Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Rough night...

I could not shut my brain down, last night, so wound up reading until after 5am. Normally, if I'm tired it doesn't matter how interesting the book is, I start dozing. Not last night. And none of my usual tricks worked. So today I wasn't at my best.

Of course, I got no writing done because I'm also working on a project that may bring in some much-needed cash. But it entails me doing animation, and the only way I can do that is through Photoshop and iMovie, neither of which are easy to use. But I got what I thought was a 2 second test done...that iMovie changed into an 8 second test and refused to let me make it shorter.

There's supposed to be a way when you double-click on the frame to designate it show at .1 second; that's the shortest iMovie lets you go. I never could get it to do shorter than .5, and I wound up having to go through every frame I loaded to make it stop its pan-and-scan crap. I should charge by the hour for this job.

Didn't help that my keyboard suddenly decided my 2, w, s, & x keys would not work. The one huge drawback to a flat Mac keyboard is, you can't pull off the keys and clean under them; I tried but the keys wouldn't go back on  straight. So I had to buy a new keyboard. I got a generic one for $25 after a discount at OfficeMax, but it's not money I wanted to spend.

Still, I have an idea of what I'm doing, now, and can do it. I just need to keep it cleaner-looking, more graphics oriented. The work I did was too wobbly.

I did make a couple changes to continuity errors on OT, and had an idea to refer to the townhouse complex as a fortress, since that's what it looks like from the main drag -- a Moorish castle atop a hill. But nothing more.

Hope tonight's better...

No comments: