Clouds of Venus at eBookDaily

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https://ebookdaily.com/free-kindle-ebooks/2020-10-11/B075SRFYV8

A little risky

I usually prefer to have a story outlined to within an inch of its life before I start writing.  The reason is that, if I don't, then I tend to wander off on tangents.  Before I now it, the story has morphed into something very different from what I intended.  Usually that means that I've written myself into a corner.  That's the main motivation for outlining: to prevent yourself from writing the story into a corner.

Right now, though, I'm living on the wild side a bit.  I've got the bare bones of a story outline, but only vague stuff, not the usual detailed scenes.  And I've started writing the story.

The good news is that I've got over 10k words, and I'm not in a corner yet.  It's usually somewhere between 10k and 20k that "the corner" happens.  So I'm cautiously optimistic.

The bad news is that I've still got lots of unknowns to tackle.  But for now, I'm willing to face them head-on.

In the meantime, I'm putting words on the page.  I'm doing what writers do.  I'm cool with that.

Keith Richards is a cool guy

The internet is full of jokes about Keith Richards, mainly aimed at his inexplicable longevity in the face of his past drug use.  But there's another side to the guy, too.  In addition to being a fantastic guitarist--and an underrated vocalist, too, in my humble opinion--he's a class act who exhibits lots of respect for the musicians who blazed the trail he walks.

He's not the sort of guy to normally put on a tuxedo and play a country song.  He's a rocker, after all.  But he'll do it for Jerry Lee Lewis, and he'll do it on short notice.  That's the sort of guy Richards is.

 

Fun fact about Amazon

If you buy enough Amazon Basics products--Amazon's house brand--then they'll send you a ten-percent-off coupon for your next Amazon Basics purchase.  I didn't know they did this. Apparently, though, they have purchase tiers, and when you hit the next tier, you get a coupon.  Pretty cool, huh?

I used my coupon to buy the Amazon Basics chisel set.

Hand planing

I recently bought a hand plane.  I figured it was a good thing to have on hand for any future woodworking projects.  I'd never used a plane before, so this was a first for me.  I have an old piece of scrap wood, a 4x4, that I tried it out on.

It was... awkward.

For one thing, you've got to clamp that wood down tight, otherwise it'll absolutely shoot off like a bullet whenever the blade bites into it.  

For another thing, you need a heavy table on which to work, otherwise the whole table will jump when the wood is clamped to it and the blade bites the wood.

The there's the pressure involved on the front end.  How hard do you bear down with the left hand?  Well, that's a trial-and-error thing, apparently.  :/

I used it enough to where I sort of got in a rhythm.  I didn't quite get the wood flat, but I was on my way there--somewhat--when I decided to call it a day.  It's a workout, too, by the way.  If you want to burn calories and sweat, do some planing for a while.

One thing I couldn't figure out is how to plane the area behind the blade.  Am I supposed to start planing with the tool hanging off the end of the wood?  Am I supposed to plane from the opposite direction?  I'm planing with the grain here to avoid tearout, so going from the opposite side seems wrong.  And starting with the plane mostly hanging off the wood seems wrong, too, due to the angle and the leverage and whatnot.  So that's something I'll have to research, I guess.

Anyway, it was a neat experience.  Maybe I'll get good with it with more practice.

Knee-jerk thoughts

I saw the trailer for Dune 2020.  Here it is:

 

Okay, so it's got some good stuff there.  I like the look of the soldiers floating down to the surface.  (Not sure whether those are Harkonnen soldiers or Sardaukar, but I think they're Sardaukar.)  And the personal fighting shields are better than the blocky things in the Lynch movie.

But the trailer ends with the sandworm, and I'm a bit disappointed with it.  I've always seen the sandworm with a three-jawed mouth apparatus, and this one doesn't seem to have that.

Wiki says the three-jawed thing is a result of an early book cover, not from the actual description in the book.  So it's technically not canon, I guess.

 

John Schoenherr provided the earliest artwork for the Dune series, including the illustrations in the initial pulp magazine serial and the cover of the first hardcover edition. Frank Herbert was very pleased with Schoenherr's art,[8] and remarked that he was "the only man who has ever visited Dune".[9] Schoenherr gave the sandworm three triangular lobes that form the lips of its mouth. This design was referenced for the sandworm puppets that appeared in the 1984 movie adaptation of Dune.[10]

 

Still, though, there's this thing called "fan expectations."  The three-jaw design is decades old and ingrained in the consciousness of the fans.  There's no good reason for Hollywood to ditch it.

Then there's the fight scenes.  We only get a brief glimpse in the trailer, but the hand-to-hand stuff looks a bit too choreographed for my liking.  Hopefully it'll play out as more realistic in the movie.

The trailer shows Jason Momoa more than it shows Rebecca Ferguson.  That's an ill omen.  Lady Jessica is a far more important character than Duncan Idaho.  Hopefully the movie won't sideline her.

I really hope there's no Pink Floyd music in the movie.  Nothing against the band, but I want a symphonic score.  Symphonic music is timeless.

I didn't get to see enough of the ornithopters to form an opinion bout them.  I didn't see much of the Fremen, either.  Or Baron Harkonnen, or Feyd Rautha, or the Spacing Guild...  I know a trailer is just a trailer, but this is like a Star Wars trailer not showing Darth Vader, the Death Star, any rebel fighters, or the Imperial fleet.

Was the spice mentioned at all?  If so, I missed it.

So, yeah... I'm not terribly enthusiastic about the trailer.

However...

When the trailers for The Matrix hit television back in 1999, I thought the movie looked pretty dumb.  I thought it was just a mindless action flick made for the purpose of playing around with CGI.  When I saw the movie later, I was blown away.  It's one of my favorite movies.  And I was pissed off at the trailer for giving me the wrong impression.  So I'm not willing to write off a movie based on the trailer, because I know first-hand how a trailer can fail.

The movie is part one of two, so it's also possible that the trailer only shows stuff from the first movie, not the second one.  Still, though, that's no excuse for not mentioning the villains or the McGuffin (the spice).

Nevertheless, I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie.  I won't fear the impressions given to me by the trailer.  Fear is the joy-killer, the little-death that brings total disappointment.  I will put the trailer out of my mind, and when it is forgotten, only the movie will remain.

Well, that was fast

Hurricane Sally blew through in a hurry, didn't it?  The forecast had predicted several days of rain, but it looks like that's not going to happen.  Once this storm came inland, it stepped on the gas pedal.  It was in the Carolinas in no time flat.

So what does 2020 have in store for us next?