid off from my coal-mining job I'd had my entire adult life, basically. Because of the pandemic, Michelle and I decided I would not look for another job for a while, so I would be able to stay home in case of school shutdowns and so forth. As a bonus, I was going to do a bit more writing and submit to some lit mags and anthologies if I came across any. Pretty low-key, really. 

One of the email writing newsletters I subscribe to has quarterly contests- flash fiction, poetry, short stories, you know, writerly bread and butter. Back in late September I think they had a contest for chapbooks. I'd heard of them, but didn't really know what they were. Essentially- short, usually self-published collections of poetry or fiction, maybe 25-40 pages. I may not be a novelist, but I definitely have 25-40 pages of poetry and short fiction laying around! Several 25-40 pages worth, in fact. 

I decided to do it! Not the contest, since you needed to actually send a finished product. But I decided to make a chapbook. Several, eventually, but one to start with. The Ursus Verses Volume 1 would focus on the early years of this very blog. Poems and flash fiction and some short stories. I compiled the contents together, a nice mixture I felt of fun stuff. Other than the focus on earlier works (though I did wind up including more recent stuff too), if there was any unifying theme it would be monsters. Lots of monsters. Fun monsters, to be sure. Bears and monsters. They always say to write the book you want to read! I definitely did that.

What order should it all go in, though? That was kind of fun, I did more of a board game designer thing and wrote each title on a scrap of paper. Then I colour-coded them. A pink line along the top if it was a poem. Brown stripe on the left if it was about bears, purple on the right if it was monsters. Etc etc, then I ordered them in a way so that there was a good progression and variety. I think it turned out ok! 

So I opened up Word, the one piece of software I know how to use! Or, wait, why is it all different. I don't understand... why is this not the same as Word 97?? Arghhh!!!!! I literally couldn't even insert a new page at the end of my document, that's how clueless I was. It has been years since I'd even used a computer, my iMac died in 2016 and I just used my iPad and iPhone ever since. Borrowed Michelle's MacBook Air and yeah. I had to relearn how to use frickin' Word. See? You're almost certainly ahead of me in the process if you can insert a blank page in a document. You got this!

Eventually I figured that out, and I wrote an introduction as well as back matter that talked about the genesis of each piece. And that was all it took to make the inside of the chapbook! Took me a while, because I did a lot of editing and even some major rewriting for Swampy Joe and the Plasma Dragon. I'll say... a month? Maybe not quite? In the meantime I had asked on Twitter how to make a chapbook, and River Selkie!! Yes, that River Selkie, aka Denise Ganley, now host of the Heart-Shaped Books podcast, and old- old-school friend of the blog, told me about Vellum.

Listen, friends, Vellum isn't cheap. And it's Mac-only. I thought long and hard but I did finally pull the trigger. Super easy for generating ebooks, which I did in no time after doing the included tutorial. Here is the result of that, a great first step. But my main goal was always a print version.

I only got the ebook version of Vellum, though for a bit more money you can also get the version that generates print editions. I was going to get that version, but this whole time I had also been asking questions and making phone calls and doing my homework. This is what I found- if you want to do print on demand, from a company like Ingram Spark, then the print book version of Vellum should be more than adequate. But I got a referral for a printing company from a local literary magazine, and I called them, and they had never heard of Vellum. Not a good sign. Maybe it still could have done the job, but I didn't want to risk it. They recommended Adobe InDesign, the industry standard, to create a single-page pdf. 

The easiest thing at that point would have been to sign up for Adobe Creative Suite or whatever it's called, but the monthly subscription fee is a little more than this unemployed coal miner was ready to pay. If you can afford it, however, I would say do it. But I chose the Open Source route, and it worked out ok. In fact, as I was writing this post I got the email from the printing company that my pdf was usable so yay! I made it with Scribus.

In the meantime there are all these little details you need to do as you go along, for example you probably need an ISBN, which for Canadians is super easy. I don't know about anyone else, though, but I suspect it is universally easy. Canadians, go here to sign up and apply for your numbers. It's free! But getting a barcode is not free, and you will have to decide if you want one or not.

Also, for the ebook version I just Worded up a logo with one of the included fonts, and well, you can definitely tell that's what I did. Since I intend to make multiple volumes, I decided to commission a logo from a professional. In fact at first I reached out to an Indigenous maker, since that sort of representation is important to me, but I don't know if there was a communication breakdown or what but they ghosted me. So I got a Twitter mutual to make one for me. I love it! And since it's a vector file I can change the colour for each volume, or use it on promotional materials, maybe even make an enamel pin from it at some point. Up to you if you want to make that investment, it will likely be one of your more significant costs, though.

Yeah, so, Scribus. Free. Powerful. Not user friendly. I googled a YouTube tutorial and I was off to the races. I recommend this one, by M.K. Williams. Though I think I will use automatic text boxes next time! I watched it once through, took notes, then opened Scribus and watched it again and just did everything she did. But always I have these little ideas I want to do that aren't covered by the tutorials, but I figured it out, because the tutorial gives you enough knowledge to explore. Prior to watching it I didn't even know how to open a document.

In the meantime my logo file had come, and I had to design my book cover! I'm really lucky in that, years and years ago I had commissioned several artists to make me art for this blog, and so I just secured permission to use those assets for a for-profit chapbook. You will have to decide how you want to go about it for your cover, maybe you make your own, or use stock photos, or commission an artist. Again, that will be a significant expense, but very worth it.

Industry standard is Adobe Illustrator, but I used InkScape and I really like it. Same thing, couldn't even open the file until I sat down and watched some tutorials. Basically this channel, Logos By Nick,  taught me everything I need to know just from watching a bunch of his videos. So good! Fun even. I had no idea, I always thought you had to be a good artist to do this stuff. 

Took some experimenting and getting feedback from friends, but I got my cover. You need to know your page count, and paper weight to determine how thick your spine is, and add that to double the page size to make your wraparound cover image. For me, I needed seven elements: title logo, cover art, my name on the front. Title and name and little Volume number indicator on the spine, and then some back cover art and a blurb. You don't even need that if you don't want! 

I think that's it! Took two solid months and a little bit, and if all goes well I should get the books late January. In the meantime I've been making great progress on Volume 2!

My next step is to set up an online store. Again, I'll be starting from scratch.... I think I'll take a moment to rest first though. We got a puppy and Naia had to do two weeks of homeschooling when her classmate had a positive covid test during all this, and so yeah, I'm tired! 

Any questions just ask in the comments or find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1 

For that matter, if, after reading this post, you decide it all sounds like too much work, well, I am for hire, depending on your needs. Get in touch. 

And if you want to preorder a copy of The Ursus Verses Volume 1 let me know as well. I'll put you on a list or something. 

I guess we didn't destroy the universe after all. Sorry! Next time. Making the store will probably destroy my universe anyway.

 One thing this pandemic has been good for has been all these collaborations between homebound musicians, and the livestreams and stuff they do. In fact, I finished a story last week that was based on an idea I've had for years, but the concept of remote performances and livestreams and stuff turned out to be the spark needed to really give it life. Not sure what I'm going to do with that story, yet. I'd like to submit it  to some of the magazines I like, but it doesn't fit super neatly into any category. Science fiction I guess, or well....fantasy? Contemporary fantasy? I dunno, it's just uncanny. It's about heavy metal and kaiju, kind of. It's really fun, though, if I do say so myself. I'll let you know if it ever finds a home.

In the meantime, I've been meaning to make a list of cool covers and whatever else that I've enjoyed and/or been meaning to take the time to watch. One of the earliest ones directly attributable to the pandemic that I saw was this fantastic performance of Godzilla by Blue Öyster Cult.

Larkin Poe are amazing, and they have put out a lot of great performing from home videos, like this one, but really just watch every single one of their videos.

Scott Ian and Charlie Benante have been very active as well, teaming up together as Anthrax and S.O.D. of course but also separately with everyone from Sepultura (who have produced a great quarantine series for their new album Quarta, called Sepulquarta) to DMC for some fun jams. I really liked this King of Rock medley

DMC also shows up in this - I need more synonyms for awesome fantastic etc etc- killer rendition of We Care A Lot by like everyone ever. Except for Billy Gould!  Love it!

One of my faves- this cover of Holy Wars...The Punishment Due by members of Mastodon, Revocation and Dethklok.

Now I have some stuff I haven't watched yet but want to drop the links to come back to later:

Metallica covering Alice In Chain's Would? but can't find an official link. Search later!

Vicky Psarakis, Falling Away From Me.

Khemmis, Come Out and Play