Solo

I've been home for less than 24 hours. I have also found the secret to being able to sleep on a plane: party till 5am on the day you want to head out to the airport at 7am, and by the time the plane leaves you are willing to forgo their stupid weak coffee if they'll just leave you alone and let you sleep.

Jin was AWESOME. KAT-TUN were AWESOME in a different way. I still need to process it all in my head before I can talk about it properly, in writing. At the concerts I met old friends and new friends and it was great and I hope we can all meet again soon.

Number of New Year's Resolutions: 1. I want to post on DW/LJ more regularly again, perhaps once a day through January.

So here I am. Hi! Who's still out here too?

Two kinds of good news today:

1) The terms for the referendum on Scottish independence have been finalized and signed by the two governments. :) BBC. We'll have a vote in autumn 2014.

This wasn't really unexpected; after the Scottish National Party got 60% in the last Scottish elections, the Westminster government had to agree it or be seen as utterly undemocratic. Still, it's nice that that's in the bag now and they'll stop bickering.

2) CHAIN DVD!!! *__* Already bought. Roll on, November 21st!

I didn't really have time to listen to CHAIN properly until... well, today, once I'd sent off that batch of assignments. I'd sampled the songs just briefly when it came out, stuck two on my 'current' playlist, and decided closer inspection and appreciation of the rest had to wait.

( So here's what I'm thinking after giving each song at least three chances to impress me. )

What did the rest of you think? What's your favourite? Is there one you hate?

rheasilvia asked for this.



( 'As long as there is warmth, I don't need anything else'? )

Those of you who listen to Kス バイ Kス live... where would I find that? (And if you want to make it really easy for me, what time is it on, and which channel?) I know how to find TV programs on things like TVants and Keyhole, but I never tried with radio before. Any info will be very welcome.

I have an invite code for AO3, the fanfiction archive on fan-run servers. It's a wonderful place and I recommend it very highly if you want a stable, user-friendly and above all futureproof place for archiving your fiction. Let me know if you want the code.

julia and I have planned our New Year, and she'll be visiting me between 30 Dec and 10 Jan. becroberts will be coming up to spend some time with us too. It'll be fun. :-)

A few days ago I picked up a random rumour about a (CD?) collaboration between Kame, Pi and Toma. Is there anything to that, or was it just somebody's hallucination? I haven't seen or heard anything since, but I can't claim that I really looked; I'm just kind of intrigued.

Jin. Cut his hair. AT LAST. I just had to say that.


And the grown-up stuff...

I've been using my mouse with my left hand for the last week because I was starting to get worrying twinges in my right wrist and forearm every day after an hour at the computer. Partly, it's been easy to get used to the left-handed thing, but for some actions where I used to have complex mouse/keyboard combinations, it's driving me nuts. I guess it's a question of time and familiarity. Just, grrrrrr.

Teaching starts for me again tomorrow. Mondays are going to be face-to-face from 10 to 4. I get exhausted just thinking about it, but it's still better than splitting it over two days and having it eat into my time even more, as it would.

Leaving tomorrow. Surveying house to figure out all the stuff I need to do before I can. My last minor batch of work didn't arrive in time for me to do anything with it, which annoys me because that means that when I get back, on the 9th, it'll be sitting there waiting with a big '2 DAYS TO DO ME' deadline attached. Which I kind of don't need. But oh well.

Destination: k_julia's, then a quick side trip to see my folks, which will provide a welcome opportunity to meet up with ina and hopefully rheasilvia, then back south to Julia's for five more days of madness.

I have stockpiled cat food like there is no tomorrow, so that A. will have a number of choices if (when) Yami decides to play fussy again. His current fallback is to feed her the cat equivalent of a hamburger, which makes her happy and me sad. I'm hoping that the presence of plenty of premium tuna and chicken cat food will prevent some of that. (Some of the chicken has pumpkin in it. This puzzled me a little when I bought it, but I figured there'd be a reason. Then I discovered it puzzles Yami, too, to the extent that she'll carefully lick the chicken off those weird orange bits. Damn.)

On the current grrrr and arrrrgh that's going through KAT-TUN fandom again, all I can say is that rather than read between the lines of what the other members say (YOU KNOW THE THING I MEAN) I prefer to read the very straightforward statements Jin himself has made. Keep the faith, guys?

Also, I laughed so much at the idea of Nakamaru doing Koki's solo that I had no space left in my brain for worry about anything. That's just priceless. PRICELESS.

Because I'm not going to be here for eleven days, I've been advancing randomly through my KAT-TUN calendar to get at least a day to look at the nicest pics. It means that for the last half week I have been in a state of constant confusion about what the day/date actually is. Today is 3rd July, and then it'll stay on 4th until I get back. Apt, inorite?

This is such a random post. It's just, I figured I should stop disappearing for weeks on end and actually, well, post a bit more, only IDK what about. I couldn't care less about Wimbledon, and I'm not following the World Cup (except very cursorily to see how far Japan get and whether Germany manage to kick England out). I keep listening to Tipsy Love and Yellow Gold on repeat. (Stupid ignorant question: is that really hip-hop? It sounds... idk, just too pretty?) And I can't make up my mind which of the three reasonably clear versions of Paparats I have by now I like best. I SO HOPE THERE'LL BE AN ALBUM. WITH VIDEO!!! k_julia and I were discussing the news about the Yamapi CD recently, and how that would appear to set an excellent precedent.

Finally, a sort of PSA. Because I'm going through one of my neat-freak phases, I'm about to do a little friends cut/unsubscribing. This means next to nothing since I don't normally lock my entries anyway. But if I can't even remember when we've last 'spoken', I figure we either don't read each other or don't have anything to say to each other any more. It happens, it's just life. Nothing personal. And maybe you've been waiting for the opportunity to defriend/unsubscribe me, and were just too shy to do so. :-) But do let me know if I made a mistake or you fell victim to my failing memory, and I'll add you back at once!

As some of you know, k_julia has been on some fabulous all-inclusive holiday somewhere nice and warm, where the 'all-inclusive' did not include in-room internet, so our contact with each other has been sporadic. And for people who pretty much live in each other's virtual pockets, a week of maybe 1/2 hr contact per day is pretty... interesting. I leave you to imagine the various shades of 'frustrating' which this 'interesting' might contain, but one thing is for sure: there are suddenly so many more hours in the day when you aren't in constant communication writing, talking about writing, talking about canon, talking about other fic, talking about the latest real life developments, exchanging links, talking about those, watching things, talking about them, and--- anyway.

You have no idea how much I got done this week! In fact, even I don't, so I'm making a little list. ( And cut-tagging it because I'm nice that way. )

The thing I meant to do but didn't: get a haircut. Whoops. Wonder if I could steal somebody's stupid hat. God, those concerts start tomorrow. Is anybody else actually nervous about them or am I just an idiot?

I have a theory. The theory is this: Kame can (for contractual, congenital or complicated reasons) only produce a solo I actually like every five years. 2005 had Kizuna. 2009 had 1582.

The countdown has started.

(These thoughts brought to you by sneak previews of Sweet.)

OTOH I do like NO MORE PAIN (though I'm not willing to spend my time figuring out how to invert the N. Somebody want to tell me?) It's like a cross between TABOO (nope, no inverted As, either) and Sadistic Love, both of which I love. So YAY for NMP.

I've been sorting pictures on my hard drive. It's an incredible timesink, but also incredibly enjoyable. JIN IS SO PRETTY. Um.

Anyway, just half an hour ago it also got incredibly frustrating. I have papa pics from three (?) different events and no indication of date/occasion for any. I am pretty sure the first one is something BANDAGE-related (was it that event with the towel?), but I can't identify the other two at all. Clearly all the same period, and maybe I was sleepwalking for a few days back then and missed... stuff. Or maybe it's because I got them from Pantip and I don't read Thai so well. Or maybe the horrible outfits made my brain seize up.

Help? Where are these from? Dates? Occasions?

Well, not much stuff. I've been pretty much incommunicado during the time I spent in Germany, partly from choice and partly because I find it difficult to form coherent thoughts when three people are talking to me at once.

The weather was lovely throughout, and it was really depressing last night to come back to a typical Scottish evening (followed by a typical Scottish morning, and a wet kitten on my bed. Well, the kitten was kind of nice).

I discovered the joy of ice cream cups. With cream and chocolate sauce and fruit and, ideally, liqueur. Why couldn't I discover the joy of raw celery? Or pickles? Huh.

Also huh: GOING! and the accompanying PV. Or rather than 'huh', perhaps the operative phrase is 'WTF is that??' Guys, if I wanted to see/hear NEWS or Arashi or HSJ, I'd be a NEWS or Arashi or HSJ fan. SRSLY. I haven't found one of their A-sides so sucky since... actually, that must have been before I was in the fandom. In fact, that may have been YOU. What a co-incidence. :-/

A kind-of sort-of PSA for those of you who are in Germany: for something my mother was doing, I hunted up the German equivalent to our Say No to 0870 (a consumer service which helps you avoid calling horribly expensive 'customer service' numbers); it doesn't seem to be very well known in Germany, so here it is in case you want it: Das 0180-Telefonbuch.

While I was away, we uploaded our kizuna_exchange story Amigo to our own fic journal and also to our abode on AO3. Summary: Kame rings in the years with angst, some abandonment, and a cosmopolitan. Akame, 9,000 words, Teen-rated; betaed by ina. Thank you again, Ina, you were great! :-)

I think I still have comments to catch up on. It feels weird to be going back almost a week. It also feels weird to be looking at my KAT-TUN calendar and deciding that I don't want to miss out on some of the pics for which the dates are officially over, so I'll be catching up more slowly there. Today is the 26th. :-) I think I'll be back on track by 3 May. And kriszeth, I'll be getting back to you well before then!

Finally, question. Well, back-story first. I use Firefox as my main browser but I can't run two instances at once on Win7, and for complicated reasons I need to have two separate browsers running quite frequently; otherwise this wouldn't be an issue. Now, is there a way to stop moving animated images in Google Chrome? Preferably after allowing them to do their animation thingie once? Basically, to do what in Firefox, setting 'image.animation_mode' to 'once' does? Or failing that, I'd be grateful to be told just how to turn the bloody things off entirely. Icons that constantly move at the edge of my vision give me migraines.

Oh, and while I'm at it, does anybody know how to force Chrome to override any given site's font settings? I know where I can set the fonts I want to have displayed as defaults, but that seems to work only when the site itself hasn't set specific fonts. (AO3, I am looking at you. I do not like your swirly serifs.)

Twitter is bad for blogging. It's like every single tiny bit of anything I might ever have to say gets nibbled away in 140-character crumbs and then there's nothing left. For weeks.

Except right now there are a few things after all.

1) We're off to Germany again on the 22nd. I'm kind of trying to make up for the fact that we'll probably not go again for Xmas, ever (long story). So I'm jumping on any cheap flight that I can get, and this one was £12 per person, so...

Anyway, it's really very brief; A. is leaving again on the 25th, I'm hanging on till the 27th. And then I'm straight back into grading. And when that's done I can start looking forward to the third weekend in May when k_julia, becroberts, ina, mananeh and I are going to have us a little party. :-)

2) We actually had some warm days recently. Warm in the sense of 'Solo throws caution to the winds and moves operations into the garden'. And of course Yami was delighted and spent all that time outside with me, chasing butterflies and getting teased by crows twice her size.
( So here are cat pics. )

3) k_julia and I have committed a TheraPWP. There we were, harmlessly discussing the summer tour and the L.A. concerts and surrounding issues, and... it just happened, okay? It is here: Lift me to the sky, 7,000 words, rated PORN.

4) The kizuna_exchange is almost finished, and as somebody who's never taken part in a fic exchange before, I've found the experience very interesting. Also, the big percentage of AUs really came as a surprise to me, as to several others. And like everybody else, I'm still catching up with the reading, but I've already found a few stories I know I'll read over and over again. The one written for us is one of those. I might do some recs once the reveal is up and reccing won't compromise our anonymity. (Only I suck at recs, so maybe not...)

5) And now I should really spend a couple of more-or-less productive hours with the YamaNade 7 subs.

State of the Collaboration, 33: "japanese teenage boy toy 2008" is not a useful google search term when you actually want to know about popular toys for boys.

I got my new computer at last. This means that I have been spending my time installing stuff on an unfamiliar operating system. Like so:



Clearly I am nowhere near done. But at least this time I'm making an image file so I can reinstall the system and all my important programs very quickly should I feel the desire to.

*

I have a view on the whole Jin / America / KAT-TUN / Asia thing. But my brain took so long to agree to prod at it a little that whatever I might have said has now been said already. I may still post it later for my own reference just so I have something to go back to when I want to cheer myself up. But might do it under lock because hey, how many gazillion position statements does the fangirl world need?

Anyway, not now, because spending all day installing programs (oh, and marking assignments) =/= sufficient cognitive powers at night.

*

Remember the artful catflap/box/bin arrangement designed to prevent our cat from escaping at night and carousing drunkenly in the streets?

This morning, she got out.


ETA since people have been wondering: she came back 15 mins later, very wet, and dried herself and her paws off on our bed.

This is a thing I usually end up doing with some unsuspecting victim on IM as we boggle at the outfits the guys have to wear for their photoshoots. This time I figured I could try it here.

( The little story Myojo tells )

My fandom is so shiny these days. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. Maybe I should go sit under a cardboard box.

I really should get some work done, but for the last two days (three? How long has this thing been going?), the Great Akame Meta Comment Gathering has eaten all my time. At least the time that wasn't spent doing seriously deadline-y work and subbing things and OMG, I need to get that finished today, too. But anyway, The Gathering (in which no heads are being lopped off). 1062 comments at the latest count, and whenever I pull email off the server there are half a dozen more notifications? I get up to inboxes that say 189 new comments. And everybody's there, and there are the most amazing threads hidden in it about ... everything? Pretty much. ... and why am I even talking about it because if you're an Akame fan you know about it, but anyway. MABUSHIIIIII!

And another thing of shiny: mirrtaunt has translated our first ever Akame story, Off The Wire, into Russian! It's so amazing to see your writing in a language you don't even understand! I need to feed bits of it into Babelfish and see what comes out; I have been informed that the results of that can be hilarious. -- This is no reflection on mirrtaunt's translation, obviously, which I have no doubt is excellent. Just, Babelfish. It could be so funny.

Looking at the story again, though, I kind of ::blink:: at the thought that we introduced ourselves to the fandom with that. Just how crazy were we? Not that I think it's a bad story, hey, I was part of writing it, but out of everything we've written, it's the one where you most need to know where we're coming from with the characterisation, and not a soul knew us and it would have been so horrifically easy to misunderstand us totally. It's a miracle anybody talked to us at all.

More shiny: A Page. I may have mentioned this before. But OMG I love this song. The thing it does in the 25(ish) seconds coming up to 1:00, and then again (better) between 2:12 and 2:34... omg. Just. I keep putting it on repeat.

I also finally found time to listen properly to Aishite Iru Kara. What a sweet, sweet song! And his voice sounds so nice, too. I'm afraid I don't find the song very exciting, but... it's so sweet. I really have no better word for it.

Right. Now I have to write a section of the k_x story to get to k_julia before she disappears, but first I should maybe hit the post office to send off my postcard requesting a Star Live DVD to the Family Club... and sending petitions to production/talent agencies is another thing I haven't done since I was 15, and boy, am I young immature dedicated strange.

Anyway. Post office. Story section. And then I need to get these subs back to the team. And my next LJ post will be all about how I am a respectable, responsible and sane member of society with a kitten and a new back door, but it'll have to wait.