Rick's b.log - entry 2025/06/01

That was unexpected

Yet, just before six this morning I woke up with abdominal pain. Again. I wish I knew what was causing this.

But this time was different. I itched all over, like I had been put into a bag full of bed bugs, fleas, ticks, and mosquitos. There was a bite on the side of my butt that was like Olympus Mons. And a puffy red patch between my legs.

As you can imagine, numerous visits to the toilet as that worked its way through me. I'll spare you the details.

It was over and done with by about quarter past eight, so I went back to bed and pulled the duvet over my head. To hell with everything.

I got up at about half ten. All of those bites? Gone. I mean, I have itches and bites from midges and those annoying little red mite things that crawl around in the sun (this is why we can't have nice things) but the massive sore bites? The mountain on my butt? Gone. I don't actually even remember which side it was on.

It's that, the skin oddity, that says to me that this is some sort of allergic reaction rather than food poisioning. The thing is, I don't know what is triggering it. I know I'm not lactose intolerant as I consume quite a bit of milk. I know also that it's not gluten as I eat quite a bit of bread and pasta. But I also know that there is really weird stuff like I appear to be sensitive to certain forms of cherry. I think I can eat cherry in a tin but not in a bottle...or is it the other way around? I don't eat cherry to avoid this. But it has weird secondary effects, like Yoplait cherry yoghurt is lovely, but Activia cherry yoghurt makes me feel poorly...yet Activia pineapple yoghurt is nice. So...?

I made a special trip to the supermarket yesterday to get butter as I was planning on making cake today given as how I'm starting to run low on cake. Clearly that was not going to happen now. Instead in the morning I played a lovely spooky game on my Linux PC which has an interesting ambience.
Then a little later I went out and started dealing with weeds in the plant pots and planted a melon in one of the raised planters after clearing the junk in there. It looks like the amaryllis has vanished. Do they die/dissolve after a few years or has something eaten it?

Tending the plant pots.

HOW BIG?

It's HOW big?

If you did not, or if you just scrolled down here instead of looking at the picture (although I'll forgive you if you're in mobile mode as that's unreadable)... it's an installation of 994MB which will require 3.3GB of disc space.
Excuse me! What? That's like the size of a basic XP installation. An entire operating system. How the hell can a hex editor need so much space?!?

So close yet so far

Google Docs and my story.

With a little under 27,000 words (or 145,000 characters (or 119,000 if you discount spaces)), it was something of a labour of love that was written partly while mom was having PET scans, and during that summer holiday when she was in hospital. Sadly she was too unwell to ever read what I had written which is a shame as I would have liked her input. And that was 2019. It's now SIX years later - WTF? Where has the time gone? So I'm thinking I had probably read through and think about picking it up. Part of my problem is that I have a beginning, and I kind of know how I want it to end, it's just the bit in the middle that is proving difficult.
That being said, I have revised the plan a number of times in those six years. I mean, originally it was roughed out as my mother was, quite literally, dying. So the original plan, best summed up as "everyone dies" doesn't exactly make for a satisfying story. It's still quite firmly on the dark/cynical side of the scale, but who knows how it will actually turn out?
My way of writing is to switch my mind to being in the position of the characters, so I am pretty much narrating what is going on. While there are waypoints that should be passed, that is to say "character X does Y", sometimes the characters go off script and do their own thing. I keep on writing as, well, if it sucks I can always ^X the lot and try again. But then sometimes it's more interesting to just go with the flow and see where it ends up.

As a part of doing this, I made use of the built-in spelling and grammar checker. While this caught a few bits of idiocy (such as a a repeated word), it seemed to be very simplistically looking at each word in turn and looking, maybe, a word or two either side. As such, it utterly failed to understand any sort of context, as best demonstrated here. Replacing "yours" with "you" just wouldn't make sense.

Uh-hu, not how it's supposed to be.

Oh, and for the parts that are blanked out, no spoilers! ☺ You'll need to buy my book. You know, if I actually ever finish writing it before I die...

It has been designed A5 size, with margins that will hopefully make it suitable for the likes of Lulu or ADP - rather expensive to purchase as it'll be printed on demand (I think it's something like €10 or so a book without me even making anything on it). But let's not get ahead here. First I need a story. The entire story. Then it needs to be checked, read, pored over... the sort of things one would hire an editor for but they don't come cheap. But, again, getting ahead. First I need a story, let's work on that part, eh?

This probably leads to two questions: Firstly, why am I using Google Docs for this, and secondly why am I trying to be an author?

The answer to the first question is because of how it was being written - sort of on-the-go in medical centres (using my phone and a Bluetooth keyboard, then later using a tablet and Bluetooth keyboard). While Google Docs is lacking loads of features, it has the benefit of being available pretty much anywhere. Once upon a time I even had a client that ran on the iPad, but Google disabled that when my version of iOS got too old... I know there are apps for Microsoft Office, but the benefit of GDoc is that you don't need any account more than the one your phone is registered with (for the Google Play apps stuff).

As for the second question? I'm certainly not going to become the next Stephen King or John Grisham, but I have a very (over)active imagination and I like to write. Add those together, it sort of makes sense. The only problem is that with ADHD there's a huge disconnect between wanting to do something and actually getting around to doing it. But, well, I guess I shouldn't let it languish too long. Six years is an eternity, even though it really doesn't feel like it.

Now I think I'll go make some pasta.

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jgh, 2nd June 2025, 20:43

On Windows my prefered editor has been Metapad for a long time. The binary was 32K when I first installed it. Yes, K, as inn 32768 *bytes*. It only increased in size when they included a higher resolution icon file. I've just checked what I've got on this machine, and it's a whopping 190K. 190*1024 bytes.    I recently started using Notepad++ for examining binary files - but you need to manually add the HexView module. The binary is 162K, but the whole application is 13M. metapad is 190K and is a single file. If it did hex view, it would be perfect. Otherwise, I switch to VirtualA5000 and run StrongEd. ;)

A tree-dwelling mammal, 3rd June 2025, 22:55

Windows? I use UltraEdit32, which seems to do just about everything. Needs a few tweaks in the configuration but it's great for writing PHP or C/C++. Or HTML. Actually the way it handles that is pretty smart, it'll flip between PHP, HTML and CSS syntax colouring in different parts of the same file as it can detect the context.    It also does hex editing.    For text files? Actually Notepad on Windows has been substantially upgraded and doesn't suck.    I tried Notepad++. Couldn't get on with the workflow and switched back to UltraEdit32.    jgh: StrongEd? Pah. Zap every time.

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