One of the British computer magazines had a demo version of Bryce 5 on their CD last month, and although those magazines are expensive and I've been avoiding buying them, I figured that was worthwhile. It also had a demo of Tropico, which I haven't installed yet.

I installed the Bryce demo this morning and messed around with it for a couple of hours--I made some new desktop images:

   

The cool thing about Bryce 5 that is different from previous versions is that now you can make trees. There's a whole list of varieties to choose from--these are coconut palms--and you can set the number and type of leaves. It's too expensive to buy right now, but it's definitely on my list.

Like Jessamyn, I considered signing up for NaNoWriMo, but decided I didn't need the pressure right now. I didn't get so far as to sign up for it, but I nearly did several times. I went back and forth, from thinking I was definitely going to do it, to thinking I was out of my mind to even consider it. It was that last emotion that won out.

This particular competition isn't judged on quality, but quantity, i.e., everyone who finishes, who writes 50,000 words in 30 days, wins. The theory is that most people who want to write think they'll do it "some day," but that day never comes. NaNoWriMo proposes to force its participants to write something, even if it's awful, and no one ever has to see it. They just verify word count.

Certainly I think I could write 50,000 words in a month (who knows how many hundreds of thousands of words I've written here over the years), but my big hang-up is giving myself permission to write badly--which is, I guess, the whole point, but the part that I couldn't really come to grips with.

Still, I've decided to make November my creative month. It's my birthday month, after all.