More music chat.

Sep. 24th, 2025 03:55 pm
aj: (music)
[personal profile] aj
I've been forcefully reminded lately how listening to music keeps fundamentally changing. Prior to ~120 years ago, you had to listen to live music if you listened to it at all. Then came phonographs and radio and *waves at evolution of recorded music*.

I mention this because I dabble in listening to music reviewers on YouTube. I tried keeping up with a few for a bit, but Todd in the Shadows is basically my speed when it comes to engaging with modern music. However, micthesnare on YT is someone who does what he calls a 'deep discog dive', which basically means he sits and listens to an artist or band's extant discography and talks about it. He also does the occasional experiment where he doesn't listen to anything via streaming and checks out a different/older way of engaging with music. He's done cd's only and radio only, so far, and it's pushed me to engage with the remains of my once-insane CD collection. (Luckily, I still have a CD player in my car.)

But! His most recent discography review was for Madonna. Which, full disclosure, I was a huge Madonna fan as a kid? Legitimately, I think her True Blue and Like a Prayer albums are ones that I owned on tape and played on repeat for several years.

And this is kind of what I mean about how listening to music - for me - has evolved? Because I was so limited in what I had access to - I saved my birthday and Xmas $$ to buy tapes, then CD's at the mall - I ended up spending a whole lot of time with the albums I ended up buying. I know that's similar to how my parents engaged with music too, although for them it was predominantly on vinyl.

Streaming/online music spaces really were a huge game changer for how people listen to/engage with music and I'm not going to finger wag about that. I know that there are some artists that I would never have even heard of if it hadn't been for how digital music opened things up. Artists with work that have helped me emotionally in ways that I can't really parse because their work is so fundamental to my emotional development.

That said, I'm enjoying forcing myself to slow down and engage in another way with music.

Por ejemplo, back at the end of 2014 I had the large and mildly upsetting realization that I couldn't remember the last time I'd read a published book. I'd been pretty exclusively reading fanfic at that point and I made an active choice to force myself to read published books along side my lovely fanfic. This was also when I started tracking my reading (as a tool!) to keep myself accountable. And I am very, very glad I pushed myself to prioritize reading published books. (Reading is a skill and I got a lot better at it by pushing myself out of my comfort zone.)

So, yeah! I love dumping stuff on the busted iPod (TM) and hitting shuffle, but I think it will be good for me to slow down and engage with specific albums too.
sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey: passion)
[personal profile] sovay
The mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #84, containing my poem "The Burnt Layer." It's the one with the five-thousand-year-old sky axe and α Draconis; it is short and important to me. The flight issue is a powerhouse, showcasing the short fiction and poetry of Jeannelle M. Ferreira, Zary Fekete, Gretchen Tessmer, Francesca Forrest, and Patricia Russo among no-slouch others. I love the warping truss bridge and the birdflight of the covers courtesy of John and Flo Stanton. You can read a review, pick up a copy, submit work to the next issue and I recommend all three. This 'zine is a seasonal constant. It even feels autumnal at the right time of the year.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll



Realtor Reiko Kujirai has many questions, about her apparent rival and about herself, but very few answers.

Kowloon Generic Romance, volume 2 by Jun Mayuzuki
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
[personal profile] sovay
I got up far too early to talk about far too much of my health, but I have been shot in the shoulder and eaten a bagel with chopped liver, which is at least two things the current administration would not care for. I am cleared to travel at the end of the month.

Now that it's been dislodged into the forefront of my consciousness, the phenomenon of Pirates of the Caribbean feels like the one real time in my life I was part of a megafandom and mostly what happened was the rest of the planet suddenly concurred that tall ships and chanteys and sea-change were cool. I saw Dead Man's Chest (2006) with my family because Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) had been such an unexpected swashbuckling delight, but I saw At World's End (2007) at a packed multiplex with friends who had agreed in common with much of the audience to arrive wearing as much pirate regalia as we could muster from our wardrobes, which at that time in my life meant the one rust-colored eighteenth-century shirt and my hair tied back with a black ribbon, the gold rings in my ears being a fortuitously preexisting condition. Especially since I continued not to interact with the supermassive explosion of fic unless it originated with my friendlist, that may be the most clinically fannish thing I have done in my life. I have never looked forward to a sequel in theaters before or since. I got the salt-green seventeenth-century glass onion bottle out of that first summer, as if it had been conjured off the screen into the traditional antique shop window for me to fall in love with its crusted tide. In the dog days of the second, I finished the novelette its sand-swirled, barnacle-silted draught was part of the pearl-grit for. In the span of that year, my graduate career had conclusively foundered and left me washing around in the wreckage. It had not occurred to me previously, but in their own flawed and splashier, blockbuster fashion, those two films may have been as much of a lifeline as the sea they evoked. I didn't expect to share it with an entire internet, but I am not sure the experience hurt me any, even if it has never repeated since.

From reading about this message in a bottle, I learned not only about John Craighead George whose mother's books I grew up on, but his twin conservationists of uncles whom I had known nothing about, so all things considered it carried a great deal of information in its transit from Point Barrow to Shapinsay.

WHY

Sep. 23rd, 2025 12:12 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
would my Framework charge if plugged into one outlet but not another? I tested the outlet from which it did not charge and it works for other devices.

[Update]

I shut it down for an hour and everything works again.

Funny thing about this singer

Sep. 23rd, 2025 09:11 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Youtube pushed a song from this source at me.

I don't think they exist. There are no non-generated images of the singer and their pace of output is suspicious. And their FB bio references ai.

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Sep. 23rd, 2025 08:56 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Oxford sends its best to study World War Two in this (grinds teeth) Hugo-winning tale of sound and fury.

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Balance

Sep. 22nd, 2025 11:59 pm
nineweaving: (Default)
[personal profile] nineweaving
I like that the New Year and the equinox are in balance. May this year bring peace.







Nine
sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
[personal profile] sovay
The status of the yontif this year is that my mother and I made honeycakes, but it is autumn and the head of the year and we are still here, the important thing. A sweet year, a safe. L'shanah tovah, all.

Bundle of Holding: Weird Wizard

Sep. 22nd, 2025 01:57 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The SHADOW OF THE WEIRD WIZARD corebooks, supplements, and adventures.

Bundle of Holding: Weird Wizard
astrogirl: (Missy)
[personal profile] astrogirl
Since authors have been revealed now, I can admit to writing this little thing for the Just Married exchange:

Title: Maybe This Time
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters/Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Rating: Apparently I rated it Teen, but it might not even merit that much.
Summary: Doctor/Master divorces: one. Annulments: several. Marriages: it seems even they've lost count. But, hey, at least this marriage wasn't their fault! Well, OK. It was only indirectly their fault.
Tags: Accidental marriage(s), Annulment(s), previous Doctor/Master divorce, Banter, Missy's time in the Vault, Humor, A little bittersweet at the end
Length: ~2600 words
Author's Notes: Written for natequarter for the Just Married exchange, for the absolutely delightful prompt suggestion of "accidentally got married yet again and are trying to annul the latest marriage, but can't get it done because all their other marriages keep on getting in the way."

Maybe This Time

Clarke Award Finalists 201

Sep. 22nd, 2025 09:52 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2015: Five Britons sign for the doomed Mars One venture, the UK pays off its WWI War Loans, and the Liberal Democrats’ adroit political maneuvering yields memorable electoral returns.

Poll #33648 Clarke Award Finalists 2015
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37


Which 2015 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
24 (64.9%)

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
8 (21.6%)

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
6 (16.2%)

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
4 (10.8%)

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
15 (40.5%)

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
17 (45.9%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2015 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
sovay: (Sydney Carton)
[personal profile] sovay
I did not post it last night because I was so tired, but [personal profile] spatch took a proof of life when I was finally home which does indeed look much more like a person than my fluorescently washed out self-portrait of a couple of nights ago and amazingly more so than the traditional tubes-and-wires effigy of earlier in the week. It's peculiar to look back on. Concentrating to talk to doctors during that period worked well enough that I was asked more than once if I had a medical background and had to answer only in the sense of having had a lot of medical to deal with, but otherwise much of what I remember of the first few days involved drifting in and out of weird half-overheard half-sleep acutely punctuated by conversations or procedures. It was amazing to go back to sleep this morning after my medications without having to discuss them extensively with anyone.



[personal profile] fleurdelis41 seasonally sent me some cases of piracy tried at the Old Bailey, of which my favorites are the prosecutor no-show, the punch line of the stolen hats, and the dudes whose defense was having been very drunk at the time.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Really, more of Book Received. One work new to me, science fantasy.

Books Received, September 13 — September 19

Poll #33640 Books Received, September 13 — September 19
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Yalum by Matthew Hughes (September 2025)
10 (26.3%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.6%)

Cats!
36 (94.7%)

sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
Home from six days in hospital with a plan designed not to land me back there any time soon, I have been passed into the care of Dr. Hestia, who is already carrying out her duties with enthusiastic ministrations of purr. I have washed my hair for the first time in a week. I have eaten food prepared by my family. I napped like a stone in the late afternoon, which I will have needed since my regimen for the foreseeable involves a schedule of medications I cannot let slide even when some of them require me to be awake at hours I have preferred my entire life to spend unconscious. My calendar is inevitably full of further maintenance, but I am truly looking forward to an increase in conversations that have nothing to do with the monitoring of my vitals. Mostly I am marrow-tired and vague with new chemistry and glad to be home in my own clothes and drinking water I don't have to ring anyone to bring me in bed. I was not expecting and delight in the gift of a plush harpy eagle that arrived while I was away.
aj: (art)
[personal profile] aj
Maybe I should start sketching. That way I'll need a pencil and a sketch pad and go about my life. (LBR, lol.)

I lament this only because I decided to Invest in a punch cradle for signatures. I have weird texture issues with my metal ruler (which I've been using to mark signatures for punching) and I don't love having to flatten the bent signature so I can poke it. I've been wanting to get one since pretty much day one, but the only ones I could find were, like, $40 3d printed ones on Etsy. Which, that's a weasel farm I did not want to touch.

Anyway, I made my bi-annual order from azn (I don't love it, but there are things I'm too poor for morals about) and found one for $13. I also bought some shampoo (Neutrogena, why are you being dodgy about T-Gel again? I need you to ctfo), paper, and Swedish dish towels. Apparently they're compostable?

BUT. I've managed to put together ~5 new projects to work on. Some are multiple volumes! Well, kinda. I respect the hell out of people who write 400K+ stories, but that usually means splitting the work into multiples. The one I'm currently working on (FF.net is tougher to harvest stuff from, dammit!) is a 400K (unfinished) beast and it's set at three volumes. Luckily, the formatting's mostly fine, I just need to tab the paragraphs and do minor spelling corrections. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but each chapter has ~300-700 paragraphs that I need to find and hit the 'tab' button for each. Glad I found the way to strip out the formatting so I don't have to hit 'backspace' to eliminate the extra formatting space. I'm relearning so much about Microsoft Word hot keys and formatting rules.

Maybe I should go back to doing fic recommendation posts somewhere. There's so much good (and long) stuff out there that I don't know that anyone knows about! TBF, libraries and archives are always bad at marketing and are much more based around the X person wants to find a thing, we'll hold it until they come looking! model. It is what it is.

I do really need to work on getting better at covering books though. The endpages always come out wonky and I just don't know what to do to work on that? Especially as glueing the end papers to the cover has a bunch of variables happening while you're trying to get it done. Is the glue too much? Not enough? Can I get the bone folder at the right angle so the pressing doesn't rip? Is the spine spacing adequate or should it be bigger? WHY IS THE CURVED SPINE NOT CURVING FFS. And it's hard to practice THIS BIT a lot to get better at it because it's all time sensitive and to practice I'd have to cut a bunch of stuff a part and that feels wasteful and annoying on my end. BLAH. Also, I need to find the damn scoring thing [personal profile] annieeats gave me last year that I "put somewhere for safekeeping" so I "wouldn't lose it". UGH, exacto knives are out for my fingers.

All that said, having a book press has made my life better by a factor of ten when it comes to binding. Especially with the post-bind pressing. Bleeeeeeesssssssss.

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