Before I forget for the thousandth time
Aug. 28th, 2006 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaScreencaps abetting this stroke of genius kindly provided by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beeblebabe and marici. Feel free to take/distribute with credit, btw. XD
Have been working on the computer in increments, since Wednesday. Somewhat to my pessimistic surprise it went off with only the most minor of hitches, even the SP2 upgrade (luckily; the disc was scratched and the last bunch of security updates failed cyclical redundancy check - Ced, I inform you so you know to burn yourself a new one. *g* I've made a copy and will hand this back to you whenever is good. &thanks; you saved me 1,000,000 years of downloading over dial-up). So now the USB 2.0 card is working properly, the DVD burner burns DVDs, the antivirus and firewall are up-to-date, and I've upgraded all the software from WinRAR to Dreamweaver to the CCCP Codec Pack to the .NET Framework (I can install ljArchive at home!). Still to go are camera and mp3 player software, Semagic, and chat programs. Ced gave me Gaim so I'll probably be using that. In the meantime you'll actually be able to find me on Gmail chat in the evenings now.
As apparent from the above life has been fascinating. I was so bored waiting for programs to download and/or install that I used the Win98 computer to sign up for writely.com and archive my ancient saved email/chat convos (z107m, serendip, there if you're interested. :P). It's an awesome utility I wish existed back when I was doing team projects at school. As it is I'm not sure I'll be using it all that extensively, unless it be for Monday mornings on which I mislay the USB data key containing all my WIPs, cough.
...Unless I set something up for SSBB submission? Must investigate.
I also finally finished reading Conrad's Fate. It doesn't feel overlong or unwieldy to me at all, but I have a fascination for large and well-ordered households, organisational details thereof, that the book itself obviously delights in - something of a Jewel in the Palace vibe. At one point I developed a horrifying mental image of Christopher and Conrad rushing about in those pink and blue outfits worn by the little scullery maids. =_= In that sense the narrative ends on a note of subdued melancholy: oh whither the Stately Homes of Yore? Down the probability sinkhole of inheritance taxes, in this universe.
Something of a content-reflects-form-reflects-content process that happens with the Chrestomanci books, Shadow of the Wind-style: all those series of related Europes, multiplicity of Englands, the books themselves an amalgamation of reflections paying homage to Englands found in other books, echo stacked upon echo stacked upon echo... For Conrad's Fate the most distinct vibration set (so to speak) was Dorothy Sayers, for me, but for someone else it'd be something else.
The denouement is one of the clearer ones, though still full of yells and revelations and crowds rushing about. I think I've mentioned somewhere that the JoJo ends-of-arcs give me the same feeling, which probably means that someone needs to do a step-by-step stick-figure animation of the last bit of Howl's Moving Castle for public edification.
What else? Worked half-day on Saturday for the release then went to the Botanical Garden, as haven't been all summer. Met a cheerful middle-aged Yugoslavian man eating haws right off the hawthorn tree. They were quite delicious although I hear they have laxative properties in large doses so dunno what happened to him after that. XD; Other pesticides sampled include: rose hips, blackberries, blackcurrants (still not ripe wtf), cranberries (okay, I'm not dumb enough to eat those right off the plant), lovage, Vietnamese basil (which is spicy). Non-edibles in season: acorns, horse chestnuts, rowan berries, lotus (they do smell a little like the bpal note >_>). Did not eat anyone's vegetable plot. Took many photos of flowers and one disturbingly tame heron. All the lanterns have been installed in the Chinese garden already, and the Japanese garden's koi pond is filled with baby koi - you couldn't scoop out a cupful of water that didn't contain tiny fish, just big enough to show their markings. I wonder if they bother to sell them?
Of course there was a wedding (a Jamaican one, I think). They've sawn off the willow branch on which I used to lie and read Swinburne, but the weddings go on unchanging. XD
Haven't gotten any writing done, of course. Dear saints I don't wanna.
beeblebabe and marici. Feel free to take/distribute with credit, btw. XDHave been working on the computer in increments, since Wednesday. Somewhat to my pessimistic surprise it went off with only the most minor of hitches, even the SP2 upgrade (luckily; the disc was scratched and the last bunch of security updates failed cyclical redundancy check - Ced, I inform you so you know to burn yourself a new one. *g* I've made a copy and will hand this back to you whenever is good. &thanks; you saved me 1,000,000 years of downloading over dial-up). So now the USB 2.0 card is working properly, the DVD burner burns DVDs, the antivirus and firewall are up-to-date, and I've upgraded all the software from WinRAR to Dreamweaver to the CCCP Codec Pack to the .NET Framework (I can install ljArchive at home!). Still to go are camera and mp3 player software, Semagic, and chat programs. Ced gave me Gaim so I'll probably be using that. In the meantime you'll actually be able to find me on Gmail chat in the evenings now.
As apparent from the above life has been fascinating. I was so bored waiting for programs to download and/or install that I used the Win98 computer to sign up for writely.com and archive my ancient saved email/chat convos (
z107m, serendip, there if you're interested. :P). It's an awesome utility I wish existed back when I was doing team projects at school. As it is I'm not sure I'll be using it all that extensively, unless it be for Monday mornings on which I mislay the USB data key containing all my WIPs, cough....Unless I set something up for SSBB submission? Must investigate.
I also finally finished reading Conrad's Fate. It doesn't feel overlong or unwieldy to me at all, but I have a fascination for large and well-ordered households, organisational details thereof, that the book itself obviously delights in - something of a Jewel in the Palace vibe. At one point I developed a horrifying mental image of Christopher and Conrad rushing about in those pink and blue outfits worn by the little scullery maids. =_= In that sense the narrative ends on a note of subdued melancholy: oh whither the Stately Homes of Yore? Down the probability sinkhole of inheritance taxes, in this universe.
Something of a content-reflects-form-reflects-content process that happens with the Chrestomanci books, Shadow of the Wind-style: all those series of related Europes, multiplicity of Englands, the books themselves an amalgamation of reflections paying homage to Englands found in other books, echo stacked upon echo stacked upon echo... For Conrad's Fate the most distinct vibration set (so to speak) was Dorothy Sayers, for me, but for someone else it'd be something else.
The denouement is one of the clearer ones, though still full of yells and revelations and crowds rushing about. I think I've mentioned somewhere that the JoJo ends-of-arcs give me the same feeling, which probably means that someone needs to do a step-by-step stick-figure animation of the last bit of Howl's Moving Castle for public edification.
What else? Worked half-day on Saturday for the release then went to the Botanical Garden, as haven't been all summer. Met a cheerful middle-aged Yugoslavian man eating haws right off the hawthorn tree. They were quite delicious although I hear they have laxative properties in large doses so dunno what happened to him after that. XD; Other pesticides sampled include: rose hips, blackberries, blackcurrants (still not ripe wtf), cranberries (okay, I'm not dumb enough to eat those right off the plant), lovage, Vietnamese basil (which is spicy). Non-edibles in season: acorns, horse chestnuts, rowan berries, lotus (they do smell a little like the bpal note >_>). Did not eat anyone's vegetable plot. Took many photos of flowers and one disturbingly tame heron. All the lanterns have been installed in the Chinese garden already, and the Japanese garden's koi pond is filled with baby koi - you couldn't scoop out a cupful of water that didn't contain tiny fish, just big enough to show their markings. I wonder if they bother to sell them?
Of course there was a wedding (a Jamaican one, I think). They've sawn off the willow branch on which I used to lie and read Swinburne, but the weddings go on unchanging. XD
Haven't gotten any writing done, of course. Dear saints I don't wanna.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 05:24 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed Conrad's Fate and I too love those types of stories set in the sort of... microsociety of a giant house or castle etc where there is an outside world visited by the characters but also the "internal" world where the politics and society is very structured and specific... I have always liked organization though. XD; (not so much politics, since I do not think in a machiavellian manner myself as I explained re: jojo and why I can't write giogio or the mafia, so while I find it interesting, I can't identify or something...)
I like books with a lot of threads that all come rushing together for a big nonsense conclusion with people rushing about up and down sekrit passages and with the key to the whole business passing from person to person in a chaotic manner which nonetheless eventually all comes to light as everyone gathers in one place... XD Have you read "Mairelon the Magician" by Patricia Wrede? I think it may be my favorite book by her and I do luv those Enchanted Forest Chronicles (MENDANBAR FTW!!!! Oh bookcrushes of childhood... sigh~)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:57 pm (UTC)I've loved these books since I was like... 12... so your milage may vary, but GET THEE TO A LIBRARY ANYHOW. God wtf.
She's most well known for the "Enchanted Forest Chronicles" which is a quartet of books, the first 2 of which are excellent and the last 2 of which are readable. Basically the plot of the first book ("Dealing With Dragons") is that a gawky princess who her family is having difficulty marrying off is sent to be a "dragon's princess" which more or less involves being the dragon's maid till a knight comes to rescue her (... which will then obligate him to marry her). However, she doesn't want to marry some tard and would rather just live with the dragon, which is a nice lady dragon named Kazul. It's cute. Features your usual spunky tomboy heroine, silly/fond turnings of fantasy cliches on their ears (evil wizards melt in soapy water WITH LEMON IN), etc.
In the second book ("Searching For Dragons" I believe? They're all "____ For/With Dragons") Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest, meets the princess from the first book; they are both investigating mysterious dragon scales. Magic carpet road trip ensues.
"Mairelon the Magician" is a book set in a sort of Victorian AU wherein a street thief meets a performing magician who goes around busking in a little wagon... of course she finds he is in fact a real magician and seems to have a mysterious past as well, and because she has useful skillz such as picking locks etc, he takes her with him and they run around the countryside doing silly things like breaking into people's libraries, crashing dinner parties, and interrupting "druidic" meetings (read: bored aristocratic youth poncing around in cloaks). This is a fun book IMHO and probably more like the average DWJ book, I suppose... it also has a very blah sequel which you would only want to read if you really like this book and would like to read a novel-length romance epilogue. Which I did, because I'm a squishy shoujo fangirl at heart, but it would have been a very dull and confusing book if I had not read this one first.
Also on the YA front the "Stravaganza" series (currently 3 books I think, I'm getting them from the library) which piqued my interest in Italy a year or two ago before I ever read Jojo. (Italy has been EXTREMELY PROMINENT in tons of things I have read in the last year and a half... none of the things are related so I don't know why it happened, but the result is that I really want to go there. XD;) Basically these books are set in an AU renaissance (? time periods are not something I'm good at) version of Italy; the Empress rules from the AU Naples and the "Stravaanti" are people who can go between our world and the AU world. The main character is a dying kid with leukemia. XD; And the books are totally girly. The main chara is described with luv as a bishounen, basically, and he meets a strong-willed girl blah blah blah, and the AU world features silver everywhere our world would have gold, and there are flying horses and everything is flower and butterfly-themed... It's better than it sounds, I swear. XD;;;;;
Obviously if you haven't read Clive Barker's Abarat books you need a beating. (I have the full-color illust versions... I don't know if there are non-color or non-illustrated versions, but if there are, DO NOT BOTHER because you will be missing out.)
REPOST, typos
Date: 2006-08-28 08:49 pm (UTC)Re: REPOST, typos
Date: 2006-08-29 03:18 pm (UTC)Re: REPOST, typos
Date: 2006-08-29 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:01 pm (UTC)Tempting, but living in the US and having the NSA looking over my shoulder, I'm pretty uncomfortable about archiving things online. Not that they're not already analyzing my internet activity. :b
Haven't gotten any writing done, of course. Dear saints I don't wanna.
Funny, feeling the same way about that dissertation proposal about now... -_-;;
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:21 pm (UTC)Like I said yesterday, the easiest way to not want to write something is to prioritize it...
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:42 pm (UTC):b
*waves hello to the men in the dark suits*