michaelboy

Recently Charles de Lint shared the story "ICE Out," from his urban fantasy setting Newford. So I decided to write one of my own, from the world of Monster House.

Warning: Here there be monsters.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

arlie

I'm back to looking at backup tools for linux, and massively unimpressed with the documentation of several that are reputed to be good.

Here's my use case:

- I have a fresh minty external drive, currently in an unopened box
- I wish to use it to backup my linux system.

(Implicit) Instructions for MacOS TimeMachine

- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- tell the system you want to use the new desk (nicely identified by name) for Time machine
(I forget this was via a pop-up when the system saw the disk, or via the File Manager GUI)
- tell Time machine you *really* don't have any data you care about on the disk; it's free to format it any way it likes.

Instructions for Borg Backup and Restic
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- figure out how to format it, whether and how to partition it, etc.; put a file system on it, and mount it, and do so. Guess which file system type would be best. Guess whether there's any reason to use multiple partitions.
- now you can start using the documentation's quickstart guide.

This was fine back when most people installed their own linux systems, and the installation involved deciding how to format and partition your disks, and which file system type(s) to use.

But that hasn't been true for most linux users for the past decade or more.
(1) Plenty of folks happily buy pre-installed linux systems
(2) Those who don't find that the installation process gives them a single bootable partition, with a single file system, using the file system of its choice. Maybe it asks user input if it sees multiple disks/ssds, and it does ask for confirmation when installing to a disk that already has a file system.

( Read more... )

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the spam SPAM spam poll, 52% of respondents only check their spam folder when they're looking for a specific thing, 30% check it maybe once a month, 10% weekly, and 8% daily. (This question was inspired by gmail sending multiple emails in the middle of threads to spam, wtf.)

In ticky-boxes, blanket cocoons and comfort food came second to hugs, 62% to 74%. Judgy koalas came third with 56%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I read Courtney Milan's The Earl Who Isn't, which was just as enjoyable at the others in the series. Her kissing and UST are excellent, and I love everyone in Wedgeford.

Bounced off Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfield, with prejudice. (That was one of my library books.) The first "chapter" (of three in the entire book) was a blow-by-blow account of working backstage at SNL; the second "chapter" (which I flicked through) was lockdown correspondence. I didn't like either of the characters.

I don't know what I'm reading next. Or listening to on my own. But Andrew and I have about 2.5 hours left in Barrayar.

Kdramas
Oh no, I finished One Spring Night and kind of... went back to the beginning and started it again. With occasional diversions into Something in the Rain (which ha, is by the same writer, as well as having vast numbers of cast members in common, so that explains that). At some point I'll emerge from this Jung Hae In fever dream and start something else.

Pru and I finished Family by Choice (I LOVE IT SO MUCH), and next week we're starting Love Scout (\o/).

Other TV
We're on the final disk of extras for Return of the King, and that'll be it. It's stressful seeing the last-minute absolute chaos behind the scenes, but also kind of magical. Still going on The Pitt, and we've watched a couple of episodes of Dinosaur, a UK sitcom about two sisters, one of whom is autistic. I like it!

Got a few things lined up: new seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer and Dark Winds, more Scavengers Reign, there were probably some other things, idk.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, some Better Offline, some What Matters Most (chatty general life psychology/advice), Cross Party Lines (local politics), Letters from an American (just a few /o\), Heaving Bosoms (chatty recaps of romance novels, just for something relaxing to put in my ears), Movie Briefs (lawyers talk about law movies, ditto).

Online life
*hugs you all, so much*

...

Writing/making things
My Yuletide treat is at beta at last. \o/ Now I've started in on my Yuletide assignment fic, unfinished at 7k words. I'm imposing a new structure on it to see if that might make it more finishable. No drawing practice.

Life/health/mental state things
Idk, I'm okay. Getting some things done, at least. Getting a fair amount of sleep and exercise. Doing righteous battle with my health insurer. Spending too much time tweaking my new phone to make it behave how I want.

Goals
This week: make a batch of vegetarian dumplings, make a mini quiche in the air fryer. All my goals are food, hi!

Good things
Sunshine. Helpful, supportive people. The 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange is coming soon! Kitty. New phone is mostly behaving itself. We went to a delightfully geeky talk about dragonflies.

Poll #34329 Being an audience

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

In the last six months, I've been (in person) to

View Answers

cinema
19 (41.3%)

theatre
13 (28.3%)

live music gig
8 (17.4%)

ballet
1 (2.2%)

opera
2 (4.3%)

sports game
2 (4.3%)

other
5 (10.9%)

ticky-box full of bakery treats
28 (60.9%)

ticky-box full of keeping a paper appointment diary
9 (19.6%)

ticky-box full of rambling around the podcast 'verse getting your ears dirty
8 (17.4%)

ticky-box full of softly squishable snow puppies snuggling in a heap
22 (47.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs to you all <3 <3 <3
34 (73.9%)

ysabetwordsmith

"ICE Out" by Charles de Lint (free PDF version)

ICE came to Newford. Big mistake.

For:
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres
Geraldo Lunas Campos
Víctor Manuel Díaz
Parady La
Renee Nicole Good
Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz
Heber Sánchez Domínguez
Alex Pretti
murdered by ICE

I've been an activist for decades. I've done marches and letter campaigns and all the usual stuff. The technique I've found with the highest throughput of people saying, "I did the thing!" is plain old storytelling. Stories are part of what makes us human. Stories bind the past, explain the present, and imagine the future.

For bards, this is our fight. This is how we fight. Pass it on.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- My contribution is "The Express Bus to Crazy-ass Death Land."

Current Mood: busy

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

Perhaps because we were seeing it at a rippling distance, when I looked out at the lake the other night, the ball of fire that was the setting sun seemed to be reflected as a five pointed star. Don't know how clearly that came out here but I liked the photo regardless.

( Read more... )

soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

Thursday recs time!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

flemmings

I spent the day, or most of it, in sweaty domesticity, which is not how I prefer to spend my days. But it was raining and cleanliness helps the megrims, so I doped my back up and took the couch apart so as to add some more cushions as I've been meaning to for a while. Am still not able to get up out of it without them. But of course this involved vacuuming everything, all sides, including the amazing amount of dust on the nether side of the cushions and the amazing amount of crap between them. Then got at the corner by the wall which was festooned with cobwebs and thick with dust because it's very hard to reach. Emptied cannister, drank 500 ml of water, then vacuumed the rest of the living room and the hallway. Some day I may get the carpet up and the couch pulled out to remove the dust elephants there, but that's a bit more than I'm up for just now. Lemon polished the wooden tables instead so they glow.

Am not totally satisfied because there's still too many miscellaneous boxes and bags here. A bag of unwearable back braces that still don't fit, the plastic hooked hanging thingies I use for laundry between the furnace turning off and the cherries falling, and a pile of calendars I can't throw out because they're where I tracked my weight gains and losses. Maybe if I noted the general trends in a notebook somehow? This would be easier if I had a computer of some description.

Currently have some basmati rice cooking so I can have omuraisu tomorrow. And maybe tomorrow will get to the kitchen floor.

mellowtigger

I ended up drinking whisky after work every day this week. They were stressful days. That was fine.

Today, I went to my morning patrol. I came home with a slight headache. I thought maybe I'd just rest all day. Wrong.

Overhead surveillance has been so frequent all day long that it's just absurd. I was gritting my teeth and wondering how guerillas get access to anti-aircraft missiles. I'm not sure if there were multiple aircraft. I thought more than once that there was a plane rather than helicopter. Some special flights get to block their transponder from public review, and last week I watched a plane overhead that wasn't showing on FlightRadar24.com. For today, you can view the flight map for N119SP starting about 1pm Central and about 3pm Central. Apparently it takes about 20 minutes to refuel the helicopter. That's my house under the main tangled knot of each 2-hour flight.

I filed a noise complaint using this form:
https://metroairports.org/file-noise-complaint

Edit 8:50pm. Yes, here's a small plane flying overhead right now. *sigh*

kaberett

a frenzy of daffodils, with ridiculous doubled frills; the one in the foreground has a green streak

About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.

ysabetwordsmith

Spending time in nature triggers a calming chain reaction in the brain

People often say a walk in nature clears the mind. Scientists have long suspected the effect is real, but exactly what happens inside the brain has been harder to pin down.

A sweeping synthesis of 108 brain-imaging experiments now shows that natural environments consistently quiet neural stress circuits and shift the brain toward a calmer, more integrated state.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

cosmolinguist

After two days of utter misery at work, I was amazed that I actually got to finish on time -- I had not been expecting to!

The unstoppable force of my executive dysfunction met the immovable object of a deadline to respond to the Government's call for evidence on Developing the automated vehicles regulatory framework.

Ugh. I am so disgusted by the whole concept of self-driving cars that it was...well, not the only reason it's difficult to write about, but it was definitely one of them.

In other car-related news, I'm always delighted to read that other people are noticing the same things I am: not only are car headlights too damn bright, but cars are too damn big.

...while bigger cars may be safer for their occupants, critics insist they are considerably less safe for other road users. "Whether you're in another car [or] a pedestrian, you're more likely to be seriously injured if there's a collision with one of these vehicles," argues Tim Dexter, vehicles policy manager at T&E. He is also concerned about the implications for cyclists.

Research carried out in 2023 by Belgium's Vias Institute, which aims to improve road safety, suggested that a 10cm (3.9in) increase in the height of a car bonnet could increase the risk of vulnerable road users being killed in a collision by 27%. T&E also highlights concerns that high bonnets can create blind spots.

This is also something I've read about in the U.S., thanks to Victoria Scott:

If, in the span of one year, 18 fully-loaded Boeing 747s crashed with no survivors, we’d reappraise airspace. We’d question how we build airplanes and how we train pilots. We would recognize this as a failure of the system, not as individual mistakes of 18 pilots. Our roads should be no different.

The good news is that we have sensible solutions in plain sight: lower speed limits, redesign intersections, build roads that prioritize pedestrians and cars equally, and most importantly, reward automakers for building smaller vehicles with better visibility. The bad news is these require some sacrifice from drivers. Safer roads have lower speed limits—likely enforced by ticketing in one form or another. These roads also require more concentration to drive on. SUVs and pickups would need to revert back to 90s sizing, and all of our cars would need to shrink. These are all a hard sell in America, admittedly, but until they happen, we keep losing lives needlessly.

I genuinely love cars, and I’ve owned some big trucks. I understand the appeal of high speeds and lifted rigs, and I’m loath to give them up. But even I can’t accept a future wherein 7,500 are killed each year, especially when the solutions are so tangible and the rewards so massive. I’d accept small sacrifices if thousands more could live decades longer. I hope the rest of America agrees.

rebeccmeister

I have been a little nervous about my seed-starting prospects because I haven't been watering the trays at work as systematically as I'd like. But when I went to check on the plant pots today, I was delighted to discover the first signs of germination!

Not only that, but it's the Black Prince tomato seeds that have germinated successfully! These are seeds that I had saved from a previous set of plants and I'm always doubtful of my seed-saving techniques for tomatoes. If the other tomato seeds don't germinate, I have a lot of backup seeds where I can try again. For these seeds, this is my one chance. So, hooray!

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were suggested by

dray.

1. Do you know of any other words for snow? What's your favourite and why?

2. What's your ideal temperature range for winter?

3. Favourite winter activity? What about it makes it your favourite?

4. What are three things you can't do without when winter arrives?

5. Do you have favourite winter holiday activities?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

dolorosa_12

I spent a delightful day working from home with the sunlight streaming in through all available (open!) windows, watching birds frolic around our new bird feeder. This latest batch of links has a similarly spring-like feeling — not all are cheerful and light-hearted, but there is a common theme of emerging into light and life.

The first three are all Ukrainian, sparked by the complicated emotions around the four anniversary of Russia's fullscale invasion, on 24th February:

The Kyiv Independent team — journalists, videographers, adminstrative staff and more — took readers behind the scenes to show the ingenuity and determination it took to survive this winter's Russian-inflicted energy crisis and carry on bringing their reporting to the world.

From Ukrainian Institute London, a panel discussion on 'culture as security'

And from chef and campaigner Olia Hercules, a video conversation with Dima Deinega, founder of an (excellent) UK-based Ukrainian vodka company, which ended up being one of the most life-affirming discussions I've experienced.

On other topics:

An interview in the Guardian about being a professional chef in Antarctica

Via

tozka, the Persephone Letter, which, to quote

tozka, They're subtle marketing, more about vibes, focused on sharing things similar to Persephone Books/the people who enjoy them then about blasting sales info or whatever. If I must be marketed to, I'd rather receive it in this manner: rambly, meandering newsletters or blog posts sprinkled with links to interesting things that give a fuller picture of the person or organisation behind it, rather than just a list of things to buy now.

(Incidentally, the Antarctica link came from a similar newsletter, this one from the Vanderlyle restaurant, which takes a similar approach.)

I think that's it for now.

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy, mild, and wet. It rained on and off yesterday, then stormed last night. Everything is still soaked.

I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

More crocuses are blooming -- lavender, purple, white, and pale yellow. :D The grass, which in recent years has retained bits of green through the winter, is suddenly much more green with growing tips visible.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

It's mizzling rain again.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the yard.

Many more flowers are blooming! :D There are buds of purple-and-white crocus in the rain garden and orange in the goddess garden. The first miniature irises are blooming periwinkle and red-violet in the tulip bed.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen a female cardinal at the hopper feeder.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

sonofgodzilla

I promise these are the last two little fics I will post about this for now. As an indication of how on it I am right now, I've literally put in the dates for every big skating competition in my calendar and I very excited about the ISU Junior World Championships this week, and I have been quietly listening to the streams with one ear throughout these past two days. Again, I don't know anything about figure skating really, but I looked through the roster and realised that Hong Kong and Japan are both sending athletes to this competition and I started thinking... one day these kids might actually be at the Olympics, and wouldn't it be really great to be able to look back at that and think "Oh, I remember when they competed in 2026." So far, from the men's short programme, my favourite has been Nikita Sheiko of Israel, and from the women's programme, I thought New Zealand's Renee Tsai should have ranked higher, but I was obviously supporting Hong Kong's Ariel Guo. I felt like I was suddenly seeing behind the curtain seeing the lady who makes the flower crowns for athletes at almost every one of these big events, and learning that Thailand's Phattaratida Kaneshiga now trained in Niigata, and Japan's Oka Mayuko came from the same clique as Chiba Mone. It's kind of scary for me to reflect on how young some of these kids are, it's kind of crazy seeing Italain pair skaters gliding across the ice to Ghibli music also. I feel like I'm learning a lot about how pop culture bakes into people's lives lately; the people who chose these pieces for the free skates, I'm sitting here watching and listening and trying to understand how these songs informed those choices, what they mean to them, what they're trying to tell me.

Everyone has been very kind to me whilst I'm going through this and beating myself up for no reason about simply liking something that my friends like. I feel very self-conscious in "sports circles," having been a deeply unatheletic child, but I really fell in love here and it was only when a wiser, kinder friend phrased their own enjoyment of sports as being about narratives, as being about the hope that "your guy can win against the other guy"—I'm paraphrasing here—that I began to forgive myself a little for being here. The clarity of that statement just really resonated with me, it made sense to me. Through dance and movement, I felt like I understood the stories that skaters during the Olympics were trying to tell and that really hit me heard. I love storytelling, guys, I love exploring different ways of telling stories and... well, the Olympics felt like a masterclass in telling stories for me. I also love the fact that the pairs skating has moves with names like "death spiral" because instantly that makes me feel right at home. I do, however, promise to post something else soon, I again have a bunch of things that I've just stockpiled, and I recently watched all of 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, a Toei tokusatsu show from 1976, and I really, really liked it, it stayed in my head for a long longer than I thought it would, becoming a quiet favourite of late.

On Monday, I stumbled across the collaboration between KATE Tokyo's lipstick brand, Lip Monster, and Kamen Rider for an advert featuring Amane Tensho as Mikazuki Nayuta, previously from the Girls Remix specials, and I was really blown away by it. It felt like Kamen Rider and I felt it did not compromise on the idea of Nayuta being both feminine and really, really mad with her lot in life. I feel these brief ten minutes recontextualised the character and ignored certain aspects of Girls Remix in order to allow her to stand on her own, and I'm really okay with this. I think everyone knows that I didn't enjoy the Girls Remix specials and I'm really, really over director Sakamoto Koichi's "quirks," so... yeah, I'm good with this, there's a specific moment in which I feel Amane Tensho's real life family connexions influence how you are supposed to interpret her character and I'm absolutely fine with that too. I never thought Kamen Rider would try and sell me lipstick, but here we are.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Nunslaughter - I am Death

thistleingrey

I've learned what I can from the heavily modified slipover that I knitted and re-knitted all through the past two months. Because the recent absence of a subcutaneous pain-mesh layer has coincided with thermoregulation's partial return to service, I no longer want a personally sized blanket layer in sport-weight wool/alpaca. I've bound it off, both to keep as a measurement reference and because the yarn wouldn't survive further reuse.

( non-knitting digression )

Thinking through some incidents has been aided considerably by working with yarn bought when my skin first felt oddly cold. I've used it recently as a memory prop, then undone the deliberately false start and restarted the project with different yarn. As part of the process, I've finally recovered the skeins that were reused to become about half of a Little Wave cardigan, then abandoned when I realized that the pattern's proportions and mine would never agree. Instead, I'm meditating upon Capsa.

Thanks, long-ago clearance-discounted yarn, oddly too heavy for past me to crochet, for taking good care of me.

I've tried the first few rows of a swatch for New Terrain in Lavold Hempathy yarn---old, if not as old as the yarn meant first for the blanket I couldn't crochet. Perhaps my 2019 hands could've managed it, but my current hands will need a bit of wool in the yarn blend to keep those slipped stitches even. Hempathy is cotton/hemp/rayon, with no bounce/spring to it.

Yamagara's New Terrain interests me because its shoulder-yoke is constructed similarly to that of the Sundial tee, except that Yamagara is actually competent at designing patterns with carefully considered details---all the finishing touches that Sundial's designer (Wool and Pine) tends to skip. As a fallback, I could make a version of New Terrain without the terrain, plain across the torso, if the slipped stitches and my hands can't agree at all.

offcntr

There's a wren in the blackberry brambles behind my studio, singing his little heart out, been there for several weeks. Flocks of robins have been populating trees around the neighborhood, and the waxwings came through on their annual migration earlier this week. Just yesterday, I saw a chickadee at the seed feeder, the first since last fall.

Good to have everyone back.

poliphilo

That was a mild winter. But very wet.

And now I'm moving into my lighter clothes- though in the expectation- but not the hope- that I may have to revert from time to time. The sunny weather makes me want to be doing things in the garden, but only things that aren't too arduous. Yesterday I surprised myself by proposing a visit to Hilliers- the garden centre on the further side of Stone Cross.

Also yesterday a bumble bee got into the bedroom and had to be helped to escape. Bumble bees have been active for a week or more now. Bumble bees are precious......

prettygoodword

crepitate (KREP-i-tayt) - v., to make a crackling or popping sound.

In medical contexts, this can be used specifically of, for example, arthritic joints or breathing during certain respiratory diseases. Taken in 1623 from Latin crepitātus, perfect passive participle of crepitare, to creak/rattle/clatter/crackle, frequentive of crepāre, to creak/crash/break with a noise.

---L.

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michaelboy

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Network

Poem: "The Express Bus to Crazy-ass Death Land"

Linux Backup Documentation Doesn't Seem to Consider What Users Know

Me-and-media update

Read "ICE Out" by Charles de Lint

Star Sunset and Flare + Ducks

Thursday Recs

(no subject)

not a restful day

have a daffodil(s)

Nature

Car shit

We have germination! [gardening]

The Friday Five for 6 March 2026

A linkpost for the northern spring

Birdfeeding

"Yuri on ice."

current stitching, and

The bird report

Signs Of Spring

crepitate

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March 2026

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