Election Time in Saskatoon

In Canada we are in the middle of a run-up to a federal election. Today I found some info on CBC's website regarding different ridings. I thought it might be a useful thing to share with the world, so here it is!

1. CBC - Canada Votes main page. The following are the four ridings that incorporate parts of Saskatoon:
2. Riding 229: Blackstrap, comments
3. Riding 236: Saskatoon-Humboldt, comments
4. Riding 237: Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, comments
   
5. Riding 238: Saskatoon-Wanuskewin and comments from people in this riding (This is the riding I live in.)

It will be interesting to see the results of the election. Will we be rid of a minority government??

The Internet Oracle

You may or may not have heard of the Internet Oracle before, but it's something I remember being around from the early days of the internet. The website says it's been around since 1989!

Last spring my brother sent me a link to this digest because there was a great Monty Python style spoof of the Lord of the Rings that began it. I had completely forgotten about the Oracle otherwise.

Here's a little taste of what you might find there:

1352-02

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> O Oracle most helpful, > > Despite the fact that I lost my arms in a horrible accident 2 years > ago, none of the arms dealers I've spoken to are willing to help. Why > is that?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Like you, I'm stumped.

126-05

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> I made some cookies the other day. They were chocolate chip. When I > put them in the oven, the chips leaped out of the cookies, jumped onto > the floor, and ran out of the house squeaking. I had to eat the cookies > without any chips. They were terrible. Why do you think this > remarkable event occurred?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Hmm. Mutineering chocolate. } Obviously they were trying to jump chip.

All in all it's fun stuff! Most questions and answers are a lot longer, so you're up for a fair amount of reading!

More Videos

Heh, how can you tell I finished school on Tuesday. I think I looked at videos online for almost three hours today!

Voice over guys go to award show

Here's a local one! (language warning)

Funny breastfeeding video

These next two are of a couple of impressive amputees. I thought I'd put them here in case I want to check them out next term. (I'll be taking a class on amputations next term.)

Amputee playing video dance game

Amputee in swim meet

Video Links

I just wanted to share some amusing video clips I've found on the internet recently.

The Shining... if it was a happy movie

George Bush's speech writer

Balancing Point

Karate master video

Contortionist

Catch Phrase

Man, I still can't stop laughing over the last one! And I've seen it like three, four times now!

Link sharing

Here's something I thought would be fun to share: Happy Fun Town

NaNoWriMo Follow Up

So here is the message where I include everything I want here for posterity's sake. I've put up an excerpt from National Drunk Writing Night in my NaNoWriMo writer's profile. Until I have time to put up my whole novel, you can get a taste of it there. (Note: that link requires that you have flash. If you don't you can try this non-flash version of my profile.)

First, my graph of progress:




Next, the myriad of icons:



And for the final thing to put up I also wanted a copy of the winner's certificate that I received, but it's in PDF and if I scan it the lettering would be too small to read. Instead, I'll just type it out here:

National Novel Writing Month hereby certifies that the author:
Lorianne Earl
Has completed the astounding feat of producing:
The Modern Fairy Tale
between November 1 and November 30, 2005. By accomplishing the heroic deed of drafting
an entire 50,000-word novel in one ridiculously busy month, the writer has achieved the rank of
Winner
As the bearer of this title, the author shall be entitled to an array of adoration and praise from fans, and envious glares from less prolific novelists.
The author shall also be officially logged in the National Novel Writing Month Gallery of Heroes,
where his or her name shall stand as an inspiring testament to the unforgettable month when one lone writer battled a ferocious deadline and emerged victorious.
We congratulate you, writer, and record the contents of this certificate into the NaNoWriMo Winners archive with all statutes and bylaws withstanding.

So I guess that's it for now. Now what am I going to blog about? ;-)

NaNo - Day 29

I know that if you look at the graph above it looks like I wrote like a mofo today, but that's not the truth. It would seem that I won the NaNoWriMo Word Count Validator Lottery! Here's a posting I made in the forum that describes what happened:

I have had quite a lot to celebrate tonight! First off, I finally won NaNoWriMo for the first time, this being the fourth year I've participated. Yay me for coming back from 'failing' for three years and doing what I didn't think was possible!

Then, when I finished writing tonight, WordPerfect 9 told me I had 50133 words. Yay! I was finished! Part of me had been hoping for 51000 words or 53000 words, but I decided to be happy with the word count I had. Eager to prove my win, I converted it to text and uploaded it into the word count validator. I just took it for granted that the validator would tell me I had the 50133 words or so that I figured there was! It was so exciting afterwards to see Winner! written on the page after it accepted my document.

I spent a minute or so looking over the winners info page, then opened a new window to see if I could find the information again. I wanted to be able to get everything another time. Instead of clicking on 'edit profile' I accidentally clicked 'view profile.' I said yay as I looked at the little 2005 winner banner around my picture. Then I noticed that my blue line was way above the 50k line. I thought it was weird. Why would they put it way over? Then my eye caught the number it said for my word count - 62874!!! That's an extra 12741 words that the validator added to my word count! A full week's writing! I don't know if it was all the French I had thrown into my novel or what, but wow! What a fabulous surprise!!!

Yay! I finished! And a day early even! And if you'd like to see my NaNoWriMo profile you can check it out here. Tomorrow I'll show off the goodies I get for winning.

Word Count Goal: 48343
Actual Word Count: 62874 or 50133

NaNo - Day 28

Not a bad day of writing. I'm not quite caught up, but I'm pretty much close enough that I'm not concerned. My personal training client cancelled on me this morning, so I had a fabulous nap instead. That meant that I was able to write fairly well tonight - yay! I even finished the chapter with a funny line, but I can't remember exactly how it went now.

My main character had a really great day today. Two things happened to her that I have been looking forward to all month. I'm not exactly sure how to get from here to the end. I was thinking of maybe writing an epilogue. Maybe I'll write that first and see how many words I still need to write. Then I can fill in the plot hole after.

I'm hoping to make tomorrow my last day!!! 3879 words left minimum. Yay!

Word count goal: 46676
Actual word count: 46121

NaNo - Day 27

Too busy doing stuff with/for people. Sigh. Oh well, I guess this adds some drama as to whether or not I will finish...

Word count goal: 45009
Actual word count: 42781

NaNo - Day 26

I didn't write much today, but I did study, work, find $10 in a library book, ate pizza, and helped Tanya and Mike cart some things over to their new place. I was basically too tired tonight to write much when I got home at 9 pm (left home at 10:45 am). My main character has returned to school for Term 2, and I copied some stuff from her text on the next author they're taking in her French lit. class - Chateaubriand. Good times.

Now I'm behind again. Most people seem to make use of the weekends to catch up. Not me, apparently! Enh, I might be able to catch up again tomorrow. I'm busy for most of the day after 2pm, though, so I guess we shall see.

Oh, and my brother has written over 90000 words. He's only 3/4 of the way to his goal. He has to write about 30000 more words in the next 4 days. Luckily he took those days off work...

Word count goal: 43342
Actual word count: 42781

NaNo - Day 25

Yay! One month until Christmas! Three months until my birthday!

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way. I didn't write super lots today, but I also didn't spend much time at it. Gwen and I got together and wrote at Louis' for a while today. We wrote for about 35 minutes, and I wrote about 1000 words in that time! That's quite fast for me! I feel like I'm just getting the ending set up at this point. There's a chance that I might run out of story before 50,000 words, but I think it's pretty slim. Also, I can go back and add in a bunch of description, so I'm not worried about having to come up with a bunch of stuff spontaneously at the last minute.

I'm set for a sort of busy weekend, so we'll see how much I get written, but I would really, really love to finish on Sunday. I guess we shall see....

Today's word count goal: 41675
Actual word count: 42347

NaNo - Day 24

Yes!!! Another productive writing day. I wrote another three thousand words, but have hardly advanced the plot at all. I guess that means I may have to rush things a little, or put what I thought could be a climax as an epilogue if I want to only write approximately 50000 words.

I really hope I can finish writing this on the weekend. I want time back!!!

Word Count Goal: 40008
Actual Word Count: 40134 . . . slightly ahead again!

NaNo - Day 23

Whew! Thank god for a day like today. I had my best day of writing for a week or so. Apparently that jerk my main character was dating was holding me back. I wrote about 2900 words today and it was fairly easy and even fun at times. I can see a new relationship developing and I'm excited because this guy is nice, caring, and French!

So now I'm almost caught up again. I'm about 2/3 of a day behind in my word count, but I'm not too worried about that. In an absolutely ideal world situation I'd finish this weekend, so that I could start studying for finals with everyone else in my class. On Friday I'm meeting another WriMo to work on our novels at Louis' for a while. Looking at her word count, there's a chance she could finish her novel that day! I'm hoping that will keep me focused on getting a lot written then. Another good day tomorrow and I could cross 40k! Wow! That's so hard to imagine.

It also feel really good to see the number of words left to write shrinking. Now it's to the point where it's fairly small when compared to the words I've already written. Less than 13k to go! It's almost like "Wow, that's not too much!" It's nice to have some enthusiasm back for this project.

Today I was also pleased to find a graph that I could put up here on my blog. Now you can quickly see where my word count is in relation to where it should be if I kept a steady pace through the month. When I first got it today my estimated finish date was Dec. 4. It's nice to see that come closer to the end of Novelber. Here is a link to the profile of the awesomely nice guy who designed the graph and shared it with the NaNoWriMo world (note: requires Flash): Rick, AKA knowbuddy Now here is a guy with some good karma coming his way!

Word Count Goal: 38341
Actual Word Count: 37100

NaNo - Day 22

Man, writing is sure feeling like pulling out fingernails lately. I wrote for a while today, but not for very long. I decided that today was the day that I would follow through with another word padding technique: going back and replacing contractions with their two-word forms, and changing hyphens to spaces. That added over 700 words for my word count today.

So yeah, I was writing and the love interest guy who had been so promising just a couple days ago turned into a total dink, so my main character broke up with him. The main problem with that is that now I have to write that they get back together so that they can break up at the novel's climax. It's been a tough relationship to write, because I just want her to be with a different guy. She will be, but she's not allowed to yet.

Word count goal: 36674
Actual word count: 34206

NaNo - Day 21

I wrote for a while this evening, but I was tired and it was fairly hard. Luckily I'm done school at 10:30 tomorrow morning, and don't have dancing until 7:00 in the evening. I'll have to see if I can get caught up.

My main character is just getting ready for a big date tonight, but she can't decide what shirt to wear. She just finished a week where I half-assedly wrote about what she did. I don't want to focus too much right now on stuff that won't advance development of the story very much.


Word count goal: 35007
Actual word count: 32190