Thanks to Mike Aragona, I have a plan now for my Lemurian Dawn project!

Mike is one of the people who will be working on the project, unless, of course, I manage to frighten him off before any work begins. Mike is a writer. Check out his “Online Spell” story. It looks familiar to me. I think it was one I either rejected (doesn’t quite have the impact of his other shorts) or never got back to him on, in which case this may be his subtle way of encouraging me to dive back into my slush pile. I’m pretty sure it’s the former though.

Mike also has something to do with comics. He publishes a magazine and I’m not really sure what all he does; I’ve never asked him. Something to do with comics though. At any rate, even though that’s not necessarily my target audience, I thought he might have some insight into what direction I should take with the project. I’ve mentioned previously the different options; I’d link to that post but I just don’t feel like tracking it down, and you probably won’t follow the link and read it anyway. Heck, Mike is probably the only one still reading this. The rest of you have dropped off and headed to John Chow’s blog by now, or something.

Yes, I actually do think you read my blog before his. What do you mean you don’t!?

Anyway, Tuesday evening while I was putting together a banner for a client, I had an imaginary conversation with Mike. Mike didn’t say much. He just listened. But, discussing the options with him helped me to realize the direction I need to go.

Which is basically back to the original plan. And that’s the kind of roundabout thinking that Joanne would appreciate.

But, Plan C (or was it Plan B?) will still be part of the plan, just not at first. The audience for the one way versus the other way, while overlapping, would also be different. So, I am planning that going ahead with Plan A and making it successful will lead to me being able to implement Plan C (or B, or whatever) later on.

And, if things go badly, it was all Mike’s fault.

A number of years ago, I started a story (that’s still in progress). It takes place in the far future, but a number of significant events in the backstory take place later in this century.

In one part of the backstory, people got fed up with government officials, and started killing them off. Like this.

And, there are other things, that I don’t want to mention because it may spoil the plot.

Am I a prognosticator?

Or, maybe what I visualize comes true, in some way? In that case, what do you want me to visualize for you? Maybe this should be a paid service. Send me $25 and I’ll visualize something for you, just about whatever you’d like. I cannot guarantee that it will come true, but I will visualize it for you. Money is non-refundable; this is for entertainment purposes only; and, all that sort of thing.

Plus, I’ll write up a little story about it and post it. Okay, the price is going to $50 now. These are value-added services.

Let’s break it down:

• Basic Visualization Service: $25
  You tell me what you want and I’ll imagine it happening. And, as I mentioned, no guarantees. No physical action will be taken on my part. This is just visualization, not actualization.
• Literary Visualization Service: $50
  You tell me what you want, and I’ll imagine it happening plus write a short story about it. About 500 words worth. Give or take. Same disclaimers apply as with the Basic Visualization Service. I retain the copyright to the story too. But, you’ll get a linkback when I post it on my blog.
• Decorative Literary Visualization Service: $250
  Same as the Literary Visualization Service, except that I’ll print out the story on some nice paper and frame it. And mail it to you. Offer limited to customers within the United States.

As I mentioned, no guarantees. So, the $25 Basic Visualization Service is probably pretty much useless. You might as well go to the $50 Literary Visualization Service instead. At least you get something out of it.

Offer expires February 28, 2008. Yes, I know there are 29 days in February this year, but I’m taking the day off.

How about I call it by its name?

And, how about I post a bit of a teaser?

And, how about, despite these revelations, you’re still a bit in the dark, eh?

Only a handful of people, including Mike who’s sworn to secrecy, know more details about this project. And none of them know the full details. Muhahahahaha! Oh, and Doug knows a bit about it too, but he’s probably forgotten by now.

But, this thing will really rock. Right Mike? I’ll allow him to answer that question, so long as he does so without specifics.

And, yes, it really has been since 2005 that I started working on this project.

Or, if you’re not “old school,” I guess you might call it SpecFic Saturday.

Anyway, here is a selection of links that will help inspire some creative thinking of your own.

Or cause your brain to explode.

Either way, proceed with caution and note that I am not responsible for the content of these links.

1. Creative Inspiration from Einstein et Alia. Did you know that Albert Einstein authored 75 books of poetry? Wait, maybe that was the Einstein of a parallel universe. I’m so confused.
2. 75 Words Every SciFi Fan Should Know. And each of them was a title of one of Einstein’s books!
3. How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet. Or eBay.
4. Time May Not Exist. It’s just a figment of your imagination.
5. Time is But a Figment of Our Imagination. See!?
6. Parallel Universes Confound Us All. Not Einstein!
7. Our Violent Universe. And you thought our world was violent!
8. How to Live Forever. Sign me up!
9. Five “Bizarre” and Discredited Theories. But, one day, California probably will be an island. What’s left of it, anyway, after “The Big One.”

Have a Happy Saturday! And, whatever you do, please do try not to blow up the universe. Thanks.

We often wonder what an alien civilization, were we ever to encounter one, might look like. Perhaps we might glean some idea from other “civilized” species on Earth.

Take ants, for example.

Take a look at this video, which shows the excavation of an ant colony. You can’t help but notice it almost looks like something from an extraterrestrial science-fiction movie, yet it’s found right here on Earth!

Next, at the end of the same video, you can compare that with a smaller ant colony that lives inside an acorn seed!

All in all, some pretty interesting stuff. And, if you’re a science fiction (or even fantasy) author, there is no doubt something you might find useful in developing your alien cities.

Here is a further refinement of the teaser image for my “secret project.” The new panel you see is not in position. It will replace the “old” panels. More on this in a moment. I placed it where it is simply for comparison.

As I mentioned previously, I was having some problems between exporting from Silo and importing in Carrara. I got some help from the Silo forums, and, well, I was more or less modeling the thing wrong. Not so much wrong, but rather not the best way to do it!

So, I will need to remodel the objects. I started with the panel. While redoing it, I took the liberty of refining it, which I wanted to do anyway! As you can see, the frames are thinner than the previous version. This is more like what I had originally envisioned. Of course, this too is subject to change!

The colors, too, are now closer. The frame is more of a solid black. The old frame was rendered using an iron texture, but that had too much reflection, I think, and resulted in the mottled look. The newer version is better and more along the lines of my target.

The bottom panel is closer in color too, with the light brown color. The upper panels are closer, but still not quite what I am aiming for there. Too much reflection, and not enough transparency. The trick is for it to be white with some transparency and no reflection. But, I haven’t dabbled too deeply into achieving that quite yet.

I have not yet redone the support beams.

Thanks to Mike, Mike, Pete and Mike for your comments on the previous image.

I welcome any comments on this new one, especially any ideas of what style this reminds you of, if any, and so forth.

On Friday, I posted a very preliminary teaser for my “secret project.” Above is a new, extended version, this time rendered larger for Pete’s sake. (Like he’s never heard that before.)

On Saturday, after knocking out some client work, I did a little more modeling work for this. I modified the original panels to add a bottom section. I also added some additional structures and flooring. Colors subject to change, of course, but this is closer to the intended target.

On second thought, not just the colors are subject to change!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I am modeling in Silo 2 and rendering in Carrara Pro 5. Carrara doesn’t support the Silo format, so I have to export from Silo into a different format. For some reason, some portions don’t import properly into Carrara. Not sure where the problem is yet; I will have to do some research to find out.

Comments welcome.

Here’s just a little teaser for my secret project. The only thing of consequence is the set of panels in the middle. Everything else is just a room scene that I used to quickly put the panels in place and see how they look.

I modeled the panels completely myself. They need some tweaking, but overall they seem to be pretty good. Colors may change. Of course, the whole thing may be subject to change, as this is just some preliminary work. I’ll have to see how things will all fit together as I build them. I have a rough model in mind, but I don’t have Tesla’s capacity to really build them in my head, so things are subject to change as they are brought forth from the mind into some tangible (even if electronic) form.

Feedback and thoughts are welcome, since they will help me determine if I’m meeting my design objectives.

Does anyone know of any examples of dimensional transcendence, where things are bigger on the inside than on the outside?

The most notable example is the TARDIS in Doctor Who. An episode of Star Trek: Enterprise also featured a timeship that was larger on the inside, but one of the producers of Enterprise was also, reportedly, a Doctor Who fan.

Can anyone think of any other examples? It can be from science fiction or fantasy. Of course, if you know of a real life example, I’ll take that too.

Thanks!

While there are certainly benefits to getting things done in an expedient manner, especially since time is literally running out, there are also benefits to waiting.

For example, my secret project (last mentioned here) has been made better (hopefully!) by the passage of time. For example, there was a particular story that I came up with that was a pretty good concept, I think. The story came out of current events and then I gave it a SciFi twist with a bit of a moral dilemma.

Originally, that was going to be a standalone story. It would contribute to character growth and, I had hoped, be a thought-provoking tale. Had I completed this whole project back in 2005, that’s all it would have been.

But now, with the passage of time, I think I have figured a way to work it into the overall storyline such that it is not a completely standalone story. The added benefit is that it will add to character growth, because once they learn how that one adventure fits in, it will have an effect on them. So, there will be the initial dilemma from their first experience, and then a follow-up impact later on. A nice, time-delayed double whammy!

And I think that’s a good thing. It brings the whole storyline into a tighter plot. Not that standalones are bad or anything, but it’s nice to have something that will payoff later.

Do you have any projects that have benefited from delays? Feel free to share them in the comments.