marvelouscity

Previous poll reviews
In the Space poll, 44.7% went with Douglas Adams ("that's just peanuts to space"), and the other options were pretty evenly split. Books came second to hugs, 57.4% to 70.2%.

In the Legacy media poll, 82.8% of respondents have a lot of DVDs and access to a DVD or Blu-ray player. Far fewer have cassetts or VHS tapes, and there's only one other person who has Super8/MiniDVD/etc tapes. *high fives* "At this point, it's just a lot of old stuff, help!" garnered 31%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
A little more Cetaganda (Bujold, narrated by Grover Gardner), and that's all. I haven't even started the little Chinese grammar book I bought for 99 cents. *hides* (It's not that I don't want to; my attention span is currently not conducive to sitting down and doing one thing.)

Kdramas/Cdramas
I finished To My Beloved Thief, which had a slightly draggy ending, but was otherwise a delight. Historical magic realism ftw! It made me want to rewatch the old Hong sisters' version of the Hong Gil-dong story, too (unfortunately, not available in streaming).

Also finished Absolute Value of Romance, which

spoiler

navigated between the ending I didn't want (teacher/student romance), and the ending I craved (teacher is gay) to find a slightly unsatisfying middle ground. I don't know if Ga Woo-Su was actually oblivious to Ui-Ju's love confession or just ignoring it to avoid the awkwardness of rejecting her outright, but an unnecessary childhood connection and significant "first snow" moment kind of point to them getting together in the future, when a) that would still be completely inappropriate and jeopardise his teaching career, AND b) Ga Woo-Su has previously shown no sign of interest in her at all (imo). He and Yoon Dong-Ju are obviously boyfriends or pining for each other! Why on earth else would he have reacted so weirdly to being the second lead in Ui-Ju's webnovel? (Which, btw, was wildly inappropriate.) Someone please write me slash for this!! (Note to self: tag this post for Yuletide.)

So now, in solo-watching, I've started episode 1 of Hong Gil Dong on my phone (ie, on my exercise machine), and gone back to The Spirealm (fantasy horror Cdrama) when I'm in front of the TV.

We're still watching Miraculous Brothers (contemporary thriller, time travel) with a friend at a rate of two episodes per week. The central character is a hot mess with no moral compass but somehow likeable enough that I'm engaged, and the mystery built around a cold case is pretty cool. I'd put it in the same category as Glitch and Sisyphus. Hopefully it will delve into the scifi/supernatural aspects more at some point.

Pru came over for some Love Scout, and even with our erratic viewing schedule, it's completely swoony and great. I think once we're done I'm going to zoom through it again by myself.

Andrew and I watched two episodes of The Story of Pearl Girl (Netflix Cdrama), but the acting is too melodramatic for him, and I want some humour in my shows, so I think we're calling it.

Other TV
We're halfway through the first season of Italian drama Blocco 181, which I heard about on

polyamships. It contains a trope I find super stressful

to wit:

leading characters steal drugs from drug dealers, argh,

but the three leads are all really charming. Warning for violence and a ton of drug use.

Finished season 1 of Scottish sitcom Dinosaur, about an autistic woman and her newly engaged sister. It's not laugh-out-loud, but I really like it and am looking forward to season 2.

A bit more Night Train with Wyatt Cenac on Youtube. Vaguely looking around for a new show, preferably English-language.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, and approximately a billion newbie lessons of ChinesePod. (I feel like I'm fiddling while Rome burns, but oh well.)

Writing/making things
This fic is never going to end. I don't even know why I'm writing it anymore. Maybe when we get to

fan_flashworks' amnesty round I'll get some momentum back? /o\

Life/health/mental state things
Messing around with storage and sorting out stuff. Biking a lot. Battling brain weasels at night. I'm in my mid-fifties, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. My arms are hanging in there, just.

Language Learning
I've been posting Chinese practice sentences, vocab, and occasional observations to

china_shops_kjnl; feel free to follow. * The fact that I can parrot phrases from the podcast into Google Translate and it mostly comes out with the right characters/meaning still feels like magic. * I'm not learning enough characters. (I don't really know how to learn them except through Duolingo? Possibly ChinesePod's character course?) * I have little previous exposure to gamificiation, ergo no immunity, so Duolingo had eaten a big chunk of my life -- and would be gobbling more if my arms were up for it. (Stylus has arrived; shorter than I expected, but a vast improvement over fingers. I might get another, full-size one.) But I think the podcasts are better for listening and pronunciation anyway.

Goals
1. Sort out my stuff. Throw some of it away. (Do I want to start in on my books/DVDs? /o\)
2. Learn enough Chinese characters that I can read a graded reader.
3. Get started on the project of replacing my ancient gas oven with an induction hob/electric one.

Good things
Making sentences in a new language is really satisfying, and I love noticing grammar patterns and looking them up to see how they work. Podcasts generally. TV-watching-with friends. Walk in the bird sanctuary in the not-quite-rain. Good biking weather forecast for this week. Guardian and the Dreamwidth corner of Guardian fandom. *loves*

Poll #34692 Reading speed

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52

View Respondents

I estimate my fiction reading speed as

View Answers

faster than average
29 (55.8%)

average
11 (21.2%)

slower than average
3 (5.8%)

it would be faster if my so-called attention span didn't keep dropping out
12 (23.1%)

depends on the language (I read fluently in more than one language)
7 (13.5%)

other
1 (1.9%)

ticky-box of 我喜欢在家里休息 (I like to rest at home)
18 (34.6%)

ticky-box full of ever more elaborate breakfasts
15 (28.8%)

ticky-box of a raindrop sliding down a glossy green leaf
25 (48.1%)

ticky-box full of stripes waiting for a cat
23 (44.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
34 (65.4%)

china_shop

Poll #34680 Legacy media

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

I have

View Answers

a pile/jumble or one or more boxes of audio cassettes
17 (27.9%)

a carefully curated selection of audio cassettes I don't want to part with yet (even if some of them have stretched)
17 (27.9%)

access to a tape deck
22 (36.1%)

a pile/jumble or one or more boxes of VHS tapes
13 (21.3%)

a carefully curated selection of VHS tapes I don't want to part with yet
24 (39.3%)

access to a VCR
26 (42.6%)

a lot of DVDs
51 (83.6%)

access to a DVD or Blu-ray player
51 (83.6%)

Super8, MiniDV, etc. tapes
2 (3.3%)

access to a camera or other way of playing them
0 (0.0%)

vinyl
22 (36.1%)

access to a record player
16 (26.2%)

a ridiculous number of CD-ROMs
35 (57.4%)

other
7 (11.5%)

a storage system I'm satisfied with
11 (18.0%)

at this point, it's just a lot of old stuff, help!
18 (29.5%)

ticky-box
33 (54.1%)

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Quick note that post-by-email and comment-by-email is (sometimes?) failing silently without actually posting right now! I'm pretty sure this is related to last night's shenanigans and will be fixed once Mark can finish the full fix for it, which he's working on, but if you've posted or replied by email in the last 24 hours, fish it out of your sent folder to check if it posted!

EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.

china_shop

Haaaai! I am just kind of floating through my day doing random stuff. To-do list? What's that? La la la.

I just spent an hour or more on Duolingo, which was a wrist-centric mistake after two hours' biking yesterday, so I've ordered a stylus in the hopes that'll make all the character-tracing easier. (Also, maybe faster for the timed sprint challenges?)

On Saturday we went to the NZ Art Show, which was uh, mostly crowded. It's hard to appreciate individual pieces in a very busy environment, with everything all crammed in together. The bright/garish pieces stand out, but anything quieter disappears. As always, my favourites were very children's-book-illustration-esque. We went round the whole place at a fair clip and were out in an hour.

And yesterday (Sunday), we biked Te Ara Tupua, the new separated cycleway/pedestrian-way to Pito-one (formerly, there was just the shoulder of the motorway). We continued along the foreshore and up the side of the river into Lower Hutt, had lunch at the Dowse Art Museum and a look around there, and came home again. The whole ride was about 43km. I bought some storage cubes (flat packed) which fit fine in our panniers and some cube packs. Still not really sure how to organise my stuff, but I have options.

Te Ara Tupua, which only opened a couple of weeks ago, was teeming with pedestrians and cyclists -- adults, kids, groups, etc. It felt like the city had been set free. I don't think I've seen so many smiles in my ten years of biking as an adult! It felt like a mix of seasoned cyclists, families with kids, and people who'd decided to take their bikes out of the garage, dust them off and give it a go. Really great. It took half an hour from Wellington railway station to Pito-one, and slightly longer back just because of the busyness of the path. :-)

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Robby has managed to put in a temporary fix for the site errors and things failing to refresh or not showing up where they should! The permanent fix is going to need Mark's experience, and unfortunately -- seriously, this literally never fails -- Mark has been on an international flight all day, because of course he has. (Never. Fails. He and I are not allowed to both take vacation at once.)

The site will work just fine with the temporary fix in place, things just might be a little slow here and there. We'll keep you updated.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

We're aware of site traffic issues and are working to fix them for the people who are having problems! (The tactics the damn bot traffic uses are endlessly shifting, and they're really good at looking like real traffic, sigh.)

china_shop

( Read more... )

china_shop

Pandemic life
Following the closure of our favourite and the temporary closure of another, our replacement "outdoor" cafe seems to be the one at the garden centre, which is great in terms of menu, but only outdoors on a technicality. There is courtyard seating, but the garden centre is covered with a high hangar-like ceiling that's open at the sides. We're heading into winter; it'll have to do for now.

Previous poll review
In the Siblings poll, 41.2% of respondents are the oldest among their siblings, 23.5% are the youngest, and 13.7% are in the middle (including me: 我有一个妹妹和两个哥哥). Only children make up 21.6% of respondents, and 5.9% said it's complicated. In ticky-boxes, giant pandas on penny-farthings and electric eel electricians tied for second place (37.3%), and hugs won with 76.5%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I've fallen shamefully out of the reading habit, so just an hour or two of Cetaganda (Bujold, narrated by Grover Gardner). I remember staying up all night reading in my twenties. What has happened to me? Clearly I need to get my Chinese to the point where I can read beginner-level graded readers, and then two birds, one stone.

Kdramas
I have two episodes to go in To My Beloved Thief, and I'm super enjoying it. More Miraculous Brothers tonight. I need to excavate my exercise machine so I can watch ep 14 of Absolute Value of Romance.

Other TV
Finished The Burroughs, which was fine. If anyone has thoughts about the ending, I'd be interested.

Watched some Night Train with Wyatt Cenac episodes on Youtube (Brooklyn-based standup sets, very chill). (I believe this was made for a network but not picked up, so they just uploaded it all to YT.)

An episode of White Collar with my sister; some

HowTown videos.

Conclave, a pope-election movie with Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, et al. I was lukewarm about watching this but very glad I did. Tense complicated politics, and a satisfying outcome. Would rec.

Audio entertainment
You Can Learn Chinese (1 or 2 eps), a couple dozen Chinese Pod newbie lessons (most multiple times), and a little bit of Sinica Podcast. Also, Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, and Dreaming Against the Machine.

Writing/making things
Still plugging away at my flashfic. I have three days to finish it if I want to post it in the current "Late" round at

fan_flashworks. Zero confidence I can knuckle down to make that happen, but never mind, there's always amnesty.

Life/health/mental state things
We borrowed a friend's EV and drove up the coast to see my parents last weekend. Lovely weather, guilt-free driving, pleasant lunch. I had been nervous about my parents moving closer, but it's turning out fine so far.

I bought a new pillow, and it's only been three nights, but my neck is so much better. No more middle-of-the-night owwwws. Such a relief! And that's meant I've been able to take some longish bike rides.

A new bike path, Te Ara Tupua, opened north of the city, and it's lovely. I rode halfway along it and back (didn't allow enough time), and it was teeming with pedestrians and cyclists, with the sea right there, all blue and sparkling. It'll be interesting to see what it's like in bad weather, but in the meantime, magic.

House
My Ikea shelves arrived, my sister helped me construct and install them, and now I feel like maybe I have too much storage? Ha. This is because I'm looking at a lot of my things, going, I could just toss that. Anyway, the stuff that was in my wardrobe where the shelves now are is currently exploded all over the room, so I have to sort it out quickly. I bought some S-hooks for my panniers (I now have one blue pannier and one orange: Bluey and Bingo!! Andrew has their counterparts and said they must be Chilli and Bandit. /in-joke for aficionados of children's TV). I just need more boxes/cubes/whatever to sort things into, and to turn some of the built-in bookcases in my living-room into pseudo-drawers. I may have spent rather too much time this week browsing Ikea and hardware store websites.

Language Learning
( Cut to spare your reading page. )

Link dump
What do other animals think of human music? by

Howtown (Youtube, 32:09).

Good things
我的猫很好。Autumn/winter sunshine. Biking. EVs. New pillow, new shelves. 520 Day (omg, I really need to make time to revel in the collection!). Guardian and the rewatch, and getting distracted by familiar characters like "this" and "not", lol. Dreamwidth. Going to an art show in a sec. Hi!! *waves*

Poll #34665 Space

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 49

View Respondents

What is your space vibe?

View Answers

you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space
22 (44.9%)

the final frontier
18 (36.7%)

no one can hear you scream
20 (40.8%)

an infinite storm of beauty
22 (44.9%)

other
2 (4.1%)

ticky-box full of marmosets making miniature mandolins
19 (38.8%)

ticky-box full of throwing things away
20 (40.8%)

ticky-box of swimming with elephants and picnicking with gazelles
14 (28.6%)

ticky-box of books that weave ephemeral worlds
29 (59.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
34 (69.4%)

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

It's been a while since we've done a full code push rather than just hotfixes for bugs, so we are well overdue! Depending on availability, we're aiming to do one sometime soon; we'll let you know specifics once we've worked out good timing for everyone who needs to be available.

However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!

So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.

Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.

I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.

For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)

Reading

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Me-and-media update

Legacy media

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I have zero focus (biking and looking at art)

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Resources I'm using (for future reference)

Me-and-media update

Testing needed in advance of code push!

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May 2021

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