(no subject)

Sep. 8th, 2025 05:06 pm
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
Is it possible for FB to choose specific accounts and slooooooooooow them down? If so, I'm a target. My FB constantly reloads, eats posts, and runs slower than when I used a 300-baud modem, back in the 90s.

sigh

... back to working on my list of nominations for Yuletide.
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

When I sat down to write last night, I noticed that the last time I had left off working on this particular story, I had ended with a character brushing her teeth and going to bed. I knew that I had mentioned characters brushing their teeth before (enough that A. had commented on it), so I got curious as to just how much my characters brush their teeth. I searched all my story files for the word "teeth," then looked through those hits to see how many of them refer to brushing their teeth, as opposed to anything else characters might do with their teeth. I found 23 occurrences of characters brushing their teeth (gritting was a distant second tooth-related activity, with eight occurrences). Dividing my lifetime fiction production by this means that my characters brush their teeth, on average, every 63,000 words. I'm pretty sure this is high, but (obviously) I've never seen this statistic from another writer. It's a meaningless statistic, but since I could calculate it, I did. And then, having done so, I decided to share it with you. Have a great day!

Clarke Award Finalists 2013

Sep. 8th, 2025 10:28 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2013: The Tories masterfully tank the UK credit rating, a grateful nation celebrates Margaret Thatcher’s death, and Scotland inexplicably chooses to remain in the UK.


Poll #33586 Clarke Award Finalists 2013
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6


Which 2013 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
1 (16.7%)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
4 (66.7%)

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
1 (16.7%)

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
0 (0.0%)

Nod by Adrian Barnes
1 (16.7%)

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
0 (0.0%)



✓ for read, * for intend to read, ! for never heard of it. Or whatever amuses you.

Which 2013 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson ✓
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway ✓
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
Nod by Adrian Barnes
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Mix Me a Strong One

Sep. 7th, 2025 09:52 pm
billroper: (Default)
[personal profile] billroper
Today's mixing session in the studio was followed by a long, long drive to get dinner and listen to the tracks, because the 23 tracks on the album add up to a total of one hour and 52 minutes before any trimming. This feels like a robust enough length and the tracks are mostly sounding good, so there's not a lot more work to do -- other than trying to figure out the track order for each CD.

*That* could take a while, so I'd better get started. :)

Baseball Is a Funny Game

Sep. 6th, 2025 10:12 pm
billroper: (Default)
[personal profile] billroper
The Cardinals just got the second-best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

This is because the Orioles (who *used* to be from St. Louis) got the best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

The Cardinals were trailing the Giants 2-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Their offense all night had been an exercise in futility. They proceeded to load the bases with no one out, got a single to score one run, followed by a double to plate two more, and suddenly they had won the game by a final of 3-2.

Pretty good, no?

But the Orioles had them beat. They were trailing the Dodgers 3-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Yamamoto was pitching a *no-hitter* against them. There were two outs -- one out away from the no-hitter -- when Jackson Holliday hit a solo shot to make the score 3-1 and end Yamamoto's night. The next pitcher gave up a double, a hit-by-pitch, and a walk to load the bases, followed by another walk to make the score 3-2. It was now time for yet another new pitcher who gave up a two-run single on his third pitch to the next batter. If you are counting, you realize that this makes the score 4-3 for an Orioles win.

Quick Pitch will be interesting tonight.

ETA: Apparently, the Associated Press had the story on Yamamoto's no-hitter ready to go, because here is the headline that just arrived from the Post-Dispatch:

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws third career no-hitter, first in MLB

Oops!

I hear that Dewey defeated Truman too.

Progress Report

Sep. 6th, 2025 10:01 pm
billroper: (Default)
[personal profile] billroper
I have now got remixes for half of the "Amy & Me" album.

I have also replaced eight of the seven vocal tracks that I intended to replace. This is because the amount of P-popping on the Chambanacon recording of "Counting Up" was about to make me insane. And since it turns out that we *also* went in direct on both guitar and fiddle for that concert, swapping out the vocal track was an option.

The Chambanacon tracks were the first ones that I mixed down when I started playing with this idea last year, so they require the most massaging to get them into the shape that the latest tracks are in. The good news is that I'm getting better at this as I go along.

And that's important, since I still have half the set to go!

Anyway, if you have picked up any of the original versions on Bandcamp, trust that the album will be different when released. :)

I was bored

Sep. 6th, 2025 02:04 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
So I rolled up a bunch of Icons characters. Mostly boring, but this one is at least mildly amusing.

Doctor* Shawinigan**

Read more... )
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Five books new to me, at least four of which are fantasy (not sure about the El-Mohtar) and three instalments in series.

Books Received, August 30 — September 5


Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39


Books Received, August 30 — September 5

View Answers

Lies Weeping by Glen Cook (November 2025)
21 (53.8%)

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (March 2026)
24 (61.5%)

The River and the Star By Gabriela Romero Lacruz (October 2025)
7 (17.9%)

The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers (November 2025)
15 (38.5%)

The Burning Queen by Aparna Verma (November 2025)
9 (23.1%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
27 (69.2%)

Watching "Kpopped" on Apple TV.

Sep. 5th, 2025 02:49 pm
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[personal profile] brithistorian

Yesterday I started watching Kpopped, the new song competition show that blends K-pop and Western artists. I watched the first two episodes last night, and I'm really enjoying it. I think the format is really great — everyone has fun because the stakes are so low. Each episode follows the same format:

  1. A K-pop group is split in half.
  2. Each half of the group works with a Western artist to create and perform a "K-popified" version of one of that artist's songs.
  3. The in-studio audience votes on the winning group.
  4. Immediately after the winning group is announced, the two halves of the K-pop group are reunited to perform one of the group's songs along with the Western artists.

There are no penalties for losing, no prizes for winning. Just performance and comradery between musicians.

The two episodes I've watched so far are:

  1. Half of Billlie performs "Savage" with Megan Thee Stallion, the other half performs "Lady Marmalade" with Patti LaBelle.
  2. Both halves of Itzy perform with Emma Bunton and Mel B from the Spice Girls. One group performs "Wannabe" and the other performs "Be As One."

A recurring theme is the Western artists having trouble learning the K-pop choreography. (Except for Patti LaBelle — out of respect for her age, they had her stay still and everyone danced around her.)

Merge It

Sep. 5th, 2025 09:39 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
I have merged the "big" project that my coworker and I have been heads down on for the last several weeks into the "huge" project that we calved it off from. The code for a couple of subsystems has been substantially cleaned up and a number of new features added, as I kept proposing small bits of additional feature creep while we were in the area. These were features that our customers were asking for, so I don't feel bad about this particular creep.

The huge project is moving toward release and now our changes have joined this giant barge as we maneuver it towards the locks. This is a good feeling. :)

About riding a pegasus

Sep. 5th, 2025 01:47 pm
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[personal profile] brithistorian

I'm currently reading Dragons of the Autumn Twilight[^1] by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and it's given me a question about riding pegasi. I had always pictured pegasus riders as sitting behind the wings, probably leaning forward and holding on the bases of the wings. But in chapter 12, when the characters have to ride pegasi, Weis and Hickman explicitly describe them as "sitting in front of the powerful wings." This seems to make sense, because it would put the riders in front of the flapping of the wings (and the powerful gusts of wind that the wings would create), but at the same time it seems problematic from a point of view of equine anatomy, because it doesn't seem like there would be room for a rider to be in front of the wings. And as I write this post, I find myself wondering if there's really something here, or if I've just been struck by an oddly chosen word that the authors wrote and then never looked back at.[^2]

When you think about humanoids riding on pegasi, where do you imagine them relative to the wings?

[^1] I missed reading the Dragonlance books back when they were new, but I was recently able to grab a huge mob of them as ebooks from Humble Bundle and I'm enjoying them. It's brutally obvious (at least in the first book, which this is) that they're the result of someone recording their D&D campaign as a novel, but they're still fun to read. [^2] It doesn't help matters that the pegasi use magical/psychic powers to put the characters to sleep as soon as they take off, in order to keep them from freaking out during the course of the ride.[^3] [^3] Which then opens up the question of how unconscious humanoids stay on the pegasi's backs. Do the pegasi have magic for that as well?

First Class

Sep. 4th, 2025 09:19 pm
billroper: (Default)
[personal profile] billroper
Calvin the Dog went to his first puppy class today with Julie acting as his primary handler. Some progress was made there and tactics provided, so that was all good.

Then we got home and Calvin promptly peed on the floor once and pooped on the floor twice.

*sigh*

Win some, lose some.
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The malevolent Hierarchs are dead. The only way to learn about them is archaeology. The only thing worse than archaeologists not finding the relics of evil sorcerers is finding relics of evil sorcerers.

Queen Demon (The Rising World, volume by Martha Wells
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

When I read about the Ndlovu Youth Choir translating "Bohemian Rhapsody" into Zulu, of course I had to go check it out right away. I was absolutely blown away. Listening to the song is amazing, but then watching the video is just a whole other level. It's like a song that doesn't even belong in our universe somehow crossed over from its home to show us an alternate world we could have.

Direct link to Youtube (in case the embedding goes bad) is here

Two Down, One to Go

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:51 pm
billroper: (Default)
[personal profile] billroper
I recorded replacement vocals for two of the three tracks for "Amy & Me" tonight, leaving one to go. Yay, me!

Recording the final track won't happen tomorrow night, because the priority mission is taking Calvin the Dog to his first puppy obedience training lesson. I have my fingers crossed, recognizing that no miracle will happen in one lesson. Right now, I just need the puppy to stop terrorizing my younger child...

One of the other things I did this evening was to remove the X-Touch Extender that refused to power up at all when I was in the studio on Monday and replace it with an open-box X-Touch Extender that arrived today. Happily, it has powered up correctly and is doing the things that a working piece of gear does.

I am still not sure what part inside the older piece of gear went wonky, but it is surely not something that I have time to look into right now, because I have an album to finish. :)

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