Eric TF Bat's Journal

'Twas The Day After Christmas

2009-12-26T11:49:33Z

Interesting and fruitful discussion on the Shambles, lately. A bit of wiffle woffle wuffle with motherhood statements about the importance of contributing to one's Society, but in general the signal:noise ratio is high. Perhaps that will change when a few of the usual suspects get back from hols, but for now it's nice.

Christmas has been had. I got a wallet from my beloved Elder Daughter and a book from my beloved Beloved, plus assorted other things but nothing speccy. My parents gave us a new toaster, which is quite an impressive one and can do thick or thin slices and four at once. And a digital tyre pressure gauge, which is... odd. Beats torches though. The BatPup got a new(ish) bike and the Boy got a 'Mania Devil and lots of cute clothes.

The EDoD got half a camera: we've offered to match what she puts in of her own savings toward a really good camera. She's got an amazing eye for photography, even with just a Nokia N95 phone camera. I must grab arthwollipot or subtle_eye or whatever other photography experts I can find who would be willing to advise her on how to choose a good camera and get worthwhile lessons in photography, including post-processing with The Gimp or equivalent. We think she has real talent. It shouldn't be wasted.

Today was a lot of lounging about. Boxing Day is excellent like that. No need to cook because there's food in the fridge, salads in our case. I spent part of the day sorting comics, and all this evening tidying the feral playroom. We call the period between Christmas and New Year the Month Of Kevin, and I've got it off this year because iBORG have a Policy in that regard, so I plan to get stuff done about the house, possibly see visiting friends if I can find their contact details, and plan how we're going to escape to Tasmania by Easter. Nice and relaxed, just what we all need.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Idiot

2009-12-25T10:57:18Z

An idiot with the initials AG spammed me and everyone on his address book with a link to a rant by one of Australia's more embarrassing right-wing dickheads about climate change. Apparently there's a conspiracy to thingy-thingy Copenhagen and wibble wobble woo the green flibbly flobbly nazis plinketty plonk East Anglia glorfle ploogie, and therefore climate change is a hoax. Or something. Anyhow, this is some good ammunition, but really I don't see a lot of point arguing. AG, if you're reading: die of skin cancer. Thank you. And to the rest of the climate change denialists: don't buy land in Tuvalu on a long-term lease, ok? We'll see you when you're knocking on our door in Tasmania begging for a billet.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

'Twas The Night

2009-12-24T10:42:46Z

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the hovel
The floor was so messy
It called for a shovel.

The stockings were piled
With old plates on a chair
With half-eaten apples
All covered in hair.

And me in my gas mask,
And full body condom,
Attempted to tidy,
...

Ummm. "And longed for a pipe bomb?" "Like soldiers in Viet Nom?" "While cockroaches said 'Nom!'?"

Naah, I got nothing.

Never mind. Back to tidying then.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

I'm Sorry I Haven't An Archive

2009-12-23T11:15:44Z

I've heard of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue for years, but could never find any episodes to download. Given how much of it suits my particular interests, this has been a great disappointment. So I'm rather pleased to find that an archive of early episodes does, in fact, exist. Now I shall clean the house while listening to it, possibly causing my Beloved to believe I am completely bonkers.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Mork and Myknee (Pun For Very Old People Like Me)

2009-12-22T11:36:16Z

Was going to post a review of the take-away dinner we had from Mork's Thai Restaurant in the Florey shops, but I see I've already done that. Our opinion is unchanged: Mr Mork does splendid food, really top-notch, and he deserves your custom. Go find him and order some nosh, stat!

I went to see the doctor today about my knee, which has been getting progressively more painful over the past several months, and is now giving me mild-to-noteworthy discomfort pretty much all the time. He suggested that maybe going to a physio would solve it, but really the sensible thing to do is to get an MRI and see if there's ligament damage or something else serious, which would be best cured with surgery. Since I've seen what can happen when you let your knees go without proper care and attention, I decided to take that option. I'm booked for 8.20am on Monday the 4th of January, and I'll go from there. Gods willing I'll just need a bit of physiotherapy and an exercise program, and although I've never had any good results from dealing with physios, who have a worse hit rate than chiropractors in my experience, I'll nevertheless welcome the opportunity to not be sliced open and edited by some human-butcher. Wish me luck.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Merry Everything

2009-12-21T02:39:16Z

As a belated service to those of my readership who prefer to celebrate inclusively, here are the dates of every major end-of-year-or-so holiday, averaged. Too late to celebrate properly this year, but maybe next year you can put on your kaftan and your pileus, staple the pork sausages and mistletoe to your aluminium rod and stick it in your yule log, festoon the whole lot with oil lamps and a menorah and dance around the cemetary wishing everyone Happy Holidays. Good luck!

2009

Celebration	Start	End
Christmas	25 Dec 2009	6 Jan 2010
Diwali	17 Oct 2009	17 Oct 2009
Eid ul-Fitr	20 Sep 2009	21 Sep 2009
Festivus	23 Dec 2009	23 Dec 2009
Hanukkah	11 Dec 2009	19 Dec 2009
Hogswatch	31 Dec 2009	1 Jan 2010
Kwanzaa	26 Dec 2009	1 Jan 2010
Saturnalia	17 Dec 2009	23 Dec 2009
Solstice	22 Dec 2009	22 Dec 2009
Average	4 Dec 2009	8 Dec 2009

2010

Celebration	Start	End
Christmas	25 Dec 2010	6 Jan 2011
Diwali	5 Nov 2010	5 Nov 2010
Eid ul-Fitr	10 Sep 2010	10 Sep 2010
Festivus	23 Dec 2010	23 Dec 2010
Hanukkah	1 Dec 2010	9 Dec 2010
Hogswatch	31 Dec 2010	1 Jan 2011
Kwanzaa	26 Dec 2010	1 Jan 2011
Saturnalia	17 Dec 2010	23 Dec 2010
Solstice	22 Dec 2010	22 Dec 2010
Average	4 Dec 2010	8 Dec 2010

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Make Me An Offer

2009-12-20T09:17:37Z

I've got a bunch of comics. Like, really a bunch. Half a room full. I can hardly ship the lot off to Tassie, because that's dumb, and also expensive. So like the subject header says: make me an offer. Come get them, or I'll ship them to you. Read them, enjoy them, then pass them on if you like. None of them are mint, or even near mint. They've been read, and stored in the hopes that they'll be read again. Want to be the one who reads them again? Say the word.

And when I say "offer", I'm not talking all your worldly wealth. Money is always welcome, as is barter, but the best offer is that you or a friend or relative will love them to death. No cash exchanged for that one, and we're all happy. You're not going broke for reading this blog entry, mmm-kay?

All are published by DC unless otherwise noted. To save time, I'm only linking the ones you can't easily find on Wikipedia. Here we go.

Mini Series and Complete Titles (short ones)

Justice: 1-12, including two of #5 for some reason.
Mystery In Space (feat. Captain Comet): 1-8
Captain Atom: Armageddon: 1-9 (DC/Wildstorm)
The Return of Adam Strange: 1-8
Justice League: Elite: 1-12
Hard Time: 1-12 (vol 1), 1-7 (vol 2) (DC/Focus)
Serenity: 1-3 (Dark Horse)

Graphic Novels

Wild Cards (Epic): collecting #1-4 of the series
Rising Stars: Born In Fire, Power, Visitations (Top Cow/Joe's Comics)
Superman For All Seasons: 1-4
Doctor Mid-Nite: 1-3
JLA/Avengers: 1-4
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 1-3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Origin (Dark Horse)
Superman: The Kansas Sighting: 1-2
JLA: World Without Grownups: 1-2
Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography
Superman: Under A Yellow Sun
The Griffin: 1-6
Hawkman: Endless Flight
JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice
Flash/Green Lantern: Faster Friends
World's Finest (1999): 1-10
Green Lantern: The New Corps
The Life Story of the Flash (hardcover)
Superman: For Earth
Superman: The Earth Stealers
Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey: 1-3
Superman: Where Is Thy Sting
Green Lantern: Ganthet's Tale

Graphic Novels - Elseworlds (alternate histories of various characters)

JLA: Foreign Bodies
Elseworld's Finest (1997): 1-2
League of Justice: 1-2
JLA: Act of God: 1-3
Batman: In Darkest Night
Batman: Dark Allegiances
Superman: War of the Worlds
Son of Superman
Superman: True Brit
JLA: Created Equal: 1-2
Superman Inc.
Superman: Speeding Bullets
Superman's Metropolis
Justice League: The Nail
Superman: The Dark Side: 1-3
Elseworld's Finest - Supergirl and Batgirl
Superman: Red Son: 1-3
Superman: A Nation Divided
Superman: Last Son of Earth/Last Stand on Krypton
Silver Surfer/Superman
Superman/Aliens: 1-3
JSA: The Liberty File: 1-2 and also #1 of The Unholy Three
Superman: Distant Fires
The Superman Monster
Batman: Reign of Terror
Superman: Kal
Light Brigade: 1-4
Superman/Batman: Generations: 1-4
Superman/Batman: Generations II: 1-4
Green Lantern: Evil's Might: 1-3
Superman At Earth's End
Superman/Green Lantern: Legend of the Green Flame
Flashpoint: 1-3

Larger Complete Series

The Authority (five GNs and a single)
Firestorm: 1-17(stopped collecting here) + a crossover with Bloodhound
Green Lantern:
- GL: Rebirth: 1-6
- GL ongoing: 1-27 (stopped collecting here) and 14
- GL Secret Files 2005
- GL Corps: Recharge: 1-5
- GL Corps ongoing: 1-10 (stopped collecting here)
- six Sinestro War crossover issues plus GCL 14-16 and 18
Flash - The Fastest Man Alive: 1-6 (stopped collecting here)

Valiant Comics: nearly everything!
(fairly sure the gaps will be filled when I finish going through boxes)

Archer and Armstrong: 1-25
Bloodshot: 0-6, 10-19 + Yearbook
Deathmate: 1-6
Eternal Warrior: 1-7,9-24 + Yearbook
Harbinger: 0-41 (#1 slightly ripped) + Harbinger Files: Harada
H.A.R.D. Corps: 1-24
Magnus Robot Fighter: 1-39 + Vintage MRF 1-4 + Magnus/Nexus 1-2
Ninjak: 1-6
Rai/Rai and the Future Force: 0-24
Second Life of Doctor Mirage: 1-6,8
Secret Weapons: 3-7
Solar: Man of the Atom: 1-36
Turok Dinosaur Hunter: 1-13 + Yearbook
Unity: 0,1 plus all crossovers
X-O Manowar: 0-31

This is nowhere near all; I'll update this as I go through all the boxes. Currently I've done two boxes; there are a dozen or so to go...

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Einstein On The Beach

2009-12-19T10:28:58Z

I heard this on ABC Classic FM once, when I was about 14 or 15, and I recorded as much of it as I could on this stuff called cassette tape, which is similar to stone tablets but breaks more easily and was eventually replaced by technology. I loved it, which is weird because otherwise I much prefer old, old music, and generally consider that music as an artform jumped the shark when they invented the piano.

Funny thing: the female voice in the background sounds an awful lot like another case of logorrhoea of an entirely different origin. I wonder if that's a coincidence.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Oops!

2009-12-18T11:24:27Z

We now know what we need for Christmas. A fire extinguisher. Smoke alarms. A fire-retardant blanket. Oh, and a new toaster.

Sigh.

The house smells of smoke, unbeknownst to my Beloved who, despite being an excellent cook, has the approximately the olfactory acuity of a plaster duck. The bench got a bit singed, but nobody was harmed, so all in all it could have been worse. As in, looking-for-somewhere-else-to-live worse.

It's an instructive lesson though. What would I rush in to save in the event of a real house fire, presuming there was time to rush in and save anything? Assume we've got the people out. What else?

My terabyte hard disk, Flounder, and my half-terabyte media disk, Cephalopod, have a bunch of files on them, some of which would be difficult to replace. Laptops, of course. The collection of paperwork in the bottom of the filing cabinet, birth certificates, passports and the like. Flurf, my teddy bear. Not much else. The place is insured, and having possessions is a trap. We could happily get rid of nearly everything and survive unscathed.

Still, that's no excuse. Extinguisher, alarms, blanket and a toaster that's not toast, stat!

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Bugger The Zombies, Fear The Norwegians!

2009-12-17T11:07:57Z

I can only hope that this will remain fiction. Unfortunately, I think the truth about life in 2040 will be closer to that than to the Jetsons. Just have to build ourselves a nice hide-away in Tassie and try to avoid the worst of it. Yay?

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Scrooged

2009-12-16T12:02:19Z

I really hate Christmas.

Well, the gift-giving is OK, and the time off from work is very very welcome. And I don't even mind spending time with the extended family, because I've seen some extended families from hell and mine isn't all that bad.

It's having to think of what I want for Christmas that I hate.

I mean, what do I want? Everything falls into one of three categories:

Stuff I won't have time to look at (like books);
Stuff I would like but don't have time to go through the complex process of choosing (like clothes; I hate it when other people choose clothes for me); and
Stuff I need so I go out and buy it myself.

There's nothing else. Either I like it but wouldn't use it; I like it and would use it but have to choose it myself; or I like it, would use it, and have already chosen it myself. That's an exhaustive set of Things I Like And/Or Need.

My mother-in-law long ago reacted to this impossibility in her son-in-law the only way she could: she bought me torches. You can never have enough torches. Well, normally; I, alone of all humanity, now have enough torches.

The real trouble is: I'm just not interested in things. I saw someone using a Kindle e-book reader yesterday, and I was almost jealous... until I realised that I have a laptop that can do everything it can do and it won't randomly delete your files due to copyright snafus. I could have DVDs, but all the DVDs I want, I have... and I wouldn't have time to watch the rest. Same with books: I'd love to get a complete back-catalog of Duntemann and Greenwood and Matthews and all the other greats (and even maybe some by people who aren't on or near my f-list!) but when would I read them?

No, what I really need is: time. Six or eight more hours in the day. That requires either temporal engineering or becoming independently wealthy. Neither is more or less likely than the other.

So that's why I hate Christmas. Humbug comma bah full stop.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Would Be Self-Congratulatory If Not For The Real Possibility That I'm Being Accidentally Rude Here

2009-12-15T12:13:40Z

Side effect of hanging about (virtually) with people who care about stuff: I start caring about stuff too. One of my favourite bloggers posted a link to something called Lamebook, being a sort of "Best of the Worst of Facebook". He didn't seem to quite get it when I politely but pointedly mentioned that "lame" is on par with "gay" and "retarded" as an epithet. He even came perilously close to "but none of my friends mind" although he dodged it at the last minute. And now there's the bullshit idea of requiring that everyone on LJ choose a gender from the set [Male,Female] for their profile - it seems the LARGE stink that was stunk has caused some backtracking (or maybe it really was just a typo).

I didn't used to care about this shit. I used to happily call someone a retard (never "gay" though; I had my limits) if they were particularly stupid. Now I limit myself to "potplant", and hope my friends in the foliage community aren't offended. I used to consider feminists to be just another bunch of weird but amusing radical loons, like creationists and vegans and people who don't like anchovies on their pizza. Then I started hanging around women who were feminists, and didn't necessarily shave everywhere that it was possible (or required by Cosmo) to shave and didn't seem to know their place, and somehow they seemed so much more interesting than the hypothetical alternative. So I adjusted.

Funny thing is: I've been aware of feminist issues for a few decades, and of issues around queer sexuality for maybe half that (thank House Smithfield for introducing me to some people I never would have met as a good little Catholic boy¹), and of disability issues only in the last little while (thanks mainly to lauredhel). I wonder what's next? What hidden bias am I still suffering? Will I have to start accepting that stupid people are people too? Gods, I hope not.

At least I know I'll never accept the idea of equal rights for anchovy haters. One must have standards.

¹ Resist the obvious comment here, please. Go on, try! Oh, all right, go ahead, I won't stop you.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

PC

2009-12-14T11:19:52Z

Some idiot on the Sydney Moaning Harold website had a rant about how pointless it is to go to the "Red Centre" of Australia (do they really call it that? how... quaint) if you can't climb Uluru. Apparently tourism will plummet if people aren't allowed to stand on a big rock, and the aboriginal elders who expressed their strong preference otherwise are therefore spoilsports.

I'm pleased that so many people who responded in the comments (nearly 300 at this time) were not completely clueless, but I'm worried that so many more were. Apparently, the specific tribe that currently has custodianship over the area only moved in there early last century, so therefore they shouldn't be considered "real" custodians, according to some. And anyway, all this stuff about sacred sites (read: someone else's culture, not even someone else's religion) is just superstition, so it should be disregarded. And anyhow, the black buggers'll give in when they realise they need the money that the tourists bring in... or something.

Gah.

The worst of it is that this idea, of listening to the opinions of people other than your own clique, is political correctness, which we all know is stupid and evil and to be avoided. Want to do what you damn well feel like? Find someone who objects, and brand them "politically correct", then go for it. Want to piss on someone's sacred site (literally! there are no portaloos atop The Rock)? Brand all opposition as political correctness. Want to treat people like shit because they don't have sex your way? Political correctness. Want to make all your problems go away without having to waste money or time on solving them? Political correctness. Easy!

Here's a hint if you've been using PC as an insult: PC is the new name for what was formerly called respect, except in those days we only applied it to our kind of people. You know, ones who earned our kind of money and wore our kind of clothes and fought our kind of war. Now, efforts to extend this idea of respect outside the one clique meet with disapproval. Why? Usually I'd say: because people forget that they're part of a larger whole. But after reading those comments, I'd say: because people are fuckheads.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Did We Mention... Brunch?

2009-12-13T11:57:22Z

Was planning to do a Facebook invitation, but meh. They're a dime a dozen. As we mentioned here and in thelancrewitch's blog after the last brunch, we're having another, next Sunday the 20th of December. We understand if you can't make it; really. I mean, apart from if you happen to live in Wellington or Perth or Amsterdam, which is a pretty good excuse all by itself. Because it's December, and The Designated Birthday Of That One Guy, so your calendar is probably booked. (Ours isn't, but that's because we're well-known hermits so we click the button marked "Wish We Could But Not Until The Monkeys Are Older" on every invitation we get.) But Sunday morning, especially a Sunday morning after a Saturday night before, when Substances may have been consumed and now you're feeling a little infraclimatic, may be just the time to cook up some bacon and eggs and sit around on the galaxy's comfiest couches with people of a similar condition. So pencil it in, and drop us an arse-verp (that's what basal_surge calls an RSVP, and I like it) if you think you might mosey. Or sleep in; your call. We'll be here either way...

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Krazy Karmic Koala Kapers (Kool!)

2009-12-12T03:15:20Z

Remember I said that the fglrx video driver on my version of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) wasn't working, and was causing a kernel panic at boot time, complete with flashing Caps Lock and black screen of death? Turns out it's fixable after all. Much googling turned up the following sequence of events, which appears to be reliable:

In System | Administration | Hardware Drivers, choose the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver, and click Activate, then Close.
In a terminal, type sudo aticonfig --acpi-services=off --initial -f to create the proper xorg.conf file.

Correct an egregious omission in the startup dependencies: edit /etc/init/gdm.conf to add the marked line in the section near the start:

start on (filesystem
          and started hal
          and started acpid
          and tty-device-added KERNEL=tty7
          and (graphics-device-added or stopped udevtrigger))
stop on runlevel [016]

Believe it or not, that should do it. Next time you reboot, the driver will work. Or at least it does for me, so far.

And as an added unexpected bonus, the standard suspend/resume now works! Whatever was going wrong with it seems to have been fixed by ensuring that acpi is running at an earlier stage. Weird, but serendipitous.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Travels With The Koala

2009-12-11T12:16:31Z

I'm getting a bit of a swings and roundabouts feeling from the latest Ubuntu.

I was using the proprietary fglrx video driver, but it randomly causes kernel panics on startup. So back to the default Radeon driver, and no more Extreme Tux Racer, which is a shame because the Boy Wonder loves watching it. As usual, the people who do the hardware integration in Linux don't seem to spend much time on testing. Guess it's less fun than the important features.

Similarly, though conventional wisdom has it that suspend and hibernate either break or un-break with each new version, I still can't get the standard suspend to work in Karmic. Oddly, the alternative one called s2ram works fine, but the instructions for getting it to be the default don't work, or at least didn't work on Jaunty so I have no faith that they've improved. Again, it's all testing. Granted it's tough to get hold of one of every computer on Earth to test with...

I was a bit aggravated that /boot/grub/menu.lst had disappeared, but my Google-Fu came through and I found out that Karmic uses Grub 2, so I had to edit /etc/default/grub instead and then call update-grub. Presumably next time I book I'll get the nice comforting text scroll of status messages instead of the inscrutable Ubuntu logo. Much better. If I wanted text-free booting, I'd use a Macintosh. Grub 2 looks like a general improvement all round, so no complaints there.

I'm using the "built-in" programs like Evolution Mail, Empathy Chat and so on. They're not too bad. Evolution feels very slightly less clunky than Thunderbird, though of course all mailers since Eudora have been uniformly awful and nobody seems interested in fixing the fundamental design flaws (maybe that's what Google Wave is, but who has the time to find out?). Empathy is similarly a little smoother than Pidgin, but there's really not much difference. That's a Good Thing, in case you wondered.

Oh, and remember what I wrote about Sudoku in Jaunty? There was a strange bug in the game duration calculation, that appeared to stem from an uninitialised variable. At the end of a game, it would sometimes tell me that I'd been playing for seven months, three weeks, five days, fourteen hours and thirty nine minutes, or somesuch. Well, they seem to have fixed that. Now, every time I finish a game, it tells me I finished it in fifty eight seconds. Exactly. Every single time. Improvement?

In general, I have to say Karmic is a small step on the road to a more stable and friendly Ubuntu. It's not perfect, but it's been good enough for some years now, and it shows signs of maybe one day being better than Windows in every important way -- well, except for the proprietary third-party software that won't play nice with open source, but it's always possible to vote with one's feet.

TL;DR: Karmic is boring but good. Worth upgrading, probably, just to keep up with the Shuttleworths.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

etfb @ 2009-12-10T22:31:00

2009-12-10T11:50:04Z

A dose of Boy-induced insomnia inspired me to chuck a sickie (more of a deadie) and stay home today. I did a bunch of useful things, including popping down south to pick up a present of a bicycular nature for the BatPup.

I also did up a report for the K&Q about kingdom awards. Since we had such a resounding success (eventually) getting those Grant-level awards renamed, they now want to sort out the rest. As actrealdon points out, if we get all the kingdom awards sorted out before the tenth anniversary of the kingdom, we'll be well ahead of the other kingdoms. And it's not too bad: there are only four whose names are utterly unregistrable: the Order of the Lily for A&S (mundane and SCA conflicts; Golden Lily is also out); the Miles Regni for war combat (Miles is one of the reserved alternatives for "Knight"); the Pride of Lochac for households, similar to the Defenders of the West (suffers same problems as the original Grant-level suggestions, ie following no known pattern of usage); and the Prix Jongleur for entertainers, like the West Kingdom Paragons of Merriment (ditto). So we just need to rename those, and possibly firm up the evidence for the Order of Hector, and we'll have the lot. Then, of course, we submit them to Laurel and wait and see...

Right. BatPup is still awake, and needs to be ~~euthanased~~ given stories and songs so she doesn't remain so. Evil bloody child. I'm off!

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Random

2009-12-09T11:50:54Z

Via Phil Plait: portraits of astronomers: 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each with a "prop" tying in to his or her area of expertise. Some of them are perfect.

Their Majesties Gabs and Stanzi have made it into fourth place, after Domhnall updated some missing records. Go them! I have lots of other stuff to do, so the Royal Leaderboard won't happen any time soon, but it's good to know that our royals are hard at work. Even if I think the award system is crap, and the idea of choosing leaders by combat is a disaster waiting to happen, and the SCA is full of people who desperately need nailgunning for the good of the gene pool... still, when it all comes together it's magic, and I'm glad it happens.

If anyone has ever lost a page full of bloggery when their browser window shut down unexpectedly, sethop has the Add-On for you: Lazarus. Just reopen the blog post page, right click and select Recover Text, and your words will return to you as if they'd never gone. If you suffer that problem again and I read about it now, I will laugh at you. Because that's a solved problem now. (Well, unless you're using Chrome or Safari, in which case you'll just have to hope someone comes up with something similar. If you're on IE, I'm already laughing at you.)

Speaking of Chrome, it's now available for Linux. I downloaded and installed it without any trouble this morning. Sooner or later I'll take a look, although surfing without AdBlock will be painful. Could I be arsed to install some other ad blocker, just for lightning fast JavaScript performance? Maybe. We'll see.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Evil Enough For You?

2009-12-08T12:42:53Z

I had an idea for a feature page on Canon Lore: an award-presenting leaderboard for royalty. According to a quick&dirty SQL script I ran up in response to a question on Blazons, these are the top ten reigns for giving out awards:

Ædward II and Yolande II (Lochac) 198
Berenger I and Bethan I (Lochac) 177
Gawyne I and Yve I (Lochac) 147
Alfar I and Elspeth I (Lochac) 134
Alfar II and Gudrun II (Lochac) 132
Theuderic I and Engelin I (Lochac) 131
Stephen I and Mathilde I (Lochac) 130
Ædward I and Yolande I (Lochac) 129
Alfar IV and Elspeth II (Lochac) 126
Unknown 125

(The "Unknown" means awards that don't have a reign attached, due to gaps in people's memories.) Our current K&Q are at #11, but given that an unknown hiccup deleted a month's worth of awards after actrealdon entered them, and they still have a month to go, I expect they'll get into the top five easily by Twelfth Night.

So what I want to do is put a top ten list on the site, updated as awards are entered. This would have two effects that I can see: first, it would encourage royalty to check their records to see if everything they've done is up to date; and second, it would encourage royalty (even more!) to give awards. The latter is probably quite redundant, but it can't hurt. The former would be a Very Good Thing Indeed, especially for old reigns. Note that Gawyne and Yve, the last prince and princess, are in the top ten despite their reign being nearly a decade old. That's not because more recent royalty have been slack; it's because Yve made a point of getting her data into the database.

I wonder how the royals would respond to this idea. Turning the giving of awards into a friendly competition? I can see cases where competition is a bad thing, but this does seem like a win for everyone. It's up to teffania Canon of course, but if she wanted it, it would be easy to do, and fun to watch the fireworks...

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Carspotters

2009-12-08T03:51:35Z

Presented without comment, but with a sort of reverential intake of breath at the awesomeness of ten million Wikipedists who have too much time on their hands: the complete story of the Rule of the Road, with copious notes and exceptions.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Getting A Handel On Coronations

2009-12-07T10:55:36Z

The coronation scene at the beginning and end of To Play The King reminded me of the tradition of crowning English monarchs to the tune of Garry Frodo Handel's Zadok The Priest, ever since George II. It took me a while to find the above clip: the rest were either slow or anaemic or both. The King's Consort one was particularly disappointing: I think both the basses in the choir were miming. When it's done right -- and I've sung in a choir that has done it right -- it deserves its place in history. Glorious stuff.

So my question is: was there anything like that much oomph to coronations in SCA period, ie up to the reign of Elizabeth I? And if so, why are SCA coronations so crap? I don't think I've ever seen a coronation with a choir bigger than a couple of each voice part and too many crumhorns, and certainly nothing with the flair of Geoffrey Ferdinand's work. Granted a lot of the instruments he wrote for didn't exist in the 1500s, but surely something did! Tell me, Medjeeval Lazyweb: what did they do in period, and why can't we?

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Oh How Sweet

2009-12-06T10:03:25Z

I am too worn out to post anything of consequence, so instead I shall rip off pepperbeast and give you this. On the plus side, it's probably better than anything I would have come up with.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Happy!

2009-12-05T12:25:41Z

I found myself feeling an odd feeling today: joy. Which is not to say I'm a misery guts 24/7, but usually I'm too caught up in obligations and obfuscations to stop and just be happy. Today I took the Batpup and the Boy Wonder for a walk to the shops, and stopped off at a playground on the way. It was while I was watching the Boy negotiating the slide that I noticed the strange sensation of peaceful happiness, and it lasted most of the way home. As I've said before: Turns out I like being a Daddy! Who knew?

This doesn't mean all is rosy. After his long walk (well, long pram ride, but there was sliding and swinging and hurtling headlong in parts) the Boy had a very long nap, so now at 11:15pm he's still wide awake. On one hand, this is a pain unto ye arse, because we can't get anything else done while he's underfoot and demanding cuddles. But on the other hand, cuddles!!! Having this gorgeous, loving, articulate little creature sitting next to me and demanding cuddles is not all bad, I have to say.

Meanwhile, I did get to go to arthwollipot's birthday party and see old friends. Had to come home after a couple of hours because the Boy's insomnia was interfering with my Beloved's ability not to get arrested and tried for infanticide. But it was fun, and I got to see some friends I haven't seen properly in ages. I really need to socialise more often, though how I can manage that and not end up with fewer children, I know not.

Right. Off to cuddle a baby Boy off to sleep, then make the same transition myself.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

Random Thoughts

2009-12-04T12:51:56Z

The Boy is down with some kind of infection that gives him tiny but irritating mouth ulcers. I took him for a drive a couple of times, hoping to settle him so he could sleep, but eventually he got tired enough that I just had to lie him down and he went clunk -- after being fortified with a few slices of ham to stave off the hungries, and a dose of Baby Panadol to reduce the pain somewhat. Poor little monkey!

Finished watching The Final Cut, the third part of the House Of Cards trilogy. I remember not liking it as much the first time I saw it, but I appreciated it much more this time. Dear old Jeffrey Booza Pitt is my favourite character from the whole series -- well, favourite after Francis Urquhart, because there can be no contest. But the characters in the third part were generally a lot more complex and interesting, even if the plot was choppier. I recommend the series to anyone who liked Yes Minister for Sir Humphrey and Blake's Seven for Avon.

Been getting further background on the recent and not-so-recent events I've ranted about hitherto. As usual, it's a case of people thinking they know what's going on, but missing essential facts that change everything. I'm pretty sure I have a better insight into both sides than anyone else -- some people know more of the other side's arguments but have missed the part where the arguments are bullshit; other people know a bit of both sides but are firmly convinced that one side or the other is totally insane. I've come to realise that nobody is entirely in the right, and everyone needs to take a chill pill and get out of their own way... but I don't think that will happen until it's all been pursued to the bitter end. An utter disaster, and it all started because we let an important office get tended by a potplant for a couple of years, and everyone adapted in different ways to the resulting mess. Dreadful.

I've installed the new Ubuntu on my laptop. Suspend still doesn't work, but apart from that it's fine. The new login screen is pretty, and it takes a fraction of the time to boot. Just wish I knew how to edit the grub loader now; it seems to have all changed. I'm going native for a while: ditching Pidgin and Thunderbird in favour of the official Gnome packages Empathy (for chat) and Evolution (for mail). So far there's no observable difference, so I have no comments.

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.

One For The Heralds

2009-12-03T04:19:11Z

Life imitates art? Bah! Life imitates heraldry!

Originally posted at my Dreamwidth account. Comment there for preference, or here.