Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫

There are no End Times. There are just times. Take some responsibility for your part in them. Make the times better or worse, but note that making them worse won't get them over with. The times will continue.

Approved pronunciation of Uranus for teaching children about astronomy?

#ScribesAndMakers 16 Mar
Convince us to read a book you don't care for yourself.

This is a very weird thing to ask. I'll give it my best shot from the angle of books I didn't love but see the value of.

I struggled with Lanark by Alasdair Gray and the third Gormenghast book Titus Alone by Mervyn, in similar ways, and they kind of remind me of each other. I know there's great writing there, but for whatever reason they weren't what I wanted at the time.

#WritersCoffeeClub 16 Mar
What's the largest cast you've ever written? What made it challenging?

The Source of Fire. 3 pivotal characters (Jens, Aena, Celandine) another 9 or so with occasional POV, plus some side characters (named, plot-relevant, no POV)

In a way, that wasn't so challenging: it fell naturally out of what the book was: a convergence of problems introduced in The Silk Mind with a new problem caused by Jens, and the action takes place in multiple locations.

1/

#WordWeavers 15 Mar
If your SC came across a large crystal that was glowing from within, what, if anything, would they do with it?

Celandine as of The Silk Mind would put it in her museum. Celandine circa The Source of Fire would store it behind lead glass and check to see if mice placed near it died, but still put it in her museum. Later still, considering where I know she'd find such a thing, and no longer having her museum anyway, she'd be *much* more cautious but just as curious.

#WordWeavers 2 Mar
Do you write scenes out of order?

All the time. I write the scene first that contains the line that came to me first, which is only sometimes the first line.

Then I might do a scene list/spreadsheet. Then I might write from the scene that's clearest in my mind and a few following on from it. Then later, I might need to insert new scenes.

#WordWeavers Feb 27
Which of your characters to you find especially interesting? Why?

Somehow the ones whose voice comes through clearly and almost write themselves.

Celandine in TSM and TSoF (and maybe a cameo appearance in The Trovador?). Writing her to be *much cleverer than me* required taking ages to think things through and then giving her the thoughts instantly on the page.

Nolene in disOrder: I don't even know where she came from; she was way more than needed for the original idea.

Firefox auto-updated today.

"See AI controls" -> click
"Block AI Enhancements" -> click
"Are you sure? This means you–" -> click. Yes, fuck off.

#ScribesAndMakers 27 Feb "Splat?"

One of my favourite ZX Spectrum games was "Splat!" You're a little X running around a scrolling maze. You do NOT control the scrolling. If you get cornered and scrolled off the side, you die. The maze seemed too big to be stored in the 16K Spectrum's memory, so I theorised it was RNG from a fixed seed, or part of the Spectrum's ROM maybe.

I started making a similar game for the Acorn Archimedes but never finished.

If you're living in a time of monsters, no you aren't, you're living in a time of cowards. The monsters are and have always been outnumbered.

I was curious if the Green win in Gorton and Denton came from switched votes or new votes, and it seems the turnout was about 47%, similar to the last election.

So Labour lost a large number of votes in a "safe" Labour constituency directly to the Greens. They need to acknowledge that appeasing bigots and fluffing billionaires CANNOT reverse this.

It also means if the Greens can get the young voters out to add new votes to the switched votes, there are very few seats they can't win.

#WritersCoffeeClub 27 Feb
Do you edit while you write? What are the pros and cons?

I even edit while I think, so it's not a question of pros and cons, there's no way to not do it.

#WritersCoffeeClub 17 Feb
How do you write about ecstasy, in a spiritual, artistic, or sensual context?

Poetically, elliptically, rarely.

If you have a bread maker, try adding gram (chick pea) flour, about 1:3 gram:strong white works well for me.

A more protein-rich bread, and the last few times I've tried it I got a nice glossy crust.

#Iceland #volcano prediction.

Note: not a geologist.

In the last few weeks there have been swarms of earthquakes on the mid-Atlantic ridge near Iceland. These aren't magma on the move, just tectonic strain being relieved as the plates stretch apart.

Now there's one going on under the tip of the Reykjanes peninsula.

I think within 2 weeks, this unzipping will reach where the full magma chamber near Grindavik has been looking for a way to empty itself.

I expect at least a magma intrusion.

#WritersCoffeeClub 15 Feb
How big are your settings?

Somewhere in the size range between a room and the surface of a Dyson sphere.

In disOrder there is interstellar travel between locations on "the Ribbon" and the plot involves such distances and corresponding decades-long travel times, but the actual action mostly takes place over walkable distances.

Computers aren't supposed to be friendly. If a computer is pretending to be friendly to you someone is up to no good.

Computers are supposed to be horrible, obtuse, exacting, rude. You are supposed to wring answers from them through the dread ordeal of Understanding What The Question You Thought You Were Asking Actually Means.

All you get out of the bargain, all that was ever promised, is then being able to ask them to do it again millions of times very fast, if that is useful to you.