I am a terrible person

 But aside from that, I'm gonna have to post the cultural narrative of the Slangebarn tomorrow because writing it is surprisingly hard and I am absolutely  shattered.

 I also don't have a series name like I hoped.

 I've been really tired so far this week, I'm a bit worried that I've got another case of the old insomnia.

 I'm pretty confident I'll be able to get the post done tomorrow, though.

 I'll also make sure to put up another post this week to make it up to you guys.

 Suggestions are welcome, tumblr is the preferred method for those.

 Sorryyy...

Writing and Streaming (along with some life stuff!)

 I've not had another editing crack at that longer story yet.

 I was kind of worn out on the whole editing thing after I finished the last edit, so I need to get back to that.

 Lately I've been working on an epic fantasy story. There's a lot of information about it on my tumblr, I'll be tagging it all with the same tag to make it easier to find at some point. I'm not sure what the tag will be, but I'll post when I've done it on this blog as well as my tumblr.

 It's about thirteen and a half thousand words at the moment, and I have a hefty cast of characters planned for it. A lot of them are quite minor, but you need bit part characters, otherwise you'll find yourself with a small cast who are all inexplicably related to each other (coughOnceUponATime/cough).

 I should probably post on here about it.

 I've got some worldbuilding notes that would make sense to go up here, and I'm planning on posting the full short story here about how one of the characters ended up in his current position.

 At the moment I'm slowly building it scene by scene on my tumblr account, but once it's done there I'll edit it and have the final polished version up here for you all to read.

 So my short story to do list consists of:

1. Finish editing Two Thousand Lenses for submission to a literary agent
2. Finish and edit The End of Holger's Military Career
3. Come up with a snappier title for that
4. Finish that Lois Lane/Batman story I posted up the first half of up on AO3 last year because I see people giving it kudos and I shouldn't leave it unfinished. Seriously, I got Kudos on it today, and three weeks ago, that means there's at least two people who want to read it.

 I've got a lot to pack into my schedule, especially since I'm starting an introduction to electrical work course the week after next.

 I'm pretty excited.

 The only downside is that I need to get there by half eight two days a week and that's intimidating to the vampire that I am.

 I've started getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 22:00. I'm not used to it yet, so I'm really tired during the day.

 I'll get used to it soon enough, though.

 Finally, I've started streaming. I did some a while ago, some yesterday and some today, and I'm going to stream once a week from 19:00 GMT on a Thursday. Which is also a challenge, 'cause that's one of the days my course is on from 8:30.

 I'm trying to challenge myself more because the only way I'm going to get better and be able to support myself is by being able to handle hard work and more of it.

 Part of that is starting to post on here more often, so expect some world building posts on that Epic Fantasy Story.

Editing and some other stuff

 So, in a previous post I talked about editing a pair of short stories.

 The shorter of the two I did actually manage to finish editing, and I'm happy to send it off to a literary agent in the near future.

 The longer one, however, was indeed a complete pain in the proverbial. I didn't just need to clean up the prose, I needed to change huge parts of the story.

 I managed to drop one and a half thousand words because I took so much extraneous crap out.

 This presents me with something of an issue, though.

 With such big changes, I feel like I do need to give this another few rounds of editing. Which is an issue because I'm challenging myself to submit to a literary agent by the end of August.

 So these big changes are making me even more nervous than I was previously about doing that.

 I suppose I should stop being such a coward and start a new edit of it.

 I've heard changing fonts can help with this, so I'm going to try that out. I just need to decide which one to go for. Hmmm...

 In other news, I'm in the process of tidying the office (it's saddening that I won't have this when I move out, but I needs to be freee you guys), so I'm going to start painting again, and finally finish this thing:

Other brands of cider with fruit flavouring are available

 I'll also be able to fit my exercise bike in here, so my dream of playing Dark Souls while on an exercise bike will finally come to fruition.

 My friend Doug suggests turning up the resistance every time I die, but I reckon that's going to put me on the highest setting in about fifteen minutes.

 Prepare to die, indeed.

 I'll keep you updated on the progress of that short story editing, and I'll be sure to blog the horrors of searching for an agent (although I won't name names, that'd be a dick move.)

 I'm looking forward to when this longer short story is done, it's been a long time coming.

I should be writing...

 It's been so long since I wrote a drabble that I've kind of forgotten how to do one.

 Inspiration has been severely lacking, so here I leave my apologies.

 As for right now, i should be rewriting a short story, but I'm so bored and it's so pretentious that I'm doing this as a method of procrastination.

 (Okay, it's not that bad, but looking at old work is always pretty cringe inducing.)

 I've been on a course at a local mental health charity, and one of the goals I've come up with while there has been to finish editing two of my short stories and submit them to literary agents.

 Of course, I would like my tutor to read my short stories, so I've given myself a pretty tight deadline of a week to do this.

 This seemed like a fine idea at the time, and a pretty good one while writing notes on the shorter of the two short stories, but this longer one is a complete pain in the proverbial.

 For starters, it's over twice as long as the first one, and for seconds, it's older and less well written.

 I hate looking at this thing, I swear.

 I'm going to have to accept the distinct possibility that I might not be able to get a final draft worth sending out by next Wednesday, but be happy with the fact that I can at least finish another draft of this story.

 Being a writer is difficult.

Sudden absence

 Yeah, if you follow me on Tumblr or Twitter, you know this, but if you don't, don't worry I'm not dead.

 I realise that this is a legitimate concern in my case.

 Lately I've just stopped caring much about this blog.

 I've been lacking much motivation to do things. About the only thing I've managed is recording a let's play session with my buddy Raincoat Videos, and that's probably only because there was a friend involved. Everything constructive I do on my own has just ground to a halt.

 It's just been really hard.

 I still feel like utter shit, but I'm hoping that I'll start to perk up soon. I'm getting a haircut on Friday, and they do say that a change is as good as a rest.

 I'm going to try and post at least two times a week, but anything other than that isn't going to be guaranteed.

 Oh, and the BoF4 LP is going to be way more sporadic for a while. Sorry about that, but I feel really demotivated right now.

 I have a couple of things in mind, so I'll go and work on those.

 Additionally, I'm going to put the LP videos with Raincoat Videos up here like I do with my own Let's Play videos.

Okay, kind of back on my feet.

 It's been a tough few days, but I think I'm able to get back to my normal self.

 So the next LP Log is going to be up tomorrow, and there's a post coming tonight with the new Anna video.

I have some 'cool' news

 My fridge is finally fixed!

 This means that I'm going to be able to buy lots of food again and not worried about it going off in a matter of days.

 It's been way more of a stress than you'd think to go from not having to worry about food going off to suddenly having to worry about it.

 Yeah, this is the time when people will go 'hah, first world problems', but it's true of anything. When something goes from not being a concern to being one it's always a stress, regardless of how minor it may seem when it's not a concern.

 What also makes it worse is that we don't know how to look after food. Yeah, that sounds pathetic, but for the most part, I don't think most people know how to look after food aside from sticking it in a fridge.

 Fridges really are a life saver.

 There's also one extra good thing about this.

 Since my fridge is no longer making tonnes of 'hey, something's wrong with me!' noises, I can actually start recording let's plays again.

 Yay.

To be honest...

 I'm not really feeling up to anything as time or labour intensive as an LP post today. I'll get Part Seven done for Friday.

 I'll try and get something up today, but I can't guarantee it.

Finally feeling better

 These last few days have been awful in terms of my mood.

 Once again I was laid low by PMS. Some months it's a real nightmare.

 I'm going to start posting again on Monday.

Just a gentle reminder

 You've probably already noticed, but I do have the Breath of Fire IV and Writing Tips masterposts up now.

 The Breath of Fire IV one can be found here and the Writing Tips one can be found here.

 I also finally added a new drabble to the rabble. I'll be trying to do that more often from now on.

 And since I recently finished The Night of the Rabbit, I'm going to be writing a post for Fission Mailure reviewing it, so you can look forward to that.

Somehow I ended up having a seven hour nap.

 Joy.

 While having this excessively long nap, I ended up singing the opening verse of Three Lions on a Shirt.

 Which was amazing, because I didn't realise I knew all the words to the first verse until I had that dream. I probably wouldn't have been able to recite them to you if asked.

 I think the reason I dreamed that is because it's St George's day today.

 A day that very few people in England actually give a damn about. I give so little of a damn about this, that it took the Google splash card to tell me.

 Well, anyway, here's the video for Three Lions on a Shirt while I order pizza and ice cream and work on tomorrow's post.

Scheduling and stuff

 I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of things with the LP Log. I think I'm going to try for a Tuesday/Friday schedule from now on, it's a bit easier on me and a bit more logically spaced out.

 I genuinely thought that I'd be breezing through this, because I love Breath of Fire IV, but I've been so down and tired and demotivated lately.

 It was only through the power of righteous anger that yesterday's lengthy rant about hair happened. (By the way, I'm going to do a second post on that topic addressing the major problem with the whole 'white dreads' thing. After all, I am so white that looking at me in direct sunlight is inadvisable, so my post does reflect that.)

 Aside from being angry and in a slump, I did get a little bit of writing on Herd done, and a few scenes for a future work.

 I actually ordered a book for research for that future work and it arrived today.

 I did basically order it sight unseen, and it didn't turn out to be what I had hoped, but it's still full of fascinating information and I'm confident that I can work what is in there into my novel.

 Well, 'novel'. I have my doubts it will end up being that long.

 I've got some typing up to do and an LP Log to work on, so I should get on doing that.

 (BTW, I am going to check in on the hot Eurovision news and get back into my Countdown to Vienna series. So don't be sad if you miss those.)

Success! (The keyboard saga)

 So, as I stated in my last post, I'd spilled cola on my laptop which made the keyboard go absolutely mental.

 I ordered a USB keyboard, which came today, only to learn that a USB keyboard does not override the built in keyboard.

 I also learned that you cannot disable a keyboard in a laptop through the device manager. Not without downloading some kind of remapping software and arsing about with that, anyway.

 So what I ended up doing was taking my laptop apart and manually disconnecting the keyboard ribbon cable.

 Right now I am ridiculously grateful for my recent obsession with electronics YouTube videos or I would have had no clue what I was doing. I probably wouldn't have even tried.

 I'm fine with the fact I've basically turned this into a laptop, I'm planning on getting a gaming PC sometime after Windows 10 comes out, and once I have that I'll probably end up getting a new netbook, because I miss having something I can easily carry around with me. So I'm probably not going to keep this laptop past the end of this year or early next year anyway.

 (By the way, I'm slowly working on setting up a Patreon page so you guys can patronise my work if you like. If you've got suggestions for patron exclusives, please let me know.)

 Thursday's LP log will be up tomorrow.

I'm sorry

I spilled coke on my laptop.

 The keyboard is fucked.

 I want to cry.

Excuses, excuses

Yesterday I was having a real problem with my sleep pattern, then today I went out to meet a friend for lunch and hanging out purposes.

 My original intention was to write about half of the BoF4 post before I went out and finish it when I can back, and I did the before bit!

 But alcohol happened when I was meeting my friend in town, so I was the drowsiest human being in the world when I got back and ended up falling asleep.

 I'll put it up tomorrow, I promise, I'll work on it right now for a while before I go back to bed.

 The moral of the story is that Raincoat Videos is a terrible, terrible person and an enemy to livers everywhere.

Phew

 I'm feeling a lot better now.

 It's amazing that video games and a mind numbingly painful stomach ache have the ability to kick one out of a depressive funk, but apparently it's a thing that they can do!

 It didn't turn out to be anything serious, but it did rob me of a full night's sleep.

 Anyway, I have done the first day's gaming and am poised to write the first part of the series as we speak.

 I aim to have it up tomorrow.

 Are you excited? Because I am super excited. I love this game, so I'm gonna write like the damn wind so I get to play more of it.

Let's have a ramble

 I've been very tired lately, and I can't think of anything to write today.

So here's a ramble of some of the things I've been up to lately.

 I've been trying and failing to make the title card for the new LP Log. For whatever reason I'm having a hard time coming up with a design I like for it.

 When not worrying over that, I've been doing some tech stuff for the let's play. The game works on my computer, so I'm not concerned on that front. I just need to take some test screenshots to make sure it works okay for the blog.

 In my spare time I've been playing Half Life as usual, occasionally mixing things up with some The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Of course, I've hit an awkward part on Half Life (I'm worried about a security guard, it's distracting me) so I've been kind of avoiding it with some Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition.

 I'm playing it on Easy mode (on account of being bad at video games), and by god it's confusing.

 It's hard, sure, but I'm finding myself getting lost more than killed.

 Currently I'm stuck in prison and I can't work out what the hell I'm supposed to do next.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?!

  I've killed a bunch of pigmen and aliens, but it seems to have achieved very little.

 Boo.

 I went swimming for the first time in years today, it started off really difficult, but it got easier as I warmed up and got used to being in water again. I could have ended up spending a lot longer in the pool than I did, because I was enjoying myself so much, but I managed to drag myself out.

 I forgot how heavy you end up feeling once you get out. I miss floating, it's awesome.

 What else?

 Well, I think I didn't mention the second part of my folk heroes editorial over on Fission Mailure, so you should totally check that out if King Arthur and Robin Hood interest you at all.

 Speaking of checking things out, my friend Glen started doing game videos on YouTube.

 Here's one.


 That's about all for now, remember to look out for the announcement of the new LP Log tomorrow!

One last delay

 Due to severe insomnia I didn't have the energy to write a post yesterday, and I barely had the energy for that quick Eurovision post on Sunday.

 Because of this, the finale is being delayed until Thursday and I am going to have it done by then if it kills me.

 My final thoughts on the game will follow on Friday.

 The new let's play will be announced on Tuesday and begin the Tuesday afterwards.

Good news, everybody!

I have my laptop back!

 Normal service can resume!

 Well, except the Final Fantasy VIII post tomorrow, but that was always going to be a long shot.

 I'm glad to have my laptop back, but I'm still really angry at the service I recieved. I know for a fact that they didn't even touch it until Saturday, and when I asked for a refund (because it was two weeks and I gave them fifty pounds [which is seventy seven usd]) I was given the old 'well, other people had to wait too'.

 Like fifteen other people being severely inconvenienced somehow makes severely inconveniencing me not a problem.

 Heck, I happened to overhear a guy who'd just got back from holiday and he seemed to think this entire mess was unacceptable.

 To be fair to Currys PC World, the KnowHow twitter people have been really helpful, it may very well just be this one guy.

 Either way, I have had severe bouts of depression, suicidal thoughts and feelings and have actually hurt myself over this, so I am going to pursue a complaint and a refund.

 That guy royally fucked up, they were warned a week ago that I'm a vulnerable adult and all that's been happening is that my totally unwarranted patience with them has been abused.

 This may be the first time I've wanted someone fired for screwing me over instead of someone else.

 That may seem extreme, but I could have ended up dead.

 In less depressing news, I'm going to upload a video that's been trapped on my laptop for the past two weeks in a moment, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

I still don't have my laptop back

 I gave it to PC World on the second and they said four days, then on the eighth they said it would be one or two days and we're two hours away from the thirteenth right now.

 I'd go and get it back from them, but I don't know where else I could get it fixed.

 There's no way that I'm going to be able to get the Final Fantasy VIII post up on Tuesday since the likelihood that they'll have fixed it by tomorrow is really small.

 I'm really sorry, but there is literally nothing I can do about this.

 This whole thing has been a massive strain. It's actually getting to the point that if they piss me about for much longer, I'm probably going to end up hurting myself.

 All I wanted was my computer fixed.