formerly jayeless@dreamwidth

Moved!

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 06:50:58 GMT

Hey all!

In the light of all the recent developments at Tumblr, I'd been thinking about coming back to Dreamwidth and making a genuine attempt to connect with the community that's active on here. Admittedly, I hadn't been really active either on Tumblr at the time when shit went down (it had long since ceased to be a fun place to geek out over TV and music for me!), but that's no reason to check out where all the other escapees of the sinking ship have run off to, right?

The thing is, though, that I've had this journal a long time and tbh I wanted a fresh start, away from all the entries dating back to my high school and uni days. It's true that all the cringiest ones are access-list-locked (at least… they'd better be), but the tags were still cluttering up my "top tags" list whenever I was logged in and ugh I just did not want to deal with that.

So, fresh start! I changed the username on this, as you can see, to jayeless_archive and I created a brand-new account to usurp the noble jayeless name. Over there, I intend to post a smattering of stuff, general musings and whatnot on a range of topics. These may include books, TV shows, linguistics, my cat, and even more! Feel free to follow me over if that sounds good to you.

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Trying to decide whether to get a new phone…

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:22:40 GMT

Since June 2014, I’ve had this: a Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s served me well. It’s already lasted me almost twice as long as my previously longest-lived phone (that’d be a Samsung Galaxy S3 that lasted 20 months). The camera hasn’t broken, which it did on my S3 – the glass on the lens shattered. It still works.

But it just feels old. The battery runs out after about 90 minutes of solid use. Last year when I was on placement, there were times I left it on silent in my bag all day, and found it at about 5% battery by the end (even though it had been at 90%+ in the morning). I’m guessing that was a bug that’s been fixed because I haven’t seen that lately, but it did drain from about 70% to 10% during a day on the Mornington Peninsula when I wasn’t using it, seemingly from overexerting itself trying to get a signal. Basically, the battery life is a bit crap.

And OK, I could buy a new battery. But the device is also really laggy. Just scrolling through Twitter is stuttery. If I press a notification, the relevant app will regularly take 20+ seconds to appear (often long enough that I try to open it again). Sometimes my alarm to wake up in the morning just doesn’t go off (as in, the phone decided to kill the Clock app/process overnight because it deemed some other background process more important). Sometimes the lag is so bad that the “accept call” screen doesn’t even appear until the call’s already timed out! Thankfully this hasn’t happened yet with any calls from the agency I get work through, but it totally could one day. As if the prospect of sleeping through my alarm wasn’t bad enough.

( Cut because this got really long and self-indulgent. )

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Did Moffatt seriously just spoil this

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 02:15:45 GMT

Cut for spoilers, duh. Moffatt-sanctioned, thus probably-not-all-that-episode-ruining spoilers but nonetheless :p

( Read more... )

Anyway now let's move on to MORE SPOILERS, i.e. the synopsis of the first episode:

( Read more... )

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Adventures in a world of less gadgetry

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:28:04 GMT

Apparently when I was little, I didn't need computers to entertain me at all. No, I watched TV and I read books and I played in the backyard with my sister, and somehow, I liked it. Somehow.

Then I discovered computers and Neopets and the fact that CD players were pretty cool and somehow eight years went past without me caring about TV or playing in the backyard all that much. (Books are a different matter... books are more like, those things which are really cool, but I never seem to do as much with them as I'd really like. Although theoretically owning a Kindle now should fix that right up.)

I tell you this entire boring story as a prelude to telling you that I'm suffering from all kinds of gadget-related botheration right now. ( Read more... )

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:O

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:17:26 GMT

Today I found out that a human being could survive ninety seconds in deep space and still get better.

Sooooo I guess I have to cancel my whinging about River Song~~'s stupid plan about~~ chucking herself out of an airlock in The Time of Angels. Technically she had 90 seconds. (Although after not many she'd have been quite sick so to some extent my point still holds. To some extent.)

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Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:57:56 GMT

Look, I remembered I still had to write this post!! Yay :D

Anyway... I adored this year's Christmas special, I have to say. It was all timey-wimey and awesome, and although there were some things about it (well mainly one thing) that I didn't like, these/this is minor and overall, I still adored the episode :p

Apparently it was hard to follow without watching it the whole way through; my sister missed the start and my mother missed chunks out of the middle, and neither of them had any idea what was happening in the episode as a result. But I watched the whole thing, so I remember.

( More under the cut! )

Lastly... HOW FUCKING AWESOME WAS THAT TRAILER. The fez!!!!!

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Fiction: Last Night on Earth

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 09:36:51 GMT

You can consider this a Halloween treat if you like, provided you're decked out in costume! If not, well... consider it just another post. I don't know, seriously, consider it however you want.

Sooo I wrote this in August, and then never posted it. In case you don't remember the ~historical background~ to this product of August, there was a federal election here, and this federal election was preceded by an election campaign. One of the big issues of the campaign was refugees, and in particular, the two major parties were competing with each other to see who could produce the most disgusting policy with the most outrageous deprivations of human rights.

I think what I wrote reflects my frustration with this. It can also be considered a response to one of the February prompts at dailyprompt, "last night on earth" (where the title comes from).

( Last Night on Earth )

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GO TO HELL MYKI

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 04:34:29 GMT

This post is a crosspost from my Tumblr, and can be read in its original location here.

If you don't know myki is Victoria's ~~upstart usurper of a ticketing system~~ ~*~smartcard ticketing system~*~ where you like get this credit card thing and you're supposed to ~~tag on~~ and ~~tag off~~ every time you get on or off a train, tram, or bus.

(Actually technically you're not supposed to tag off when you get off the tram, unless your tram trip was wholly within the zone 1/2 overlap, in which case you are. METLINK'S ONLY HOBBY IN LIFE IS BEING CONFUSING ok.)

myki may sound like a "good idea" if you geek out over science fiction-y smartcard systems (understandable that was my own reaction when myki was first supposed to be introduced.............. in 2006) but if you consider that Melbourne already has an A-GRADE AMAZING TICKETING SYSTEM called METCARD it basically sucks. ( And basically there's two reasons for this: )

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The football codes

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:22:18 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

With the grand final rematch set to take place tomorrow, it feels like a fitting day to write about something of great cultural significance to Australia: football. This is something so significant to people in this country that even people who reject the entire idea of “Australian culture” (like I don’t know… me) still take an interest in football.

The first thing to know about football, though, is that there is a cultural battle of sorts raging over which sport even gets the title of “football”. Our three main contenders for the position are:

football
soccer
rugby

Based on this list, I’m sure you will see that I am not at all biased when I say that the true bearer of the name of “football” is, uh, football. That is, the kind of football they play in the Australian FOOTBALL league.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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Fiction: Things in life that aren't very fair

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:29:27 GMT

One of the best things about feeling angry, in fact pretty much the only good thing about it, is the way I can often channel what I'm feeling into a piece of writing. This particular piece didn't take a lot of thought or editing, just me adding words to the file and getting into a rhythm. It's not my "usual" style of writing where there are characters and events and things happen and you can see them, but it's more like poetry in the format of prose. Anyway, I don't feel like I have to justify my work before you've even read it, so just click through :)

( Things in life that aren't very fair )

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Ramblings on Australian accents

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:50:57 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

One of the downsides to studying linguistics, if you’re anything like me, is that you start listening very closely to the way other people speak. Of course, if you’re anything like me you wouldn’t consider this a downside, you’d consider this pure awesomeness. Just think, every time you get super-bored in international studies, you can just listen to your classmates and think, “Oh wow, did they just do the whole Melbourne Accent™ thing and pronounce an [e] like /æ/?” or, “Hey, so I’m not the only one who substitutes glottal stops for [t]s! Awesome!”

As you can see my classes are very exciting.

Anyway, someone I know said I should write a post about Australian accents, and since I adore accents, I thought I would. Actually what he said was I should talk about the homogeneity of Australian accents, but I feel like this is a bit unfair.

Of course Australian accents are far more homogeneous than, say, British accents, or even North American accents. There’s not really any such thing as a “New South Welsh accent”, for instance, although I was once reading a Lost fan wiki that claimed there was. That kind of misinformation should be on Mythbusters, man — there’s truly not. While there are multiple Australian accents, none of them are tied down to specific regions of the country (possibly excluding the country/city divide). That said, there are different accents, and (in General Australian anyway) further variations on top of those accents.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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78 Saab – Kandahar

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:56:23 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

For once, I’m going to use a music post to promote a band that barely anyone in the world seems to know about, but is really, really good and deserve to be better-recognised. That is, 78 Saab.

They’re not entirely my usual style — a bit folky, a bit country — but they’re just amazing. If I had to compare them to other artists in my collection, they’re probably similar to Arcade Fire… and maybe others? I don’t know. Anyway, I own their album The Bells Line, and every track bar two is rated five stars in my library. However, “Kandahar” is probably my favourite.

If you’ve never heard this song before I don’t blame you. There was no copy of it on YouTube for me to embed, and not even that repository of all wisdom in the world, Google, can tell me what the lyrics are. Luckily for all of you guys I was dedicated enough to install Windows Live Movie Maker, create a video out of it, and upload to YouTube… and having listened to the song about a million times, I’ve made a pretty good attempt at transcribing the lyrics!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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On a train in Perth

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:47:12 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

I was on a packed bus a few days ago, in the dark, in the rain, and for some reason a memory came to mind of a packed train in sunny Perth almost three years ago. We were on holiday, heading back to our hotel after a day in Fremantle, with a lot of other people who were heading back from a day at the Royal Perth Show. There were a group of three boys about my age chatting excitedly about their day and plotting mischief. One of their showbags had come with a laser light, so they were constructing a devious plan to blind policemen with the light while running away from whatever. Harmless stuff, as you can see.

But the grey-haired man next to them had a stern, grouchy look on his face, and this look only darkened as the boys got even further developing their plan. Finally, he burst: “Do that and you’ll get shot!”

The boys looked at him, shocked. “What? Why?”

“Police officers are trained to shoot first and think later, if they’re blinded,” the man snapped. “I shot a boy your age once!”

“Are you a police officer?” one of them asked, in a tone approaching guilt.

“No! No, I’m much worse than that. Look, I’m not saying you will get shot, but if you’re going to mess around doing things like that you’ll have to expect it.”

Another of the boys asked, defiantly, “What were you doing that meant you had to shoot a boy?”

“That is none of your business!”

“Are you proud of yourself? Are you glad you shot a kid?”

The man looked away, staring pointedly at the wall on the other side of the train as if he couldn’t hear them.

“I bet he was in the army,” said this boy. “Who else would shoot kids? He’s a soldier, I’m sure of it.”

“You’re probably right,” said another of the boys. “He was probably on patrol or something, and snapped and killed someone. That’s what soldiers do.”

“I bet he’s not even guilty,” continued this defiant boy, so loudly that the entire half of the carriage could hear him. “I bet he’s proud of himself. That’s what soldiers are like, aren’t they? Remorseless killers!”

The man pretended not to hear him, but his face became redder and redder as they made further declarations about the remorselessness of the military. Until finally, he got off the train, to the jeering of the boys.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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I'm doing a bingo!

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:40:58 GMT

Hay guys. I decided to sign up for promptbingo a few days ago, on a whim. Basically this means I have a card (as you can see below!) of 25 prompts and I think I'm actually supposed to write something for all of them... which is not what bingos typically involve... but I DON'T CARE because almost all of these prompts look extremely promising :)

childhood abuse	attempted murder	unrequited love	assault	needles
silence	heartbreak	anorexia	illness	despair
shattered	drunk	tragedy	cheating	earthquake
hurt/comfort	acid	injury	stabbed	isolation
blizzard	domestic abuse	fight	nightmare	distance

Anyway... I guess I'll update this post with links as I fill the prompts? As a heads-up, I said I'd fill these prompts with a mix of Doctor Who fanfic and original fiction (and if I'm to be quite honest, it'll lean quite heavily to the original fiction side!) so LOOK FORWARD TO IT. Yeah.

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Yessssssss

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:11:02 GMT

Doctor Who Series Six To Be Split In Two

You know what this means?? TWO FINALES. Also, less of a wait between the halves of the season. But mostly TWO FINALES.

Excitement.

And while I'm talking about Doctor Who, have something FUCKING AWESOME: the opening lyrics to Children Collide's song "Asleep on my Feet":

I've been looking for a timelord
To take me back to when I was a god

Too bad I have nooooooo idea what the song is about, but I got that bit :D Chapel St also got a mention - Melbourne represent! ;D Actually if I post all the lyrics maybe someone can help me out :P

( Cut because MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT )

Seriously, this song is intense. I have no ideas, none at all.

If I magically gain one, I guess you can expect a slightly repetitive entry as I write about my amazing revelation... :P

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Heteronormativity in popular music

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:30:36 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

This post is kind of borne out of a discussion I was having with my sister, as well as some of the thoughts I’ve had myself about the music I listen to. The conclusion we draw is basically, popular music is totally heteronormative. This is not news to anyone who has ever thought about it I am sure, but we both find it extremely annoying.

I’m going to discuss this with particular reference to Arctic Monkeys, because I have a lot of music by them in my library and the issue particularly comes to my mind when I’m listening to them. To be fair, it’s not like any other artist I listen to is much better on this front¹, but it is so glaring with Arctic Monkeys because they have song after song about heterosexual relationships — seemingly every single permutation of personalities you could imagine, from men who adore their lovers and feel totally lost without them (“505″, “Cornerstone”), to men who rape women and think it’s OK and she might even enjoy it (“Balaclava”).

And it’s like, clearly these songs are not all reflections of your own personal attitudes². Clearly therefore, if you can invent these characters whose heads you get inside to write these songs, you could broaden your horizons and write about a man who was interested in men. But you don’t.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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Arctic Monkeys – Dance Little Liar

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:54:26 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

I’m not really sure what to say about this song.

It and I don’t really have much of a history the way, say, “Armour for Liars” and I do… in fact I only got this album, Humbug, for the first time about a week ago. And it took a few listens before I really heard this song properly enough for me to understand its greatness, because it comes right after “Cornerstone”, which makes me crack up over how pathetic the main character of that song is¹, and there are other songs that are more obviously creepy earlier in the album (“Dangerous Animals”), overshadowing this one until maybe the third or fourth listen. The song’s name didn’t really help its case either, because “Dance Little Liar” sounded (to me) like the song was going to be about some slutty girl at a club, which is a theme that does recur in Arctic Monkeys’ music (“Still Take You Home”) and I don’t really like it and I was not enthusiastic for yet another song about that theme. However, it isn’t, and when I looked at the lyrics cursorily and realised the titular “little liar” was male², I gave the song a better listen.

And it is amazing.

The most amazing part of it isn’t even the words, or at least it’s not the words once you’ve read the words and understand the song’s meaning, but the music. The guitar! And drums! I was listening to this song on the train yesterday afternoon and I started crying when that part happened. To be fair, 90% of the reason I started crying was probably more a combination of having been awake for 28 straight hours and leaving the house to remain awake for at least another seven, and being utterly emotionally drained, but the fact that this song can be one-tenth of a reason to cry is pretty damn good, okay.

So listen:

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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More on that election

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:28:00 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

Firstly, all the people finding this blog by Googling things like “doesn’t matter we’re all fucked anyway” and “I hate myself birds of tokyo”, I sympathise but you’re freaking me out even more than the people who found this blog by looking up my international studies lecturer… before I even wrote about him. Birds of Tokyo are there to ease our pain, okay.

Anyway…

Despite my pessimism late on Saturday night, Australia might not be as fucked as initially thought. The independents are demonstrating a little more antipathy to the Coalition than I was expecting, and while they are still conservatives and Katter is a nutcase, it means Labor still has a chance and that’s important. The fact that all three of these independents care so strongly about telecommunications in the bush is something that bodes well for Labor too, because Labor has its NBN policy that the Liberals have promised to scrap… which, I can well imagine, would infuriate rural MPs. The Liberals’ idea of throwing $6bn at corporations to “encourage” them to develop broadband would likely only benefit the cities, where the profits lie. Whereas a government-mandated network with a clear focus on rural areas — despite the $44bn cost — is going to be more effective and more equitable to rural populations.

So that’s good.

Too bad they’re basically still stupid-ass conservative hacks.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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We’re all fucked

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:11:20 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

There was an election today! Did you notice? It sucked. In short, the Coalition won, although it didn’t actually technically win and we technically have a hung parliament. This means shit though, because either side needs 76 seats to win. Current projections are that Labor will get 72 and the Coalition 73, although with one of the electorates on a knife-edge that could turn into Labor 71, Coalition 74. Then there’s the single Greens candidate and four independents — three stupid-ass conservative hacks, and some former spy who used to be a Young Liberal then defected to the Greens then defected to himself presumably and became an independent.

Basically, the stupid-ass conservative hacks are going to wrangle a deal with the Coalition and there’s our government — Tony Abbott and the stupid-ass conservative hack brigade. Basically the only good thing out of that entire mess is that Wilson Tuckey lost his seat, but that’s little good to the world because he lost it to the Nationals. I’ll still take it though, because Tuckey is that fucked.

If you know me at all you’ll know I loathed our Labor government and was CONSTANTLY, CONSTANTLY pissed off at the latest shit they tried to pull, but when it comes down to the line, when it comes down to red numbers v. blue, it’s going to be red every time.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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Churchill!

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:50:07 GMT

NY Times: Book Review - Churchill's Empire

If you read my review of the Doctor Who episode Victory of the Daleks, THIS SHIT IS EXACTLY WHY THAT EPISODE PISSED ME OFF SO MUCH. Churchill does not deserve his reputation for heroism and bravery at all. Man is a fucker. Just read the article and read ALL THE HORRIFIC THINGS CHURCHILL SAID that I did not know he said; not knowing all that much about twentieth-century Britain, I was basing my opinion purely on the fact that Britain retained an empire during WW2, Churchill lead Britain during WW2, therefore Churchill is an imperialist dick. I am very articulate explaining why I hate people, I know. But as the article says itself it's not even that Churchill was reflecting values indoctrinated into him:

...even at the time, Churchill was seen as standing at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum.

The article talks about how he gleefully destroyed villages in then-India, was irritated that the vast concentration camps in South Africa WERE NOT GOING FAR ENOUGH (seriously we learned about these concentration camps in history last semester and they are horrific), boasted about ~personally~ shooting three Sudanese "savages" (i.e. human beings), wanted to use poison gas on Kurds in Iraq... I mean fuck it man, when was the last time Saddam Hussein was celebrated in British TV as a hero? HMMMM.

I'm not sure about the bullshit in the article at the end, trying to salvage Churchill's image by going "he DID believe in ~freedom and democracy~ and it DOESN'T MATTER that he only thought white people deserved any because people never take things that way lol". It's like, no. STFU.

And besides, how fucking much did Churchill believe in the welfare of people as a conservative politician? How fucking much did he care when he personally shot people dead and believed he was entitled to do it? Who cares that he could string together a few pretty words about "freedom" and "democracy"? Honestly, if you do not believe that human beings are AUTOMATICALLY entitled to necessities for life like FOOD, WATER, HEALTHCARE, SHELTER, AND SO ON then you can wax lyrical about "freedom" and "democracy" all you like but it's all meaningless words.

( And now I relate the above to Doctor Who )

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Birds of Tokyo – Armour for Liars

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:53:31 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

“Armour for Liars”, off Birds of Tokyo’s second album Universes, is (in short) one of their most amazing songs ever. It does face some tough competition for this title I’d have to say, from “Like Rain” from Day One, from “Wild-Eyed Boy” and “An Ode to Death” from Universes, from… well, from basically half or more of their latest album Birds of Tokyo. It’d be tough for me to claim that “Armour for Liars” is my favourite song of theirs. And honestly, given how “In the Veins of Death Valley” and I bonded over that torturous document analysis for history, describing why Mussolini thought the twentieth century would be the century of fascism, I’m not sure I’m ready to make that claim.

However, “Armour for Liars” occupies a special place in my heart. It belongs where it does there because of what it’s about, what it represents — it’s an entire song about how the world is fucked and no one cares. For someone like me, who thinks that the world is fucked and who’s driven crazy by the apparent indifference of so many other people, the song really intersects with a huge part of my worldview.

Before I explain any more — the song!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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Mid-August already? Gah!

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:14:17 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

I wasn’t deliberately lying when I said I was going to take blogging ~seriously~ this month. I just haven’t had the time, and when it comes to ideas about what to write… I mean. All I really want to write about is music, because a lot of the time it feels like my freest time all day is the time I spend chilling out on the bus and listening to music. It’s got to the point where I refuse to write using my mobile phone or do anything productive at all with it¹ because that would mean sacrificing this time where I am totally free, under no obligation to do anything at all because who expects anyone to be productive on public transport?

A couple of Thursdays ago was quite awesome in this regard. I went to uni for my one class of the day², and then I got to go home. The bus was crowded enough that the only free seats that didn’t involve sitting next to anyone else were at the back, but this was a good thing, because with no one looking at me and with rows of seats in front of me, I could just relax in the sunshine and mouth along with all the words of Birds of Tokyo’s new album. Because I love it. I adore it.

I don’t think you understand yet. Let me show you what I mean. This was my top 25 in iTunes at the end of last week (PLEASE CLICK to see the bigger image, because the effect is incomplete without seeing the playcounts!):

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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So I fail at blogging, hey

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:11:05 GMT

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

Semester two has begun, which NATURALLY means SUPER BUSY ACTION-PACKED TIMES OF BEING BUSY AND NOT HAVING TIME TO BLOG. It does not mean any shortage of things to blog about, though. I am constantly doing things like walking to the train station, waiting at the station, walking home from the train station¹… and so on and simultaneously thinking about all the great things I would love to write about. Then I don’t do it.

I am announcing that for this month, I will try to make an effort, though

August is going to be an even busier month for me, though. In terms of blogging, novel-writing, and all my other hobbies, my Wednesdays are basically out of commission all semester — I have uni all day and politics in the evening, so by the time I get home between 10pm and 11.30 (depending), and watch the linguistics lecture I have to skip on Tuesday and eat dinner, I don’t have a lot of recreation time left. I can use the internet, like, on my phone while going to uni, but that kind of limits me to Twitter/email and I usually use that time to write my novel, anyway. Not use the internet. Unless I am seriously pissed at Metro (this happens frequently enough), in which case I vent my frustrations on Twitter.

This month will be even busier, though. It’ll be busy for some of the greatest and noblest of reasons — fighting against governmental oppression in the form of the ban on same-sex marriage rights and Australia’s hideous treatment of refugees, for a start — so that’s a good thing, but it still means being busy. Oh, and then there are the unhappier reasons for being busy, like… having shit-tons of assignments. Goddamn you uni, isn’t it enough that I go to class and participate, why do you want me to do assignments as well??

This’ll have to mean the end of the era when I fussed over my blog entries so much, I guess

So I have a lot to say, and it really comes down to sitting down and beating out some of these entries. Despite the lack of time at my disposal, I could certainly sit down over the weekend and type out a few in quick succession, and then some days of the week (Tuesday, Thursday) are less packed than others (Wednesday!)… and there is the entire concept of queuing entries that I don’t think I’ve used in my entire blogging “career”. So you know.

Sorry, this entry kind of sucks. Just letting you know how busy I am, that I haven’t just abandoned this blog in a fit of… I don’t know, impatience?… and that I’ll be back. Hopefully tomorrow. With a super-cool entry about something. Or I don’t know, a super-uncool entry that no one will find interesting except me (I hope not though). Whatever it is… just prepare yourselves, okay?

A BIG thank you to Metro for making me miss my History lecture on Tuesday, by the way! There is NO WAY I can find two hours to listen to it now! (shhhh my procrastination has nothing to do with this lack of time)

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JulNo results!

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:13:58 GMT

This is the final graph of my JulNo progress:

YESSSSSSS I WON. 57,422 words in total... I hit 50,016 at 11.44pm on the 30th (I'd like to see myself win NaNoWriMo with that narrow a margin :P) and then spent my entire day WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN STUDYING, not studying and instead writing.

I got kind of bored of where I was up to, so. I wrote the last two chapters. Well, "bored" is the wrong word. I mean I was sitting on the bus yesterday afternoon and went, "OH CRAP I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE NEXT??" so I decided to write the last chapter. Then I wrote the last chapter and decided to write the second-last chapter. I'm now filling in the blanks I left while word warring (blanks because I figured they were scenes that could be copied almost verbatim from the old draft, with the pronouns changed... I was wrong by the way). Oh wait, I finished that, and NOW I'm moving onwards. Chapter six!

I'm getting a bit irritated with how long the draft is so far (ALMOST 50,000 - the 57,422 included 2,171 of an irrelevant story, and a bunch of prior drafts to scenes and miscellaneous fictional writings I churned out during July also) for such little narrative. Not a lot HAPPENS in the first five chapters - I mean, things TOTALLY DO, but not as many as are required to justify the thousands of words devoted to them. Soooo I think there's some slimming down to be done in future. No more entire drafts though, I intend to make sure of that :) (I say, for the thousandth time...)

PS: The song I listed in the "music" field = amazing. I love it.

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I have a new laptop!

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:25:49 GMT

Man, you don't even know how excited I am. Or how excited I would be, if not for this keyboard! I've been using Dvorak left-hand since September 2008, and obviously this keyboard layout is QWERTY, and I can't actually move the keys around since they seem pretty well stuck in place :( I was trying before to type in Dvorak and simply not look at the (totally useless) keys, but I was making LOTS of typos. Now I'm typing in QWERTY, but it is so slooooooooow. Sigh.

The problem does have a solution though... I've ordered a pack of stickers that I can stick over these QWERTY keys, and then I can have my beloved Dvorak once more. The problem is that I have to wait for my stickers to ship from Canada. :\ I don't know why Canadian stickers are so much affordable than Australian ones, but they are.

Anyway, I haven't even told you about my laptop yet! It's an HP Pavillion of some sort. I did my research and it was down to either an HP Pavillion or (another) Toshiba Satellite. My last laptop was a Toshiba Satellite A210, and I was considering upgrading that to an A500, with (a) a much, much better graphics card and (b) a TV tuner. But then there were the HP Pavillions, with amazing graphics cards for a relatively cheap laptop, and a much, much smexier appearance. The mouse was harder to use than the Satellite's and the keys couldn't be prised off and swapped around the way the Satellite's could, but... let me put it this way...

The Satellite A500 is one of the ugliest laptops I've ever seen.

I mean this. It's all shiny black plastic... it looks all gaudy and horrible. The Satellite A210 is quite nice-looking, so I don't know where this sudden deterioration came from, but it is quite unatttractive.

The HP Pavillion is, on the other hand, sleek and beautiful. It is matte black, not shiny, and it's all smooth (hence my difficulty with the mouse -- there are no buttons). This is a very shallow reason to choose a laptop, but yes, its beauty did play a part!

I had other reasons, though. Its RAM/hard drive space/processor were all better for an equivalent price, and have I mentioned its GRAPHICS CARD?! I can't wait to play Sims again to see how it all looks now, I really can't. I mean, with the incessant explosion problems stopped my sims might even be able to go Downtown and all sorts of shit! It will be EPIC.

The Satellite A500 would've been epic compared to the A210 as well, but this will TRULY BE EPIC. I am sure of it 8D

BTW this all happened somewhat suddenly, so it's not like I've been mulling over what to replace my A210 with for weeks on end. My mum's laptop died, possibly because she lets the cat walk over it all the time, so rather than buying mum another (cheap) one, dad and I agreed to get me a better one and give my old one to mum :D Mum's not fussy; so long as she has word processing and internet I don't think she can even tell the difference, tbh ;)

Anyway, I have a really busy day tomorrow... indeed, an epically busy entire week :\ First week of semester, siiiiigh. I'm not attending my 8am Spanish lecture (no way!) but I do have a fair bit of political activity to do from 9.30. At least that means WAKING UP at eight, not BEING AT UNI AT EIGHT.

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