naath

On Saturday I ran parkrun faster than ever before, which may have something to do with swapping to non-flappy trousers because I felt like shit with an incipient cold which I don't THINK should be good for my running time...

Then I did some OU work which was mostly (that is, "most of the first half of the TMA" rather than "most of the course" the second half looked harder, but I didn't do it this week) answering pointless questions about entirely pointless crap (like "write 100 words on what 'concurrency' means" - well, dude, it's a common English word and besides this is a third year course in Computing, is it even possible to get to this level and NOT know this?). Cambridge never made me answer pointless questions to get a degree (just really hard ones I couldn't do), do other universities do this? anyway, I want the degree so I'm going to write the pointless crap down but, really, is this what passes for third year level work?

I made CAKE and went off to jack's for a partay where there were lots of cool people and an argument that turned into a debate so it wouldn't turn into a YELLING MATCH and also CAKE (nom).

On Sunday I tried to make chilli-con-carne from a recipe in the Green and Blacks book and it says "simmer for 90mins" and it was burnt onto the bottom of the pan after 10. NOT IMPRESSED. The non-burnt parts tasted OK though, so not a total write off.

Then Bridge playing people turned up and we played Bridge for hours and hours and hours (7-very late)! Which was great fun. There were 9 bridge players although C & K were taking turns playing bridge and caring for J who is a toddler; 3 of the bridge players were novices (to the extent that the rules needed explaining) and there was a lot of switching people around so there wasn't a score at the end to tell us who won (we kept score for the physical positions, mostly just because keeping score is part of the game, but that isn't attached to any of the people). And then K went home with B and J so there were 7 bridge players, which meant we had to play jumping dummy (which worked poorly because we were synchronised in no sense at all) and then other people went home and 4 of us were left to play a few hands before the snot demon in my head called time. There should be more bridge! Particularly memorable was ending up in 6 spades because of a bidding war with the opposition who wanted to be in 6 hearts very badly... it only went 1 down, which I think was a Very Good Effort; their 6 hearts might even have made.

On Monday the snot demon in my head called for SLEEP and CHOCOLATE and not much else, so I stayed at home sleeping a lot. Spent about half the day feeling like someone punched me in the eye (is this a common side effect of colds? it is for me).

I made http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pan-fried_duck_chunky_48367 for rjk's birthday. It was very very nommy; but 400g of rice is MASSIVELY too much for 2 people (it'll be fine reheated with other things later).

I also tried to make Nigella's Gin-and-tonic jelly which worked VERY VERY BADLY; and then I tried it again using Delia's instructions for champagne jelly but putting in G&T instead and that worked a bit LESS badly but not actually WELL. I have decided that leaf gelatine is not just hard to obtain and fiddly to use but actually not very useful; I have no idea why both Nigella and Delia say it is far superior to powdered as I actually couldn't make it work properly at all. Last time I made champagne jelly I used powdered and it worked rather better.

I have been baking biscuits; they always seem to take twice as long as the recipe says. This is irritating.

I've been reading GRRM's Unfinished Magnum Opus... I'm not done yet (NO SPOILERS!)... and I have an earworm of the FIRST LINE of "A bear and a maiden fair". Can someone who has read everything yet written in the series tell me if there are MORE LINES provided? This is really IRRITATING!

I'd almost rather an earworm of the Rains of Castelmere (I think we got whole verses!). Even though it is (probably) much less rude (so less interesting to my stupid ear-worm-catching brain).

So, you want someone to tell you their name... what kind of thing SHOULD you do if you don't want be the target of IRE and RUDE EMAILS :-p

(this is just my opinion, of course)

Two main things:
*Think about what you are going to use their name for, and ask them in a way that makes that clear; if for more than one thing, ask more than once.
*Accept any string the user can type; if you do need to make rules about what can not be in this string, or about the length of it, then say "sorry, our system can not handle your name" rather than "that's not a name" - it might be someone being silly, but it might be that a person really has a name that's too long or too obscure-unicode or whatever. Take a single string - not a drop-down title + string or "firstname" an "lastname" separately.

In general try to avoid assuming things about their name, or how they want you to use their name: some people want you to use a title (or more than one) as part of their name or instead of their name, others do not use any title (a full list of every title people might use would be very long); some people want you to use their first name or their last name or (one of) their middle name(s); some people want you to realise that their last name has a space in it but is one name and please use both parts (sim. for first and other names); some people use their initials (CJ Cregg off the West Wing comes to mind as an example); some use a shortened form of one of their names; others use a nickname; for some people the title(s) come first, for others last (are their in-fix titles?). Would it not be so much easier to ASK than to try to guess whether you are meant to say and risk getting the formality-level wrong?

I am actually reminded of this by my mother complaining to me (yet again) about annoying hotel staff who use "Firstname" to address her rather than "Mrs Surname". Whilst many people (like me) are happy to always use our personal names, many other people (like Mum) prefer to use a more formal form of address. And this is with a common British name, in a British hotel!

1. I think of you as something of a Cambridge fixture, but where did you actually come from before you became a Cambridge person?

Chelmsford, Essex. Born and bred (my parents still live in the house they lived in when I was born). I was sent to a Catholic primary school and then moved to a private one when the headmaster didn't support the 11+; I 'passed' the 11+ and went on to the local girl's grammar school, which was very nice.

2. What is the most common wrong assumption for people to make about you?

I expect a lot of people I kinda know assume I'm straight, which I'm not but not very visibly so these days. Amongst people I know I think the most common wrong assumption is that I'm fine with $bad-thing when I'm not, I guess I have somewhat less of a tendency than many to throw a public tantrums (whilst sober).

3. Would you rather pay for luxury treatment and exceptional service, or for someone to save you from having to do unpleasant chores?

I don't really mind chores, and I think it's very unfair of people who CAN do chores (some people of course can not, I am not one of those people) to offload all the unpleasant chores onto a small group of people when we all create the mess that causes the chores to need doing. I think I'd much rather pay for occasional luxury; especially the kind I can't provide for myself (such as massages, and gourmet meals). Besides variety is nice.

4. If there were a heaven and a hell for the internet, what would qualify sites for one or the other?

Well, trolls can all go to internet-hell, along with spammers, scammers, and assorted other dodgy types who steal all your money. Internet-heaven should be for sites that provide a truly useful service, especially if it's a service for people who desperately need it. The rest of us can go live in internet-limbo I guess.

5. What do you most wish you'd known ten years ago?

That I'm not as smart as I thought I was ten years ago.

Mistborn Trilogy, Brandon Sanderson

Looooooong trilogy is long. Also good. Interesting non-cliched fantasy story, what happens after the dark lord wins? Nice magic system, good characters.

I've been nomming all the Vorkosiverse fanfic I can find (nomnomnom) and a gorram plot bunny has BIT MY ARSE (halp) I think I shall spare everyone my appalling writing though.

Anyway, it occurred to me that whilst I'm (probably obviously) v happy that LMB has written some strong women having exciting adventures (all of which are, probably, spoilers) I'm perhaps (to me anyway) surprisingly happy about Alys Vorpatril. Who, if you haven't read the books, has, in a very gender-segregated world, a very feminine job; but it's a job she clearly takes pride in, and a job that she is very clearly recognised (by the characters and the authorial voice) as being good at, and a job that is very very clearly Important. It makes me happy that a woman doing a "woman's" job can be shown as being Important and Useful and Competent (and not dismissed as pointless).

Because whilst its also nice to know that commanding spaceships is TOTALLY something a woman could do (because it is) that all those things that women do when they aren't allowed near spaceships are also important and useful and stuff.

Of course it would be nice if more men could be shown doing such things too...

Habitation of the Blessed, Catherine M. Valente

I borrowed this off fivemack. It's an interesting book with a slightly unusual structure (the framing story is of an individual copying from three texts, so there are three different styles of writing, four if you count the framing story) about Prester John who is an interesting Mediaeval legend of whom I had previously not heard :-)

Everything Vorkosigan, Louis McMaster Bujold

Is almost all available free from http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD/index.htm but that's missing Memory which Baen will sell you an ebook copy of for $6 which I feel is very reasonable. This has entertained me for nearly 3 months :-) I'm not sure it does anything especially new or clever, but what it does it does well. "What it does" is a bit hard to pin down though as it goes from a rollicking space adventure to a mystery to a drawing room farce and back at great speed; I do rather like it all though. The characters are very compelling (to me anyway), and the settings interesting.

BeBook Club eBook reader (not a book...)

I mentioned this already but I have now read all of Vorkosigan evar on it. I find it has a very short battery life but other than that it is very useful and does what it says on the tin (displays books). It doesn't do anything else fancy (like taking notes, or buying books off the internet) but it's competent at what it does. Much smaller and lighter than most of the physical books I read, and definately a lot easier to store (house space being a commodity in short supply).

Oh, one last ToM point...

The narrative reminds the reader that it has been DUN DUN DUN two years since the first book. Got that people? TWO YEARS. Yeah. I don't think you'll find a longer two years without a whole lotta lookin' *grin*

Towers of Midnight, Sanderson manipulating the cold dead hand of Robert Jordan

this is a certified spoiler free review. It's fun, and has no spoilers DO NOT READ COMMENTS (they probably have spoilers, but generally I find the comment crowd over at Tor.com VERY annoying).

Spoiler avoiders should note that the glossary contains at least one Significant Spoiler and you should leave it to last, the non-spoiler parts do not seem to have anything very new/interesting/useful so use the GS glossary if you have a burning need to look up some silly thing that you've fergotten.

Er my spoiler-free comments (I am less coherent)

OMG it is a heavy book (861 pages in the US edition).

YAY, cookies for fans! (Theories that came true; look it's not a f***ing spoiler, there are just SO MANY of them some of them had to come true! But some of these look very... cookie shaped OK)

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

OMG WTF YOU DID NOT DO THAT YOU GIT.

Sad. Happy. Sad. Happy. NOOOOO it ended. Dammit.

Story to resume in a year and a bit we are told. And then END. OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I have been reading this for... years and years and years. I mean... M'lisinaaath Ethifel Aenea Thabana *Aes Sedai* people... that was BACK IN SCHOOL maybe 2000? earlier? A DECADE AGO I have been reading this thing FOR A DECADE (more) and I didn't even start when it started. Damn but it'll hurt when it ends. IT BETTER END GOOD SANDERSON!

Now I have The Way Of Kings and I shall read it and see if I like Sanderson writing on his own behalf too. Probably I'll buy Mistborn.

I read books and sometimes I even remember to post about them...

Books read lately:

Nothing to Envy, Real Lives in North Korea; Barabara Demick.
North Korea sucks, a lot. At length. Very interesting book, but not cheering.

I Shall Wear Midnight; PTerry
PTerry continues to write good books. This is the latest (and AIUI final) instalment of Tiffany Aching's story.

Tongues of Serpents; Novik
Book the nth of Temeraire (5 I think?), this time with kangaroos. Definitely a part n of N though, don't think it would be very accessible on its own.

And I'm STILL (have been for months) reading Kraken (Mieville) (the one with the suspicious lack of giant squid). Because... well because apparently PTerry and Novik write things I find easier to read. Not that it's bad, because it's excellent. But apparently somewhat less gripping.

I am orf to Kentwell hall to play at being a Tudor. For a week... I hope it doesn't rain much!

Anyone wanting a fun (but not cheap, sorry) day out for all the family (children most definately welcome) could do worse than to come visit; dates and info and stuff here - http://www.kentwell.co.uk/Re-Creations/Tudor/GreatAnnual I'll be doing stuff with wool this Sunday and next weekend. I'm not supposed to admit to recognising visitors though.

This also means I shall be without internet or phone for a week (OMG! HOW SHALL I COPE ETC.) I'll try to catch up when I get back.

I'm doing Kentwell's Tudor Recreation this summer. My Tudor name is going to be Thomasin or Tamsin (naath is not a Tudor appropriate name :-( ). Anyway, we are meant to mark all our personal items with our "mark" (not with name tags like school kids, and besides Tudor-me can't read or write so that's out). So I need a mark! It needs to be drawable, scratchable and sewable onto my pottery/leather/cloth/wood items and it needs to be something unique to me. Help?

I like immigration, I want there to be more of it. And I want politicians to stop playing the "who hates immigrants the mostest" game. Because it is MAKING ME SICK. Any more of this and I will be voting green.

happydork gave me the colour purple for the "Squee about five things of a certain colour" meme. Comment with the word "Spectrum" for a colour of your own!

( purple things )

Been lazy!

Lots of books to report.

Becoming Queen, a biography of Queen Victoria's early life. I found this interesting. And naturally more accurate than the film "young Victoria" (although I also like staring at people in pretty costumes).

Life Stories (Attenborough). My brother bought this for me for XMyth, which was a great gift! It's a lovely book, with nice stories and pictures of (mostly) animals. Definitely worth reading if you like Attenborough's work

Morgaine volume 4 (Cherryh). I actually liked this one a lot better than the previous. I think no. 2 put me off a bit.

The God Engines (Scalzi). I loved this one, only problem - very short (it's a novella). Fantasy, in a break from previous mil SF stuff.

Anthony and Cleopatra (McCullough). Last volume of the First Man in Rome series. Chunky and dense, but good. I think they probably bear re-reading in quick succession for less forgetting-things-between-volumes, but didn't suffer awfully from all the forgetting. This one takes us from the formation of the triumvirate through to the death of Anthony.

More books. Both of these came from the library (go library!) By my count this is 37 so far this year, which I don't think is very many :( on the other hand 12 of them were Robert Jordan bricks and 1 was Anathem so probably larger books than usual. Maybe I'll read some graphic novels next :-)

Adiamante, L E Modesitt Jr

The author was recommended to me by rand and this book is apparently his shortest *grin*. I liked it although found it a little preachy in parts.

Daughters of Isis, Joyce Tyldesley

A history of women in Ancient Egypt. Reasonably interesting, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

More books finished!

One I missed earlier:
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Laldasa: Beloved Slave (which I got as an ebook from www.bookviewcafe.com I dunno if it's available as a printed book). I thought it was good enough to buy after reading the first few chapters for free (rather than wait for them to put up the rest), but it wasn't especially memorable.

Unseen Academicals by PTerry
Still on form I think, I do like just about everything PTerry has written though, so if you haven't so far I can't say that you'll like this one.

Metatropolis, ed. Scalzi
This is an interesting collection of long short stories by different authors set in the same world, it was originally an audio book (but I Don't Do audio books, I have the print edition which amazon appear to have some copies of) (it was nominated for the hugo for dramatic presentation long form, I think that it loosing out to the stupid robot was sad). Anyway; I think the setting is a decent take on cities of the near future and all the authors do interesting things with the setting.

(The US have apparently instituted some rule about bloggers having to reveal where they get stuff from that they promote/review/wevs which I think is weird, on account of, well, millions of blogs and so forth; but anyway, in case you were in any way interested when I review books they are almost all books I paid for at the going rate for said books but sometimes they are books that were loaned to me by friends (this doesn't appear to make me like the books more than I would otherwise). No one sends me free books to review)

I read a lot of books :)

( lots of book related text )

Spoiler post. Post you spoiler comments on this one, even if they are
about the other one.

People seeking more informative spoilers try the encyclopedia wot,
leighdb's readthrough and the wot faq (not quite up to date)

Spoilers UP TO and INCLUDING book 11, the Guide and NS. Spoilers for
book 12 will make me VERY UNHAPPY.

( OMG SPOILERS )

Why is it that anytime I see a post that someone has made of the form "thing X is a bad thing and I wish people-who-do-X would stop doing it" there are almost always responses of the form:
a)"but *I* never do X"
and
b)"but thing Y is bad too!"

as for (a) - great, continue not doing X. Unless the initial post clearly accused *you personally* of doing X then why bother commenting to say that? Do you have anything else to add?

(b) comes in two forms; sometimes it's *true* and sometimes it's *not*. But really, NOT RELEVANT. Sure, if you were having one of those lazy afternoons down the pub and letting the conversation go hither and yon my "OMG I HATE X" might well be responded to you saying "WELL I HATE Y" and then we can all be "YEAH, HATING STUFF". But if one wants to have a Serious Discussion about X and how it affects people, and why it is bad, then Talking About Y rarely helps.

These tactics (among others) are things I think come under the heading of "Derailing" that means that they take the conversation away from what was intended (travelling along it's rails). It takes a fair amount of effort to deal with these types of comments, even if one's moderation policy is "don't like, will delete"; they really do get in the way of serious discussion. It is certainly my experience that even reading with no intention of dealing with (because someone else is doing that) these types of comments really eats up valuable head space that I could be using to engage in interesting discussion (and I'm doing quite well for spare head space really).

If you want to use your corner of the internet to have other discussions about other things then you do that. It's a big internet, there's space for everyone. But increasingly I'm find that there are a lot of topics that simply can't be discussed in a public forum, because others come along and refuse to let the discussion happen; and I find that bad because, whilst of course we could all retreat to closed communities, it makes it much harder for people who are just starting to dip their toes in the water to find things. I have a great deal of respect for people who have been, and continue to be, willing to deal with moderating public discussions of sensitive subjects and kept their sanity.


(Hello Metafandom; OMG I've been metafandom'd!)

So go VOTE! (if you're in the UK, and have a vote). For someone other than the bloody BNP :-)

Personally I'm very pro-EU. Because, generally, I think that *having an EU* is a Good Thing, and it should be stronger, and bigger and stuff like that. That's not to say that I think the EU is 100% wonderful or that the current implementation is the absolute best possible or that I agree with everything that the EU does. But then I don't think that the government in Westminster is 100% wonderful or etc. either, I think that right now it's pretty shit actually, but I'm not going to start campaigning to go back to having the Queen tell us what to do, or stage a coup so we can have an el Presidente Dictator For Life instead of what we've got.

( I <3 the EU )

Replying to myself *grin*


( spoilers? for the tea thing, not anything else )

I needed a dress for my cousin's wedding. This one can double as a costume for off-duty Ariel Corps members methinks (from the books by Novik).

(manually cross-posted from LJ)

( beware the pictures )