...Which means I DO have a blog entry to type up, but I'm too tired to write it tonight. I suppose I'll make it my first thing tomorrow priority. (Well, assuming I remember that is.)
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Not that that's much of a surprise given that I've been home all day, slept until one, and have therefore been up only eleven hours before I need to go to bed again. Still, in spite of how much of my day I wasted, I DO feel like in spite of me having wasted it I've managed to, at least to some extent, keep myself afloat and manage to keep my life in order.
Some things I'm still behind on. But...I'm getting there. I really am. Starting with me being responsible. I'm not particularly tired (though I'm not exactly gonna complain about sleeping, either), but I should go to bed now because I work tomorrow morning. I actually, believe it or not, didn't work on anything today. I was just...not really doing much of anything, as strange as that is. I mean. I think I'm slowly beginning to get control of my life. And in a few other ways losing control of it. But that's par for the course. Getting better in some areas, and worse in others.
I think I'm overall getting better though. I am kinda tired, in spite of having done nothing. I guess this is it for the day then as far as blogging material goes. Apologies for not having any interesting stories for ya today. In more and more places, leaks are opening up. The latest place?
...The window right behind the desktop. You know. The location where all these sensitive electronics are. If my sister and dad don't fix it on their own (it's fixable with a tarp over the roof) I am going to bug them because unlike the other leaks thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis is not one we can put off on fixing. But before I go I thought I'd share with you a small snippet of my life.
We have a shelf. This shelf...well, shelves various things. But the bottom level of the shelf is empty enough that there's room for it to be occupied. It often is. Because we have a heater vent which blows the heat onto the shelf in that exact spot. It had a resident, and she was soundly asleep (or so I thought) when I went to my room to grab my work stuff. I was in my room for less than thirty seconds--probably fifteen. And when I opened the door... ...CAT. Right there, sitting next to the door, looking up at me. When she had, as far as I could tell, been fast asleep as I had gone down the hallway. You know, the ones who wonder where I go to when I'm not checking in? (I know you exist, even if you hide it well.) Well I thought I'd give an update. Right now, I am at a key moment--I can't really do anything right now. But I am in the zone where I am EITHER: about to bounce back and suddenly start doing things, OR: about to get ten times worse, crash and burn, and completely detach myself from reality.
I'm not sure which it is. I came in thinking it'd be the former, but I am well aware that times which look like they will be the former can take a sudden turn for the worse and transform into the latter. I wish I could give you reassurance. I came in here thinking I could, but then I realized that might be a lie. Basically, what I want to say--and what is most likely to be true--is that you'll have to bear with me a little bit longer, but that I'm almost through the depression phase. I'm cautiously optimistic. But said optimism does come with CAUTION, in that if I fail it will be a spectacular failure, and I won't know until tomorrow which I'm headed towards. It could be neither, with me remaining as-is, but I just kinda...well, feel something's going to change by tomorrow. I thought it'd be for the better, but there's no guarantee. We'll just have to see, and of course, hope. With luck and me trying my best to muster what little skills I possess, I'll manage to make some semblance of a pulled together life. And you know what that means.
In this case, I developed an old idea of mine. The cross-story language I developed which I loosely dub "Celestial". Specifically, I realized just how inadequate 101 unique characters was. For a start, there are two letters (one involving t, the other involving c; the two extra characters are closely tied to two existing characters that are closely tied to one another) I was missing (and because there's both uppercase and lowercase, that's four new characters I need to make), but I also made a big freakin' huge wish list of punctuation. Keep in mind that the punctuation in Celestial is not quite exactly the same as English punctuation, although it's similar--what I had was essentially "partial conclusion to a thought", "full conclusion to a thought", and "full conclusion to the train of thought" (which can loosely be thought of as comma, period/full stop, and paragraph/line break, respectively). But I realized I wanted SO much more. I want a punctuation mark which indicates speech--as in, when quoting someone, a mark that it is a quote: Quotations Marks, ". This has obvious use. I want a separate punctuation mark which indicates metaphorical speech/euphemisms/implications of the opposite of the stated: Air quotes (which in English would also be the quotation mark, but I want a different punctuation mark to differentiate the two), so that if someone's idea of "helping" makes things worse, or someone's idea of "saving" involves killing the person/thing to be saved, it can be made clear that they are not literally doing those things. I need a punctuation mark for possession (since while I can write around lacking it via "the object which is mine", it's much easier to just say "that's mine"), which in English would be the apostrophe, '. This also has obvious use. I want a separate punctuation mark for contractions (since while I can write around lacking them, it's rather convenient to use if you haven't noticed the amount I've already employed), which in English shares the same punctuation mark of the apostrophe, '. On those same lines, I want a FIFTH punctuation mark, for isolated/emphasized concepts. In English, we use both quotation marks and apostrophes for this, and if there's a difference then I don't really know it, but what I'm talking about here is basically, This 'thing' you are referencing, This "thing" you are referencing, This 'object of importance' would be, This "object of importance" would be, I want to tell you about a thing called 'patience', I want to tell you about a thing called "patience", you get the idea. It is where you are placing particular emphasis on a concept which is of particular importance/relevance to the topic at hand, often one which requires some sort of additional explanation (and that can be given be it through description or by context). We do it all the time in English without really thinking about it, and Celestial being based primarily around English would need a way to do it, too, but I want it to have separate punctuation from the above to make sure it's clear. As a just-in-case feature, for the sake of those ridiculous incidents where in English you need an apostrophe in the middle of a word be it sometimes to shorten something and yet other times to lengthen something but it's NOT a contraction (think like the stereotypical overuse of this in Alien Names, e.g. Teal'c, Bra'tak--I believe it's spelled that way--, T'pol). That kinda "sometimes pausing, elongating, or shortening parts of a word for no good reason". Well in case I ever decide to do that kind of insanity, I should probably have a punctuation saved for that, too. I also need a punctuation mark for tied concepts. That being, when two concepts are inherently intricately linked together. In English, this can be thought of loosely speaking as being filled by the hyphen, -. It's something we'd do all the time, for instance, linking two colors together. Blue-green item, wherein it's neither blue nor green but somewhere in-between. (There are of course colors you can call that, but that's not the point. I was giving an example of the tied-together concepts, of two items which are normally separate but via the punctuation mark are merged to become a single new concept.) On that note, it'd be convenient to have shorthand for added concepts, which in English we use and/plus, &/+. This is similar to tied-together concepts, except it is when they aren't linked together yet are still paired together. "This-plus-this", rather than "this-combined-with-this" (more or less). Subtracted concepts would also be of use. ("It's this, except minus this".) I also want a punctuation mark for an elongated ending, AKA, trailing off--in English, this can be accomplished in multiple ways. The double-hyphen (--) can have this effect, a properly used colon (:) can invoke the effect, and ellipses (...) are also a strong way to achieve the effect. Naturally, this means I would additionally want a punctuation mark for an elongated beginning, too, which we have no method of differentiating between in English from the above, aside from using a line break and putting one and then the other or doubling up and hoping it comes across as the intent rather than just a double ending/double beginning. ...And also rather convenient to have? The cut off ending, AKA the abrupt ending. In English, we can use ellipses for this, but that risks it coming across as the OPPOSITE, a trailed off ending. Hyphens can work better, but because in English hyphens look so similar to double-hyphens (except when special care is taken for them to not be since most software even many wikis will auto-render hyphens/double hyphens to look different), they can still look like they are trailing off because we use double-hyphens to trail off from time to time. (At least, I do.) It should come as no surprise then that I'd also like to have an abrupt beginning--when someone is cutting in. This is something which is usually actually a bit difficult to instantly immediately convey in English. From context, we're able to pick it up relatively quickly, but it's still something I want to be unambiguous in Celestial. Because in English, the ways we mark it are -We don't -We use the ellipses which can imply the elongated beginning which is the inverse of the intention -Or we can use a hyphen, but this is a rarity even though it's the best of the methods to do so. ...What else is on the wish list? Well right now, I have one punctuation akin to a comma, but I need three. (Well, a comma has a lot more uses than that, but I think three is the minimum I can get by with.) I have the "slight pause/stop/change in thought" use of a comma, but missing still are what I call the "interlude comma"--you know how I do these double hyphens to contain a mini thought, well they could be either parenthesis OR a comma, and as a comma I'd call it an interlude because it's meant as a brief pause in thought before returning to the original--, and the "List comma". I am...not a technical person. I had strong grammar for a fourteen-year-old, but my grammar is anything but strong for a 24-year-old. It might be sexy when people speak punctuation to me but it's not a language I am as fluent in as I'd prefer, as one may have noticed by now. Still, you should get the idea. For a comma, you have the "pause without returning to the start", the "pause and then return to the start" (which can be handled alternatively with two other forms of punctuation, the parenthesis or the double-hyphens), and the "list of things which need separation but are part of the same". That's not all a comma does, and that's not the best description of what a comma does, buthey. I'm inventing my own conlang of sorts, so I can use whatever rules I want. Also on the list of things I need separated--I have a punctuation mark made for a full stop at a thought's conclusion, but there's another common use of the period: issuing a command. I feel like a language based so much around the spoken word should have a difference between the two, because when you're issuing a command regardless of the command it carries a different inflection from a statement. (Think, "You may sit." versus "Sit." 'You may sit' is more of a statement though it could be a command; 'Sit' is more of a command though it could be a statement; English has ambiguity even in something as simple as that.) Oh and if you couldn't tell, I need at least the basics when it comes to questions and exclamations. In that right now I have no punctuation mark equivalent to the question mark, and no punctuation mark equivalent to the exclamation mark, yet alone variants I'd need/want. (For instance, naturally, I'd have something loosely equivalent to the interrobang. Because seriously it's a crime that's not a bigger part of the English language.) There was a Reader's Digest article on alternative punctuation marks which I want to have another look at listing a bunch of others, too. For instance, I'm pretty sure that there'd be a punctuation mark carrying a similar implication to the tilde, ~, because that has at least one very common usage in that using it implies an inflection in tone which is more suggestive in nature (not necessarily sexually albeit that is common). So. Four new characters from two new letters. And a minimum of 20 new characters from needed punctuation marks. Well, 125 unique characters isn't too daunting, if you don't slack off. (...Oh.) I mean the typical keyboard averages only 94 (by my count) symbols which include some that aren't punctuation, numbers, or letters. (I have no clue what we actually use ` for, and then @, #, $, %, ^, *, _, +, =, probably { [ } ] < >, |, \, and / are all things I'd call "not punctuation, numbers, or letters". ~!&()-:;"',.?, as per my above standard, would be classified as punctuation, in a sense. To those 13, add 10 numbers, and then add 26*2 = 52 letters, and it comes to be 75 punctuation/numbers/letters on a keyboard with the 19 non-punctuation/numbers/letters I listed above.) So how hard could 125 be, really? Especially when you're making them from scrap and are aiming for similar things to be notably similar in appearance (for instance, m and M are similar because they're the same letter just lower/uppercase; m and n are similar and have a similar sound loosely speaking) and yet still distinctive enough that they look like different characters rather than the same one just drawn inconsistently? (...And now you know why in spite of me having had this idea in my head for literally years now I've yet to make it a functional reality.) |
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