poast repository

Sadly all good things must come to an end, and today is the last full day of my vacation. Tomorrow has check-out late in the morning, so it barely counts as a vacation day. I'm really not interested in heading back to work, but so it goes.

Vacationing on the shore of Lake Huron is wonderful for both flora and fauna. I'll miss it. There has a decent variety at home but it barely compares. I spent most of yesterday reading on the beach. I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora, an excellent book, and I'll be seeking out the sequel. I've now started Legends and Lattes, which is not an especially challenging or deep read, but is entertaining. I had worries it might suffer from a certain contemporary fantasy writing style I loathe, but fortunately it doesn't.

I've written a massive quantity of rough draft for Sulphur and Starlight. I'll be starting on Chapter 35 today, which I likely won't finish before I head home, but is still beyond my goals of finishing the draft for 34. Chapter 32 is not one of my favourite things I've written, something of a transitional chapter leading into much more exciting things. 33-34 have been outlined and existed in miscellaneous and out of sequence notes for a very long time--they essentially the basis of the fic that everything else grew around. I pray they meet my expectations and that my readers enjoy my favourite chapters as much as I do. And after 34? The final "arc", so to speak. It's crazy to think it's almost over. But, I'll be thrilled to have completed it, especially since I'm genuinely quite proud of this fic.

Rather than embed a bunch of images in this post, I've made a little album with some of the best pictures from my vacation here... primarily water, trees, and frogs, haha.

There's always that stupid saying that you get more conservative as you get older. I've long pegged this as bullshit. Poor or marginalized people die early for any one of a multitude of reasons. Anyway, that's not really what this entry is about. This entry is about me realizing the type of weirdo I've become as I'm creeping ever closer towards middle age.

I have always hated typing up documents on the computer. I'm a poor typist, slow and inaccurate, and I feel no connection between the thoughts in my head and what appears on the screen. Even through my eight years of post-secondary, I hand-wrote every single note I took in class, only ever typing up finished reports and essays that had to be fed through the anti-plagiarism software. In my early twenties I took this even further by adopting an even more antiquated writing form and ditching my fine liners and gel pens for fountain pens. My collection has grown, but I still own the pens that carried me through most of post-secondary, though they are a little banged up now. My fanfic and most of the posts destined for here are handwritten at first, too. I entirely respect all-digital artists and writers. But I can't do it.

This seeps more and more into other aspects of my life as well. I have an ebook reader, and read plenty of ebooks, both professionally published original works and fanfic, on it and on my phone. But in recent years I find myself reaching more and more for physical books. My collection of print novels and manga grows. I reread things I've already read frequently, and my books become worn, with creased spines and bend corners of pages and covers. And I remember what I read, just a little better.

A few years back, I bought a Sony Walkman mp3 player. I pick up physical music media when I can, and squirrel away a digital library of frightening proportions. I rarely if ever use streaming services, and become increasingly nervous every time vendors I rely on, like Bandcamp, change hands.  People think it's odd I don't use Spotify. I guess it is, in the grand scheme. But I like having control over my collection And I like owning it. Until it degrades into unusability, no one is taking my Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast CD away, and they sure as shit aren't taking my vinyl of Queen's News of the World, in its old milk crate my dad stole some decades ago.

More recently, I became fed up with the privacy infringing, ad-bloated, shambling mass of Windows 11. I backed up my files, completely wiped my drive, and installed Linux Mint Cinnamon. It took a little work to get everything functioning as I liked, but far less than I expected. I haven't looked back and I doubt I will.

Which gets into my all-consuming loathing of generative AI in all it's forms. There is that old saying where if a service is free, you are the product. I am rightfully spiteful towards AI and it's insidious inclusion in everything. The push for making people more helpless. You can't do these things, have the AI do them, isn't that so much easier? Isn't it so much better and faster than trying to make it yourself  or finding and paying someone else to make it? You can mimic another authors words, another artist's quirks, a dead person's voice. All at the cost of the environment, the unconsenting use of another's work or identity, and the most precious thing anyone still has exclusive control over  their own thoughts and creativity. Sure, there might be inaccuracies and lies, but you don't have to do it.

It's abhorrent. I will hear no arguments for generative AI. I will never accept it. And I'm legally blind with early arthritis in my hands. What's anyone else's excuse?

So, I guess as I'm getting older, I'm turning into a certain type of guy that values original thought, respect for fellow artists, and control over my own work and the technology I own. But I suppose there are worse kinds of guys I could turn into.