When I grow up...

When I was in my last year of high school I was torn between getting a degree in science to have a successful career or a degree in english to be a starving writer. The logical, practical side of me (probably 99% of me, I might have been born on Vulcan) chose science, and picked the subject in which I'd received the highest mark, chemistry since the first year of university in a science programme is the same regardless of your major subject. I ended up at the University of Guelph's wonderful interdisciplinary physical sciences MPC^2 (Math, Physics, Chemistry & Computing) programme, sadly dismantled after only a few years. There I remembered that computers were my real best subject, much to the chagrin of the chemistry, mathematics and physics professors; especially my math professor who told me, now rightly I know, that I should have taken math as everything else is a derivative or specialization of math. I quickly realized that he was right and that university level chemistry and physics is just applied theories surrounded by math. Rather than do the right thing and follow him to the math department I saw that computer science is much more practical so once again, that side of me won over and here I am today, a software developer for MKS Inc. I took some required and elective biological science and english (including SF) courses, plus psychology and philosophy of science, one of my favorite all-time courses. Through all this I mostly forgot I wanted to be a writer.

One of my favorite authors is Gene Wolfe. He wrote a sort of fifth book for his tetrology, The Book of the New Sun, called The Castle of the Otter (in the same style of title as the other four). The book was about The Book and writing in general. It was good advice to me on who should be a writer. At the time, I was not one who should have written according to his advice; I agree with that. He said unless you find yourself unable to stop writing, you aren't a writer. If you have to fight for every word, you won't make a good writer. So aside from programming code, emails and that sort of thing I haven't written much in ages.

Recently I got the writing bug again and I've got it bad, almost late for work today trying to put thoughts to paper. I always used to write down ideas for stories that were cool but I'd start writing and after a paragraph or two I'd be done. The ideas were too small and had almost no room for expansion whatsoever. My new idea is much better and I've already written ideas and even some preliminary work in longhand to the tune of several pages. I will start typing it soon as I write so little in longhand these days that I get a hand cramp quickly while I'm used to typing for 8-12 hours a day.

Wow, I think I may have the title for it! That is often the hardest part.

I have some grand notions of having it published in Analog or Asimov but looking at the pay scales I don't know if it would be worth it. Perhaps I'll publish it here instead in serials to see if anyone will actually find it and/or read it.

Harry

Two months old

Today my daughter is two months old. Amazing how time seems to fly, and how much she can grow and advance in such a short span of time. Children, especially very young ones, remind you of what life really means and what it's all about. Some people choose to go through life without children and honestly, I don't understand why; to me it almost seems as if a life without children is not a life worth living. As an atheist, your creations including your works of art, science and your children are all you leave when you die; they are your legacy.

A favorite author of mine is Henry Green (nom de plume of Henry Vincent York) and the main themes of his books (as I see it) are that you can never know someone else's point of view. Even when you think you've walked a mile in their shoes, you really haven't -- there are subtle differences which mean the experiences and the resulting wisdom are different too. In the same way I'm sure couples who decide not to have kids can't understand why people have kids, and wonder how they ever get anything done, have time for themselves, etc. This would seem to be an opposing view for the truism that the grass is always greener on the other side though I'm sure there are some in both camps who wish they had kinds and vice versa.

Harry

And then there was no light

Welcome to my blog, named for a little joke I made about photography with no lights (compared to photography with one or more flashes or studio lights) and calling it Zero Light Photography instead of the usual available or natural light photography. Of course you can't take a picture without any light (even infrared photography involves the recording of electromagnetic radiation, even though it is outside of the visible spectrum). I created the yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zerolightphoto for the purpose of that discussion and don't really mean to use this blog to discuss techniques but thought it was a cool name, so I used it.

I like reading, cycling, scotch malt whisky, carnivorous plants, F1 and rally automobile racing, computers, and more.

Today, my Sarracenias are flowering. My 'Scarlet Belle' hybrid's burgundy flower is just about done, the lower petals are now dry and it has released all its pollen, but my purpurea (possibly var. venosa) has started to open its deep red flower. My Venus Flytrap's flower seems to be rotting, unfortunately, so I may not get to see any and hope that the effort the plant put into the flower stalk will not deplete its energy enough to kill it.

Harry