actuallyclintbarton

[... sorry about the template, I hit return in the title field and IT POSTED. details to appear shortly. :-p]

Reading. ( Ann Leckie, Monty Lyman, Ronald Melzack & Patrick D. Wall )

Writing. ... I have actually put some more notes into The Document.

So many lost property e-mails. (And at some point I'm going to need to start replying to them, too.)

Watching. On YouTube: True Facts: Bats, The Science Of The Hunt. NSFW. Definitely... An Experience.

Cooking. ... yeah no I managed to make veg spag bol on Friday but otherwise we've mostly just been feeling faintly sorry for ourselves. Okay, no, that's not quite true, I did also achieve baked potato on Wednesday.

Eating. Misc takeaway from The Field (leftover Sunday night curry for dinner on Tuesday; leftover vegetable fried rice + Szechuan tofu for breakfast on same...). I remain mildly resentful that the Wagamama menu still does not contain any of My Favourites.

Growing. The second attempt at pineapple has NEW LEAVES. The second attempt at lemongrass is maybe Going? And other than that I have no idea because I have spectacularly failed to make it to the plot this week.

Observing. BATS. A variety of excellent dahlias and passion flowers on a Trip To Town (post office, pharmacy).

umadoshi

Posted elsenet yesterday: Queen's Quality is the only manga I've worked on with a simulpub release (for the last few years of its run), and now I'm down to odds & ends and small corrections that need doing for its final compiled volume. Feels a bit strange, having properly said goodbye months ago when adapting the epilogue.

That's this weekend's work, which I'd hoped to get done sooner than this (due to the Dayjob crunch starting this week, not because I'm running late), but I don't have the translation for my next assignment yet anyway, so I guess it's worked out fine. I do hope I can get this done today, though. (And I wish I'd gotten that translation and could have started adapting it this weekend, given. >.<)

Queen's Quality is one of those series that switched publishers/titles partway through its run (very early, in this case), and there's always something a bit amusing about being like, "I'm working on vol. 25, which is the final volume. I've worked on this story for 27 of its 28 volumes." (Which is to say, in this case, that Queen's Quality was preceded by three volumes of an initial series called QQ Sweeper, and someone else adapted vol. 1 of that one.)

scruloose and I have been getting some household puttering done, which was desperately needed. We're both prone to letting piles of ~stuff~ slowly accumulate, and getting some of that beaten back before work swallows my life for however long is a relief. (Especially since that type of visual clutter is one of the sensory things that starts to bother me far too easily when I'm stressed. It starts to feel like I'm being loomed over.

scruloose also hung up a piece of wall shelving for displaying things in my office! I have no clear idea yet of what will wind up on it, as most small things that go on such a shelf are just sort of stashed around my office in bins or odd places. I'll have to dig through some drawers and see what surfaces.

(I see the usefulness of the "a place for everything, and everything in its place" concept, but am terribly unclear on how that actually works for most people in practice, given how many sorts of objects [that do in fact see use] don't really lend themselves to "this object resides here in the house". We're very much not minimalists, which doesn't help, but...yeah. Like what do you do with, say, a vacuum cleaner if you don't have some closet space that lends itself to being the vacuum's home?)

(A while ago my mother-in-law forwarded a couple of pics she'd come across of our place not long after we'd moved in, when we were unpacked and a bit settled. It's incredible how alien it looked--the original horrible paint colors, some furniture that's been LONG since replaced--but I think the biggest thing is the complete absence of anything cat-related.)

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

A very busy week. Perhaps not quite as productive as we'd hoped. But anyway, we put down a lot of scratch tracks, and put in a total of eight hours of studio time. Some of which is definitely going to have to be re-done. Not clear how much we can salvage, but we learned a lot.

Meanwhile I re-strung Plink, in part so that I could replace the battery. I broke a wire in the process of trying (unsuccessfully) to get the new 9V battery into the clip. Thereby accelerating my long-term goal of mounting the battery outside. An ill wind, and all that. I still need to buy a new battery holder, and see if I can locate my soldering iron.

As if I didn't have enough rabbit holes to fall into, I've discovered a static (web)site generator called Hakyll. Written in Haskell. See Tuesday. I am (so far) not looking in that direction.

And as if we didn't have enough problems to throw money at, we decided to call in a plumber after the kitchen sink leaked all over the floor one time too many. He confirmed my speculation that the mess (not a rat's nest -- that's wires; maybe a can of worms) under the sink was caused by a previous owner who thought they knew what they were doing. It looks much saner now, and everything empties faster after reaming out 12m of drain. The temperature control on the first-floor shower is still broken; since all the works are inside the wall it may stay that way, unless their "old guy who knows everything" can identify the brand and point the way to a fix that doesn't involve tearing into the wall from the other side.

The best links are on Saturday this week -- these include guinea pig rental services in Switzerland and an an amazing Bohemian Rhapsody Flashmob. Although last Sunday's Busy Beaver article may be worth a look if your taste runs to Turing machines and insanely large numbers.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: variable
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: see post

lb_lee

Hey guys! Friday, October 24th will be the New England Graphic Medicine Summit, and I'm gonna be giving a presentation! Remember when I was gathering up all those many-selved family portraits? THEIR TIME HAS COME!

But now that I'm looking back at all those portraits I accumulated almost a year ago, jeez, I realize I have no memory of whether anyone's consent was given. So: if you've given me a selves-portrait, please let me know whether you'd be okay with me using it at a live event in Boston, which will then be recorded (and probably put on Youtube). Those of you I have contact info for, I've gone to poke!

For other folks who missed all this a year ago: please, send us your selves-portraits! All mediums and skill levels welcome, all interpretations of “family portrait” and “many-selved.” Please give a date and artist/s name for attribution and citation purposes. You can link in the comments below or send them to us at loonybrain at healthymultiplicity.com

lb_lee

Rogan: I am making the terrible mistake of staying up late, reading the False Memory Syndrome Foundation's "Summary of Legal Survey Data from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation: presented FMSF Conference Memory and Reality: Emerging Crisis" from April 17, 1993, so Y'ALL ARE COMING WITH ME.

( I hope y'all packed your shit-wading boots! Lawsuits, sexual abuse, and gaslighting behind the cut! )

Current Mood: groggy

umadoshi

The seasonal crunch at Dayjob hasn't even started yet (so soon, though) and I already feel like I'm falling behind. >.< But I've been reading, so here's a fairly bare-bones post about that.

scruloose and I finished listening to Exit Strategy, and reluctantly are not moving forward until after said crunch period. This is a good resting point. We're both really enjoying these, which isn't really a surprise (heaven knows everyone raves about the Murderbot audiobooks!) except that I so thoroughly think of myself as not being someone who takes in much(/any) audio media other than music. It's possible that these are the first audiobooks I've listened to since...maybe since some Robert Asprin book on cassette during a family road trip when I was a teenager (which I only recall even that much of because the reader's delivery of "'Gleep', said the dragon" has stuck with me), and whatever snatches of audiobook I've heard while road tripping with Ginny and Kas.

Saint Death's Daughter (C.S.E. Cooney) was a really good read and rather brutal; I imagine I'll pick up the sequel at some point.

Julie Leong's The Teller of Small Fortunes was a much softer book (it may count as "cozy", but that seems to be a very subjective classification). It didn't leave much of a mark on me, but I enjoyed it.

The most recent novel I finished was When Women Were Dragons (Kelly Barnhill), which was one of those books where I didn't think I had much idea of what it would be like but then found it was nothing like I'd (subconsciously, I guess) expected, based on having read a few sentences about it somewhere. It too was good, and the fact that both the tone and the actual unfolding of the concept threw me is on me, not it.

Now I'm reading The Starving Saints (Caitlin Starling), but I'm only a few chapters in.

Non-fiction: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World is not a fast read, but then, I didn't suppose it would be. Slow progress is still being made.

I mostly don't mention cookbooks I've read, but a couple days ago I finished reading the ebook of The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World by Lisa Kyung Gross and the Women of the League of Kitchens Cooking School, with Rachel Wharton. And then the second book of collected Murderbot novellas (3-4) popped up on Book Outlet, tempting me to place an order even though I ordered from them pretty recently, and they also had the hard copy of The League of Kitchens Cookbook, so I pounced on it.

I don't remember where I heard about it, but someone somewhere mentioned it and then I snapped it up a while back when the ebook was on sale. I had no real idea what the League of Kitchens was until I was reading, and it turns out to be such a neat thing! From the book copy:

Founded in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the daughter of a Korean immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker, League of Kitchens is a unique cooking school that empowers immigrant women to share culinary expertise and culture through hands-on cooking workshops, both in their homes and online. The instructors pass on their knowledge, skills, recipes, and most importantly, their secrets for how to cook with love. At its heart, League of Kitchens is a celebration of the invaluable contributions of immigrants to our food culture and society.

IIRC from the intro to the book, they don't/didn't go searching for people from specific backgrounds as instructors; rather, it's about finding people who match what they're looking for, regardless of their country of origin. (Here's their current list of instructors.) Some classes are taught online, which is tempting, although I don't realistically like my odds of ever actually signing up.

(One thing I really like about the book is that the recipe instructions are broken down into incredible detail. I pretty much always want more detail than I'm given when learning something or being asked to do something. When I was still very early in the book, I was excitedly calling out to

scruloose about how the recipe I was reading--which was not for something super-complicated, I don't think--was broken down into seventeen steps. SEVENTEEN. Yes, please!)

Current Mood: drained

kaberett

... and doesn't quite make it.

On page 187 (of 218), we finally get this paragraph:

At this point we need to return to a crucial caveat. In most cases of persistent pain, whatever caused the initial injury has healed. Pain is now the primary disease. But there are a number of cases where there is continual damage that triggers nociceptive fibres; chronic inflammatory diseases are good examples. It is also important to point out that not every case of back pain is our brain's overreaction. A small -- but important -- minority of cases are caused by serious conditions -- cancer, some infections, spinal fractures and the nerve-compressing cauda equina syndrome -- but these can usually be ruled out by doctors, who will be on the lookout for 'red flag' symptoms. However, in the majority of cases of persistent pain (and over 90% of cases of back pain), there is no longer any identifiable tissue damage; our brain has become hypersensitive.

In a book that otherwise dedicates a lot of time to talking about gender and racial inequalities in healthcare access, including a solid half-paragraph on how common and how painful endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition!) is, the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings. And yet it's still the closest anything I've read so far actually gets to engaging with the fact that the rest of us exist, so... no get-out-of-writing-essays-free card for me here, alas.

(The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, mostly pretty good and definitely got me to think constructively about a few things -- like the merits of classical vs contemporary Pilates for my specific usecase via discussion of knitting -- and introduced me to some more, like open-label placebos and "safe threats" and the impact of paracetamol on empathy. It's incomplete, but not disrecommended.)

kaberett

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Kaleidofolk's new album starting to come together,
Mario of StudiOjo in Wateringen. Also, having a professional recording studio walking distance (450m) from our house.
Learning a lot about recording. NO thanks for my scratch tracks being barely usable. Oops.
Bandmates (m and N) with an ear for harmony, as well as m's voice coaching.
Bronx's growing talents as a snuggler. He may be taking lessons from Ticia. Also, having a cat to keep my back warm on cold nights.
5mm cube magnets.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: see post

fred_mouse

For some days, I've seen people mention the Martha Wells Humble Bundle offer and gone 'nah, I don't need it, I've got most of the Murderbot stuff, I DON'T NEED IT'.

And then someone posted that it has the short stories, and I nearly caved. And then someone shared it on Tumblr, and I don't remember what was said, and I was like 'it won't hurt to look, right'?

I will tell you that I did not cave because it has a Murderbot book I have either not read or have entirely forgotten reading (and may not, in fact, own). I did not cave because of short stories, for I noticed not the presence of said short stories. I caved because nearly the first thing I saw was The Emilie Adventures, which I know not if I will love, but has been in my wish list many many years (best guess: 2018, which is the copyright date of what I think is the first Murderbot book I read, which was at the time the most recent. The two Emilie stories are copyright 2013 and 2014, but by the time I tried to acquire them, no legal avenues worked).

So now I have 14 ebooks, some of which I have read and some of which are short stories, and I do not have the oomph to put them in the acquired books list (which has a gaping hole in it in which I either bought no books, or did not record them), along with the three that turned up ... yesterday (and one I really wanted is not sodding available and my money has been refunded. I hate this 'warehousing glitch' or whatever the excuse is, it happens so sodding often).

silveradept

Let's begin here with celebrating fifty years of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and fifty years of what might be the most unique theatrical experience someone goes to when they go to see Rocky. (And the fact that while the thing on the screen stays the same when you go to see Rocky, everything else changes depending on where you are and what time it is.)

Organizations that fail to consider intersectionality in their diversity, equity, and inclusion will create things like employee resource groups that only capture a part of someone's experience and that elide the places where the intersectionality is unique and important. Which should make you unsurprised, but also horrified, that the Institute for Museum and Library Services budget is being given directly to propagandists for a project that will present a white man-centric view of history and demand that we all believe it as the sole and only truthful narrative of the United States.

James Dobson, creator of such abominations unto his God as Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance, has gone to receive judgment at 89 years of age. Our world is far better off without him, and the damage that he has done to the world would take generations to heal if he were the only one doing his kind of damage. But like so many others, he has disciples and followers, and they will continue to perpetuate his damage into the world for generations to come.

A man who believed that violence was an answer, and who aggressively sowed the wind wherever he went, has reaped the whirlwind, killed by the violence he promoted, by a gun that he believed should have more rights than the people killed by it. He is no longer able to use his organization to promote and encourage harm to others.

( The fallout from such, and plenty of other things, inside )

Last out, Bohemian Rhapsody translated and performed in Zulu and with the visual and singing styles of several other African traditions. It's worth a watch and a listen, absolutely.

The concept of Queer Time, where the signifiers of "adulthood" like marriage, children, and houses are not achieved on any kind of regular time, if at all, and therefore queer adults have to find their own ways of demonstrating to the community that they are full grown-ass adults.

And the iconic Atari CX-10 joystick as a decanter for drinking, along with a couple of Atari-logo glasses.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Music: Depeche Mode - Barrel of a Gun

teaotter

I finally wrote out the pattern for the trapezoid shawl I made earlier this year. It's my first time writing out a pattern, but I *think* it all makes sense.

( Read more... )

kaberett

Have spent most of the day asleep.

Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.

kaberett

Reading. Tiny bits of Solutions and Other Problems and The Painful Truth.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac.

Exploring. Chester, including Chester Zoo!

Eating. Almost all of my favourite field foods, including raspberry and lemon curd toasties, noodle pots with the addition of the prepped salad bits (spinach! red onion!), the giant lemon and sugar crepes, and flapjack. ("Almost" because the cake options CHANGED.)

Observing. The Milky Way. Something that might have been some kind of satellite or might have been some kind of shooting star. CHESTER ZOO, etc. At least one field bat.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

On the whole it's been a pretty good week, modulo problems with the kitchen plumbing, and my internal plumbing. But music! With m leaving next week for the US until the end of October, we had to get as many of their tracks on the new Kaleidofolk album as possible recorded. For this we needed scratch tracks, and as of this afternoon we have them. We have studio time booked for Wednesday and Thursday.

We visited StudiOjo Friday evening. It's only 450m away -- an easy walk even for us. I'll be saying more about the album soon, presumably; all that's needed is time to write it. For now, I'll just mention the title, Winds of Time, which comes from a line near the end of the next-to-last track, "Millennium's Dawn".

In the process of searching for an instrument cable I came across my MXL large-diaphragm condenser mic, so the purple RØDE NT1 I've been coveting will have to wait until this project is done. Hazard pay.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: okay (body not particularly s
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: tuning a newly-restrung Plink; making scratch tracks

finch

There's nothing quite like reading fanfic that jumps up on your buttons and rolls around on them like my cat jumping up on my keyboard while I'm working.

Weekend one is not off to a great start, I'm gonna be honest. It's definitely now Autumn and the pressure change has my vertigo messing with me. At the moment I have tinnitus in both ears, but the right ear is the whooshing sound I usually get and my left ear is a high-pitched sound. The combination of tinnitus and audio processing disorder leads to the most ridiculous scenes in stores or restaurants or anywhere I have to talk to people because I'll be partway through an interaction and lose the ability to understand what the other person is saying.

The plan for this weekend has been cut down since bending over and other various weird movement is out, but at minimum we're planning on taking some stuff to goodwill tomorrow. This will happen. Bug went through her books some and for her that's huge. And we paid somebody with a truck to come take a few things too big for the car, so... Definitely some progress. Just not as much as I'd like.

I did also finish a fic last night but not anything I've been intending to work on, just something that took over my brain this week. Yay, that!

lb_lee

Rogan: man, but I am so glad the False Memory Syndrome folks were so wrong about everything.

( Read more... )

fred_mouse

Today has brought the news of the passing of two more people - one I counted a friend, and one I knew more in passing. I've known both since the 80s.

David was a member of the dance group my mother and I joined in about 1984, and which I've intermittently been associated with since. I'm not sure if I ever had a conversation with them that wasn't about dancing. We were members of the same performance group, although I spent far fewer years in it than David. Other than folk festivals and dancing places, the only other place I ever remember encountering David was in one of the city queer pubs on a very quiet weekday afternoon. I never did find out if they were there because it was a safe space, or because it was their local pub.

Robert ran the Fremantle Music School, which I attended briefly in the mid 80s*. I've encountered Robert intermittently over the years, at various music events. They were involved in the Mandolin Orchestra, and I believe the Recorder and Early Music Society. We met up again when I joined the first of the two (very) amateur orchestras I've joined in recent years -- they have been the leader of the group in the years I've been there (two years? three?). In retirement, Robert became somewhat prolific in composing pieces, and I think we had one of their pieces at least every semester. We have one that is due to be debuted tomorrow, at a concert that is now going to be a bit fraught. **

* provided-by-school lessons ran to the end of year ten. I found a lovely teacher at the FMS, but when they moved away from the school roughly a year later, I followed them, mostly having lessons at their home.
** I really feel for our conductor, and for our other main organiser, both of whom have been dealing with calling telling people one on one throughout today.

fred_mouse

At my last psych appointment, I reported back that while getting my evening tasks done earlier was great, and for four nights I'd successfully gone to bed at a reasonable time, it hadn't lasted. I had continued to get the tasks done (most nights) but had lost the ability to then go to bed afterwards -- I'd adjusted to the new normal, and 'finish my list' was no longer 'and it's bed time' it was 'and it's time to read fic / flirt with tumblr / etc'.

(aside: the expression on the psych's face was priceless. They said approximately 'You did the homework?! only teachers do the homework!?'. And here was me feeling that I'd half arsed the homework. Which, yeah. )

Building on that success, I've moved my bedside lamp down from the top of the bedside shelf (say, 1.1m up) to the shelf that is the same height as the bed. This enables me to read in bed with just the lamp on, and not have a really bright room. And it will surprise no-one who knows about sleep and light and screens, putting the screen away and then reading in low light on paper? My insomnia is dramatically reduced.

I'm now waking up before the 7am alarm more days than not. But what I'm not feeling is rested. I'm obviously getting 'enough' sleep in some way, or I wouldn't be waking, but I'm not sure I'm getting enough sleep cycles. Or maybe it is that I've got a lot of stress happening, and I'm just burning through all the oomph I have.

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

A very bad hiss on one channel of my recording rig turning out to be a bad cable, and not the (rather expensive) microphone. (If it had been the interface it would have been a good excuse to get a better one.)
Having extra mic cables sitting around for just such a situation.
Having made a psych appointment for next week, before N told me that I probably needed one. NO thanks for freaking out under stress.
Progress, specifically in breathing and singing exercises. Having m as a vocal coach.

I do not know how to characterize the fact that the RØDE NT1 now comes in PURPLE. Gratitude doesn't seem quite appropriate.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: Kaleidofolk rehearsals

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December 2018

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Page Summary

kaberett - vital functions
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: work, impending work, and at least a bit of clutter tamed
mdlbear - Done Since 2025-09-14
lb_lee - Many-Selved-Portraiture at New England Graphic Medicine Summit!
lb_lee - MST: "Summary of Legal Survey Data from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation," 1993
umadoshi - Almost two weeks' worth of reading
kaberett - [pain] today's book gets so close to The Thing
kaberett - [growth] pineapple is go!
mdlbear - Thankful Thursday
fred_mouse - Murderbot Humble Bundle
silveradept - Sex and Violence, Tech and Violence, and some genuinely neat stuff - Early September 02025
teaotter - Trapezoid Shawl Pattern
kaberett - tired. so tired.
kaberett - vital functions
mdlbear - Done Since 2025-09-07
finch - first weekend
lb_lee - True Memory Syndrome
fred_mouse - More farewells
fred_mouse - Sleep
mdlbear - Thankful Thursday

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Page generated Sep. 22nd, 2025 11:59 am

just focus and keep aiming

aw, coffee, no

Reading

vital functions

Weekly proof of life: work, impending work, and at least a bit of clutter tamed

Done Since 2025-09-14

Many-Selved-Portraiture at New England Graphic Medicine Summit!

MST: "Summary of Legal Survey Data from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation," 1993

Almost two weeks' worth of reading

[pain] today's book gets so close to The Thing

[growth] pineapple is go!

Thankful Thursday

Murderbot Humble Bundle

Sex and Violence, Tech and Violence, and some genuinely neat stuff - Early September 02025

Trapezoid Shawl Pattern

tired. so tired.

vital functions

Done Since 2025-09-07

first weekend

True Memory Syndrome

More farewells

Sleep

Thankful Thursday

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December 2018

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