Member Posts

Current Mood: grumpy

Entry tags:

school life

Final Projects Progress Report

Intro to Human Services:
Interview with a Human Services professional: Done
Reflection paper on interview, due Friday, Dec 5: ~~Not~~ started
Personal mission statement, due Friday, Dec 12: Not started

Social Problems:
Research a particular topic as a social problem: Done
Do a creative project based on your research: Mostly done, needs touch-ups
Write a paper about your research topic and your creative project: Not started (has a very detailed template I can probably just fill out as the paper)

Ceramics:
Interview with a living ceramicist: Done
Reflection paper on interview, due Sunday, Dec 7: ~~Mostly done~~ Done!
PowerPoint Presentation on interviewed ceramicist, due Sunday, Dec 7: Not started

I'm going to try and get the one interview reflection done tonight, and then take a break. (I'd aim for both, but they're both minimum two pages, and I'm not sure I have enough juice for that.) I want to go ahead and make the Paid Time for Mood Themes announcement on

moodthemeinayear, but alas, I must use my brain power for this, instead 😩

Edit: First reflection paper is done! Time to dig out my notes from the other interview and contemplate at least starting the second one.

Edit 2: Intro to HS reflection paper started, basics of getting paid time for mood theme completion posted to

moodthemeinayear 👍

Entry tags:

computer :-(

the inexorable passage of time and end of all things

For lo these many years (i.e. basically since I got a smartphone) I've been using Swype as an onscreen keyboard. Some time ago it was announced that it had reached end-of-life-and-support, but it wasn't until I went looking earlier today that I realised that happened in 2018, that being when I posted asking for suggestions for replacements.

And then I didn't think about it again for, apparently, approximately eight years, through several new phones and quite a lot of new major versions of Android... and then a few-ish weeks ago Fairphone rolled out Android 15 to the Fairphone 4 and alas That Was The End Of That.

Recommendations back in 2018 were for Gboard and Swiftkey; a question posted to reddit in 2022 garnered similar responses.

Since the Abrupt Keyboard Failure I've swapped to Gboard more or less by default. I don't hate the bit where language switching is now automatic (for the purposes of language learning apps, at any rate), but good grief I am missing the ability to e.g. type < or | without needing to go like three clicks deep in menus. Yes, when I have "Touch and hold keys for symbols" enabled -- as far as I can tell that only gives me one symbol per key, not "now select from a variety of them" as with the much-lamented Swype. I'm also missing the gestures I know for "yes, that word, but change the capitalisation", and still grumpily adjusting to the shift key mode cycle being in a different order to what I'm used to.

I've experimented briefly with AnySoftKey but rapidly got annoyed by the total lack of any Irish language pack (and how difficult it is to navigate the app listings to establish this fact). I'm trying to persuade myself that it's worth giving SwiftKey a try even though it (1) is now Microsoft, (2) has gone all-in on Bundling With Copilot, and (3) apparently "contains ads".

Eheu, alas, etc; all is woe; ... unless anyone knows of any other Android keyboards that provide ready access to All the punctuation...?

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FIC: From Daxis to Emor (Tempestuous Tours)

North of Border Port lies a beach. Its serene beauty belies its bloody history.

It is here that, on half a dozen occasions, the Daxions beat back the Emorian armies that were intent on conquering Daxis. Finally frustrated by all these attacks over the border, the Daxions undertook an amazing task of landscaping, bringing the Western Ocean several miles inland from where it had lain before. Once the Daxions were finished, their border with Emor had narrowed to a brief passageway between a mountain and the deep Ocean.

Guarding the border has been exceedingly simple since then. Indeed, on the one occasion on which Daxions permitted Emorian soldiers to cross the border – in 976, when Daxis agreed to allow the Emorians to travel south in order to attack the Koretian capital from its naked back – it took so long for Emor's vanguard to pass over the border, one horse at a time, that a concerned Koretian borderlander was able to alert Koretia's council in the south to the coming attack. Alas, his message was not heeded, and Koretia fell to the Emorians.

The Daxions, on the other hand, have not been attacked from the north since they persuaded the Ocean to guard them. Their true vulnerability lies now to the east, which is why Daxis attempts to maintain good relations with Koretia these days.

Because the border is so narrow, you will likely have to wait several hours to cross the border into Emor, during the busy season. You may wish to spend your time exploring the caves nearby.

[Translator's note: That narrow little border causes some trouble for travellers in Breached Boundaries.]

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winter break advent card

My card for the Winter Break Advent Challenge.

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promo post

current fandom events

12daysofchristmas is a multimedia multi fandom winter prompt based fest that runs from December 13-24th, with three options to choose from on each day.

mcu15 is a prompt table challenge focused on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

elasticella is running sapphic stocking stuffers, a multifandom multimedia f/f gifting event where you post your own "stocking" and fill others requests. Sign-ups are open until December 6th and fills are open until Dec 31st.

rarefemslashexchange (:D :D :D), a fic/art exchange for rare f/f ships (less than 250 works, complete, in English, using the otp:true filter), is accepting nominations until December 10th, 10PM PST.

polyamships is running Pass That Blorbo: Holiday Edition, a prompt challenge where you try to figure out how to pass that blorbo in as many ways as possible. Sign-ups are open until December 19th, 8:00PM (GMT-4).

Blood Drive is an event encouraging people to donate blood, plasma, or other blood products, register as a donor for bone marrow, organs, research, or other donor programs, and/or facilitating a blood drive by volunteering, organizing, or other kinds of help. If you do those things in December or January, you can leave a prompt to be claimed. :)

Holiday Love Meme is back for another year! :)

✨ holiday love meme 2025 ✨
my thread here

genprompt_bingo, a multimedia multifandom bingo that has "gen" prompts, is open for Round 29 sign-ups.

comment_bingo (:D), a bingo challenge where you used the provided prompts to comment on existing fanworks rather than create your own, is opened for Round 8 Sign-Ups. Click on the banner below to find out more and request a card! :)

blue background containing community name and goal with various social media and commenting symbols

fancake's theme of the month is: amnesty. Click on the banner below to learn more!

Photograph of the aurora borealis taken in Norway, text: Amnesty, at Fancake. The northern lights are a bright green scribble that stretches over the horizon, along a snowy mountain ridge, and up into the starry night sky.

Entry tags:

journal entries

what the heck am i struggling for?

18 year old me could've done this sick and lying in bed. how the hell have i fallen so far

Entry tags:

visualising

rennovating project part two

my household suffers from shitty storage solutions rather than anything else. it's kinda depressing to watch my parents argue over how overcrowded and cluttered things are when there's nowhere for things to go and horribly mismatching furniture. it's painful. i'll ask my father for a budget and i'll rennovate things myself. the planning and executing are things they can't do. i can't promise the best job ever, but i am actually the only one in this house that's remotely capable.
* donating what furniture charity shops will accept (only selling the tv if deciding to buy a new one, in the sake of time-efficiency)
* arranging pick-up for furniture that need to be thrown away
* visiting ikea to double check what i want (push-closed or handles?)
* painting office possible green? something to match the plants i want to put in this room.
* installing a wall-length bookshelf in the office
* moving books from around the house into it, moving dishware and china into the glass sections, moving my father's things into the drawers, the cat's food, stuff from underneath the cupboard
* switching out this cupboard in the kitchen to something from upstairs and adding doors to it
whether the bookshelf is white or oak, i guess i'll think about. i want to complete this in a tight timeframe

Current Mood: creative

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Checking in from Miami, flying in from over the pole....

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

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UPDATE: Flight Through the Forest (The Motley Crew #2) + Thousand Nations early access fiction

ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, pdf, and xhtml)

Free at my website.

The Motley Crew (The Thousand Nations). When a young man named Dolan flees from the north, he faces danger on all sides. The Northern Army wants him back. The Empire of Emor wants him dead. His native homeland of Koretia may not want him at all. And his only protection is a man with motives that are mysterious and possibly deadly.

New installment:

2 | Flight Through the Forest. When you're fleeing from high danger, you have little choice in your companions.

EARLY ACCESS

My readers at Patreon and Ream get the first look at Twisted (The Thousand Nations: The Motley Crew side story). That short story will go into general release next month.

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

New installments:

Royal chapel.

Ambassador's Balcony.

Introduction to the borderland.

Border Port.

NEWS & UPCOMING FICTION

As some of you already know, I posted last month's update two days after I tripped on an uneven sidewalk, banged my head three times against a metal fence, and acquired a concussion, not to mention a broken leg. (I consider that update to be one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.)

Unfortunately, the concussion delayed my completion of "Heir" and its accompanying Blood Vow omnibus, since putting together an omnibus requires a concentrated mind I just don't have at the moment. I've moved those two projects to next year's schedule. In their place, I've juggled my release schedule in order to offer my Ream and Patreon readers a side story this month from The Motley Crew.

The timing of my next e-book installment release is a little uncertain at the moment, since my recovering head is still at the stage where, every time I edit a story, I introduce more errors than I correct. However, I hold out hope that I'll be able to get a new e-book installment out in January. In the meantime, as you can see, I'm continuing to bring out blog fiction.

Fortunately, the concussion hasn't stopping me from writing stories. Among other things, I've finished composing Motley Mayhem, the third novel in the Thousand Nations series.

( Ways to offer me a tip, financial or nonfinancial )

Entry tags:

journal entries

joy and discontent

it's an unfortunate thing -- my words all coming out wrong, stuttering through sentences, all of my efforts to be someone articulate (by writing, reading, describing) only to be left with the inability to express myself or anything. it's unfortunate i present myself how i do -- unaware of what's flattering and not, inexperienced on being girly enough for my own standards, even after all my efforts. it's disappointing that i don't implement the right standard for my own studies, lives can be changed by achieving high grades and i've forgotten that. it's disappointing i'm not making progress with my strength, not putting in the right amount of time. but i'm not endlessly wasting time, it's more that i'm not focusing where i need to. you can get very far on less, and i'm not thinking there. i could not spend money, i could sit in my room and just study. i can go to my garage and just work out. i can take care of what i have. i should make a plan for the next month, really. highlight the most important things, follow along. oh, brother.

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Holidailies catch-up post

("The earth is doomed" is probably going to be my default icon at least as long as Trump stays president.)

I've had a kind of eventful couple of months - mainly because my car got stolen. Turns out Kia's are easy to steal, who knew. (Well, I actually did know that by the time this happened, but I didn't know it before I bought the car!) So dealing with that was, um, not fun. BUT the police found the car - all the thief had done to it was rip out the ignition, along with a bit of body damage. It's all fixed now, and we just had to pay the deductible, of course. And I got a call a week or so ago saying they even caught the guy who stole it. Hope he's enjoying the county jail.

We went over to my sister's for Thanksgiving and watched movies - a couple of movies Rob had seen earlier this year, "Companion" and "Drop" - his tastes and mine don't always line up, but I liked both of those, and so did everybody else, fortunately.

P. (my sister) wanted me to come back over Friday so we could watch the UT-A&M game, but I had to work. (She went to A&M & I went to UT, so rivalry week is always interesting.) A&M was ranked #3 and we were like, 15, so I said if I was a person who bet on sports I'd've been betting on A&M - which I guess is why I don't bet, because UT won, go figure. P. was trying hard to be a good sport about it, and I was trying hard not to rub it in too much, so we got through it without any major sisterly drama.

Current Mood: ecstatic

Entry tags:

mood theme year

Incoherent keysmash goes here

Ah. So. Um.

I have just been officially gifted a whoooole bunch of Dreamwidth points to reward as I see fit to participants at

moodthemeinayear, just to encourage more creativity and participation and stuff. With instructions to ask for more if I run out, and also to encourage anyone who makes a qualifying mood theme to consider submitting it to be site-supported. (And also I'm maybe being informally recruited to be the/an official Dreamwidth mood theme uploader person???)

I need. To take some time to think about how I would award these points.

(Initial idea: One month of paid time for anyone who completes just the Minimum Track, three months for anyone who completes the Medium Track, and one year for anyone who completes the Maximum Track, but like. Given that the community is supposed to be low-stress and low-pressure and allow participants to drift in and out, maybe I should instead do "One month of paid time for each Part/eighteen moods completed"? And then throw in some bonus paid time for anyone who completes the Maximum Track and/or submits a mood theme to be site-supported? Hrrrmmmmm...)

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: RM "Seoul"

Entry tags:

holiday fun,
wtf

Dept. of Where the Hell Are They?

Help!

As probably most of you know, I normally enter a Holiday and Christmas card writing frenzy around this time of year. Last year I didn't, since the outcome of Nov. 5 depressed me so badly.

This year I decided to revive the tradition; I'm not going to let Cheetoh ruin another holiday season for me. And for the most part, writing and addressing cards has been as much fun as it always was.

Just one problem: my Gmail contacts list has turned wonky, and I've lost way too many of the addresses I've used to send y'all cards in the past.

So, in the spirit of beating whatever the hell group of gremlins invaded my contacts, and more importantly, in the spirit of sending cards to everyone to whom I've sent cards before, can I ask folks to give me their IRL addresses? If you're not comfortable with that, could you send me an email address to which I can send an e-holiday card?

If you're ok with that, just DM me. You will make this old blue-haired broad very happy.

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vital functions

vital functions is once again a placeholder

... to be expanded on tomorrow. <3

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

art,
mood themes

Cloudy Daze Mood Theme

Dunno when I'll be able to submit it for consideration as an official mood theme, but in the mean time, here's a preview: ( 117 Cloud Moods )

Anyway, if you want to get a jump on things, here's a downloadable .zip of all of the above moods, plus a super secret alternate version of Quixotic!

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dreamwidth

It's been a hard year

✨ holiday love meme 2025 ✨
my thread here

Current Mood: productive

Entry tags:

school work

Social Problems Projects

For our final project in Social Problems, we have to pick something we think is a social problem, find research on it, then turn our findings into a creative project with accompanying one-page paper.

Luckily, the paper has a very thorough template where pretty much all I'll need to do is write one sentence per prompt and I'll be done; I think I've done okay with picking my problem and doing my research, so now what I need to do is to turn said problem into a creative project.

The problem I've chosen is infosec/(lack of) privacy in the age of Big AI; I think I'm going to make a board game about the dangers of not having secure information?

I'm planning to go very simple: A space-by-space game board (think Candyland), and movement by D6. Part of me really, really wants to go over-the-top and come up with a token system (when you land on a marked space, you draw a card, and based on that card you either pay or receive a Privacy Token; the goal would be to make it to the end of the path with the most tokens, and if you lose all of them, you're out of the game), but that's probably too ambitious for right now.

Honestly, I'll take something closer to a Snakes and Ladders approach, where landing on a marked card has you moving forward or backwards extra spaces depending on whether the space has good or bad infosec practices. I may still need to look up some game theory to figure out how often I should place which spaces, but it's much less than if I go with the cards-and-tokens route. Probably less fun as well, but this isn't exactly the only final project I have to do this semester...

Anyway! Time to come up with a list of good and bad infosec practices and think about where they'd need to appear on a board game!

[pain] oh this book is bad

The terrible hyphenation one can reasonably attribute to a failure to invest in subject specialist proof readers (or possibly any proof readers at all, good grief).

The wildly ahistorical nonsense about the history of medicine? Less so. I begin to understand why there isn't a references section, and I've only made it as far as page 7 before needing to stop and shriek about it and also stare at a wall for a bit...

[pain] a strong contender for The Worst Possible Hyphenation

Spotted in today's book, with just as much of a medical theme as you might reasonably expect:

... biopsy-
chosocial...

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Anna Meredith - Blackfriars

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Definitely More of an Autumn vibe

So, yes, I am in fact writing these out of order, but writing the last one made me think about this album and as it was also gig related I thought it was a natural companion piece to follow up with. So this album choice was a result of two different gigs. As noted previously I went to see the Scottish Ensemble and Anna Meredith doing their collaborative album Anno at the Barbican at the end of September, and then at the end of October I went to see the Scottish Ensemble here in the Inverness again. To my intense amusement, working with Anna Meredith again had clearly reminded the ensemble how much they enjoy playing her work, because the whole second half of the Inverness gig was pieces by Anna Meredith re-arranged for string ensemble. Mostly from her first electronic album Varmints - the lead violin noted with clear irony before they played Nautilus that that piece had been intended as a clear break from her previous orchestral work - and having experienced it as something akin to a transcendental experience - I virtually floated home afterwards - obviously I had to go and actually listen to the album in question.

I didn’t initially love this album, despite it being much more what I was expecting from Anna Meredith - before I encountered Anno I knew her mostly from her film scoring work - but as I’ve continued to listen to it across the last month, I’ve come to the conclusion that I like it more the further away from the gig I get. For example, I can now listen to Blackfriars and feel it’s glorious rhythms combine happily with my memories of my recent holiday in London, of standing outside Blackfriars station at rush hour, hearing bells and clocks striking all over the place, feeling the ebb and flow of traffic around me and the rumble of the tube below - I have a whole bunch of field recordings I made in and around that tube station - and think, yes, that part of London does indeed feel like that. I also feel like I’ve been able to fall in love with Nautilus and Scrimshaw all over again in their own right, without constantly comparing them negatively with their reimagined versions. (Honestly I want to hear Nautilus re-arranged for brass a la that Hannah Peel album I wrote about earlier this year.) I do think I need to go see Anna Meredith live in her own right next time she’s touring, because I think her work really lends itself to live performance, to variations on a theme and interacting with visuals and graphics, a proper multimedia experience. However, now that I’ve got enough distance from the gig, I can happily also enjoy it, lying on the sofa with low winter light and just the fairy lights on, through big headphones and let it transport me to other places.