I think I have gone a bit off Musicbrainz for cataloguing my own music. The process is slow (about two weeks for an edit to be approved) and I often forget to go back and inspect, or become frustrated with limitations of the system (how does one handle a synth orchestra without online presence that released an album containing medleys of excerpts from pieces by different classical composers in a single track?).

So I am turning to tag editing locally, and probably when I am satisfied in some cases will offer the information back to Musicbrainz later. Meanwhile I will not have to worry about whether information I edit will meet the approval of others and will be able to update it at my leisure.

Filter: happy

Why is it some foods it seems are so dreadfully that merely mentioning them or expressing enjoyment for them gets me warned they 'are fattening'? Do they have some kind of radical, permanent overnight effect on biology? I think if that were the case, in this culture they would be long since banned.

It's very frustrating, that this seems to be the only lens people are capable of viewing food through: 'fattening' (= bad), 'non-fattening' (= good). What ever happened to eating for enjoyment? I don't care if food has been placed into a particular moral category. I don't want to care, and I do believe people's bodies will largely sort themselves out.

But I am not entirely impervious to peer pressure. It frustrates me a lot to look at some food or drink item and have my first thought be "that's fattening". Hard not to, when that is the only context everyone around you regards food in, vocally and frequently. At this point, please consider an additional tear-filled rant at culture and advertising destroying people's ability to enjoy even simple things, and an inability to find escape from it.

At least I can and do still enjoy the 'banned foods', but I'd be happier with that rubbish entirely out of my head.

(cross-posted to feminist_rage)

Filter: frustrated

Lately for book-acquisition I have been using the nifty site Booko which attempts to solve Australia's book price problem by comparing online retailers from around the world (including shipping and currency conversion) to determine the cheapest source for any given book. It has not been perfect so far, as I have not found anywhere willing to sell me Volume Five of Excel Saga which is quite disappointing.

But, quite nifty-seeming over all, so I am wondering if anyone knows of a similar site or tool for purchasing music. Failing that, if people know a variety of music stores which could be checked out in search of music, that would also be helpful. The names of music-selling places I know currently are: HMV, Sanity, iTunes (foreign currency), and Amazon (also foreign currency).

At this moment I have not searched on my own for such, and am about to - with intent to report back on findings later. I quite like learning and sharing as a social activity though, so want to also approach the wisdom of others.

Edit: Seems Amazon does not do music downloads to Australia; I assume hardcopies can still be ordered from the .com, .co.uk or .ca stores though. So far it looks like most of the online music vendors I've heard of, except Apple, do not sell in Australia. Sometimes I continue to be surprised how behind Europe and North America Australia is in this whole online thing - it is one thing I do look forward to about being in the US, not being geographically locked out of most of the cool stuff I hear about.

Others I've heard of mostly because they are integrated with music players I use include 7digital, Jamendo and Magnatune, which seem worth a look for availability but apart from 7digital seem unlikely to have other than indie artists (which I'd be interested in, but there are also more famous signed artists I'd want to purchase albums of also, making that maybe not a complete solution). But I shall investigate directly.

Mostly am using Wikipedia's comparison page as a reference, as apart from the Invisible Hand extension I have yet to find a tool which may be helpful in the way Booko is.

Filter: curious

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Starlost

Wow. They want a lot of killing from me today. Got new boots to replace the ones I made, that's sad.

I found tin! Yeeee.

Silver, wowwwwwwww. Silver silver silver! Gonna put that in to replace the silver I borrowed from the guild. >_>

Carrying wayyyyy to much. Dunno what to do about it.

Antikata

I had been sent to finish cleansing the Agamand Mills, but the Scourge were too thick within the crypts. Facing so many foes at once is not a task we mages are suited for. Though I resolved to force my through with careful and firm progress, I still had not made far into the depths before I was set upon by four or more and fled back out of the crypt.

That was too much. I picked my way down the cliffside, skidding a couple of times badly, until finally I dropped myself into the ocean and swam round the headland in search of safe shores. Curiosity got the better of me, and peeking at a chest in the mouth of a dead fish saw a swarm of murlocs after me, so I ran all the way back to Brill. I am sure my frost armour is the only reason I can manage such escapes, allowing me to outpace any who dare strike me.

Since it seems I must regather myself before attempting the final cleansing of those crypts I have taken myself south, to deliver some messages and make my first visit to Undercity. I had never got to visit here in life but I am sure it is much changed. With the surface in ruins, how could it not be?

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

A new month, so time for a new desktop background. I had been using art shared from other people, but this time chose a screenshot I'd taken in Celestia a few days before.

The perspective is from the surface of Deimos, looking down to Mars below. Much closer than our moon to Earth. If you look along the terminator marking day from night, a white spot is visible. That is Phobos, the other moon, caught in its (less than) 8 hour orbit at a dramatic moment.

Apart from its large crater Stickney (not shown), Phobos is famous for its low and fast orbit, which contrary to that of our moon is decaying lower and faster. When it drops not much lower, tidal forces from Mars will tear it apart and for awhile Mars may be ringed until those fragments rain down upon its surface.

Deimos gets much less love, but perhaps when it is the last moon remaining this will change.

Filter: depressed

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Mistpaw
New mail today from Vorlock and Starlost, did not disassemble into anything especially interesting. Still waiting on silver rod from Starlost. Going back to sleep.

Starlost
Finally made it to Loch Modan, think I found the guy I was told could show me what to do with this bear meat I found... hope it hasn't gone off by now. This is a nice area. It feels much happier than Bloodmyst. I think I will come back here after I finish helping out there.

Sword is nice and sharp and sparkly. Rawr, swish! Miss my pretty copper armour tho. I guess this stuff is better but I feel all drab. :(

Better get back home, they need me. Wish I could fly back. Maybe mine more on the way?

I feel weird. This is where my sword came from, from the ogres across the loch, but this is my first time here. I couldn't even pick it up not long ago. Maybe someday I can take it all the way back home to visit!

------

Darkshore is beautiful.

------

That was a lot of smelting... and I got a new hammer for my collection. But we must get back to Blood Watch. I have a princess to save!

------

All this running around is making me tired. But we are new to this world so I guess we gotta go to the dwarves an' elves an' humans to find out how to cook the weird creatures here.

------

Back to my own made pants now, yay! Prally should go sleep now.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Recently I came across a discussion about constructing a website to serve as a resource for a community and a nexus for social interaction within that community. One of the possibilities under consideration was providing hosted blogging for community members.

It seemed likely to me that most members of a community (or social subset which could potentially form a community?) who were inclined to be blogging would already be doing so. I think as bloggers often create commentary and dialogue communities of their own, that in addition to providing a platform for new community members to blog if they wish, it could be beneficial to a fledgling community to ask established community bloggers if they would be willing to integrate their blog with the community site.

I suspect that would be a fair degree of technical challenge, since beyond merely syndicating the existing blog to the community website, I am also envisioning a unified comment thread, so that comments made at the blog's primary location would show up at the community site, and likewise comments made at that site by community members would also show up in the blog's own comment stream. At least to me that seems likely an effective balance between attempting to build local community, soliciting the contributions of established community members, and not asking people to uproot the niches they have settled themselves into.

As I said, I suspect there would be a fair amount of technical difficulty in doing such a thing, although I think previously the Bad Astronomy blog has been integrated with the Universe Today forums, so it seems possible and the increasing prevalence of OpenID might make it easier. The variety of blogging software platforms available I suspect makes the problem a lot harder, maybe entirely impractical.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Around December I went back to playing World of Warcraft, mainly because the people I played with decided to go back to it also. The group had branched out to another server to play Horde characters and because of various complications (me doing NaNoWriMo, my home net connection being throttled to dial-up speeds so that downloading the game patches took two weeks), by the time I got back into the game everyone else's characters were all levelled in the mid-20s or higher. So I created a tauren druid named Katacat to join them (and an undead mage named Antikata, and... )

The point is I spent a fair meanwhile playing her to catch up with the others, so they could group together. Playing on the Horde side felt distinctly uncomfortable relative to the Alliance side of last time. It put me in mind of race drag. The tauren feel very much like pop-cultural Native Americans and the trolls are seeming very much to be Rastafarian stereotypes (plus some Cannibal Islander in the mix). It bothers me. And the Horde side seems to have much more extreme sexual dimorphism, with the women often scarcely resembling the men beyond skin colour. When I was making an orc warlock it seemed like the female model could fit entirely inside the male model.

It is also quite jarring when Voodoo is referenced within the game (pertaining to trolls, of course... are they just all islanders of colour all at once?), such as when a character mentions sending an enemy's severed head to a troll friend because he 'knows he likes to use that sort of thing in his voodoo rituals'. Do the writers not realise this is an actual, specific real-world religion they are referencing? I think if the word 'Voodoo' there were replaced with 'Christian' I think many more people would recognise that as jarring, as pertaining to a specific set (of sets) of beliefs and rituals which have no place being explicitly referenced in a fictitious world which does not support their development. Likewise for shaman. These are specific, actual things, not generic terms which attach to nothing particular.

Conversely, I have been quite enjoying the wildlife of the Barrens. We stick European animals and plants in fantasy settings all the time, so it is a pleasant change to see some lions and zebras and hyenas and giraffes roaming about, although I mislike how much of a minority that zone is in compared with the rest of the world. It does make me think I would like to see some areas themed with Australian-based flora and fauna (perhaps the new island zones in the Cataclysm expansion? although I think that decision and work is already past and done by now). I suspect that ironically where that where 'voodoo' and 'shaman' pass often unnoticed and unremarked, including creatures derived from those inhabiting Australia would throw people out of suspended disbelief and perhaps lead to accusations of inappropriate inclusions. I say that because I believe the general 'we' is accustomed to seeing, frex, kangaroos as symbolising the specific place Australia, and that we are accustomed also to seeing the religions of people of colour as synonymous with dark magic and spirits so we don't notice the appropriation of those or see a problem with it. (the omnipresence of wolves and boars[1] and bears is also invisible, for different reasons) Then again, they have annual festivals based on Christmas and Valentines, so maybe not.

Speaking of the festivals, they have recently put me in mind that I would love to see global seasons implemented. I suppose the way the festivals are synced annually would be an impediment but still I would love to see changing seasons done on a scale shorter than a year (maybe over four months? one month per season, keeping the festivals always occurring in their proper season), and separated too north from south. It would be lovely to see how the zones change through the 'year'. Much of the game I have been finding quite beautiful even with the graphics necessarily turned far down; I wouldn't want to see them all given conventional spring, summer, etc., but something appropriate to existing themes could be quite breathtaking.

[1] Oh, boars! This game is the only time I have seen them depicted as peaceful, plentiful creatures rather than elusive, ornery animals it is unwise to stumble upon.

"What we see today, when we look out at the Universe, is that the farther away things are from us, the faster they move away from us. "

Let's rephrase that. Let's say "the farther away things are from us, the faster we observe our separation increasing". The standard phrasing encourages misunderstandings about the nature of the universe's expansion.

Filter: sleepy

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

A while back the folks at LibraryThing started an Open Shelves Classification project (OSC, which makes me think of Orson Scott Card whenever I read it). There was even a round of beta testing in which LibraryThing members were invited to try and sort books into top level categories, to see how well the system was working.

Recently I have been spending more time at LibraryThing and Musicbrainz, having decided that 'now' is the time to ensure my collections are properly catalogued. I got curious about the state of the OSC project, having not heard much about it since the beginning of the year, so for the past couple of days I have been reading the Build the Open Shelves Classification group. I started from the bottom of the page and have been reading upward, trying to build a sense of context. So far I am still early on, reading the discussion threads on the initial round of testing that was the last I heard of the project and getting a bit frustrated with what I see going on in it although I do not know how things have progressed since.

The project as I understand it is to build a system for shelving works which is open source and easily usable by most for finding things, and to overcome the shortcomings of existing shelving systems. It is supposed to be a system for deciding how to organise material in a physical space and not some sort of abstract classification or cataloguing system, yet because this involves arranging things according to what they are deemed to most be 'about' I think it cannot help touching upon those territories.

My frustration comes from things like this: after reading several threads discussing matters like dividing items by audience (e.g. Children's, Young Adult), language, or format (e.g. prose, play, DVD) and what appeared to be a consensus that optional facets should be used, so a library that wanted to separate by format would be able to do so while one that did not wish to do so was not required to if they followed the system. So it was frustrating to then see in the first round of testing Comics & Graphic Novels as its own top-level category. This was precisely the situation that apparent consensus on optional facets was seemed suited for handling, and there seemed no clear consensus on whether graphic works should be separated out or interfiled. It seemed a lot like a crisis of disorganisation, although I suspect whatever was done with graphic works there would have been some sort of panic since they can include both fiction and non-fiction.

There were also some complaints that science was granted a single top-level category, while what are often called the social sciences (and other areas) were spread around. Despite initially being reserved about that, it does make sense to me since there are plenty of works about science generally, although I don't know this isn't true for other areas that were split up, and a place elsewhere could presumably be found elsewhere for them (philosophy->science ?).

The point was made at the start, which I agree with, that a shelf-organising project like this is foredoomed to failure somewhere as soon as it begins. Compromises will have to be made somewhere, there will be some number of works which don't fit easily into one category and not others, and how people sort the world is going to be culturally biased. The goal is to create a system which maximises ease of browsing, but I think even if the terms and codes can be translated themselves, it may in the end be better to create a new shelving system from almost scratch for different cultures than attempt to be human-universal.

What all these misgivings did accomplish was getting me to consider how I would go about devising a shelving system. So now you get to see my thoughts on that unless you are quick enough to scroll or close the page in time. As I said just a paragraph above, I think any such system is going to have significant points of failure, especially concerning multidisciplinary works or syntheses, and I have little idea if my thoughts on the matter would be any better or worse at avoiding such. Probably worse, since I have conducted no study to inform myself on the subject (I don't think my minor library qualification counts, since we were taught to use catalogues, not judge them).

So, top-level categories in my personal 'this seems like a good idea to me' system:

Reference

This is something I think of as not really a subject area itself, but a shelving area which is handy to have. I think of 'reference' as a sort of mini-library containing works which are useful to have readily available for referring to. Important to have in most cases, but should be handled by whoever is organising the library it occurs in. That, I suppose is to an extent bowing to 'how people are accustomed to finding things organised' and maybe it would be better to do without a reference section? Maybe in some ways it is better suited to a personal library, where the person who owns it can decide which books ey finds useful to keep in arm's reach.

Knowledge and ideas

I don't know what to call this category, but my idea behind it is 'knowledge about things'. If you want to know how something works, this is the appropriate section. Subsections include things like astronomy, psychology, mechanical engineering, history, religion, law. To a fair degree it approximates what we refer to as 'non fiction', but is not equivalent to that category. I am uncertain if it would be appropriate to separate 'how to' into a separate category, but for consistency with my ideas elsewhere, have not attempted to do so.

Games, sports and recreation

This includes subjects like cricket, World of Warcraft, whist or Dungeons & Dragons. Activities performed for leisure, for entertainment, or competitively. I suspect this is also a place for guides and (non-academic) information on practical activities like cooking, caring for pets, gardening, or sex.

Creative and critical works

This includes subjects like painting, poetry, sculpture, music, essays, films and prose fiction. Criticism, analysis and instructive materials go along with the works they are about. I think biographical works go here, since the material is not necessarily 'fiction', but I could see a case for it going with history in the knowledge section.

That's it. That's the whole listing of my current ideas on how I would organise a shelving and classifying system. My own if no one else's.

I was also talking with Tess about how to solve the 'one location per book' problem, so perhaps there will be a post later with (probably very impractical) ideas on that.

Filter: hungry

Today was the day of a funeral in the family of my mother's husband. So far in my life I have experienced two weddings and at least four five funerals, which is probably an effect of my knowing very few people near my own age and my extended family (in every extension I am aware of) consisting primarily of people at least twenty years older than me.

I knew em barely at all and had no connection to be remarked upon, so I was not in a state of grieving myself except abstractly, but I lacked desire to be disruptive and had desire to participate and to learn from participating. I think I care about people who were effected and do have a pragmatic and moral interest in their well-being. I do not know how true I will regard these words at any future. I think there would in hypothetical scenarios be concerns from other parties about privacy and the publication of family matters; I desire not to violate such wishes that I believe are held by others but do wish to write about my day and things which happened in it, so I am attempting a compromise which hopefully satisfies both interests.

It was a hot day. I was sent to the entrance to the cemetery to watch for my sister's arrival and guide her to the proper location. Due to circumstances beyond her control she was not able to be there for the service and I was about a minute late getting in to the service, the last to enter. I worried during the service that my customary behaviour of (attempted?) alertness to my surroundings would be perceived as rude and disrespectful, a worry which is typical to nearly any extended interactions in physical space.

At the end of the service time was set aside for reflection. Classical music was played during this time which had frequent strong peaks at the start and which I experienced as disruptive of my thoughts and ability to reflect. I ended up focusing more on the music and concluded it was a waltz, probably a Strauss waltz. Dance music seemed an odd choice for a period of reflection, but I thought anyway people's reflection on the deceased and related thoughts would not be contained to an assigned duration.

After all this the service was ended and people filed out. I was fascinated by how this happened, the order in which people left. I was sure it must not have been pre-decided or organised and wondered if it were a social response reflex signalling when it was appropriate to stay and to follow so that what resulted was an uncoordinated orderly exit. That might be nonsense, the preceding sentence. Am trying to express that, in the absence of explicit planning, I thought the effect of a neat, orderly departure might have happened via unconscious exchange of body language with reference to social roles. I do not posit myself as immune to such an effect.

The wake followed, at the home of immediate family of the deceased. My experience of funerals is that they are relatively happier events than media would suggest. Following the service there is typically a gathering of many people who are not in contact especially often, with extensive socialisation centring on the concerns of the living as happens at any other similarly composed gathering. Most often exceptions to this would be those closest to the deceased, but not necessarily. The gathering was loud in conversation and went on for several hours. I contributed to the conversation at some points, mostly near the beginning and later on when people had begun leaving.

As usual it was not until I was back home that I became aware of the strain going out and being social puts on me. Once I got changed and sat down I noticed myself being overloaded, feeling a strong desire to curl up somewhere quiet and cry. I was still under obligation though, so I postponed that further. Whenever I am reminded of this cost of social events I wonder if doing more of them would inure me to this or if it is something to be accepted and lived with. I suppose the thing to do is test by trying more social things, but if the answer to that question is no, how do I tell when I have tried hard enough?

Knowing when I have tried 'hard enough' is not something I have a good history of.

Filter: tired

I don't agree with many things the Labor government is doing.

The Liberal / National coalition is pretty consistently worse on those matters.

If I vote Green like usual they will probably lose and the preferences default back to Labor.

If I do not vote I will be fined.

This situation could be more encouraging.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Feeling sleepy. Was up until 0500 catching up on RSS reading, which is probably going to have consequences. Of which speaking, my thighs and hips are currently being sore after yesterday moving cabinets and other large things, since my family had a new television cabinet delivered yesterday and that had to be put in place.

Been absent from posted writing a while. Was doing the NaNoWriMo thing, then later in the month mantic_angel was encouraging me to go back to World of Warcraft. Of course I was still busy with the writing so I put that off until the beginning of the month. We only have a limited data allowance, 12 GB per month without even an off-peak bonus, so I went and bought the Wrath of the Lich King expansion hoping to thereby bypass large patch downloads which would eat the whole thing up very quickly.

Of course that did not work. When I put the disc in I was informed my laptop did not meet the minimum requirements, so I ended up having to download those patches after all and we quickly reached the limit of our data allowance. That was before the first 2.5 GB patch was even finished downloading, and after a couple of days at throttled speeds when it finally did come to its end it turned out to have been a stalled installation anyway, so I had to download it over again. That was my occupation for the previous thirteen days, downloading patches for World of Warcraft and complaining about the slowness of the connection.

IM still worked for me, and surprisingly Skype did too, but for much of that time I was not even able to load web pages. So, absent. The downloads finished right about when our new billing month came and our connection speed was restored, so for now we are back.

I have not been doing any writing this month. I had intended to be doing editing of a story from last year (I still intend to be doing editing of that story) but felt I could not unless I had resolved various other tasks and backlogs which remain unresolved. I don't know how I will manage that or when I will feel like I am 'allowed' to get on with that editing. Since I haven't been writing I have been jumping around other, often unplanned creative projects. Outlined some concepts for a couple of magic systems (one based around people who work with books, the other based around sexual preferences). Renewed working with pazi_ashfeather on design for a shared setting (although mostly has been her work). Been stirring some ideas for classification schemes to facilitate using astronomy in secondary world settings without referencing Earth-tied concepts (like 'Jupiter' or 'Edgeworth-Kuiper belt'), which really needs to be properly written out for more progress to be made. Renewed concepts for converting creatures from Doom and other sources to the d20 system for a project, though I am thinking of scrapping that part of the project (or the project entirely, depending on mood). Most recently I started work on an ecology generator for D&D, although it will be a long time before that is done since I have yet to learn all the skills that project will need.

Which reminds me, am also proud codingwise to have recently managed a crude sort of search program. It may not be much good, but I mostly made it myself so I feel good about that. That's where we are up to now; my next task now net connection is restored is to catch up with jobsearching and reading so I can get on with more practical work on my projects.

Filter: creative

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

This is something which has been going around. I'm not a published writer and I don't know if anyone who might be reading this is, but I think this is important and maybe posting about it will help in some way. So, here is a substantial quote from a post by Charles Stross:

Turning to a different aspect of communications technology, I'd like to pass on a note from Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) (who describe themselves as "a not for profit non-governmental organization that searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources, as is described in http://www.keionline.org.")

We are distributing a letter (in English and Spanish) to writers, journalists and authors who support the World Blind Union WIPO treaty proposal to improve access to books in formats accessible to people who are blind, visual impaired or have other disabilities.
The World Blind Union has been for years requesting a new international legal framework that will allow them to produce and share accessible formats of books and other written material.

The World Blind Union treaty proposal, formally endorsed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay is supported by nearly all developing countries and by disabilities and consumer organizations but the position that developed countries, like the European governments and United States, will take next week is still unclear.

Why is it urgent: Next week the treaty proposal is going to be discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. This is the website for the WIPO meeting.

A fact Sheet that explains the treaty proposal is available here (PDF).

They're looking for writers and asking them to sign the petition: interested parties should contact Judit Rius at judit.rius(at)keionline.org. My take on it is that this is an unequivocally good cause, and I'll be signing KEI's letter. One of the big problems with electronic media and DRM is that they tend to lock the visually handicapped out; for example, a common restriction on ebooks is to disable the "read aloud" feature offered by Kindle and other readers. Such behaviour is discriminatory and (in some jurisdictions) illegal, but it's going to be hard to prevent it spreading without something like this proposed treaty.

Quoting seemed the most effective way to communicate this information. I wanted not to misrepresent anything.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

The preview of Wave I had requested access to did not arrive until late November, and I did not begin using it until early December as I was busy writing previously. I have made a point of using it often since then and so far I am liking it a lot.

Wave seems very useful for the purposes I have been wanting to put it to, working on collaborative fiction projects or for small editorial review of public writings like this one. So far this has been encouraging and I have been experimenting with new ways of organising my ideas, as well as being for me quite productive. So, pending the participation of other people, Wave is already succeeding at everything I wanted out of it, except that I have not yet been able to try it for role-playing gaming.

I do have some complaints or frustrations so far though. Right now I am using Chrome because the main wave I was editing was too jittery in Firefox for me to even get the cursor to where I wanted it or, when I finally managed that, to see what I was doing - with every character typed the view would jump to the bottom or the top of the wave or sometimes to actually show where I was working, though this was rare and seldom persistent.

Whenever I experience issues like that where a Google product has problems on Firefox but not on Chrome I tend to suspect Google of discreetly encouraging use of their browser over others especially if it used to work fine. But Wave at least is still in experimental stages and for others I have not ruled out some odd interaction with extensions in Firefox, something I should really test more thoroughly, so that could well be only a product of my regular cynicism toward business.

I would also like to be able to have more than one wave open at a time, since although I tend to give primary focus to one thing I am working on I tend to be inspired to make smaller tweaks to other projects at the same time. This is something I value about tabbed editors like Notepad++, although as a complaint it may have more to do with my connection speed being currently very slowed, making quick switches between documents online a hassle, although I do think I would rather not close something I am actively working on just to add a couple of lines to something else.

Otherwise I am quite happy with Wave so far. I think it does everything I was wanting out of it.

Since it is being promoted as an alternative communication tool to email, one that will be available to non-Google entities to provide in the future also, I am finding myself preferring to refer to it as Wave rather than Google Wave for now. They have already anyway assured themselves market dominance through this period of exclusivity I think.

I suspect Google is not going to be creating a desktop client since they would rather people use their browser, although someone else might make one, and I expect once out of preview there will be a Wave app added to Google apps.

One of my favourites of the webcomics I follow, Arthur, King of Time and Space came back from hiatus a while ago and today I got the urge to say so publicly, probably hoping others might go take a look and decide they like it too.

Not every day is a triumph in my opinion, but that is true of any comic I follow, and it gives me more moments of glee than most others and jokes by its premise that I don't think could work in any other story I've heard of. Apart from Peanuts this is maybe the only primarily gag-a-day comic I've much enjoyed so far. (hint: it helps if you enjoy slow puns, but probably is not required)

The currently current comic I think gives a fair impression of what goes on there, but is spoilery. I think I have run out of stuff to say about this for now.

Filter: tired

In conversations with lost_angelwings one of the topics she has talked about, especially in relation to Star Wars (and criticism of same), is conveying narrative through fight scenes and how this can be done well or poorly.

Last night I had this in mind as I was watching a movie presented as The Protector (or more properly, Tom-Yum-Goong according to Wikipedia), which features a man named Kham who is of a line of guards protecting the King of Thailand's war elephants and who pursues poachers to Sydney, Australia when the two he is closest with (Por Yai and the calf Kohm) are kidnapped, trying to rescue and return them home. Along the way he is troubled by corrupt white Australian cops who try to kill him and large numbers of people who arrange to be beaten up him, or occasionally to beat him up.

I was not paying especial attention to the plot since most of the movie is in Thai and subtitled and I was busier with my laptop for most of the time. One part which did catch my attention is very relevant to the first paragraph of this post. About halfway through the film Kham has tracked the the people responsible to a restaurant and I was amazed to see a single shot go on four about four minutes following Kham as he fights his way in a spiral up to the top floor. He bursts into the top floor of the restaurant and demands to know where his elephants are. A small group of people come out from the back and mock him about it, shots from around the restaurant and the service counter imply the elephants have been killed, cooked and are being eaten right now. We see his despair as he takes this in and as the lead of the group, wearing white, knocks him down decisively a couple of times while he is still too stunned to defend himself, taunting him with the elephant Kohm's bell. At this we see Kham recollect himself with anger and determination, wrap the bell around his hand and beat down his opponent and others, pushing his way to the back of the restaurant where he finds numerous smuggled animals ready to be killed and served (and the elephant calf Kohm who is alive).

That scene had me rapt all the way through.

There is another somewhat similar scene toward the end when Kham finally finds Por Yai's skeleton mounted on display. He is overcome by this and knocked around helplessly by his roomful of opponents for several seconds. When he recovers himself he takes out his anger by methodically breaking the bones of each of them in turn, leaving behind a floor covered in people groaning in pain.

These are I suppose simple things to communicate in fight scenes (although I did not do them justice, I think), but seeing them so well executed helped me to appreciate the power such sequences are capable of having. It has definitely inspired me to think about how I might apply such craft to my own work.

I said I was not paying much attention except to scenes which especially caught my attention so unless I was watching the US cut (which edited this out among many other changes, and which seems likely at this time) that probably explains why I did not realise until looking it up on Wikipedia that one of the film's main villains is a transsexual woman played by a transsexual woman.

Filter: tired

Yesterday was the first full day for aimed-at-children network ABC3. I ended up watching a fair bit of it, since there were superhero cartoons I was curious about. Also Skyland, which as far as I can tell is Star Wars but intend to keep watching anyway in case maybe it actually isn't.

The other shows were all based on Marvel Comics franchises (and bear in mind almost my only exposure to comicbooks is from cartoons like these, live action films, television series and lost_angelwings). First, okay, first was The Spectacular Spider-Man on a different channel which is fun, but I can never seem to tell where in the series we are.

Later was Wolverine and the X-Men, which I had already watched most of so this time around is more to fill in the gaps than anything else. I prefer to call it 'The Wolverine Show' and although it is not bad, have a lot more fun talking about with lost_angelwings than watching alone. Like the time Shadowcat phases through ice into the ocean during a battle and isn't seen again for several episodes.

After that was The Super Hero Squad Show. I'd heard from lost_angelwings that she dislikes the show. After watching an episode I also dislike it. The animation was unpleasant to watch and the show itself wasn't fun to me. Reminded me a bit of Muppet Babies although maybe that show had redeeming qualities (I don't remember if it was good or bad). Maybe part of the problem is I am not fond of or attached to most of the characters, although that hasn't been a problem for me with Justice League episodes and actually I think I recognised most of the characters - Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Storm, Ms Marvel, Wolverine, Silver Surfer... probably missed a few. Wikipedia says I missed many.

In the first episode they ended up fighting Mole Man (not the one from The Simpsons and a Japanese Kaiju movie. That sounds much more fun than it ended up being. Maybe the problem is the target audience is too young for me? I don't quite think so since it spent a lot of time being almost but not quite enjoyable, but I was a bad judge of what children would enjoy even when I was a child so maybe. There wasn't anything I saw on Wikipedia suggesting what age group it was targeted at though.

Iron Man is Batman, apparently. His mouth moves when he talks (as does Doctor Doom's) and that bugs me.

Hulk is Grimlock and that makes me sad.

That Silver Surfer was given a Californian Surfer accent confuses and angers me.

From what I heard I think I would enjoy seeing Ms Marvel in a different, fun context.

Last was the first four episodes of Iron Man: Armoured Adventures which I was surprised to find is my favourite of these so far. I was going to say while talking about The Super Hero Squad Show that just about anything describable with "... but as kids!" is almost bound to be bad (although they aren't actually younger in that show, the animation just makes that connection for me). Fortunately I did not, since this show stars a teenaged Tony Stark, Pepper Potts and James Rhodes.

In this version Tony's father Howard Stark was the founder of Stark Industries and killed by Obadiah Stane, who took over the company and now Tony has to attend high school.

In only vaguely related news, the final episode of Ergo Proxy played last week. It had I think a nice blend of resolution and openness at the end, and I was quite fond of a lot of the devices used during the latter part of the series. Tomorrow they begin broadcast of Death Note in the same timeslot, which is handy since as infinitely_late may recall, I did not have access to ABC2 the last time it aired.

Filter: tired

Was watching the Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars earlier. Since the rest of this post contains my thoughts about that, it goes behind a cut in case someone who wants to watch it unspoiled is reading this and hasn't done so.

( This is that cut )

Filter: busy

Watching Bones and something is up such that I see the picture fine, music is heard, sound effects are heard, but not voice. So it seems voice is transmitted in a separate track to other components of the broadcast?

Some checking revealed voice was audible on a different version of the channel so it seemed more likely to be a transmission problem than a matter of settings on the television. Shortly after the credits voice returned to the channel in question accompanied by a puzzling flickering of the captions when they appear. My guess is someone at the station managed to fix the problem, perhaps by adding the voice track to the broadcast a second time - if the captions are carried on the same track as the voices being captioned that might explain the flickering since they are appearing on screen twice.

But, I don't know enough about television to be confident in this. In fact, I would be surprised if I learned I was correct in these conclusions, since why would the distributors deliver episodes to television networks in pieces to be assembled in broadcast? Although there is that tendency to overlay things like ads and voiceovers onto programs, but I don't think that is the same thing.

So, I've had some ideas but I don't know what is actually going on or why. Interesting error though.

Filter: curious

Lately have been using this image as my desktop background:

It is an image I took with Celestia two years ago and, coming across again, seemed like good background material.

The main object in the foreground is of course Europa, mostly eclipsing Jupiter in the background. To the left is the Sun, and to the left of that another disk is visible. I recreated this shot in Celestia recently to verify (the time displayed in the image is local to Sydney, so I had to adjust the clock settings in Celestia to get to the right moment, but if you leave them unaltered and enter the time shown you get a shot which is nearly a mirror image of this one) that the other disk visible is indeed Io and not one of the other Galilean moons.

I think it is wonderful that there are places in the solar system we could go and see more than two objects visible in the sky as more than points.

Filter: happy

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Finally, finally done. Half past seven the morning of December 1st. 3,048 words since I woke, 22,183 total in this first draft of the story. So that's well more than 10% I wrote on the last day, seems to be a habit of mine finishing that way.

I managed two of my major goals for the month. Didn't make 50,000 words. Did finish the story. Did do more than double the words I'd written of fiction all year. And now I am very tired and I want to sleep. Somehow got to get back on regular time. So here's the story. I actually liked some of the stuff I wrote in this stretch, maybe that means it is awful. We'll see next time. Goodnight.

Filter: tired

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Another very bad batch of words, but at least it was a pretty productive one so far as words go. This was a NaNoWriMo thing, an effort for the month because I was teetering considering and someone I'm very close to signed up for it, so why not? The goal was to try and write a novel, 50,000 words of the month. Currently we are at 18,119, all of which will have been posted publicly as draft by the time this is readable.

So that's a failure? I don't think so, depending how today and tomorrow go. I set out to tell this particular story, which I thought might have been novel-sized. It turned not to be. We are at nearly 20K words now and right on the cusp of the final sequence(s). So the word count isn't what it was officially supposed to be, but we're at the end of the story and nowhere near that, so it never was going to be. I wasn't sure from the beginning, had a vague idea of doing two successive projects this month (which didn't work out, but might have if I'd kept the WriMo pace). But I'm at the end of the month and the end of the story, however bad its drafting has been, and for me that's pretty good.

I hope I can finish the rest, and then it will be very relieving to move on to something else and maybe do some other stuff I have been neglecting.

(that second goal is the less public one I have been writing to - if the story reaches that mark I will have succeeded in doubling my year's fiction writing in a month)

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I don't like these words at all. They're awful, and insufficient in number, but we're still trying to get to the end of the story so that's what we have. Bit too foggy to say much here right now. Don't like that; there are things I have to say in these posts which vanish whenever it comes time to write them down.

Here's what we have this time:

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

When I am anxious or bored I often like to sort and organise things. It tends to be both soothing and exciting (it can be both! calms other anxieties, engages interest in a different direction).

My two main sources for this these days are LibraryThing and MusicBrainz (both of which collections are currently very incomplete). Currently the latter is much more intense since so far as I know its data is built manually by volunteers rather than sourced from already catalogued resources elsewhere.

So far I have yet to find anything I tried to put on LibraryThing needing more than a little tweak to be well-matched, while many of my albums, particularly the older ones, don't seem to be present at all and need adding by me personally. This has caused a definite slowing of my progress (where the incompleteness of my LibraryThing is more to do with not previously being able to get a paid account). Right now I'm stuck about this album, which I added myself but which probably is not meeting the best current standards in how it is laid out. I will fix that later, when I can. Earlier I was using the Picard music tagger while writing to try and clear up some of the mess the CDDB made of my collection when ripping the albums and it seemed to think the tracks belonged in a different album with an identical (but better compiled than mine) tracklist. That album is newer, but put out by the same company and looking a whole lot like a reissue under a new name. Especially as those albums are both number four of a series. I'm not sure if I should trust my deductions and claim those as related titles, one being a reissue of the other, or if I should seek confirmation. Perhaps by writing to Decca since the copy I have seems not to be listed in their catalogue now. It would still be a problem since MusicBrainz does not seem currently, from my limited exploration, to support marking an album as a renamed reissue of another. Plenty of other relationships but not that one.

I may have to engage in community participation. Or more study. Either's good.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Long, long delay since last posting here and of this story. I had an idea to put within the story a smaller adventure that could work as its own story and I wanted to finish that bit of digression before putting up any more excerpts. It went longer and slower to write than I was hoping but now the third chapter of the story is drafted enough to post.

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. From right after I started it has seemed like this work would come out more like a 20K novella than a 50K novel and it still looks to be that. I have a working week to finish on time, five thousand words to write if I want to meet my personal goal for the month, and probably a fair few more than that of story to go. So after this is posted, back to work and hopefully a thousand words for each of those days.

I don't like how this story has come out so far. That's normal for something I'm actively writing. It has felt more like a skeleton of a story, more hastily dashed outline than fleshed tale. I worry it has become more abbreviated as I continue. I worry I am losing or have lost what little character definition I had to start with. I hope that, in editing, this story can become something I am not ashamed to say I wrote. At worst presumably it becomes a learning experience.

It has long confused and bothered me that in the question of how to respond to climate change one of the major governmental concerns appears to be "How can we ensure that industries like coal remain profitable?" As concerns go it seems almost nonsensical, since in order to respond effectively to the problem the coal and other industries need to cease existing in their present form - an effective response cannot I think include 'energy producing industries continue to exist profitably as they are'. If they do want to keep existing as companies they probably should be investing in changing what they do and how.

Perhaps this is because 'growing less than fast is a sign of a bad economy' has never made sense to me as a goal either. It seems like a whole lot of people pretending the planet's resources are infinite and putting off any problems to be dealt with in some indefinite 'later'. Any economic focus other than a sustainable, non-destructive one has always struck me as misguided.

I was watching Lateline earlier tonight and the businessperson interviewed seemed much more charismatic than the politicians and political analysts. Maybe that explains this.

Filter: optimistic

Perhaps I should moderate myself more. I read things people say which inspire me to polemical writing and the result, being caught up in rhetorical acts, is often something I would not be willing to say in direct conversation. This suggests to me either I should be interpersonally bolder, more rhetorically muted, or make clearer the distance between the words which inspire mine and the more generalised directions I tend to mean them.

In other news, it bothers me when people describe conservative religious leaders or leaders who invoke religion as 'probably faking belief to manipulate the masses'. It makes me think the speakers hold religion so in contempt they do not think believers are capable of such popular or effective leadership. I wonder if these people, often atheists, realise what they are saying sounds a lot like "I think much of what is worst in society is due to atheists cynically manipulating religious belief to their personal benefit". But I see no reason why these leaders couldn't mean what they say. Their followers appear to, mostly.

Filter: thoughtful

Not the reason I expected to be a first or early prompt for writing a post linking to FWD/Forward but...

This post? It's wrong. Infuriatingly, enragingly wrong. I hope that's just for rhetorical purposes.

Not the bit saying it is hard to confront people on their use of language, and I wouldn't disagree about it being harder taking the extra step of opening oneself up to that defensive hostility which so often arises when people are called on the ways their unexamined habits perpetuate systems of abuse and oppression, but to say changing one's language use is easy in such a derisive mocking way?

Oh dear. No, no it isn't. For most people, particularly the abled, language is a deeply ingrained automatic part of themselves. These words they use, they don't think about them most of the time and attempting to make a shift in long established usage is a very difficult habit to change. Words that rise up unbidden as part of commonplace speech as natural as breathing, words that have a lifetime of casual use behind them, words which are used pervasively in the surrounding environment as if they are ordinary acceptable terms?

No, not easy. Simple maybe. As simple as 'just say no'. As simple as uninternalising the messages I have picked up and believing myself to be a person of worth. 'Just change your mind', 'I know they were wrong and hurtful, so I can stop believing what they said of me'. It is simple, but it is not easy, and mistaking conceptual simplicity for ease of action has tripped me up many times in trying to recover... so. It quite aggravates me to see someone saying that because the concept of checking and altering one's habits of thought and action is simple, the doing of it is correspondingly easy.

What it takes in my experience and observation is mindfulness and sustained effort. Not slipping up is difficult. Try removing religiously based language from your non-technical vocabulary because it isn't your belief system; I've been working to control my vocabulary since primary school and it is still difficult to remove compromise words like 'darn' and 'drat' and 'bloody'. I'm fortunate I suppose that I never picked up most (not all, definitely some slipped through) ablist and homophobic and sexist language and was committed from a young age to not doing so, but it doesn't actually get easier as life goes on. Those words are normalised as part of our social discourse, they still get embedded in our lives and presented as language for our brains to pick up on and parse and use.

Quitting isn't so easy, no, but I have no fondness for people saying it is too hard even to try. Not for something like this when the message is "Please try to be less hurtful and more respectful in what you say, please be more mindful of others". Not the easiest thing to do, fine, but I'd say it is less than the minimum required of trying to be an ally, and well worth doing in itself. Pfah.

Filter: aggravated

Today has been the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Likely not still that day here, by the time I finish writing this, but it will be elsewhere still. That day set aside for remembering all the people who over the past and previous years were murdered because of cissexist bigotry, for being trans.

The numbers for this year were a bit tricky to access, being in a Word document, but according to the website this year 101 163 people were killed for that particular who they are. If trend from past years hold true (and what I have read elsewhere indicates this is so), the majority of those murdered were trans women of colour. Not white trans women, and not trans men. A lot of the time trans people who are murdered are assumed and portrayed as having been sex workers, whether they were or not, and because of the widespread stigma applied to sex workers this provides cis authorities further disincentives to take these crimes seriously.

A lot of the time people guilty of these murders, if they are charged, use what is called the 'trans panic' defence. Rather than claiming innocence they instead claim the murder of trans people is justified because of how horrifying and disgusting they find it to be knowing a trans person. This gets accepted as valid in court far too readily, even though it is often untrue or very unlikely to be true that the murder was unaware of the person ey killed being trans prior to the act of killing. It tends, rather, to be that "I found out she was trans so I killed her[1]" is seen by many as a fair and logical train of thought. Even people who say the murder was wrong often say the murdered trans person was also wrong not to walk around wearing a sign saying "Trans", as if that would have made eir life so much easier to live, or would be a reasonable standard to require of someone so as not to be murdered.

[1] Actually they don't normally use gendered pronouns. Normally they describe the person they killed as 'it'.

I was thinking, for writing something for this day, about why these murders happen and why they are predominantly of women. The conclusion I came to was a combination of transphobia, homophobia and sexism.

The mere act of being visibly a woman, presenting as female, is seen by many men as a sexual act. An invitation. This is why a lot of men feel entitled to behave aggressively sexual toward women who are not welcoming of this behaviour - because being a woman is itself considered a sexual invitation or come-on.

It is because of transphobia that the genders of trans people are regarded as invalid where the genders of cis people are treated as real. Thus, trans women are considered 'really men' and trans men are considered 'really women'.

When we combine this with cultural homophobia and macho sexism that sees violence as a valid, even imperative means for men to enforce perceptions of their masculinity and 'defend' it from the threat supposedly posed by the existence of queer people and other ways of doing gender, well...

Because a woman in public is by default seen as engaging sexually with all the men around her, whether she wants to or not, and because a trans woman recognised as a trans woman is seen as being 'really a man', the mere existence of trans women is seen as a threat to the sexuality and identity of heterosexual cis men, one to which violence is often regarded as a justifiable or at least understandable response.

Of course this does not explain why white women are less likely to be murdered in this way than other women because my thought process did not include race until after the fact. I have seen however several other writers express that the lives of women of colour are regarded as less valuable than the lives of white women, just as the lives of trans women are regarded as less valuable than the lives of cis women which I can readily believe. It would make sense that the intersection of these two identities would combine to a far higher murder rate as people might believe either they could especially get away with the killing of a trans woman of colour, or that trans women of colour are especially unworthy of life.

Clearly, this needs to change.

Filter: disappointed

Accommodation and accessibility are among those mostly unnoticed things. When they are brought to our attention our response might be approving. It might be a scowling grumbling about expense, inconvenience and 'whining'. Might be something else, probably - humans are varied, though sometimes they seem distressingly monotonous.

Perhaps that is a poor preface. I have been thinking about accessibility and the difficulty that is had, the resistance to introducing new accessibility measures and having them implemented and maintained, especially widely. There is a bit of grim amusement in my consideration of that, lately, because really we worked so did so well on some accessibility so far, enough for maybe most of us, but there is so much resistance to going any further with it.

A lot of us with visual impairments have access to corrective lenses. Not all of us; I'd be shocked if easy quality glasses access weren't mainly the domain of middle class and up citizens of nations that call themselves 1st World. We make doors that most of us can reach and open easily. Reaching elevated locations we often put in stairs and expect them to be sized for our common feet and gait. Inside we add illumination, though not all of us need it.

Our signs are displayed in EM frequencies we can see; we use colours we can clearly differentiate as markers. We use auditory frequencies we can hear. We make our clothes out of materials which do not irritate our skin. We provide ourselves with foods which do not make ourselves sick or kill us. We refrain from filling our environments with pervasive, irritating sounds. We do not decorate with odours like onions or faecal matter because these produce adverse reactions in us. We don't use strobe lighting in work environments and consider it a problem to fix when we cannot accurately perceive our environment because of how it is structured. When we build structures we size them so that most of us can get around easily inside and outside, with enough room that we don't become stuck or unable to proceed.

It is a very long list. I doubt I have been anywhere near comprehensive and a lot of people could probably find glaring omissions in what I managed to come up with. The point being aimed at is that humans put a lot of effort into making their environment accessible to a subset of themselves. Comprehensively enough and long enough that most don't realise that a lot of why people with disabilities can have difficulty getting around and accessing things it is because they weren't included among those people initially built their world to suit and now when they point it out and say they want it changed, many see it as an extra imposition instead of a continuation of the work and attitudes that went into making navigating the world so easy for them.

Accessibility isn't something extra. It is the demand an incomplete work be continued.

Last night watching Eureka one of the guest characters was supposedly Australian, except his accent was awfully all over the place. Left us wondering why they didn't just cast an Australian for the role. That, and an earlier episode of Frasier reminding that the trend in casting for trans women is cis men for laughs, cis women for pity, gave renewed impetus to write this intended post.

There is a lot of under-representation in our fiction, and in AV fiction often when a member of a marginalised group is depicted the part will be played by a member of a dominant group. Women are usually no longer played by men, although roles are limited. People of colour are usually no longer played by white people (but still too often), although roles are limited and frequent opportunities are taken to white-wash works and replace characters of colour with white characters. Trans characters are nearly always played by cis actors - almost always a trans woman is depicted and if she is an object of humour or ridicule she is played by a cis man; if we are supposed to feel sympathy for her she is played by a cis woman. Disabled characters are played by abled actors faking a disability in most cases.

Consequently many people advocate for better representation, like the outcry against the Avatar movie being transformed from one inhabited by Asian characters into one where a small band of white heroes saves the world (the one being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, not the one by James Cameron, which looks to be Super Space Colonialism anyway), or that people with disabilities and trans people should be cast to play the roles which represent them. I've also seen some backlash against this from among the people in question. At least wert trans people playing trans roles, people have argued that if we have that happening the actors will get typecast as 'trans actors' and their careers will be stalled due to being restricted to trans roles in an industry where there nearly are no trans roles. I would be unsurprised if there were similar protests elsewhere.

I don't think that should be the case though. Would it actually happen? I suppose it might, although given the current situation where cis actors play cis roles and cis actors play trans roles, and so on, it still seems like an improvement over no representation.

What I would like to see, in addition to more representative casting for existing roles is more diverse casting for roles which are not specifically marked as 'minority parts'. I am not inclined to agree that, for example, the aspirational goal for trans actors should be to play cis roles. I don't see any problem with such casting, but nor do I see a reason roles shouldn't accommodate the actors cast for them. It happens a lot in response to protests against things like white-washing of characters of colour, so why not turn it around?

That is, they tend to say "This character doesn't need to be Asian (or disabled, or female, or whatever), the story has universal appeal, so why can't ey be played by a white man?". (and again, often when people are arguing for the universality of a character or story's appeal seems to be when they are reaching for a straight, white, etc. man to represent this universality) So why not the other way round? We don't call straight men typecast if they only play straight men. Nor white men, nor abled men, nor cis men... but most roles are written for them. Unless the story actually depends on the character being one of those things, what would be wrong with casting someone else and tweaking the role to fit? Explicitly not meant to be about turning characters into gimmicks, because being not a straight white abled cis man isn't actually a gimmick, it's being also a normal kind of person who happens to not be that kind, and there's plenty of variety everywhere. Very rarely does the character actually need to be that man, so it is suspicious ey usually is.

Since I don't believe any group of people other than 'talented and / or skilled actors' has a monopoly on better acting ability than others, this leaves the conclusion that there are other factors than 'ability to play roles' involved in why most people we see in films and television aren't women, a third of them don't have disabilities, less than one in ten is other than straight, or why most of all of these people are white. If we were casting strictly to acting ability and weren't so biased in our conceptualisations of what people ordinarily are, I think our working actor demographics would be very different.

And of course, we aren't yet in a position where changing things in the other direction would be fair. It is after all the problem at hand.

Inexplicably sleepy despite overheated, fanless bedroom. Ended up drowsing back to sleep for another hour despite having at least 8 of them unconscious already, and later in the day than I would have liked.

Also led to oddly unpleasant dream in which Earth's biota had been contaminated by alien life. Was given a gift of a creature resembling a small deer or a vicuña by my mother as a pet. Unfortunately this creature turned out to reproduce asexually and continuously, somewhat like a tribble (although tribbles were not referenced as a concept in the dream) and I was at a loss for what to do with it since I preferred not to starve or more directly kill it.

More disturbingly it turned out that due to the way this creature's neurology worked it would always viciously and emphatically attack anything which touched it only once. The tone of this information was that it meant death for any human who committed that error. I was amazed and relieved this had not happened to anyone in my family and that my own particular compulsive tendencies had led to my not triggering this behaviour yet either.

Not a pleasant dream that, about having to look after an unwanted and dangerous burden of an otherwise pleasant-looking creature.

Filter: sleepy

I have said this before, although not here yet:

I think when we experience a desire to share music [or something else which may be the subject of a similar desire] with others this is often a proxy for a less commonly known or appreciated desire. I think what we often truly wish to share is the experience of the moment, the emotions that are being inspired in us. "I want to share this ecstasy, this joy, this wonder, this passion, this moment of empathy or grief or oneness [...] and the only way I know to even approach doing so is by sharing with you what is the immediate inspiration of my feelings."

Filter: enthralled

Reading about this news earlier today I wanted to provide some recent context, if I were to say anything about it. I couldn't think how to express that, so put it down as a matter to gather dates and details for before posting. Then there was this post from Idiot/Savant at Larvatus Prodeo which I think sums the situation up well enough:

The ACT Legislative Assembly has just passed a civil union law, amending its existing civil partnerships legislation to permit public ceremonies. There’s some history here – in 2006 and 2007 civil union laws were repeatedly vetoed by the Howard Government on the basis that allowing public ceremonies (rather than filling out a form and making a declaration in a registry office) would “mimic marriage”. The message was clear: gay couples should stay in the legislative closet, and keep out of sight (and out of mind) of decent straight folk.

The new law gives the finger to that idea, reinstating public ceremonies and establishing a seperate system of civil partnership notaries. Oddly, however, the ceremonies are limited solely to same-sex couples – ensuring same- and opposite-sex couples use different laws apparently being a cornerstone of Australian bigot politics. Even this may not be enough to avoid a federal veto – the Australian Labour Party voted just three months ago to uphold Howard’s ban on gay marriage, and Kevin Rudd personally opposes equality. its unclear yet whether there will be a veto – but given the hostility of the ALP to gay rights, I would not be surprised.

Filter: tired

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Haven't posted updates for a couple of days because while I have been writing my output has not felt substantial enough to merit posting. Have not really got enough for that so far either, but I've been doing some thinking about what to do with this story to regain momentum and the next update, while likely not coming tomorrow, is probably going to be relatively lengthy. So here's a plate-clearing update of wretched writing:

A long time had passed and now in the wake of a great burst of energy she was weary. In her yellow dress she stood upon a gantry, rotating her view to find an understanding of why this swiftly flourishing work had stalled.

Her intention still held, but here, at this point had always been less firm. Its lack of definition now stood as a stark obstacle to her continued construction and it was too significant a piece to be filled in by a place-holder. Or so she thought of it.

On her island drifting through its eternal sea of blue sky she opened herself to inspiration, raising up her arms and summoning a wind so the moment felt right. Urgent inspiration did come, but it called back to an earlier stall and, though she found it compelling, did not resolve either that previous halt or this present one. Possibly it would be useful later; in lightning she etched its representation on a nearby stone, henceforth labelled precious.

She shook herself clear and- ahhh, there. If this part of the woven wire tower were expanded... take out that prospective bit which was silly anyway, move some reluctantly discarded pieces up higher and now perhaps it works. Story in story, not quite, not really.

She smiled and reached for more pieces. This might still be fun even if it fell over.

Filter: creative

Outside heat experienced like pressure. Front lawn carpeted in purple jacaranda blossoms. I want to make a single panel comic:
Adult figure, looking up at a tree. "I used to be taller than you."

Filter: numb

• There weren't ads insisting it were really possible and could happen


• The plot weren't an annoying apocalyptic myth going around for years already


• And if astronomers and others weren't having to reassure terrified people that the end of the world is not imminent, thanks partly to the film's advertising

Filter: annoyed

To describe treatment of a person as reprehensible, often we liken it to accepted ways of treating children. When we think a person's behaviour needs to be more controlled, we liken em to a child.

Because I think how we regard and behave toward children culturally is itself reprehensible I try not to compare others to children in order to dismiss or degrade them. I try not to use comparisons such as 'treated like a child' unless I am also making these points, because I think unexamined, uncomplicated use of those references reinforces attitudes that such treatment is appropriate for children and only wrong when applied to older people.

Only recently we got a television which can display closed captions. I don't normally need those to be able to understand what is on television but I often find them a great aid at times when my auditory processing is disrupted. Even otherwise they usually help me understand what is being said better.

Consequently now that I am able to access the state of closed captioning I am very disappointed in it. When I can understand what is being said the words on the screen are sometimes jumbled, overlapping, at the wrong times (such as showing after the preceding sentence(s)) or just wrong. Which is not the same as edits for ease of reading or clarity, and live captioned programs are not what I am talking about. Two of the newest television channels often seem not to have captions at all, which is especially infuriating, although I think my sisters appreciate it since they don't like when I have the captions on.

Maybe it is just this particular television acting up, or maybe I am seeing things wrong but if not, it is disappointing the state of captioning is not what it could be.

(I do tend to use subtitles where available in DVDs and games where available, and my impression of those is of being more accurate and comprehensible)

Obama lifts the ban on US aid money going to any organisation that provides abortions and the US House of Representatives goes and passes a similar ban on their own people.

It's absurd. Federal money banned from paying for a particular class of medical procedures. Why? It's not illegal, so why is a government being barring itself from funding legal medical procedures? Because a subset of the population has a religious prejudice against it, seems like mainly. Which isn't a very secular way to run a government. Unfair too; no government is making laws based on my religious beliefs, or even- well.

How come? we would ask. How come laws are made on the basis of the views of some sects of a religion but not the views of others? Especially the ones which outlaw personal choices, ones we would expect people who hold a belief in their immorality not to choose.

If this becomes law the lives of many people, particularly poor women and children, will be materially disadvantaged compared to if this does not become law. The gain, meanwhile, is that members of some Christian sects can feel pleased others are being forced to live by their morality, while members of other Christian sects will be frustrated that their morality has been prohibited.

Their are anti-choice non-religious atheists and members of other religions, but let's not pretend this was done to suit their desires.

[Link up top, very worth reading. Post content is different to what I wrote here]

Filter: disappointed

In the currently playing episode of Poirot he [Hercule Poirot] is complaining of a play he saw, that it is unfair because the resolution depended on information not available until the end.

Depending if he means 'was discovered at the end of the story' or 'was not revealed to the audience until the solution was expounded on to the audience', I think maybe he is being unfair. The latter case I would agree is cheating, but in the former, is it not how detective stories go that they are a process of uncovering the information which indicates the solution? And therefore that the story typically ends once we have all the facts in hand because those facts indicate the answer and thus our mystery is solved?

Filter: curious

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Surprisingly I actually managed more than the pace target last night. Probably won't happen again but it was nice to do that for once.

Was disappointed that a scene I had been building to ended up not happening. It turned out not to make sense given everything that had been written so far, so was averted instead.

The cast of this story are supposed to be of Arabic heritage, but I am fairly certain a lot of definitely wrong idioms and details have made it in so far. Am trying not to worry about that for this draft and wait until editing to fit those details to the story (including making significant changes if that proves necessary). Depending how well that works, will consider making such an approach in future too - sort the details and practicalities we don't know after writing the story's skeleton. There will be a lot of that to do, not only for culture.

Currently at 7841 words, should be at 16,667 to be on track. I compare the counts because doing so is easier than not doing it, but I don't really care by this point. I seem to need the occasional day or few off writing anyway, don't know if I will be up to writing more tonight. We shall see, but this is a late start and I'm having an early night.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Last night I committed a NaNoWriMo sin. After a couple of hours writing some scenes for Ferideh the story would be improved if these were Algol's scenes instead and rewrote. They ended up longer than before but I wrote much less in total than I'd intended to. Trying to be a bit more disciplined about it tonight.

I've been leaving out the formatting in the story so far, but forgot to call attention to this until now. It does mean some information is missing which will be present in the final version but I doubt that is anything pertinent to this particular story. And maybe I'm mistaken.

Word meter's been acting up, but the total currently is 5770 words. So here we go:

I always thought of Kill Bill as basically the Mirror Universe version of Charlie's Angels.

Edit: The part where she goes after O-Ren Ishii reminds me of the Hundred Man Battle from Berserk, with Gogo in the role of Adon's brother (same weapon and all, updated), although... hard to say who fared better. Guts seemed to manage the fighting easier, but The Bride can walk away under her own power at the end.

Edit2: I'll take that back. Accounting for the story styles those events are embedded in, I'd say they do about even.

Filter: busy

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Not much to say at this point. Will have to increase the writing pace significantly to make the official targets but I think that's more "It would be nice" than "I have to". I am managing a rate about half that of the NaNoWriMo goal and for me that is significant. If I can keep it up this will signify a large step in my ability to produce story drafts.

As I had been learning with my work on A Library Fox, having a clearer idea of what I am doing as a scene in advance helps to work faster, where before I had often been working more sentence by sentence and often not knowing what happened that far ahead. I'm not actually sure if this is a change, and maybe I have just improved.

One thing I am disappointed about is how much some of the cast have been non-entities so far, particularly Algol. She was originally conceived as the starring character with a supporting cast but so far mostly Ferideh and Nawar have been featured, with a touch of Altair. I suspect this is because I am enjoying them more and that I have a less clear idea of who the other characters are or ways they might choose to be active. Will be trying to fix this both as I proceed and in revision, although this excerpt and the next are I think mainly committed to Nawar and Ferideh.

So here we go:

When your post was guest-posted at Womanist Musings I was sickened enough to want to stop following that blog for airing your views, for your paternalistic pre-emptive dismissal of anyone who might disagree with you as 'fun-fems' or male-identified, for the condescending superiority dripping from your every word. Your argument was barely comprehensible, but as near as I could make it out, is roughly 'If you contracted for sex in advance and were unable to fairly renegotiate or back out that would be rape, therefore all porn is objectively rape at all times and anyone who disagrees is unworthy of engagement because they've been patriarchally brainwashed'.

Okay, so I disagree that pornography (by which you apparently mean human-acted visual pornography) is innately rape (which does not mean I think it is never rape, or don't have strong issues with lots of it), find your arguments lacking, be sickened by your presentation, and get that out of my system by ranting to friends and lovers. Fine.

And then, this. ( Cut for intense transphobia and rape apologism from a feminist )

Filter: determined

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Only 3236 words words so far, had a stall the past couple of days. That usually happens to me, few days writing, few days of very little.

Well, it seemed for a while this project might not be novel length after all, but be much shorter. Although it also seemed what I was writing was too abbreviated to be the full story, enough that I had thoughts of finishing early and then expanding on what was written.

Last night had one of those moments of understanding, and realised I had things happening in the wrong order. Was trying to push the characters to follow what was laid out in outline, which was not working well because it went contrary to how they'd been established. Then I realised letting them go the way they were inclined to would get us to the same point, later, without having inconsistent characterisation, with a clearer sense of why their enemy is their enemy (which I'd been worried was getting lost), and getting to showcase some stuff that I was being worried was being inappropriately left out. So that's a very handy detour that'll add quite a lot of word count too.

Sadly, by the time I realised this it was 0300 and I needed to sleep. But now there is today! and... errands. But we'll get there.

As much as I say I hate the story, that it is terrible and in no way worthy of being written, I have read enough by authors to know this is a common sentiment while writing, and enough personal experience to know I feel that way about just about every story I write. So I'm not going to throw it out just because I hate it at the moment. Maybe at some other point, maybe after it is finished, if I think my assessment of its quality is a bit more enduring.

The first part of this story turned out to be more prologue than quarter of the narrative, but here's the end of it. We continue with the writing of the next part, but give 'end of story-part' priority as posting cut-off point over 'how much we wrote today'. So here's that bit, and an image:

So you're participating in a thread where your main argument is that being a cis heterosexual man who is interested only in cis women and not ever in trans women, and that this is perfectly fine because it is your orientation...

... and then someone says, incidental to her actual argument, that given what you've expressed in that thread, probably most trans women wouldn't be interested in you anyway - you actually have the gall to call that an ad hominem? So you think it is just peachy to repeat at length that you only want cis women and trans women who don't disclose are being immoral and deceptive, but if anyone suggests that trans women might find that attitude offensively unattractive, you claim you're being subjected to an unfair personal attack?

Try getting a sense of proportion before the next time you have an urge to reiterate the beliefs that get trans people murdered.

And all these cis people, feminist and otherwise who have such a problem with the possibility that maybe you'll accidentally have sex with a trans person and feel violated, then perhaps what you should do is confess up-front to everyone you want to flirt with that you would be bothered by them being trans. There's a better chance you'll find kindred spirits than someone carrying icky trans cooties, bah.

[because don't click on links which outrage auntysarah]

Filter: pissed off