NaNoWriMo 2007: Half-way

15Nov07

It’s the half-way point of the NaNoWriMo and I’m still at it¹. Week one was fantastic with the over 11 thousand words falling into place in the first two session. The first day came in at 3500 words and the second at a little over 8000. After that things slowed down a bit but I still managed to average above the target of 1667 words a day. That’s just as well because I missed a few days in week one and the last week has been something of a bust with only two days writing done in the last seven days. Right now I’m across the 20k barrier² and just short of the 25 thousand half-way mark. I’m pretty happy with the way things are going though and reckon I’ll be back on target by the end of Sunday.

It definitely needs editing and trimming and I can already see ways in which inconsistencies have crept in. I’ve also managed to introduce a little sub-plot which right now seems to have absolutely no purpose and I’ve completely failed to establish certain things about my central character which are important.

I can fix all that next month though. For now it’s about getting the 50,000 words done even if they do edit down to about 20,000!

On the practical side I’ve been doing all the writing on my MacBook using Jer’s Novel Writer. It’s a pretty good tool but it’s had a few revisions recently which broke and then fixed the word count. The annoying part was that I wasn’t able to get onto the message board to report the bug. I had to register but I’m still waiting for my confirmation email so I can log in. Boo!

The daily word count which I enthusiastically tweet about on Twitter is based on the figure reported by Jer’s Novel Writer. My daily totals were based on the word count that NeoOffice reports³. Today I started using the NaNoWriMo word count utility and discovered that it doesn’t agree with what NeoOffice says. I’m going to go with what NaNoWriMo say – they’re the ones deciding whether I’ve passed or not.

I’m something of a notorious procrastinator so one way in which I warm up before starting a session is to do some deliberate procrastination. I check my mail, read my RSS feeds and look for any missed tweets on Twitter. I spend about 20 or 30 minutes just generally browsing the web and then get started. I’ve also done most of my writing in my dining room rather that at the desk in my study. I reckon there are too many distractions in there⁴ and if I sit at the end of the dining table I can actually put my feet up on the other chairs. I’m almost in a reclining position as I write.

I’m looking good in good shape to hit the 50,000 word target at the moment but part of me secretly hopes that 50,000 words won’t be enough to actually finish this thing and I’ll have to keep going through December too!

– Fintan

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1 – Yay!
2 – You can track my word count on the right side of the page…
3 – I’ve been exporting from Jer’s Novel Writer to an RTF file after each session. Backup, backup, backup.
4 – You can never re-read the entire Preacher series too many times.

Filed under: NaNoWriMo, Writing   |  1 Comment

Technology Memory Lane

13Nov07

I found a great site the other day and it took me on a real stroll down memory lane. It’s a bit nerdy, and probably appeals to the OCD aspect of my personality¹, but Walkman Central has a list of all the Walkmans that Sony have produced. The two that really struck a synapse in the old long term memory were the WM-102 and the earlier WM-10.

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Tumblr has Tumbled…

03Nov07

Well it looks like Tumblr has died for the moment. They did a big upgrade on November 1st but for some reason either completely failed to test it or there were some nasty bugs hiding in the long grass. Whichever it is the RSS import feature was broken, then sort of fixed, then sort of broken while all the time different pages were available/unavailable due to maintenance¹. Now it’s down completely and looks like it has been down all day.

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Retrofitting Unit Tests Part 4 – Complex Test, Complex Code

02Nov07

Picture by Olivander Some rights reserved.

Having introduced mock objects, even if you’ve managed to avoid the pitfalls described in the previous posts in this series, you can often end up with some pretty complex and ugly-looking unit tests. There might be a lot of mock objects doing very little or there may be a lot of configuration required for the test. Fight the urge to blame the unit test though. If the unit test is complex, chances are it’s because the underlying code is complex.

For example, you might find yourself creating multiple mock objects simply to reproduce this pattern;

    classA.getB().getC().getD().doSomethingWithD();

Filed under: Agile, Software Development, Unit Testing   |  1 Comment

Going Dark For November

30Oct07

Between the number of posts I churned out over last few weeks, and the spike in traffic after my recent post¹ on Enterprise Ireland and Auctomatic, I’ve managed to break a lot of the mouse organ’s records² this month. That’s probably going to change over the next few weeks though because I’ll be going dark for November. I won’t be completely silent as I hope to post a few short pieces from time to time and I already have a few posts lined up.

The reason I’ll be going dark is that I’ve decided to take part in this years NaNoWriMo challenge. I’m probably mad because I’ve just looked at my calendar for the month of November and I reckon that between a trip to France in the middle of the month and a visit from my U.S.-based mum (plus a bunch of other stuff) I really only have two and a half weeks to write my 50,000 word novel. This should be fun.

But sod it I’ve been planning this for a year so I’m going to do it. I’ll keep you posted on how I’m getting on.

– Fintan

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1 – A somewhat inaccurate post it has to be said.
2 – Not that this would have been hard.

Filed under: NaNoWriMo, Writing   |  Leave a Comment