Last November Jessica and I participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and each wrote our own 50k word novel in a month. It was absolutely crazy. And awesome. (If you want to read the trash I wrote, let me know in the comments)

Well, starting tomorrow ewe will be starting our own 100 page scripts for this year’s ScriptFrenzy event. I am half excited and half nervous to do ScriptFrenzy. I’ve never written nor attempted to write a script and am at a little bit of a loss at how this is going to work.

I’m planning to adapt this fantastic novel by Michael Cox called The Meaning of Night to the screen. I read this book in January and fell in love with the story. It’s so dark and mysterious and exciting. There is plenty of suspense, great characters, and witty dialogue. I think it would make a beautiful film.

So tomorrow we start. Sometime before LOST I guess. If you’re doing ScriptFrenzy, and you would like to, add me as a writing buddy.

If you’d like to read my script as we go along, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do it like I did with NaNoWriMo. So, there’ll be a private post of the script. If you want to read it over the month, comment and let me know and I’ll create an account for you.

Another Damion Suomi video. You really should check out his album at P is for Panda.

The fantastic P is for Panda has released the equally (possibly moreso) fantastic Damion Suomi record today. Jess and I got the album from @chadpearson last year and listened to it all winter long. It is SO good. Go buy the cheap download–and if you’re up for it, the CD or LP. Great music from a great musician and from a label that’s set on helping those less fortunate than ourselves. For a taste of the tunes, check out the live video below.

I got a NAS!

My D-Link DNS-321 came yesterday and is running well. Although… I haven’t put any data on it. I’ve sort of been messing with fun plugs and features and stuff.

The greatest benefit to this NAS is the Linux kernel underneath. That lets me add whatever features I want (within reason and skillset anyway). So I’m busy setting up Bonjour (for our Macs), Firefly (for iTunes sharing), and a bunch of other things.

I need to brush up on my Linux commands… because I am way out of practice when it comes to working in a terminal. But it’s going okay. I’m gettin’ there.

Photos of the NAS to come, I hope. If you’ve got tips for working with the DNS-321/323 PLEASE let me know in the comments or with the Contact link at the top. I’d appreciate any help I can get.

Hope you’re having a good week!

In America, this day is known for celebrating Irish culture–or at the very least getting heavy drunk and celebrating stereotypes. But St Patrick’s Day is an actual saint’s day; it’s a holy day in not only the Irish Catholic church but in the church at large.

It’s important to recognize the good that Patrick did for the nation of Ireland, no matter how big the stories about him have become. So today, on St Patrick’s Day, I am posting the translated text to St Patrick’s Breastplate, translated by Cecil Frances Alexander (1823–1895).

St Patrick’s Breastplate

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
By power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
His baptism in the Jordan River;
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom;
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of the Cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour;
The service of the Seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the Prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, his shield to ward,
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death-wound and the burning
The choking wave and the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,
The strong name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Source

I think I may only work one full day this week.

My parents and sister fly in tomorrow afternoon to stay with us for a week. They’re going to help us finish the house, finally. It’ll be nice to get all of the flooring in, the wall patched up, trim up and painted. Hopefully we can get the gutters up too.

Jess and I got to do some gardening yesterday. We planted some more hyacinths and tulips that we picked up for pretty cheap at WalMart. I sprinkled some grass seed, so hopefully we can get that lawn patched up this year and looking nice.

AND tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. That means we’re making Dublin Coddle tonight for dinner tomorrow. Delicious! Coddle’s become sort of our St Patrick’s Day tradition. It’s delicious. Jess makes a mean soda bread too. Exciting.

Okay, I didn’t really lose it, but I did get rid of it unfortunately.

I participate in this weekly photo assignment with a group of Flickr friends and this week’s topic was “Before and After”. I did a faux-dyptic that ended up being half of my face (with a beard) and the other have sans-beard. I’m sad the beard is gone. And that means I’ve already started on a new one.

One of the participants in the group tried to console me in the comments, explaining my actions away as “performance art”–so I’ll go with that. In any case… we like me better with a beard. I look like a baby without.

So at work we are in the process of moving our CMS platform from Joomla! to dotCMS.

We just finished two days of basic training in dotCMS and I am super excited. The CMS is built on Java, but don’t hold that against it. The user side of it is nimble and ridiculously flexible. Everything cool is done in Apache Velocity code which makes it simple to do pulls.

Basically, if all goes according to plan, we’ll be going from 20k pages of content to about 30 pages with all of the content being dynamically pulled. Simply, how a CMS should work.

I’m excited. We got to do some cool things with velocity in our training yesterday and have a second training round coming up.

I got wait listed for the graduate program I applied to.

This is frustrating to me. I won’t have a firm answer until May 1.

gah.