NATG XV prompt 3

Jun. 6th, 2025 11:10 pm
frith: Violet unicorn cartoon pony grinning like Cheshire Cat (FIM Twilight crazy)
[personal profile] frith
Day03_Funny_expression

Better muzzle, nostrils OK but not the eye-like nostrils from day 1, can't get my eyes the same size (maybe I should use a template or a bottle cap). The prompt asked for facial expressions, I went with "funny expression", expecting it to be easier. Not sure how to fill in the nostrils and ears. Black? Brown? Pink?
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[personal profile] laurapalmer posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo

Introducing [community profile] seasons_of_fandom, an interactive fandom challenge community/landcomm that allows you to create work for any fandom you can think of! We were previously [community profile] lands_of_magic, a name we ran under for over 10 years, but we figured we needed a facelift and a name change since it has been a long time since we had only focused on fantasy fandoms. We welcome TV, movies, books, games, music, anime, celebrities... almost anything goes! We have all kinds of challenges- writing, graphics, games, and some challenges that are miscellaneous fanworks! This round we'll also be trying out monthly drabble and icon contests.

We have four wonderful teams- The Spring Court, The Summer Court, The Autumn Court, and The Winter Court.

Sign-ups for new members start today, and though our first round under our new name doesn't start until August, we will have two challenges open before the round officially starts. To sign up, all you have to do is read the rules and fill out the survey here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

bookbookbook

Jun. 6th, 2025 08:03 am
jazzfish: Owly, reading (Owly)
[personal profile] jazzfish
Going through my books, because it's been a couple years since my last serious purge. Pick up The Fortunate Fall. Note that it's under the author's deadname. Ponder what to do about that: sticky-label on the spine? Shelve it under R?

Open it up. Note that my copy is signed (under the author's deadname). Flip through. Read two and a half pages. Realise I've just booksniped myself. Put it firmly back on the shelf.

Next up, I guess. I was gonna read some of my unreads to see if they're worth keeping / hauling but sometimes the bookshelf speaks.

(I believe Cameron Reed's second novel will be out this fall. FINALLY. I am excited.)



Just finished Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter. It's ... the trappings are I guess "industrial fantasy." I think Abby described it as nihilistic. I can see where she was coming from but to me it's more about, mm. The process of outgrowing nihilism, maybe.
DONNY: Are these the nazis?
WALTER: No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be frightened of.

Currently reading the sequel, The Dragons of Babel, which starts off in the same nihilistic vein but quickly takes a turn for the at least somewhat more cheerful. I remember liking this one an awful lot when I read it. Looking forward to the third volume after this.

back to school, 5/?

Jun. 5th, 2025 10:55 pm
thistleingrey: (Default)
[personal profile] thistleingrey
hmm 12 (to pick up from post 4/?) I had a vague sense in grade school that word problems and I didn't get on. Read more... )

13 I've chosen to take an additional class from each of two instructors, and to avoid an additional class from a third instructor---a novelty compared to the chronic overenrollment of my original undergrad classes, whereby one did not choose so much as roll dice against the enrollment slot, one's requirements, and unseen forces (which I realized in grad school were partly administrative, such as who was on leave during a given term). Anyway, the instructor to avoid for the fall had a synchronous lecture via Zoom for spring and advertised several times for his fall class. I see why, now---only 15% of its seats have been filled.

weird power outage, and knee update

Jun. 5th, 2025 09:10 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

semi-recent reading

Jun. 4th, 2025 10:33 pm
redbird: full bookshelves and table in a library (books)
[personal profile] redbird

Since my last reading post:

Nobody Cares, by H. J. Breedlove. This one is good, but dark: it's dedicated this to Black Lives Matter, and fairly early on I got to the first mention of Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It's also book 3 in the Talkeetna series, with further developments in the friendship-turning-romance of Dace and Paul.

The Disappearing Spoon, by Dan Kean: a history of the periodic table, with a bit about each of the currently-known elements and the people, or groups of people who discovered them. Someone recommended this after I mentioned liking Consider the Fork, but the two books have almost nothing in common.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, by Katherine May: a memoir, about walking and what happens after the writer hears a radio program about Asperger's and thinks "but that's me." (I don't remember where I saw this recommended

Return to Gone-Away, by Elizabeth Enright: read-aloud, and a reread of a book I read years ago. Sweet, a family's low-key adventures in an obscure corner of upstate New York. As the title implies, this is a sequel; read Gone-Away Lake first.

Beautiful Yetta, the Yiddish Chicken, by Daniel Pinkwater, a short picture book that we read aloud after Adrian and I realized Cattitude hadn't read it before. Conversation in three languages, with translations (and transliterations) for the Yiddish and Spanish. Not Pinkwater's best, but fun.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright, because I enjoyed rereading the Gone-Away Lake books. Several months of a girl's life with her family on a farm. The plot and adventures are relatively low-key. I liked it, and am glad I got it from the library.

Also, it looks as though I didn't post about the summer reading thing here. It started June 1, and the bingo card has a mix of kinds of books, like books in translation, published this year, or with an indigenous author; some squares with things like "read outside" and "recommend a book"; and some that go further afield, like "learn a word in a new language" and "try a new recipe." Plus the ever-popular "book with a green cover." (OK, last year it was "book with a red cover.") I do a lot of my reading on a black-and-white kindle, so I don't know what color the covers might be. Therefore, I walked into a library yesterday, looked at their summer reading suggestions, and grabbed a book with a green cover.

NATG XV, Moving It

Jun. 4th, 2025 04:01 pm
frith: Light blue cartoon pegasus with rainbow mane and tail (FIM Rainbow evasive)
[personal profile] frith
Day02_Moving_it

Still trying to get the drawings flowing. I keep stalling. This prompt is for "on the move" and "walking the walk".

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 02:14 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Two minor amusing things from a trip downtown this morning:

I saw (and rode) one of the googly-eyed trolleys for the first time.

And on the way back, an ad in a subway car for some AI thing. The headline is something like "offload the busy work." The steps given below that are "AI drafts brief" and "brief accepted." Almost anything would have been a better example, after repeated news stories about lawyers getting in trouble for submitting impressively flawed AI-drafted legal briefs.

The trip was to try on sandals at the Clark's store. There was one that was slightly two big, so I have ordered a pair in my usual style, to be delivered to the store, so I can try them on there and return them if they don't fit.

I stopped to grab some lunch at the Quincy Market food court, and then wrenched my knee while sitting down on some stairs in order to eat it. The trip home was not fun, but I came home, sat down for a couple of minutes, then got out last fall's cane and went into the kitchen to make tea.
jazzfish: Jazz Fish: beret, sunglasses, saxophone (Default)
[personal profile] jazzfish
I'm home. I'm pretty well caught up on classwork; mostly what remains is a big group project and a final exam. And I need to finish writing the final report on my practicum. Weird to think this will all be in the rearview in three and a half weeks.

I'm still jobhunting, which remains a reliable depression trigger. Not worth talking about other than to note it's ongoing, on all counts.

Mr Tuppert has decided that what is best in life is to demand scritches/pets from the cat-mat next to the laptop spot on the table, while I'm eating and reading ye internette. Sometimes he also gets brushed, which he generally ... somewhere between tolerates and enjoys. Eventually he decides that he's had enough company and isn't it time for me to go be somewhere that's not in his space? He expresses this through the medium of lightly biting my hand. Not ideal but one works with what one has. Treats can redirect him away from being cranky, but that is not really a road I want to go down.

For now I keep sending out resumes. If I continue to get no bites by the end of the month I will have to regroup. In the meanwhile it's threatening to be early summer out there. Things as they currently are aren't so bad.

NATG XV, Standing

Jun. 2nd, 2025 07:26 pm
frith: Violet unicorn cartoon pony grinning like Cheshire Cat (FIM Twilight crazy)
[personal profile] frith
Day01_Standing

It's day 1 of the annual Newbie Artist Training Ground. I'm again attempting to morph Generation 4 My Little Pony cartoon entities into a somewhat realistic equivalent, this time with round pupils. Silly people are nuts for cat's eyes but horse eyes, not so much.

This year there will be only 15 tasks with 48 hours to complete each one. This first one is "Draw a pony standing // Draw a pony planting their hooves". I'm just phoning the first one in (I drew it last week) as I recover from the working weekend. If I can get my mojo alight, I'll try for the hoof planting thing.
full_metal_ox: A National Geographic cover mock-up, with three marigolds in an analogous orange-yellow color harmony. (Nature)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] common_nature
Taken on 21 June 2024 at 20:33 US Eastern Daylight Savings Time, as I hurried up the street through the break in the rain.





My limited equipment does the scene nothing even remotely resembling justice: neither the gauzy rainbow-sherbet luminosity nor the grand theatricality of the skyscape, with the air of a vintage book illustration or a meticulously painted film backdrop. A detail I particularly like is the small dark cumulus cloud at bottom center that suggests a person astride a charging (pig? bear? huge dog?)

(Keanu-as-) Constantine 2!

Jun. 2nd, 2025 01:52 am
firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
[personal profile] firecat
"Peter Stormare Gives Update on ‘Constantine 2’; Keanu Reeves Reportedly Unhappy with Script" by Meagan Navarro (very similar articles seen on a number of other entertainment news sites).

"'But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes,' Stormare said."

I think I agree with Keanu. We already have the John Wick franchise. IT IS AWESOME. But we don't need the Keanu-as-Constantine franchise to turn into another John Wick franchise.

I hope they resolve this soon because I am DROOLING at the chance to see Stormare play Lucifer again.

Photos: House Yard

Jun. 2nd, 2025 12:17 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] common_nature
These pictures are from Sunday, but it's after midnight, so the post says Monday.

Walk with me ... )

celiac test is negative

Jun. 1st, 2025 06:25 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.

I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.

State of the Swag

May. 29th, 2025 08:05 pm
frith: Bust of white pegacorn with flowing multi-colour mane and closed eyes (FIM Celestia stamp)
[personal profile] frith
MLPcollect2025

Back in May 2011 I had about 5 "blind bag" style ponies and the "Gift Set" of five slightly larger plastic My Little Ponies. Now I have so many that taking a group shot is way too much work for a result in which every pony is reduced to a speck of colour, showing nothing. Did you know that some of those books are for sale on eBay for $800 and up? Madness.

Flickr has removed the option of getting the URL for the "original" size of an uploaded picture and "view source" is not working, but "inspect" is... The hard part is finding the correct o.jpg URL in the wall of code. Oh I found it, probably by dumb luck: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54555084133_9c55c9ba7a_o.jpg but it looks like I won't need it for the Equestria Daily submitter gizmo, but I might need it for posting pictures on FiMFiction (MLP fanfiction archive).

amodei's warning

May. 29th, 2025 11:14 am
thistleingrey: (Default)
[personal profile] thistleingrey
Upon due reflection, I think this Axios piece (which I read yesterday) deserves more attention:
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic
AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, Amodei told us in an interview from his San Francisco office.

Don't panic. Strategize.

Osprey nesting

May. 29th, 2025 10:41 am
pauraque: bird flying (Default)
[personal profile] pauraque posting in [community profile] common_nature
I got to see an Osprey sitting on its nest!

brown and white raptor sits on a nest at the top of a wooden pole

When I came back later to show my partner, we talked to another birder who said this nesting platform has been there for a long time but in past years Ospreys have only stayed for a short time and not fledged any young. This year they've stayed much longer than usual so hopes are high for a baby! The other adult was perched in a tree nearby.

Ospreys eat only fish. (The platform is above a river.) It's interesting that small birds seem to realize they're no threat, and completely ignore them. While we were there, we saw a flock of blackbirds furiously mob and chase away a Cooper's Hawk while the Ospreys calmly looked on.

blood draw, etc.

May. 28th, 2025 06:39 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
I'm fine, as far as I know everyone's fine, but my trip to get blood drawn was more exciting than anticipated: the bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid either a bicycle or a pedestrian crossing in mid-block. She did that, checked to make sure that everyone on the bus was OK, then drove to the next corner, pulled over, and asked again if everyone was sure they were OK.

A few stops after that, someone asked me where he should get off the bus to get to "the little mall with Trader Joe's and MicroCenter." It took me a moment to figure out what he meant, because the bus we were on doesn't go there. So first I told him I wasn't sure, because this bus didn't go there, and then I started thinking about the problem. He said he wasn't good at directions, so I suggested a route that involved more walking but less chance of getting lost. I wound up signaling for his bus stop, and then telling him I was sorry, I'd forgotten they'd moved the bus stop, so [revised directions]. I should note, he didn't ask me for most of this, just what bus stop to use, and I was in the mood to do the extra bits.

The rest of the trip to Mt. Auburn to get blood drawn went smoothly. Once I got there, I had very little wait, and the phlebotomist did a very good job; I made a point of telling him so. On the way back, I stopped in Harvard Square to put more money on my Charlie card; buy and eat a slice of Otto's mashed potato and bacon pizza; and then went to Lizzy's to get Adrian a pint of non-dairy chocolate ice cream.

I was going to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-11 at Comm Ave and Harvard Ave, but when I got there the screen said "windows 7. Press ctrl-alt-del to log in," which was literally impossible with the numeric keypad, so I just came home.

Turtle from the Kyzylkum desert

May. 28th, 2025 02:43 pm
pilottttt: (Default)
[personal profile] pilottttt posting in [community profile] common_nature


For more details about our trip to this desert (in Russian), see here: https://pilottttt.dreamwidth.org/445028.html

back to school, 3/?

May. 27th, 2025 05:04 pm
thistleingrey: (Default)
[personal profile] thistleingrey
(These are out of sequence because I edited the pen post earlier but wrote most of this post before it.)

6 The looseleaf-paper textbook format that I've chosen for two classes is great. One went into a three-ring binder, with bookmarks for the necessarily open-book exams; the other used two binder rings, and I turned the pages carefully (it's very cheap paper). They came hole-punched! Would use similar format again, 9/10. What even is a glued binding---the USD 300+ option of textbook format---for 700-1100 roughly A4-sized pages that'll be superseded within a year or two, anyway.

7 I was amused to find that a company that advertised a few months ago for a technical product manager is a textbook purveyor. Their web interface uses <iframe>. To dodge their printing limitation (capped at 10 pages per day for individual human users but already ingested by AI), one may right-click to open the current frame in a new browser tab, then make pretty PDF, as though it were 25 years ago.

shallowly comparative publisher stuff )

8 So far, my instructors have structured our exams to limit what AI-fueled cheating could accomplish. Good. It suggests recent pooling of resources and information amongst the teaching staff.

Wiscon report

May. 27th, 2025 07:25 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
This year's Wiscon was all-online, and billed as a "gap year," with fewer program items than I'm used to, and no dealers room.

I went to two program items--a "US immigration law and worldwide fandom roundtable" and a panel on "the wild world of modern agtech and why isn't it showing up in current SF."

The roundtable was about as cheerful as you'd expect, with a lot of discussion of both past and feared legal difficulties in traveling to cons, and alternatives like smaller gatherings and online cons. Most of us thought that online wasn't as good as in person, but that it's significantly better than nothing. (There may be some selection bias here: people who didn't think an online con was better than nothing wouldn't bother attending.) And a couple of people noted that their choice has been online or nothing at least since 2020, for reasons like disability or budge that don't have much to do with Trump.

The panel on current and future agriculture was fun. Some of the "what SF is getting wrong" was about TV and movies, showing a garden plot that's much too small for the population it's allegedly feeding, and that the fictional future is even worse/stupider about monoculture than the real world today.

Other than that, I hung out on the Discord server. Most if not all of the program items were recorded, and will be available to convention members for a week after the end of the con, but I may not get around to watching any of them, even less interactive things like readings and the guest of honor speeches.

5 Things Always Make a Post!

May. 27th, 2025 04:01 pm
oracne: turtle (Default)
[personal profile] oracne
1. I participated in Science! This involved an MRI of my right calf while at rest and before, during, and after doing a minute of movement. I got paid, and used part of it to finally buy the Shape Note song book a college friend (from choir) worked on. The next step is to try and make at least a few of the monthly sings in my neighborhood this summer, while I'm off from regular choir.

Read more... )
full_metal_ox: A National Geographic cover mock-up, with three marigolds in an analogous orange-yellow color harmony. (Nature)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] common_nature
Taken last year, this is pictorial tax for my previous post; this little guy was one of a family headquartered in a vacant lot along one of my habitual shopping routes.





Note the ropes cordoning the space off, as well as the designated perch set up for the owls. In the upper background, across the path, is another staked-off owl nesting site; unusually for birds of prey, Burrowing Owls are social animals who sometimes form communities of multiple families.

(If I’ve slipped into Earnest School Essay Mode, it’s because this is stuff I myself am very much newly learning.)

New neighbors!

May. 26th, 2025 12:54 pm
full_metal_ox: A National Geographic cover mock-up, with three marigolds in an analogous orange-yellow color harmony. (Nature)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] common_nature
Lizards have been somewhat fewer in the apartment complex than last year, and the other night I learned a possible reason: a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) couple have set up housekeeping on the back lawn next door! (No pictorial tax as yet: their nest, less than five feet from the curb, overlooks a back alley heavily travelled by garbage, service, and delivery vehicles as well as human cyclists and pedestrians—meaning that they’re probably experiencing botherance enough without amateur paparazzi. (1)

Burrowing Owls are regarded as local mascots and rigorously protected here; standard procedure upon discovering an inhabited burrow is to erect a little designated perch for the owls and cordon it off, crime-scene style, halting any human construction until the young have left the nest.

(1) Rule of thumb is that if the owls are reacting to your presence, you’re too close; the risk of attracting gawkers is one reason that doxxing Burrowing Owls nesting on private property is frowned upon around here. Schools, museums, and other such facilities, however, will encourage on-site nesting, observable by remote cam.

I’m finding varying accounts of how capable they are of digging their own burrows, but certainly the owls prefer the convenience of found housing when they can get it, not only taking over burrows constructed by other animals but occupying such human artifacts as PVC pipes; it’s quite possible to build artificial burrows to attract them.
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] metaquotes
This eternal verity from [personal profile] thanekos:

There's never yet been a definition of " ordinary people " without some kind of self-aggrandizing exclusion.

Context is a [community profile] scans_daily post on Nightwing #125 and law enforcement arms escalation.

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