š Monthly Update: April 2024
You ever had to deal with an interrupter before?
Itās the kind of person who stops you mid-sentence by interjecting and simply talking over you until you shut up and let them finish. They ask a question, and before you can finish your answer theyāre already speaking over you again. When you try to clarify, they branch off to another topic before you can resolve the first thing.
This isnāt me leading into some weird trick that short-circuits the interrupterās brain and teaches them to correct their behavior, Iām just venting. Maybe I take everyday respect for granted, but itās not hard! š
I come from the school of thought that says, āWhy waste time say lot word when few word do trick?ā
I donāt speak as often as others, but when I do say something I try to make sure itās meaningful or contributes something. So getting into a back-and-forth where half the points made get lost can be frustrating.
Anyway, itās all good, itās whatever! š¤
Iāve got more content lined up to fill out the worldbuild-y AI art and graphics projects like the šCompendium of Beasts and šPlanetary Tour. It was fun to scratch that itchāworking on this helped me develop some finer details, solidify my universe, and justā¦ make something new.
š In Progress
š The Star Pirateās Folly - Epilogue
Well, here we areā¦ finally at the end. For those of you reading as Iāve posted, your interest has been much appreciated! Tomorrow 4/25 when the epilogue arrives in your inbox or notifications or whatever and you read through the final pages, it would really help me out as an independent author if you let me know your thoughts.
So if you could just go ahead and Like/Share/Commentā¦ thatād be terrific.
Or (now that Substack has DMs) you can send me a Direct Message which will be private and you donāt have to worry about what anyone else thinks of what you say! Except me I guess. Anyway, let me know how this story hit youāwhereād it ring true, whereād it miss the mark? What are you looking forward to, or imagining?
šThe Star Pirateās Folly ā Ī± | 1 | 2 | 3 | ā¦ | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34
The Star Pirateās Folly will stay available in full, free on Substack until June 1, 2024. Now that itās done, Iāll be going back through to add any missing hyperlinks so that readers can go through the entire thing in order from any chapter. I got lazy after a certain point fur sure. š¬
āā Upcoming:
š Bonus Content:
OK surely at this point all the office references are a dead giveaway, ITāS SPREADSHEETINā TIME!! You know what weāre gonna learn today? Itās probably the single most useful thing Iāve come across in my (so far brief) career.
Q U E R I E S
Letās go, hop in and try it out, itās easy! New sheet
Click the + to add a new tab Sheet2 and copy/paste these columns of simple example data into your sheet in cell A1:
Book Chapter Name Wordcount
The Hero's Journey 1 You 1000
The Hero's Journey 2 Need 1250
The Hero's Journey 3 Go 1500
The Hero's Journey 4 Search 1000
The Hero's Journey 5 Find 1250
The Hero's Journey 6 Take 1500
The Hero's Journey 7 Return 1000
The Hero's Journey 8 Changed 1250
Then go back to Sheet1 and copy/paste this:
=query(Sheet2!$A:$D,"Select * where A is not null")
So letās break this down. If you double click on the cell the formula is pasted in, you can bring up this handy little popup window that explains each of the required or optional variables in the formula.
Clicking on the different parts of the query will highlight the corresponding variable which lets you know where to look to get more info if youāre not sure what the formula needs, what order, etc. This tooltip thing is SO, SO helpful! š
So what are we even looking at? Basically, this query is looking on Sheet2 for columns A through D, selecting all of the rows in A through D where the value in column A isnāt blank. The $ are to lock those ranges in place in case you move the formula within the sheetālearning about this is a whole other lesson in itself.
Mainly, the reason queries are great is because you can specify a crazy amount of complicated conditions within them (or simple ones). Letās say I want to know which chapters of the book are at least 1250 words. Go into your query cell on Sheet1 and add this into the āSelectā portion of the formula after ānullā but before the final set of double quotes:
and D >= 1250
Now weāve told it, āI only want to see rows where A isnāt blank and D is at least 1250.ā So the query has filtered out any rows with a chapter length less than 1250. But wait, thereās more!!! What if we donāt care about seeing the chapter name, and we only want to see chapters greater than 1250 words??š²
=query(Sheet2!$A:$D,"Select A,B,D where A is not null and D > 1250")
So if you have a big set of data where you only need certain columns, and/or certain rows based on certain conditions, queries can be your best friend! š¤©
Can you guess these quotes? š¬
This list just keeps growing! Highlight ā Right click ā Restack to your people and see if anyone knows these:
š#4: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from." āš
š#5: š "Kaneda! What do you see?!" š
š#6: š¦ "The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box, and you die." š
š#7: šā” "A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left." ā¬ š
š#8: š” "May thy knife chip and shatter." š”
Previously Guessed on Hanlonās Reader
š#1: "If you ain't first, you're last." š ššØ
ā Guessed by: El Generico II - Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
š#2: "... it'll be dark soon and they mostly come at night. Mostly." š¾ ššøš š¾
ā Guessed by: Architectonic - Alien (1979)
š#3: "All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's?" šš· š·š¤
ā Guessed by: El Generico II - The Princess Bride (1987)
US voters, make sure youāre registered!!!! Itās easier than you think
āBallotpedia = sample ballot = research candidates = easy š
Be well,
James Hanlon
4/24/24
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