Reminding you of my world ending epic, an epidemic that transforms some but most succumb to a horrible zika like degeneration. It is sexually transmitted, it mutates and it results in the collapse of the West. The catastrophe is set around 2020 and the title is A Guide to First Contact.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-First-Contact-Terence-Park-ebook/dp/B00EUI42U2
http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/terence-park/a-guide-to-first-contact/paperback/product-21444383.html
I’ve been posting intermittent updates on this on my FB account https://www.facebook.com/terence.park.583 since mid-Jan.
There are different patterns for each nation that this chart does not pick out. In China substitute province for nation. As the epidemic takes hold in each nation, the chart steepens and then as attempts to control it bear fruit, the curve flattens. The UK is three weeks behind Italy but there are cells of infection all over the country. These are near you. Check this out:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/coronavirus-uk-cases-how-many-in-your-area
Those already infected have transmitted it on, oblivious to the deadly payload. It hasn’t kicked in on the stats. but given the lack of intensive care units in the UK, I expect a nearly vertical contribution from us. We have to get social distancing right and take seriously all of the basic precautions.
COVID-19 / Wuhan-Flu as at 19/03/2020
Based on the experience of Italy, this will be much worse than many have assumed.
9,000 have died of a total confirmed infected of 220,000. That 4% figure is higher than expected. The outcome of infection looks like this:
Recovered: 84,000,
Deaths: 9,000
This death rate is just under 10%
It gets worse. In Italy many in intensive care units aren’t making a recovery. This is explains why the ludicrously low no. of ICUs in the UK will not be able to cope. We have two weeks to change our habits……… or die.
It would be possible to write a lengthy tome on reducing the impact of this outbreak. I plan to avoid this but first I must make things absolutely clear, this post is about managing behaviours – in times of panic the public behave like herd animals, they are their own worst enemy. An organised society can do much to anticipate and prepare. Analyse the event and it is transformed from a disaster recovery situation to manageable processes. In this way social behaviours are broken down into manageable elements. This post deals with the public’s impact on the supply chain.
What people need is a steer on how to distinguish between a normal weekly shop and a ‘put away as a strategic reserve in case I am sick’ shop. With a mere 342 new cases (yesterday 15/03/20) it might sound ridiculous but the reaction of the public is to anticipate. Those that plan and manage our nation should have that in hand. For all kinds of reasons (bureaucratic inertia etc) they haven’t. Hence we have public pleas from the PM when readiness action is required.
An optimal solution starts with identifying the public’s desire to anticipate, separating this out from the normal periodic ‘shop’ and channelling it appropriately.
So, what should have been analysed… what is it exactly?
It is extra spend that has occurred too early for the purposes of a poorly configured supply chain (blame the supermarkets). It results in waste and inconvenience to whoever makes the purchase (as they have to hoard) and as a result to whoever can no longer make that purchase. To change behaviours that muck up fragile supply chains, set up emergency cover / distribution processes for those who at some point in the future, will be too ill to go to the supermarket – this cover must deliver adequate support during the actual time of need. In effect the framework for an emergency structure. This will be an increasing requirement in an increasingly over populated planet with the current levels of free movement.
It goes without saying that supply chains are fragile – only a fool would imagine they are run as a social enterprise – thus they only work well under normal circumstances. Anything outside that will strain them – such as panic buying. To protect them it is essential that the emergency framework is trustworthy – underline the point here – social behaviours as in the herd instinct are more than an inconvenience, they threaten society by haring the civilised and managed conduct of our affairs.
Spell this out — it is critical to inform people properly so they understand that panic purchases are amplifying the problem — if they know there is a trustworthy route that will come into play once they fall ill, they can cut down on irrational spend.
Here we get into the mechanics of setting up support systems within a suitable administrative envelope. The UK is rich. It is well ordered. It has a surplus of public servants over 4 million at last count. For those with red tape for thought processes ask yourselves this question: what would they be doing if things fell apart? The reality here is I’m looking at the police, you know the ones who used to patrol the streets. It’s time social cohesiveness was put back on the menu. We will do things differently from the Chinese.
I little interest in dealing with the mechanics of administration however, I’ve said more than enough to wake up strategic interest.
Below are snapshots of the virus progress, these are taken from the work by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). For reasons of brevity I do not include my observations which are, however, on my Facebook page.
COVID-19 infection spread – charting period 29/01/20 to 22/20/20 (in reverse order)
Focus – China
What has gone before
Sivitya manifests on Earth in the hallway leading to the pad of Alan Bates (aka Akalito). She emerges by smashing through a wooden panel and rings Akalito with her Book.
Continue readingWhat has gone before
Sivitya manifests on Earth in the hallway leading to the pad of Alan Bates (aka Akalito). She emerges by smashing through a wooden panel and rings Akalito with her Book.
Alan Bates wakes. It’s like 3 am and he’s got work in the morning. Is this call a wind up? He is convinced enough to get out of bed.
Sivitya is suspicious of Alan Bates – he doesn’t look as heroic as Akalito. Alan Bates’ neighbour, disturbed by the commotion confronts Alan. In turn, Sivitya forcibly remonstrates with the neighbour, and Alan begins to realise this might not be a wind up. Alan convinces Sivitya to put on one his waterproofs to cover up her tattered clothes so that he can decently take her out for a coffee.
They go out and finally Sivitya is ready for her first sip of coffee… and things do not go well. Akalito must soon make a decision but neither alternative is good.
episode 8 – A Dangerous Road
Door Witch begins here: episode 1 – Earthly Manifestation
Don’t forget to check out the episode list
What has gone before
Sivitya manifests on Earth in the hallway leading to the pad of Alan Bates (aka Akalito). She emerges by smashing through a wooden panel and rings Akalito with her Book.
Alan Bates wakes. It’s like 3 am and he’s got work in the morning. Is this call a wind up? He is convinced enough to get out of bed.
Sivitya is suspicious of Alan Bates – he doesn’t look as heroic as Akalito. Alan Bates’ neighbour, disturbed by the commotion confronts Alan. In turn, Sivitya forcibly remonstrates with the neighbour, and Alan begins to realise this might not be a wind up. Alan convinces Sivitya to put on one his waterproofs to cover up her tattered clothes so that he can decently take her out for a coffee.
This episode switches to her point of view.
Current episode: Streets of Lanndern
Begin at episode 1: Earthly Manifestation
Door Witch is a reverse-engineered Western reflection on the Japanese light-novel. It’s influences are varied including MMORPG, fantasy made real and the real transmuted into fantasy. It’s about an in-game, non-player character, Sivitya, who makes the transition to the real world, to save the Land. The Land is also known as Earth Myth to MMORPG players, where the object of the game is to defeat the adversary of the age. Alan Bates is one of those who plays Earth Myth and his in-game avatar, Akalito, even has an out of the way residence known as House Batezz. Akalito has hired a Door Witch, Sivitya, to deal with unwanted strangers – it’s what your do if you want your on-line house protected.
Door Witch is told through alternating alternating points of view.
I will be publishing episodes on a weekly basis.
Current episode: Shall I Reflect on Thee?
Begin at episode 1: Earthly Manifestation
There are workarounds to the Worpress.com’s latest deployment. They’re not pretty and – given they didn’t work before – I’m inclined to imagine the gods of the net have looked on how things are and, in their wisdom, let older PC’s like mine communicate with the net at large just a little longer… so: screen selections that led to blank pages now lead to something useful. On that principle here’s some updates that have been going to Facebook.
How long can a battle scene go on?
Well firstly the battle scene has been the hardest part to write.It’s the penultimate action in Door Witch and it’s a 3,600 word piece of combat littered with MMORPG-ness (uhh-yeah… shouting out special attacks). The driver here is authenticity. Normally for combat I’d use bad-guy / good-guy launches surprise attack against which there is no defence – combat, result, quickly move on. This isn’t like that, it’s more stylised hero v monstrous opponent. Unlike the traditional gladiatorial showtime, there are no spectators as it’s in the depths of Eald Widu (Saxon – old wood).
So how long should the combat be? At the moment it will go on to take up 10% of the total story with further 5% dealing with the aftermath.
19 January
Finally decided to move onto Audible: that’s a way of getting your works converted into spoken books. Just trialled it today on my XP PC. A host of technical issues – all overcome.
Now the whole thing has to be managed pretty well as Audible have exacting standards. I’m on the way with that and ready for the next stop: trialling one of my pieces. I’ll be doing The Slow Holocaust from my 2016 Dystopian collection of the same name. (Not on Kindle btw but you can find it here:http://www.lulu.com/…/the-s…/paperback/product-22699859.html)
16 January
Door Witch update: having real problems with the climactic battle scene. Sword play, hmm, special attacks double hmm, alternating pov hmm… triple+++ hmm. Still the important thing is I got to 36k words… more than I planned on but fits to what the story requires. Still some detail to work over once it gets to draft – interpersonal angst (boy / girl stuff) and the perennial scenery winch I invariably skimp on. Then there’s spelling out point-of-view changes plus all the normal stuff… could be a grind but… it’s worth it.just to flesh out the vision.
P.S. It’s really about finding the narrative thread that pulls me in the direction of advancing the story. I type the words and the thought flow – which means my brain must have snuck out and took up residence in my kb. Oh, a kb warrior am I. 
😉
8 January
30 December 2019
Door Witch now stands at 32k words and it has now entered the battle stage. The challenge here is to leave enough in for the committed MMORPG (Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Gamer) to get something out of it, without leaving the non MMORPGers completely mystified.
it begins with an ambush. In ancient times the nomads repeatedly changed the course of civilisation by their mastery of the arts of war. Anyone can ambush but civilised armies repeatedly made the mistake of confusing headcount and power with the outcome of war. ’nuff said
Anyway this looks like the end of WordPress for me.
I started this year with a resolution to do more on my WordPress blog. I have just under 400 posts dating back to 2009 – when I transferred from My Space to WordPress. Now at that time I’d Just written the first draft of my very first attempt at a novel; 60,000 words of violence, end of the world, strange mutations, bleak savagery and more end of the world. As you do. Until then my blogging had consisted of daily / weekly notes on the blogging section of Myspace (who remembers MySpace?).
There’s a feeling and a vibe coming from things that ain’t going too well, Myspace had it – blog functionality was being downgraded and it was getting difficult to find posts. What was the point of a blog where you couldn’t find your posts? I began reference my work (this was Myspace remember) creating appendices so I could find things. It got worse, Myspace was devolving almost daily. I was deep into getting my first draft done – writing a novel is tough when your command of the language is poor and you don’t know the first thing about writing – and didn’t have the energy to curate my blog.
I looked around for free blogging platforms and hit on the blogging platform provided by the London Daily Telegraph: MyTelegraph plus WordPress.com. I chose the former because the platform also hosted a creative writers group (which I joined). As I was deep into the creative process, I saw it as a way to describe my writing journey. WordPress was for current events, sport etc and my stuff on Myspace was an archive which I would sort out later.
The matter of Myspace soon came to a head: it finally ended its almost impossible to use blogging side, and then gave notice that existing content would be archived. I realised if I didn’t want to lose my posts, I’d have to follow through and download their archive of my stuff. I did so with the intention of moving it somewhere… eventually. Reason being there was stuff I didn’t want to lose sight of such as my notes on Plato’s The Republic.
Meanwhile the idea of creating a blog of my writing journey just didn’t work. The learning curve was steep and I didn’t know what lay at the end of the path: was it a hobby? would I create anything worth reading? what was my audience? how could I fix my many flaws? I was so dirt-poor and the process was so arduous I couldn’t imagine that kind of tale would interest anyone.
Then late in 2014, the warning signals that MyTelegraph was nearing the end of its days began. DT staff were moved away from the platform and the comment areas which were a hybrid of WordPress and Disqus, began to fill up with spam. Some of the groups were defended better – the creative writing group kept going through automated spam etc until 2016, when the platform was switched off. I took a copy of the entire history of CWG discussion boards with the view that some time in the future, those archives could be reconstituted onto the net. That hasn’t happened yet and may never happen.
Before the inevitable end of MyTelegraph I moved my blog onto the WordPress.
I have several blogs on WordPress and normally I access them through the interface – e.g click ‘My Sites’ in the top left hand corner. The access method has changed recently and all I get now is a blank page with the following reference: https://wordpress.com/stats/tparchie.wordpress.com
Other areas of reduced functionality include: Me
https://wordpress.com/me/
When I click the button to add a new post I get another blank page under the reference
https://wordpress.com/post/tparchie.wordpress.com
Even the reader no longer works:
https://wordpress.com/read
So how have I produced this post?
When the classic WordPress interface is invoked, the classic interface allows me to add new posts. I can no longer, however, directly upload media files as the Block just shows an error. The work-around is the upload directly to my media library and add to my blog post from there. The signs are that WordPress will continue to evolve and in doing so, leave some unable to use it… which brings me to the point where the struggle with technology becomes pointless. I have conquered my writing demons as best I can.
There are many fine and popular bloggers in the community so there will be no loss if I can no longer be heard. For my part, by sticking here, I will be wasting my energy. I do not think I will stay with WordPress. I am a fan of change but when it silences you, your voice can no longer be heard.
With luck, a fair wind and plenty of time, I might continue to figure out how to make use of what has become limited functionality. But it isn’t fun.
When I bought my first Studio Ghibli film
Grave of the Fireflies
I didn’t realise how large Anime was Continue reading
