Monday, August 23, 2004

Simian strikes back

Still got more notes to type up for Simian Smith, I didn't realise I'd handwritten as much as I had..... not that it's 1000's of words, but it's still a fair bit. I had a bit of a reread of the first chapter and a rewrite is definitely required, but that's okay, I didn't expect to get it right the first, second or even third time. Narration wise it's a bit clunky and the opening paragraph just didn't 'grab'. My usual method of fixing problems like this is to drastically cut the word count down, and it seemed to work this time. 50% less words and two paragraphs became one and I like it much better. Looking over it I think brevity and fun are my two keywords to remember for the rest of the writing (maybe I should tape them to the PC screen?), there's a tendency for my prose to be a bit flat and dry, not the best tone for a 5-8 kid's book really.
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What's better, a laptop, and Apple laptop or an EMac? If I get an Emac I can afford a dvd-r aswell as cd rewriter, but I'd like to have a computer that takes up as little space as possible. An Apple laptop will save space but my budget means I'd have to do without the DVD-R which would be a shame. A laptop would mean I could keep in budget and have DVD-R and CD-R, but I've been told over and over how much better Macs are, particluarly for artwork. Hmmmm.

3 comments:

Danny said...

eMac all the way, mate. I know it takes up more space, but you get all you need in a small a space a desktop could take up, and they're relatively cheap. iBooks are good, but if you're doing lots of memory intensive graphics work I reckon you'll probly need a desktop. (I use one for work and they're pretty good).

Good to see Simian back!

paulhd said...

Yeah, I've decided to got for and Emac, the vote of confidence helps though. Reckon I might buy it in a couple of weeks, gotta get a new matress first though.

paul said...

personally i'm all for pcs, but mostly because you can monkey about with the hardware like a true geek rather than them being intrinsically better than macs. like it says in that crap car advert: a choice, not a compromise.

i'd definitely agree that a desktop is the way to go for doing anything intensive. laptops are good, but the components generally can't compete with a desktop performance-wise unless you spend a lot more money.