look on my works ye mighty, and despair

I don't post here publicly very often any more. I'm not even posting anything very private, I just feel like I want at least an illusion of privacy these days and so I default to locked posts.

(Similarly, my twitter and my fb are locked, and I rarely post much to tumblr.)

Since I know a few people without accounts come and look at this account every so often to check up on me: I'm happy and healthy and all that. I'm just not feeling broadcasty right now.

Today our bus home hit someone! That's rather more excitement than I'd like on my home commute, but the girl seemed to be fine (and very apologetic, ah britain).

There's some horrible ebooks site scraping AO3 for fics and putting them up as pdfs; as a result all my fics are now only visible to registered AO3 users. I hate doing that but I hate fic-scraping sites more. (I'm not sure if my fics actually evaded the radar or if I'm just incompetent at finding my own fics there, because everyone else I've seen who has fics on AO3 seems to have been scraped.)

I was supposed to be spending this evening writing but nothing of the sort has happened. Sigh.

So Fanfic Journal is scraping lj for any entries tagged with 'fanfic' or variants of, and reposting them (presumably because you'd think most of them would be actual fanfics). As you can imagine, a lot of them are personal posts which get tagged with fanfic and get scraped as a result. And currently, a lot of them are posts *about* posts being scraped. It's interestingly meta.

This is a good post about it; that user was kind enough to notify me in comments that a few of my personal public entries had been reposted there. There is theoretically a complaint page where you can object and they'll take down your posts, I am distinctly skeptical that this is likely to happen.

(I would contact the hosting service to complain; whois really only tells me it's Russian-hosted -- which I figured from the site already -- and there's not really any hosting info. The registrar might possibly also be the webhost, and they do have an abuse report page, so I've complained there. And at PrivacyProtect.org. Anyone have more ideas?)

(A version of this post -- before I found the abuse report pages -- appears on that site now, less than an hour later. Amazing.)

Pez and I have found a local 'improvers' Japanese course starting in October that looks like it might be pitched at a useful level for us. It specifies that it uses kana not romanji (yay!) and assumes you have enough knowledge to get by in terms of buying food and getting around but not enough knowledge to hold a conversation. That's about right for me, at least. It only runs for an hour a week and isn't particularly expensive, so it's probably worth a try. That's assuming the course actually runs; they sometimes cancel courses if they get insufficient interest.

The website to sign up for the course is a pain in the ass (forms with non-required fields that are in fact actually required before it'll let you submit, etc) and requires you to wait for them to validate your details, so now we're waiting on that step. Yay bureaucracy. The Adult Learning Centre is quite close to our office, so if there's significant delay before they process the login then at least I can go smack them in person.

I called a plumber this morning -- our gas boiler has been non-functional for a fortnight, and because a) it's warm and b) we have a separate shower which heats the water by electricity we've had no urgency in fixing it but it would be quite nice to actually have hot water one of these days. Actual grown-up things! Yay! So now I'm waiting for him to call back. Ho hum.

And I finally chucked my current Rocket Dog sneakers and bought a new pair to replace them (black sequined ones this time). I love Rocket Dog shoes for comfiness but they wear through quite fast on me (usually the shoes give up before the shoelaces do). This pair had holes in both heels, and the left heel was sort of held together by luck and prayer, so it was clearly time even if they were a gift from Pez and so slightly sentiment-infused.

(The Sims 2's university thing ate my evening again, but now everyone's graduated so maybe I can reclaim my life. Yukimura was held back for his early screwup and cried when Renji and Sanada graduated and left the house without him. So much trauma. At least he got to hang around and see Akaya graduate summa cum laude though. Yes, I am easily invested in this sort of thing, shush.)

Today we're moving Coscraft! I am kind of hyper about this, omg.

(And yesterday our home internet died, so today we had an amusing BT openreach engineer come and poke at it to try and see why it had broken. A glitch, as far as he could tell, but everything's working now so fingers crossed it stays that way.)

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (re-read)
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Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl (re-read)
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Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
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Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
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The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami Haruki (short story collection)
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Pretty Good Number One by Matthew Amster-Burton (non-fiction, re-read)
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Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes by Cory O'Brien (non-fiction)
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The Quarry by Iain Banks
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Current to read pile:
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Today Pez went to forage for food and to take the mail to the post office on her own, earning her all the wife points. Meanwhile, I spent the day writing (D1, because they are somehow easier) and scanning in pictures of pretty boys (for Tumblr purposes) and chatting on skype and on ifMUD. It's been nice and laid-back.

(My leg doesn't hurt now, but it feels like it's misaligned and also like it won't take my weight.)

Today we inventoried all the wigs!

And I seem to have spent the four hours since then arsing about on the internet (talking about Masa and Bachon and Sasaki Yoshihide, in fact) and watching Bugsy Malone. Oops.

New trainers! I've had my last pair since, uh, 1999, I think. I think I can afford one new pair of trainers per millenium, really. Pez also got a new pair; her last pair are even older than mine. I also bought two scarves (I know, it's swelteringly hot, but they are decorative dangly things rather than functional warm things), and Pez got a pretty floaty dress that I saw and went 'ooo, that would look nice on you'.

We dropped by a gym in town to have a look around - it's cheaper and more convenient than the other ones we've looked at (but has no pool). It also has a month-by-month system rather than long-term contracts, which is nice. So Pez is probably going to sign up for that, and I guess I will too; we can bully each other into going regularly. We do some workout stuff at home but this will hopefully give Pez a chance to do cardio that isn't going to be bad for her back.

Tumblr is genuinely addictive now I've added people, shit. I keep finding hilarious fanart. Send help?

Today I cut two wigs! Go me!

(There was a lot of not-very-productive attempting-to-write by me while Pez made Yurick's leather pants. Plus some tumblr-reblogging and exercising. And we got a delivery of groceries. Living the rockstar lifestyle here, I know.)

(Note from storme - The below is a reposting--the words below are not mine.)

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

For the Pterry fans on my lj friendslist: get your face on the limited edition cover of I Shall Wear Midnight via http://apps.facebook.com/ishallwearmidnight/

Limited spaces, so get a goin'.

We are watching the Leader's debate on the BBC--I wish the BBC had used a less distracting backdrop, and I really wish that the makeup and lighting people had managed to make everyone a little less bright orangey-pink.

Also I wish Facebook wasn't being so random about which status updates it would show. Sigh.

The Labour candidate for my ward just sent me a friend request on Facebook.

Man. XKCD totally just broke my heart. Stupid object empathy.

Today has been a day of tidyingfrenzy spattered with pauses to breathe non-detergented air so my sore throat can stop. I've even polished and cleaned my keyboard.

One of my friends posted their answers to this quiz, and it's a nice idea, but man. I have friends I've met online but have also met offline, so do they count in both columns B and C? How far back are we going for these results? What qualifies as 'talking to someone' from a country, anyway? Having exchanged sentences? Long conversations? More than one or two conversations? Is it actually possible to go to a country and not speak with anyone from there at all? What about people who've moved countries several times, which one do I count them as from?

Also apparently I am ranty today, I see.

In other news, I'm trying to arrange things for November. If I'm reading your NaNoWriMo lj account as a friend of this lj, don't panic if I remove you - I'll be adding you to the friendslist of my NaNo account, since I think I'm going to find it simpler to read everything NaNo-related from there. No faffing around with filters, then.

I think that's it for now...

Oh dear.

I was thinking about Nanowrimo, and vaguely hoping I could come up with more of a focus for it. My basic idea is okay, in that it will allow me to write 50,000 words inside some semblance of a plot. I just wanted to find a new angle to put into it, to twist it all slightly, to try and make it a little bit more than self-indulgent rambling.

I've just realised what the focus has to be.

Oh dear.

Last year I did NaNoWriMo, got out 50,000 words of plotless fantasy rambling inside the deadline, and was happy. Very stressed for an entire month, of course, but it was worth it for the feeling of waking up on the last day with twelve hours and only 500 words to go...

This year, I'm going to do it again. This time, it's not going to be fantasy, and with any luck, it'll have a faintly coherent plot.

Let's just hope I don't regret this.

For a little background on what exactly Flash Mobs are, look here.

( This might get long )

EDIT: Diamond Geezer has a writeup of the event, complete with a photo. I am in the photo, but very tiny.

Wow, I'm kind of proud of everyone. A very very large amount of people on my friends list got nominated and/or won in the Yearbook poll.

I'm so impressed. But whoever nominated me for funniest female, I boggle at you.

Edit: doospack is now running her own yearbook poll. Feel sad you didn't do well enough in the last poll? Pimp this one!