I’ve kept ahead of my plan (as far as daily writing targets are concerned) so far. Last night I had a great run based mostly on a dare to include the Melbourne Cup in my story and managed about 3,500 words, which has taken me over the 10,000 mark for the first time in three goes.

I’ve been having a back-and-forth word war with my writing buddy Kamu in Port Hedland who keeps pulling ahead and making me stay up far too late. The bonus to that is that now both of us are doing really well, like this:

Naggers please note, I still expect lots of email, texts, facebook messages and the like to keep me honest.

I’ve been enjoying WriMoRadio and the pep talks that have been coming. Today we got one from author Jonathan Stroud which included this inspirational line:

Alchemists tried for centuries to turn base metals into gold. Every time we sit down and put words on paper, we succeed where they failed. We’re conjuring something out of nothing.

See. We’re not wasting an entire month. We’re making gold out of base metals!

King James I of England in 1617, defending his decision to allow the Apothecaries to separate from the Grocers’ Guild.

Ooo, stop press: Moffat is reported to want James Nesbitt as the new Doctor. Watch this space!

I’m asking anyone who reads this (and cares) to come onside and nag the life out of me. Leave a comment here, send me an email, a text message or give me a ring (if you know those details) and ask me how I’m going. Especially if you look at the charts on my sidebar and see that I’m not doing so well. If you really want to know how bad is bad, the NaNoWriMo crew have generated these detailed Progress Reports… click if you dare.

I really don’t want to have to start making up justifications for poor performance. It will all just be too embarrassing and will therefore be my incentive to write.

Thanks in advance.

Edit… I’ve decided not to keep all my charts on the sidebar. The NaNo site seems to be having a bit of a problem with a heavy workload now. No need for me to be adding to that every time someone hits my site (like it really makes a difference!).

Instead, they can stay on this page.

Country vs City Word War, Elsewhere in Australia vs Perth, North

North vs South Word War, Me in Esperance vs Kamu in Port Hedland:

Edit 2…: I should have just kept everything here, but I’m posting regular (milestone) updates here.

I’m not saying anything about the desirability of a new Islamic school in Camden, but judging by this sign shown in the ABC’s story on the issue I think some people could make better use of the schools they do have.

I’m sorry, but this sort of thing really brings out the Bob the Angry Flower in me.

Slashdot ran a story today about the end of DST in the northern hemisphere. Here a few of the more insighful comments.

I grew up in AZ - moved to a state that does daylight savings a couple years ago. I hate it. I never felt any lack for not having it or thought, “Gee, I wished we messed with the clocks twice a year.” - stoolpigeon

make everyone talk in UTC. That should do it. - frank_adrian

Russia has a dozen time zones and fares just fine - as does China, with only one. This business of claiming that ‘light’ is a problem needing a solution is the only issue here…- djupedal

So, scrap daylight savings time and replace it with a system of several thousand time zones, each updated daily based on the predicted “high noon” for that particular day at that particular location. If the prediction ends up being off by a few microseconds on a particular day, just change the time to correct it right then and there! Sure, wristwatches will become orders of magnitude more complex, but it’s the only way to have a truly sane and accurate system of time measurement. And after all, isn’t that what we all really want here? - eln

If people want/need to get up earlier or later to take advantage of the daylight then JUST GET UP EARLIER OR LATER! There is no good reason to change the clock backward and forward. Lots of places don’t do it and they don’t have any problems. - slashname3

I haven’t completely tested this system with more recent versions of Azureus/Vuze, but all the files seem to be much the same, so I’m guessing it will be OK. Please leave any comments with news to the contrary.

As before, I have taken much of my information from other places, but I feel put it together in an easier to follow manner. In particular, the bulk of ideas came from the azureus wiki

Step 1: Install Azureus and enable Headless operation

1. Download the executable installer from sourceforge
2. Ensure that the installation directory contains the file Azureus2.jar
3. Download the files log4j.jar and commons-cli.jar from here and place into the Azureus directory. This will allow command-line (headless) operation.
4. To run, use command java -jar Azureus2-XXX.jar --ui=console