Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
umadoshi: (lilacs 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
With Canada Day rudely falling on a Tuesday, [personal profile] scruloose and I both booked today off. I haven't managed a whole lot of manga work yet, but hopefully between today (as soon as I finish this post) and tomorrow I'll get a reasonable amount done. While I'm doing at-my-desk things, [personal profile] scruloose is working on the next step(s) in getting a dedicated hose set up for our individual townhouse.

Last night we finally got around to switching the desk chairs in our offices, cut for the uninterested )

It occurred to me very late in the game that I might do better at spending non-work time at my desk (where, y'know, most of my writing used to happen) if I didn't hate my chair; I've been attributing the fact that I spend 95% of my evenings down in the living room these days to the fact that Sinha's such a lapcat, and that's definitely a huge factor, but...being able to sit comfortably in here would sure help.

Another pleasing tech-related development has to do with my phone keyboard. again, cut for the uninterested )

Speaking of things that feel so much better now, Saturday also involved Ginny chopping my hair off for me. I've been leaving it alone (other than the undercut) since whenever the last time we buzz cut it was, and maybe a month ago I found that it was long enough to easily ponytail. That was pleasantly novel for about a week, even though the front bits weren't long enough to get into the ponytail and quickly started to need clips or something when it got hot. By last weekend, I was very, very done with the whole thing, and this weekend Ginny was able to deal with it. Such a relief.

My younger nibling and their spouse of eight months or so stopped by a few days ago to pick up a few years' worth of my spare comp copies from Seven Seas. Only one box, since I've technically scaled back my freelance workload (and I think there's also a backlog of comps that I should be getting sooner rather than later), but a hefty box that was bulging a bit at the seams, so it's nice to have that all sent off to a new home. It was lovely to see my nibling and meet their spouse, however briefly. (They politely rolled with the "we're going to stand in our driveway and chat while masked and overheat more than a little" element.)

A final thing before calling this a post and getting to work: last weekend [personal profile] scruloose and I gave the Sensation lilac a long-overdue aggressive pruning (and it should probably get the same amount cut out of it in a year). The poor thing was all spindly limbs and mostly-high-up blooms, so hopefully this will help it for next year.But what to do with the mutant hybrid? )

Random cdrama rambles

Jun. 30th, 2025 02:18 am
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon

On idol or non-idol drama


Due to a recent post elsewhere, and some cdrama conversations with friends, we've been trying to define idol vs. non-idol (or prestige vs. not prestige) dramas, and also trying to define what we think of as good acting.

One of my friend's definition of idol vs. non-idol considers things like, the production (set, makeup, lighting, filters, etc.), the focus of the highlight scenes (is it on the actor/actress [to make the actor/actress look good], or is it on the overall plot/emotions?), cast (now, this is a thorny one to bring up and can change over time), acting style (subtle? overact?).

Mine was just: "Pores or no pores?" But everyone I've spoken to seems to agree that it cuts to the core of the issue XDD

(Anyway, Joy of Life is not non-idol, in case you are one of the ones who thought so! But it is a very good show.)

Some dramas I've been watching


Because of covid, I've been binging dramas. So, here are some thoughts on the dramas I've watched!

Blossom: I can't say I watched it properly because I watched it on 1.5x speed and skipped scenes... I don't know why I was watching a time travel redo/revenge romance drama for the revenge and not the romance (so yeah, I skipped all the lingering looks, all the romance coded things). The ML's acting was quite stiff and left me mostly emotionally cold. I did enjoy the FL's story a lot more though and my favourite parts are actually all the FL's side, especially when she's with her grandmother/cousin/friends. I wish it had gone harder on the court politics, but hey, that's on me for expecting something different from a drama that honestly did very well for what it set out to do, which was a fun tropey time travel redo drama. It's fine. Bingeable.

An Ancient Love Song: I'm at 11/14. There were some parts that didn't quite work for me, but on average, I'm really enjoying this show a lot! I'm still watching it at normal pace (no speeding up, no skipping scenes), and they are delivering the core gimmick of this show extremely well, imo.
Spoilers for the gimmick [you know about it in ep. 1, really].ML and FL meet each other in reverse because of time travel shenanigans. Kinda like River Song and The Doctor, if you're familiar with Doctor Who.
The emotional beats are done well, the heartache, realizing that this is very likely going to be doomed for them, is great. It's short, it knows what it wants to do, so yeah. I'd recommend this if you're looking for a shortish drama (14 eps is a rarity). Don't expect complex court politics, go in and just feel the vibes!

Legend of Zang Hai: I've only watched two episodes, and that's only out of curiosity because I've read such polarized views on this drama. Seems like it's either praised as the next Nirvana in Fire and Xiao Zhan's acting is amazeballs, or that it's trash, DNF, not worth watching. But I suppose anything that has Xiao Zhan in it is going to inspire passionate love or passionate hate (or passionate indifference I guess). The story starts in a very chronological way, with the ML (as a kid) witnessing his entire family being killed by this guy who wants something from his father, and so he swore revenge. The rest of the story is likely a revenge story. Halfway through episode 2, the boy grows up. The adult version of the ML is acted by Xiao Zhan.

So, thoughts, from two episodes: 1) imo, eps 1 and 2 were fine but it didn't really pull me in (I will give it till ep 4, for a fair chance, since it's still setting up the story and all), 2) XZ afaik wasn't trained in acting from acting/performance schools, so knowing that, I think he did well, 3) that said, it still feels like XZ is an actor playing a role, rather than embodying the role, if that makes sense.

CDrama related links


Somehow, from Zang Hai, I went to watch random other clips and okay, this FMV with Zhang Ruoyun in Novoland, with blue eyes (and terrible taobao sets and worse wing prop) intrigued me XD (though I do enjoy ZRY's acting, I must say, he, like most actors now, can't do fight scenes well ahaha).

And this bilibili link has my fav trash character acted by Kwong Wa, Ha Suet Yi, that bastard (and also the only part of the story I remember from this Jin Yong story because the MC is so bland). It's a 3 min 3 seconds video, no dialogue, just scenes of Kwong Wa as Ha Suet Yi.

And then I dug out a 4 mins 44 secs Kwong Wa role compilation FMV, here. The range XD (My grandma like this actor! She said he is great at acting as emperors/those type of characters).

And then, I thought, "what about Esther Kwan, one of my fav TVB actress?", so here's a 3 min 33 secs music video of her roles!

(Still testing positive for Covid, but hey, symptoms are mostly gone! Just some lingering cough)

Two weeks' worth of reading

Jun. 29th, 2025 03:16 pm
umadoshi: (books 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
A weekend post never happened last weekend, but here's what I'm been reading over the last couple of weeks. (Watching has been basically unchanged: we're up to date on Murderbot and continuing to slowly work through Leverage season 4.)

I finished reading Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which I thought was...fine? It was interesting enough, but if it had been my first exposure to his work it wouldn't have made me rush out and try more right away.

I read and liked Margaret Owen's Little Thieves in April, and Jenny Hamilton on Bluesky was recently talking about the trilogy as a whole (and this reminds me that now I can go read her "How to Break a Heart: Subverting the Hero’s Breakup Trope"), so when I decided a week or so ago to finally burn through all of my Kobo points and clear at least a bit of my wishlist, I included the second book, Painted Devils, which I enjoyed enough to want to read the third (Holy Terrors) right away. I try not to buy many ebooks at full price, though, given how many more I buy overall than I'm ever going to manage to read, and thankfully my library not only has it but had it available right away.

Consider that a recommendation, but beyond it I'm just going to quote the non-spoilery part of Jenny's essay that describes the series (and the essay then details how things stood at the end of book 2, so consider that the spoiler warning):
This year brought us Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors. It’s the third in a trilogy about an angry, selfish girl named Vanja who made it through a lifetime of neglect and abuse with a crop of emotional and physical scars, a talent for picking pockets, the favor of the gods (sometimes), and a healthy hostility for rich people. Against both their better judgment, she falls in love with prefect Emeric Conrad, whom she variously describes as a “human civics primer,” an “accounting ledger made flesh,” and an “intolerable filing cabinet.”

(Here the author of this piece has been compelled to delete a ten thousand–word manifesto about the greatness of the Little Thieves series. If you like the TV show Leverage, or you enjoy digging your teeth into solid character development, or you just hate rich people, you should read it. The first book is Little Thieves. Thank me later.)

For a dramatic change of pace, I'm now reading Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi (also a with-points acquisition), which I keep wanting to file under non-fiction, although the title will clearly tell you that it's speculative fiction. (IIRC I learned about it from [personal profile] skygiants' post.) Its fictional interviews build a distressingly plausible picture of global collapse through this decade and the couple to come, but also offer glimpses into how we could come out on the other side, if we're willing to largely raze and rebuild ~human society~ in a way that actually takes care of people. (The book came out in...2022?...so it in no way accounts for the most recent and current forms of the political hellscape.)

On the non-fiction side, I read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, a book of essays and corresponding recipes that I'd previously read maybe ten years ago. Colwin died in 1992 (I think I've got that right), and this book (and the follow-up, More Home Cooking) is a food-writing classic for good reason, although also very much of its place and time--very American, very '80s.

(The rest of my using-all-my-Kobo-points haul: The Hands of the Emperor, We Are All Completely Fine, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, and Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World. Did this put a visible dent in my Kobo wishlist [which is a relatively curated list of books I keep an eye on for preorder purposes and sighting sales]? Yes. Has the dent since been filled in? Also yes.)

the squirrels are in the tree

Jun. 29th, 2025 12:03 am
ursamajor: people on the beach watching the ocean (Default)
[personal profile] ursamajor
[personal profile] hyounpark and I wrapped up our extremely concert-filled June last weekend with two shows in Wine Country, backing up Andrea Bocelli and friends. Three rehearsals in ten days with almost entirely new-to-me repertoire - it felt good to have that kind of intensity of practice again. It's different from regular rehearsal, where we have a month, two, sometimes even three to slowly, steadily polish a single piece. Harder to cram into daily life, but always worth it.

Saturday was also Hyoun's birthday, so I was highly amused when the sound check opened with La donna è mobile from Rigoletto. Because I originally learned that melody in fourth grade as a birthday song!

Archiving the lyrics here because I know I was able to find it on the internet at some point in the past, but no longer. )

the rest of the Bocelli concert experience )

And now, my Wednesday nights are free for a (very) few weeks! (Summersings start July 23, and then after that we're right into rehearsals for Verdi; I hope I'll be able to cram in one or two Wednesday night Friends With Bikes rides during the time off, but we'll need to see.)

Duo blathering

Jun. 28th, 2025 10:28 pm
ysobel: Pink bunny (bunny comics), holding a sign: "jesus save / cthulhu eats"; text: choose wisely (choose wisely!)
[personal profile] ysobel
Duolingo's increasing reliance on AI at the expense of human employees bothers me a lot. It's also, not coincidentally, gotten sloppy. I've noticed things in the English that feel off -- "He didn't die because he had the operation on time" should have been "in time"; "It's possible that I start going out with Francisco" should be "I'll start" or "I might start"; "She isn't tolerant with other ideas" should either be "of" or the object should be "people" (this may be regional? but for me it's tolerant *of* things, tolerant *with* or of people); "The travelers would buy at the market" should either have a different verb like "shop" or should have a direct object (I know "buy" can be intransitive but it still feels weird in this sentence); etc. If there are things that strike me as odd about the language I'm a native speaker of, how the fuck can I trust them to be correct in the language I'm trying to learn?

I currently have a subscription, partly so I wouldn't get ads and partly because I supported their stated mission. I no longer want to support them. My renewal, set to annual, renews next month.

On the other hand I have a streak of 3839 days, several friends streaks over 300, and a ridiculous number of friends quests in a row (can't find the info but I think it's around 85-90?). Also while practicing Duo mostly makes me better at Duo, I am still learning vocab, even if some of it doesn't want to stick.

So I'm trying to decide:

Option 1: cancel subscription and delete app. Up side: cheaper and more ethical. Down side: realistically I'm not going to find an easy Spanish-practice alternative.

Option 2a: cancel subscription but keep "playing" until I reach a pretty streak number, then quit. Up side: cheaper, though ads mean they're still profiting, and I get to leave on a pretty number. Down side: ads, plus im still planning on breaking the streak.

Option 2b: cancel subscription and keep playing indefinitely. Up side: still get Spanish practice. Down: ads, blech.

Option 3: keep subscription for another year. Up: practice, no ads. Down: I'm paying money for dubious AI.

If I take one of the streak-breaking options -- either now or in 161 days (which is, uh, 5 months and change, so December? -- and then regret it, I'll have lost the chance to make the long streak longer. OTOH it literally can't go on forever anyway, and I don't like supporting AI. OTOOH one subscription isn't noticeable really, so they won't care.

...I hate making decisions...

(Side note: my phone's predictive texting really wants to decapitalize I. If I type "i wo" it of course autocaps i to I, but then doesn't suggest "would"/"wouldn't" for the next word, but instead suggests "i would" which changes the I back to lowercase. Is this inherent to autocorrect or am I doing something wrong?)

Firefox AI Removal

Jun. 28th, 2025 01:55 pm
krait: Yuri Plisetsky's face, looking outraged (outraged Yuri)
[personal profile] krait
Firefox, my web browser of choice, just updated and dumped a bunch of new "AI features" that are enabled by default.

If you, like me, hate this nonsense, I found this very helpful guide to removing it. It took about one minute, and seems to be working - I no longer see the 'AI link preview' popup window when I hover over a link, for instance.

Please feel free to pass this on!

Me-and-media update

Jun. 27th, 2025 03:50 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
I wrote most of this on Tuesday, and now it's Friday, so some unrepaired time dilation might slip through.

Pandemic life
Protocol slippage. )

Previous poll review
In the Impending doom of the natural variety poll, the most common natural disaster threatening respondents is drought/heat (55.6%), followed by flood (44.4%), then blizzard (40.7%). Twelve of us (including me) are at risk of earthquakes.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won by a landslide with 70.4%, followed by "ticky-box made of Möbius strips and Escher staircases" with 48.1%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
A little more Neurotribes, but the focus on kids and parenting is not holding my interest. Nothing wrong with it; I'm just not the right audience. A chapter of Guardian. A smidgen more of The Book of Three, and the first few hours of Incandescent by Emily Tesh, read by Zara Ramm (very heavy on introductions and the nitty-gritty of school administration so far, but I like the POV character - no spoilers, please).

TV & movies
Four episodes of The Expanse season 6 with a friend; we're watching the other two tonight. Murderbot (really enjoyed the last episode). Poker Face (haven't seen the latest). Andor S02E06 (maybe we're watching this too slowly? so far this season isn't clicking for me).

Episode 2 of Stick, which... I enjoyed watching Lydio Ko play on TV, one time, but I just don't know how much golf I can engage with, especially in fiction. Swings all look the same to me, so after the first three or four, there's none of the physical competence porn you get in more overtly active sports. And I don't find Owen Wilson inherently charming or interesting. I think the biggest appeal of the show is actually that so much of it is set outside with trees around, and that's still a very manicured, artificial setting. /fussy /tl;dr, We're in the market for a new show.

Our Unwritten Seoul (Kdrama on Netflix). I'm enjoying this so much! Two episodes and several revelations yet to go.

Materialists at the movies. We went to this because a friend and I have a running conversation about the death of the romcom, and this nominally was one. But it turned out to not really be rom or com, and the title should have clued me in that Andrew wouldn't like it (he disliked the main character and wasn't at all invested in the outcome). It's interestingly structured, and the cast is good, but it's mostly about entitled people approaching dating in terms of checkboxes (age, height, income, etc).
Spoilery things about the structure.The main character, Lucy, is a professional matchmaker in NYC, and the film is in three parts: the first third is a wealth-porn romance between her and Pedro Pascale; he pursues her after they meet at the wedding of his brother, her former client. They go to a lot of expensive restaurants, have sex on satin sheets in his $12m penthouse, and talk a lot of numbers at each other. He wants to take her to Iceland on holiday. The middle third (or possibly third act of four? I wasn't timing it) starts when one of Lucy's clients is sexually assaulted on a date Lucy set up. This all happens off-screen, and I don't think we even see the assaulter. The victim is the nicest, warmest of Lucy's clients, but the film is mostly concerned with Lucy's crisis, as the assault brings home that the checkboxes don't matter. The final third or act is a second-time-around romance with her struggling-actor/cater-waiter ex-boyfriend, Chris Evans. Lucy broke up with him over money, and now at the culmination of her character arc, she decides she loves him enough to make it work after all. Conveniently, he is still extremely hung up on her.

I don't think I've ever seen a relationship movie that starts out focused on one pairing getting together (they feel pretty well-matched, and Pedro Pascale's character is smart, open, attentive and kind), then transitions to another pairing. Huh.


The Wild Robot on Netflix. Okay, this was really cute and funny. I especially enjoyed the possum babies. (I kept missing quips, though -- poor sound mixing, or is my hearing going?) As an aside, I was amused that the corporation was called Universal Dynamics, given Global Dynamics in Eureka (2006) and Massive Dynamics in Fringe (2008). What comes after "universal"?

October Sky on Netflix. Fictionalised biopic about a kid in a coal-mining company town in 1957 who is inspired by Sputnik to create a rocket, learn trigonometry, and get a college scholarship. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, and Laura Linney. It was fine, but wow, I wanted the story to be about overthrowing the company.

Audio entertainment
I spent four or five hours over the weekend listening to Melanie Nelson of Coherent podcast interviewing politicians, academics and a disability activist about the "Let's Make Everything Libertarian" Bill for which submissions closed lunchtime Monday. (Locals, it's not too late to weigh in! Talk to your MP!) Since then, Writing Excuses and a bunch of Midnight Burger. (I bounced off Midnight Burger when I first tried it a year or two ago, but now I'm really enjoying the physics and other science aspects, and the characters are growing on me. Ava is my fav. I'm most of the way through episode 11.)

Online life
Catching up on comments. Still have a billion unread emails, and let's not even talk about my tabs.

Writing/making things
I spent the weekend juggling multiple urgent things. Now I have some breathing space, of course, when I sit down to write (aiming for a combination [community profile] fan_flashworks entry and Guardian Bingo), I can't make sentences.
Whining.A contributing factor is that I'm having another "argh, my prose sucks" crisis of confidence. This happens periodically. You can't be on a roll indefinitely without hitting a bump, I guess. For me, usually it means it's time to read a particular type of literary novel, preferably in paper format. The one I remember being most successful is Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible; the very close, very voice-y rotating POVs, the playful intricate language use, and the thoughtful exploration of context help me to sink into whatever POV I'm writing, rather than skating over the surface and Lego-ing together tired phrases. I wrote some really good fic after re-reading it a few years ago. Whereas re-reading Byatt's Possession just meant I produced endless run-on sentences, heh. Anyway, I guess I should get on that soon...


Finished and posted an old outsider POV writing exercise for [community profile] fan_flashworks's Yield challenge.

Life/health/mental state things
I got my political submission in (thanks to [personal profile] cyphomandra for beta) and wrote an outraged email to the Prime Minister about the Deputy Prime Minister's engaging in stochastic harrassment.

In general, I've been feeling needlessly stressed and vaguely sick, but today my alarm didn't go off and I slept an extra hour and a half. So much better.

Good things
Un-punctured bike tyre. Kdrama. New intermediate glasses making it easier to do crosswords and to read while I exercise. New bathroom sink taps. [community profile] sid_guardian commentpalooza. I'll probably get back on my writing feet again soon. Andrew and Halle and books and fandom.

Poll #33295 Routine
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57


Night-time getting-ready-for-bed routine

View Answers

I brush my teeth
48 (84.2%)

I lock up and switch things off around the house
29 (50.9%)

I tend to pets
19 (33.3%)

there are a few skincare- and/or haircare-type steps
18 (31.6%)

kind of a lot of steps, of various kinds
10 (17.5%)

it takes me more than half an hour
14 (24.6%)

sometimes it takes me an hour or more
4 (7.0%)

what routine? I'm always ready for bed
8 (14.0%)

other
9 (15.8%)

ticky-box of it's normal to have strong opinions about taps (AKA faucets)
24 (42.1%)

ticky-box of how stressful it is to ask tradespeople to change things they've done
33 (57.9%)

ticky-box of wondering if today is the day you'll unexpectedly step through a portal into another time or world
23 (40.4%)

ticky-box full of sitting on a mountain ledge in the moonlight, listening to owls
32 (56.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
43 (75.4%)

Five more icons for my 100ships table

Jun. 26th, 2025 09:18 pm
tinny: Something Else holding up its colorful drawing - "be different" (Default)
[personal profile] tinny
I have been working on sporadically remembering the [community profile] 100ships table since 2022, and today I felt like making a few more shippy icons.

Here they are:

#14 – Navy #16 – Neon #52 – Salt #72 – Desert #75 – Buff


I realize that Ody3 aren't really in the navy, but I feel like cruise ship / navy, close enough. I really wanted to have an icon of them in their navy blue uniforms, but didn't have a good cap. :/ I made some Spock icons for [community profile] your_favourites today and while I was at it, made two more for the table. And the remaining two are Murderbot and the movie "Good Luck To You, Leo Grande".

The table is here, there are currently 40 icons in it: https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/704185.html

Previous icon posts:

{music monday} charli xcx - party 4 u

Jun. 23rd, 2025 08:18 am
cypresssunn: (Default)
[personal profile] cypresssunn
Fandom Fifty 2025: Post #18




Really don't want to think about how the seller's agent on my new house is so so so bad at their jobs that the closing of the sale has been held up indefinitely.

So instead i'm thinking about the comeback of this five year old heartbreak anthem. which is nuts since musically we live in such weird wild times in terms of what manages to chart globally and across the pop charts. we only listen to old songs, nothing new has broken through with any staying power for months! all of us seem still stuck on last years kendrick and sabrina. the music of last year that i thought signaled a change in the industry turned out to just be a flash in the pan. hell, brat summer came and went but all it amounted to was tiktok deciding to go rifling through charli xcx's back catalogue to find this banger on her How I'm Feeling Now album. and it IS a banger. its bridge has easily turned into the saddest fandom calling card of romantic grief and limerance to be cut into edits of characters from across franchises. and its such good fandom fuel. the layered, its glitchy, its dreamy, its a film's ending credits in your ear. in the four minutes it plays, you are somewhere else, somewhen else. its so bitterly sweet and soft, the way it feels like a realization. part of you knew. but part of you hoped. and thats an animal that never really dies inside you, no matter how hard it kicks and scratches and yelps and starves in the basement of your heart.

me and the rest of the girlies on tiktok are truly out of our heads having self induced breakdowns for months. and its insane but i swear the right edit has the power to make me literally weep. (and poorly done edits have the power to make me burst out laughing. because what do you mean you people STILL think about teen wolf? let alone still think stiles and derek were true loves jesus fucking christ stop embarrassing yourselves.)

but that aside. SHOUT OUT TO THE PAIRINGS THAT HAVE DESTROYED ME WITH THEIR TIKTOK PARTY4U EDITS. in no particular order:
  • Jackie & Shauna (Yellowjackets)
  • Art & Patrick (Challengers)
  • Carmy & Syd (The Bear)
  • Fezco & Lexi (Euphoria)
  • Fleabag & Priest (Fleabag)
  • Derek & Meredith (Greys, somehow, in the year of our lord 2025)
  • Louis & Lestat (Interview with the Vampire)
  • Effy & Freddie (Skins)
  • Logan & Veronica (Veronica Mars)
  • Bonnie & Damon (TVD)

Initial Air3 usage report!

Jun. 25th, 2025 02:10 pm
umadoshi: (plague doctor (verhalen))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Over a month after the arrival of our (in my case, long-yearned-for) Microclimate Air3 powered respirators, I finally took mine out on its maiden voyage yesterday. (It may result in me going more places than I have been, but it may also mainly result in me feeling safer in the places I do go.)

Yesterday there was a casual in-person meeting at Dayjob where the team properly met the two people who our office's managing editor answers to. Donuts were promised (and turned out to be quality donuts, although I opted not to bring one home with me [since I sure wasn't about to unmask to eat anything there!]. Fun times in needing to be picky about what I spend my sugar intake on). We also had a heat warning, so I was all the more glad/relieved to have a drive to and from the meeting rather than taking transit for the first time in, oh, three years or so.

I'll put most of the rest under a cut, but I do want to note--especially since probably at least one or two of you clicked on the link for the Air3, and the price looks horrifying--that I'm incredibly glad we didn't order ours immediately when they first became available, because at that point the Air3 alone (as opposed to the kit) was more like $1000 USD. The original plan wasn't for [personal profile] scruloose to get one at all, given that initial price and given that they have a respirator setup that works well for them. But then a few weeks later, the price dropped to $549(/$649 for the kit with extra stuff, which is what we opted for, as well as a few extra filters etc. in the name of minimizing future need to deal with shipping), so we got to say "Well, that's still really spendy, but it's also now not completely outrageous to get two." (And then we wound up having to contact the company because of shipping/import charge shenanigans, but those were on the courier's side, not Microclimate's, and the person [personal profile] scruloose dealt with was great, so it's all good.)

I should also note that one of the review videos I watched about this made sure to point out clearly that its price (which initially was a MAJOR jump up from how much the Air2 cost when that was available) was in line with the cost of other NIOSH-certified powered respirators. It's far from cheap, but it's not the gouging attempt it might seem like. (I do wonder what the deal was with the massive price drop so soon after its release, though!)

And now, the actual experience: )

10 vibrant icons for fandom10in30

Jun. 24th, 2025 08:03 pm
tinny: Close-up profile of Adam Karadec from the French series HPI kissing Morgane, both with their eyes wide open in surprise (hpi_morgadec kiss)
[personal profile] tinny
The current challenge at [community profile] fandom10in30 is Vibrant Colors. My fave thing, turning up the vibrance and saturation to the max! I made these in like two days, lol. :) I hope I won't hate them tomorrow, but for now I adore the colors. It was a real challenge to make Karadec vibrant. :D

Teasers:


all hpi or hpi actors )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
I finished off an old writing exercise for the Yield challenge on [community profile] fan_flashworks:

Title: Supplanted (1541 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Characters: Xiao Quan (Shen Wei's student), Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Jiajia
Additional Tags: Episode Related, Canon Scene, Canon Dialogue, POV Outsider, Episode 9 roadtrip, Zhao Yunlan is my blorbo, but sometimes he's a bit of a dick, Xiao Quan don't get no respect

Summary:

The responsibility for getting them back on the road rests on Luo Quan’s shoulders—and when he achieves it, the glory will be his, too. Jiajia will clap her hands and promise to buy him a drink when they get back to Dragon City. Professor Shen will give an approving smile.

(no subject)

Jun. 23rd, 2025 06:58 pm
ysobel: (Default)
[personal profile] ysobel
Kinda funny how mood can affect experiences as much as the other way around.

Impulse-went out to eat tonight... Black Bear Diner, a casual diner spot where I Read more... )

and I'm just really satisfied and happy, and I know good food improves my mood, but good moods make food better

I don't expect this mood to last all evening but dang it's nice

* * *

Unrelatedly, I love that the D&D DM for my group rewards roleplaying. Our group had freed a genie and were granted a wish; the guy with the highest charisma was volunteered to make our request. He didn't make any effort and was just basically "give us X", got a 19 on a persuasion check, and that failed and annoyed the genie. I used the inspiration I'd gotten (from a really good pun) to undo that attempt, then decided to take over since high-charisma dude didn't want to try again. My character has -1 to charisma, but I gave a passionate speech about the various adventures we'd been through and the various perils we were facing and how we could Defend The Innocents better if we could get some fun magic items to use... I got a 10 for the persuasion check and *passed*. (High-charisma dude is already at BEC status for me, so it was extremely amusing to win with a lower roll just because I ... erm, roleplayed, in a role play game, how novel...)
heresluck: (book)
[personal profile] heresluck
Animals

The president called undocumented immigrants
animals, and in the nature documentary
I watched this morning with my kids,
after our Saturday pancakes, the white
fairy term doesn't build a nest but lays
her single speckled egg in the crook of a branch
or a tree knot. It looks precarious there
because it is. And while she's away,
because even mothers must eat, another bird
swoops in and pecks it, sips some of what now
won't become. The tern returns and knows
something isn't right—the egg crumpled,
the red slick and saplike running down the tree—
but her instinct is so strong, she sits. Just sits
on the broken egg. I have been this bird.
We have been animals all our lives,
with our spines and warm blood, our milky tits
and fine layers of fur. Our live births, too,
if we're lucky. But what animal wrenches
a screaming baby from his mother?
Do we know anymore what it is to be human?
I've stopped knowing what it is to be human.


— Maggie Smith
from Goldenrod

why is moving so much work???

Jun. 22nd, 2025 10:57 pm
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
[personal profile] edenfalling
I have successfully emptied my filing cabinet into two boxes!

Admittedly the first box was not sorted or weeded at all, but that's because that drawer contained all my folders of Things What I Have Written and I knew if I so much as cracked one open I'd lose the entire day. So nope, directly into the box, do not pass go, do not collect $200, I'll sort it in Minnesota.

The other two drawers got sorted with extreme prejudice and I chucked a good 2/3 of the papers. A small victory by size of box, but a very large victory by amount of psychic weight I have consequently shed. :)

I'm trying to do a little sorting of the GIANT ACCORDION FOLDERS my mom kept for every goddamn year of my life up through... I think the end of elementary school? Anyway, I did weed all the preschool materials some years back so those are just in nice normal file folders, but the best I managed with the TWO massive kindergarten accordion folders was condensing them down to ONE massive accordion folder. Which is not nothing! But I do need to weed more strenuously when I have more time to be selective and also to ditch some items after taking well-lit photos.

...I think I will tackle 1st grade after I eat some dessert, and then I might call it a night.

(I have been trying to finish all paper-sorting tasks today since recycling gets picked up at about 4am on Mondays and I would like to get as much nonsense out of my apartment as possible.)

Ipoh trip

Jun. 22nd, 2025 05:44 am
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon
Last weekend, I had a family trip to Ipoh for three days (Friday to Sunday).

I spent most of that time in the hotel because of a fever, which turns out to be covid... so now I am isolating myself and also wanting a redo of the Ipoh trip, damnit! All the foods I couldn't eat.

In terms of accessibility, I must say that it was better than I had hoped but still leaves much to be desired. There were some disabled parking spots, but all of them weren't anywhere near cut curbs or ramps, so a wheelchair user will still have to navigate steps. Many of them did not even have extra space for a wheelchair to fit in so it feels a bit like just paying lip-service? Decorative accessible parking spots? Idk.

The hotel we were at were pretty good at accommodating our requests, so that's great! But still has the same issues where their accessible parking spots are really not (I can share the name of the hotel if interested! just PM me).

Anyway, for the places I did manage to go to:

Ming Court is the popular dim sum place now, and it's evident from the long queue outside... but it wasn't wheelchair accessible so we went to the dim sum restaurant opposite Ming Court, Foh San. It used to be the popular dim sum place, but standards have definitely gone down. I would recommend it only for the easier access for wheelchair users but I wouldn't recommend it for the dim sum, really.

Funny Mountain Beancurd is kinda a drive through service so easy access, with a car. We wanted to try Big Mom Beancurd too but they open midday, and we wanted to start our journey home before noon. Well, nothing much to say. It's Funny Mountain Beancurd. Silky smooth and soft is guaranteed. Soy drink a little too sweet though. I remember they used to serve with ginger syrup too? Maybe I remembered wrong.

Taiping Chee Cheong Fun place (yes, we drove to Taiping) was surprisingly easier to navigate than expected. The chee cheong fun place hasn't changed at all in all the years I've eaten there... This blog entry about Taiping Chee Cheong Fun has some photos of it from 2014, and it looks exactly the same today. It's a very comforting food item for me and so far, impossible to find outside of Taiping (iirc Ipoh has this as well, but you gotta ask for the red sauce and it doesn't come with the yam and you have to eat it with the yam for the perfect mouthfeel).

November 2024

S M T W T F S
     12
34 56789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Style Credit

Page generated Jun. 30th, 2025 06:01 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios