I am going to make knives. At least one. Ideally more. I shall start with an easy, simple kitchen knife cut from sheet metal and make that, then move on to something more complex. I may well need to make some tools along the way. I've made one or two knives before but I'm still very much a beginner. There are things I'd like to achieve including a hammer-textured finish, a hamon line, a pinned handle and both stick and skeleton tangs. Probably not all in the same piece!

I have no clue how much time I'll be able to commit to this which is why I'm leaving it a bit open ended, but we're currently in quarantine due to exposure to a covid-positive person last weekend (no illness so far here) and the whole country is going back into lockdown in a few days for the entire month. Childcare takes priority over making stuff, of course. The Boy (age 2) isn't quite old enough to help me with the forge and grinder yet..

I'm doing the first full draft of my book, 'Cuisle Mo Chroí' as part of NaNoWriMo. This NaNoWriMo draft will be entirely in English for feedback purposes, but the final product will be an Irish language low-fantasy novel. The discovery draft I'm working from was about 20,000 - 25,000 words, so even if I don't hit the 50,000 word goal I'll have a substantial story drafted.

NaNoWriMo project page.

Here's a thrown-together plot synopsis:

"The mysterious mineral 'pulse' has a straightforward usage: igniting it will retrieve whatever occupied that space over 50,000 years ago, be it water, minerals, plants or animals. It is this property that sustains the metropolis of Baile na nIarlaí, which has stood in a remote Spanish desert for the last 90 years, on an ancient dried-up lakebed.

Nobody yet knows where the pulse came from or why it behaves as it does, yet they have trusted it with their lives.

The year is 1702, and the local population of Gaelic exiles is happy with the status quo, but there are rumblings of concern that the supply of pulse is beginning to run out. If the mine runs dry before the people are convinced to change their ways, the result could be catastrophic..."

As mentioned in my post on the last thread, I'll be focusing on community this month. Specifically: how we can build better communities online and in real life -- for everyone. I'll talk to a diverse group of people about it, write about some of the ideas we come up with, then design tools based on these ideas. I want to get a couple designs completed by the end of the month, maybe more, we'll see what the research reveals.

This month I'm writing 1000 words a day in a "lite" version of NaNoWriMo. I'm calling it #1KaDay. My first entry is on my gemlog.

This month I will build/rebuild a "big block" 4 cylinder Toyota engine that will inevitably be swapped into my 1983 Toyota Tercel SR5 4WD Wagon to replace/retire it's 300k mile tired factory engine and give it more than double it's original horsepower and torque at the same time.

See my previous comment for a long explanation of what that means/involves/history.

This month I commit to making significant progress on my personal website. Most websites don't get "done" but this one should be functional and be able to have things added to it by the end of the month.

I intend to:

• come up with a design for the new site
• define a number of features that I would like to have
• implement the design and features onto a functional site (probably using Wagtail)
• put in some content

I have some stretch goals:

• import my old blog
• try a new technology

I may as well join this. I've been putting off doing a lot of coding for self-pleasure, and I always keep putting off gamedev. On top of that, I began coding a text-based version of Among Us, which I mentioned in a previous comment, which I plan to work on.

I didn't think of the model all the way through because it was mostly a rage-code job, which resulted in me having to wipe a lot of the code yesterday, which means I pretty much back at square one. I'll focus on trying to finish this by month's end, as well as learn some Rust along the way.

Oh boy October is over! I will be knitting a pair of socks (pattern here: Love Socks) and writing a short story (bare minimum lol gotta keep them goals low). I'm going to start with looking at different ways to knit socks. I'm hoping to find one to knit the socks simultaneously, in the hopes that the socks will be knit in a more matching manner. It'll also double as a way for me to keep track of my tension and use the same on both socks. That's my hope anyways lol.
EDIT: WOW I have to order the right size needles lmao I thought I had some small, circular ones or at least some interchangeable ones but alas, no. So I'll be starting a little later with my socks than I'd like.

For the short story, I'm not 100% sure what I want to work on or if I should continue with older project. Probably should've planned that better but it's a weird year, I'm letting myself off a bit. But definitely going to be upping writing productivity.

As I previously said, I would like to create some songs. I am still quite busy though, so I will commit to making at least one song, but I'd ideally like to make multiple to make a small EP. If possible I'd also like to include some cringy vocals. Also I am going to force myself to share the song(s) here, which will be hard. It's probably going to be terrible, so people will probably not say anything about it to be polite haha. I guess I will just say it's DIY lo-fi and bad on purpose :).

I will be working on my personal website a bit. First I would like to switch the site generator over to something written in a language I use and understand, probably either Python or Julia. Once that is done, I want to write an article I thought about a while back but got lazy on, in hopes of completing and posting it.

I wasn't thinking specifically of Timasomo, but I'm throwing myself into cooking again. Today's exercise was Thai Red Curry Chicken. Topping off the basic Maesri curry paste called for in the recipe with lots of sauteed shallots, garlic, ginger, and cilantro stems made it about as good as average Thai restaurant food, which beats anything available locally. Also, a glass of Chateau Fontaine Gewürztraminer went very well with it.

There's a kind of dailiness in creativity that I want to rediscover, and cooking lends itself to this process very well. I intend to give at least one meal an innovative twist each day, even if it's just substituting a vegan ingredient, pairing a wine, or using something the recipe lacked, as long as the end result is palatable.

The biggest obstacle is that there are only two people (and one apparently bottomless teenage kitten who may be a Bag of Holding in disguise) to consume the output, which rules out bigger productions.

With any luck, I'll also have space to get the jewelry workbench set up again this month, and may tack that into the plans.

Oh, and also, posting regularly on Tildes again. It's not precisely creative with a capital "C", but tiny essays are good for the writing brain.

I'm writing 50,000 words for the play-by-post game I'm involved in! I just hit 2,000 for the day, so I'm right on track. :)

I'm writing a blog post every day, and my first one just went live!

I have a two part plan. One is a set of four short stories, with images for each of the four, handdrawn.
The other is slightly technical and I need to consider it more so I enter mostly with that first one.

I've decided to do a themed series of film photos. My goal is to come away with 10 high quality prints of great shots. As suggested by another Tildes user @monarda I'm going to go with "Lost" for my theme. I'm not exactly sure what that will look like, whether it will be more literal or metaphorical but I'm excited to get started. I think I'll use my lunch break at work tomorrow to go downtown and try to get started!

I will be writing and developing a stand-up comedy routine that I may end up trying out at open mics towards the end of the month. I completed a very rough 5 minute set a week ago, and have re-listened to it again, writing down parts that get laughs, and parts that need more work.

One thing about stand up that I have learned is that every stand up act you have seen has been rehearsed, edited, and finetuned over dozens upon dozens of performances. Every pause, every stammer, and even the crowd work has had planning behind it. The good comics are thinking about the next joke while they are performing whatever you are seeing.

So I have my work cut out for me. I will be writing, rehearsing, acting out, rewriting, performing, rewriting, and then maybe I will have 5 minutes of good jokes that will generate at the minimum, 4 laughs per minute (LPM). Right now, my current set is 2-3. I have done some prep work tonight on fixing last week's stuff and introducing new jokes for class on Monday night. Tomorrow is going to be spent writing all that I have on index cards, figuring out the flow to the set, and probably doing more editing and rehearsing before class.

I am going to build a Rope Trolley. A robot that climbs around on a rope.

Good luck everyone!

I have been having a lot of self doubt about whether I can achieve this one, but I am going to commit to writing and recording some songs. Whilst I originally wanted to say commit to 4 or more, I think I need to release some of the pressure and say a minimum of two.

Country / Alt Country / style, lo-fi bedroom recordings sang with an Australian twang.

I will be writing a general purpose, web-facing DigitalOcean droplet launcher! My own personal use case is for launching a sufficiently powerful Jitsi server for only as long as I need it to avoid crazy bills using an iOS Shortcut, but I aim to make this applicable to any DO application.

This month I'll be working on launching my online furniture business-Traveller Furniture. Right now I just have a few listings up on Etsy. Prototyping for my first line of products is complete, so my goals for the month are as follows:
-finish preliminary photography so I can get the rest of my products up.
-improve the copy in the product descriptions
-start promoting my shop in online channels. Reddit, FB, Insta etc
-figure out shipping and fulfillment

Stretch Goals:
-professional, high-quality product photography

• potentially a dedicated Shopify store
• preliminary art for my next product line

I appreciate any feedback or advice about running an online store.

Thanks and good luck everyone!

Link to my store page:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TravellerFurniture?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=866176918

Firstly, this is a great initiative! Many thanks to all involved.

My commitment is to work on and, importantly, finish a long-form article I've begun sketching the idea of. A longer-term goal is to write one a month, focusing on depth and quality. I'll share it here when complete!

Oops, I'm a couple days late.

In any case, I'm doing a project called ALoSiN. It stands for A Lot of Songs in November and is basically just a project where I try to write a lot of songs and quickly record them in a non-professional manner (like just with my phone and maybe an external mic to preserve audio quality cause I've had problems with my phone and the tripod I use) to post on my YouTube channel(s).

If you want to stay updated until November 8th where I will attempt to rejoin the formal schedule for Timasomo, you can check out my YouTube channels CityboundForest and Wires&Branches. I already have posts on CityboundForest and Wires&Branches has a track that I made for ALoSiN.