N a Day: November

(where N is the day of the month multiplied by 100)

Welcome back, friends and foes! Once again, I am doing a weird little writing challenge for November. Last year I wrote 100 words (a century) for every day in November and posted each entry online. I'm set to do that again, with a couple tweaks to the general rule set, which follows:

• Write every day (duh).
• $$\sum _{n=1}^{30}100n$$
• Specifically, write 100n words per day, where n is that calendar day.
• (e.g. 200 words on November 2nd. by the end, this is a total of 46,500 words)
• Incorperate the WritChal theme once a week.
• Author swaps are allowed, but must conform to the day's length requirements. Any reciprocal guest-posts I produce must also conform to the day's requirements.
• Keep it freaky!

2024-11-01 (100)

Steps to being, again.

1. Break it apart. Harshly, with a hammer, web-like cracks spreading through yourself. Mourn the past to prepare yourself for the future. Yes, it has been a while. Yes, you could have changed already. But there is only the present.
2. Establish a new pathway. With the cleansing fire comes regrowth, if you seed it. All-nighter to correct your sleep schedule, set your alarms and keep them there, Reach Out. Loneliness begets isolation.
3. Guard these touchstones. They are precious, pillars into bedrock that guarantee your stability. You can be, again, but disturb these consistencies lightly.
4. I love you. Be gentle. But be.

2024-11-02 (200)

Ms. Winter

Winter is arriving. She let herself in (no, I didn't copy her a key), refusing to take off her boots at the door (rude, unkind). But this was inevitable. The warmth of summer stains autumn for a while yet and a brief jump in the cool waters of Australia may make you see her shadow, but it has been an age. The year of eternal summer must come to a close, inevitably. Her caress is gentle, though, a kiss on your cheek and brush on your fingers while you bike, a spreading tingling while you run through the city. It's loving, tender, a reminder of the time you've spent apart and what the future holds for you. She can be sharp, too, but for now she is loving. She may be flighty at first, but she always comes to stay in the darker months. She'll toy with your hair while you sip your morning coffee and hold your hand on the walk to the metro, cuddling into you when you turn down your thermostat to cut costs. She is my welcome guest. I am excited to see her again and witness what our life together will be like once more.

Written during the time slip!

2024-11-03 (300)

You're watching: THE TIME ZONE

A cheesey mid-nineties monster of the week tv show intro proceeds. The characters are forgettable, but goth-ish.

This week the cast finds themselves on the shore of a lake at dusk. It is surrounded by a forest at the end of autumn: some colours remain, but it's filled with bare trees and dead leaves. The trees' shadows leer while the sun quickly sets.

The cast is in a small rowboat now. It's a classic wooden dingy, the kind a child would imagine. The water is black, dripping off their oars like oil, and ripples aggressively through several shots of the boat moving deeper into the lake. In the final shot, the cast's boat bears down on the camera, driving towards the viewer.

They arrive on the gravel-covered shore of an island. The producers have piped in shitty fog and a solitary tree lurks in the distance. The cast sets aside their oars and trek onwards, towards the tree. The score is suspenseful, threatening a terror lurking just beyond their sight until someone is frightened by a bullfrog and the score breaks, with only the bass's mournful line continuing through their laughter.

They are approaching the tree. It is just beyond their immediate surroundings, but stands stark white and bark-less, branches haggard, withering in the nutrient poor soil. Suspense is building through the score, again, the bass's line muttered by the horns. As the cast reaches the tree, they look around for the first time and spot a light upon the shore. They scatter in terror and the tree is everywhere, a bad confused vision shot of the tree overlapping with the casts' faces as they try to flee.

The show ends with a shot of another cast, similar to the first, standing on the lake-shore and staring towards the island.

Written during the time slip!

2024-11-04 (400)

On intimacy

I want to learn how to write about intimacy. And talk about it, too, but that can follow from learning to write about it. I want to create an intimacy of mine own, brewing and lingering and grazing the surfaces of pleasure and tenderness of self with the corollary of cutting it from myself to express it publicly. So, let's try.

Since I was young, I've been ashamed of intimacy. Call it puritanical teachings or a culture that instilled them, the mere thought of hugging my friends made my stomach drop with anxiety brewed with shame. This went beyond physical intimacy: my folks used to tease me when I was younger and asked about the time with the reply, "Why, do you got a hot date?" I don't know why this made me flush with shame, but the only thing it taught me was to stop asking the time. My first tangle with intimacy was in middle school, in what I consider my first relationship (as much as something in 7th grade can be described as such). We were both the emo still-figuring-it-out trans kids, and intimacy then meant being ashamed to ask my parents if I could bike over to the park to spend time together or (gasp) holding hands over the summer. This helped, a bit, to thaw the immediacy of shame I felt, but it still lurked at the edges of my consciousness, threatening to hit when acknowledged. But still, it lingers. I've become hyperaware of how I emit affection to others, desperately trying to micro-correct to match my perception of others' comfort/desire/expectations. Nerd camp, surprisingly, was the first time I felt comfortable being casually physically affectionate with people I cared for (that was not familial or romantic). I made friends who were touchy and actively asked and checked-in, verbally, before cuddling or holding hands for the first time in my life. It was delightful. And then I went back for the summer.

I remember that odd feeling of returning changed to an environment that remained the same. So, I changed my environment. Slowly, gradually, through stops and starts and failures to launch I'm finding the intimacy I want, on my own terms. It isn't quite sexual, it isn't quite romantic, but it is tender and vulnerable. Intimacy means dumb loud obvious asks to overcome that shame, and makes the ask part of the intimacy. It's real.

2024-11-06 (600)

Caution: Do not look.

Damn, some news for today, huh? That is as much acknowledgement as that will receive.

I've been dreaming of the future again. The beautifully horrifying factors of circumstance, Québécois politics, and anarchist fantasies swirl in my head at night. I'm finding myself more certain of what I want amid the uncertainty; finding what you want by experiencing something you don't. This stability grows as relationships and friendships go steady and I make this new house mine own. I didn't mention it at the time, but during DIY-week I painted my room a delightful green and I've recently decorated the walls, too (after only a third of a year!). It's in pleasant contrast to the uncertainty I was experiencing a year ago in NZ at the end of my semester's studies, finally knitting friendships right before my departure, and feeling the pull of home grow ever stronger. I have a post for my final bit of time in NZ kicking around since a year ago…maybe it's about time that it's finally published. Over the past year of consistent posting here (woah! (.encours.xyz)) I still feel weird about putting things into the ether. I think it has to do with the release of control: I don't know who's reading this (if anyone), how it's being perceived, if you think it's good. You clearly are, right now, and I don't know that. It was a little jarring when I posted about CAD:N last year and heard from relative strangers that they really liked it. I never know if this is hitting home, connecting, making the point I want or being unintentionally misinterpreted.

My grappling with perception tends to follow the emotional weight of a piece: both with my early CAD:Ns and bigger (emotionally) posts I asked for read-overs by my writing friends (hi Harriet and Laura and so many more), but lately have felt less of a need to so as I've gained confidence in my choices, even if they might be worse. Perhaps I'm at a new point of the "confidence curve" they seem to have in every "~I don't think this is a real class~ business course", slipping into awareness of my abilities and interests and staying cozy within the bounds I've determined. Maybe it's time to break some stuff. Real glass of water into your laptop's keyboard type of situation. A scenario that makes you step back and re-evaluate everything when it comes time to rebuild. Maybe a new website, a new "virtual alice,", is in order. Maybe even more than that. Something with tangible impacts on myself and my world, really wrenching some novelty back into the system while sticking to those certainties I've found along the way.

Maybe though it's the whisper of perfectionism in my ear that's set me adrift. I want to make things. And I want to be proud of the things I make. But it's hard to make good things without practice, and I have trouble being proud of the ugly little ducklings that come from growth. Or maybe I feel that way in the moment, because when I look back at CAD:N it is beautiful. There are so many stories I would rewrite, edit a bit more, polish with the grit of hindsight, but I'm not going to. The point is that it is rough, messy, and mine. I need to slip back into confidence, I fear, that you (the reader) will allow me some grace amid this all. We are fallible, we are human, we are growth and love and rough edges. And these are mine, in my space, opened to you, friend.

2024-11-07 (700)

Heptacentury

2024-11-08 (800)

Photography: Backgrounds

Introduction

I've been around photography for most of my life. My mom's first "real job" purchase was an early Canon Rebel DSLR and I still wield the family "big gun¹" as my digital camera of choice. I grew up mirroring my parents' passion for photography. When I went to 'nerd summer camp' I brought the family camera and designated myself the photographer for my friends. I didn't know what I was doing, I just put the camera in automatic mode and occasionally adjusted the exposure compensation. I took a lot of bad pictures and didn't understand why. Really, who's to say why they all looked so orange (she does not know about white balance). True learning didn't come until I dipped my toes into film photography at the start of 2022 and fell in the deep end. Since then, I've taught myself how to take good pictures through trial and error, learning a bit with the internet and even more by doing. Really, it's made me understand why I love photography, and I wanted to share a bit of that love with you.

A brief history

If you don't know anything about cameras, that's okay! Humans have been capturing the world around us for eternity, in stylistic forms ranging from painted landscapes to wood carvings to cave paintings. Cameras grew from a piece of technology called a "Camera Obscura". Basically, a small hole of light coming into a dark room projects an inverted image of what is on the other side. These cameras were used to trace scenes for painting and eventually preserved using light sensitive silver halide. As understanding of exposure times, hole sizes, and optics advanced, cameras developed their main controls of precise shutter speeds, apertures, and lenses to capture a scene with less distortion. How we capture images advanced too, placing a thin film of silver halide on gelatin for mass consumption in consumer-ready formats like 35mm and 120 (these are the formats that are still alive, alongside large formats like 4x5" and 8x10"), and with such a degree of light sensitivity that images could be captured in less than a 1/1000th of a second (early film was so light-insensitive that exposures often lasted several minutes in daylight!). And then, a marvellous progression: colour! You can capture a colour image on film using a combination of silver halide and layers of dye! This means certain layers of film only capture part of the colour spectrum, allowing them to be reproduced in positive on a print with a carefully controlled exposure.

Cameras continued to develop into machines that were easier for the user, too. Large format cameras allow you to focus an image using a piece of ground glass in place of the film, then close the shutter and place in the film to be exposed. That a whole thing! Instead, what if you had two lenses, one exposing a piece of ground glass and the other the film? If you locked together their focus you can ensure that your actual picture will be correctly focused when you take your picture! These are called twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras with the addition of a mirror to redirect the viewing lens up, allowing the camera rest against your chest when you take a picture (for better stability). This developed into smaller camera bodies that dropped the second lens for a small viewfinder to create rangefinder cameras, but both of these models mean that you're unable to see Exactly the view you're exposing through the film's lens. For that, you'll need a single-lens reflex (SLR), a camera that incorporates a mirror in the path of the lens that lifts out of the way when you take the picture. These are fucking complicated machines! But they make the camera much easier to use, so it is worth the complexity.

But film is consumable. Every 36 pictures (for most 35mm rolls; every 8 pictures for a 6x9 120 roll) you'd have to reload the camera with new film. Sports photographers might have high-capacity backs, but this was relatively rare to see in the real world. But with semiconductors advancing, someone put it together that it's pretty "easy" to make a digital image with photosensitive diodes and MOSFETs. Layer that with colour filters and that's a colour digital picture, baby! This led to the DSLR (digital single-lens reflex), and the current "latest and greatest" cameras, mirrorless, which eschew the reflective mechanism to move the lens closer to the sensor. In practice, this means that you can make more efficient optics that capture more light with less glass, which is a godsend. However, you're reliant on the camera's screen to focus your exposure, which can be laggy and imprecise compared to a DSLR.

2024-11-09

Photography: Practice

Okay, meat and potatoes time. What's this all about alice,? Well, I'll tell ya.

How do you take a good picture?

Fucked if I know.

Let me be more specific. I really like the pictures I take (usually), and have taught myself what to look for and steps to take to get the looks I like. (Un)fortunately, I started shooting with film as one of the bastards grabbed by the trend (though I try to hold myself above it all). Let me talk you through some of my thoughts on taking pictures and we'll go from there?

Methodology

This is not prescriptive. If you disagree with this, groovy! Send me ur pictures <3!

Materials:

1. A camera.
2. It does not have to be good nor fancy. Some of my favourite pictures I shot on a disposable (plastic single use film camera). You can get a working film camera for under 50$CAD from a reputable shop, 20$CAD if you're willing to do some legwork on FBmkplce. My first² camera was a Minolta X-9 which resulted in me ending up with some Minolta lenses and cameras, for better or worse.
3. A roll of film
4. Film is very fun. Different stocks lend slightly different saturation, contrast, and grain to your pictures. Get something cheap and in colour (C-41) to start; I agree with Laura that black and white isn't incredibly exciting for a beginner. Shoot first, find what you like, and then let B&W whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
5. A notebook
6. Write down what you're doing as you start. You can get weird and meticulous with it (I recorded shutter speed & aperture for a number of my first few rolls, shot by shot), but general comments on what pulled you to take that picture can help you in the future (Did you really like the light on the tree? Were you trying to capture the blurs of the cars? etc).

Environment

Personally, I like shooting landscapes, city scenes, and portraits of my friends. So I put myself in situations to do this! Lately, I've been approaching this in two ways: I'll write down moments of beauty I find that could be a good picture and return to them with my camera later if desired (my favourite portrait that I took of Blair came about this way) or I'll wander an area I find visually interesting with my camera. Wear good shoes and walk around. Limit your access to film intentionally: it makes each shot feel more valuable and measured, even if it doesn't turn out. 36 tries to take a picture you like. You got this!

Techniques

What caught your eye?

Genuinely, focus on what got your attention. For me, this tends to be a combination of liking how objects (or subjects if you're being Photographer about it) line up and interact together (also called framing) and lighting. Photography is always a game of light. I never realized how dark day-to-day life was until I started shooting film. The medium is inflexible! Good. I digress. Take this eye-catching thing and think about how your shutter speed and aperture will affect it. In short:

• Shutter speed: How blurry do you want the subject to be? I avoid less than 1/60th when shooting handheld due to shaky hands, but you can do as long as you want with a tripod or a stable objects. Waterfalls look magical with a ≥1/2 second shutter, portraits look dazzling at ≤1/125.
• Aperture: Okay, this gets a little weird. The wider open your aperture, the more light that enters your camera. This means higher shutter speeds, but only a small sliver of your scene will be in focus. This soft background is called bokeh, and is desirable for things like portraits or other pictures that are highlighting the subject alone. The more closed your aperture (higher f number), the less light that enters, but it is less scattered (simplification). This means a slower shutter speed for more of the image in focus. A good rule of thumb for a generally sharp image throughout most of your subject and background is a shutter speed of ≥1/125 and an aperture of f8–f11.

Results

So, where does this take you? Let's look at a few pictures³.

Disposable

This is off of my first disposable camera. I have this picture literally framed. Toaster would always sprawl on my bed in the afternoon sun, bathed in beautiful gold. This afternoon was no exception, and it helps that she posed very well! When in doubt, take the picture.

Framing

And this is one of my favourite little found scenes. With an aperture of f5.6 the picture's still sharp, not requiring too much depth of field with the macro focus. The sea foam bubbles match the sea grapes and round oyster shells. The rock in the bottom left creates a beautiful curve that weaves through the scene and the small grasses lend a punch of colour.

Portrait

This is that favourite portrait of Blair I mentioned earlier. This has a bit of that bokeh effect due to a shallow-ish aperture, but he's still sharp with a fast (likely 1/125?) shutter speed. Annnnd this was one of the first time I planned a shot, at this gorgeous park on the side of a church on my commute. I figured out when the sun would hit the garden (around 1pm) and brought my subject along.

Go out and take pictures! Poorly, beautifully, take them anyways!

1: Not the original Canon Rebel, but a Canon 5D MkII, a pretty schweet DSLR.

2: Film camera, which I treat as my 'first' camera as I started actually paying attention to photography with it. Though I was giving the 5D before it, I only actually began using it after shooting with my Minolta X-9.

3: Girls can have a little bit of self-promotion.

2024-11-10 (1000)

I promise this entry is coming soon

2024-11-11 (1100)

speed.encours.xyz

Happy day 11! I made a website about speedrunning the Métro and REM in Montréal using exactly 1100 words in its html, RSS feed, CSS, javascript, and repository README. I excluded the CC0 license text (and Github deployment file) from this total due to my lack of control over their word counts. Enjoy!

(Getchyer-ass entry)

2024-12-01

the end

I'm certain it's apparent to you, reader, but I did not complete NAD:N. This was a far more ambitious project than I realized prior to going into it (as seen in my glib declaration of 46,500 total words by the end of this).

Ultimately, it just felt bad by day 12. I was already a day behind by Day 3 (I think), and the horrible dread of "fuck I'm already behind" was not conducive to an enjoyable act. Day 8 was a turning point: that night, I finished my entry for the 6th, and thought "wow, if I can knock out another 700 + 800 words I'll be caught up." I wrote seven centuries in around half an hour (that might be a new record for like. average pace?) and was totally drained at the end when it came time to write another, longer piece.

I still plan on posting November 10th and 12th's entries, which exist as partially completed drafts. I have an author swap and a short post from November that'll end up on the main Writchal page, and I'm hoping that December may offer some more writing encouragement.

For now, I love you, and hope you had a gentle November.

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