Factory in the Woods

Making It All Fit

I hurt myself lifting the bag, and I still hadn't packed my clothes.

Earlier this year, as DW and I were starting to seriously plan for our upcoming vacation, which starts this Friday, I gave myself a challenge. I usually travel with one carry-on suitcase and one personal item, but for this trip, I only wanted to have one carry-on backpack, which would hold all of my clothes and all of my camera equipment, including my new drone and its accessories.

I was going to squeeze all of that into one bag and was going to add an empty day bag, that would carry necessities for the day while we are exploring the countryside.

This weekend, DW and I started packing for the trip. I started by laying the day pack at the bottom of the larger pack, adding my tripod, my 200–500 zoom lens, shower shoes, and an electronics bag, which carries spare batteries, data cards, cables, power chargers, and more. With all of that in the backpack, I only had room left for my compression cube, which holds three pairs of underwear and four pairs of socks.

There was no room for any other clothes. Or the drone.

So much for that challenge. I realized that I'd have to use the day bag, as well, and even at that, I'd have to make serious changes to get everything in the two packs.

I removed everything from the large backpack and started over. The tripod went in first, followed by the large zoom lens, which is protected in bubble wrap. Next, my packing cube with my pajamas and two pairs of pants. Then, a packing cube with four long-sleeved shirts, followed by the pack with my socks and underwear.

With all of that in the bag, I only had room for my shower shoes. There's also a top pouch, into which I've placed my toothbrush, paste, hair brush, razor, travel towel, and meds. A side pouch holds a monopod and one of my 360-degree cameras.

In the day bag, I have my electronics bag, a mini tripod, drone and RC, and my rain jacket. A clip on one of the shoulder straps will allow me to clip my D-SLR to it, as well as a water bottle.

And that should be it.

The day bag can clip to the outside of the larger backpack but it's a lot of weight to carry on my back.

It should be interesting to see how I get around the country, this laden, but everything I have with me, I need.

Stay tuned.

Ice Out, Paddles In

As the weather has been getting warmer—finally—in the Ottawa region, our thoughts have been turning to one of our favourite outdoor activities: kayaking.

Last year, in early September, DW and I journeyed to Frontenac Outfitters, just north of Sydenham, to check out new kayaks. We left, having put a deposit down on two 2025 Delta 14 kayaks, to pick them up in the spring.

We were becoming anxious, worried that the kayaks would arrive while we were on vacation, risking missing out on a notification and not getting our new boats until the end of May. Last Wednesday, I called Frontenac Outfitters to get a status update and was thrilled to learn that the kayaks were in transit, would be arriving either later that day or on Thursday.

They notified us the next day that our kayaks were in.

On Saturday, we left the house bright and early to make the two-hour drive to Frontenac. Our car was packed with all of our paddling gear, with the hope of putting our boats into the lake behind the shop, to try them out. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain and, even though we had our skirts and rain jackets, it was coming down too hard to make our inaugural paddle any fun.

We had to make due with strapping the kayaks on the roof of the car and taking them home.

DW's lime-green kayak. Mine's still wrapped up, next to hers.

But I can't wait to get in the water. And now that I'm not working, perhaps I'll take a break from writing, during the week, and paddle somewhere close by.

Assuming DW let's me go on an inaugural paddle on my own.

We'll sell our old kayaks, which served us well for five seasons, when we return from our trip. It's going to be sad to say goodbye to our first boats: they were great for what we needed them for, but we'll be taking on bigger challenges this season.

Stay tuned.

They call this azure blue.

Juiced

In late 1996, a couple of months before DW and I packed up our lives and headed to South Korea, where we would be living for the next two years, we met with a travel-medicine practitioner to ensure that we were inoculated against any disease that could come our way. And while there were no mandates to have any shots for this East-Asian peninsula, we were planning to travel all over this region of the world.

Image: ChatGPT

And better safe than sorry.

We received shots against hepatitis, typhoid, and other diseases (I've since forgotten and have misplaced that immunization record). We were also given vials for yellow fever, to keep refrigerated and to have administered if we decided to go to countries like India, Cambodia, or Vietnam.

Unfortunately, the vials didn't stay refrigerated long enough for the long flight, so we had to dispose of them. Fortunately, we didn't go anywhere that such an inoculation was required.

Still, money down the drain.

For our upcoming trip, which is only a week away, we found ourself at another consultation for immunization shots. This time, we didn't go to a specialist and this time, many of the vaccines were covered under either mine or DW's health plans (we were out of pocket in the late 90s).

While none of the vaccines are required for entry into the country we'll be visiting, many are recommended and, just as in 1996, it's better to be safe than sorry.

We've rolled up our sleeves and popped pills. So far, we've received shots for Hep A and yellow fever, and we've been taking pills for typhoid (four capsules that are taken once every two days: our last pill was taken yesterday).

We also have tablets that we'll start taking, next Friday, when we arrive in the country. And over the following couple of days, we'll take more. They're meant to help relieve altitude sickness. And, we'll have anti-malarial pills as well, which we'll carry on us just in case.

So, in a word, we're juiced. We're taking preventative steps and are carrying treatments for unknown possibilities.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. We want to enjoy every moment of it.

So, where are we going? I'll let you know, next week, when we're en route.

Stay tuned.

Beer O'Clock: Cody's Brew

I'd been looking forward to trying this brew for a while.

Even though DW suggested to my family and friends that my birthday party, in March, was a no-gift event, some people brought something anyway. From lush wine to hand-made, knitted toques, my friends and family are thoughtful.

Among the generous gifts, I received a pack of assorted beer from various breweries in the east end of Orleans—an Ottawa neighbourhood that I don't get out to often enough. The pack included brews from two of my favourite breweries, Stray Dog and Broadhead, as well as from a brewery I have yet to visit and whose beer I have only tried a couple of times.

OBC: Orleans Brewing Company.

As I moved the cans of beer from the wooden crate that held the gift pack to my beer fridge, I read the labels of each can, and I gave an "oooh!" as I looked at one can. It was an oatmeal stout with coffee.

I don't drink as often as I used to. Now that I'm retired, it could be too easy to open a beer at lunchtime or keep a pint next to me while I work on my novel. And I promised myself that I wouldn't do what it did at the start of the pandemic, when I always kept my beer fridge full and would drink a few pints a day.

My gut is big enough, these days, and I want to focus on my writing.

More than seven weeks after my party, I decided that the time had come to try this coffee stout. I had already enjoyed some of the other brews from the gift pack but I wanted to give this stout a proper review. My hopes were high as I cracked it open.

Cody's Brew: Oatmeal Stout with Equator Coffee (4.6 % ABV; 22 IBUs)
Orleans Brewing Company
Ottawa ON

Appearance: pours a near black with a foamy, deep taupe head that settles to a fine lace. Within a couple of minutes, the head was completely gone and the effervescence disappeared. I thought the stout might be flat, but it wasn't.

Nose: strong coffee with a hint of chocolate.

Palate: there was almost a sourness right away but the coffee followed up. A bitter chocolate brings the short finish. I was almost put off by that sourness but on subsequent sips, it disappeared. While the brew wasn't flat, there wasn't much fizz action going on in the mouth. It made me wonder how long the can had been sitting on the OBC shelves before it was added to my gift pack.

Overall impression: there's good coffee flavour in this stout and not much else to distract you from it. Equator Coffee Roasters make great coffee and their beans make this a much better brew. It's a fine stout but perhaps my expectations exceeded what I received. Was it a good stout? Yes. Would I drink it again? Perhaps. Would I seek it out? No.

In my opinion, Stray Dog and Broadhead make better stouts.

Beer O'Clock rating: 🍺🍺

OBC offers online ordering with free shipping on orders of $60 or more and within a 30-km radius.

Thanks to my friends, Bee and Marc, for the lovely brew pack. I still have more cans to savour.

Cheers!

Drone Sunset

Just Keeping the Flow Going

Before I started writing a crime thriller, I told myself that I couldn't do it. I'm not smart enough to think of a near-perfect crime and certainly not smart enough to have a detective figure out who dunnit.

Still, I wanted to try and after I was laid off from work, I had a lot of time on my hands and didn't have a more-perfect time to give it a go.

Plotting out the sequence of events that led to the murder was pretty easy, actually. I started with the idea, who could be driven to commit a murder, and how would they do it? Once the murder was committed, I turned my attention to the murderer. What would he or she do? Would the murderer hide the body? How do they cover their tracks?

So, for the first week that I started working on Dark Water, I created a spreadsheet that had the main characters, including the murderer. In the spreadsheet, I wrote the person's role in the story and notes about the role that they play in the book. For the killer, I wrote a backstory and traced their movement before and after the murder.

That part of the story was pretty easy, actually. I had the motive and the opportunity, and the killer had to simply go about their life, interacting with other characters throughout the story as though they were innocent.

The hardest part of the story is following the detectives. I have two, which I've revealed in the synopsis. The detectives enter the story after the body is found and they are the main characters in the story, as I follow them more than anyone else.

The hard part is knowing how a detective would go about an investigation, given information and evidence that is presented to them. I'm not a detective (surprise!) so I don't know proper procedures. I only know what I've seen by reading other police procedurals and detective shows on TV.

I have also turned to Google and to ChatGPT: the latter, I present a bunch of evidence and ask how a detective would investigate said evidence. I've also Googled police procedures and what sort of information they'd be able to access.

I've got a pretty good story and I'm afraid that I'm going to get bogged down in details, so I've been writing as much as I can, making up procedures as I go along. I just want to go with the flow and worry about accuracy later.

In my past fiction, I'd get bogged down too much with details. I think that's what got in my way with Gyeosunim, to the extent that I lost interest in the story and stopped writing it.

When I get the initial story for Dark Water finished, I'll go back and properly research the parts that I've made up, regarding police procedures and murder investigations. It's important that I stay focused and just keep writing.

So far, this method is working. As of the writing of this post, with nearly four weeks worth of writing my novel, I am nearly 90 pages in. I don't want to interrupt the flow.

Stay tuned.

New Portrait

Look! I've finally started using my cameras again.

For the past few years, I've taken a self portrait just before my birthday, so that I can see how my appearance has changed. I think I started doing it when I looked in the mirror one day and saw more of my dad than I did of myself.

On New Year's Day, I decided to stop shaving, so by the time that my 60th birthday rolled around, I had a pretty full beard. I liked how the beard looked but a few days after my birthday, I was bothered by how the whiskers above my top lip would reach into my mouth. I would constantly stick my tongue out, touching the bottom of those whiskers.

Even though I trimmed the beard, the moustache whiskers were ever-present around my mouth, and they really started bothering me. And every time I kissed DW goodnight, she'd say "Ew," which kinda hurt.

DW hated the beard. And so, shortly after I shared my birthday selfies on my blog, the beard was gone.

Last week, after receiving the first haircut since I took my self portraits, I decided it was time to update my photo. This is 60, plus a month and five days:

I started off by using a white background. I had one of my D-SLRs on a tripod and used a WiFi connection to my smartphone to focus the camera and snap the photo. For some reason, however, when I switched to a black background, the camera didn't want to focus on me, even though I was in the exact-same position as I was with the white background.

I ended up turning off the auto-focus function of the camera and manually setting the distance of the camera from my position. Because I was using the Nikon app on my smartphone to take the shots, they were automatically downloaded to my phone, so I edited the images with Snapseed.

One of these days, I'll download the RAW files onto my computer and use my laptop to edit the files.

One of these days.

Two in One

Last weekend, I made a concerted effort to get out of the house. I find that I spend too much time at home and don't get much fresh air. And, I've become extremely lazy.

In preparation for our upcoming vacation (I can't believe we'll be leaving in only two weeks), DW and I have started training by finding steep hills to climb. On the previous Saturday, we drove to the Arboretum, between the Central Experimental Farm and Dow's Lake, and walked up the steepest slope of the hill a few times.

When I finally ran out of breath, we called it a day. We hopped back in our car, drove to our latest, favourite breakfast spot, The Third, and then headed home, where I stayed indoors for the rest of the weekend.

Lazy.

The first week of our vacation will have us up in a mountainous region and we plan to do some hiking. And because I'm probably in the worst shape I've been in in years, I want to make sure that I'm up for climbs. Even in the towns we're visiting, there'll be some climbing and I need to know that I'm able to keep up with my family.

So, last weekend, DW and I drove to the Gatineau Hills early on Saturday morning for a hike to the Carbide Willson Ruins. We're familiar with the trail and know that in the past, we've managed it without any issues.

We strapped on our day backpacks and loaded them up to duplicate what we'll likely have on us when were hiking on vacation. I decided to bring one of my Insta360 cameras and my drone, in its case, plus a large, metal water bottle that I filled to the top.

There was still a coating of granular, icy snow on much of the trail, which presented a bit of a challenge on some of the steeper slopes, but DW and I were able to manage the trail without falling. I decided to use my video camera to capture our trek, and at the ruins, I pulled out my drone to use the automated functions to capture a selfie of DW and me.

I wanted to use the remote controller to get some great shots of the remains of the factory, but I don't have any experience using it. And with the waterfall raging and lots of snow on the ground, I didn't want to risk flying into a tree and losing the drone. It was too slippery to have to retrieve it, should it land somewhere on the other side of the factory.

I did, however, use the remote to simply get a top view of the factory and to close up on the waterfall, but that's all my nerves would allow for this hike.

I've already put the video footage for that hike on my YouTube channel (please subscribe!). It's the first time I've captured video, edited it, and uploaded it in a single day. Give it a look: it's just over five minutes long.

Sunday was an even better day, with the sun coming out for the first time in days. It was warm and there was almost no breeze, so I thought that this would be a perfect day to test my drone.

I wanted to pick a spot where there weren't many people—especially, kids—and where there wouldn't be a great risk of hitting trees. I wanted an open space.

I didn't go far from home. I crossed the Rideau River and parked at Claudette Cain Park, near the Vimy Memorial Bridge. There's a large, treeless field that is surrounded by a circular path, which was perfect for testing my hand at the remote control. And because the ground was still wet, no one was walking on it.

One of the drawbacks of the DJI Neo is that the battery life is limited. They're rated up to 18 minutes but with wind, they tend to get about 15 minutes of less, so you have to have a plan for what you want to capture on video.

Fortunately, I have two extra batteries, so I was good for about 45 minutes of flight time.

I spent the first two batteries getting comfortable with the controller, moving the drone up to about 40 metres or so, turning the drone while moving forward, raising or lowering the gimbal for the camera, and testing the return-to-home function, where the drone will automatically fly to its take-off spot.

Because I set up next to the Moodie Family Cemetery, a small plot of headstones in an enclosed corner of the park, I also practiced moving the drone from a height down to eye level, closing in on the burial plots.

When I felt comfortable, and was down to my last battery, I decided to fly the drone further away, over the trees that separated the park from the Rideau River. Once over the trees, I turned the drone toward the Vimy Memorial Bridge and then circled back to the park before landing it and calling it a day.

I had been outside twice in as many days, the first in a long time.

When I got home, I downloaded the video footage from the drone and decided that I'd make another YouTube video. For the second time, I shot video, edited it, and uploaded the final video in a few short hours.

In viewing the video, I realized that there were some settings that I did not adjust before flying the drone. Being a bright day, I should have lowered the exposure level. And I had learned, from other owners of the DJI Neo, that I should have lowered the sharpness of the video (DJI sets the default too high).

I couldn't do anything with the sharpness in post-production but I applied a high-contrast filter to the video clips during editing. They still don't look great but I was really just focused on getting comfortable flying the drone manually.

With my first drone, which was a cheap, crappy drone, I flew it into trees on my first flight. It survived, but I kept flying it into trees and became discouraged.

The controller on the Neo is much better and makes flying easy. I'll continue to practice but I'm now not as nervous about using the drone when we travel.

If you want to see the drone video, which is just over two minutes long, have a look:

It wasn't until after I viewed the video that I realized I had captured the whole setting of the opening chapter of my novel, Dark Water, where the body is discovered by two kayakers on the Rideau River. You can see Chapman Mills Conservation Area, the river, the bridge, and the park.

Coincidence.

I need to get out of the house more, and now that the weather is improving, I expect the drone will be good incentive to get some fresh air.

Happy Thursday!

Swing and Miss

Until I have taken enough photos to supplement my blog posts, I'm finding ChatGPT has been a good source for creating images that work to satisfy my needs. But it doesn't always work out as planned.

For example, there have been a few successful illustrations that I've made from this AI tool: the writer at a computer; me, reading a book, or taking a photo; and even, to some extent, of me kayaking on a river (my face wasn't replicated very well in that one so I opted to cover it with sunglasses).

For Monday's post, I wanted to take an existing photo of me on my spin bike. I took the picture a couple of years ago and have used it in previous blog posts. But now that I've restarted my exercise routine, I wanted to add the image again, only I wanted to create a 3-D cartoon version of it.

So, I turned to Chat GPT and wrote

Create a 3-D cartoon image from the attached photo. Do not include the cords on the floor.

Here's what it produced:

I may have gained a few extra kilos over the winter but I'm not as big as the generated person. And I'm nowhere near like that in the provided photo (why does ChatGPT always make the cartoon version of me bigger than I am??). So, I requested an alteration:

Make the man much less fat.

Okay, that was much better. But the face of the character doesn't look like me, so I uploaded another photo and wrote

Use the attached photo to change the face of the man on the spin bike.

It took several minutes for ChatGPT to produce an image, and here's the result:

Again, that looks nothing like me. Three strikes, and I was out.

Maybe ChatGPT is giving me a subtle hint that I should lay off using it to convert selfie photos into cartoons. DW has hated all of the previous images: "What's wrong with the source photos? I like seeing your real face."

What do you think? Should I give ChatGPT a rest when it comes to generating images, especially of myself? Should I stick to asking it questions that can help with crafting my novel?

Let me know in the Comments section.

The Return

When I first started using social media, I was slow out of the gate.

I reluctantly joined Facebook because a lot of friends were using it and I could connect with those with whom I hadn't kept in close contact, and it was nice to see what they were up to. But as more and more content from people I didn't know started filling my timeline, I used it less and less, until I stopped using it altogether, several years ago, and closed my account this year.

I joined Twitter in 2011 at DW's suggestion, as she was away for a couple of weeks, in Taiwan, for work, and she felt it would be the fastest way to keep in touch. And over the years, while I made some great friends with the social-media app, my feed once again became polluted, and when the biggest twit of them all bought the company, I dumped it.

Around the same time that I joined Twitter, I joined LinkedIn. And at that time, I was almost as active on this so-called platform for professionals as I was on Twitter. In the first couple of years, I made so many new connections and more new friends than I did on the other site.

I used to use Hootsuite to manage all of my announcements of my latest blog posts, so that I could get the word out to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in one shot. But when Hootsuite dropped Facebook as a supported platform, and later wanted to charge for the services I had been enjoying for about a decade, I dropped it; and, in doing so, I stopped sharing blog-post announcements on LinkedIn.

My use of LinkedIn dwindled to almost zero quite a few years ago. I removed it from the many tabs that I keep open on my Web browser. I would only go into it if I received a notification from one of my contacts. And when I finally retired, I told myself, I would close my account altogether.

But since I've been 'retired' from my company, I've returned to LinkedIn. I announced that I was no longer working at my company. I've changed my profile to reflect my current situation. And once again, I've started sharing my blog-post announcements.

I'm even playing a stupid little game, Zip, each day.

I've noticed that, like Facebook, my LinkedIn feed is full of posts from people to whom I'm not connected, and it's a bit of a pain to find my peeps. But because I don't intend to stay retired, I'm still hopeful that LinkedIn will be a useful tool when I'm ready to start looking again.

The LinkedIn tab has returned to my browser. We'll see how it stays.

Routines

Today marks two weeks since I've officially started my days as an unemployed person. Though my company forced me into retirement, I consider myself to be only temporarily retired, as I can see myself working again.

Doing what, who knows?

Since I stopped working, however, I haven't stopped being productive. If you're a regular reader of my blog (first, thank you!), you'll know that I've started writing a murder mystery. To that end, my weekday routine hasn't changed: I get up at the same time, get showered and dressed, have breakfast, and sit down at the same desk that I occupied while working—only the computer has changed.

I tend to work on my book until 4 or 5, but sometimes go longer. I may not spend all of that time writing and I sometimes become distracted by unrelated things, but I sit at my desk nevertheless.

If I hit a snag in the story and feel the need to take a break, I'll often write several blog posts in advance. (This one was written last Thursday.)

As much as I think it's important to keep writing, I feel that I shouldn't necessarily stay at the desk when I'm not. There are other things that I want to pursue in this temporary retirement and I don't have to wait until the evenings and weekends.

I want to practice using my drone. Now, as soon as I said this the last time, the weather turned nasty with snow and strong winds. My drone weighs only 135 grams, so it doesn't like the wind. But I can't predict the wind for our upcoming vacation, so I should just suck it up and get outside with it, learn how to fly it in windy conditions so that it'll be easy when the wind is calm.

I want to start exercising more. In the past, I'd get on my spin bike or road bike after work, but I can do that anytime. I'd like to make it a lunch-hour routine, so that it gives me a break from my morning writing. And with only a couple of weeks until our vacation, I really need to get in shape, pronto.

There's a lot of hiking and climbing at high elevations, so the more fit I am, the better.

I've really neglected my photography, and one thing that I told myself when I looked ahead to full retirement—initially, in three years—I told myself I'd be out with my camera more, that I'd perhaps set up a side gig where I shoot headshots, and that I'd try to sell more of my images.

With so much time on my hands, I haven't pursued one of my greatest passions, and that's sad.

So, starting now, I'm going to set up some routines. They won't be carved into stone, as I have to be flexible for the weather. But I'm no longer going to sit on my arse from 9 to 5 like I did when I was paid to do so.

Stay tuned.

A Winter's Day, in Spring

I am so done with the snow.

And I know: I live in Ottawa, the coldest capital city in the world, where the weather at this time of year is unpredictable. But enough's enough.

A couple of winters ago, I thought it would be interesting to count the number of times that I would have to go out and shovel my driveway. Now, I'm a stickler for a clear driveway, so I would head out with my shovel whenever there was enough snow to cover the driveway and leave an impression with a footstep.

Anything more than a fine dusting, and I was out there. In the 2022–23 season, I shovelled my driveway 55 times.

The next year, I thought I would do a comparison so I counted again. It was a gentler season, so in 2023–24, I only went out with the shovel 26 times.

So far, in the 2024–25 season, I've been out 44 times: most recently, I went out twice, on Tuesday.

On Monday, looking out onto my street, there was almost no snow in the neighbourhood. There will little piles on some lawns, including mine, where there was a little pile that held on because during most of the day, the snow was shaded from the sun's rays. Even the mountain of snow that had built up in our circle, in the cul-de-sac, was largely gone.

I was getting excited to take my drone out for some practice flights. In exactly three weeks, we leave for a vacation and I hope to get some good aerial video footage, and I want to be comfortable piloting the drone (although, it can perform some manoeuvres on its own).

But then, on Tuesday, I woke up to more than 10 centimetres on the ground and more continuing to fall.

Of course, the snow was heavy. It was raining when I went to bed and it was only a few degrees below the freezing mark, but I was out, clearing the driveway.

At one point, looking northward, the clouds were quite dark and made a dramatic contrast to the white that was sticking to the branches of the trees, so I took a break from shovelling to capture this photo with my smartphone.

Snow. Lots of it. On April 8.

I had to go out again, later in the afternoon, to shovel about another 10 cm, but it was colder outside so at least it wasn't as heavy.

Hopefully, there won't be any more snow this season. I've just swapped my winter tires for summer ones.

But this is Ottawa: the weather at this time of year is unpredictable.

Happy Friday!

Cartoonish Me

There are days when I get distracted when I should be working on my book. Maybe I should go back to my old manual typewriter.

You may have noticed that the past several blog posts that I've published are using AI-generated images. It's been so long since I've used my cameras that they're literally starting to gather dust.

I've been telling myself that because I'm temporarily retired (I expect to take a paying job later, this summer or fall) that I can go out and take photos anytime, but I've become a creature of habit where I get up, get showered and dressed, have breakfast, and then move over to my home office. I've been doing this for more than five years, since the start of the pandemic, and it's a tough habit to break.

I don't need to wait until the end of the day or the weekend to get out there.

Because I haven't been taking many photos, I don't have any to share in a blog post. So, when I've written a blog post, I have lately turned to ChatGPT to create something to help illustrate what I'm writing about.

Hence, the images of a person writing on a computer at a desk and of me, sitting in a chair and reading a book. When I created the latter image, it cracked me up so much that I wanted to create more, but because I had used up the number of images that Chat GPT would make in a day, I had to wait to do more.

I uploaded the 3-D cartoonish image of myself into the tool and asked it to create another image of the same man, but instead of sitting in a chair, reading a book, have him taking a picture with a Nikon D-SLR. On the first try, I got this:

Perfect! It's now my avatar for my Bluesky account.

I also thought I'd like a similar creation of me, kayaking, so I found a photo of me, wearing my expedition hat, and asked ChatGPT to use the photo to create a 3-D cartoon image of the man in a red kayak, on a river, with a forest in the background.

Here's what it gave me:

I don't think it looks very much like me but it's not bad. And something was missing.

I always wear sunglasses when I paddle, so I told the AI tool to add them to the image and keep everything else the same.

Much better.

I was going to use this final image as my avatar for my YouTube channel, but I think that viewers would rather see a face not hidden behind sunglasses, even if it is a computer-generated face. So, I used the one without sunglasses.

I may make more of these kind of images but I'll try not to become addicted. In the meantime, I should get back to writing my murder mystery.

Happy Thursday!

Led By Emotions

When I wrote Sonsaengnim: A Korea Diary, there were certain sections that I knew would be successful with the readers. One, in particular.

And please note that there are some spoiler alerts in this post. If you haven't read Songsaengnim but are planning to, you might want to skip this post.

Image: ChatGPT^*

For myself, I find that if the author can evoke emotions, he or she has won me over for the book. When I read, I want to laugh, I want to cry, and I want to think. I don't have to necessarily do all three while reading a passage but I have to do at least one.

If I'm reading a light-hearted or comical book, I expect to feel joy. If it's really good, I'll laugh. And similarly, if I'm reading a touching story, I expect to feel moved. If the writer can create a moment that puts a lump in my throat, she or he is a masterful storyteller.

So, back to when I wrote my novel. And again, spoiler alert.

There are chapters that, when I wrote them, I knew were going to evoke sad emotions. For example, because the novel is set in 1997, there's a time where the world learns about the car crash that kills Diana, Princess of Wales. I, myself, was living in South Korea at the time, and was visiting friends who lived in Seoul. One of them worked at the Canadian embassy.

Shortly after news of the crash broke, we were watching it unfold, live, on CNN. At the time that we tuned in, Diana, Dodi Al-Fayed, Henri Paul, and Trevor Rees-Jones were still in the vehicle. For hours, we watched the sad drama unfold and turned the TV off shortly after Britons awoke to the BBC announcement of their princess' demise.

I captured that day in my novel, mixing it with Roland's memory of his own family tragedy. When I wrote it, I couldn't help but get choked up. I had to take a break, at one point, because I was overwhelmed with grief.

But when I finished that chapter, I knew I had something special.

When friends and family read the published novel, they commented on how heartbreaking that chapter was. One friend, who met me in a pub, one night, sat next to me, punched me in the arm, and said, "You bastard. You made me cry."

A personal triumph.

Yesterday, while working on my current novel, Dark Water, I wrote a passage that also tugged at my heartstrings. And once more, here's a bit of a spoiler (but not much, and the passage may end up edited out of the final version—though, unlikely).

Dark Water is a murder mystery that is set in Ottawa. In the first chapter, a couple of seniors are paddling on the Rideau River, in kayaks, when they encounter a body floating in the dark water (wondering where I got the working title??).

When I created the kayaking couple, it should be no surprise that I based them on DW and myself. If you should eventually read the published book, you'll see DW and me clearly. The husband even has a 360-degree video camera mounted to the deck of his boat.

Later in the book, when the detectives play back the video that was captured of the discovery, I share aspects that weren't described in the first chapter. In writing this section, I placed myself directly in the role of the character.

What would I do if I ever found a dead body while kayaking? As I wrote, so much of me came out in the character and I could actually feel as though I was recounting what would happen.

And, I got emotional. I had a lump in my throat and my eyes started watering.

I got to the end of that section and had to take a break. Get my mind off of the book. Possibly, call it a day.

Later, I decided to write this post. And even in a couple of paragraphs ago, I felt a touch of the emotion that I felt when I was writing the actual passage.

Let me just take a moment to pat myself on the back.

I'm excited to continue writing Dark Water and I hope that when it's published, you'll be pleased with the work.

The story continues.

^* Once again, I used ChatGPT to create the image for today's post. I attached a photo of my head and shoulders, and asked the tool to create a 3-D cartoon image of a middle-aged man who is reading a book in an armchair, and to base the man on the provided photo. When I saw the result, I laughed so much that I was brought to tears for the second time that day.

Close Enough

On Thursday, after I had written Friday's blog post, I realized I didn't really have an image to go with the content.

I like to add an image to my blog posts, as I feel that it helps the reader visualize what I'm telling him or her. It also becomes a draw for when I share the blog post on social media, as a visual can be eye-catching. The same goes for the right-hand margin of my blog, where the popular posts of the last month are listed.

Because Friday's post was about me working on my novel, Dark Water (the name will likely change), I wanted to include a picture that would relate to the story. But I couldn't think of one.

I haven't been using my camera very much, this year. I attended a model shoot with my photography group in January, I took some self portraits for my 60th birthday (I've since shaved off my beard so should shoot new ones), and DW and I took a few photos of birds at Mud Lake, a few weeks ago, but that's it.

I'm retired, now. I should take some time to get outside and start shooting.

I considered setting up my camera to take a picture of me, typing at my computer, but my desk isn't really set up so that I could place a camera behind me or at the side. My workspace isn't conducive to capturing in a digital image.

Last month, when I first thought of Dark Water, I wanted to create a cover to the unstarted book, so I tried ChatGPT. As a previous post showed, that experiment failed terribly. But I thought I would give the AI tool one more try.

I asked the program to

Create an image of a writer at a desk, typing a story onto a computer. The writer's back faces forward and the computer screen is obscured by the writer's head.

And this is what it came up with:

It was pretty good, actually. The image was pretty much what I had imagined. Even the writer, from behind, looks like me when I was in my early 20s. And I wondered if it could age the writer.

Because many people say that I don't look like I'm 60, I asked ChatGPT to age the writer somewhere in between what it had created and where I am.

Make the writer a bit older: perhaps, in his 40s.

It wasn't bad but it was definitely not me. The writer was still as thin as in the first image but his hair was a salt-and-pepper colour, and he had a bald spot at the top of his head.

Luckily, for me, I still have a full head and the grey is minimal. But I'm no longer thin, regrettably.

Give the writer a full head of hair but add about 15 kilograms.

Oops, too much weight.

Make the writer a bit less fat. Keep everything else the same.

Unfortunately, I used up my requests. After my attempt with the book cover, I created a basic account, which, apparently, limits me to three images a day. I wouldn't be allowed to request a modification until late the next morning—too late for Friday's post.

The final attempt would have to do for Friday's post.

The next day, I tried my last request again, and I'm not sure but I think it's the closest to resembling me. Close enough, anyway.

But now, I'm determined to get more exercise. After all, I'll be on vacation in about three-and-a-half weeks, and there's some climbing involved.

Happy Monday!

Friday Fiction: Synopsis

Image: ChatGPT.

As I said, yesterday, I have no intention of sharing parts of my murder mystery like I did with Songsaengnim and Gyeosunim. Being a 'who dunnit,' I don't want to give too much away.

I will, however, share some of my thought processes as I work through the story. I've never written crime fiction before, never figured myself to be smart enough—or sinister enough—to work out a murder mystery.

But the other day, while I was taking a pause from writing a chapter, I thought I would write out a brief synopsis, a teaser, of what the story is about. I didn't want to give much away: rather, this would be something that I might have on the back of the book or on the inside jacket.

Here's what I've written:

When Ottawa Police Services Inspector Michael “Mickey” Calloway returns to the Serious Crimes team after a mild cardiac arrest, he is partnered with Erin Hayes, a rookie inspector who has yet to prove herself, leaving Calloway to wonder: has she been assigned to babysit him, in his recovery, or is he babysitting an untested detective?

Both are quickly put to the test when a body is recovered from the dark waters of the Rideau River, in Ottawa’s south end. A young woman has been discovered by two kayakers, and when her lifeless body is brought to shore, Calloway recognizes her as CBC reporter Emily Fraser, who, only days earlier, escaped certain death when she and her fiancé failed to board an ill-fated flight from Ottawa to Montreal.

As Calloway puts it, “there’s no cheating death.”

Fraser’s death is suspicious, due to the nature of the injuries that are found on her. Fraser, who was investigating a story that would “shake city hall to its core,” was due to bring the story to light on the day that her body is discovered. And because her fiancé, Ottawa City Councillor Daniel Whitmore, is missing, he is immediately suspected of involvement in Fraser’s death.

Calloway and Hayes are faced with many questions: how did Fraser end up in the river and where did she go in? What was the news story that she was about to release and who was involved? Where is her computer, which contains information about her investigation and possible contacts? Where is Whitmore? Is he tied to Fraser’s news story? And did he kill his fiancée because of what was going to come out?

Dark Water uncovers corruption at municipal–and possibly federal–levels of government, and reveals a murky world of deceit and revenge. Dive in.

Thoughts? Does it sound interesting?

I'm more than 50 pages into the story but I'm facing a slowdown as my knowledge of police procedures is severely lacking. In the meantime, I just keep writing, and I'll come back and fill in the details later.

How did Ian Rankin write his first Inspector Rebus novel?

Happy Friday!

Confidence

For all the writing I do and have done over the last 40 or so years, I've never had confidence in my abilities.

The same goes for my photography. More than 95 percent of my photos, to me, seem okay, but only just okay. It actually surprises me when someone tells me that my photos are good (and I'm not talking about family and friends, who are always there to cheer me on).

When I submitted my first novel, JT, to publishers, I didn't expect to get so much as an acknowledgement. Of course, I did, from three publishing houses, who all sent me the standard thank you for your submission but we're not interested.

Essentially, you suck. Piss off.

I was genuinely surprised when one of those standard rejection letters was filled with a handwritten message around the margins of the letter, from the person who actually read my novel. I still have that letter, stored somewhere in a box, among other old manuscripts, but I'm too lazy to dig it up to quote directly from it.

Essentially, the person who read my book wrote, "Even though we don't publish this genre of fiction, I enjoyed reading JT. You're a good writer. Don't give up."

Those words kept me going enough to write Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. And whilst I was working on that novel, I published the rough chapters on a dedicated blog, which now only shares the first chapter. I encouraged readers to comment, providing a now-abandoned e-mail address, and I was touched by how many people reached out to me.

One person, who lived in Brazil, told me how she loved the character of Roland Axam, even suggesting how she'd like to see the story end. I'm sorry to say that my plans for the end would probably disappoint her (I never heard from her after her first message).

Another reader told me that she couldn't understand why I was putting up the novel for free, that she'd happily buy the book. I responded, thanking her, and reminding her that I was only sharing the rough draft and that as soon as the first manuscript was completed, I would be taking everything down but the first chapter. If she wanted to read the polished version, she'd have to buy the book.

She did.

Despite the positive feedback that I've received over the years, despite the fact I was able to make a career out of technical writing, I've always lacked self confidence. I've feared rejection. I've questioned my self worth.

Since I've left my job—or rather, was forced into retirement—I've actually felt some confidence. I'm much happier—I actually feel that my job was sucking the life out of me. I feel free to finally be doing something I've wanted to do without my 8-to-4 job getting in the way.

The idea for my new novel came to me much more quickly than anything I've contemplated writing before. I've always wanted to write a crime novel but in the past, I've felt that I wasn't smart enough to write one. Yet, in the space of one weekend—the weekend after learning that my writing department was being eliminated—I worked out the whole synopsis for my book. In just over a week (and at the time of writing this blog post), I've completed almost 50 pages, filled a spreadsheet with more than 20 characters, and have dozens of pages of random notes.

I told DW that I was going to take four or five months off to complete this story and look for a publisher. At the rate I'm going, I could be finished in half that time.

While I'm confident in the story, I still need to build up the confidence to think that someone would want to publish it. But finishing the book is the number-one priority. I'm not going to let any lack in confidence for what comes after the writing to get in the way.

Unlike Songsaengnim, and unlike parts of Gyeosunim, I'm not going to share rough drafts of Dark Water (that's the working title). It's a murder mystery, after all, and I don't want to spill the beans of who dunnit.

I am, however, working on a synopsis that I can share, and I'll do that in the next day or so. I'll also share my thoughts on the writing process, as this is a new genre of writing for me, and I'm approaching it in a completely different way.

Stay tuned.

Red-Winged Blackbird

It was behaving very strangely.

A couple of weekends ago, DW and I went to Mud Lake, along the Ottawa River. We hadn't been to this small trail and trove of many different types of bird in a long time, and I also felt that I needed to get out of the house, to get some fresh air, so it was a great way to start the day. And even though we were heading out too late for the peak time that birds are fluttering around, there's always something new to spot, whether it be an owl, a new species of heron, or a new duck to be found.

On this visit, we spied a northern pintail duck, which I shared in last week's Wordless Wednesday.

As we walked back to our car, I noticed a red-wing blackbird perched on someone's side-view mirror. And it would also flutter over the mirror or in front of it, chirping in a seeming state of irritation.

"Do you think he's seen himself in the mirror and thought it was another male?" I asked DW.

"I don't know," she said, "it's possible."

I didn't have the greatest vantage as we approached the car. But the bird wouldn't leave it, hopping on the mirror and the roof of the vehicle. Even when we reached the car, the red-wing blackbird was determined to stick around. So, I snapped a few photos (one of which I also shared, last week).

Red-wing blackbirds are territorial, so there was definitely something that made him stay at the car. And whatever it was, he was not pleased.

Happy Wednesday!

AI-Assisted

At my old job, we were supposed to embrace AI. When I was composing an e-mail message, AI would make its presence known—not like Microsoft's Clippy, but a subtle icon would suggest that AI could improve my message.

I'm sorry, I would respond, in my head, to that prompt, but I'm a professional writer. I don't need to have an algorithm create my message or convey it in a different tone. I know what I'm doing.

For our customer documentation authoring tool, we incorporated a plugin tool that used AI to analyse our writing to ensure that we were following our company's style guidelines. I never used the tool. I was my team's editor and I knew the style guidelines cold.

So, the thought of using AI at work seemed preposterous. Maybe, that made me a bit of a dinosaur but I still produced high-quality documentation. Year after year, my peers and bosses praised my work, so I was doing something right.

The idea of using AI for my fiction just didn't make any sense. How could an algorithm be as creative as a human? I imagine that any work of fiction that was generated by AI would be dry, boring. I mean, I had tried describing a scene in order for Chat GPT to create the cover art for the novel I'm now working on and it couldn't get anything right.

It didn't seem to understand what lying face-down in a body of water looked like: how would it know how to craft a well-conceived story?

I'm more than 30 pages into my murder mystery and I'm more organized than I've ever been for a novel. I have a spreadsheet that contains the names of the characters and their roles, and how they fit into the story. Some of the people, such as the killer and some of the witnesses and suspects, are on the spreadsheet but haven't even appeared in the story.

I have a clear idea for the motive and the circumstances that lead up to the murder, and I came up with them on my own. I used no artificial intelligence to produce my plot.

But there are aspects of this story for which I have no knowledge beyond what I've seen in televised crime dramas or have read in murder mysteries I've read over the decades. I'm taking wild-ass guesses or I'm just glossing over some sections, such as the coroner's autopsy findings.

There are a lot of moving parts around the discovery of the body and identifying the victim, and while I've made some decent notes around certain things, I'm not a detective. I don't know proper procedures.

So, for the first time, yesterday, I turned to ChatGPT for help. For other stories, I've relied on Google searches to give me some answers, so I decided I'd let ChatGPT be my search engine.

I described how the victim's body was found. I provided the identity and career of the dead person, with people who know her (I've previously stated that the victim is a woman, so there's no surprise there). I did not state that the person found floating in the water was a murder victim: I simply said it was a dead body. When I typed in this information, I asked the AI tool for the first order of operations on the side of the police.

The tool churned for a few seconds before listing all sorts of tasks that the police and pathologists would perform. It gave details of what clues would be followed to determine if the death was an accident or homicide. It suggested who would be interviewed, and how the body would be identified.

AI gave me a framework in which I could fill in details.

As soon as I had this information, I started thinking: was this story mine? Was I letting an algorithm be a part of the creative process?

The answer is a resounding no. AI isn't telling me what to write. It isn't giving me insight into the characters or suggesting any twists to the plot. (I've had enough people do that when I've indicated that I'm writing a crime novel.) AI has simply listed a number of tasks that an investigating team wound undertake to help determine the identity of the victim and how she would have ended up in the river.

I'm not cheating.

AI isn't writing my book but I think I'll use it like an assistant, as it should be. AI should never do the heavy lifting when it comes to being creative.

For me, ChatGPT will be the new Google search, without me having to wade through what is useful and what is just taking up my time.

Time I can be using, writing.