Chaos: A Blog

mirrorred_star @ 2012-02-01T22:01:00

2012-02-01T11:08:41Z

You know what, though? I was Listening to 'Red Roses and Dead Things' last night while I did the dishes, and I so really love 'Dear Gina'.

And speaking of filk, I remembered an interesting little idea I had involving re-lyricing parts of 'reflections', ie that song from Mulan. I should. When I get the time. *rolls eyes*

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mirrorred_star @ 2012-01-21T17:49:00

2012-01-21T07:02:57Z

My mentor hasn't been at work for the last few days, and my supervisor is very busy most of the time, so I spent a lot of thursday chasing her down to ask for more work, and a lot of yesterday chasing her down to ask for more work. Because usually my mentor gives me work, and she she's usually at her desk even when she's busy, so...

Chained, aka the vampire anti-romance, started working the way I wanted it to work, through figuring out that the main character needed some agency.

And for no reason at all, I want chocolate.

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mirrorred_star @ 2011-12-24T16:29:00

2011-12-24T09:53:59Z

I have finished reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone. It didn't have that thing where a book will move inside my brain and demand to be thought about long after it has been put away, but it did everything else right. Though it initially worried me in how lithe and beautiful the main character is depicted as being, and that she has this outwardly exotic, beautiful life (she's a student at an art school in Prague), and that her big problem at that moment is that... her life is missing meaning. The worldbuild has gotten to me more than the characters.

I wonder if what bugs me about romance in novels is that whenever the couple are driven apart, it's because of uncertainty about whether one of them should be with the other, and I have no patience for it.

Also, I want horns. Not permanently, but I have an inner aesthetic in which I want to have animal ears or a tail or a something, to be someone who couldn't possibly exist.

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mirrorred_star @ 2011-12-20T18:56:00

2011-12-20T11:03:25Z

Right now, I'm the kind of tired where I want to muck around for a bit until I feel less tired, and then do the less fun things that need to be done. Like the dishes. And the weeds. The weeds make me sad- they're so fast growing that I might have to spray them to keep on top of them. :(

~

I have started reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. It's good so far, but not mind-blowing. I had been reading a Doctor Who novel that my sister had lent me- a 7th and Ace one called Matrix which was oddness. Odd as in, for most of the book the Doctor isn't anywhere and Ace is trying to fend for herself in 19th century London.

~

I have seen all of Avatar: tLA. It didn't feel as long as the other seasons, but maybe that's because I ultra-marathoned it over the weekend. Or because it has a 2-parter and a 4-parter in there.

( Spoilers for book 3 )

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have a thing for emo boys. I do very much heart Zuko.

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Belated birthday present?

2011-11-05T07:17:09Z

Lupa had a birthday last week and asked to have her birthday post reposted as a birthday present. She's a Pagan author, an artist who uses dead-animal-parts in her artwork, and has recently completed a Masters in Psychology.

Lupa at Livejournal

Lupa at Dreamwidth

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Several things make a post

2011-10-08T03:54:22Z

I have been half writing posts and then not posting them because they're not finished and then not posting them. I need to stop the procrastination thing.

I started a new game of Kingdom Hearts 2 yesterday. And the whole thing with Kairi still massively bugs me- personality wise, you'd think she'd be kicking bug ass, keyblade or no, but in the first game she exists mainly to motivate the (male) main character, and in the second.. safe at 'home' until the plot decides it wants her for some reason. I like her a lot- when she's around. In cut scenes.

I saw the movie 'The Last Airbender' because I wanted to see how horrendous it actually is, and... you know, after having seen the first season of the series, even the things that the movie should have done well weren't impressive- Aang's airbending feels so much more powerful when you can see the wind he's generating, and when he can casually glide around following everyone else. I get the feeling that the director was too enamoured of the series to do a good job of adapting it- and blind to what others saw in it as well, ie racebending. I think he was trying to fit in as many of the nuances of the series as he could, and there was just too much.

We finally got a washing machine a few days ago, and I've put a load through it, but sadly, most of my clothes came back dirtier than they went in. I will have to rewash them. I got a multifunction printer (yay!) and new shoes as well, but I got grass stains on the new shoes by weeding the backyard. Next time I get shoes I hope I remember how good I am at dirtyfying everything.

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Things that are amusing

2011-09-26T04:51:45Z

That some of the write-ins on Good Game: SP say that if they don't get help they'll turn into a n00b (or a n000000000000b)

That I've seen enough of Good Game: SP to know that.

That this unit has sort of become the ABC3* unit, and it's mostly my fault. Mostly as in, my sister mostly hasn't objected to it so far.

*It's kind of the kiddy channel. But it had the Iron Man cartoon on, I couldn't help it!

~

I've been asked to do an interview for a business admin traineeship. My current thoughts on that are- if there's money, I'd like it if they want me, if there's not... I'm less sure. I've done admin as a volunteer; I don't know whether it would be worth giving up the conservation and land management for it. Even for job prospects, if the market is that competitive, though I guess I won't pass the interview if they didn't think I could work in the industry.

~

I'm currently on school holidays. And waiting for us to get some furniture delivered. We're getting a futon couch and a kitchen table with chairs, as well as each of us getting a bookshelf and me getting a set of drawers.

~

I have been writing, sort of. I've been editing Chained and being not-entirely-happy at it because it- you know. It's not as good as I think it should be. It's not even finished- I planned to edit through to where I was up to, but now I think it starts too quickly and this other bit could be better, and all.

Short stories are so much easier than all of that.

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Weed spraying

2011-09-21T09:49:02Z

This morning, we sprayed weeds. I was much happier with the experience after it was done- some of the equiptment I'd borrowed didn't fit well. Including the rubber boots, which were way too big. I chose to wear the white protective overalls thing, and ended up looking like a Doctor Who villain.

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Fine, so the DPI says its called a Black Seeded Samphire, but it still Tecticornia pergranulata

2011-09-21T09:40:04Z

Yesterday everyone who was at class was asked to take some seeds home to soak for a experimental planting at Limeburners' bay, at the boardwalk site. We have five or six different species of saltmarsh plants, and I got a Tecticornia species, either grey or blackseed glasswort.

The saltmarsh plants grow slowly and take years to recover areas that have been compacted by having people walking on them or riding bikes on them. The seeds of these plants need the area to be flooded before they germinate naturally, so we were asked to soak them and change the water a couple of times (or put them in a stocking in the top of the toilet, which I did because I have a pair of ankle ones), and then we put a couple of buckets of water on the areas we were going to plant in, after having raked them up to give the seeds more space to germinate in.

Having the seeds felt a bit like having flecks of gold- I didn't want to lose a single one, because any seed I lost could be one of the seeds that would germinate. And the seeds are tiny, about the size of poppy seeds.

So yeah, today maybe we helped accelerate the spread of the saltmarsh plants into these compacted areas. A good few hours' work.

*I like the name samphire, even if we haven't used it in class much. It's like a cross between the words sapphire and vampire. But not a sapphire vampire. That would just be weird.

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Writing

2011-09-15T12:36:28Z

I haven't really been writing lately, but I've been nudging things. The superhero virus novel decided to tell me how it wanted to start this morning, I've been thinking about if/how I'd play with the plant kingdom in Lunaris, and maybe write a short story about a plant mage there, and also looking back through the catalog of short story ideas I have and giving them a nudge. And before that I was doing some sketches for a webcomic idea... yeah. I should be going back and fixing Chained or Serpent Queen, but I haven't quite settled into a routine of waking up early to write yet- we only have vertical blinds, and it's cold. A friend suggested getting material blinds, and I really want to but it would depend on the vertical blinds' bars being able to take the weight.

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By the time I move houses, I'm going to need a truck to move all my plants...

2011-09-15T12:02:19Z

I came home from class today with two chocolate lilly seedlings from a planting we were doing today, and a punnet of beetroot seedlings from the supermarket (and stuff for pizza*- the power of beetroot did not compel me enough to go there only for seedlings). I planted out all the seedlings, and now I have thirty six seedlings all in their own little pots. (I got a heap of pots off one of my classmates, and I am so glad I got so many little square ones now). The chocolate lillies are pretty cool- they're indigenous, and edible- they have edible tubers. And the flowers smell like chocolate (apparently- I couldn't smell much from the ones at the bush food garden at Whittington last monday)

So now I have; the chocolate lillies and the beetroot, one each of ruby saltbush, nodding saltbush, berry saltbush, murnong/ yam daisy (all indigenous, the yam daisy also has edible tubers); round carrot seedlings, mint, the mint-baby lavender, red lettuce that's looking a bit manky and cos lettuce and two pots of red russian kale (I had no idea what it was apart from 'mystery brassica' until I brought a leaf into horticulture last friday). And some pumpkin seeds and some cucumber seeds and other things that were potted last friday, and the friday before. And I think there was a bell pepper seedling or two somewhere.

And the garlic, and the pea-straw peas. Seventeen. Assuming I haven't forgotten anything.

No wonder I'm starting to feel slightly overwhelmed with the plant thing. The natives will pretty much look after themselves (I have seen nodding saltbush growing through blanketweed- the little plants are tough), but I worry about whether I'm watering the veggies enough or too much or not enough- I think I've killed some of the garlic with overwatering, and some of the carrots were looking really droopy. On the other hand, the kale and the lettuces were watered really sporadically, and they're mostly really good.

Also, I had cauliflower on pizza. It wasn't bad.

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Finally! Internet in my own home!

2011-09-13T09:04:38Z

I just hope I haven't sold my soul to Dodo for the privledge, though. They wanted my home address but didn't offer up a privacy policy with it. But the joys of Centrelink wait for no person.

My bedroom has gone from 'mountain of boxes' to 'yay, one bookcase' to 'zomg, second bookcase and desk shelves'. I moved my bed from being straight across the middle of the room to along the wall nearest to the living area. We have a living area connected to the kitchen, it's cool to be able to talk to someone else while they're in the kitchen and you're watching tv... or vice versa. Just as long as I'm not saying bad things about the characters on Home and Away while my sister is watching it. That would be bad.

We have this system where, my sister mostly cooks and I do the dishes. Because she likes cooking and I like doing the dishes, and dishes for two people over one day aren't that bad to do at once.

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I have a new address!

2011-09-10T06:39:30Z

I moved out of home last friday.

We're kind of living with half of what a normal household has, and we're getting by easily. The only problem is food, pretty much. and so many little things, like that had my sister not reminded me to take the mince out of the freezer yesterday afternoon, we would not have been able to have spaghetti for dinner. We had a can opener saga which would have been averted if I'd gone to Corio Village after class and bought one instead of going to a classmate's house to get some of her old pots. I had no preventative medication for a couple of days (but I dropped off at the doctors' office after class, and got the doctor to bandage up the blister on my heel), and discovered the hard way that my sister's workboots are far too big for me, and too big boots are bad news in the heathland in Anglesea (low shrubby plants tripping hazard + uneven, low visibility ground ground tripping hazard + clown boots = not good. Also see above, re blister). (man, I'm lame.)

And just, much running around. But it's slowly getting all sorted.

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mirrorred_star @ 2011-08-29T13:43:00

2011-08-29T03:46:58Z

Moonvoice is doing a survey on news media and is looking for ~~victims~~ volunteers of the 18 or over persuasion.

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Moving stuff

2011-08-28T05:57:57Z

Moving day has been moved to tuesday because my sister applied for bond assistance and that hasn't come through yet. We are still in need of a fridge.

Nearly every book I own is in boxes, and all of my dvds are too. I own an awful lot of books.

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mirrorred_star @ 2011-08-22T10:20:00

2011-08-22T01:25:00Z

Damn. I'm like most of the way better from how I was yesterday from this flu-like illness- I didn't take any paracetalmol yesterday, and I was rather creaky from the low-level everywhere ache, whereas today, I'm feeling really good. Except for the part where breakfast was just not appealing. And the reduced lung capacity thing. It's less terrifying than it sounds, but it's still not in the realms of good.

I recorded an episode of Castle last night, and mostly because Castle dressed up as Captain Reynolds for Halloween. And was told off by his daughter because 'there aren't any space cowboys, and didn't you wear that five years ago?'. Win.

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Mentha spicata, family Lamiaceae, common name Spearmint

2011-08-17T08:03:15Z

I scored five spearmint plants today, and one of them has a baby lavender. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them...

Indoor classwork day today, some of which was catchup and some of which was rather boring, but involved tangents on the hypocracy in animal welfare being only concerned with hurting vertabrates and not caring about invertebrates, and then that plants react when you cut them too...

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Life, and link soup

2011-08-15T09:01:59Z

This morning we got to ~~order around~~ plant trees with some school kids. I was a bit worried about it on the weekend, but the kids were well behaved and amusing (and very chatty- I think they were divided up into groups of ffriends

My sister came over again last night. She's been here all day and is feeling sick right now. And maybe has the flu.

Found on the net-

Duck Duck Go A search engine that doesn't save your data or railroad your search results towards sites you are more likely to ideologically agree with

Harry Potter and the... what? Some dude watched the last movie without having watched the others or read any of the books and came up with... something

Canine Amaterasu cosplay

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Stupid thistle bit me!

2011-08-02T07:08:05Z

Yesterday I was weeding with my gloves because I wanted to pull out the thistles that have started to grow in the garden. Because they're not good to touch or anything. And one of them bit me through my glove. I wasn't happy. And I shouted a more profane version of the post title at it. But I was going to kill it, so I guess all's fair in biology and war.

There were also some mushrooms behind a huge patch of weedy grass. They will probably die once the grass has been pulled out, though :(

~

Total wordcount for JulNoWriMoThingie stands at 39k plus some. I skipped about five days and didn't hit word count on a handful more. I think I could keep up that pace most of the time if I could figure out how to turn off the part of my brain that zones out/ goes on tangents every so often- first couple of days were pretty good for both wordcount and time because I was just focused on getting words out, after then it would take 3 or 4 hours to do around 2000 words, and while I could make that time while going out and doing other things, I wouldn't have enough time to be doing anything else.

Next up for Chained will probably be research and doing up character sheets for all the main characters. And it wants a soundtrack. As in 'oooh, this song really fits the story thematically, and so does this one, and this one fits with those and was associated with a scene in the old draft...'

~

I'm gong to have a massive bruise on my thigh tomorrow from climbing over a gate today (it was locked and our teacher didn't have the key) and not getting my leg high enough over the fence to not hurt myself.

I took some pretty pictures of the saltmarsh and the plants.

Also, I am not dreadfully tired. It is a miracle!

~

My birthday's in about a week, and I'm still figuring out what I want to do. Apart from being a bit epic, in the 'stuff I can make happen with a couple of days of work'. I have some ideas.

~

Here, have some dalek-related amusement- the dalek game

And this is just plain amusing, even though I've never played Portal Warning- Cracked article

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Ponyo! Ponyo!

2011-07-24T04:21:12Z

I had the house to myself last night, so I did what any self-respecting adult would do- watch cartoons! I finally watched Ponyo- ZOMG cute! And how many movies are there where the main character is five and acts five. And it is so damn refreshing to be watching a movie without implicit labels of 'good' and 'bad' to the actions of characters or the characters themselves, that Ponyo's father wants her back because he's worried about her, that Souske's mum can be peeved at her spouse because he's taken an extra shift at work and isn't home much.

Also, after dinner I may have watched ABC3 for an hour or so. There was a program called Deadliest 60 where the crew went around trying to find particular creatures- not necessarily deadly to humans, unless I am seriously missing information about tuna and giant cuttlefish- but the crew had a camera on the crew, which made the whole show feel more informal, and gave them the leeway to film the kangaroo that came to check them out and the trapdoor spider (and the director 'look, a platypus!' and it turned out to be a duck) while they were looking to film a platypus for the show.

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What I've been doing this week

2011-07-22T07:05:59Z

I have been busy lately. Like, actually getting out of the house and doing things. The term has started back, so Tuesday I was back out to photo editing. Wednesday I tagged along with a cert 2 conservation group to Limeburners' Bay, took heaps of photos, and accompanied the group back to the classroom. Thursday I thought was going to be Horticulture, but the class actually starts back up next week. So I took some photos of where Rosewall Primary school used to be, and walked back. And I've still mostly gotten my writing done around that.

I got asked if I wanted to actually do the cert 2, and I am seriously thinking about it. It started off that I'd been asked if I would enjoy it and I thought it sounded interesting but I wasn't sure, so I went to check it out. And Limeburners' is cool. It's actually not far from where I live, and it's so unusual. It's a salt marsh, I think, and it used to be a lagoon before they dredged some of it so they could build a yacht club there. And it's... very much the opposite of what we still think of as a beautiful landscape- the natives plants are more often brown or red or gold or silvery than green, and the landscape is flat and smells of salt from the sea, and the area where the mangroves grew smelled like sulphur, but when you are actually there, it is a beautiful place. We carry so much of the mythical European ideal landscape of greenery as far as the eye can see with us that we can't see how beautiful the landscape before us actually is until we go and look with our eyes and not our cultural baggage.

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Not dead

2011-07-14T07:41:25Z

I haven't been on for a looong time. I think it was a combination of playing Okami again, dad's computer playing up and mum's restarting itself randomly every so often, and getting head-deep in rewriting Chained in NaNoWriMo style. (I'm on 20k. It's cool, but I'm edging onto problems where my style doesn't mesh with the 'all wordcount, all the time' style of nano. I'm holding off editing until I either win or hit failure point, just to kind of prove to myself that I can do nano. Or die trying.).

Links, for personal reference, but if you guys think they look interesting...

haikujaguar- the three Micahs (on art/creative business)- why a day job is good

Walking on Broken Glass webcomic- first page Nicked from Lupa

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Of the things

2011-06-05T01:24:51Z

Yesterday I was helping build a food forest at a primary school. It's like a veggie garden, except there's fruit trees and herbs and veggies as well. And the second I got home, I had a long hot shower because my muscles were Not Happy. My muscles are still a tad whiney today, but not as much as last night. And it's different muscles doing the complaining.

~

I could go see X-men: Origins with the Continuum crew, which will almost certainly leave me stuck at a train station somewhere in geelong at 8 o'clock at night, and either hope my parents are home so I can ask for a ride or get a taxi back.

Okay, I just put in for it. We'll see how it goes.

~

Doctor Who: The Almost People- There were parts of this I thought were brilliant, and parts that sucked, and parts that are either internally inconsistent or completely awful. ( Spoilers )

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teevee...

2011-06-03T04:13:20Z

I think that every single person I know who is into specfic likes it for a different reason, and a different reason from me. Sometimes its disconcerting, but really, diversity is awesome.

I have finished season 3 of Torchwood. It was very awesome. ( And contains spoilers for all of season 3. )

Season 4 is going to be interesting. It's possible that they have an entirely new cast. Though they probably are going to have a Jack. Because, dude, Jack.

Doctor Whom- the rebel flesh- I had an almost-emotion connection with what was going on, but it didn't quite work for me. The concept was awesome, but I think they jumped from 'what the heck?' to 'kill them all' too quickly.

I think the next episode will mostly look like a capture the flag paintball fight, without the paintballs. And with a body count.

Sanctuary is... I'm still gettting the hang of it. It seems to do well with balancing arc plots with self contained episodes. For the upside, it has chicks who kick arse, the team alien isn't the non-white-person stand in, and they seem to look at stuff other shows of this type ignore. also, interesting use of CG- there was at least one room that was completely CG, I guess because it was easier to have someone make the CG set and greenscreen the characters than build the set and keep it somewhere.

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mirrorred_star @ 2011-05-28T14:42:00

2011-05-28T05:28:22Z

Lilith Saintcrow makes me feel like I'm not the only scatterbrained person in the universe I've never been that bad, but the closest to that kind of run I've ever been in maybe 4000 words over two days, and not writing all day every day coz the writing's running to the finish. But I am normally fairly scatterbrained.

I've been out most of the day- gardening class first, and then over to the other community centre because they had a festival thing on. Just kind of tired. Need brains. Mmmm, brains.

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