Fahim Farook
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1576Following
139Followers
879I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.
I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...
Lived in: 🇱🇰🇸🇦🇺🇸🇳🇿🇸🇬🇲🇾🇦🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇶🇦🇨🇦
Fahim Farook
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I finished my first digital painting a few days ago. It was a quick painting but even as I did it, I knew it had certain shortcomings 🙂
I moved on to my second painting to try to improve upon these.
The first issue I noticed with my first painting was that it was flat — it had no depth. So, with the second one I tried to introduce that. I succeeded in some cases, but feel I failed in others 😛
The other things I wanted to do was give some texture to different elements and to add a sense of light and shadow. While I did a few things to add this, I feel I did very badly at those things.
I've been watching videos on how to draw and one thing which struck me was that a lot of the videos out there tell you how to do one thing — like draw an apple — but not why you do certain things a certain way.
Now this is by no means a slam on those people who put out "how-to" videos. Any information that anybody creates, especially the free resources, to help others learn how to do something, is a great service in my opinion. But I do wish that people added a bit more of the concepts to some of these videos 😊
What I'm saying is, if you simply show how to draw an apple, then at least some people (like me) only learn how to do that one thing. But if you tell them, "this is why you do such and such a thing", then I can formulate a process (or workflow) that I can use to draw other things.
Maybe this is self-evident to a lot of folks. I don't know. But I don't get some of this straight away 🙂 For example, I do understand that you need a source of light and that an object needs to show the light and shadow in order for it to appear three-dimensional. But I don't always put it together with somebody saying "place a lighter colour splotch here and a darker shading here".
One of the best examples I saw explainig this was this free Udemy video course:
https://www.udemy.com/course/art-fundamentals-in-one-hour/
(I have no affiliation Hardy Fowler but that course was helpful in filling in some gaps and so I'm linking to it in case it helps somebody else on the same journey. Also, he has some interesting tutorials on YouTube.)
So I'm doing a lot more reading on the subject of light and shadow and how to add texture to shapes and am preparing to work on the next painting ...
#DigitalArt #Painting #DigitalOilPainting
A digitial painting showing som…
I moved on to my second painting to try to improve upon these.
The first issue I noticed with my first painting was that it was flat — it had no depth. So, with the second one I tried to introduce that. I succeeded in some cases, but feel I failed in others 😛
The other things I wanted to do was give some texture to different elements and to add a sense of light and shadow. While I did a few things to add this, I feel I did very badly at those things.
I've been watching videos on how to draw and one thing which struck me was that a lot of the videos out there tell you how to do one thing — like draw an apple — but not why you do certain things a certain way.
Now this is by no means a slam on those people who put out "how-to" videos. Any information that anybody creates, especially the free resources, to help others learn how to do something, is a great service in my opinion. But I do wish that people added a bit more of the concepts to some of these videos 😊
What I'm saying is, if you simply show how to draw an apple, then at least some people (like me) only learn how to do that one thing. But if you tell them, "this is why you do such and such a thing", then I can formulate a process (or workflow) that I can use to draw other things.
Maybe this is self-evident to a lot of folks. I don't know. But I don't get some of this straight away 🙂 For example, I do understand that you need a source of light and that an object needs to show the light and shadow in order for it to appear three-dimensional. But I don't always put it together with somebody saying "place a lighter colour splotch here and a darker shading here".
One of the best examples I saw explainig this was this free Udemy video course:
https://www.udemy.com/course/art-fundamentals-in-one-hour/
(I have no affiliation Hardy Fowler but that course was helpful in filling in some gaps and so I'm linking to it in case it helps somebody else on the same journey. Also, he has some interesting tutorials on YouTube.)
So I'm doing a lot more reading on the subject of light and shadow and how to add texture to shapes and am preparing to work on the next painting ...
#DigitalArt #Painting #DigitalOilPainting
A digitial painting showing som…
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Fahim Farook
f
As a child I really wanted to be able to draw. I tried to teach myself drawing by tracing over artwork I liked, looking at stuff and drawing etc. but I was never very good at it.
As I grew older, I found others at school who could draw effortlessly. I joined up with them and wrote books where they did the artwork. But I still wanted to draw.
A while back on Mastodon I discovered @MichaelWhelan and his feed. I already knew Michael Whelan from his book covers but his feed made me realize the scope of how many of the book covers I remembered from over the years were by him.
The most memorable for me personally will always be "Destiny's Road". The book itself is very memorable for some reason — I remember how I felt when I read certain passages, how the sun felt on my skin that day, where I was and so on. But I picked up that book from a second-hand store over 30 years ago because of the cover and I still remember Michael's cover notes in the book describing the various elements like the fool cage.
So, seeing all the great covers that Michael has created over the years has made me want to try art in some form again. I know that I'm not very good at drawing/sketching, but I thought I might be better at painting perhaps?
So I gave it a try with digital painting and I discovered that I loved oil painting on the computer 🙂For some reason, I really like how the oil paints "feel" on the screen and how it works when you mix paints.
I created my first painting yesterday. It's not very good and I hadn't actually looked at techniques or tutorials when I did it. But I think I'm going to give this a go and see if I can get better at it.
At worst, I'll have fun trying all this out. And that's not a bad thing, right?
A digital oil painting showing …
As I grew older, I found others at school who could draw effortlessly. I joined up with them and wrote books where they did the artwork. But I still wanted to draw.
A while back on Mastodon I discovered @MichaelWhelan and his feed. I already knew Michael Whelan from his book covers but his feed made me realize the scope of how many of the book covers I remembered from over the years were by him.
The most memorable for me personally will always be "Destiny's Road". The book itself is very memorable for some reason — I remember how I felt when I read certain passages, how the sun felt on my skin that day, where I was and so on. But I picked up that book from a second-hand store over 30 years ago because of the cover and I still remember Michael's cover notes in the book describing the various elements like the fool cage.
So, seeing all the great covers that Michael has created over the years has made me want to try art in some form again. I know that I'm not very good at drawing/sketching, but I thought I might be better at painting perhaps?
So I gave it a try with digital painting and I discovered that I loved oil painting on the computer 🙂For some reason, I really like how the oil paints "feel" on the screen and how it works when you mix paints.
I created my first painting yesterday. It's not very good and I hadn't actually looked at techniques or tutorials when I did it. But I think I'm going to give this a go and see if I can get better at it.
At worst, I'll have fun trying all this out. And that's not a bad thing, right?
A digital oil painting showing …
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Fahim Farook
f
I have to replace the cover of my science fiction novel, but I'm torn as to which one to go with. Can you help me figure out which one is the better cover?
Please let me know which one you like. And also, please share for reach 🙂
#ScienceFiction #CoverSelection #IndieAuthor #HelpMeDecide #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A cover for a science fiction n…
A cover for a science fiction n…
Please let me know which one you like. And also, please share for reach 🙂
#ScienceFiction #CoverSelection #IndieAuthor #HelpMeDecide #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A cover for a science fiction n…
A cover for a science fiction n…
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Fahim Farook
f
I've been working on my Scrivener text analyzer over the weekend and while I initially thought that it might take about 3 - 4 days at least to see progress, I've been able to get to a fairly functional level in just two days 🙂
At this point, I have a working app which can load a Scrivener document, extract just the manuscript text, parse it and provide information and identify components of text — like unique words, or repeated words and the word count.
If you select one of the words from the list, the viewer highlights every occurence of the word in the document. So I'm very pleased with where things are now 🙂
All that remains is to do the following:
1. Add the ability to detect specific types of words like nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
2. Add the ability to detect/hightlight specific words or phrases added by the user.
At that point, I believe it does everything that I want it to do. This should work on any platform but I have only tested under macOS. If anybody is interested in testing it out, let me know and I'll see about setting up a download.
#WritingTools #Coding #Scrivener #Flutter #macOS #SideProjects #Writing
A screenshot of a macOS app sho…
At this point, I have a working app which can load a Scrivener document, extract just the manuscript text, parse it and provide information and identify components of text — like unique words, or repeated words and the word count.
If you select one of the words from the list, the viewer highlights every occurence of the word in the document. So I'm very pleased with where things are now 🙂
All that remains is to do the following:
1. Add the ability to detect specific types of words like nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
2. Add the ability to detect/hightlight specific words or phrases added by the user.
At that point, I believe it does everything that I want it to do. This should work on any platform but I have only tested under macOS. If anybody is interested in testing it out, let me know and I'll see about setting up a download.
#WritingTools #Coding #Scrivener #Flutter #macOS #SideProjects #Writing
A screenshot of a macOS app sho…
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Fahim Farook
f
A very long time ago, I wrote a Word macro to help writers detect specific types of words (adverbs, passive voice etc.) in their writing. You can still find that macro here:
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php?threads/helpful-macro.26020/
I was talking to somebody on here about it a day or two ago and I realized that my current writing tool, Scrivener, does not really let me do something similar. I looked into it and it turns out that Scrivener does not have any macro or scripting functionality, but the developers are OK with others writing third-party apps which access the Scrivener files and do stuff with the data.
So I thought I might as well work on that this weekend 🙂Thanks to the helpful Scrivener developers, I was able to figure out how to access the Scrivener file and read only the data I wanted fairly quickly.
The issue here was that a Scrivener file can contain many types of textual content besides your manuscript — there can be notes, research, thoughts, quotes, whatever.
You don't want all that text to be analyzed. You only want your manustcript text to be analyzed for particular types of words. That part (getting only the manuscript text) is now functional 🙂
Now I have to figure out how to do the actual word analysis. My original Word macro was pretty basic. I feel that there might be better ways to do this now. So I'm going to look around a bit and see what approach might work better.
If I go back to the original word lists approach, that's pretty simple to implement. But hopefully, I can find something a bit more automated which doesn't involve people typing in lists of words?
#Coding #SideProject #Flutter #Writing #Scrivener #Authors
A macOS application screen show…
A macOS applicatio file showing…
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php?threads/helpful-macro.26020/
I was talking to somebody on here about it a day or two ago and I realized that my current writing tool, Scrivener, does not really let me do something similar. I looked into it and it turns out that Scrivener does not have any macro or scripting functionality, but the developers are OK with others writing third-party apps which access the Scrivener files and do stuff with the data.
So I thought I might as well work on that this weekend 🙂Thanks to the helpful Scrivener developers, I was able to figure out how to access the Scrivener file and read only the data I wanted fairly quickly.
The issue here was that a Scrivener file can contain many types of textual content besides your manuscript — there can be notes, research, thoughts, quotes, whatever.
You don't want all that text to be analyzed. You only want your manustcript text to be analyzed for particular types of words. That part (getting only the manuscript text) is now functional 🙂
Now I have to figure out how to do the actual word analysis. My original Word macro was pretty basic. I feel that there might be better ways to do this now. So I'm going to look around a bit and see what approach might work better.
If I go back to the original word lists approach, that's pretty simple to implement. But hopefully, I can find something a bit more automated which doesn't involve people typing in lists of words?
#Coding #SideProject #Flutter #Writing #Scrivener #Authors
A macOS application screen show…
A macOS applicatio file showing…
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@Emmacox I was curious and took a look at the options available with Scrivener. Apparently, they don't provide any way to script or to add plugins. So apparently that path is out 😞
However, they do have an option under Edit > Writing Tools > Linugistic Focus... which allows you to find some types of words. But not words from a custom list.
The Scriverner documents are just RTF files. So it should be possible to simply load the files in a separate app and do any kind of search you want. I might look into this if I have some time.
However, they do have an option under Edit > Writing Tools > Linugistic Focus... which allows you to find some types of words. But not words from a custom list.
The Scriverner documents are just RTF files. So it should be possible to simply load the files in a separate app and do any kind of search you want. I might look into this if I have some time.
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Fahim Farook
f
My second novel, "Sir Lanka Files" is done 🙂
Details here: https://books.farook.org/2024/08/03/sir-lanka-files-done/
The cover art is by my lovely wife who spent a lot of time getting it just right ❤️
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Author #BookPromo #Writing #Bookstodon #FediBooks
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
Details here: https://books.farook.org/2024/08/03/sir-lanka-files-done/
The cover art is by my lovely wife who spent a lot of time getting it just right ❤️
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Author #BookPromo #Writing #Bookstodon #FediBooks
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
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Fahim Farook
f
In an island city where the Cat Men of the Thieves Guild rule supreme, DaVic, a private eye with more quips than credits, takes on a job for the Thieves Guild from a mysterious femme fatale. This job lands him on the on the run through the dark streets of Sir Lanka, trying to stay one step ahead of those who pursue him.
In trying to unravel the mystery, he ends up finding a sidekick in the form of a Thieves Guild Tea Leaf, KarJa. With her help, the duo start cracking the case and when Sir Lanka is brought to the brink of war by way of a clash of ideals between the Guild and a nascent revolution, would DaVic and Karja be able to stop a bloodbath? Or will they be too busy helping tree-like aliens who are wary of human contact, or dealing with a bunch of alien scientists who are conducting experiments in the very heart of Sir Lanka?
Find out in "Sir Lanka Files". Coming August 15th, but now available for pre-order on Amazon.
https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/
#ScienceFiction #Humour #BookPromo #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
In trying to unravel the mystery, he ends up finding a sidekick in the form of a Thieves Guild Tea Leaf, KarJa. With her help, the duo start cracking the case and when Sir Lanka is brought to the brink of war by way of a clash of ideals between the Guild and a nascent revolution, would DaVic and Karja be able to stop a bloodbath? Or will they be too busy helping tree-like aliens who are wary of human contact, or dealing with a bunch of alien scientists who are conducting experiments in the very heart of Sir Lanka?
Find out in "Sir Lanka Files". Coming August 15th, but now available for pre-order on Amazon.
https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/
#ScienceFiction #Humour #BookPromo #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
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Fahim Farook
f
My lovely wife did a cover for my next book: "Sir Lanka Files"
Hoping to publish on August 15th.
More details here: https://shop.farook.org
#Books #IndieAuthor #BookPromo #BookPromotion #ScienceFiction #Humour #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
Hoping to publish on August 15th.
More details here: https://shop.farook.org
#Books #IndieAuthor #BookPromo #BookPromotion #ScienceFiction #Humour #Bookstodon #FediBooks #Writing
A book cover titled "Sir Lanka …
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Fahim Farook
f
@sebastianmalloy I believe it depends on the server/client. Some servers are set up to show a preview for links but if the server is slow it might not show for a while ... or not at all.
I have my custom client (that I wrote) which I configured to show a web preview for the first web link if there are no images in the post and it shows it like in the attached image.
I have my custom client (that I wrote) which I configured to show a web preview for the first web link if there are no images in the post and it shows it like in the attached image.
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Fahim Farook
f
Now is your best chance to find my book, "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog" available for a promotional price at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale!
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/7491
#SWSale2024 #Smashwords #ScienceFiction #Humour #SciFi #BookPromo #SupportIndieAuthors #FediBooks #Author #Bookstodon #Writing
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/7491
#SWSale2024 #Smashwords #ScienceFiction #Humour #SciFi #BookPromo #SupportIndieAuthors #FediBooks #Author #Bookstodon #Writing
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Fahim Farook
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Do you think you might hate my book more than this person did?
Care to try? 😛
https://shop.farook.org
If you do, please let me know what you think? I found this review after 13 years.
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Reviews #SupportIndieAuthors #FediBooks #Author #Bookstodon #Writing
Care to try? 😛
https://shop.farook.org
If you do, please let me know what you think? I found this review after 13 years.
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Reviews #SupportIndieAuthors #FediBooks #Author #Bookstodon #Writing
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Fahim Farook
f
Happy to share that "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog" will be on sale through Smashwords all July long for their Summer/Winter Sale! Stay tuned for the discount link and more exciting updates!
https://shop.farook.org/
#SWSale2024 #readers #books #SciFi #Writing #FediBooks
https://shop.farook.org/
#SWSale2024 #readers #books #SciFi #Writing #FediBooks
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Fahim Farook
f
I'm busy writing a new novel, but I decided to dust off my first novel (from 20 years ago) and re-publish it. It's on Amazon Kindle (and a few other places) 🙂
There'll be a promo from Saturday where the book drops to 0.99 in price (but slowly goes up again over the week). Let me know if you like it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099FPBP98
I wrote my first novel 20 years ago. Have written a few books since then but haven’t really gotten back into the swing of writing till now. I’m really excited about the new one but am only 25% of the way through 😛
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Quirky #Writing
There'll be a promo from Saturday where the book drops to 0.99 in price (but slowly goes up again over the week). Let me know if you like it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099FPBP98
I wrote my first novel 20 years ago. Have written a few books since then but haven’t really gotten back into the swing of writing till now. I’m really excited about the new one but am only 25% of the way through 😛
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Quirky #Writing
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Fahim Farook
f
Spent what free time I had yesterday on adding Trakt access to "ShowMan", and that allowed me to get access to my calendar of shows today.
I'm getting pretty excited about the app now since the integration of the multiple services allows me to do a bunch of different things — all in one app 🙂
Now I can see what I have not watched over the past few days and also get an idea as to what is coming up. When I watch something, I can tick it off the list by simply checking the box ...
Next, I need to add more Trakt integration to let Trakt know when an episode is watched and then add BetaSeries too for the same purpose. Lots of fun stuff to do!
#Coding #App #Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #ShowManagement #Entertainment
I'm getting pretty excited about the app now since the integration of the multiple services allows me to do a bunch of different things — all in one app 🙂
Now I can see what I have not watched over the past few days and also get an idea as to what is coming up. When I watch something, I can tick it off the list by simply checking the box ...
Next, I need to add more Trakt integration to let Trakt know when an episode is watched and then add BetaSeries too for the same purpose. Lots of fun stuff to do!
#Coding #App #Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #ShowManagement #Entertainment
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Fahim Farook
f
I didn't get as much done today on my TV/Movie manager app as I'd hoped because I got stuck in several different SwiftUI issues ...
But at the end of the day I'm able to at least see all shows I'm watching, the seasons for the show and episodes.
So hopefully done by next weekend's end? 😛 (I kid ... I don't think I'll have everything done, but I'm hoping that I'll have TV show management complete at least.)
#Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #Apple #Entertainment #ShowManagement
But at the end of the day I'm able to at least see all shows I'm watching, the seasons for the show and episodes.
So hopefully done by next weekend's end? 😛 (I kid ... I don't think I'll have everything done, but I'm hoping that I'll have TV show management complete at least.)
#Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #Apple #Entertainment #ShowManagement
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Fahim Farook
f
A few days ago I discovered "TVMaster" (https://noben.org/tvmaster) by way of @keyle
It's a great looking app and it helps you manage the TV shows you watch via this very nice interface.
But I wanted more 😛 I wanted to monitor both TV shows and movies I wanted to watch. I also wanted to be able to interact with external sites (since I use several) to monitor the progress on shows and movies.
I’d already created the movie watchlist solution several times in different ways, but this would give me one app which would handle everything and that seemed a rather attractive proposition.
So got to work, and after about a day of work, I have a new app … and the project for this weekend 🙂
Basic functionality — done!
The next part is a bit more complicated since I need to allow the user to connect various sites with the app. But I’m hoping that if it’s not a single-week project, then it’ll only be a week more.
I guess we’ll see?
#macOS #Swift #SwiftUI #Apple #Entertainment #ShowManagement
It's a great looking app and it helps you manage the TV shows you watch via this very nice interface.
But I wanted more 😛 I wanted to monitor both TV shows and movies I wanted to watch. I also wanted to be able to interact with external sites (since I use several) to monitor the progress on shows and movies.
I’d already created the movie watchlist solution several times in different ways, but this would give me one app which would handle everything and that seemed a rather attractive proposition.
So got to work, and after about a day of work, I have a new app … and the project for this weekend 🙂
Basic functionality — done!
The next part is a bit more complicated since I need to allow the user to connect various sites with the app. But I’m hoping that if it’s not a single-week project, then it’ll only be a week more.
I guess we’ll see?
#macOS #Swift #SwiftUI #Apple #Entertainment #ShowManagement
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