Reading

Current Mood: scared
Current Music: nothing now

Phobic.

Visiting my parents' building is always a gamble, and it's both rare and memorable when I lose. Specifically, when I have to deal with a dog. More specifically, when a dog needs to be held back from attacking me. Once about a week ago, down the hallway, and today. The encounter that happened about a week ago took place when I was climbing up the stairs and got to a floor where someone had their dog on a leash, waiting for the elevator to take them down, and without any provocation, just from seeing me climbing the stairs, their dog starts barking at me. Clearly at me, needing to be held back, its owner holding the leash to keep it from coming in my direction. Why it did that, I don't know. It wasn't a very large dog, but the bark was angry enough I was worried about its teeth.

This afternoon, I got on the elevator, and as it descended, it picked up a dog, who came at me but got pulled away when the owner saw my body language - stiff, pulling inward, steadfastly looking away. Then a couple floors below that, it picked up another dog, and I behaved the same way, shifting my legs when it came close to my bare skin, and it begins barking. Loud, angry. I keep looking away and it keeps barking, getting violent enough its owner picks it up to hold it and make sure it doesn't do anything.

Someone on the fourth floor called the elevator. I leave and head down the hall, and look back to see see that they were waiting for the next one, too.

Current Mood: a little bit genghis khan
Current Music: I don't want you to get it on with nobody else but me

Entry tags:

Small joy and a rec

Less exciting by a long shot than yesterday's Huntington treatment news, but I was feeling extremely icky today and then Genghis Khan by Miike Snow came on in the café where I stopped for lunch, and it made me chair dance.

I didn't link the official video. I linked a shot-for-shot remake from Phineas and Ferb, a tv show about which I know approximately nothing not found in the vid. And I ship it anyway.

Current Mood: oh humans yay
Current Music: You gotta have heart and music

Entry tags:

science

Science: Treatment developed for Huntington's Disease

BBC article.

Bring tissues if you, like me, are susceptible to Really Good News.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Big Machine - The Goo Goo Dolls

Waiting for you.

The first day of fall. Rosh Hashanah beginning a new year. And giving blood, too. It took me just over six minutes, which isn't bad except for how I know I can do better than that. I'll keep hydrating and hitting the treadmill.

I'm also going to leave the bandage on until bedtime, as usual. It's yellow, so I feel like I should pick a dress for tonight's dinner that'll really make it pop.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: You'd better watch out

Entry tags:

yuletide

Yuletide nominations

I have made my nominations:
Slow Horses (TV)
The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Galavant (TV)
Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
InCryptid - Seanan McGuire

The nomination coordination spreadsheet is here if you want to see what other people who know the spreadsheet exists have nominated.

Entry tags:

questions

Question thread #144

It's past time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Current Mood: sorry wrong icon
Current Music: It's the bloody Surprise!

Entry tags:

holidays

Give you joy of the day

I can't celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day without remembering the time Talk Like Stephen Maturin Day was proposed as an alternative on Making Light, which was probably the best thing to ever happen to that website.

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: Mr Jones - Counting Crows

Strolling through.

The highlight of the day was sending out a pair of novel queries, the first in a while. Beyond that, not much. I got the flu and TDAP boosters yesterday, so my arm's sore enough I didn't want to move it a whole lot, certainly not for weightlifting, so all it was in the gym was the treadmill.

I also found out why I hadn't been informed of certain family developments: they're all on the family group chat. However, everyone else is using the iPhone's proprietary message system. Last week I turned that off to just get text messages, thinking that might help with coordinating movie theater seats - if an iPhone message wouldn't get sent, maybe a text would. Then the other people arrived and I didn't think about it for several days, until my dad gave me a call the other day about recent ongoing developments. I tried turning that feature back on, but it didn't bring in the backlog of things that'd been shared, so I'm still at a loss for how things are going. I'm also really tempted to turn it back off, just to see what happens. Except given how my phone's already largely incapable of getting internet-based message services, there's not much of a difference to be made.

Entry tags:

dark souls,
games

"If you like Dark Souls, it's hard to shut up about Dark Souls"

For anyone who may be Dark Souls-curious, here is a very long video essay of which I've only watched part (because I'm trying to limit spoilers) and of which I mainly want to rec part -- the first 30 mins or so, where the essayist discusses something that the mythology about the game’s supposed uber-difficulty tends to obscure, namely the gorgeous, generous array of different tools and options that it gives you for engaging with its difficulties, and how it tries to teach you to use them:

Watch on YouTube

I think this is some of the stuff that prompted me to declaim “Dark Souls loves me and wants me to be happy.”

The game is difficult, it is intended to be difficult (and I still don't know if, for me, it will at some point be insuperably difficult), and progressing and learning through difficulty and failure is the core gameplay loop. As mentioned, it took me a total of seven hours to beat the most recent boss, the Capra Demon. I am currently camped out in the Depths, where I intermittently fall through holes and get cursed by basilisks. I recently got invaded for the first time, by a player who watched as I ran directly under a slime and got enveloped, facepalmed*, and then waited politely while I extricated myself before murdering me**.

And yet my major feeling at this particular moment is of being spoiled (in the pampered sense, not the knowledge sense): I have too many good weapons to try (my beloved halberd, now upgraded to +7, a Balder Side Sword -- a rare and coveted drop -- and a Black Knight Sword)! I'm having to actively try not to over-level! I have so many upgrade materials! I have the world's largest stockpile of charcoal pine resin (purchased on my endless boss runs back to the Capra Demon, so I'd spend any souls I was carrying and not distract myself with losing or trying to retrieve them) so I can make my weapons burst into flame any time I want! I have opened the latest incredibly-convenient shortcut! There's a handy new merchant just before the next boss! I am holding an armful of presents and Dark Souls keeps trying to pile more on top!

{*I went off immediately afterwards to Google "dark souls how to facepalm”, but it looks like you have to join the Forest Hunter covenant to learn that emote and I have other plans. Still tempted, though.}

{**I had expected to loathe being invaded — and had initially planned to play offline mainly to avoid that, but did not for reasons which need to be a different post — but in the event, it was brief, non-inconveniencing, and actually pretty funny.}

Current Mood: yearning
Current Music: Besides, no matter what one might infer, one must have faith to some degree

Entry tags:

Don't ask a question you don't want answered - Star Wars triple drabble

Don't ask a question you don't want answered (300 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Mutual Pining
Summary:

Padmé asks Anakin a question and gets a surprising answer.

Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: nothing now

p=m/V.

I'm looking my vanity right in the eye when I say, "I want to fit into smaller dresses." That's it. That's the desire and motivation. Smaller dresses. I don't much care about the scale - while somewhat ego-stroking, it doesn't matter nearly as much. Volume, density, and mass. If I dropped a dress size by weightlifting, decreasing volume and increasing density, the mass is the same.

One of my clients has, some time ago, begun taking an injected antidiabetic medication, presumably for diabetes. I haven't asked and don't plan to. Mostly I noticed that when she needed to move a potted plant that felt like it weighted twenty to thirty pounds at most, she had a hard time lifting it, while I didn't have any trouble. While it's true she doesn't lift weights as much as I do, I can't help but think about how much I like that form of exercise for its direct benefits of being able to pick something up, move it, and put it down without issue, and how that's something I'm unwilling to mess with. There's healthy and there's skinny. There's also vanity, which I'm admitting to - without wanting to sacrifice health to get there. My relationship to gravity is secondary to my relationship to my closet and being able to readily find good pants at thrift stores.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Live That Way Forever - Richard Reed Parry

A riot at the end of a game.

I've now finished the second season of Friday Night Lights and I'm both eager to begin on the next and pleased I waited a while to come around to watching it - I wouldn't have enjoyed or appreciated it nearly as much if I'd tried it another time, not even all that long ago. It's something helpful and satisfying for where I am now, for so many reasons. The large scale news, the small scale news, the personal family concerns.

I keep watching it and looking at it, and I keep thinking that there's a wonderful sense of precise geography. It's true there's not much in the way of wildlife, and I can't feel the climate through my computer screen, and there's still a lot of one small corner of Texas to be seen. I've seen faceless image collections and gifsets pass through Tumblr, and I know there were faceless icon challenges back in the day, and watching this show makes me think there's probably enough footage for a faceless vid. Something with the fields and the clouds and the stadium lights, the oil wells and the horizon lines. Something with all the players on the fields and the massive crowds in the stands without any one person carrying the focus. I'm sure I've seen such vids around, maybe at a con's vidshow, but I can't remember anything specific, and it's not the most precise keyword to use to search.

I'm still going to think about it, though. And because I listened to the soundtrack recently, and because the song fits the human melodrama of the show as well, it'll probably be to Live That Way Forever for a good while.