Signal Boosting: Ladies' Bingo!

Sep. 6th, 2025 02:15 pm
althea_valara: A screenshot of Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV. (alisaie)
[personal profile] althea_valara
[community profile] ladiesbingo, a Bingo challenge that is for fanworks about the relationships between women, is open for round 13! Here are the categories for the prompt list; you can request a card here.

Now, I don't read much fanfic so I don't know how much of this is true, but it does feel like there is a need for more fanworks exploring womens' relationships. I mean, my own fanworks are largely male-centered, with the exception of my Alisaie/Lyse fic, and even THAT fic was primarily from Alisaie's POV with not much Lyse in it. So I figured, let's get a card and be the change I want to see. Maybe? I mean, I still hardly write fanfic, but maybe a card will spur me on?

my card under cut )

Random Doctor Who Picture

Sep. 6th, 2025 03:32 pm
purplecat: The Eighth Doctor. (Who:Eight)
[personal profile] purplecat

Cover for the Eighth Doctor Book Endgame by Terrance Dicks.  A burning radiation symbol.  The Stars and Stripes and Hammer and Sickle are just visible in the read background.
This was one of a sequence of books in a soft reboot of the Eighth Doctor range, in which the Doctor has lost his memory and must live through the 20th century - in this case the Cold War. Terrance Dicks increasingly recycled his old ideas, or perhaps obsessions into his book. This one features a shadowy set of beings called The Players about which I recall little, beyond that they had already been inserted into various books of his. Anyway, at least I remember something about this one.

Random Roman Remains

Sep. 5th, 2025 09:30 pm
purplecat: Black and White photo of production of Julius Caesar (General:Roman Remains)
[personal profile] purplecat

Tree growing close by some Roman footings with large fallen bricks behind.
Chesters Roman Fort
purplecat: An open book with a quill pen and a lamp. (General:Academia)
[personal profile] purplecat
One of my post-docs, and I was previously on the supervisory team for her PhD, has been partly occupying her time generating publications from her thesis. This is one such. She's addressing the question of what people actually want when they ask that an autonomous system provide explanations. In particular, though she doesn't really get into that in the paper, most explainability research has focused specifically on neural networks that are classifying things into groups, not on robotic systems that are taking decisions about what to do next.

Eliciting Explainability Requirements for Safety-Critical Systems: A Nuclear Case Study talks through her approach, and tries to categorise her results into groups. There is also some formalisation of the requirements into logic, though via the use of structured English to make it more comprehensible. Lastly she reports on some lessons learned.

Galumph!

Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:24 pm
azurelunatic: Computer with a wind-up key captioned "Which version of STUPID are you running?" (stupid)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
It turns out that there is a timeout to the "let's test your equipment" for the browser-based telehealth appointments with my therapist. That timeout is 5 minutes. I had to switch to my phone, which is always vexatious for me.

Recently, Belovedest hauled Dad's old machine (dubbed Galumph, after the imaginary draft horse stallion Dad always talked about as his preferred riding beast) out to test it and see if it would run. (The massive monitor that came with it did not run, but I have found a suitably crusty-looking TV and other screen based appliance repair shop to attempt a repair.) Galumph ran. Belovedest looked at the specs. "That's a freaking RACK SERVER masquerading as a desktop!!!" they said, or words to that general effect.

So after we returned from the Michigan trip, I told Belovedest that it was time to take them up on their offer to rebox my poor old suffering machine.

I accidentally gave them the wrong figures for my C: and D: drives, so there was a bit of a flurry at first, but after they switched them, they were able to get to a login screen. I opened my Chrome / User Data / Default / Sessions folder, copied the most recent Tabs_* and Session_* files to a subfolder that I've named "Explicit Distrust" and launched my browser.

All 1,5XX tabs opened.

I've been trying to decrease them a little bit ever since, starting with my Main window, where the tabs tend to proliferate with abandon. (Trying to do this on the old hardware took forever, in addition to me getting distracted by shiny things.)

United Healthcare is at it again

Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:17 pm
azurelunatic: "Where's the goddamn NERF BAT when you *really* need it?" Animated cartoon tech support loses her cool.  (work)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
United Healthcare sent me a letter, dated August 26, to tell me that they were taking away my primary care of record (not actually my real primary care) -- retroactively not covered since May 16. And assigning me to someone whose UHC profile shows that he only takes 0-17 year old patients.

"If you have any questions" I could call in. Where I learned that there were a lot of those letters sent out in error.

I requested that the UHC phone agent quote me with any creative profanity she'd like to attribute to me when conveying my displeasure to her supervisors.

I called the schedulers listed for my "new primary care", who instructed me to call UHC back to say that I wanted to keep my actual primary care doctor (who I've had since my former nurse-practitioner went into Infectious Diseases. And gave me the "MPI" number of my current doctor, and further instructions on how to make this happen. (But it can't continue happening until tomorrow, because both of them close down their phones at 5.)

Kudos to that agent, who was on the phone with me past her scheduled departure time. I thanked her for that.
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

Returned from Mitchagain

Sep. 1st, 2025 01:37 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
I picked a hotel based on price and reviews, and I think I picked poorly. Housekeeping was by request only, but they communicated that exactly bloody nowhere. The staff were universally friendly and courteous, but the lack of communication about that vital issue was overwhelming. I had to request housekeeping on Sunday twice, and the second time the person who arrived with fresh towels and to take away the garbage said something peculiar, about having us on the housekeeping list the next morning. I inquired, and learned that it is a lingering Covid safety policy. I would rather have universal masking as the lingering Covid safety policy.

Spicy mango frozen margaritas are delicious. We went to a local brewery, I think on Friday after the parish hall setup for the party. S & Z went for the frozen margarita "flight" and we passed the little goblets around for tasting. I tried the raspberry daiquiri (non frozen) and found it too sour. But I was able to enjoy the hot rim on the mango margarita, to the extent that I looked up recipes and got a bottle of Tajín after we got home. We played Sushi Go (except for Mums) and Wizard (except for me). There was no duckie in the big fishbowl drink as they were out. Alas. Hot Rim is our new band, and all the titles of the songs are double entendres, each followed by a B-side entitled "... Vociferously!"

Pips' partner H came for Saturday and Sunday, and it was very good to meet them. Belovedest has a sticker on their water bottle reading "I'm the enby sheep", and H is another such enby sheep. And Goth. We took to each other immediately.

The anniversary party was a hit. I even convinced Belovedest to dance with me to "I Will Survive", which I named as "our song" — not incorrect, but it's my song from nerd camp, and I believe their song by way of yeeting the evil ex, rather than our song together.
Cleanup on site was very swift, and we didn't actually have to stack all the chairs. Afterwards at home (the parental home), V and Mums put away leftovers and sorted the salad (cucumber and tomato separate from the lettuce) while the rest of the kid generation gossiped and played games and I carefully pulled the photos off the science fair board and sorted them back into their ziplock bags.

There was Sunday brunch, and I think we may not go there again — both of us and perhaps more of the party had mild food poisoning symptoms that afternoon. It didn't ruin our days fully, but I was glad to have my fully stocked medical kit on hand.

Squaredle is one of the family preoccupations. It's a NYT game that resembles Boggle, except it's a composed game rather than random, and the boards vary in size and shape. (One recent one was a 5x5 doughnut, with the middlemost letter missing.) There were also games of Boggle.

I did have the new folding power chair for the trip, which saved my strength for the important things. The acquisition is its own story, with the Bastard & Our Lady's own lucks. (This is a distinct entity from the folding scooter, which should arrive later this month.)

Crochet updates:
My #10 crochet cotton super Goth beaded choker is finished with the structural crochet work and needs the final outside beading. I'm waiting on more of the beads.
The self-striping granny triangle shawl has the first triangle complete, and I could wear it like that if I wanted to. Now that I know how it's sized, I've started the second triangle of three to make it a trapezoid.
Secret #10 crochet cotton project with a due date: I need to make a crucial measurement, but I found the perfect button in my collection. Awaiting the first chain. And I am pleased beyond measure to have been commissioned it.

Yellface is extremely glad we're home. She lectured us at length about having left, in tones I've never heard from her before. That was the extent of her displeasure, fortunately.

I experimented, and got us a first class upgrade on our way out. There was almost enough foot room for Belovedest, and enough elbow room for me. I even napped some. There was a cheese plate, and I felt secure enough in my prophylactic meds to partake. The only problem was the combination of my swoopy sleeves with armrest cup holders, so my right sleeve became saturated with ginger ale for a while.
Coming back was very crammed, even though we were in the premium seats with some extra foot room.

I'm glad I went.

Wish World/The Reality War

Sep. 1st, 2025 07:22 pm
purplecat: The Fifteenth Doctor (Who:Fifteen)
[personal profile] purplecat
I went into Wish World/The Reality War knowing it was likely to be a hot mess and I was not wrong.

Are we still doing spoilers? )

Crafting Update, August 2025

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:01 am
althea_valara: A picture of a striped crochet project, with the words, "STAND BACK! I have YARN!" (yarn2)
[personal profile] althea_valara
Most of this month was spent NOT crafting. I'm behind on checking in at [community profile] get_knitted because of it - I hope everyone there has been having success with their crafts!

It was an on month for Nerdopolis; we were in the third and final round for the current tournament, and I got inspired by some of the challenges.

The first challenge was the traditional Love What You Do challenge, in which teams pick their own themes. My team is all about gaming, and this month, we chose Mini-games as our theme. I immediately thought of the butterfly hunt in Final Fantasy X and dutifully searched for butterfly-related patterns. I found this butterfly shawl pattern. "It's crocheted - I can finish it in a month!" I said to myself. Reader, I did not finish it. Instead, I knocked out a quick crocheted hat yesterday that has the classic butterfly-made-of-chains on it. Apologies for poor picture.

A crocheted hat featuring a butterfly made of chain stitches.
[Image Description: A pink crocheted hat, featuring a butterfly made of chain stitches on the brim.]

Then there was the Boats challenge. Well, boats are often white in color, so I thought hey, let's make some white snowflakes! I chose this snowflake pattern, and tried it holding thread doubled. Alas, I got bored at the tediousness of it in the final round, and literally dropped it to finish it later... and it ended up under my desk, where it tangled with OTHER projects that have been dropped. BIG SIGH.

Anyway! I did not feel like unearthing it, so I decided to do something else instead. If you stand on the deck of a boat while it's in motion, it gets HECKIN' WINDY and your hair blows all over the place. So I started contemplating a hairband of some kind.

I considered yet another Lacy Crochet Kerchief - this pattern is like potato chips for me, I've made NINE of them. I did dutifully get yarn and started the chain/first row, but changed my mind. I considered a granny head scarf I found and even started that one, but the pattern called for fingering and I had just grabbed the first yarn/hook combo I found (worsted weight and a J hook) and it was coming out ugly. So I went back to the drawing board AGAIN, and finally whipped out this YESTERDAY:

A crocheted headband that features a patch of pumpkins.
[Image Description: A crocheted headband. It is tan in color and features bright orange pumpkins made of cluster stitches. A green vine meanders through the pumpkin patch.]

I left off round 2 and 6 because I didn't have much time. Even so, I barely finished this before the deadline. I'm happy with it, and it looks really cute on me and HEY I LOVE ALL THINGS PUMPKIN so now I have a seasonal headband - or will, once I weave in ends, oops.

For Nerd Cred, I tied to the All Saints' Wake in FFXIV, as there are plenty of pumpkin decorations then.. and also pumpkin cookies, as featured in this clip from one of my Twitch streams:



The Lab's theme this month was Paper Manipulation. I immediately thought PAPER QUILLING! Alas, I couldn't find my quilling pen, and didn't have the proper color paper for what I wanted to make anyway, so I bought more supplies, oops. I did start quilling a bird, but (a) it wasn't coming out too well (b) I ran out of time. So in desperation, I made an origami inflated box. HEY, IT COUNTS!

An inflated paper box, folded in the origami style.
[Image Description: An inflated paper box, folded in the origami style. Made with a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook.]

I made a ton of these toys when I was a kid. The children's craft book I got it from said you could fill them when water and use them as water bombs, but wouldn't the paper disintegrate? Hmmm. Anyway, I used that "water bomb" idea for my Nerd Cred, and tied to Final Fantasy Tactics as there is a Water Ball throwing weapon in that game.

I did not work on my cardi at all this month, but did spend an hour starting the Sylvan Tee. I'd like to really put some work into that this month, maybe for [community profile] communal_creators? We'll see!

notable quotables

Sep. 1st, 2025 01:10 am
ursamajor: droppin' the ball (d'oh)
[personal profile] ursamajor
[personal profile] hyounpark has recently started watching the 2022 revival of Quantum Leap, and tonight's episode? Revisited the World Series quake. As somebody who lived through that? ROFL, pedantry ahoy!

Me: "Hi Candlestick! ... wait, happy hour during Game 3 of the Bay Bridge Series? GET UNDER A SOLID DOORWAY NOW."
Me: "WHAT THE HELL YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SEE THE FERRY BUILDING FROM THERE IN 1989, NOT EVEN WITH THE FREEWAY COLLAPSE."
Me: "You can't get across the Bay in the time you have! The bridge is down, BART is down, that utility tunnel is at least FIVE MILES LONG, and even when you come up on the Oakland side you still have to get through the entire-ass Port of Oakland. And you're playing a white family, highly unlikely they would have lived in West Oakland at the time, so now you have at least another two miles of running to get anywhere where the apartments look like that and you could plausibly have none or very few Black neighbors, and OH WAIT YOU'D HAVE TO CROSS THE CYPRESS STRUCTURE TO DO THAT, which also fell down in the quake! Your 90 minutes are up, tick tick BOOM."
[personal profile] hyounpark: "Watching this ep with you is WAY more entertaining than watching it by myself would have been!"
Me: "And this didn't even account for going back to their new apartment in SF at least two miles in the wrong direction, RUNNING UPHILL, to look for the kid!"

*

The Strategist interviewed Sally Jessy Raphael a few weeks ago on some of her favorite things, and I feel seen.

"Let me explain. The first thing people say when they see me is, “Oh my God, you’re so short.” This is terrible. I am slightly under five feet. This means that if I go to buy grown-up clothes in the store, everything is too long. Everything. Every skirt, every pair of jeans, it doesn’t matter what I pay or where I shop. So, I have pinking shears. Everything I own, I pink with the pinking shears. It doesn’t make sense for me to go to Kohl’s and buy $9 jeans and then send them to be hemmed for $30. In New York, that’s what it costs to hem. So I gave up on having anybody hem them. And I’m having trouble threading my sewing machine. So pinking shears do everything."


I mean, not that I own a pair of pinking shears, but I'm always on the lookout for jeans that are short enough for me off the rack. Usually, they end up being some form of slim-to-straight fit cropped style, but the best pair of jeans I ever had was a flared sort of baby bellbottom style that I got at a clothing swap like 15 years ago. They didn't last terribly long (got holes on the inner thighs within a couple of years), but I loved the hell out of those jeans - they were button-fly (look, I bought my first pair of jeans with my allowance from the Gap in the early 90s and that's what I imprinted on), they had embroidered cuffs, they flared out below MY knee height just enough to balance my curvy hips better than any pair of then-trendy skinnies ever did, and I wore them at least twice a week while I owned them except in summer.

They were my holy grail of jeans, and I've been looking for anything like them ever since. I've tried on jeans from probably every American mass-market brand in the interim, but no. At this point, I own two pairs of Levi's Wedgie Straights because they are not "cropped" and come in a 26" inseam (so the knees hit where they're supposed to), and are suitable for the times when I just need plain old jeans that don't stand out. They are reliable. But they don't feel like ~me~ the same way these old jeans did.

I know the real answer is that I just need to buy a sewing machine and learn how to make my own jeans, but. Sigh.
althea_valara: A cropped image of Feo Ul, a pixie with fiery orange hair, from the Final Fantasy XIV video game. The words "oh my adorable sapling!" are on the left side of the frame. (sapling)
[personal profile] althea_valara
LOOK AT THIS BANNER, ISN'T IT ADORBS?


Join us at [community profile] smallweb for Small Web September!


[community profile] smallweb is a community for folks building personal, small websites. I'll be taking part in Small Web September to spruce up my Final Fantasy Fan Script Fan Site. The goal is to complete porting over the stuff I've previously posted here, at the very least. If I can, I'd like to get FFXI: Chains of Promathia documented as well. And I really should go back to my FFXIV script, too; it's been over a year since I touched it and I'm still mid-Shadowbringers.




[community profile] communal_creators is a community for creative types, and will be starting its next round in mid September. ANY creativity counts! I am definitely going to double-dip and count working on the website, but I also hope to get some fiber arts done. We'll a supportive and chill community, so come join us if you need some cheering on for your creative projects!

Random Doctor Who Picture

Aug. 30th, 2025 08:37 am
purplecat: The Second Doctor holding his diary (Who:Books)
[personal profile] purplecat

Cover for the Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure Palace of the Red Sun by Christopher Bulis.  Picture of a domed palace with four pointy turrets.  The silhouettes of two figures, one in a long dress and one in a shorter one walk down an avenue of upright trees to the palace.  Everything is in oranges and yellows.

Another blank in my memory. The back makes it sound like there is an underlying quest style narrative which, as I recall, is common in Bulis' works.

Random Roman Remains

Aug. 29th, 2025 06:30 pm
purplecat: Black and White photo of production of Julius Caesar (General:Roman Remains)
[personal profile] purplecat

The foundations of a long oblong stone brick roman building showing the pillars that once supported the hypocaust.
Housteads Roman Fort
purplecat: An open book with a quill pen and a lamp. (General:Academia)
[personal profile] purplecat
The award winning paper I mentioned next week, actually had a sequel. In The human factor: Addressing computing risks for critical national infrastructure towards 2040 we performed a similar exercise of asking a number of experts about risks to Critical National Infrastructure arising from computing developments and synthesising the results.

I am honestly, happier with this paper, I thought we had a better range of genuine expertise in the people we talked to, and a more focused area of consideration. We had a little trouble with the third referee, who thought our experts were wrong about Quantum Computing and that we should rewrite the paper so they gave the answer the referee thought was correct. Our experts did not think Quantum Computing was among the biggest risks to be considered in the next 15 years - but instead thought there were a number of issues relating to human factors (sophisticated phishing, difficulty tracing the cause of problems and poor incident response in complex situations).

Dear [community profile] sexpollenplus creator,

Aug. 25th, 2025 10:56 pm
anaraine: Crop of Bianchi from Katekyou Hitman Reborn! ([khr] bianchi)
[personal profile] anaraine
Affected has stopped being a word for me. But hello, dear creator! I'm still pulling together all of my ridiculously iddy thoughts for these requests, but I love sex pollen, it's one of my absolute favorite tropes - if you already have something specific in mind, please feel free to just go for it. If you need a bit more to work with, then hopefully I've touched on something that inspires you! (If I haven't, please give me until September 3rd 4th. Will probably finish in an hour or so if I don't fall asleep first!)

(You can also view this entry by ship with cuts a la the date view, and freeform thoughts can be opened/closed by clicking the ▶/▼ arrows.)

I do have gifting enabled and will always be open to and delighted for treats.

In general... )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Bianchi/Dino )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Tsuna/Xanxus )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Xanxus/Squalo )

Labyrinth: Jareth/Sarah )

Naruto: Hashirama/Tobirama/Izuna )

Naruto: Tobirama/Izuna )

Naruto: Tobirama/Kagami )

Naruto: Tobirama/Touka/Hikaku )

RF Guardians of Azuma: Ulalaka | Matsuri/Ulalaka )

Star Wars: Aayla/Bly )


purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

heads up: important news post

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:55 am
althea_valara: Photo of my cat sniffing a vase of roses  (Default)
[personal profile] althea_valara
There is a very important news post in [site community profile] dw_news that you all should read carefully.

TL;DR - Dreamwidth is forced to start blocking those accessing the site from a Mississippi IP address starting September 1st. This is because the state of Mississippi has passed a law requiring residents verify their age before accessing social media. As the burden of doing this is WAY HIGH for Dreamwidth (plus they don't want to do it anyway!), they have made the reluctant choice to block those users.

Dreamwidth is fighting the law in court with the help of Netchoice; [staff profile] denise is pretty confident they'll eventually win, but there's been a setback with one of the courts and thus are forced to take this action in the meantime.

I know I have some UK folks on my access list - I have not read all the comments on the news post yet but the very first comment from [staff profile] denise says the UK law doesn't apply to Dreamwdith because the number of users from the UK is too small.

I continue to be happy that Dreamwidth is one of my homes on the Internet. I stand by and agree with their principles.
ursamajor: the Swedish Chef, juggling (bork bork bork!)
[personal profile] ursamajor
The algorithm sent me this ATK recipe (paywalled, but linked for posterity, and pretty easy to extrapolate the basic idea) for a peanut butter chocolate quesadilla yesterday, and my instant reaction as a Massachusetts expat: "But where's the Marshmallow Fluff?! How can it be a Fluffernutter quesadilla without the Fluff? This is all Jarrett Barrios' fault, isn't it!"

Though of course, out here on the West Coast, getting ahold of actual Fluff is more difficult; when supermarkets have jarred marshmallow product, it's usually Kraft's Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme, which is more liquidy. ... hold on, I can get a two-pack of Marshmallow Fluff from my local Cost Plus?! As in the same Cost Plus where my mom used to buy us Botan candy to keep us occupied while she looked at household decor? ROFL.

Of course I ended up down the merch wormhole with my search results; I'd rather have it as a long-sleeve tee, but I love the logo on this What the Fluff sweatshirt from the Fluff Festival. 20th annual this year! Pairs well with this Ice Cream Weather hoodie from Gracie's just across the square that I've been meaning to pick up for years now. As well as my What a Cluster! tee. And now I want Goo Goo Clusters and Marshmallow Fluff. At least Moon Pies have made their way to the Bay? I can get those at my local CVS sometimes now.

Cherry on top of all this internet wormholing: while trying to figure out if Fluff was sold in any grocery stores local to me (besides Walmart, ugh), I stumbled across their recipe section, and amusingly enough, one of their most popular recipes is Lynne's Cheesecake. I swear I didn't submit it - the recipe looks like a New York cheesecake recipe, and I strongly prefer my cheesecakes burnt Basque or Japanese cotton style. But now I'm thinking, maybe I should tackle a burnt Basque Fluff cheesecake. Though admittedly, on my cheesecake back burner, I also want to make a cheesecake with Poppy Bagels' truffle schmear, Wikipedia has just informed me of the existence of a smoked salmon cheesecake, and Kat Lieu just posted a SPAM Basque cheesecake. Time to reup our Lactaid stock!

And now, of course, I'm earwormed with the old-timey Fluffernutter jingle.



(Yeah, I know, an original Fluffernutter has no chocolate, but sprinkling some chocolate chips on top of one side and melting before assembly is pretty standard. Though IME hagelslag or vlokken work better, and of course you can also get hagelslag at Cost Plus, 😂.)
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