Clarke Award Finalists 2011

Aug. 25th, 2025 12:27 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2011: The VAT is improved by altering it from the hard to remember 17.5% to the more memorable 20%, the government continues efforts to replace the Incapacity Benefit with an alternate program in which applicants have cinderblocks dropped on them from a height and there is absolutely no news involving PM Cameron and a pig.

Poll #33534 Clarke Award Finalists 2011
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10


Which 2011 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
3 (30.0%)

Declare by Tim Powers
7 (70.0%)

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
0 (0.0%)

Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
0 (0.0%)

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
1 (10.0%)

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
4 (40.0%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2011 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Declare by Tim Powers

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

(no subject)

Aug. 25th, 2025 06:03 am
ravena_kade: (Default)
[personal profile] ravena_kade
2 beaches in 2 days. That's what I like to do in August.

Friday I took my half a day and headed to Revere beach. I didn't get to look for sea shells as the tide was just at high tide and the waver looked murderous. I did still walk the beach and got my feet wet. It relaxes me to walk the surf line, but U was carful as I could feel the receding water try to pull me down. I did come home with 2 interesting shells, but no deep sea scallop shells.

Saturday I hopped on a train and met up with Malterre and FBHJR and headed to their favorite beach in New Bedford . It was lovely. A bay protected by a bay, protected by a bay so the off shore hurricane wasn't an issue here (Sadly a teen lost his life to a rip tide closer to the northern beaches I usually go to). It was so nice to go in the water proper, I dont go in too far when I am alone. At one point I was just kneeling in the water with Malterre and we were surrounded by tiny silver fish. I love that =)

Yesterday was an unsuccessful chore day. I have lost to do around a bird 2 family house, but sloth won out.

Today I have off. I was just supposed to putter around the house, but the other day I dropped something off at DQ's apartment and found out thither brother is living on her sofa because he is in agony (apparently prostate issues can be so bad they block the ability to urinate and that causes pain, and they send you home with a catheter that is a rod going through your privates and that causes severe pain... oh my.

That and her roommate is refusing to go to the hospital and she is in great pain, but is also refusing pain meds and such.. because she wants to die, but... some pain isn't the type that kills you. She has a bubble on her heart and knows that she could die any minute... so that's her reasoning. She has this history. She broke her hip at Thanksgiving one year and refused to go to the hospital until New Years Eve. Stupid. Yes.
I also find it selfish as her roommate, DQ, is 83 years old and can't deal with this. Not sure how much I can do, but maybe I can get her to think about medical help.

Weird...or selfish of me...not sure, but I am keenly aware that the people that are my direct contacts so to speak are all rather close to passing... and part of me will be sad and part of me will be free to reinvent me.

Checking In - 24 August 2025

Aug. 24th, 2025 08:21 pm
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
[personal profile] dewline
Mostly a quiet weekend but for visitations.

Tomorrow the job search resumes.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A diverting assortment of spooky stories selected by an editor about whom I could discover almost nothing.

Stories of Suspense by Mary E. MacEwen

Untitled for Three Jigakkyu [music]

Aug. 24th, 2025 07:02 am
siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
Yall, the bowed musical instruments have finally made it to the electronica party. This is the coolest damn thing. Audio required, video also extremely worth it if accessible. 3 min 17 sec.

2025 Aug 11: Open Reel Ensemble: "Tape Bowing Ensemble - Open Reel Ensemble":
磁気テープを竹に張って演奏する民族楽器「磁楽弓(じがっきゅう)」三重奏による調べです

This is a trio performance on the “JIGAKKYU,” a traditional folk instrument made by stretching magnetic tape across bamboo.


ETA: I want to state for the record, contrary to what a lot of commenters on YT are saying, it is not that what is cool here is just how wackily innovative it is to use a reel-to-reel this way. The only reason this is going viral is because of how musically good it is; nobody would care about it otherwise, and I submit for evidence the half century plus of prior art of abusing reel-to-reel recorders in the name of music-making you have probably never heard of, because a lot of it wasn't very compelling as music so nobody ever brought it to your attention. What's most shocking here is how musical it is, and how they use the innovation to do something new in music recognizable as such. It isn't good because it's innovative; it's innovative because it's good.

As far as I am concerned, the great problem for electronic music has always been what I think of as the Piano Problem: the music is made by operating a machine, so there's a machine between the performer and the music. Great pianists master operating the machine so beautifully they make the machine disappear. But this is what makes piano playing hard. So much of what we love in music is its organicness, the aspects of it which are so beautifully expressive because of how intimately the performer's body interacts with the instrument.

Heretofore, the only ways to bring that kind of sound to electronic instruments were to use breath controlled midi controllers (electronic woodwinds), use an electromagnetic interface (e.g. theremin), or get really fantastic on keys. Or give up and embrace the mechanical nature of the instrument and use it for repertoire the excellence of which does not rest in expressiveness (q.v. Wendy Carlos' Bach recordings).

This instrument conclusively brings the organicness of bowing and all its delicate expressiveness to electronica. The result is simply gorgeous and I hope this creative vein is further mined.

Reading not-Wednesday 23/8

Aug. 23rd, 2025 03:24 pm
liv: Bookshelf labelled: Caution. Hungry bookworm (bookies)
[personal profile] liv
One advantage of my unexpected free month was that I started reading books again. Not a lot but 6 complete novels and a longfic in 6 weeks, which is more than I have for years. Let me catch up with some brief reviews:

Since term properly, properly finished on 6 July, I have read:

  • Circe by Madeline Miller 2018, Pub 2018 Bloomsbury, ISBN 9781526612519
  • Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (c) Nikesh Shukla 2010, Pub 2010 Quartet, ISBN 978-0-7043-7204-7
  • Will Super Villains be on the final? by Naomi Novik, illustrated by Yishan Li (c) Temeraire LLC 2011, Pub 2011 Del Rey, ISBN 978-0-345-51656-5
  • Some desperate glory by Emily Tesh (c) Emily Tesh 2023, Pub 2023 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-51718-6
  • Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (c) Ann Leckie 2015, Pub 2015 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7
  • A free man of color by Barbara Hambly (c) Barbara Hambly 1997, Pub 1998 Bantam, ISBN 0-553-57526-0
  • I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! by Lanna Michaels, 2025


Circe )

Coconut Unlimited )

Will Super Villains be on the final? )

Some desperate glory )

Ancillary Mercy )

A Free Man of Color )

I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! )
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Poll #33520 Books Received, August 15 — August 22
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

The Last Woman on Earth by Bex Benjamin (September 2025)
12 (29.3%)

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole (January 2024)
13 (31.7%)

Guilt by Keigo Higashino (April 2026)
7 (17.1%)

Green and Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (March 2026)
15 (36.6%)

The River She Became by Emily Varga (June 2026)
12 (29.3%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.4%)

Cats!
31 (75.6%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Five books new to me: three fantasy, one mystery, and one science fiction. Two are series, and the other three may be stand-alone.

Books Received, August 15 — August 22

Washer's busted

Aug. 23rd, 2025 09:10 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
The money comes in and then it falls back out again.

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


Read more... )

Positive Bits

Aug. 21st, 2025 06:38 pm
ravena_kade: (Default)
[personal profile] ravena_kade
August is turning cool...and I am okay with that. Toss a blanket on the bed and get cozy. It's the beginning of soup weather. Yummy. It's also baking weather. I dont bake a lot for just me and Dad, but this year I think I will try more things and bring them to the coworkers. Yay for having coworkers I like.

Tomorrow I have a half a day and I took Monday off. I was going to cancel because of the crap with the boss, but being in won't change things. Month End and Audit is done so I should just breath. Tomorrow after work I am going to head to Revere Beach to walk the surf line Hoping the offshore hurricane tosses some nice shells on the beach.

Saturday I head to a new beach with Friends...Thank You Friends =) I haven't really had much beach time this summer. Looking forward to Friend Time.

Sunday is a no relative time.

(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 11:27 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly


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


Read more... )

Project Farcry by Pauline Ashwell

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:28 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Dr. Jordan's weird kid Richard is the key to unlocking first contact... and much more.


Project Farcry by Pauline Ashwell

Phone, again [me, tech]

Aug. 21st, 2025 05:10 am
siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
Whelp, it looks like I'm in the market for a cell phone again.

On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.

Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.

Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.

So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.

It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.

Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.

(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)

Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.

Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.

So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.

I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.

Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.

Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)

Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.

So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.

It was the wrong battery.

Hwaet! The saga continues... )

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