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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Saturday, May 26th, 2012 |
heleninwales
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2:05p |
To Mum with love
21/52 for the group 52 in 2012
This week's theme: Love
My first thought was romantic love, but because I had to write the final assignment for the OU children's literature course, I had very little time so couldn't go looking for shots of loving couples walking hand in hand or sitting together on benches.
But it was my birthday last Thursday and my children (now grown up and with children of their own) sent me cards and flowers. Hence I had my shot for the week. I'm afraid the quality isn't very good. My desktop computer is very poorly. In fact I think it's dying. :( But only the desktop computer has the software for converting RAW files, so I took this with the point and shoot which shows quite a lot of noise at higher ISO. At least it fulfils the theme and I can forsee a new computer entering my life in the near future. It could be my birthday present. :) |
| Friday, May 25th, 2012 |
femgenficathon
[ edenfalling ]
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10:22p |
"Blueprints" (Inception, Ariadne, G)
Title: Blueprints Author: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) edenfalling (Elizabeth Culmer) Fandom: InceptionRating: G Warnings: background off-screen death of an original character Prompt: 68) The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire since the word go! -- Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945), Pulitzer-prize winning author, poet, essayist and critic. Summary: This is how you build a castle. This is how you build a life. Author's Notes: This is not the most belated thing I have ever written -- that dubious honor goes to a fairy-tale retelling I once promised my family for Christmas and did not deliver Thanksgiving of the next calendar year -- but it's still pretty ridiculously late. :-( ( Blueprints ) |
mizkit
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9:36p |
my boring life
Apparently my life is sufficently boring that I can’t think of anything to blog about. I have to draw winners for the BYD contest, but since I already blew my first deadline on that and there’s a long weekend coming up in America, I think I’ll wait until next week.
In the meantime, random things:
I believe this is very much the sort of thing the phrase “Oh, snap!” was invented for: Back to back questions presented to Robert Downey Jr and Scarlett Johansson.
*laughs* My wallet died, so I found an old one I knew I had lying around. It has Sarah/shadowhwk‘s work phone # ca 2001, a 1999 bank receipt, a photo of me & Ted from 1997, a 1994 pic of my sister, & the crowning glory, the thing that made me actually laugh out loud because it was so unexpected, an early 90s photo of the unrequited high school Love Of My Life. *laughs & laughs*
Speaking of pictures, this is probably the most awesome one I’ve seen this week. MIB-Avengers mashup FTW!
I believe I have got all the ducks in a row for launching ORIGINS next Friday. Having re-read the stories, I feel that the ORSSP patrons got their money’s worth, and that so too will the people buying it as an e-book. *waits impatiently for Friday next*
(x-posted from the essential kit) |
xiphias
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9:53a |
Call of the wild?
I was just thinking about this piece of adorableness that made the rounds a few months back. I assume most of you have seen it, but those of you who haven't deserve to.
Sorry about the lack of . . . anything . . . previously. I posted it using an Android app which . . . didn't. |
xiphias
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7:11a |
How much of a language do you have to speak to call yourself "bilingual"?
I've been intending to post this for a week or two, now, and I was just reminded by it by the front-page poll on LiveJournal, about "how many languages do you speak"? I consider myself monolingual, although I know a couple words in other languages, and have a dilettante's interest in linguistics, so I know a little bit about the different ways that different languages put together grammar, and, off of my speech and rhetoric, I have a little tangential knowledge of different phonemes, including a few that don't appear in English. So I know a little bit ABOUT languages, but I don't know any other languages, themselves. Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I went to Home Depot to look for a grinding wheel that I could attach to my drill, and then use to sharpen my machete, rather than using a file. It's a cheap machete, so the blade gets knicked up badly whenever I hit a rock, which is often, so I wanted a quicker way to grind out knicks than a hand-tool. The BEST tool for that, of course, would be a bench grinder, but that's kinda excessive for me to own. So, I went to Home Depot, poked around for a bit, and then asked one of the clerks for help. I started explaining what I wanted, and he wasn't sure, so he pulled over another clerk, who actually knew the section better. The second clerk was Deaf, and the first clerk was trying to enunciate so the second clerk could read his lips, and was having trouble, and he started to pull out a pad of paper. I stepped in, and started signing. 'Cause I know a LITTLE ASL. Now, I used a LOT of fingerspelling, some miming, a lot of pointing at stuff. . . but he understood what I wanted, I understood what he was telling me. He was able to show me what they had, but we agreed that what they had wasn't EXACTLY what I wanted, and he suggested that I check out another store that was a bit south of them on Rte 1. So I thanked him, and that's what I did, where I did, in fact, find something that worked for me. It wasn't until I left that I realized that I'd just had a conversation in which I was able to express a relatively complex problem, and understand a relatively complex response. I didn't do it grammatically, nor prettily, nor entirely within the bounds of that single language (fingerspelling isn't ASL, in my mind, although there are signs in ASL that include fingerspelling forms). But I did it. Can I think of myself as bilingual in ASL? I DON'T think of myself that way. But I DID muddle my way through. |
xiphias
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6:46a |
Let's talk about the sociological semiotics of the new Mustang commercial:
Ford's put a commercial for the 2013 Mustang up on YouTube. It's completely visual, and I can't think of any good way to describe it, so apologize to my blind friends. Personally, I LOVE this commercial. I'd like to note a couple things about it. Let's look at the four Mustang lovers shown. Two of them are male, two are female. One is clearly white, three are less-white -- the woman looks mixed-race to me, the first man looks light-skinned Black, and the girl looks Hispanic. I mean, race isn't always obvious, so I don't know if that's how the actors classify themselves, or if my guesses actually match with their heritages, but at least the commercial doesn't look as racially homogeneous as one might expect. Also, the little girl is being cared for by a man, presumably her father. So we have the image of a father as caregiver, taking his daughter to ballet class. Of course, the big moment of the commercial is the subversion of pinkwashing. And -- this one is a bit more arguable -- but watch the guy at 0.17 seconds into the ad. It looks to me like he's totally checking out the dude in the blue shirt. It's not obvious, and it's possible that he's just sorta looking in that direction, but I like to think that they put a gay man in as one of their typical customers. Plus, the look on the little girl's face at the end of the commercial is freakin' adorable. In my experience, this pretty well matches up with the demographics of Mustang lovers. They include everybody. |
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xkcd_rss
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4:00a |
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| Thursday, May 24th, 2012 |
candygramme
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1:37p |
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matociquala
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12:21p |
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heleninwales
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2:13p |
Tangfastics
I have just finished the final essay (3000 words!) for the OU children's literature course.
I'm old enough to remember dolly mixtures, ju-jus and pear drops, so I'd never tried these Haribo sweets before because I think they even post-date the offspring's childhood. But the other students were eating them and so I tried a packet.
As a result, my essay was fuelled by Tangfastics and as I still had some left at the end, I thought they might make a good subject for this week's alphabet theme of "Kaleidoscope". This was the original picture, turned into a kaleidoscope at www.tuxpi.com. |
heleninwales
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1:59p |
Tangfastics Kaleidoscoped
21/52 for the group T189ers weekly alphabet challenge.
This week's theme was: K for kaleidoscope
I'll post the original separately, but it was edited using www.tuxpi.com's kaleidoscope filter.
I did two and it was hard to choose between them, but I think this reminds me more of the kaleidoscopes I played with as a child. |
| Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 |
grrm
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11:58p |
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matociquala
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9:01p |
i just know that i'm harder to console
I'm working on "The Deeps of the Sky" tonight, and generating a regular festival of Words Word Don't Know: luminesced, tropopause, sheeny, thicks, unnavigable, dartlike, Meanwhile, I had a little argument with myself on twitter as to whether I should use some modestly bogus science to create a cool special effect. I went with it. ;-) Now I'm stopping because I have to figure out how the protagonist intervenes to stop the Bad Thing from happening, or how he mops up afterward... Oh, I might have just done so. Woot! Current Mood:  mellow |
xiphias
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4:49p |
Good idea, or AWESOME idea?
The US Navy names some of its smaller ships after notable individuals, occasionally breaking out of an established naming scheme to do so. For instance, the new Independence-class littoral combat ships (which, incidentally, look really, really cool) will be mostly named after smaller US cities, but one will be named after former Representative Gabrielle Giffords. A suggestion has been made to honor a famous and important political figure of the 20th Century, who, indeed, WAS a Navy Lieutenant before he embarked on his political career. He served as a rescue diver on the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake during Korea. Some people are against this idea, because he was strongly against the Vietnam War, but other people who knew him say that, while he certainly was against THAT war, he was nonetheless proud of the US Navy, and of his service -- he wasn't against the military in general. So, how about the USS Harvey Milk? |
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xkcd_rss
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4:00a |
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| Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 |
heleninwales
|
8:25p |
The end of the course
I completed and submitted the final assignment for the children's literature course this afternoon! Yay! I have my life back now. :) A moment ago, I yawned and thought, "Why am I so tired?" And then I remembered that today I had: done an hour on the final nitpicky corrections for the essay; taken Brith for a 3 mile walk; typed the nitpicky corrections into the essay and written a conclusion, given the (rather long) front grass the first cut of the year; and cooked dinner. Yes, that's why I'm tired! Not getting to bed until midnight last night didn't help either. I went as chauffeur, technical support and general dogsbody to help G give another geology talk to the U3A last night. As the group meet in Borth y Gest, by the time the meeting had over-run to 9:30 and we'd driven home and had something to eat, it was very late. Anyway, the children's literature course is safely completed, two days before the actual deadline. After some ups and downs during the course and a very low point at the third assignment, where I got sidetracked into reading about Barrie's life and made a mess of the Peter Pan essay, the last few essays have achieved good marks and I felt that this final essay (which counts for 50% of the marks) flowed quite well. I may, of course, have totally missed the point of the question, but I thought it was a decent essay, so I feel that I have finished on a high note. We don't get the results until the beginning of August, which is when I will get the AS-Level maths result too. I will let you know how I did in due course. [Cross-posted from Dreamwidth by way of a backup http://heleninwales.dreamwidth.org/43651.html. If you want to leave a comment, please use whichever site you find most convenient. Comments so far:  .] Current Mood:  accomplished |
candygramme
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11:22a |
Oh, yes I did!
 It's short and sweet, and I won't be tempted to write an epic, so bring it! Current Mood:  chipper |
grrm
|
10:21a |
Social Gaming
I don't know much about social media. I don't have a facebook or twitter account. But I've been told a few people have them, and that some of those people like to play social media games. I'm told the biggest social media game involves running a farm. Surely, I thought, there must be something one could do on social media that would be more fun that growing turnips and feeding chickens. Like, say, scheming and plotting, murders and marriages, contesting for power. HBO shared the feeling, and together we have granted the license for a social media game based on GAME OF THRONES to a great new start-up company called Disruptor Beam (( http://disruptorbeam.com/ )) Game development is already well under way. Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptor Beam, says: "This will be the first Facebook game based on the TV series and books and, trust me, this game isn’t just going to be another Farmville! George RR Martin is working very closely with Disruptor Beam to ensure the game will deliver an authentic experience. I can tell you that it will not only be highly story and character-driven, but Game of Thrones Ascent will give you the chance to experience the world from your own perspective and with your own friends." "Sounds fun, right!? Want to know more? Well, additional information about the game will be released in the coming months, including details about how to participate in a pre-release beta program. To follow its progress, be sure to “like” Game of Thrones Ascent on Facebook ( http://facebook.com/gameofthronesascent) or follow on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/#!/GoTAscent). "  I saw several early versions of the game demonstrated, and Jon and his designers took great pains to make sure the flavor of the novels is here. I saw alliance building, treachery, marriages, murders, and most of all the constant struggle to be the greatest house in Westeros. So create a character, pick a liege lord to swear to, and start playing the game the way Tyrion would, because in this game you win or you die. (No turnips will be involved). Current Mood:  amused |
scott_lynch
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12:46a |
THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE by A.E. van Vogt
It's been a while since I bored into a book like a hopped-up literary woodpecker, so here's some brain spillage originally written last year and never posted.
Left: "Black Destroyer," 1939
Right: Current edition from Orb Books.
Hot jets, Kinnison! What a jaunt in the way-back machine this is. I first became aware of The Voyage of the Space Beagle via Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials as a kid, and once again waited a mere two decades before reading the source material. At this rate, I'll have all of my seventh-grade math homework turned in by December, 2013.
Voyage is a 1950 fix-up of four previously published short stories, forming a loosely chronological account of the titular Space Beagle's multi-year exploration beyond the confines of the Milky Way. Its thousand-man crew, chemically castrated for the duration to keep their minds firmly on Doing Science, is preyed upon by a series of increasingly dangerous creatures, and must also deal with internal pressures, scientific disputes, and a case of dreaded SPACE MADNESS.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle was influential as all hell, out of proportion to what's actually on the page. Philip K. Dick claimed van Vogt as a major influence; so did Harlan Ellison. You can see it here, a distinct flavor that was carried into Ellison's early SF work. You can also see this book's profound effect on Star Trek, with its strange planets, predatory aliens, and mysterious threats to the ship. Van Vogt even took legal action against the producers of the 1979 movie Alien, a suit that was settled out of court, based on arguable similarities between xenomorphs and his own egg-implanting Ixtl.Voyage is an affable relic of the Big Science Done Big era of SF. The ship jaunts about at hyperluminary speeds, courtesy of Whoosh-Zoom engines powered by authorial whim. There are all the expected toys... gigantic heat-rays, semi-portable atomic furnaces, visiplates, vibrator guns. It has the same ludicrous-but-lovable feel of Doc Smith's Lensmen series, where scientific progress is almost always just a matter of dumping more power into a bigger thingamajig (if you yelled "BUS BARS!" just now, bless you). What it isn't, curiously enough, is a true log of a voyage and its voyagers. The episodic nature of the story would be less stark if there were some context provided, some glimpse of home, some notion of how the Space Beagle compares to anything else humanity is doing. Exploring vacuum in a vacuum is not as interesting as it could be. No real narrative integument was provided when these short stories were stitched into the vague shape of a novel. Also, the real heart of the book, for which the voyage is merely a framing device, is how an advanced interdisciplinary approach to the sciences called Nexialism proves the best solution to each of the Beagle's challenges when the more stratified and traditional sciences allegedly fall short of the big picture. This is all well and good as far as hobbyhorses go, but it would have helped the story if some of the solutions implemented to fend off each alien attack weren't so conveniently dim-witted. For example, in the novel's first major incident, adapted from the short story "Black Destroyer," a panther-like creature called coeurl feigns harmlessness to get aboard the Beagle. Coeurl is actually a ravenous, ultra-strong, life-draining predator, with the ability to detect and manipulate energy using whisker-like appendages. It can neutralize the deadly force of human weapons, a fact the humans realize once the thing is on the loose and killing people. So, when coeurl (constantly referred to by the men as "pussy")* locks itself in the Beagle's engine spaces, what do they do? Do they even attempt to poison it? To asphyxiate it? Nope. They wheel out their gigantic heat-ray projectors and start melting their way into the engine room. Yes. To deal with an energy-manipulating creature, they hurl more energy at it! While it's mucking with the ship's engines, no less. The Beagle is described as having a truly impressive workshop capacity, but even so, you'd think the notion of blasting apart your own engine compartment when your ship is thousands of light-centuries from home would give sober and non-libidinous men pause. What do they expect to do if they melt their propulsion center, break out the oars? There is also a puzzlingly gimlet-eyed overuse of purely speculative social science (though van Vogt deserves props for making his social scientist, Korita, Japanese in a time when the Japanese were not exactly sympathetically portrayed in much American media). Korita is constantly brought on stage to speculate on the social structure and cultural foibles of the singular aliens the Beagle encounters, always in the complete absence of any shred of context or evidence. Yet Korita is made to accurately diagnose potential weaknesses in the hearts and minds of these creatures (nobody even brings up the possibility that these entities might be outcast or atypical) This ain't science, even in a context that generously allows for atomic rayguns and Whoosh-Zoom engines. It's bullshit without a scaffold. Despite this, The Voyage of the Space Beagle still moves smoothly across the eyeballs in a way too many of its contemporaries couldn't aspire to even when they were fresh. It's reasonable and penetrable fun; penetrable, perhaps, because it had such a hand in defining a certain geometry of space opera still quite familiar to us decades later. Damon Knight was often criticized for his perceived harshness toward van Vogt's work, but I think Knight judged fairly in 1950 when he wrote: "...this department's thesis on van Vogt is (a) that the man has a very respectable talent as a writer, and (b) that he consistently misuses it." Van Vogt operated energetically in both the thoughtful and thoughtless modes of invention, and if he fell short of constructing mature narratives, at least he had the ability to occasionally evoke real feelings of mystery and awe. ***** *It is an exceptionally juvenile cheap shot, I admit, but it's difficult to keep a straight face at frequent reference to how the voyagers "beat pussy" and "chased pussy off the ship." They're two million light-years from the nearest woman and drenched in libido-deadening drugs; no shit they chased pussy off the ship. |
| Monday, May 21st, 2012 |
xiphias
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11:28p |
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grrm
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5:46p |
Next Sunday
Coming next Sunday, to a television near you. I'll be watching from Montana. Current Mood: excited |
grrm
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11:43a |
Last Chance for Longclaw
Just got a note from Chris Beasley at Valyrian Steel. He writes, "Just wanted to let you know that Longclaw is almost permanently sold out. I do not expect it to last through the month of June." So if perchance you're one of the folks who has been saving your dimes and nickles to pick up one of the Longclaw replicas, act now, or you may soon be out of luck. These swords are limited editions, so once they are gone, they are gone. Valyrian Steel will not be making any more.  (I should add that Valyrian Steel has obtained a license from HBO to produce replicas of the weapons seen on the TV series, so they will be producing a "show Longclaw" at some point down the line. I don't believe that one will be a limited run. This post relates only to their current version of Jon Snow's blade, produced under a direct license from me -- the "book Longclaw," that is. That's the one that is almost sold out). To order, head over to the Valyrian Steel website at http://www.valyriansteel.com/shop/ Current Mood:  busy |
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xkcd_rss
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4:00a |
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plantagenesta
[ transemacabre ]
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12:12a |
King Kundafrun of Armaniyah
I posted awhile back about what appears to be an ersatz version of Richard I that appears in Arabic hero epics recorded by M.C. Lyons. I thought I'd post a bit more on it. Kundafrun, king of Armaniyah (England) seems to be Richard, syncretized with local legends and half-remembered factoids. It reminds me a bit of how old Persian folktales recast Alexander the Great in their own image of a warrior prince. Lyons suggests the name is a corruption of "Comte de ---" (Count of --). Kundafrun, "lord of all the English isles", appears on the scene after his daughter Runaqis elopes with the Muslim hero Arnus. In a convoluted series of events, Runaqis disappears and Arnus and Baibars (also based off a real person) go in search of her. They track her to her homeland of Armaniyah but are drugged by an old man who is Kundafrun in disguise. Then the "real" Kundafrun appears and killed old-man-Kundafrun, only to turn out to be Shiha, Arnus and Baibars' homeboy, who'd taken on the form of Kundafrun by using a magic mirror. Rumiya, the sister of Kundafrun, vows revenge. She summons a djinn to spirit away her niece Runaqis, who shortly afterward gives birth to her and Arnus' daughter, Miriam. Many years later Miriam becomes a warrior queen, defeats many men in battle, and wins the heart of Baibars' brother Toqtimur. She is kidnapped by multiple assailants and lusted after by TWO of her own half-brothers, Timurj and Qatalunaj. Kundafrun reappears, alive, and attacks Aleppo. The hero Ibrahim fights him in single combat for seven days straight, but cannot hurt him as Kundafrun's "bones are like those of a crocodile." Kundafrun is overcome once again by Shiha and apparently dies. He's alive AGAIN when he invades Muslim lands alongside the Byzantines. There's a sequence dealing with Kundafrun's rivalry with "King Ptolemy of Marjan". He sends an emissary named Uqba to speak with Ptolemy, who instead arrests him. Uqba curses Kundafrun and says that Kundafrun murdered his own father (!). Kundafrun allies with his former Muslim enemies to defeat Ptolemy, and victorious, is converted to Islam by the angel of death in a dream. Ptolemy and Uqba go to Sextus, "king of the land of the Franks", who is one hundred and twenty years old. They tell him that Kundafrun has turned Muslim, and he joins with them. Kundafrun is captured in battle and spat upon. The warrior princess Fatima rescues him and Ptolemy converts to Islam as well and denounces Uqba. This whole tale reads to me like some garbled account of Richard's falling out with King Philippe II, perhaps with Leopold V of Austria mixed in, heavily romanticized. |
| Sunday, May 20th, 2012 |
mizkit
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9:07p |
OLD RACES: ORIGINS
 THE OLD RACES: ORIGINS
Before the Negotiator, there were the long-held covenants of the Old Races: Do not mate with humans. Never tell them of our existence. And never kill one of our own. For time immemorial, these laws were adhered to…
…except when they were not. Delve into the secret history of the Old Races and discover the truth behind Saint George and the dragons, the origins of the mysterious selkie race, and the djinn betrayals that shape the world of the Negotiator Trilogy.
These stories and more are revealed in this collection of five Old Races short stories, coming June 1 to an e-store near you!
(This collection contains 5 of the 6 Old Races Short Story Project stories, so if you were a patron of that crowdfunded project, you don’t need to buy this one. I mean, IF YOU WANT TO it’s fine with me, y’know? But there’s no new content. Except the cover. :))
Cover art by Tara O’Shea. My head is just going to explode of excitement when I get to see ALL THREE short story collection covers together. :)
(x-posted from the essential kit) |
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