October 26th, 2025
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 06:51pm on 26/10/2025 under ,

I thought last week's bread was holding out pretty well until it suddenly sprouted mould - however there was still some cornbread left + rolls.

Having been out for lunch on Friday I was not feeling like anything much for supper but made partner a Spanish omelette with red bell pepper and had some fruit myself.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, strong white flour, turned out v nice.

Today's lunch: Crispy Baked Sesame Tofu - not sure whether there should not have been some actual sesame seeds somewhere in the mix? also thought maybe I was a bit cautious with the amount of tamari in the sauce - and didn't think this turned out particularly crispy....; served with sticky rice with lime leaves, baked San Marzano tomatoes and mangetout peas stirfried with star anise.

chickenfeet: (spear)
posted by [personal profile] chickenfeet at 10:30am on 26/10/2025
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 11:41am on 26/10/2025
Happy birthday, [personal profile] finisterre, [personal profile] rivka and [personal profile] taelle!
October 25th, 2025
chickenfeet: (Default)
oursin: A C19th illustration of a hedgehood, with a somewhat worried expression (mopey/worried hedgehog)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 05:56pm on 25/10/2025 under , , , ,

Just one of those weeks that felt like a strain - lower back flareups and insomnia and long-scheduled commitments that could not be deferred -

Though I did get a few small bits of life admin accomplished, like finally making an appointment for the first session of dental inlay work and chasing up whether journal reviews editor actually got my review.

But at the moment having the blahs.

mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
posted by [staff profile] mark in [site community profile] dw_maintenance at 08:42am on 25/10/2025

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 12:30pm on 25/10/2025
Happy birthday, [personal profile] aurumcalendula!
October 24th, 2025
oursin: The stylised map of the London Underground, overwritten with Tired of London? Tired of Life! (Tired of London? Tired of Life!)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 07:29pm on 24/10/2025 under , , , , ,

Some while ago I was invited to A Do for the retiring secretary of An Organisation with which I had had to do for many years over their archives and in other capacities. And since it had been this longstanding relationship and relations with the person in question had always been amiable, I said yes, I would go.

It involved a smallish lunch party in a restaurant on Battersea Bridge Road, which I discovered is nowhere near Battersea Power Station Tube station, which would have made it an easy-peasy journey from my starting place, but (according to Tfl) can be reached by a journey involving at least 2 Tube lines and at least one bus journey.

Excelsior: I set out on the 2 tubes, bus from Victoria, which involved rather a lot of faffing around the vicinity of Victoria station to find the relevant stop, and it was a nice day, and the bus journey, while it does take in things like Victoria Coach Station of unblessed memory, passes by some very nice bits of Chelsea including the Embankment.

Faffed around a bit more, having got off at the designated stop, trying to find the restaurant, but arrived in fact a little early though at least one of the other guests was already there.

And it was an agreeable occasion even if these were people I have not seen for yonks and did not know all that well outside of specific context then, and some I did not know. The food was good, though perhaps not so amazing that I'm inclined to make the odyssey out to Battersea again.

And then repeated the journey in the opposite direction, in company with one of the other guests who was bound for Euston.

chickenfeet: (cute)
posted by [personal profile] chickenfeet at 11:13am on 24/10/2025
nanila: me (Default)
  1. What do you see when you are looking out of the window closest to you?
    The canal lock. No boats coming through, though, it’s quiet season now.

  2. Who was the last person coming into your room?
    Astro. He is now lounging on the day bed, as is his wont (example below).
    20250809_120552(0)

  3. What is the most predominant colour around you?
    A gentle pastel green. It is very soothing.

  4. What is right behind you?
    A box containing a bunch of stuff that I need to take to work. Thanks for the reminder, meme. :/

  5. What is on today's calendar sheet?
    More than I could possibly accomplish in one day, and several meetings of different types.
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 09:13am on 24/10/2025
Happy birthday, [personal profile] innocentsmith and [personal profile] intothespin!
October 23rd, 2025
ceb: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ceb at 06:37pm on 23/10/2025 under
Dear Yulegoat,

Thank you for writing for me! I love hand-made presents and I am easy to please. I hope you will find something you enjoy writing here. This is me at AO3.


General likes/dislikes:

I would prefer gen fic for all the fandoms I've nominated, though plot-relevant sex is fine (especially for the Saint of Steel books) if that's where your plot needs to go. I like happy endings and bittersweet endings, and noble tragedy is my catnip.

I like competence and the ability to think things through; I am annoyed by plots where a character does something out-of-character stupid just to advance the plot. I have no problem with in-character mistakes and if written well they can make the story.

I adore experimental and unusual formats (and, apparently, lists). Please, if you want to, tell me a story as a game or a series of drabbles or a shopping list or a puzzle or a 1-line fic with a very large set of intertwined footnotes or a poem or an ASCII map or half of a scribbled note exchange... if there's some crazy thing you've been wanting to try to write forever but aren't sure if it would work or if your recipient would get it, I am the right person to send it to. Take this as a 'HELL YES' opt-in for IF also. If you're not that person and just want to write a story, I will also be delighted, so please play to your strengths and don't feel you need to reach for a weird format if you don't want to.

DNW: No 2025 real-world politics please (e.g., no fascism, no real wars, no TERFery, no disintegrating climate doom).

All my specific suggestions are intended as idea sparks, I don't have my heart set on any of them and I will not be even slightly disappointed if you have a different idea you'd like to pursue. Run with them, or not, as suits your story.

AO3 Name: molybdomantic


Fandom: Glamourist Histories Series - Mary Robinette Kowal
Characters: Worldbuilding

I am completely fascinated by the artistic and technological potential of glamour. We see it change during the series from merely a polite pastime for genteel women to a thing with uses beyond parlour tricks. What might it be used for later in the history of this world? Photography? Does glamour show up on film? Theatre? What might glamour music hall acts look like? Did the Victorians use glamour for educating the masses, like they did with plaster cast galleries and magic lanterns? Movies? Seances? Fashion? Modern art? I would be delighted to be given a guided tour of a glamour art installation from basically any point in time.


Fandom: Powerpuff Girls
Characters: Space Towtruck

I really enjoyed the return of the Powerpuffs after such a long hiatus (in the real world and also in Yuletide :-).I find I desperately need to know more about the girls' new favourite TV show, Space Towtruck. What is Space Towtruck's greatest secret? What other adventures has Space Towtruck encountered? Don't worry too much about canon; I get the feeling this is the kind of show that has multiple reboots, comic versions, etc. Feel free to include the girls if you would like to (maybe they get sucked into a Space Towtruck story via the magic of plot, or have an argument about which is the best Space Towtruck reboot). I like Mojo Jojo too, especially in his wordier incarnation of the earlier series, but find many of the other villains a little irritating.

I can't find full episodes online anywhere but 90% of the existing Space Towtruck canon is in the first half _The Big Sleep_ and the theme song is in _Tiara Trouble_.


Fandom: LEGO Natural History Museum
Characters: Worldbuilding
Fandom: LEGO Botanical Garden
Characters: Worldbuilding

I would love some worldbuilding set in either or both of these lovely sets. Both are packed with details. The botanical garden has lego versions of many real plants (see the build instructions linked below) and the natural history museum's collections include dinosaur skeletons, minerals, historical lego sets, and spaceships. What's it like to curate one of these museums? What do their accession records look like? Who smashed the pot? What do the exhibit labels / interpretational texts say? If you're feeling festive, I'm extremely fond of my local botanic garden's cheery winter light art display, what would that look like in lego?

Natural History Museum (10326)
https://www.newelementary.com/2023/11/lego-icons-set-review-10326-natural.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1Uf37xCXE
https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/building-instructions/10326

Botanical garden (21353)
https://brickarchitect.com/2024/review-21353-the-botanical-garden-lego-ideas/
https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-ideas-21353-the-botanical-garden-review/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSDN-w7mJic
https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/building-instructions/21353
oursin: Illustration from medieval manuscript of the female physician Trotula of Salerno holding up a urine flask (trotula)

(Yogi Tea Bag tags, bringing the woowoo by random bollox generation long before AI started getting in on the act.)

Anyway, are we at all surprised by Millions exploited by ‘menopause gold rush’ amid lack of reliable information.

(Query: how far is lack of reliable information due to its being overwhelmed by menopause quackery, murmurs historian of medicine.)

Millions of women are being exploited by a “menopause gold rush” as companies, celebrities and influencers take advantage of a “dearth” of reliable information on the issue, experts have said. Healthcare companies and content creators saw menopause as a “lucrative market” and were trying to profit from gaps in public knowledge, women’s health academics at University College London (UCL) said. Researchers called for the rollout of a national education programme after finding a significant number of women do not feel well-informed about menopause.

You know what? I think part of this can be put on to the decline in the good old trad women's magazines, which had a) health columns written by pseudonymised health professionals b) agony aunts prepared to Do The Research and having a stack of helpful leaflets written in conjunction with qualified experts.

Brought to you by someone who was devouring her mother's magazines pretty much from the time she became literate and therefore encountered the concept of menopause decades before it became of personal relevance.

And what still gets very little play is what Stella Duffy points out in this piece:

while everyone in my research talked about physiological and emotional difficulties in the transition, once they were out the other side – even while dealing with workplace discrimination and the caring demands of their loved ones – all of them also described postmenopause as time of thriving and growing. We’re not done yet.

Margaret Mead mentioned this, but I'm not sure the 70s feminist discourse around 'croning' did a lot of favours to the idea of what happened after the pause.

chickenfeet: (resistance)
paulkincaid: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] paulkincaid at 02:16pm on 23/10/2025
How could I not fall in love with the work of novelist Edward Carey when he produces such gorgeously unclassifiable novels as this? https://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2025/10/23/they-do-it-with-mirrors/
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oursin at 09:42am on 23/10/2025
Happy birthday, [personal profile] chalcedony_cat, [personal profile] diony and [personal profile] em_h!
pauamma: Cartooney crab wearing hot pink and acid green facemask holding drink with straw (Default)
posted by [personal profile] pauamma in [site community profile] dw_dev at 12:36am on 23/10/2025 under
It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.
October 22nd, 2025
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)

What I read

I managed to plough through The Wheel of Fortune and do not think I will be plunging into a major Susan Howatch re-read binge. O all those angsty men. As for man handing on misery to man, Larkinesque-like, it deepens like the Mariana trench. Plus, the Katherine Swynford-analogue character gets no interiority, and besides being pretty much normal and sensible (unlike pretty much everybody else, no, Anna seems fairly stable) is full of deep mystical working-class Welsh wisdom. Good for her levanting to Canada (can one levant in that direction?). The last section in particular had me muttering about codfish.

O what a thoroughly delightful change to move on to Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. (1977) - you do not need heaving melodrama or even actual plot to be compellingly readable, just saying.

On to Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room (A Dance to the Music of Time, #10) (1971) in anticipation of group discussion at beginning of November. Getting faint frissons of that narrative pattern of that period which was eschewing ominiscient voice but having a first-person narrator who just happens to be in a position to see or hear Events and can reflect upon them.

Latest Literary Review.

Also finished the book for review but have not yet got round to getting any thoughts on it written, this week having been a bit of a week, so far.

On the go

Maggie Helwig, Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community (2025).

Also happened to notice Jonathan Rose, Readers' Liberation: The Literary Agenda (2018) when I was looking for something else - I think this must have been something in return for reading something for a publisher? - I don't think I actually bought it - but looked interesting in the light of recent musings about reading.

Up next

Having discovered that I do, in fact, have a copy of The Making of a Muckraker, maybe a spot of dipping into that?

***

*Wombat Awareness Organisation: World Wombat Day!

rmc28: (cuihc)
posted by [personal profile] rmc28 at 05:40pm on 22/10/2025 under

I am very happy to say that I'll be playing for the Cambridge University Huskies this season.

Fixture list (clashes with Kodiaks 2 games in italics)

  • 1 Nov 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Oxford Women's Blues
  • 15 Nov 2025 23:15, Oxford Ice Rink, Oxford Vikings B
  • 22 Nov 2025 20:30, Planet Ice Gosport, Southampton Spitfires B
  • 29 Nov 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Birmingham Lions B
  • 6 Dec 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Kent Knights
  • 24 Jan 2026 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Oxford Vikings B
  • 7 Feb 2026 21:15, Planet Ice Solihull, Birmingham Lions B
  • 14 Feb 2026 21:15, Oxford Ice Rink, Oxford Womens Blues
  • 21 Feb 2026 20:15, Streatham Ice and Leisure, Kent Knights
  • 28 Feb 2026 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Southampton Spitfires B
  • TBD: Varsity game against Oxford Vikings B

No guarantee I'll be on the squad for any particular game, and Kodiaks 2 will have my priority when there's a clash. But yay, getting to represent my university again.

chickenfeet: (death)
posted by [personal profile] chickenfeet at 10:26am on 22/10/2025

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