Words are inadequate

en ajijic

Fri, 28 Feb 2014 04:11:06 GMT

It was snowing Satyrday morning when we left Vancouver, and from all reports hasn't really stopped yet. I'd be a little sad to have missed the snow, except that it's supposed to either still be going or start again on Sunday evening. What a winter.

( impressions from travel )

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"in like a lion, out like a deranged arctic elk"

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:30:45 GMT

Weekend already, sheesh. Some weeks.

Last weekend was ... I was going to say 'quiet' but that's not true at all, it just wasn't in any way stressful. Satyrday there were games in New West followed by some Rock Banding. I stumbled through vocals on a handful of tracks (including Werewolves of London, which according to semilocal J-- sounds like Sweet Home Alabama, argh) and acquitted myself somewhat better on guitar, and we convinced uilos to sing "Eye of the Tiger" and "Carry On My Wayward Son," which she did quite well. Good times all around.

Sunday we drove down to Seattle to see Tylan (sounds like Thailand and not Dylan, which is not what I'd expected), and also to spend some time with Karawynn and Jak. Karawynn cooked the only broccoli I have ever been able to eat (lightly pan-fried with a ton of garlic and some red pepper flakes), and Jak made the best creme brulee I have ever had the good fortune to get my mouth around; between that and just getting to hang out for a couple of hours it was an excellent trip even without the concert. The show itself was good but not great. I get the sense that Ty's still finding her feet in doing solo shows. She played mostly stuff from her solo album, with a handful of her Girlyman songs ("The House Song," "The Person You Want," one or two others). Still well worth the seeing.

Last night we saw a cheery Britpop band called Veronica Falls and their opener, a SF grrlpunk band called Brilliant Colors. I still have "Teenage" stuck in my head. Good times, and since both bands had two CDs and they were $10 each, we have a bunch of new music for the drive down to Seattle today.

Sometime during last week I utterly devoured book 1 of Walter Jon Williams's space opera epic Dread Empire's Fall. Very good stuff if you're looking for space opera. It's... how did Jo put it? "The empire is ruled by the truth of the Praxis, which forbids things likely to lead to boring singularities (no AI, no nanotech, no uploading, no immortality, etc.) while promoting things likely to lead to space-opera (spaceships, space navies, space stations, conquest of aliens, aristocracy, exploration of wormholes etc.)." Pretty much. It's 400 pp in paperback; roughly the first 250 pp are buildup and worldbuilding (very good buildup and entertaining worldbuilding!). Then there's an extremely tense 30pp where the rebellion gets underway, and the book is off and rolling. The only reason I haven't plowed straight through the other two is that they're in transit from Chapters. Recommended.

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linkflood

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:53:16 GMT

Although, oddly, no links about the flood. Mostly because I didn't experience it firsthand.

Career advice for cats and foxes: "If you’re struggling to pick just one big thing to do with your life, because too many things are pulling you in too many directions — think instead about what you’re going to do with your first life, knowing that you’ll have a second and a third and even a fifth if you want them." (Are we all aware that Karawynn is smart? Because Karawynn is smart, and you should be reading Pocketmint even if you think you have no interest in personal finance. Dreamwidth feed at pocketmint_feed.)

Glass Works: a brief yet fascinating history of Corning's experiments in glass. I love that Corningware was an accident, and that they've had Gorilla Glass on ice since 1971, "a solution that would have to wait for the right problem to arise."

Comedian Chris Gethard on depression and suicide. Long but worthwhile.

Best headline all month: Ancient statue discovered by Nazis is made from meteorite.

Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web: "Under Reddit logic, outing Violentacrez is worse than anonymously posting creepshots of innocent women, because doing so would undermine Reddit's role as a safe place for people to anonymously post creepshots of innocent women." Also a followup, and another.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM: "Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation." Per this followup she got her books back, but still. Those of us who remember the 1984 debacle in 2009 doubtless saw this coming; for anyone else, this is among the most succinct arguments against The Cloud that I've seen.

Third Draft Struggles: "The same characters, with the same in-world genders, taking the same in-world actions, read totally differently in terms of reader sympathy. ... Switch the pronouns on 'proud, rebellious teenage male' and you get 'mentally ill teenage girl'; switch the pronouns on 'manic pixie dreamgirl' and you get 'asshole'."

For pre-Halloween gaming I recapitulated «Le fils de l'homme», because hey, this is a whole new set of people who've not seen that particular apple. I also acquired a pair of those blue boots which mostly fit. They feel fine around the toes, which is a nice change, but they're too big in the heel. Padding and thick socks seem to be solving this problem.

Since I have these boots I've been getting a little dressed up for no reason lately. I continue to hate ties with a passion generally reserved for "it can't be good, it's genre." On the other hand I am at a loss to explain the lack of French cuffs in standard semiformalwear. Because seriously, guys, you don't have all that many opportunities to spiff up or personalise your wardrobe, and cufflinks are awesome. If I could find more good shirts with French cuffs I would be happy.

Also, my distaste for long sleeves may come at least in part from too many instances of 1) "permanent press" (read: nonbreathing) shirts 2) in overly warm churches. Good-quality shirts in decent weather are actually not so bad, temperature-wise! Who knew.

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