In which aliothsan gets back into gear, among other things
I'd thought that I would have ten times more spare time once all my APs were finished. I was wrong for two reasons. One, three APs really wasn't all that much. Two, the amount of other work I have to do has coincidentally increased, what with concerts and photo albums and what have you. All this week, I've been annoyed and slightly worried because I hadn't done any active conlanging in a while. Sure, I did plenty of reading, and good reading too. But today I think I've finally kicked myself back into gear.
The bit that made the difference, I think, was that I finally made myself face up to several issues I had feared and avoided. For example, motion verbs can be notoriously complicated, and are often tied up in...interesting ways with the general grammar of verbs. I don't pretend to be anything like well-informed on this subject. But today I finally got an idea for a motion-verb system that I think I will really like. Of course it will need tweaking to fit in with all the other verb stuff I have already done, but the work is downhill from here. I got over major roadblocks for a couple of other issues as well, and it was tremendously satisfying.
I've been effectively confined to the back of the library all the past couple of days because of the Thibodeaux photo album thing, and I'm not sure if that's been good or bad for my progress. I'm alone and not tempted to hang out, which is good. Also, I can work on or off the computer depending on what I need at the moment. On the other hand, sometimes groups of people come back there to study and I get really distracted. But on the third hand, I'd go nuts if I were somewhere completely isolated and silent. The Yearbook room or the Journalism room might be a good compromise. (I don't know how thewolvesofnibu stands having to work alone in the basement all the time. I'd accompany him, as I did on the first day of projects, but having access to a computer is very important.)
It seems weird to have already arrived at "time to start thinking about your final presentation!". Feels like the whole project started yesterday. Apart from that, I'll have to decide what to present and what to leave out. A lot of my work has been on fairly technical, obscure things that would take too long to explain. I would love to teach the audience everything about Tlharithad so far, and the language is small enough that I could probably do it in an hour and a half. But given the constraints on time and content for the presentation, I'm thinking the best method is to stick to the touristic highlights of conlangery in general, and the features of Tlharithad that I'm really proud of. That, plus the obligatory "Why did I choose this project? How did I overcome difficulties? Would I choose this project again?", should be interesting and snappy.
(Shameless plug: the presentation is on May 30 at 12:30 in room A146.)
The bit that made the difference, I think, was that I finally made myself face up to several issues I had feared and avoided. For example, motion verbs can be notoriously complicated, and are often tied up in...interesting ways with the general grammar of verbs. I don't pretend to be anything like well-informed on this subject. But today I finally got an idea for a motion-verb system that I think I will really like. Of course it will need tweaking to fit in with all the other verb stuff I have already done, but the work is downhill from here. I got over major roadblocks for a couple of other issues as well, and it was tremendously satisfying.
I've been effectively confined to the back of the library all the past couple of days because of the Thibodeaux photo album thing, and I'm not sure if that's been good or bad for my progress. I'm alone and not tempted to hang out, which is good. Also, I can work on or off the computer depending on what I need at the moment. On the other hand, sometimes groups of people come back there to study and I get really distracted. But on the third hand, I'd go nuts if I were somewhere completely isolated and silent. The Yearbook room or the Journalism room might be a good compromise. (I don't know how thewolvesofnibu stands having to work alone in the basement all the time. I'd accompany him, as I did on the first day of projects, but having access to a computer is very important.)
It seems weird to have already arrived at "time to start thinking about your final presentation!". Feels like the whole project started yesterday. Apart from that, I'll have to decide what to present and what to leave out. A lot of my work has been on fairly technical, obscure things that would take too long to explain. I would love to teach the audience everything about Tlharithad so far, and the language is small enough that I could probably do it in an hour and a half. But given the constraints on time and content for the presentation, I'm thinking the best method is to stick to the touristic highlights of conlangery in general, and the features of Tlharithad that I'm really proud of. That, plus the obligatory "Why did I choose this project? How did I overcome difficulties? Would I choose this project again?", should be interesting and snappy.
(Shameless plug: the presentation is on May 30 at 12:30 in room A146.)