Dinosaurs with Laser-Guns

Zzub Nirdla

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:59:12 GMT

The weather is wet and work was exhausting, but hey, yesterday I spent two hours in the same room as Buzz Aldrin.

We went to see a recording of The Museum of Curiosity yesterday, and their special season finale guest turned out to be DR BUZZ ALDRIN.

He was really sharp and had some snappy putdowns ready and talked about his Mars colonisation plans!

What a cool guy.

Buzz Aldrin.

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The hazards of walking to work in the autumn.

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:10:14 GMT

Mudsplattered: the new professionalism.

This wouldn't be a problem if Surrey was cool enough to have proper footpaths in its villages.

Yus, I've finally got some work, and the balance on my bank account is steadily moving into positive numbers! The job's only part time, but it's still been pretty draining. I hope I'll get used to the change in pace soon, though. Co-operate, brainssss.

I've been making some very vague plans for the future, too. After a discussion with my mum last week I decided that, depending on how things go health-wise, I'll probably do some study at the Open University next year to ease myself back into academia. I'd love to get some more economics and sociology knowledge under my belt especially. Plus more background knowledge on European archaeology/history. Give me every social science, I want them all!

OU is apparently restructuring it's social science department at the moment, though, so we'll see how that goes.

I'd been putting off writing a post because I was hoping to include a video I've been editing, but with work being so tiring for now, that might not get finished for another week or two. I did make a blog on tumblr for my insect photos & videos, though, if you wanna have a look at those! Eventually I'll build up a queue over there, too, and then there'll be more regular posts.

BEE WIZARDRY
http://beezardry.tumblr.com

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For your listening and watching pleasure.

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:13:40 GMT

Two recs for you guys:

OA Podcast #23: Bart Leib and Kay Holt talk Crossed Genres
I really like the interview with the Crossed Genres editors in the most recent Outer Alliance podcast. What a great press/magazine. I have one of their issues, the LGBTQ one, but I haven't actually read most of the stories in it. I got it out after I listened to this, though, the rectify that! I saw on their blog that they're considering offering print/ebook subscription for the revival of theri magazine and I hope they do. I'd love to give them my money, now that my employment situation is looking up a bit. (I got a part time tutoring job!)

In Between
A really cute short French animation. (I'd watch it full screen, makes the subtitles easier to see.) Debilitating shyness has never been this adorable!

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Blogsterdam - Nederlands

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:51:03 GMT

Spending a week in Amsterdam at the moment. I've been enjoying myself! Amsterdam is a very fun city to just wander around in. It's coat of arms, though, from what I have gathered from seeing it everywhere, looks like this:

Which inspires me to do that commiserating wince you do when someone has a name that suggests terrible puns, because XXX just makes me think of this:

(Sorry Amsterdam.)

Good thing it's a city, and not a child who has to go to school. At least it's a nice strong graphical motif to put on every single thing that exists in the city or in souvenir shops.

There are a lot of pretty places and really great museums here, but my favourite part, I think, is the language. I can't say anything about actual Dutch, since I speak about a sentence and a half of it, but to me everywhere I go here there are wonderful little language puzzles to solve. Because to my ears, Dutch is the weirdly skewed merging of English and German. I mean, look at this:

"Ontdek de wereld in 1 week"

Ontdek is pretty easy to figure out (entdecke - discover), as is week, but don't try to tell me wereld doesn't look like the botched merging of Welt and world.

I'm really fond of the emergency exits signs on the buses and trams, too.

"Nooduitgang - Bij gevaar ruit inslaan"

I can't help but parse that as "Notausgang - Bei Gefahr ruhig einschlagen" -- "Emergency exit - in case of danger, do feel free to break glass."

I'm sure everything doesn't sound charmingly silly in actual Dutch, but it sure does to me.

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Quick life update!

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:56:10 GMT

I went to visit lullula in the North this week! It was a lovely time. Here's some things we did:

We visited this stately home on the way up.

They filmed a part of the Pride and Prejudice film there, so in the giftshop was this:

FAR more Misters Darcy than anyone has ever needed, all sneering at you.

We also went to see Stone Age cup&ring carvings in a wood.

And I ran around all over the place with Melissa's EXTREMELY PRETTY dog, which was the most fun workout I've ever had for reals.

I also made friends with this forest shield-bug.

We went on a boat ride from Seahouses!

Saw a whole buncha seals and an unseasonal lone puffin.

Plus we went to MIND-BLOWINGLY AMAZING Barter Books.

It was SO WONDERFUL.

Tomorrow I have a job interview for a part-time tutoring job and then THE DAY AFTER Tim & I are going to Amsterdam for a week SO MANY THINGS PLEASE STOP THE RIDE I NEED A BREATH.

Amsterdam should be a lot of fun though.

While travelling I've been amusing myself with a pixel art app on my phone. I think I've been improving! These are my two faves I've done so far.

(That bottom one being Homestuck fanart, of course. Ah, insect alien babies, the way to my heart.)

And now, to bed!

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Bees!

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:33:14 GMT

Bees.

(Trying out my camera's macro settings. Pretty pleased with how this came out!)

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Artz

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 18:59:12 GMT

At the suggestion of ilthit, I've made a DW feed for my art blog: therandomplanet_feed

~~I was going to make one on LJ, too, but you have to have a paid account to set up a new feed there. I guess if anyone on LJ wants to do that feel free. The URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/trpcom~~

Edit: Now with LJ version too, thanks to mayhap! therandomplanet

(Aside: my job interview today went pretty well, but they ended up giving the job to someone with more experience. At least I got an interview, though. Now I just have to keep doing that somehow...)

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Prometheus

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:39:20 GMT

My reactions, via Twitter in the car on the way back from the cinema:

‏chairmanwow: What I learned from Prometheus is that with proper excavation health & safety protocol alien murder death could've been avoided. #

‏chairmanwow: Also our current theory is that that entire thing is part of the Aliens aliens' convoluted parasitic lifecycle. Because parasites are cool. #

‏chairmanwow: No consensus on the significance of the very first scene, though. Wtf was that all about? #

‏chairmanwow: My other takeaway from Prometheus is a desire to wash my hands before I touch anything. #

Spoilers under the cut:

Man, I really like the idea of a parasite that prompts its host to use it as a weapon (also seed a whole other planet with life to use the weapon on). It's almost mutually beneficial, except it still ends with alien murder death! I suppose it would make more sense for it to be a general desire to spread it around (+ maybe increased aggression?), with the weaponisation just being the particular thing this species ended up doing, but weaponisation as a part of parasitic reproduction is just WAY COOL.

I like weird parasites a lot. Also stories where there is no higher purpose just a bunch of horrible (or nice! Nice shit too sometimes) shit that happens in the wake of some vast other process.

Someday soon I really have the watch the original Aliens film.

PS: If you know what that first scene was about, please write your answer on a postcard and send it to PO Box the comment section of this post.

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The school of over-thinking simple puzzles.

Fri, 11 May 2012 19:02:51 GMT

I've stared at this poster while waiting for my train in the morning almost every day for the last three weeks. If you can't see the image, it's a poster for a new programme on Dave (a comedy tv channel) with Dara O Briain called The School of Hard Sums. It has this written on it:

You are waiting for a train.

It is 12:01 exactly. Trains arrive every time the minute hand lies on top of the hour hand.

How long do you have to wait until the next train (If it's on time!)?

I have had the following reactions to this poster, chronologically:

1:05. So a wait of 1 hour 4 minutes.

It's 1:05.

Dara, that isn't even "sums", it's imagining a clock face.

Is this a trick question? Am I missing something?

Ok, fine, it might be slightly after, but I don't think the hour hand would move far enough in five minutes to be significant.

...

Five minutes is 1/12 of an hour; five minutes divided by twelve is 25 seconds.

1:05:25, Dara, that's as precise as I'm willing to get.

Unless you want to count the little bit for however many nanometers the hour hand would move ahead in 25 seconds.

I mean, I don't even know the specifications of this hypothetical clock! Maybe it's one of those ones that ticks over every minute, instead of moving smoothly. And I don't know the width of the hands, either.

You have to give me more details here, Dara.

Dara.

Dara.

Dara.

Just put a new riddle up already.

...

...

... I still don't really want to watch this programme.

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Blog blog blog

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:57:52 GMT

Hey all. Been having a pretty good time at Eastercon! Twittering about it a lot, so check that out. Recording some vlogs, but won't get to show you guys until the week after next because I'm going to Cornwall with my family for a week after. Going to fall into bed now, so very tired.

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A Romance for the Ages

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:01:34 GMT

Everyone on Tumblr has been posting Valentine's Day cards, and I wanted in on the action. Oh breakfast, you might not be the one accompanying me to the London Aquarium on Tuesday, but in my heart you are my true valentine. (I still don't really care one way or the other about Valentine's Day to be honest, but I like excuses for dates, and I really like aquariums.)

I'm afraid I still don't have much to report about my life; jut generally attempting to get out of bed at reasonable times of day and leave the house sometimes.

I do have some great short stories to rec, though! In audio and text form, for maximum convenience and accessibility.

The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived by Keffy R. M. Kehrli. Audio & text at Escape Pod.
A sad story about clones and identity and childhood and things like that.

Their Changing Bodies by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Audio at PodCastle & text at Subterranean.
And this one is an awesome story about puberty and vampires (no no, bear with me here), and girls being total badasses. Also in the end-- no, I don't want to spoil it, just listen/read.

The Magick by Kristina C. Mottla. Audio & text at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
I guess this is a pretty standard coming out/oppression metaphor type thing (I admit I do enjoy those on occasion), but the worldbuilding is quite charming in a teasing way. Argh, no, tell me how your magic system works, show me what's going on outside this one community, I want to know more.

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Hourly Comic Day Part 2

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:10:53 GMT

The grumpy hours.

But then I woke up this morning thinking I want to do hourly comics again, that was fun!

/shrug

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Hourly Comic Day Part 1

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:02:45 GMT

I probably wont have time to scan the rest before late tonight, so I thought I'd post the first half now

Lunchtime now!

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Resolutions for the new year (wip)

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:23:17 GMT

- Embrace the fact that my typing over IM is always terrible and there’s no need to give an excuse for it in every single conversation.

- Figure out solution to the logistical problem of wanting to learn to play the drums when your flat is too small to fit any drums into.

- Learn to play the drums.

- Try not to shout at anyone who mentions the alleged upcoming Mayan apocalypse.

- Try not to be too sarcastic at anyone who mentions the alleged upcoming Mayan apocalypse.

- Ah fuck it, they probably deserve it.

- Continue to get better at the stuff I want to get better at. (The only way to lose is not to play.)

Mirrored from The Random Planet.

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Update from between the years.

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:52:14 GMT

Happy holidays, friends! I hope you all had fun winter festivities. I’ve been staying at my parents’ house for a week or so, having a good time with the traditional Christmas activities and feasting. Feasting is the main traditional Christmas activity, as far as I’m concerned.

I got some great presents as well:

The thing in the box is a FEZ Spider Starter Kit, and I’m really excited to start playing with it, although I still have a few tutorials to go through until I do. I may try to convince my brother to lend me his music expertise and collaborate with me on some kind of cool chiptune-y project. No idea what it will be yet, but I think it’d be fun. Maybe we’ll build an instrument, kind of like those modified Gameboys.

The books are Der Hundertjährige, der aus dem Fenster stieg und verschwand; Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories; Machine of Death; and Guns, Germs, and Steel. I also got some colourful brush pens from my brother, which I forgot to draw. /terrible sibling

Unfortunately I’ve been incubating a cold all week which has chosen today to come out in full force, and so I’m off to drink tea on the couch and sulk about my hands being too unsteady to draw properly.

Mirrored from The Random Planet.

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Three Advent Sundays down already.

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:55:56 GMT

What has happened to the year? I’m not really sure what I’ve done in the last three months. I did NaNoWriMo, and although I didn’t win, writing turns out to be a huge amount of fun and I’m going to keep doing it. Maybe my ~creative energies~ have recharged, or maybe I’m just getting my act together, but I’ve got a lot of ideas lately and I’m drawing again, and getting a start on some other things I’ve been meaning to do in my copious free time.

Endless leisure is still not my favourite situation to be in, though, and so far there’s been no success in the jobsearch. I am doing some German > English (and the other way as soon as my test gets approved) translation on MyGengo, and as usual it’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately the jobs aren’t really pouring in so far; in the last week I’ve done two, one of which was only a sentence long. Made almost $30 on the other one, though, and requested a payout (to make sure it actually works). I hear the experience from the customer side is pretty good, so if you need a translation you should consider them. And consider doing it via this banner, because then I get referral money. ;P

Something that has raised my unemployed spirits is that the library they’ve been building near our flat since before we moved in has finally opened. I still think it looks kind of like an ominous looming spaceship.

The non-fiction section is a little lacking, but the fiction selection is good — they fit a lot more books into that building than it looks like there’s room for — and they have a nicely sized graphic novel section, too, so I’m finally getting around to reading all of those comics people have recommended to me.

The first time I visited last week I took out volumes 1 to 3 of Fables. It’s fairly good so far. The writing seemed a bit stiff to me at first, but I think I’ve gotten more used to it now. They get points for having their ladies drive the plot a lot, but I haven’t been able to really get into any of the characters, and I’m not sure why. They just seem a little obvious to me; it’s like they’ve taken fairy tale characters and turned them into the cast of a soap opera. Or maybe it’s because most of them are rich and US American that I get that vibe. The premise interests me enough to get the next few volumes, though, and maybe when more of the back-story is revealed I’ll become more invested in the characters.

I also got out a few volumes of Hellblazer, which is always fun in a creepy way. (Although the hippies in The Fear Machine annoyed me a lot, for various reasons.) I have no idea of what order they are meant to go in so I just got out two at random. That Wikipedia article probably has the publication order in it, doesn’t it. Maybe I’ll go with that from now on.

What other comics should I check out? I have a long list somewhere from various Eastercon panels, but I am always happy for more, since I know you guys have good taste.

Mirrored from The Random Planet.

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World-building Wednesday post 1

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:07:57 GMT

World-building Wednesday is a thing that originated on Tumblr, I think. I like the idea, and I’ve been meaning to post something for it for months, but I kept missing the day and then forgetting about it until the next Thursday. But no more! I need something to occupy my time until I can find a job, so I’m going to try to post something every week; although I might take November off, because I’m planning to try NaNoWriMo. I’ve been making up worlds for ages, but I’ve never been very structured about it, and way too shy to post any of it online, so if anyone has any constructive criticism I would appreciate that. LET’S TALK ABOUT COOL FANTASY WORLDS, GUYS.

(By the way, I’m trying out a plugin to crosspost to LJ and DW from my website, hopefully this will work…)

This first post is going to be a little short, probably, because there are a lot of nuances for this place that I have yet to work out. Turns out it takes a lot more effort to construct a culture if you don’t know as much about their environment. Everything is going to be set in Mediterranean climates from now, ok? (No it won’t, that is a total lie. I have so many papers about Scandinavian prehistory open right now.) The world in general is a fantasy (or maybe alt-history? I might still put in some monsters or something) world, but prehistoric instead of pseudo-medieval. Because I think that’s super-cool and I couldn’t find anything like it in books. Although maybe the point is a bit moot now, since I’m ageing up a lot of the places to Iron Age – Early Medieval levels for my NaNo story…

The topic of this post is definitely at “prehistoric” tech levels, although a form of written communication does exist (it isn’t representative of spoken language, however). The place doesn’t have a language or name yet, but I’ve been calling it The Northern Island. It’s kind of my pseudo-Europe, at least in terms of climate (hemi-boreal), but hopefully it won’t end up hideously cliché! Here’s a rough map:

It’s the northernmost inhabited landmass of this world (at least at this point in time), and fairly isolated. It’s not too far from the nearest continent, but you would still spend a few days of sailing without any shore in sight. The map might change slightly as I keep working on it, but the basics are:

The island is the remnant of a much larger landscape, drowned under rising sea-levels. It’s roughly teardrop-shaped, and consists of a rim of mountainous highlands surrounding a flat plain tending to marshland. I don’t know exaaaactly how geographically feasible that is, but just go with it. On the northern tip there is an old eroded volcanic crater, overgrown on one flank by an extensive, dark, and imposing forest. There are actually bits of forest all over the place, but that one has particular significance to the inhabitants of the island (scary shit lives there).

The population of the island is split into two major groups: those that live around the bay and on its islands and are largely sedentary, and the groups based around the southern mountain range and the central plains who are seasonally nomadic.

The two group’s territories.

In the winter, the nomadic people congregate in large settlements in the southern foothills and along the major rivers. They live in what are basically large examples of European long-houses, holding something like 30 to 40 people each. The inhabitants of one settlement, which I’m going to call a community, number a couple of hundred, probably. My sense of scale is not the best for these sort of things, but that seems sustainable to me. (I may look up what calculations there are for this later, but that might be heading too far into “avoiding the difficult business of coming up with plots in favour of comfortable nerdery” territory) Monsters and creepy supernatural things have free reign over the northern half of the island in the winter and it is considered a bad idea to leave the settlement.

In the summer, the members of a community split out into smaller sub-groups and spread over a large part of the plain to hunt, gather, and tend to the land. They don’t really farm, as such, but they manage some animal populations and woodlands and encourage useful plants, that sort of thing. Some also stay near the mountains and exploit the resources there. (There’s metal ores around, but the technology hasn’t really taken off in a big way quite yet.)

Another thing that happens during the summer is the upkeep of borders. Territories and paths between them are carefully delineated and marked. Groups are partly familial and partly based on a ridiculously complex role system, which is part gender, part astrology, and part profession. (They recognise three sexes — plus one, linguistically, for ‘unknown’ — and 4 or 5 ‘aspects’ on top of that which are associated with certain behaviours and character traits and determine how you’re supposed to dress, talk, and the role(s) you fill in society. I am unable of designing cultures without a shit-ton of restrictive rules to bother my characters with, apparently.) Each group owns territory collectively, made up of the land rights of each of its members, and all of the groups together make up the territory of the community. This isn’t necessarily one coherent stretch, but you don’t tend to get things like one community’s land completely surrounded by another’s.

Each group has a base camp within their territory, where they collect resources for the winter, occasionally meet to exchange news and goods with each other, and all come together at certain key points of the year. From there, the group splits off into even smaller, single-aspect groups, which go off to fulfil their various roles. (Oh, you’re also not meant to get with people of the same aspect, who are coincidentally the people you spend most of the summer with. Which is why the winter deity is not only in control of all the things that want to kill you, but also one of the patrons of romance and sexytimes.)

I haven’t entirely worked out how joining or leaving one group (due to exogamy or whatever) works, so shhhh. I’ll figure it out later. Child-rearing and inheritance are probably going to more or less communal affairs.

The coastal dudes are much more sedentary. The area is rich and relatively sheltered, so there’s not much of a need to disperse. They do move inland occasionally in cases of bad winter storms. Their social structure — as well as language and basic religion/cosmology — are the same as of the inland islanders, although the various roles to fill within the community are of course slightly different, and they have a greater marine focus. Some communities also build pile dwellings, especially the island ones. They do maintain the same customs regarding the upkeep of territorial rights and maintained of paths, and carry on a good deal of trade with the in-landers, who don’t have a lot of access to marine resources, since they don’t have any rights on easily accessible coast land.

That’s pretty much all I have on these guys for now, apart from a little bit of mythology, which I think I’ll save for a later post. Now I have to go draw some Homestuck fanart before I explode with fannish glee.

Mirrored from The Random Planet.

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Blog about Hay: check!

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:30:53 GMT

I have made a to-do list and am attempting to structure my life now there is no more school to do it for me.

Last weekend, Tim and I went to Hay-on-Wye to celebrate handing in my dissertation. It's a tiny village in a lovely countryside, and filled to the brim with bookstores. So basically heaven on Earth. I'd love to come back for a week sometime and mix the browsing with some hiking around the Welsh countryside, but for now I had an amazing time wandering from store to store.

I thought I was being relatively sensible with my book-buying, until it came to packing up everything for the bus and train ride home. Here's my pile of loot:

Including some that sounded cool, some I'd heard of and been meaning to buy, some which had pretty covers or interesting titles, and a few that sounded too hilarious to pass up. Like Less than Human by Charles Platt, featuring a cover illustration of a floating, glowing man in an Elvis-esque outfit, and the following blurb (in part):

HE WAS MANKIND'S LAST CHANCE. AND THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR IT. Burt is a trillion dollars worth of robot — with a ten-minute gap in his programming that renders him virtually useless to his creators. Still, since coming to Earth, he was managed to find a snappy new set of clothes, a cure for cancer, and a sixteen-year-old girlfriend.

How could I not give that book a loving new home.

I also picked up a few pick-your-own-adventure books, what appears to be a prehistoric fiction novel that isn't the Earth's Children series (always on the lookout for more of those), and a very intreseting-looking volume of literary theory/criticism called Strategies of Fantasy. I didn't intentionally stick only to SFF — I was looking for more non-fiction of various kinds, too — but somehow it worked out that way.

Well, I've been procrastinating on writing a cover-letter for an application to an archaeology fieldwork job... so I'll probably go do something else from my to do list.

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IT IS DONE

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:19:51 GMT

FINISHED

PRINTED

BOUND

HANDED IN,
AND
CELEBRATED

I have thoughts about the past year and plans for what I will do next, but for now I am gonna grab my book and read in bed.

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Dissertation progress continues apace.

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:59:07 GMT

Tim got me a little whiteboard and it calms my troubled mind.

I decided the other day that when I've handed in my dissertation, we're going to Hay-on-Wye for a weekend in celebration. Yeah, this place. It's going to be amazing.

I also finally saved up enough to buy my own 3DS, and this awesome decal so we can distinguish between the two that exist in this flat:

(I had this gif here, but looking at it makes my head hurt.)

Just one bossfight away from beating Ocarina of Time! And then I'm going to get ~~A Link To The Past~~ Link's Awakening (EDIT: I can't be expected to remember names at 1am after a day of dissertationing) from the download store, and I won't stop until I have all the Zeldas.

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Signal boost

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:41:01 GMT

(via von_geisterhand)

Non-native English celebration fest?

As long as this doesn't happen while I'm still buried under my dissertation, I am definitely up for it. I've already been looking for excuses to write in German occasionally, despite the fact that maybe two of my friends would be able to understand it.

And then we all get to find out how shamefully rusty my written German has become. But I'll probably enjoy it, anyway.

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Riots

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:18:44 GMT

You've probably heard that there's been rioting all over London, as well as some other cities. Just thought I'd post a quick note to say I'm alright. The shopping centre near us was looted (Tim, who stayed up all night watching the news, had a look around earlier and tweeted about the damage) but otherwise it was quiet.

I'm really pissed off, both at the people looting, and at all of the people commenting on this on the news harping on about what "pure, senseless criminality" it all was. No-one is excusing the people burning, stealing, and mugging, but just because it wasn't a political protest doesn't mean there aren't political and social underlying factors. Looking at the reasons doesn't make the things going on any less horrible and stupid, or the people perpetrating them any less at fault, but it means that maybe we can try to make people's lives better and make this less likely in the future. The demonisation of youth, poor people, and ethnic minorities people jump to so quickly make me rage.

Anyway, I'm going in to uni for a bit. I need to go to the library, and I want to visit Gay's the Word to buy a book in support after they had their window smashed in over the weekend. I'm going to head home around lunchtime, though, in case there are any transport disruptions later on.

Links that I've been getting my news from:

Google map of incidents
Live BBC stream
#LondonRiots hastag on twitter
Guardian live blogs for last night, and from this morning (haven't read the latter yet).

cobweb_diamond has some more links, as well.

Obviously be suitably sceptical towards any unconfirmed rumours.

I feel almost guilty about how much attention is being paid to this, when there's war and famine and other worse things elsewhere, and I'm not even affected apart from having to walk to a different grocery shop, but man. This is where I live. Feels weird.

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Dear Diary,

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 01:28:39 GMT

Bad night at the castle. After a very successful bit of mining in a new branch of the caverns that seem to make up the entirety of the peninsula (and beyond, like I discovered that one time I dug up to the ocean) I got over-confident and was overwhelmed in a dungeon full of skeletons and creepers. I went back to try to retrieve my tools and armour, but it looks like all of it fell into some lava when I died. Also I got myself killed again.

In adition, monsters have now re-infested all of the areas I made safe during this foray, as I discovered when I went in again to get out the 10 diamonds I had stashed in a nearby chest.

So I'm just gonna sulk in the courtyard and take pictures.

At daybreak it begins to rain. I'm sure this is somehow the skeletons' fault, as well.

Recently, I decided to start supplementing my pork and mushroom soup diet by farming. It's quite fun. Makes the place feel like a proper settlement.

The idea for the courtyard in the first place came because animals kept walking all over my fields and destroying the crop.

A little later, I make my way through the hill and climb my highest tower.

Someday soon I will make a boat and explore north, past the draw distance. But first I have to retrieve my diamonds and take revenge on those fucking skeletons.

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Film, TV, and theatre: collect them all!

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:40:46 GMT

First of all, there are some extremely important orders of business to discuss:

Look a this!
Ouran is getting a live-action drama! I am pretty excited about this. They could keep making adaptations of Ouran forever and I'd be happy.

Also this!
You really need to watch this one in HD, trust me. That hair. I am definitely seeing Brave in the cinema when it comes out.

And now for something that's already happened: some friends of mine and I went to see Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" at the Globe last week. I highly recommend going to see it if you get the chance! The acting was great, especially the two main characters (played by Paul Hilton and Arthur Darvill), and the sets, costumes, props etc were all just right for the atmosphere. (Hurray for eerie hell-creatures!) I was a bit... not wary exactly, but unsure going in, because although I knew the basic story I had no idea if I'd let myself in for a comedy, a tragedy, or a heavy philosophical treatise. In the end, though, it turned out to be the prefect balance of (generally slapstick) humour and dark creepiness and dread.

And walking out of the theatre we all agreed we wanted a BBC TV series of Faustus and Mephistopheles's wacky adventures.

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Slutwalk

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:18:32 GMT

[Image: an A4 piece of paper taped to a chest-high wall (someone tell me what these are actually called) pointing the way to the SlutWalk meetup.]

I went on the London SlutWalk last Saturday! Which was not, as some coverage would have you believe, an excuse to dress up in sexy clothes, but a protest against rape culture and the notion that only sluts get raped/all people who are raped are sluts, and the way people's clothes, background, and sexual history are used to let their abusers off the hook and I am not feeling very eloquent today GO READ THE WEBSITE. (I also liked this article about it in the Christian Science Monitor. No idea what the exact purview of the Christian Science Monitor is, but this is a really good article.)

Mainly this post is to show off the cool banners I managed to get pictures of:

[Image: A crowd with some banners. A large banner being held up by two sticks reading "End rape culture for all races and genders". IN front of it two smaller signs bearing the Socialist Worker logo and URL and the slogan: "Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes, no means no".]

(Do Socialist Worker just insert themselves into every protest? I saw so many of their signs around uni when the student protests were all going down.)

[Image: Another crowd, this time from behind. Large sign being held by two people in the foreground has an image of a bottle and wine or cocktail glass and reads "I DON'T LIKE rohypnol." Another legible sign in the background reads "Consent is sexy."]

[A single sign is visible, with the backs of others in the background: "My clothes are not LOUDER than my VOICE!"]

[A large cloth sign suspended from a metal frame. It reads: "Turn Off The Blue Light: Sex workers need human rights, not legal wrongs. www.turnoffthebluelight.ie]

[Image: A single sign visible in front of a section of the crowd reacting to the speeches at Trafalgar Square. it reads:" Why am I dressed like a SLUT? Why are YOU thinking like a RAPIST?"]

Also some of my favourites that I didn't get to take a picture of but managed to find on the internet: "I'm a bitch if I say no but I'm a slut if you rape me anyway!", You need permission to Slytherin to my Chamber of Secrets", and "River Song wouldn't stand for this shit!" The rest of the Flickr set is really good, too.

I intended to leave after the walk and get back to my dissertation work, but the speeches in Trafalgar Square, although I disagreed with one or two speakers on one or two points, were so good. I hope some of them end up online, because they were sogood. It's a good feeling to reaffirm that a lot of people who agree with you on things exist, sometimes.

A lot of great-sounding organisations were involved which I must find out more about the future, like Women Against Rape and GAPS.

I am 100% sure I will find a lot of spelling mistakes and weird sentences in this tomorrow, but I'm going to bed now.

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