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Architect Secretly Builds Epic Scavenger Hunt into NYC Apartment
Eric Clough “…secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a $8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.”
Which is totally freaking cool.
Apologies for not posting much, I’ve been a touch busy writing and trying to get a job so I have some actual income coming in as well, primarily because I’m starting to run out of money. Ho hum.
Anyways, only got 1700 words or so down today, but I did some shuffling around as well so I feel a some accomplishment - at least I did something after all.
All my life I’ve been fascinated by the concept of transformation. In my early years I found the concept frightening - Doctor Who or the Daleks never disturbed me, but I could never watch the old Hulk series with Bill Bixby turning into Lou Ferrigno - I think it was the idea of letting something out, turning into something new, that upset my innate need for stability. But then, desirable transformations didn’t upset me at all - my favourite piece of childhood entertainment was, after all, called Transformers.
But as time has passed this fear has turned to fascination, until now I derive much joy from seeing different forms of transformation, be they into monsters or superhumans or anything else. I think that’s why, much as I love the western superhero tradition, I spend so much time watching eastern heroes like Kamen Rider - when the hero goes into battle, he literally transforms into his alter ego - rather than being the same person in a spandex suit, he gains new strength and new abilities and, in some cases, literally a new body.
I think this love of transformation is also what attracts me to writing fiction and stories - in the end, every story is about a transformation, be it a transformation of characters or a transformation of a world. Even if the hero or heroine awakes to find their experience a dream, they seldom walk away unchanged.
Personal Development, a recent interest of mine that precipitated the creation of my blog Hifelacking, is a further symptom of this deeper interest, and perhaps deeper need. I’ve been listening to a lot of Tony Robbins stuff lately, and he often talks about change itself taking only a second, something that reminds me of David Hume’s Bundle theory of the Self - the notion that a person is not an identity, but a loosely aligned collection of perceptions and experiences, and that identity is made up from these perceptions. All this means that we are all transforming from moment to moment, shifting being that only perceive a single identity.
Which is pretty cool.
So I’m sticking with Water for the time being as my Wordpress theme. I do rather like it, after all, and I haven’t yet found a theme that really matches my requirements (I like single column themes for preference, certainly for Pages which I’m planning to add a lot more of to this site. Maybe I’ll just hack this theme and stick some code in to turn off the sidebars when displaying pages.
Anyway, apologies for that little bit of miscellaneous stream of consciousness. Here’s an update on the book:
Thought I’d include those little word meters in the posts as well as in the sidebar, so you can watch my progress. Yay!
The first phase of my planned re-jiggings to this site are complete - my personal blog (this one) is now front-and-centre, while Daily Flash Fiction has been moved out to flashfiction.sambeaven.com, so y’all know what to do with your bookmarks.
Next, I want to update this to a new layout, one of my own concoction - don’t get me wrong, Water, my current theme of choice is beautiful, but I want something a little more classic, and I want to have a go at creating one myself.
Oh, and I’m going to sprinkle some word count meters through the site as some added accountability, and so you can all be wowed at my incredible progress (insert giggling sound here).