Just like Mom used to make.
NaNoWriMo 2008 Winner
Me! Suprisingly, despite all of my other projects and obligations this month, I managed to make it to the 50,000 word threshhold in the National Novel Writers Month competition. So far, less than 10,000 of the 117,000 entrants have crossed the finish line.
I would like to take this moment to thank the Academy, my family, my mom, my pastor, Carolina Men’s Basketball Team, Coach Williams, the entire Steelers organization…
Well, I have jumped into the pool of iPhone app developers, seeking fame and certain fortune in a whole new stream of development. I have read the stories: man creates simple iPhone game and nets $250,000 in two months; girl creates iPhone app while watching episode of the Real Life on MTV and nets $25K in first 15 minutes; 8-year-old boy invents iPhone app that cures Polio. I figured I would give it a shot so that I too could become wealthy beyond compare.
My first app is for the NaNoWriMo competitors. It allows you to track your buddy list and get an update in real time of all of your buddies’ word counts. It’s actually a pretty cool little app. It stores all of the data locally, so if you open the app up when you are not connected to the internet you can see the most recently downloaded results. When you go online or hit the network, it will get the new numbers and update the database. All you need to do to add a buddy is put in their id number - it fetches their user name and all that jazz.
The app didn’t take me that long to build, which is a bonus. I did have to learn Objective-C and use Xcode and Interface Builder, but that was not really a problem for me. I have used many IDEs in the past and have a strong Java and Ruby background. Objective-C does take some getting used to, and I hate having to think about pointers, threads and memory, but that is another story.
When will this wonderful app be available to the NaNoWriMo faithful, you ask? Well, it will be out… next year. Sucks, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I am in the part of the process over which I have no control.
I have submitted my application to Apple to become a certified iPhone App Developer. When they get done crawling up my butt to make sure I am not some hacker looney, they will approve me, give me my secure keys, then I get to submit my app to the App Store on iTunes. Then, I wait some more for them to approve the app.
Since NaNoWriMo officially ends on Sunday night at the stroke of midnight, I am guessing that no one besides myself will get to benefit from the joy and excitement as you pass your buddies in the great wordcount war. Then again, I only have one NaNo buddy, and that is my wife. And she has not had the time to participate, so I guess I really don’t get to have much fun with my app, either.
But NEXT YEAR, you will be able to download the app and have some fun keeping up with your buds. No doubt, I will have made some improvements to the initial app by then as well, perhaps allowing you to message your friends when you pass them or find others in your area or something. All depends on what they allow in the API. I will still release the initial version when I can, so if you want to carry the word counts with you for the next 11 months for posterity’s sake, by all means.
The app will be free initially, of course. I may try to sell a subtle ad on there next year in order to keep the app free and to allow for improvements. But I have nothing in there that accounts for that yet.
What would it be like if the Matrix ran on Windows? That was the question asked by a few college students who put together this video. Personally I hate all the porn and spam on MySpace, but this link was sent to me and the video warranted inclusion on the blog given my stance that Windoze is the worst piece of crap in the computing world. Enjoy!
A few nights ago, I was doing some calculations on my current writing schedule as it pertained to the National Novel Writers Month competition. At the time, I had written about 8900 words. I started doing some math, which is something that computer-geeks like me do all of the time.
I figured I had to write approximately 2100 words per day six days a week in order to get to the targeted 50,000. Wow, that is a lot more than the 1667 words per day I was targeting at the beginning of the competition.
My writing was going well; I was having no problem actually churning out a few pages when I sat down. But, I was getting to the point where the story in my head was getting more difficult to connect to where I was in the book. I had written nine chapters thus far, and was only scratching the surface.
So I decided to spend a night plotting out the rest of my book rather than actually writing a complete chapter.
I started at chapter 10, and wrote a little blurb about what I wanted that chapter to be about. I put it in brackets ([]) so I would not get confused later. When I finished that blurb, which was nothing more than a paragraph summarizing what I wanted to tell about next, I inserted a page break and did the same for chapter 11.
Fifty-nine chapters later, and I had the pleasure of writing, “The End.” Of course, what I really have right now is just a skeleton, but I think it is a GOOD skeleton. By thinking through each chapter one by one, I was able to direct the story towards what I had originally conceived, but without the pressure of making all the little details interesting. I now have a blueprint for success in the competition.
Sure, the book may still suck. But it will be 50,000 words of suck, which is really the point, now isn’t it?
Long story longer: I sat down today and wrote chapters 10 and 11 in one sitting. It took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I churned out more than 2100 words. The other night when I did my planning added over 2000 words of summary text, so I was already at 10,900 before the day began. I am now sitting at 13,175, and couldn’t feel more confident that I was going to get it done.
Wish me luck! I may post some of my glorious prose at some point when I feel the need to be held in an entirely new, if not unflattering, light in my circle of influence. Thankfully, no one I know actually reads this blog, so I might be safe sharing my secrets with you.
Ok, so for once, the inspiration from my title is a little more cryptic than a line from an 80’s song. And no, I am not getting ready to flog you over the head with some nostalgic piece about Mork and Mindy. Although, that would be oddly entertaining to me. Don’t ask me why - I really don’t know.
Saturday begins the annual official National Novel Writers Month competition, or NaNoWriMo for short. Participants are tasked with writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That breaks down to about 1,667 words per day. No one in their right mind would participate in this competition - especially if they have anything else they need to do with their life. Good thing I am not in my right mind, or I might really be stressing about having signed up!
You may or may not have noticed that my frequency of posts has been lacking this week. I actually owe you a post on the results of the Panthers and Steelers games from last week, as well as a preview of Pittsburgh’s matchup for Monday Night Football. On second thought, since I am in fact the only one reading this, I guess I will cut myself some slack!
This week, I have been busy, busy, busy between my day job and all of my side projects. My biggest accomplishment over the last two days been a complete revamp, replatform and redeployment of netphase.com.
Check it out if you get a chance a let me know what you think. We have a new look, and a new approach to marketing our business. Your input is greatly appreciated!
A little photoshop fun!
So late last night, I was trying to come up with an apple image for a new web project I am working on, when I stumbled upon a photoshop tutorial at PSDTuts that would help me create my own - from scratch! Being the geek that I am, it sounded like fun to me, so I gave it a shot.
The image to the left is the fruit of my labor (pun intended, sorry). It was a lot of fun, and in following the tutorial, my PS skills increased dramatically. It’s hard to believe, but that image has no photographic elements in it AT ALL. It was drawn from nothing on a blank slate. Very nice.
The site is very cool, and I expect I will be doing a lot more of the tutorials in the near future. Check them out, if you are into that sort of thing. And if not, what’s wrong with you? Just kidding (not really).
The non-technical, somewhat silly and perhaps slightly off-beat blog of Chris Beck. Those of you who know me will know this is not a stretch. 
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