light vessel automatic

6,265 words and counting. Writing them has been alternating violently between quite enjoyable and being a horrible, tedious slog. I should, by this stage, be on about 11 thousand and something, if I was writing my daily quota. But I was busy at the weekend, and wrote almost nothing. Today was probably the most enjoyable and productive day so far, so I’m hoping that things pick up from here. I still reserve the right to cut my losses and fold at 10,000 words though. But I’m not allowed to stop until I get there, so I’ll certainly be writing manically for a little while yet.

Now. Apropos of nothing in particular, but just in case it’s of any use to anyone – a little while ago I came across a piece of photo-managing software called acdsee 8, which I have been finding very handy indeed for organising the several thousand digital photos I’ve taken since coming to Japan. It allows you to categorise and rank pictures however you like, and search by date, keywords, and so on. It’s the first piece of commercial software I’ve actually forked out for the full version of in a fair while.

Also – while we’re on a computer-software tangent – just in case you didn’t know, the latest version of Opera browser has had the advertising removed from it, meaning it’s now a completely, no-strings-attached free browser, like Firefox. Only arguably rather better (depending, obviously, on personal tastes, blah blah blah). Very much worth trying, if you haven’t already.

Enough of this boring nonsense! I am going to bed. Sorry. I will try to take some photos or be struck by lightning sometime soon.