One More Night, Just One More Night

    I have to be honest here.  I have nothing planned for my blogcast today. Nothing whatsoever. I trying to save better topics for the new year when I have more time to type them out. I've all but finished the inventory.  Mostly, I just have to total everything up. I have taken down almost all of the Christmas decorations at the store.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring over the boxes for the wreaths, so they will have to stay up until Friday. Still, everything else will be down, and the Valentine's Day  decorations can be put up on Saturday. I hope to find the time to create a the store's Upcoming Releases board Friday and Saturday, after cleaning it off this afternoon. I am making plans for my new video, which I should be uploading either Saturday or Monday.  I just need to come up with a theme. I'll be closing only a little earlier than usual today, as most places will be open all day, although I have two stops to make on the way home. Unlike other years, I doubt I'll be staying up much past midnight. There's just not that much to make me stay up that late any more. Well, besides hearing fireworks go off for who knows how long. That can keep me up for almost an hour some years. I find it stupid, but whatever. Anyway, I'll just be waiting on confirmation on my latest comic book order/s.  There's a good chance I'll have to split it between multiple stores. I still haven't heard back from my local one about when they will have them again. 

    Like I mentioned at the start, I've got nothing to say today. I hate to end the year on such an underwhelming post, but I've got a lot to do today.  I need to get on with it. So, Happy New Year!

    See you next week.

Odds and Eves

     In case you never noticed, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve always fall on the same day of the week.  This year, they fall on Wednesday. Wednesday is the day I usually post new material for the blogcast.  On these holidays though, I also close my store early. For Christmas Eve, I usually close the store about two hours earlier than normal. This means that I have a lot less time to do all of my regular Wednesday chores. I have already checked my email and watched my YouTube shows, and I am obviously writing my new post. However, I have a lot of other things I have to do online today, and that isn't counting other tasks at my store.  This doesn't even consider any last minute customers who might come in. Considering that there haven't been that many so far this week, the chances aren't very good.  Regardless, to make sure I get as much done today as possible, I'm going to have to make today's post fairly short. I'm almost halfway through it now. Next week, I'm only planning on closing only an hour or so earlier, so that post won't be as rushed or short. In fact, it is planned to be a close to a 'normal' post as possible. Things could change, of course, but they probably won't.  So, I'm almost finished with this one. I'll get the link up on Facebook, and then play a few games before turning the computer over to someone else as I prep the store for inventory starting Friday. I'll solve a puzzle or two over lunch before playing another game and checking up on an RPG forum for any updates. I have been lurking instead of posting for quite some time now. If I'm lucky, I will be able to have one last check on social media before I close for the holiday. Anything I've missed will be checked up at home this afternoon before I start another gaming session, this time on my phone. It's almost eleven now, so I better finish up. Happy holidays, merry Christmas, and whatnot. See you next week.

Every Letter, Everywhere, All at Once

    In last week's monumental 500th post, I mentioned that I would be discussing its unusual title. Namely, "Quixotic Topics Involving Sheer Luck and Jazziness towards Blogcast Infamy." In case you didn't notice, that unwieldy title is a pangram, a work that features every letter of the alphabet at least once. While it can refer to any work, it is primarily focused on sentences, as much longer works are just naturally pangrams. Coming up with that title took a while, as finding just the right words was tough. I narrowed down on quixotic, blogcast, and infamy immediately. Involving and topics were next. Jazziness, while atypical, came next. Finally, I chose towards over wit, so I could get sheer and luck to finish up the alphabet. 

    As pangrams go, my title isn't too outrageous.  I have seen some that were questionable with many of their decisions.  In fact, many of my posts are pangrams as well. This is mostly not intentional, as I just naturally want to use as many letters as I can. It is a bad habit I have picked up over the years. I have even done such things in assignments. The papers are just long enough that it appears normally and not an affectation. I find it comforting and not crazy at all.

    My favorite pangram sentence is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." I believe that this was originally a typewriting assessment but I can't be entirely sure. It's only thirty-five letters long, with some obvious repeats, but it shows all the qualities that the best pangrams have. First, it uses common words. the average first grader would know all of these words. Some pangrams resort to the most obscure words possible to use up the letters as possible. I remember seeing a pangram using the words sphinx and quartz. While such words keep the repeats down, it can lead to unusual phrasing.

    Second, actual words are used. I've seen pangrams that resort to abbreviations and acronyms to keep the word count low. While technically correct, the wordplay aspects are tossed out. Sure, use TV and Mr. so you can avoid repeats.  Just don't call it a true pangram.

    Finally, the sentence makes complete sense. One type of canid performs an action around a second canid. Most people would know immediately what was going on. Many shorter pangrams resort to using such unusual words and phrasing, that the sentence has to be "translated" for the reader to understand what exactly is going on. To me, this constitutes an epic fail. If a read can't understand, then the creator tried too hard focussing on the result as opposed to the wordplay.

    I feel that it is the wordplay that is the key to the pangram. Just using the entire alphabet without repeats in a sentence is not enough. A pangram needs to be fun, not just a puzzle to be looked over or solved. A pangram should leave the reader experiencing an acknowledgment that they just read something special, something not seen everyday. A pangram shouldn't have to head someone over the head with its uniqueness, its strangeness. Words should be fun, and pangrams should be an extension of that fun, in its wordplay.

    The next two weeks of posts will be fairly short, due to the holidays and work I have coming up, but they will still be written on time. See you then.

Quixotic Topics Involving Sheer Luck and Jazziness towards Blogcast Infamy

    Today marks the five hundredth post on this blogcast. Yes, I'm still trying to get that become a "real word." I suggest you don't try counting every post, as a few got "lost" over the years. Sometime next spring, I'll hit the official tenth year anniversary, but hitting five hundred isn't too bad either. 

    This wasn't technically my first blog. That would be the original blog for my store, Booknotes. That blog was originally weekly, then monthly, then I pretty much ended it. I just couldn't come up with enough new ideas about the store. Not enough was happening. I still try to post every year or so, but considering that the site's host no longer supports that particular blog app, it's just easier to let it go. Especially since I actually confused the two blogs. That's why a few posts got lost, but I did try to reconstruct them. I also have a literary blog where I post some of my works. This includes the first drafts of two novels/novellas, as well as plenty of poems. I've been trying to start a third novel, but I'm just not into it yet. As it is, it has been a while since I posted there.

    I started this blog as a means for me to start writing again. While I had numerous ideas bobbing around in my head, I wasn't putting anything down. This blog would allow me to put ideas to "paper" as it were, and actually write instead of just thinking about writing. I didn't have a computer back then, so I used one at the recently closed downtown Pikevile branch of the library.  Every Wednesday, I would close the store early, go to the library to check on my emails, and write a post. I chose Blogger as a host, as it already part of my Google suite. Since it was there, it just made things simpler.

    I was fairly aimless during those first few months. Many of those first posts were short, as I didn't have that much time after work to type these things up. So, I tried to come up with simple ideas that I could type up quickly without too much thinking. One of my favorite early posts was about an emu sighting on my way to work. Turns out, there were a pair of emus, both since have gone off somewhere.  Of course, I mentioned the horrible reception I get on the radio at my store. That's been a recurrent topic. Even now, multiple causes are making so much static that I sometimes wonder why I even leave the radio on some days.

    I ultimately decided to focus this blog on a topic that really interested me, puzzles and games. While not becoming the majority of themes I discuss, I dedicate quite a few posts each year to them. Even now, I'm starting to plan the next edition of song title puzzles to start off the new year. The year-end charts were just announced, so I'll have plenty of data to sort through for inspiration. I've discussed puzzle magazines, my early love of RPGs, and a specially made crossword, once.  It is a little harder than I thought to create one on a regular basis. That one took about a month.

    Another related theme that I comment on is humor. If anything, I try to make the readers of this blogcast happy. Humor is an extension of that. Considering all the puns I stick into post titles, this should have been rather obvious. While I try not to get too ribald or risqué, I have been known to push the limits. I dedicated an entire post to "bulges," in light of an Olympic mishap. I've put up two adult parody picture books based on the interpretation of certain food emojis, eggplant and peach. I just wrote a post about holiday confusion in the from of a stand-up comedy routine.

    In the past two years, I've taken up another form of post, a limited run series. The first was about every place I bought comic books from, or could have. The second was about every restaurant I ate from. I've already started to make plans for my next series. This one should focus on something I've barely touched upon before, but it will be a fairly easy guess once I start it.

    Beyond what I've already mentioned, I've got plenty of other new posts in the planning stages. I'll finally make my third adult parody picture book, melons. I will be updating my first two series after the new one.  I've got the idea for a fairly dramatic editorial style post on my longtime desire to coin a new word.  That one is currently leaning a little too political than I normally go. There's also the possibility that I finally start detailing an unusual event that I have been wanting to bring up for many years now, even if it is NSFW. How exactly I'll manage that? I don't have an exact idea, but I'll be trying.  Of course, there is the tenth anniversary coming up next summer as well.

    Next week though, I will be covering a fairly common topic for me involving wordplay. Check this post's title. Spot something a little off about it? I'll explain everything next week.  Until then, prepare to be thwarted.

    

Offline and Not Loving It, Again

    I will be taking a break at some point in writing this post due to an unforeseen problem that occurred last night or perhaps this morning. 

    The early evidence of a problem started last night when I got home. Soon after I turned on the television, I had problems accessing certain stations at certain times. The signal would just cut off, and I had to figure out a workaround just to watch the program I wanted. Now, I get my cable television through the internet. The provider switched things to this way a few years ago. Usually, there are no big problems, unless something happens to the internet. However, last night, there were no problems with the internet. I could surf, stream, and play games without any problems whatsoever. I only had problems switching channels on the television. It was only a few stations, and not every time I changed the channel. It was as if the cable box couldn't find the correct signal to latch onto. It got so bad at one point that I had to turn the cable box off and restart it. After watching the late night news, I turned everything off. 

    As soon as I got up this morning, I knew that there was a problem. One of the lights on the modem wasn't on. That light was the one that indicated that there was wifi signal. As soon as I turned on the television, all I got was a notice that there was no signal. The cable box then switched over to the main screen, which somehow wasn't affected by whatever was happening. I checked both my MacBook and my phone. The wifi was working, but there was no internet to connect to. (In case you are wondering, I have almost no cell signal at home. Barely a bar, at best. So, whenever I use my phone for gaming and such, I just use wifi. While this means I can't call or text on it at home, this has only been an issue only a few times.)

    This meant that I had no way to catch up on the news or weather, and I needed to know about some things to plan out the week. It also meant that I couldn't go online to check social media, but with how the algorithm has been acting up, the posts might be over a month old. The worst part was that I couldn't automatically get my check-in gifts on my game. The gifts occur every four hours. I have scheduled things so that I can get six a day, but only by a small window of minutes. By not having internet this morning, I missed out on my overnight bonus, and my early morning bonus. I'm going to now have to take a break in writing this post to go outside so I can get a better signal just so I can activate my bonus at the right time.

    I'll be back in a few minutes, although it won't matter to those reading.

    And I'm back. I hate to go outside sometimes just to check my phone, but I sometimes can't get a signal inside. At other times, the signal is so slow I can't use the phone for anything but calling.

    Anyway, the provider didn't have a time when the internet would be fixed when we called them. On the landline. (It wasn't affected by the outage.) I'm just hoping it will be back on tonight, or will be in some serious trouble.