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September 20th, 2008

08:24 pm - Well, now I've gone and done it Ever since LJ announced that paid users would be able to edit their comments, I knew it was going to be what finally pushed me over the edge into getting a paid account (taking forever to pick that sixth icon made me realise I didn't need tons more icons, as nice as it would be to have them). It just took until now to get over the procrastination. Finally, no more deleting-and-reposting when I decide I've messed something up! Compulsive editor that I am. I expect new icons to be added slowly, however, despite my having stockpiled them all this time. Current Mood: creative

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March 21st, 2008

02:55 pm - sno? do not want! it's been snowing for the past six hours. constantly, sideways. and when i say "sideways," i do mean it's nearly perfectly horizontal. and i do mean the whole time. i'm getting vertigo just looking out my living room window. 4p update: it's now shifted to something akin to rain...but it's still horizontal. Current Mood: dizzy

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March 18th, 2008

08:09 pm - RIP Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008 as reported by CNN and MSNBC. (the date will actually be listed as the 19th, because it was 1:30a "tomorrow" at his time of death.) i find it interesting that CNN files it under "showbiz/books," while MSNBC has it under "technology&science/space." like both ladyeuthanasia and lauracory, my first book by him was childhood's end, read when i was still very much a child. and wouldn't you know it, i'm a telecom geek now. eonia i mnimi!

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March 8th, 2008

07:00 pm - not-entirely-Gratuitous Icon Post So. Either thanks or halfhearted curses to daki, I have finally discovered Bunny: The Book of Random. This despite seeing Bunny scattered across my FL (in people's icons, mostly) for a while now. It's a webcomic. It's been going steadily since some time in '04. The halfhearted curses are because I've lost something like five hours* over the past two days, reading through the whole thing. I have decided that you folks should share my pain distraction. It is odd, funny,** and addicting. You have been warned. edit to add: WTF?! copyedited this post last night, supposedly-surreptitiously, but didn't notice LJ switching the icon back to my default. what's the point of a GIP if it doesn't show the new I?!? hrumph. also: fixed. *Admittedly, roughly a half hour was spent poking at pixels to get the transparency looking at least decent in the new icon. Isn't it interesting that this is what finally gets me to use my last lj-icon slot. Think I'll break down and get a paid account. How about starting in May. **Not just any old sort of funny, but that dry and dark British sort of humor that I thoroughly adore. See, I never could stand US sitcoms, never found any of them even amusing much less funny, and for years I thought something was wrong with me till I realised: mine is a mostly-UK sense of humor. Current Mood: creative Current Music: "transformers" score" - steve jablonsky

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March 7th, 2008

10:48 pm - RIP Gary Gygax 1938-2008 He passed away on Tuesday. Lotsa comments on my FL, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, so I ended up saying nothing. There have been some nice tributes out there. Think I'll just link to a few of those... John Kovalic (who draws "Dork Tower") did this one. Then there's the thing Penny Arcade did. But I think my favorite came from xkcd. Current Mood: thoughtful

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February 21st, 2008

06:56 pm - not a meaningful update, but a MEME-ing-full one gakked from violachic, ( this does not surprise me in the slightest ) Current Mood: silly

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December 23rd, 2007

10:41 pm - wrong...wrong...so very wrong... i saw this for ten dollars in the big evil brick-and-mortar electronics store while shopping for mom, and i just had to get it because...well... OMGWTFBBQ the scary part? he's serious. not campy or over the top not "modernized" not nuthin', just a guy singing christmas songs straight up. the really scary part? once you get past where you know the voice from...if you get past where you know the voice from... it's actually not that bad. Current Mood: brain-hurty

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October 25th, 2007

04:38 pm - as quoted on last night's episode of criminal minds: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed." -- G.K. Chesterton Current Mood: thoughtful

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September 28th, 2007

03:21 pm - oh, and for the record: Transformers in IMAX is made of win.

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September 26th, 2007

03:37 pm - squee OMG squee i saw a "coming attractions" poster this weekend, while at the theater to see transformers in IMAX, and i practically bounced out of my skin: yes, mister todd! yes, mister todd! yes all around! and sondheim is very much involved in it's production, which means they just might get it right. Current Mood: giddy Current Music: gee...

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September 11th, 2007

04:28 pm - for the knitters on my FL ...all of whom, i'm fairly certain, are SF-geeks to at least some extent: "extermiknit! extermiknit!" (with thanks to gnomi, who is already knitting her own) Current Mood: giddy

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August 5th, 2007

08:54 pm - not to panic anybody after the fact, but... ...I saw a tornado today. For real. Relax we're OK it missed us completely. I've been out in the suburbs at my sweetie's place all weekend. Late this afternoon, my sweetie was upstairs in the computer room, and I was in the living room watching Daleks In Manhattan on DVR to catch up with him. Then (at almost exactly 6p) he came downstairs, looking concerned. "The tornado siren is going off, but the [weather] radio isn't," he said. I couldn't hear anything, but then he grew up around here so he's more sensitive (plus the computer he was on is right next to a window). Then he opened the front door, and I heard the town siren loud and clear. We stepped outside and looked around. A few neighbors were also out and looking. Stepping further still from the little patio/porch thing, I saw it first and pointed. It was a short, almost vertical column of charcoal gray coming down from an ash (i.e., lighter) gray cloud. It only reached maybe half way towards the ground. It was due north of us, and moving due east: once I processed this observation, whatever alarm or fear I had was gone in a blip. I believe even if it turned "suddenly," it wouldn't hit us unless it managed to pull a complete U. And given that everything around it was solidly moving in the one direction, I knew that was a statistically rare possibility. It solidified and stretched downward at a 45-or-so degree angle while we watched, but then started to dissipate even before it got out of site behind the housing complex across the street. I couldn't tell whether it ever actually touched the ground or not. none of the neighbors standing in the cul-de-sac with us appeared concerned in the least, which confirmed my gut's telling me that it was not a concern. Coming back in to the townhome, we then heard the weather radio finally going off. "Trained spotters plus radar have confirmed a tornado in [sweetie's town], moving 20mph due in [town somewhat north and east of sweetie] in [5min]..." Woot! Tornado chasing in our own front yard! Yeah I'm a weather geek. But that was still as close as I would like to ever get again, thank you. Edited on 6Aug to clarify and expand, as shown in bold above. Oh, and it had to have touched down at some point or the NWS wouldn't have called it a tornado like they did: it would have only been a "funnel cloud." Current Mood: relieved/pleased

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June 5th, 2007

09:04 am - destruir (et?) proteger you know those small posters that get plastered in multiples on boarded up buildings and such? well, as i was out acquiring lunch yesterday i spied some for the new transformers movie. they go in pairs, one character in each in profile so they're facing each other. they did a similar thing with AvP. so there's one bad guy and one good guy (yes yes i KNOW, one of them is a DECEPTICON and one is an AUTOBOT, just bear with me there are people out there who have even less clue than i do) who end up nose to nose if the posters are plastered properly. now, there's no large text other than one word in white underneath. it's above all the fine print, all of which--the trademark ownership blather etc--is in english. so why is this one word not in english? under the all-gray almost-gorilla-faced bad guy, DESTRUIR. under the good guy (and for those wot care, yes it's Optimus who the hell else has blue on the helmet and red on the shoulder pads), PROTEGER. i'm sure they translate to "protector" and "destroyer" ETA: i found english versions on IMDB, turns out they're verbs not nouns: PROTECT and DESTROY. and, whoops: gorilla-face is in fact megatron!...but again, why are they not in english when the rest of the poster is in english? p.s. i did not watch transformers when i was small, i watched battle of the planets instead. so what (admittedly little) i know about transformers i learned via osmosis from friends. Current Mood: somewhat puzzled

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April 23rd, 2007

04:37 pm - because it bears repeating and because i want a record of it somewhere i can nab easily, thank you: THE GREAT CLOMPING FOOT OF NERDISM http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_04_01_archive.asp#5345355050073702108 M John Harrison, absolutely brilliantly, as quoted by Warren Ellis : "Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done. Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid." Current Mood: contemplative

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April 17th, 2007

06:48 pm - three (or four) degrees of separation one of mthielbar's good friends is a va tech alum, and that friend's fiance is still a student there. the fiance is OK, but they lost two of their friends. ladyeuthanasia's sweetie has a good friend who is a professor at va tech. the friend is OK, but two of his colleagues were lost. those prayers i started yesterday? just got more personal. eonia i mnimi Current Mood: intercessor-y

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April 16th, 2007

01:34 pm - va tech shootings my prayers go out for the souls of the victims, and for the strength of the survivors and all the families Current Mood: sympathetic

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March 23rd, 2007

12:48 pm - signs of spring as seen today on chicago's lakefront: the mooring balls have been dropped into belmont harbor, to get ready for the sailboats. no boats on them yet that i can see, though i did notice a little skiff out on the water the other day. "lakeview bike and tune" is open. it's a tiny (and independent) repair shop, located in a shed along the bike path by the tennis courts. if you weren't paying attention you'd think they were a hot dog stand. Current Mood: hopeful Current Music: "the last samurai" move score - hans zimmer

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March 21st, 2007

06:49 pm - inadvertently tagged because i commented in sekhmets_song's LJ when she did this, she gave me the letter P. so i shall now list ten things i love that begin with the letter P, because that's how this meme works. mind you, they're not in any particular order. 1. pistachios 2. pens, either fountain or gel but i'll even use the free ballpoints they give me at hotels or conventions. i write longhand a lot. sometimes i wonder if i'm not at least a little hypergraphic, but i'm not complaining. 3. paper notebooks* - 6x9 fat spiralbounds in particular. goes with the pens. 4. (the) psychedelic furs 5. piano solos (e.g. chopin's nocturnes) 6. the soundtrack to the movie pi - is this cheating? i like the movie itself, but i love its music. OK, how about princess mononoke (both movie and soundtrack) instead? 7. pink lemonade 8. pockets - i want someplace for my hands, and i want individual places for all my stuff i take with me so i don't have to go burrowing in my purse/bag 9. pen & ink drawings - i own several originals that were first seen in various RPG sourcebooks 10. pampas grass - an ornamental plant that grows outdoors in the south. clumps of bluey-green long thin leaves that naturally shape themselves in a large ball like a shrub, often planted at building entrances and whatnot. i really want to grow a clump indoors in a ceramic pot, but i'm told it wouldn't survive. and a bonus P, because i like you...PURPLE! yes, i know purple isn't a "thing." but make a thing purple and i will desire it--if only momentarily till i return to my senses! comment and i'll give you a letter! *as opposed to computer notebooks, which i love (well, mine anyway) just fine but they don't begin with P. Current Mood: amused

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February 5th, 2007

01:08 pm - weather geek + math geek = even more wrong than you imagine in fahrenheit, the current temperature outside is double what they had forecast for today. of course you realise i'm in chicago. which means it's 2F when they only thought it was going to get up to 1F. and yes, i said "up:" last night it was down at -6F for a while. brrr. Current Mood: just looking out my window Current Music: the noisy humidifier that's not doing much good

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February 3rd, 2007

11:37 am - i hate peer pressure! everybody around me is sick. whether they're in real life or on the internet, they're all sick. tho of course it's real life that counts, as viruses (virii, actually) jumping from humans to computers and back again is the stuff of SciFi legend yet to be realised. but observing this, do i keep up with my C regimen, which has never ever failed me before? noooOOOOoooo. so now i'm sick too. pleh.

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