When I moved over to the Mac, around 5 years ago now, I searched for an alternative to my go to text editor of choice, Notepad++. That search had obviously lead me (as it does many newbie mac users) to Bare Bone’s Textwrangler which appeared to be the defacto ‘ultimate free’ text editor of choice on the mac.

At the time, the problem was that I really couldn’t justify paying the full price of $100 for a text editor - no matter how powerful it was. As such I’ve never really used a single text editor that I called upon for all my text needs. In hindsight, maybe I should have invested.

Due to that decision, the amount of time I’d actually spent in a dedicated text editor however has been limited. I’d use the browser for most of my writing needs (this is before the iPhone and Simplenote) and most of my coding was done in Coda (I could justify paying $79 for a piece of software like Coda).

Obviously time moves on, and the Mac App Store has made it easier (and cheaper) to buy software (and keep it up to date). A couple of things happened. I stopped writing with any amount of consistency for my website, but the amount of writing personal notes, emails, reference files went up exponentially.

What brought this about, was my iPhone, Notational Velocity and Simplenote. I’ve written about Notational Velocity in a lot of detail before, but it remains an essential tool in my arsenal. Earlier last week, Simplenote experienced some syncing issues, and honestly it felt like part of me was not working properly. I depend upon the service a great deal and NV is at the centre of that.

So what has changed? NV is a simple application. That isn’t updated very often. In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s usually updated once a year (if that). As such new features are few and far inbetween. Also the type of features that are important to me might not actually be all that important or applicable to an application like Notational Velocity. NV is all about the speed. Without a doubt the single fastest application on my machine. Yes, application.

I thought I could get into the ‘minimalist’ text editors (iA Writer, Byword and the like) but ultimately those apps are limited as well. What’s triggered (and partly renewed) my interest in looking for a solution to all of my writing needs, is discussions that have been going on recently following Textmate’s open sourcing (yeah I looked into this as well, again couldn’t justify the cost and couldn’t see much of a future).

Textmate presents an interesting situation, in that Textmate 2 might grow to be an awesome open source text editor and might take over as the defacto free editor of choice on the mac, and what an incredible free editor that could be. The problem is that there is no timeline in such situations, and there are no guarantees what that future will be.

Which then brings us to BBEdit. BBEdit doesn’t do things in the most glamourous way. It lacks that ‘modern’ way of doing things, but I guess that is down to the fact that the app is over 20 years old - and so obviously has a few intrenched ideas. The thing that you definitely get with BBEdit is the fact that it’s rock solid. It’s got a pedigree that none of the text editors in the mac ecosystem even come close.

Therefore, after 5 years on the mac, I have finally decided to start using BBEdit for most of my writing needs. Notational Velocity remains an integral part of my arsenal and where all of my notes will be saved, but BBEdit will be where most of my writing will occur.

We got married one year ago today. My parents were stressing out about it, and made sure to tell me about it as well. How it was such a terrible idea to have an outdoor wedding on the first week of May, in Lebanon. We should have pushed it back, at least 1 week if not 2. There were many clouds in the sky in the week leading up to wedding. The night before it really looked like the heavens were going to open up. It rained very early the morning of that day, and then it stopped to present this amazing sunny day.

Seeing my bedridden grandmother and other sickly family members make superhuman effort to come to the wedding was a gesture that I couldn’t help but marvel at. Having my friends and other family members travel from all over the world to come and visit was another aspect of this wedding that I will forever remember and cherish.

My wife was radiant (as all good brides should be), and the smile and happiness on her face was bright as ever. The food I’m told was pretty good as well, although we didn’t get to sample much of it to be honest as we were far to busy with everyone else.

Everything else was a blur. It went by far too quickly. It ended far too quickly for me. Months spent preparing for this day, gone in a matter of hours. Ultimately it was a good way to start off our marriage.

The first year of marriage has been both exciting and hard. The highlight for us was going to Malaysia for our honeymoon. A trip that Yasmine still talks about (and even calls Qatari Riyals as Ringits, because it sounds better). We were unlucky in our choice of first house, which was a construction mess - which triggered off Yasmine’s asthma, something she still has problems with. We ended up moving houses 6 months into our contract. Then I got made redundant. Because of this fact, we ended up moving houses again 6 months later, this time to a different country entirely.

It’s not been a calm year that’s for sure. Turbulent is one way of describing it. Thankfully life in Qatar is simpler. Quieter. That’s something we’re relishing at the moment. We feel much better for it. We feel like this should have been the start we wanted a year ago. We’re moving into our new house this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be there for more than 6 months.

Life with throw things your way, that’s a given, lefts hope that in the future the amount and frequency will be less than what it was in our first year.

Happy Anniversary.

Fountain - What makes this is extremely interesting to me is that I imagine that this markup language can also be used (within reasons) for writing comic scripts. I’ll need to play around with it a bit more but definitely something to consider as well.

There Everyday - This stuck with me as very true. Building your site’s following is down to delivering consistently. In recent years, I’ve not really continued up with my site, but that’s to be expected since it’s not my day job, and I’ve been writing it for over 8 years now. I’ve been working hard on updating things around here a bit, which should start appearing shortly.

So the new version of TaskPaper (version 2.2.3) is out, offered at a great discount, which is nice for us original buyers. Also the latest version of Notational Velocity is also out (Beta 5)

Now I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Hog Bay Software, but I think I’ve finally seen why Notational Velocity works for me and the reasons why TaskPaper, although an excellently put together application, really actually never clicked, even though I tried, really hard to get into it.

###Workflow The workflow is probably the single most significant aspect of Notational Velocity’s success with how I want to write things. The secret sauce is the single input text field at the top of the application.

After a few years with Google Chrome I am now completely programmed to use an application using a single text input field. I now crave the single line input text field that also offers search and inputing text flexibility, within that same space in all of my applications.

I guess the single essential innovation that works for me on Google Chrome that I miss the most when I flip over to Safari, is that input text field. Sure I love the tabs at the top, but the input field is far more essential and without it I feel like something important has been disrupted.

The thing is TaskPaper is great in it’s own right. It really is a well crafted piece of software, and one that has a lot of quality oozing everywhere, the problem is that there is a fundamental problem with regards to how it was conceived to be used.

Also another important feature is how titles are generated in comparison. While both pretty simple, the fact that the first thing you write in the text field before pressing return is the title, again just works.

###Synchronisation One of the things that NV has over TP is the seamless integration with Simplenote and Dropbox. It seems that Jesse wants to get this done for the iOS version, however the sad truth is that this doesn’t exist at the moment. You can synchronise using simpletext.ws, which has a pretty horrible web interface. So much so it’s distracting.

While the web version of simplenote has the clever search bar at the top and visually reminds you of the software on your mac. I guess because I write notes at work on my windowz machine, and then edit on the fly on my iPhone and then do the heavy writing on my Mac at home, the integration works so much better for me.

From the comments in the post it does seem like it’s on the cards, but basically taking too long, the free versions have won me over (even though I’ve paid for both the Mac and the iOS versions).

###NV wishlist Don’t get me wrong, I still think there are a few things that I would like Notational Velocity to have before it honestly becomes the perfect text editor. In particular is markdown integration.

I’d like to be able to write in markdown and have the words change in front of my eyes, if it’s an option that I choose to activate. Leave the text exactly as it is (so all the original markdown text will be available when I view it in Simplenote) but this would be an excellent feature. I don’t really want a separate generator, just let it update then and there.

While this isn’t a feature request, I would like some of that animated polish that is found in TaskPaper to find it’s way back into Notational Velocity. I know that Zachary Schneirov is already taking some queues from TaskPaper (such as the lists and @done), so some other little interesting visual animations would add to the polish (as in when creating formatting etc).

So will I be slapping down some cash on TaskPaper? No, because it doesn’t fit my workflow and I’ll be deleting it off my iPhone as well since it’s just not something I’m likely to use now that I have established my workflow with the NV/Simplenote note taking combination.

I’m sure I’m like seriously late to the party, but if I’m late, then I’m sure a ton of people are late as well. Recently been getting back into writing on a daily basis. It’s actually been easier than I thought, but one of the things that I aim to do is basically write and think in Markdown.

For those who don’t understand what that is, basically it’s a syntax for writing words that can be converted into other formats, with all sorts of embellishes (bold, italic, links etc), while maintaining a simple text file.

Obviously then you realise that there is the next step up which is MultiMarkdown and even something called Maruku which basically enhance the original Markdown with additional options and syntax, and extend the functionality to things other than websites.

The idea of just writing something in text which can then be converted into any number of formats that can be used in a number of ways is something that not only appeals to me, but i wish I’d copped onto this amazing benefit years and years ago. Trust me, don’t make the same mistake I did.

OhLife - If you start seeing more blogging action here on the ‘Kode in the coming months, it’ll be thanks to this site. Over the years I’ve used different methods to actually communicate online. First it was a newsletter to my friends as a long bastard email. Then it was this blog. Then it was Facebook for a while and a bit of twitter. Now, now it’s nothing really. But I love writing, and I love maintaining this site. Writing an email to myself every day, with my most banal things is a good way of getting back to blogging again. At least that’s the thought process.

One thing I love about the OhLife site is just how beautifully put together it actually is. It’s a single column design (just the way I like it) with subtle backgrounds and little details everywhere. The colour scheme is calm and the little bit of red brings out everything as well.

The guys have been smart enough to make sure to allow you to export your entries as well incase you wanna do something with them, and setting up an account is exactly as it should be, completely painless.

Late Bloomers - One of the best articles found in Malcolm Gladwell’s collection of articles ‘What the Dog Saw’. This one really hit home for me, because I approach art and design and creativity in exactly the same way described here. In fact it’s actually very freaky how similar my approach is. Aitus Moralis has been written and rewritten 4 times over before I got to the draft that I’m working on now.

This week I moved on from character descriptions and turned my attentions to providing a more comprehensive set of descriptions for the world and environment that ‘Aitus Moralis’ will occupy. This was actually much more rewarding than the character descriptions exercise. Originally I was dreading it, because the worlds I imagine in my head are overtly complex and I don’t think I have the skill to bring them to life, but really because I don’t want them to suck.

Like before these descriptions are each giving a single sheet of paper that I start scribbling on, letting my imagination run wild. One of the things that I noticed however was in doing these descriptions this also went back and informed my story as well. I guess I was expecting my draft to expand and change during the next stage of the project, what i didn’t expect was my description for a building to have a direct impact on the sequence of events, moving a particular scene from the middle of the book to the end (to create greater impact).

Which has got me thinking about the route taken for the story. It’s not presented in a linear fashion, by any stretch of the imagination. Is that a good thing? Will it confuse my readers? Will both of them care (hey mum)? I also worry about whether or not readers will connect with the characters. I’m a great believer in letting your character’s actions dictate what they are and who they are, as opposed to them telling you these facts. Letting you build your own view of the character. I’ve been watching movies more intently to understand what makes a great character.

The one thing that I’ve not done yet is begun my research and information gathering for these worlds. This is basically the next three months worth of work. I’m going to be drawing character sheets and building the worlds, both on paper and virtually.

One of the tools I’m keen to use for this project is SketchUp, which I’ve used several times during the design of most of my projects. It’s an excellent tool, which has really grown over the years housing an impressive library of completed and available models.

Next week I’ll be showing the first character designs so far and hopefully the start of the second draft (more on that next week as well).

Having completed my first ‘visual’ draft this week, I took a few days off and then began with the next step in the process, character and environment descriptions. Much like my draft this particular exercise began by going through the entire draft and recording the different types of characters that I would have to design and the sets/environments that they would be interacting in.

The idea is to basically brainstorm as much of this world as possible, by breaking down everything into pieces my brain can focus on. This whole process has been just that, breaking it all down into smaller pieces that work for me. This process may very well be completely ridiculous to someone else, but for me it works. The ideas keep flowing. Some of them are great, some of them are crap, but the essence of this is to get every onto paper. Let the idea breathe a bit. Let the idea have a form, even if it’s just something written onto a piece of paper and dies there.

Ideas are like sperm. 90% are going in the wrong direction and 10% are fighting the uphill battle to get to the egg. This process brings those 10% into contention, rather than having all 100% bottled up and waiting to explode…ok I think I might have drawn that analogy a bit far, but hopefully you get my meaning.

Each character or environment has got a page, or a series of pages dedicated for development. This is where the research for each character begins. Magazine clippings, downloaded photos, articles, whatever all get catalogued at this stage to allow for when I start designing the character’s appearance this task is relatively straight forward. I’m sure that during the drawing process more ideas will bubble to the top, but they’ll only have bubbled after I’d gotten everything out there and let it ferment for a few days.

In this, the first volume of ‘Aitus Moralis’, I currently have between 25-35 characters to design. Some obviously are more important than others, but even the simple ones will probably take a good deal of research. This trifecta of documents ‘Visual Script’, the Character Descriptions and the Environment Descriptions provide me with all the founding blocks I need to create my first readable draft (more on this in future posts) and a series of accompanying character design sheets for when the final art is being created.

This is an important day for me. Completed my first ever draft script for ‘Aitus Moralis’. This is what I have been working on for the entire month of January; and this is what 65 pages looks like:

There is still a great deal to be done, but for me, I can look at this collection of pages and take solace in the fact that things are moving in the right direction. Here’s one of the pages so you get an idea of what kind of visual representation this script is:

I wished someone had told me years ago what I should do after next. This next step is what’s kept me back from having completed my graphic novel years ago I think. That’s not completely true, only partly, there were of course many more reasons but this is a big one.

Once the entire story has been mapped out in a series of single sentences, the heavy lifting begins. As before these sentences are grouped in Acts, like in a movie where you have scene changes, I consider each act the stuff that happens been a major scene change. In ‘Aitus Moralis’ these scene range between 5 and 10 pages each and total around 60-70 pages. So in total I’ve got around 70 lines of text. Each line describing a page.

At this stage no dialogue is put, no real descriptions, just ideas. Years ago, Bob Gale (the writer of the ‘Back to the Future’ movies, and one of the architects of the Batman: No Man’s Land year long story) said that it is wise to know where you’re going with a story before you’ve begun it; how you get there can be filled in later.

This has always been something I’ve driven towards. The problem is of course that in the past I honestly thought that the best way to get the process underway was to keep writing. I would do various exercises to get me to write. I’d write a page a day. I’d write random thoughts, I’d just write. I ended up with 100s of pages of script and character descriptions and no graphic novel.

When I came to drawing at the beginning of this sabbatical, I found my scripts didn’t connect with me. I couldn’t visualise what obviously was in my head at the time I wrote it. The problem of course was that I’d written this years ago and so there was no way to come up with the actual result.

The method that I stumbled upon, was to basically take that single sentence and start to scribble my thoughts onto the page. Bits of dialogue, doodles of faces, structure of the page. Panels. Anything that I thought that I wanted to happen. Camera shots that I wanted to achieve. The page then would basically grow organically. These effectively show you what is going on the page indicatively.

Often times I go back to previous pages as I get an idea. It’s all scribbled down. What I end up with is a collection of pages that more or less map out the entire book. From start to finish. Obviously the only person that has any clear idea of what is going on here is me…but that’s ok. I’ve visually created a draft ‘script’ that I can then start building upon.

I wish someone had told me about doing this as I was writing those 100s of pages. I might have had a visual script to work from, rather than 100s of pages of text with no context.

What amused me was when I was at the bookstore a week ago and i saw the Herge ‘Tintin and Alpha-Art’ book which basically showed his ‘script’ to final page methodology for his final unfinished book. The script was pretty much done in the same way.

At the moment, I’ve finished 45 pages in this draft method, seeing as I started this process little over a month ago, I’m on target to finishing off the whole first draft by the end of the month.

Residency #139 - I will be applying for one of the residency positions. It fits PERFECTLY with what I’m doing at the moment. By the end of May, I should have the entire story properly roughed out with dialogue and hopefully a few pages and several (if not most of the character designs) for my graphic novel. It’s funny how things sometimes fall into place. Even if I don’t get the residency, this will still give me a deadline that MUST be met and create a package that can stand on it’s own two legs. If I’m not mistaken there are 24 positions available, 8 for Paul Pope, 8 for Craig Thompson and 8 for Svetlana Chmakova. The deadline is the 21st of May…much later than my sabbatical is over, so plenty of time to finish by then.

Of course if I do get one of the positions, it’ll be a pretty big battle to actually get another 3 weeks off from work so soon after my sabbatical…but we’ll cross that bridge if we really have to when we get there.

Following on from our previous post, we’ve now gotten our paragraph which breaks down the entire story into a few key sentences. So for example Star Wars could be quickly broken down into:

1. In a galaxy far far away, there Intergalactic War between the empire and the rebels.

2. We follow the path of Luke Skywalker who goes from galactic farmer to Jedi.

3. He looses his mentor along the way, but gains a series of friends.

4. He continues his training and proves himself in battle as the rebels try to thwart the evilness that is the empire.

Or something along those lines. So what’s the next step? Well the way I’ve currently been going about it (in this series dedicated just to documenting the creating of my own graphic novel) is expanding those few paragraphs into Acts. These Acts are basically very brief descriptions of the above sentences broken down into pages. It’s all meant to provide a skeleton of roughly what is going to happen within each page and roughly how many pages are going to be required in each Act.

This is useful for many reasons. It gives us a very loose frame from which we can either choose to expand or reduce, depending on which direction we choose to take it. In addition to this we also get a general feel for the number of pages that we’re going to need.

Currently as it stands ‘Aitus Moralis’ has a total of 9 Acts and requires around 65 pages for the first volume. The final page count might go up or down, but by and large it will hover around that number. This might not seem like a large number, but it’s actually a little bit larger than an European graphic novel or a 3 issue American mini series.

Now the last part that’s pretty important for me to disclose is that I’ve actually done all of the above by hand. I’ve not typed any of this up, it’s all hand doodles. I’ve found that this is a much more productive manner of creating than typing it on a screen. It feels more organic to me, which is weird since I’m not a technophobe and yet my most personal project I’m going COMPLETELY analogue (even planning to hand letter it as well).

Far Arden - The full graphic novel which got published this week. I was about to pick this up, but I had a few other more pressing purchases to make. After reading the actual history of this book’s creation however I am definitely interested in having a closer look at this. 288 hours, is basically 12 24hour days of comic book creating over the span of a year, creating 288 page graphic novel. In the next year I will definitely be doing a couple of these 24 hour sessions, but using them only as ways to create the basic thumbnails and roughs (maybe even some of the dialogue as well), in order to speed the process.

I read a few things about this a little while ago, but it’s only until I actually saw these amazing images by Richard Wilkinson that I actually decided to go out and investigate further.

Basically ‘Little Brother’ is a creatives commons licesenced book, by Cory Doctorow and apparently it’s pretty damn good (winning awards left right and centre at the moment), with the kicker being you can download it for free and remix it if you want. I’ll be sure to review once I’ve finished reading it.

It’s been nearly 4 1/2 years since comments were officially not part of this site. Back then it was because I couldn’t actually host them on my own site, until of course I moved to WordPress and during the blogging revolution of the early naughties. So what’s changed? Twitter and Facebook. Both of which have brought the internet to the world that hid themselves from it, but they’ve practically killed the blogosphere, or at least how it used to operate.

The funny thing is turning them off was on the cards for a while now. I’ve noticed this downturn for about a year now (probably a few months before I even moved to Habari as my blogging engine of choice).

Does it upset me? I guess it’s a different kind of change. While sometimes I like twitter, there’s too much noise for me on there. Also the fact that everyone only speaks in soundbytes does annoy me. I can’t read people’s thoughts about things because they’re limited and effectively people’s voices on the internet are silenced.

In the meantime I’ll be here writing more than 140 characters and hopefully sharing some good links from around the net. If you want to comment on something, drop me an email or you know…send me reply on twitter (maybe I’ll even integrate that twitter reply thing that Michael is attempting at the moment).

That’s what I want to be surrounded by right now. Creative brains drawing, sculpting, moulding, painting, etching whatever. Over the years I have definitely understood that your enthusiasm and energy is boosted by those around you. You gravitate to people with positive energy because they make you want to actually get on with life as well. Your surroundings play such an incredible part in this.

For years I have been lamenting the fact that I’ve not been able to get creative with my art. I’ve not been able to nurture the graphic novel that I’ve been writing for nigh on 5 years now. The truth the story is all the better for this incubation time because although the idea was sound (the very basic idea) the execution was lacking.

Yesterday I went and saw a collection of student movies (this isn’t a review of the work that was presented, but more of an observation, when you have no budget, the story has to work cleverly within these constraints - which i don’t feel was captured). The one thing i took from the evening however was the collection of minds in the room and how they all fed off each other.

So I’ve decided (and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier) to try and find a studio to share with a bunch of artists. Now if it was up to me I’d round up the crazy Danes, maybe a couple of Americans get a big warehouse in London on the waterfront and have us create awesome stuff, pushing each other creatively…something which clearly cannot happen.

I’ll be sure to post the results of my research in my hunt for a design studio to get creative in.

The strangest thing has happened after watching Quentin Tarantino’s latest teaser trailer for his forthcoming movie ‘Inglorious Basterds’, he’s made me excited about writing again.

How can a trailer, not even a fully baked one at that make me want to finish what I started? Simple, a few carefully chosen words that appeal to me and stick in my head just captured my imagination. My favourite part is when Pitt steps in closer to the camera and says ' …and I want my scalps'. It’s a line, but it summed up the movie. I love the pause just before the delivery of the line.

I can definitely attest to the fact that writing a script (for whatever medium the script is ultimately used for) is damn difficult. I miss it and I really wish I can keep this enthusiasm up, just enough for me to finish the script that has been gathering dust for the last 5 years.

The problem is that 2008 lacked focus for these areas, so it’s time to provide them with a slight bit of structure. I doubt I’ll be able to meet these deadlines, although I might try and attempt to do something about it, the harsh reality is that life will no doubt get in the way; however it’s better to have some structure than none at all.

Japan Photo Album

Finish the script

Clemency

Character Designs

Broken Kode

Brad Meltzer’s ‘Book of Lies’ Trailer - Oddly enough I am actually intrigued by this. Never read a Brad Meltzer novel, so maybe after Choke I’ll pick this up…speaking of choke.

My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.

This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.

In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.

I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).

My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.

Making of Dark Horse Comics section. As I’ve been emmersing myself in the comic book world lately, as I truck on with the script that has been on the back burner for 6 years ago (it’s moving along slowly but nicely). This is a great series of making of comics. The nice thing about them is that they show the entire process from script to pencil to ink to colour to lettering.

Oh my that is a first. First time in 5 years of blogging that I don’t actually say anything for an entire month. I’ve been busy…if you’ve seen me in the office, you’ll attest to this fact. Thankfully it’s not been just work, as that would make Khaled a pretty dull boy all around….which I hope never to become.

Life has taken over, so much so that my online activities have been curbed to an absolute minimum. So much so that I even got rid of my Blackberry today. I was THIS close to waiting till next week for the new iphone. What made me stop? The reason is pretty simple actually, I’m trying to step away from this constantly connected all the time fashion. It wasn’t doing my psychology much good and I really felt wired all the time, which was a bit much for my sensibilities. There is something called too much information.

Does this mean I’m going to be back online anytime soon? Nah, probably not. I’ve got more important things to do right now. My focus is shifting and I’m actually really ok with that. The main reason for moving offline is to try and concentrate on the script, which has been going slowly but actually very well.

One thing I will say about creating a story, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult to create something cohersive. So much so that I have an even greater appreciation for those people that can come through with their vision and create something that truly is beautiful to behold. I will have some sketches online sometime soon because it’s the story is part of the reason for this haitus. I’m becoming 29 this year and I will have the fucking thing done before that birthday, so that I can actually have a chance of drawing it before I’m 30. Tall order I know, but alas strive for the hard otherwise what’s the point?

I was thinking about this today and basically, blogging involves removing the additional thoughts that are in your head that take up valuable space. Things that you should think about but not necessarily keep in your brain knocking about. That way it leaves you with more time to do other things, like in my case watch ‘The Wire’ (best police series EVER created) and read a few books (got a couple of reviews for books you really should read) and most importantly for my sanity, create things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating stuff.

The issue with me is that that part of my brain has been laying dormant as I began thinking and doing a bunch of other things that seriously didn’t really add to my being,…overall…in hindsight and all that. Part of the problem I guess is that I’m not angry enough at stuff, so it’s time to start getting angry again and flex that muscle again. It’s time to start creating again, it’s time to start blogging again, none of this 7 posts a month bullshit.

It’s a funny thing about how much information your brain can actually hope to take in a single moment, a single day, or a single experience. For me this is made clearest when I go to Fopp. For those in the dark, Fopp is a store in Britain, which I believe (but this could be COMPLETE bollocks as Kevin told me this) started off in the back of this guy’s car in Glasgow selling music and other assorted greatness a reasonable, stable prices, without the stupid .99 bullshit. Yeah like 11.99 will make me think it’s £11 rather than £12 I mean seriously stop insulting my intelligence you asshats. Anyway, Fopp’s opened this massive megastore on Tottenham Court Road. This place is pretty huge. Originally I thought that was great. Bigger is better right? Wrong.

It’s completely overwhelming. I go in there and I’m completely lost in a sea of music and books that I have no hope of trying to whittle down myself. I end up actually buying nothing because I’m completely at a loss as to what seems like a good deal and what I feel I’d get just because it’s at a decent price. Also I don’t want to think about the range of stuff that I don’t get because I don’t actually see it.

Back to the original topic though, I’m glad when I found out that I’m not the only weird person out there that has people in his MSN contacts list. They’ve been sitting there for years and I’ve never once had the inclination to use the function to contact these people. I can’t explain it, they sit there and part of me would like to know what they’re up to but at the same time another part of me feels a certain comfort that they’re there anyway. It does sound strange and maybe a bit anti-social but like I said, your brain can only take on so much information, before it’s on complete overload.