Option “AccelMethod” “xaa”

In the driver section of xorg.conf. Hopefully EXA will get faster in the future.

The atmosphere prior to the start of the concert was absolutely incredible. I’m going to keep comparing it to Loreena McKennitt at the Barbican, because there was the same sense of being part of a group of really dedicated fans, and of extreme anticipation. In her case it was because she’d not toured at all for nine years. In JoCo’s case, it’s because he’s never been here at all.

With a group of people from JoCo’s forum, I was right near the front of the queue. The doors didn’t even open until the advertised start time, which is not how I usually understand these things to work — the time on the ticket is usually the show’s intended start time. Therefore the concert started later than expected, and the whole transport situation became rather more stressful than it should have been.

However, the show itself was worth waiting for. After Over There — complete with derisory boos during the ’saved their asses in World War Two’ line — we were treated to a good cross-section of JoCo’s music, although unfortunately not including the new Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu. Particular highlights included Skullcrusher Mountain with virtually everyone singing every single word and the last chorus as an audience solo; Re: Your Brains as a concert-ender with audience participation (as if we hadn’t been participating already, as he acknowledged) where we had to learn to sing it like a mob of zombies, not like a Viennese children’s choir which has been turned into zombies. ‘Perhaps your mouths don’t work properly since you became zombies’.

I can’t recount all the wonderful moments as I’ll be here all day and I need to go shopping and do some cooking, but we did get the world premiere of Code Monkey sung with the accompaniment of JoCo’s new Tenori-On.

What do you mean, you don’t know what a Tenori-On is? Get thee to Google! Away, away!

Also, if you’re around and at a loose end, come over for dinner. I’ve got a dining table and four chairs, but you might have to bring a plate.

No, this is about drink!

Non-alcoholic, before you get too excited. It’s quite simple really. It goes like this:

1. take a decently-sized piece of fresh ginger
2. peel it
3. slice it thinly
4. tip it into a small saucepan with some water and a generous amount of sugar
5. heat it gently, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar to form a syrup
6. continue to cook gently until it tastes quite strongly gingery
7. add more sugar if it doesn’t seem syrupy enough
8. strain
9. allow to cool a bit, then place into a jar, bottle or other suitable lidded storage vessel

When you want to drink it, dilute some down with water. For strength, you’re aiming for something like commercial ‘high juice’ squashes. You could make it weaker, but then you just need a bigger helping in each glassful.

I have no idea how long this keeps, but if you make the syrup really sugary it should keep until you drink it, because it’ll get drunk fast, sugar’s a preservative and ginger’s antibacterial.

The problem now is that libglade isn’t finding half the widgets in the glade file, and returns null pointers for them instead of the widget pointers. Every single one of the ones it’s failing to find is definitely in the XML, and the file’s definitely in the right place. I’ve checked - lots of times.

This might just be what makes me start to go bald.

Okay so it took a manual edit to the Makefiles. I think I’m going to have to consult somebody who knows this whole autoconf/automake business a bit better to see how I can get the Glade libraries referenced properly.

Then I need to get it to actually start up as it currently tries to dereference a null pointer and segfaults. This is probably due to my fairly cavalier #ifdefing out to get it to compile. Now I need to go back and figure out which bits are actually needed and how to get them to work.

Ultimately of course the UI under Maemo is going to be a bit different, especially once I get the thing working as an input method, but for now I just want it to work at all!

The plot itself is going well, although I think I need to speed a few things up a bit because I’m at 18,620 words and most of the main characters haven’t even met each other yet, only one of the Gods has died and there’s not even a hint of who the bad guy is. I’m going to have to start dropping a couple so that the protagonists have something to work with when they all get together and embark on their quest to save the world.

Their wise magician mentor also hasn’t died yet, but since he hasn’t yet met one of his mentorees that’s probably a good thing. His days are still numbered though…

I’m pleased, but I think I’m going to have a problem writing much more this week. I’ve got musical things here there and everywhere and a performance on Friday evening about which I’m panicking just a little bit and need to put in a fair amount of practice time for. My next semi-clear writing day is Saturday, and I’ve got a nanomeet and SRP meet then although at least the evening’s free.

Still, at least I’m ahead of the curve at the moment. It’ll make catching up after this week is over a bit easier.

I also bought myself a nice shiny new vacuum cleaner, which has so far been introduced to the bathroom and the bit of the kitchen that’s not underneath a pile of random stuff. The dust collector thingy has about half a carpet in it, it seems — and the carpets themselves are a different colour. Looks good, and makes me realise just how pathetic the cleaner that came with the flat is.

So, today I have no engagements or plans other than roasting a small chicken and some potatoes and carrots. I’ve got all the stuff to make stuffing, so I shall stuff the chicken and it will be delicious. I shall also make gravy and do things properly. Yum yum. No you can’t come, unless you bring your own potatoes as I only got enough for the one portion.

As for the writing, I hope to bash out another three thousand words today, thus bringing me up to 10,000 which will give me a little breathing space for next week which is going to be horribly busy. Fortunately my recorder teacher’s always thinking of how to make life easier and has moved my viol lesson to the same day as the viol consort (both at her house) so I now actually have a free evening which is almost like being given another 1,500 words on a silver platter.

The story itself is coming together nicely. I’m now up to the main three viewpoint characters and I’m gradually building the idea in the background that there’s something very odd going on with the priests. It won’t be long before one of the viewpoint characters finds out what it is, and then the readers will have been introduced to the central crisis, which is going to upend the world (not quite literally) and cause a great deal of consternation. It will also get Eiran and Princess Aru into the same place, allow Eiran to get some proper magical education and lead to the deaths of Eiran’s mentors, in order of acquisition.

He will get a happy ending, but I haven’t told him that yet.

However, in that small number of words I’ve already managed to introduce a new main character, a Princess who’s about to start training as a magician with the magician who’s due to be a mentor to the primary protagonist. I guess there might be some romance and/or bickering in the air when they finally meet.

It also seems the story’s starting earlier on in the plot than I was expecting it to, but it seems to be working out at the moment and sort of reflects one possibility for starting it off that I discussed with Alan at the kick-off party.

Good luck to everybody for the next thirty days of writing!