silver

silverflight8 @ 2012-04-23T23:27:00

2012-04-24T04:31:47Z

dear flist, I would like your opinion on this book.

I started reading and then about forty pages I finally reached my limit of LOLNO and put it down. And now I wonder if maybe this is overreaction - maybe this is just fantasy convention I have missed? (I have read tons of children's and young adult fantasy but very little adult fantasy).

From Ian Irvine's A Shadow on the Glass. With the most relevant examples.

( Prepare for book. )

What do you think? I am really not inclined to read more...it sounds like it will be a lot more of this. Some parts are good, and then there are patches of oddly modern speech ("he felt let down" in one memorable bit) and - well!

Is this just convention? Am I missing something?

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Picture from the A--- Gardens

2012-04-21T04:55:53Z

( Boring text bit )

RAMBLING ASIDE - I have pictures. It is 1 am and I have been working with this set, editing and trying to figure out how to publish - since four, so none of these have commentary. Well, except that the light was very good so most are just a crop and a bit of contrast adjustment, and oh right there's one with desaturated green (you'll see it easily - the flower really looks bright).

( Pictures as promised. Two dozen culled from two hundred. )

*This explains why the temperature adjustments seemed necessary! *facepalm*

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Jacqueline Carey: Naamah's Trilogy

2012-04-17T05:04:19Z

My brain is frazzled by economics. I have spent seven or so hours today studying, plus some five hours yesterday, and more in the last preceding weeks. INSTEAD LET'S TALK ABOUT BOOKS.

I am experiencing intense withdrawal from the Naamah trilogy.

Finished reading the Naamah Trilogy (Naamah's Kiss, Naamah's Curse, Naamah's Blessing: Jacqueline Carey) a few days ago and in the grips of fevered want for more. That is, I don't want a sequel, per se, or a prequel (though how she should be able to put Moirin, the protagonist, into a prequel, would be a definite problem: Kiss begins in Moirin's childhood; the Kushiel series, as I understand, take place about a century prior anyway). I don't actually want fic either, because I don't really want to explore anything else in the universe. I suppose what I'm after is instead a fresh re-reading of the entire series, like it were new - to be able to wallow in the story again. I've already re-read them all an embarrassing number of times.

( thoughts on the whole thing. This is spoilery for all three books. )

If you like alternate history/alternate universe historical-fantasy, this is your book! Though if you're a prude I would recommend the skill of flipping pages quickly. There's lots of travelling and plenty of adventure and fighting, and some politicking on the side. AHHHH who am I kidding? I'd love it if everyone could read it and we could all talk and make meta and discuss and even make fic and have art. Go on, read it!

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silverflight8 @ 2012-04-01T01:05:00

2012-04-01T05:23:55Z

*Budgeting for federal government is announced. $5.2 billion slash, everyone runs around yelling. (Age of retirement has been raised, which is a big one, I think). http://www.canada.com/news/2012-budget/index.html I cannot vouch for its objectivity without having actually seen the budget in question, but it seems levelheaded enough.

*Mr Flaherty, finance minister, decides to get rid of the penny. Cue articles and editorial swimming in penny jokes. ("Well, Flaherty has done what no other finance minister has done - he has left Canada penniless" [groan] and more in that vein. Most of them make little cents).

*I found this. Worksafe, but you may want to read...gingerly...if you ignore the digs at swimming and run with him, it makes sense. A little.

*I feel rather dreadful about keeping up. Studying for final exams has ramped up (I feel like a hound that is indolent for approximately 8 months and then transforms at the smell of blood) and I'm applying for jobs and positions left and right. (APPLICATIONS). And I am forgetting things or putting them off and then forgetting them. Mostly just forgetting. If I owed you something, I'm sorry! :(

*I was careless while trying to do a choctaw (2 foot steps to change forward/backwards on ice) and fell. I ended up half-sitting and thumped onto my back, which makes me wonder where I acquired the bruises on my knees. ??

*Now that the unseasonal weather is gone, I miss it. I hope the flowers don't freeze.

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10 names, as promised: ALL THIS MEAN HOMEWORK

2012-03-15T04:52:26Z

HOMEWORK FOR ~~ZOI~~ ΖΩΗ!
(she has tasked me homework!)
( Names in English, transliterated badly into Greek and IPA (I am no linguist) )

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silverflight8 @ 2012-02-28T23:32:00

2012-02-29T04:54:48Z

I was browsing through The Modern Vocalist forum; this part is basically where people post clips of their singing and ask for critique. Most of them are okay, and some of them are good, but this one blew my socks off. It's a cover of I will always love you:

http://soundcloud.com/jillhuber2012/01-i-will-always-love-you#play

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A. M. Dellamonica: Indigo Springs

2012-02-21T07:05:18Z

I did promise something on Indigo Springs.

Book cover is generic fantasy, by which I mean it's a dun-coloured construction, with a woman (half her face showing) cupping a dish of something.
( Here's the cover )
Here's the blurb:

When small-time criminal Albert Lethewood is murdered, he leaves his daughter Astrid a house in the town of Indigo Springs. Suspecting a scam, she nevertheless moves into the house with two friends. There they discover several mystical objects, including a penknife capable of terrible–perhaps limitless–destruction.

Soon it is obvious the old house is a cover for a wellspring of magical energy, and that Albert Lethewood had a secret life as the wellspring’s keeper. It falls to Astrid and her friends: dependable, heroic Jacks Glade and volatile Sahara Knax, to puzzle out the nature and purpose of the magical well.

But Albert’s killer is still out there. Worse, the mystical power is deeply seductive. . . and Sahara might be willing to risk everything, even Astrid herself, for control of the well.

Astrid inherit her deadbeat father's house when he dies. She discovers, however, that he's left behind a sac of belongings, ragtag and old, but seem to be magical. The kalediscope can see through walls. A pencil sharpener makes gold flakes. A rough penknife crumbles anything into dust.

It's all tangled up in the past and present; in the present, the thread follows a man named Will, living in a post-apocalyptic world, trying to reason with Astrid. The world is seized up with the overflow of magic: the U.S. is frantically trying to control contamination of it. Astrid's former best friend, Sahara, is leading a cult called the Alchemists, who are apparently controlling the supernatural acts - huge forests sprouting out of control, people turning into half-human, half-animals. Sahara herself seems to be able to do miraculous things like curing the sick.

Back to the past, Astrid is discovering that her father, whom the entire town had thought a wastrel, was actually creating magical artifacts - called chantments - and sending them away. Astrid discovers this knowledge in fits and starts. When they pull up the fireplace to find a dripping leak, they're hit by a blast of blue fluid - vitagua, from which magic issues. Slowly, she's discovering memories of her and her father: that he's a guardian of the blue spring. The book flips between past and present - Astrid herself is often confused about what time it is and what's happened (she refers to the day Will arrives as "Will day"; the significance of this isn't revealed til the end) - and also between the world of the ordinary, and the unreal which contains magic.

( the informal babbling )

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EUPHORIA

2012-02-18T06:29:16Z

Current definition of euphoria: After an 8-day struggle with Overdrive and Adobe Digital Editions' "Error getting license Server communication problem: E_ADEPT_IO" and the library site (you lie, command prompt, there is no way the ping is 14ms it takes a whole minute to load a stupid page) seeing the words "Downloading document" AND THE STORIES OPEN!

I am starving for books, and I just finished one the day before. I NEED BOOKS. I am going to go devour the three I checked out. o/

(On a side note, the book lately finished is Indigo Springs and is, surprisingly, fantastic! Will get round to a post of capslock tomorrow.)

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News from the writing-innovations front

2012-02-05T07:07:08Z

Having heard the excellent advice about overcoming writer's block, paraphrased:

Write your words in a different, unreadable font like Webdings, so you can't see what you've written. Then go back the next day and untranslate it to see where to start for the next day, and continue writing in the unreadable font to prevent your internal editor from critiquing.

...I decided to follow it.

The writing went well enough as I dashed off the next piece of my GLORIOUS TALE (subtitled: Pixie Lights). And then I, being your usual impatient fellow, decided to untranslate it without waiting the aforementioned night.

When I switched the font to Times New Roman, though, I ran into a small problem.

( Namely, this one. (Illustration, in technicolor). )

Word's inability to translate certain words seems to be random. There are parts of one word translated properly, and parts that aren't. Typoed words are translated properly in some cases and in other cases. So I switched the boxes (which is Word's way of freaking out and saying it can't render the text) back into Webdings and translated them manually.

I am getting good at reading Webdings, but next time, I think I'll just turn the colour of the font white.

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not to be mistaken as actual content

2012-02-01T06:00:04Z

It's odd how I don't have a book-reading icon. :( THESE MATTERS MUST BE RECTIFIED, and SOON.

( Every once in awhile I see how many I've got of these books...bold for read-through, italics for started )

It snowed approximately five centimeters on the evening of the 30th, I arrived home looking like the abominable snowman and cursing people for salting their sidewalks (instead of shovelling, since then it just freezes), and woke up today to find it was GONE. This is such a weird winter.

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newly found good book general excitement (!!!!!)

2012-01-26T08:02:17Z

It is an awful godforsaken time of the night, but I finished Pride and Prejudice last night and just asdjfkl;jkl;

I will actually review the book at some point, but for now [really really spoilery!] [the book is, however, 200+ years old...] ( my thoughts )

tl;dr *Pride and Prejudice flail*, and why didn't I read this earlier

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all that wonderful stuff: 新年快乐！

2012-01-22T18:50:33Z

Happy, happy New Year! May this year be better than the last.

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There might be a lot of colons in this thing. The punctuation, I mean.

2012-01-19T01:56:11Z

Advice: never wire money unless you have to. ¹

Interesting detail: gummy bear torture occurred in the hallway outside my room (!!!). Someone brutally tacked an orange gummy to the wall, and idk how it even stays (the pin shouldn't be long enough).

Other interesting detail: while I was in the bank, it was really foggy. The bank has enormous west-facing windows, so you could see one building on the next street which appeared to be slowly disintegrating into the sky. It's a standard high-rise, but the white exterior alternates with black windows, so it looked like a zebra-striped thing vanishing into air....it was incredibly bizarre. I thought at first that dark smoke was flagrantly disobeying physics and rising to the heavens in a zig-zag path. I wish I had a picture.

Being a student: is boring. Thought process during class: hm, okay, that makes sense, wait, what? no, what are doing? what? oh. ohhhh. I see. ok. hm. And so it goes. This is why I don't update much. ~~Plus, I'm playing Runescape.~~

( Dear Liberal government: )

Today while in the drugstore I complimented a lady on her hat. She smiled and said: "Yes! It keeps me warm." The hat in question was the size of a car-tire and extremely white and furry. It was a bold fashion statement, to say the least. (She did look warm. Maybe I should invest in one too.)

Last thing: LiveJournal, too, has an announcement regarding SOPA and PIPA, although less in-your-face than Dreamwidth. I'm glad that both LJ and DW decided not to shut down as Wikipedia did; for a protest that specifically targets censorship, I think louder voices - especially on sites specifically designed for sharing one's life - is better. Wikiepdia's shut down is ramatic - yes. But I prefer having my voice.

¹ So due to an unfortunate confluence of moving and credit ratings, I, the sole member of family in Canada, was tasked with wiring money. This was a three-trip affair, and the last trip took over an hour. (Admittedly, mostly it was because I kept getting wrong info, but I digress). In doing the wiring, I talked to all of the tellers of my neighbourhood branch, had the manager called over multiple times (?), and listened to a lot of pop music. On the upside, I now know this branch really well! Good Lord.

² http://cfsontario.ca/downloads/CFS-Tuition%20Grant%20Briefing%20Note.pdf Retrieved January 18, 2012

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I will post happy things. I will think happy things.

2011-12-29T02:39:32Z

Messiah!

I went to ~~see~~ hear the Messiah ~~yesterday~~ a few weeks ago!
( complaints about own sillypantsness )

I am still in love with the choir, because it was fantastic. It is the choir that makes my heart leap - like a sudden rush of sound, all together. They had fantastic control over volume, so it could sink low and - this being in a concert hall - in dead silence, then boom out. And of course Handel gives them the opportunity: Messiah is chock full of glorious outpourings of happiness and - grandeur. (All we like sheep unexpectedly joyous, and he shall purify resonant, and of course Hallelujah magnificent. "Wonderful counsellor" stuck through my head on the half-hour of wet evening, walking home). I liked the bass and the soprano - the tenor was okay - but I am a firm believer that Handel, though he was also awesome, should never burden anyone (virtuoso or no) with passages that Messiah contains. As in fifty-note strings of trills, basically - in the bass (pardon me, baritone), they sounded like nothing more than rocks being shaken about. (This might have been "For behold darkness" or "The people that walked" but I don't quite remember.) Having analyzed the bit in the second part for music history, beginning with "There were shepherds", it was fantastic to hear another rendition - and the soprano didn't overload too much; her voice simply rang.

All in all, amazing. But I'd still rather have gone to the sing-along - alas!

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omg

2011-12-26T00:52:37Z

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS

I HAVE A FANTASTIC YULETIDE STORY

I am so happy. OH MY GOD I WANT FIC FOR THIS FANDOM and there was none and NOW THERE IS

EEEEEE

A Liar's Honor (1028 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Novels of the Collegia Magica - Carol Berg
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ilario de Sylvae, Portier de Savin-Duplais, King Philippe de Savin-Journia
Summary:

On why Philippe de Savin-Journia, King of Sabria, was so ready to trust his never-before-seen cousin Portier with such delicate matters.

MY SHIPPER HEART
IT IS IN LOVE

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silverflight8 @ 2011-12-10T00:32:00

2011-12-10T05:36:15Z

this is another test entry in public form lalallala

( here have a video )

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cards!

2011-12-06T02:55:30Z

If you would like me to send you a card for December holidays, please leave a comment or PM me with your address. I alas cannot make cards this year (my supplies are a few thousand kilometers away atm) but I will write notes in Hallmark cards and try my italics pen. Again. (You don't wanna see the copperplate :p) Let me know if you celebrate Christmas/New Year and such!

Comments are screened.

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5000 words to go in nano wheeze

2011-11-30T06:40:31Z

( brief writer agony: augh, historical fiction! )

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silverflight8 @ 2011-11-23T00:25:00

2011-11-23T05:25:32Z

Essay-related (it's in, thank goodness), now I want to read the books I was writing about. What should I read first, flist/circle? Thoughts on any of them?

(alas no paid account here so no poll. POLL IN THE COMMENTS!)

*Tristram Shandy
*Pamela/Clarissa
*Northanger Abbey
*Robinson Crusoe (oh god I think I typoed that on my essay)
*Sense and Sensibility/Pride and Prejudice
*Great Expectations/Oliver Twist

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silverflight8 @ 2011-11-22T00:12:00

2011-11-22T05:19:39Z

Surprisingly I'm enjoying writing this essay. Even if I'm still about 700 words behind (oh, the historiography'll have lots of words and I still haven't got an intro/conclusion and I'll manage fine, wordcount is usually not a problem.) For once I understand why the essay as a form is used. It is like waging a war: not guerrilla war of now, but the two lines of armies marching upon each other, like Spartan armies of old. One may delineate one's arguments with absolute precision and backup with sources and throw them THWAP THWAP THWAP at the reader. (Or gently persuade, but I like the in-your-face better.) Fiction is a lot less explicit and it's sometimes only after the 1000+ pages that you see the themes arcing delicately over. I suppose this would be biowarfare: creeps on you without realizing. Or maybe that's just very good undercover ops.

The elevator broke so I climbed up to my 23rd floor room after dinner. And then the fire alarm went off and I, being just then at the study room, climbed down 28 floors. As ~~devil-possessed~~ awful as the elevators are, I am really glad they exist <3

(one poor fellow I spoke to said he'd been doing his laundry. On the basement floor. He got off the twenty-first floor.)

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silverflight8 @ 2011-11-20T18:48:00

2011-11-20T23:48:36Z

Hi, yuletide writer! I'm sorry for the delay in getting this letter to you, but here it is now.

1. I will be so happy to just get a story this Christmas. These fandoms are so small that almost nothing has been done, so you can take it anywhere! I don't mind sex scenes and violence, but please do your best to apply warnings as accurately as you can - with a heads-up I can pretty much read anything :)

The fandoms:

Collegia Magica: Carol Berg
*ahhhhh I'm in love with not just the characters (oh Ilario <3), but also the setting. I've always seen it as an AU of pre-Renaissance France, what with the advent of reason over magic and so on. Like it said on the prompt, I'd love to see how the characters interact outside of the plot. (If not for Eugenie/Philippe, then all those games of stratagems must mean Ilario/Philippe :D). What was it like to be at the collegia? Was Eltevierre ever inhabited by ordinary people, and what did the Mondragoni do to them? What's the Cazar's place like? (I get the feeling they're quite...remote.)

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: Susanna Clarke
I put down Arabella Strange here, but I would love to have the Raven King or someone else (putting more than one person down would mean you'd have to write them all...which would possibly be awkward). I love the history aspect, that magic has existed for so long in England and is just embedded into the folk tales and so on. Imagine what it would be like to live in northern England when the Raven King was alive! What happens after Jonathan gets rid of that weird cloud thing?

Georgina Kincaid series: Richelle Mead
I find it amusing that no one nominated Seth. >.>. He's lovely but I'd prefer Georgina/Roman, or Georgina/Carter (as messed up as both would end up being...the angel angle is interesting. And Roman's Georgina's roommate.) I'm not really looking forward to the last book which will probably pair Seth and Georgina up, so I'd love to see other options! Gen is good, too: what does a demon do in his daily life, anyway? (Other than drink, apparently, with angels. Or maybe Hugh handles the work?) What's heaven like? (Carter does have to visit it once in awhile, right?) Interaction between Jerome and Roman (oh god.)

Have at it, yuletide writer! Thanks for signing up for these fandoms!
silver

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And here's your video of the day!

2011-11-17T05:44:33Z

Being the history geek I am, I read Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards, a rather light-hearted history book that enumerated all the regents from Egbert.

( And then I found this video. I can't stop laughing at the chorus. )

(Starts from 1066 and William, but it's amazing. Just amazing.)

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Alas!

2011-11-14T01:33:30Z

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November 11, 2011

2011-11-12T05:38:03Z

Take from the flowery speeches and long-drawn pauses, the sound of the trumpet stepping in for the bugle, the sea of red flowers: simply never again. They called it the war to end all wars: let it be true, and never have it again.

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A little dated, but relevant nonetheless (icon!)

2011-11-02T05:31:43Z

( Nanowrimo stuff, you're all likely inundated with it already )

But, lest you think my life is a horrid frenzy of speedwalking - which sometimes it is, I have improved both my speedwalking and jaywalking skills - I actually live a lovely life. (This is not reflected on my journal.) And I have pictures which I took on Saturday. I found the most delightful, quaint garden on this ramble.

( Click for images! Click on images for enlarged images! )

and now I'm for sleep o/

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