vivdunstan | Network

fred_mouse

Well into 'it's not one thing after another, the damn things overlap' territory here

nominal deadline for my confirmation of candidature to have been submitted has passed without anything from my reviewers (one of three from our school has theirs)
Eldest's quilt has been somewhat abandoned, which is annoying me but I haven't had the cope
Instead I've been working on logistics of Youngest's quilt, which is very heavy in the planning stages (picture quilt, converting it from a photo)
Took a week at home on light duties last week, this week I'm back in the office. Did surprisingly well yesterday. Surgery site looks to have healed on the surface but the internals are still quite sore, so I'm still sleeping with the post-surgery bra.
Middlest and their partners have bought a house. They move in January. There was a messy blow up with the fourth housemate, who has since moved out, so they are learning how they fit together as a trio, and it sounds like things are going well. R's parents are providing lots of important support for the process.
Saw the nurse for follow up on Monday. They didn't like the wound support stuff I'd found in the pharmacy (because it is plasticky) and replaced it with a stiff fabric 'can be washed but blow dry it after' dressing that was so annoying/itchy I took it off last night (and it took off lots of ick; that area has an unsurprising build up of Stuff) and put the second piece of the wound support stuff on. That is so much better -- it is a clear plastic lattice that actually moves with the area, rather than digging in. Also, I'm not reacting to the glue.
My middle sibling and their partner are moving to Perth for two years. D has a job at UWA, K's job will allow 'remote' work from the Perth office. Amusingly, D described UWA as 'not restructuring' and Youngest laughed when reading that out. My comment was that from my perspective it has never not been restructuring, it is just the level that is changing. Plus, there was a leaked minutes from some meeting that suggested they were going to try and get a merger with Curtin, which I learned about when the Curtin Guild sent a 'not if we can help it' email out to all students. Pointed out to sibling that as they and I share a family name there is a non-zero chance they are going to get spotted as related.

apnic_blog_feed

Posted by Dan Fidler

https://blog.apnic.net/2025/12/10/your-elected-leaders-roopinder-singh-perhar-apnic-ec-secretary/

https://blog.apnic.net/?p=96576

Roopinder Singh Perhar reflects on building networks, shaping policy, and preparing the next generation of Internet professionals.

https://blog.apnic.net/2025/12/10/your-elected-leaders-roopinder-singh-perhar-apnic-ec-secretary/

https://blog.apnic.net/?p=96576

toothycat

Candle dragon ^^

A Chinese-style dragon coiling around a candle.

$radiantfracture: a gouache painting of a turkey vulture head on a blue background, painted by me (vulture)$

radiantfracture

What is best?

1. A patch with just the text "Tablet XII is Canon"
2. A patch with this text and the shape of the broken tablet above or below it
3. A patch that's in the shape of the broken tablet with the text written on the tablet?

Font would be vaguely cuneiform-y but legible.

For aesthetics, so far as I can tell with very sketchy research the best Tablet XII fragment is shaped kind of like this:

§rf§

labingi

I (finally) received the proof copy of my social sci-fi novel, A Soldier in the Borderlands, lovely cover art by Xavier Aguirre. Here's the blurb:

On a planet racked by drought, fourteen-year-old soldier Tánashen has done terrible things to serve the Citadel. Guilt is a price he’s willing to pay for the Citadel to protect his brother from the raiders who massacred their people. But when the so-called “raiders” capture Tánashen, he must face the fact that the Citadel lied; they are the true oppressor. Now, he’ll risk death to save his brother from the Citadel and liberate his homeland. There's just one complication: most lies contain some truth.

Arwen holding Borderlands

If anyone is interested in reviewing this book, I'm happy to send you a free epub or PDF. Just PM me.

astrogirl

Whoops, I got this new

genprompt_bingo bingo card a few days ago, and then neglected to post it here.

Of course, I've still only written two things for the previous bingo card, but I'll catch up eventually. Surely. I mean, I did last time, right?

Anyway, here it is:

( New card )

As usual, I'm not at all sure at first glance what to do with that, but I'm kind of eying the bottom row.

Current Mood: tired

frith

I have a hell of a lot of friction when it comes to spending money on things I might want. "Buy now pay later" has no hold on me, nor does it's friend, "pay in installments". I hate to owe money. The only BNPL situation I got myself into was for buying a house, AKA a mortgage, because, well, a house is _expensive_ and if I'm to live with a roof over my head, rent-to-own (the mortgage) beats rent-without-end, especially if it's somewhere not compatible with hand-rearing orphaned fawns. (Is it me or do I use a _lot_ of hyphenated words? Some sentences just don't make sense if certain strings aren't hyphenated.) So anyway, I go to eBay, try to find the stuff made in China or India (free shipping!), browse and browse and browse and buy nothing. I don't have the shelf space, it's too expensive, it's not quite right, do I _really_ want that? And I close all the tabs and get nothing. Then I look at my tiny Bambi saucer of sparkly artificial rocks and I think, y'know, I'd really like an opal, and then it's back to closing tabs and buying nothing.

I'm still zookeeping in my sleep, working with a colleague who retired and died a decade ago, working in a section that was demolished two decades ago, dealing with coworkers who leave doors open (animals wandering reserved spaces, leaving piles of manure, knocking stuff over), hunting for golf carts parked who knows where, dealing with moody vet interns going from stall to stall collecting data or something, sorting trash. I'm not getting paid for this.

My parents ditched their old gas powered vehicle for an electric one. It's full of settings and gadgets. One thing it does is display all the nearest charging stations (which, unlike gas stations, are hard to find). Now if I were a gigantic multinational car manufacturer and I was itching to make even more money beyond just selling an electric car, I'd do the following: make locating a recharging station a monthly subscription service, only show recharging stations that pay a fee to be included on the map in the display in the car, get the recharging station chosen by the driver to pay a cut of the revenue it gets from selling the electricity, make the ability to accept "fast charging" a subscription service paid by the driver, play adverts non-stop during the charging process, make getting a full charge a subscription service, have "dynamic pricing" for the charge service based on either who is driving the car or if that fails, who owns it, also have "dynamic pricing" based on how low your car is on battery power (ergo, how desperate you are to get recharged), and finally, tweak the selection of charging stations so that by the time you get there you _will_ be desperate to get recharged, or risk the car dying for lack of power. Yep, better mouse traps, we get new ones every day. Oh, and expose the plethora of chips controlling every aspect of the car to the elements and to power fluctuations to ensure they fail frequently and require expensive replacements that only the dealer can provide. Do I want an electric car? Hell no, not unless it runs on an electric weed-eater motor from 1980 and self-charges via super efficient solar panels.

My Windows 10 laptop (boo! Hiss! Windows 10!) has been collecting more dust than usual. Not only does it suck all my bandwidth trying to update (can't turn that off) and keeps time like a cheap 50 year-old knock-off watch (probably update dependent), it was corrupting files on and refusing to stay connected to various of my USB keys, including a Verbatim one. Not exactly a no-name brand and they work just fine on my Win 7 laptop. I am leaning toward replacing the OS with Ubuntu (I've never done that before) but that requires a USB key and I'd like to first save the screen caps from that pony game and the hundreds of ComfyUI auto-pastiche images I'd saved to disk, something that would also require a USB key. Fortunately, I bought some cheap 32 GB USB 2.0 keys last week. I tried one on the laptop-from-hell and inexplicably, it worked! I should look for a tutorial and try to learn how to switch OS's.

One positive from the mouse-munched fiber-optic phone line was that I figured out that yes, despite it using my web browser to display the control board, ComfyUI is completely local to my Win 10 machine. Ergo, I can unplug my modem and use ComfyUI to generate huge-eyed alien horse images, without getting bothered with updates and a drain on my paltry bandwidth allotment. Cooking with free-falling robots is back on the menu! The auto-pastiche cake is a lie, but sometimes it looks good.

luzula

Aaand an alibi sentence, which I wrote late at night. But the sentence did open the door to how to continue tomorrow, I think. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 8:

china_shop,

badly_knitted,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

goddess47,

cornerofmadness,

garonne,

sanguinity,

chestnut_pod

Bonus farm news: Geeked out with my tomato spreadsheet, analyzing what categories of tomato we need to complement the ones we grew this year. Such as, we need an early paste bush tomato that tolerates cold conditions, we need more types of winter tomato, etc. No need for recs, really, I have the opposite problem of being spoiled for choice...there are TONS of tomato varieties.

thisbluespirit posting in

allbingo

Finally got a bingo on this card, which I've been chipping away at for ages, but got stuck on a couple of last squares.

Fandoms: Doctor Who, Dangerous Corner, Sapphire & Steel, Original Work
Prompts; Borage - Bluntness, Lady of the Storm, Bouquet of Withered Flowers - Rejected Love, Daisy - I'll Never Tell, Any Duchess Will Do

( Links to fills under here )

( 9 stray fills in Time Master, Towers in the Mist, No Wind of Blame, Miss Scarlet, Craddock & Co, Glorious 39, Doctor Who, Pilgrim, Wish Me Luck, Discworld, Enigma )

jwz_blog_feed

Posted by jwz

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/honsky-dot-cx-adjustable-anus-clamp/

https://jwz.org/b/yk0Q

Compatible with All Anuses. For 7.9" to 12.9".

Cool!!!...cute, compact and effective!!! Thumbs-up design!!! Use it as anus clamp at home, rectum holder at the office for fashion and youth feel.
The unique and cute appearance can be used as a gift for your family and friends during the Christmas season, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, etc.
Stability. Practicality. Stretchability. Viewing Angle.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/honsky-dot-cx-adjustable-anus-clamp/

https://jwz.org/b/yk0Q

smbc_comics_feed

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/all-2

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
We just have to get locked into the Federation and then we can run back to the basement.

Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/all-2

oracne

My Xmas Playlist on YouTube.

wychwood

I made an automation flow that actually works!! I did realise afterwards that I need to add more error handling into it, but I am fully into celebrating the initial success right now.

Particularly because work is otherwise not as rich in successes as I would like. My inbox is a disaster area (everything in there requires action; I aim to keep it under 100 items and right now I'm running at 125 on a good day), the last report I actually completed in full was for July and I have a cumulative 2800 items to review in case they need moving, 900 duplicate records that need cleaning up, three test plans to write, an entire component that is supposed to go live before Christmas but which isn't with me for testing yet... and none of those things are even on the action tracker Boss Lady and I go through in my weekly 121.

But I did cross off one of my ten KANBAN items this morning and deleted two or three to-do list items. I'm hoping that tonight I will sleep instead of going for a series of one-hour naps all night, and maybe tomorrow I'll have the energy to tackle Power Automate...

conuly

You'd think we'd get snow, but no. Tomorrow's forecast thus far calls for a "wintery mix". The only wintery mix I want is cocoa and marshmallows, not whatever the hell happens to fall from the sky like soggy doom confetti.

19F, jesus. At least it'll be warmer tomorrow. Warm enough to get a fucking wintery mix instead of snow, which is what we really want.

********************

( Read more... )

azdak

Happy birthday, Nineveh-UK!

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/9/ha-ha-i-have-the-floaty-now

Photo by Helen Pinchin, via New Forest Wildlife Park

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/9/ha-ha-i-have-the-floaty-now

lokifan

I went to a bi speed-friending thing on Sunday (it was great) and one of the conversations I had there reminded me of this weird, hilarious moment of fandom-meets-normal-people I had a while ago.

So there were six of us sitting at a round table in a restaurant, having just done a fun activity for

sodsta’s birthday. Me,

sodsta,

januarium, Januarium’s husband A, and our friends L and F. Importantly, L is a uni friend of A’s, and F is her partner. We’re definitely all big nerds together but I’m not sure even L knew that Januarium, Sodsta and I all met through Harry Potter fandom.

We did, though. And we’re part of a group of 11 friends who all have a lightning bolt tattoo - mostly about two inches long, on the inside of our wrists. They were drawn for us originally by

lizardspots, because she wasn’t gonna get a tattoo herself but she was part of the group. None of us, I think - including the 4 or so of the group who are trans - regret the tattoos, because they’re a symbol of friendship rather than Potter in itself.

Sooooo like two years ago, we’re sitting around having dinner and F starts excitedly talking about how she’s reading HP for the first time, and really enjoying them. She’s very offline and you can tell from how she’s talking that she has no idea about JKR’s fall off the deep end - and her girlfriend L, who 100% knows, is trans. So she’s happily talking, and L is looking at us in desperation, clearly hoping we’re not about to burst F’s bubble with any information about JKR’s transphobic activism. And I think we all silently decide that if L doesn’t wanna have that conversation, we won’t inflict it. But we’re all kinda like ‘hmm, interesting’ lol, not really engaging about HP, more drawing the conversation towards like reading in general. You’d have no idea any of us had even read those books.

And then F goes something like ‘and the red dragon, the - I can’t remember, the - ’

Januarium: the Norwegian Ridgeback?

F: ???

Sodsta: the Chinese Fireball, wasn’t it?

Me, joining in for the fun of it: or the Welsh Green?

F: …wait…

Januarium, sodsta and I: :look at each other, then slowly slide our wrists onto the table and pull back our sleeves to reveal our tattoos as one:

So we basically did a big reveal that we’d secretly been in a cult the whole time, lmao.

leecetheartist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

conuly

So much awful stuff happens to the protagonists in the last third of the show that I often don't make it all the way through. It's worth it, though - my favorite character suddenly gets enough growth to become my favorite character, and the villain dies in a very satisfying way, allowing me to say ( Read more... )

******************************

( Read more... )

antisoppist

The pleasant custom of sending Christmas cards prevailed in Tilling, and most of the world met in the stationer's shop on Christmas Eve, selecting suitable salutations from the threepenny, the sixpenny and the shilling trays. Elizabeth came in rather early and had almost completed her purchases when some of her friends arrived, and she hung about looking at the backs of volumes in the lending-library, but keeping an eye on what they purchased. Diva, she observed, selected nothing from the shilling tray any more than she had herself; in fact, she thought that Diva's purchases this year were made entirely from the threepenny tray. Susan, on the other hand, ignored the threepenny tray and hovered between the sixpennies and the shillings and expressed an odiously opulent regret that there were not some 'choicer' cards to be obtained. The Padre and Mrs Bartlett were certainly exclusively threepenny, but that was always the case. However they, like everybody else, studied the other trays, so that when, next morning, they all received seasonable coloured greetings from their friends, a person must have a shocking memory if he did not know what had been the precise cost of all that were sent him. But Georgie and Lucia as was universally noticed, though without comment, had not been in at all, in spite of the fact that they had been seen about in the High Street together and going into other shops. Elizabeth therefore decided that they did not intend to send any Christmas cards and before paying for what she had chosen, she replaced in the threepenny tray a pretty picture of a robin sitting on a sprig of mistletoe which she had meant to send Georgie. There was no need to put back what she had chosen for Lucia, since the case did not arise.