bloodykitty.com

Unfortunately, I’m not on holidays anymore, but if I were then I might be doing fun things like making charming papercraft structures like this Superaurus, this Wild Boar and this sweet thing called “Lucky cat (Beckoning for money)”. Or even this E-type Jag, once my favourite car in the world, or Japan’s Himeji castle. There is even a paper model of my cat, Simby (he’s a Abyssinian). All this is courtesy of Canon and their 3D PaperCraft site, I found the address in a PDF printer brochure trying to clean up my Desktop/Documents/computer/life. I imagine there will plenty more strange links in the next month as I spring clean my digital files and the scary scary pit that is my Firefox bookmarks. I might even get round to tagging the last twenty or so entries.

Boing Boing had a post on Friday about Tuomo Sipola attempting to create a common fantasy language, ” a kind of Esperanto for inhabitants of fantasy worlds” which is a pretty cool idea. It would be nice to establish some common fantasy languages for public domain use for fantasy writers.

BB picked it up from Making Light which in turn had a lovely link to langmaker.com, a wonderful wiki for constructed languages. They have a huge list of constructed languages from more well known ones like Star Trek’s Klingon and the Lord of the Ring’s Quenya to things like Anglo-Saxon Computerese (in case you needed to talk about computers in Anglo-Saxon) and smaller personal projects like Antique Lantian.

You might have seen some pics/video of projection bombing recently, it’s where artistic types project images onto large structures and make kinda cool statements, here is a tutorial if you have always wanted to do your own: PROJECTION BOMBING

Outdoor digital projection in urban environments is a great method for getting your content up big before the eyes and in the minds of your fellow city inhabitants.

It’s almost time for Nanowrimo! The competition where you win if you managed to finish off a (50,000 word) novel in the month of November. They are now accepting registrations so if you’ve ever felt that you might have a novel inside of you, sign up and maybe find out! It may seem like a lot of words, but it’s only just over 3 pages/day. For a lot of people, just giving up evening telly would make enough time to do that. The idea anyway is to aim for volume not perfection. You can edit away much easier when you’ve actually got stuff to edit and writer’s block is safely dispensed with… and it will give you something to do over January and February!

Joining up with a friend is the best way of getting support, but there’s heaps to be had on the Nanowrimo forums and they even have a Radio show!

Simon Haynes, a science fiction writer, has developed a few tools including the free yWriter software which helps you break down your writing tasks into doable chunks. He’s also got some neat forms to help you keep to your Nanowrimo goals.

If you’re looking for help on your technique, check to see if you have a local community writing centre that runs courses or else try the online courses at Writers Village, they charge a subscription fee and then you can do as many or as little courses as you want. I’ve done some in the past, the variety is huge and they’re quite fun.

Have been meaning to do some sort of homebrewing for a number of years now with my latest fixation being mead. Anyway it seems a little bit easier than beer and wine and as Mead Made Complicated rightly note: “nobody knows mead: if you have friends taste wine you made, comments could be like: “it tastes like Bordeaux, just not as good”. If people do not like the mead you made, it is possible to pretend that they just do not like mead in general.” So this might be a good idea for a summer project.

Gotmead.com have an extensive NewBee Guide to Making Mead and the site has heaps of resources and a large active community who post heaps of recipes like Kiwi Mead, Orange Ginger Mead, Earl Grey Metheglin, Strawberry Spiced Mead, Black Raspberry Horilka and a Quick Mead that takes about a month in total.

There’s a heap of recipes at Honeywine.com that look delectable. The (US) National Honey Board has a downloadable guide to making mead (pdf) along with some other interesting stuff like Hard Honey Cider (pdf).

Unsurprisingly, the type of of honey makes a huge difference to final taste.

The type of honey used will determine the flavor of the Mead. Experience has proven that Clover is so delicate a flavor it could be called Generic Mead. Blueberry, Cranberry, Orange, and Raspberry taste like the fruits. Thyme makes unique ale-like mead. Wildflower produces an alcoholic perfume, not for everybody’s taste, yet probably most like the ecstatic stupor experienced by the small creatures who make it all possible, the BEES! [Making Mead]

It all sounds so wonderful! Here are some more articles:
Mead-Making Procedures, A to Z
Making Mead At Home
Mead Making
More about making mead (Blessed Bee Apiary)
WineMaker Magazine - Mead: Nectar of the Gods