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January 1st, 2011
12:21 am - Winter War Index
Index of Winter War posts.
( Below the cut. )
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February 10th, 2010
01:09 am - irked
It is never fun to have to look forward to a filling at the dentist tomorrow.
Also got a new piece of work regarding updating some data by a particular system. Am partly to blame because I had a work package (I hate that term) to train other members of the team in said system last year and it didn't happen. Do not feel I am totally responsible for it not happening, as there were tech issues, but cannot entirely complain now that I am the only person currently capable of using said system and am therefore having to use it.
Am also irritated because I need to do some work on some particular data, which was supposed to get to me this week, and I have now been told that I'll be lucky if I get the data on Thursday, that Friday is more likely, and that not at all this week is entirely possible.
Oh well, I have next week booked off, and it's on record, and they have been informed, so if they don't get me the data in time, it is Not My Fault.
Bah.
(Also finding current crop of false Bleach spoilers to be somewhat irritating.)
(Still, reading the latest chapter of FMA has just improved my mood.)
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It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him. -- Abraham Lincoln
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February 9th, 2010
12:43 am - coffee helps
I need new glasses.
Bah.
This does not come as a total surprise, since I tend to need a new pair every two or three years, and my last new pair was in 2008, and I should be grateful that the modern state of technology allows me to have glasses and thus fairly normal vision rather than being very short-sighted, and my budget can stand it, but all the same. Bah.
Other than that, work not too bad today, weather gloomy, snow forecast (though hardly American snowpocalypse), life continues, coffee helps.
---
this is the garden: colours come and go
this is the garden: colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
-- e.e. cummings
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February 8th, 2010
03:05 am - staggering forward
Back to work tomorrow.
Consoling myself with the thought that I have the week after next (that is, the week starting the 15th) off. Alas, I have an eye appointment (Monday) and a filling at the dentist (Thursday, I think -- must check) before that happens. Through the bitter waters to reach the sweet, etc.
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The Streets of Laredo
O early one morning I walked out like Agag,
Early one morning to walk through the fire
Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements
Wih tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire;
When grimed to the eyebrows I met an old fireman
Who looked at me wryly and thus did he say:
"The streets of Laredo are closed to all traffic,
We won't never master this joker today.
O hold the branch tightly and wield the axe brightly,
The bank is in powder, the banker's in hell,
But loot is still free on the streets of Laredo
And when we drive home we drive home on the bell."
Then out from a doorway there sidled a cockney,
A rocking-chair rocking on top of his head:
"O fifty-five years I been feathering my love-nest,
And look at it now -- why, you'd sooner be dead."
At which there arose from a wound in the asphalt,
His big wig a-smoulder, Sir Christopher Wren
Saying: "Let them make hay of the streets of Laredo;
When your ground-rent expire I will build them again."
Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrils
From Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:
"Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;
Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake."
"I come to Laredo to find me asylum,"
Says Tom Dick and Harry the Wandering Jew;
"They tell me report at the first police station
But the station is pancaked -- so what can I do?"
Thus eavesdropping sadly I strolled through Laredo
Perplexed by the dicta misfortunes inspire
Till one low last whisper inveigled my earhole --
The voice of the Angel, the voice of the fire:
O late, very late, have I come to Laredo
A whimsical bride in my new scarlet dress
But at last I took pity on those who were waiting
To see my regalia and feel my caress.
Now ring the bells gaily and play the hose daily,
Put splints on your legs, put a gag on your breath;
O you streets of Laredo, you streets of Laredo,
Lay down the red carpet -- My dowry is death.
-- Louis MacNeice
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February 7th, 2010
11:59 pm - Winter War: Hinamori, Takano, Ichimaru: Taking The Bait
Title: Hinamori, Takano, Ichimaru: Taking The Bait
Arc: Winter War - an AU co-write with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) liralen and sophiap
Characters: Hinamori, Takano ("Newbie"), Ichimaru
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for language, references to character death
Summary: In which the plan goes into action.
Notes: This is a rather dark AU co-plotted with liralen and sophiap. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Index of Links
[...]
11. Soi Fong: En Garde
12. Gin: On Top
13. Karakura: Waiting
14. Iba: Hurry Up And Wait
15. Isane: Present
16. Nanao: Looking For A Blonde
17. Hanatarou: Underground
18. Lisa: Prisoner's Dilemma
(Note: this section was written by all three of the writers together. While readers do not get any cookies for correct guesses, feel free to guess who wrote which bit anyhow.)
( Hinamori, Takano, Ichimaru: Taking the Bait )
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02:06 am - a reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire
Had a pleasant afternoon in York. Bought some beads and a book, but it was also good to just wander around the town. It's just one of those towns that's pleasant to stroll around.
Finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin. Excellent book, strongly recommended.
Currently, for quite another reason, trying to look up mythological or folklore cases of brother-sister incest resulting in a female child being born. Significant lack of these: sons seem far more common. (I know about Antigone and Ismene, but they don't quite fit the trope here, because I'm looking for a case where the daughter sides with the mother rather than the father.)
I suppose I could look into alchemy and name a character Rebis. (Even if Grant Morrison did sort of get there first in Doom Patrol.)
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The Rolling English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
-- GK Chesterton
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February 6th, 2010
03:14 am - aimless babbling
I think I've just thought of a way to bring The King in Yellow into a future Library story. (For which I at least in part blame the SCP Foundation entry here.)
Excellent.
Of course, first I have to finish the current one. Then I have to write the one involving the cyberpunk alternate, the pseudo-Venetian auction, the Doom Train, and Kai's uncle.
(Why does this have to involve work? No, don't worry, I know the answer to that one. Bah.)
And maybe the one about the villainous boarding school and the book of bad poetry while I'm at it.
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In all my travellings through the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilization: decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core. Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen; they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt!
-- the Doctor, in The Ultimate Foe
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February 5th, 2010
02:06 am - an evening in which not much got done
Over a hundred pages into The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and enjoying it a great deal. Alas, must sleep if I am to be at work tomorrow.
(Work continues. At the moment I am updating a big spreadsheet with a list of proposed changes. This means I am not necessarily feeling very enthusiastic about changes. Ah well.)
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The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
-- The Book of Job: An Introduction, Chesterton
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February 4th, 2010
01:22 am - wishful thinking
I wait with interest to see if events in the latest chapter of Bleach will be followed by Urahara being revealed as the true evil mastermind, currently ensconced in the true Seireitei and about to put his plans into motion.
(At least if Nanao is there, she should finally get some action.)
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Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break.
-- The Codebreakers, David Kahn
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February 3rd, 2010
01:32 am - looking out of the window
First it was grey outside, then it rained, then it snowed (cue much running to the window to look out at it), then it rained again, then it just went grey again.
Fortunately the snow does not appear to be lying.
Some sun would be nice.
I'm trying to remember the details from one Tom Holt novel where it turns out that the weather dragons are cricket fans. Which explains what so often happens to cricket matches in England. Hint: rain is involved.
Have sudden urge to reread Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. Not sure why.
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Cities and Thrones and Powers
Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.
This season's Daffodil,
She never hears
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance,
To be perpetual.
So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"
-- Kipling
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February 2nd, 2010
02:20 am - lampwork
Oh dear. I've just discovered lampwork beads (the sort that are handmade with glassblowing gear), and they are utterly gorgeous. I'm not planning to make any, but I am tempted to buy some.
Fortunately the really good ones are pricy enough to put them out of the range of my affordable temptation for the moment, and the less good ones can be refused, but even so . . . gorgeous.
There is going to be a bead fair of some sort (I haven't got the full title to hand) in York, in about two and a half weeks. Must have a look while I'm there. Must have a look for a lot of things while I'm there, really.
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The Four Guilds: IV: The Bell-Ringers
The angels are singing like birds in a tree
In the organ of good St. Cecily:
And the parson reads with his hand upon
The graven eagle of great St. John:
But never the fluted pipes shall go
Like the fifes of an army all a-row,
Merrily marching down the street
To the marts where the busy and idle meet;
And never the brazen bird shall fly
Out of the window and into the sky,
Till men in cities and shires and ships
Look up at the living Apocalypse.
But all can hark at the dark of even
The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven,
Tolling and telling that over and under,
In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder,
The hunt is up over hills untrod:
For the wind is the way of the dogs of God:
From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den
Hunting the souls of the sons of men.
Ruler and robber and pedlar and peer,
Who will not hearken and yet will hear;
Filling men's heads with the hurry and hum
Making them welcome before they come.
And we poor men stand under the steeple
Drawing the cords that can draw the people,
And in our leash like the leaping dogs
Are God's most deafening demagogues:
And we are but little, like dwarfs underground,
While hang up in heaven the houses of sound,
Moving like mountains that faith sets free,
Yawning like caverns that roar with the sea,
As awfully loaded, as airily buoyed,
Armoured archangels that trample the void:
Wild as with dancing and weighty with dooms,
Heavy as their panoply, light as their plumes.
Neither preacher nor priest are we:
Each man mount to his own degree:
Only remember that just such a cord
Tosses in heaven the trumpet and sword;
Souls on their terraces, saints on their towers,
Rise up in arms at alarum like ours:
Glow like great watchfires that redden the skies
Titans whose wings are a glory of eyes,
Crowned constellations by twelves and by sevens,
Domed dominations more old than the heavens,
Virtues that thunder and thrones that endure
Sway like a bell to the prayers of the poor.
-- GK Chesterton
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February 1st, 2010
01:38 am - looking forward
Feeling better, so back to work tomorrow.
Finished a necklace and a pair of earrings today. Moderately pleased with them: I think they don't look too amateurish.
Two new starters on the team at work tomorrow. Fingers crossed: well, not so much that they'll be reasonable people, but that I'm not expected to spend too much time in briefing them on what our part of the team does. ;)
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For Four Guilds: III. The Stone-Masons
We have graven the mountain of God with hands,
As our hands were graven of God, they say,
Where the seraphs burn in the sun like brands
And the devils carry the rains away;
Making a thrift of the throats of hell,
Our gargoyles gather the roaring rain,
Whose yawn is more than a frozen yell
And their very vomiting not in vain.
Wilder than all that a tongue can utter,
Wiser than all that is told in words,
The wings of stone of the soaring gutter
Fly out and follow the flight of the birds;
The rush and rout of the angel wars
Stand out above the astounded street,
Where we flung our gutters against the stars
For a sign that the first and last shall meet.
We have graven the forest of heaven with hands,
Being great with a mirth too gross for pride,
In the stone that battered him Stephen stands
And Peter himself is petrified:
Such hands as have grubbed in the glebe for bread
Have bidden the blank rock blossom and thrive,
Such hands as have stricken a live man dead
Have struck, and stricken the dead alive.
Fold your hands before heaven in praying,
Lift up your hands into heaven and cry;
But look where our dizziest spires are saying
What the hands of a man did up in the sky:
Drenched before you have heard the thunder,
White before you have felt the snow;
For the giants lift up their hands to wonder
How high the hands of a man may go.
-- GK Chesterton
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January 31st, 2010
01:29 am - nothing but a poem
Feeling somewhat better today.
It was sunny outside.
---
For Four Guilds: The Glass-Stainers
To every Man his Mystery,
A trade and only one:
The masons make the hives of men,
The domes of grey or dun,
But we have wrought in rose and gold
The houses of the sun.
The shipwrights build the houses high,
Whose green foundations sway
Alive with fish like little flames,
When the wind goes out to slay.
But we abide with painted sails
The cyclone of the day.
The weavers make the clothes of men
And coats for everyone;
They walk the streets like sunset clouds;
But we have woven and spun
In scarlet or in golden-green
The gay coats of the sun.
You whom the usurers and the lords
With insolent liveries trod,
Deep in dark church behold, above
Their lance-lengths by a rod,
Where we have blazed the tabard
Of the trumpeter of God.
-- GK Chesterton
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January 30th, 2010
01:39 am - flat, stale and unprofitable
What do you know, I did feel ill today.
So I called in sick and spent most of the day asleep in bed.
(Which is partly why I'm awake now. But I will go to sleep again shortly.)
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January 29th, 2010
01:11 am - shine death and white daylight unchanged to the end
For the last couple of days I've slogged into work despite feeling rather dubious, due to important meetings and high-pressure workload.
There aren't any important meetings tomorrow and if I really felt the need to call in sick, I could.
If I suddenly feel in the pink of health and bouncy as a bunny, I can only say that life is not fair.
Wait. Life isn't fair anyhow. I'd quite forgotten.
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For Four Guilds: The Bridge-Builders
In the world's whitest morning
As hoary with hope,
The Builder of Bridges
Was priest and was pope:
And the mitre of mystery
And the canopy his,
Who darkened the chasms
And domed the abyss.
To eastward and westward
Spread wings at his word
The arch with the key-stone
That stoops like a bird;
That rides the wild air
And the daylight cast under;
The highway of danger,
The gateway of wonder.
Of his throne were the thunders
That rivet and fix
Wild weddings of strangers
That meet and not mix;
The town and the cornland;
The bride and the groom:
In the breaking of bridges
Is treason and doom.
But he bade us, who fashion
The road that can fly,
That we build not too heavy
And build not too high:
Seeing always that under
The dark arch's bend
Shine death and white daylight
Unchanged to the end.
Who walk on his mercy
Walk light, as he saith,
Seeing that our life
Is a bridge above death;
And the world and its gardens
And hills, as ye heard,
Are born above space
On the wings of a bird.
Not high and not heavy
Is building of his:
When ye seal up the flood
And forget the abyss,
When your towers are uplifted,
Your banners unfurled,
In the breaking of bridges
Is the end of the world.
-- GK Chesterton
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January 28th, 2010
12:18 am - and so the world goes round
Looks as if we're going to have to revise a chunk of coding structure (this is medical coding, not computer coding) which is then going to result in a large chunk of cross-mapping needing to be redone.
Given that there is no realistic way to avoid this, I am trying to view it in a vigorous and healthy manner, and pointing out to myself that since the coding structure in question will be revised to be sensible and efficient, the resulting cross-maps will be, if not quite a pleasure, then at least devoid of too many knotty problems.
Well, I do mostly think this. It's just a little bit of my head that's throwing up its hands and doing a flamenco dance on the bones of the people who arranged the previous chunk of coding structure that now needs revision. With extra heels.
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The Road to Roundabout
Some say that Guy of Warwick
The man that killed the Cow,
And brake the mighty Boar alive
Beyond the bridge at Slough;
Went up against a Loathly Worm
That wasted all the Downs,
And so the roads they twist and squirm
(If I may be allowed the term)
From the writhing of the stricken Worm
That died in seven towns.
I see no scientific proof
That this idea is sound,
And I should say they wound about
To find the town of Roundabout,
The merry town of Roundabout,
That makes the world go round.
Some say that Robin Goodfellow,
Whose lantern lights the meads
(To steal a phrase Sir Walter Scott
In heaven no longer needs),
Such dance around the trysting-place
The moonstruck lover leads;
Which superstition I should scout
There is more faith in honest doubt
(As Tennyson has pointed out)
Than in those nasty creeds.
But peace and righteousness (St John)
In Roundabout can kiss,
And since that's all that's found about
The pleasant town of Roundabout,
The roads they simply bound about
To find out where it is.
Some say that when Sir Lancelot
Went forth to find the Grail,
Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads
For hope that he would fail;
All roads lead back to Lyonesse
And Camelot in the Vale,
I cannot yield assent to this
Extravagant hypothesis,
The plain, shrewd Briton will dismiss
Such rumours (Daily Mail).
But in the streets of Roundabout
Are no such factions found,
Or theories to expound about,
Or roll upon the ground about,
In the happy town of Roundabout,
That makes the world go round.
-- GK Chesterton
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January 27th, 2010
12:42 am - oh dear, said Harry
Huzzah! The Dresden Files RPG is within measurable distance of being out!
http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2010/01/26/press-release/
(The war with Eastasia is within measurable distance of its end . . . wait, wrong fictional setting.)
Seriously, I'm looking forward to this one. The fact that I've got a bit of writing in it doesn't hurt.
It goes some way to consoling me for having a visit to the dentist this afternoon and finding I have a small cavity at the back right upper area which is going to necessitate another visit in mid-February. Bah. Bah humbug. (Though this cavity didn't seem to be quite so much my fault as others were, which cuts down on the guilt a bit.)
Consoled myself some more by routing my trip home via Hobbycraft and purchasing some 6mm bicones. (Beads, the new drug.) I have this idea, see . . .
---
Happy About Being Old
When I was born, I cried myself;
when I die, others will cry.
When I cried, others were happy;
when others cry, I too should feel joy.
"Alas, it passes away so fast!"
The windblown wheel, rolling like a carriage.
They change the torch, but not the fire:
the later flame is still the older flame.
How laughable, the people of this world,
frantically making offerings to Buddha and immortals!
Spiritual alchemy just exhausts the body,
and bowing in worship hurts your head.
In the end, all return to the vastness,
like wind whose form can never be grasped.
Indeed, when called
that is when I'll go;
with a smile, I follow with the crowd.
-- Yüan Mei, translated by Jonathan Chaves
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January 26th, 2010
01:14 am - since it is not a shounen manga
QA meeting this morning to discuss difficult coding issues for several hours. Thank goodness they only happen once a month. (Still, they're better than they used to be: I remember when they lasted all day.)
We have also begun the discussion over how we arrange the last few bits of annual leave for our team before the end of the financial year, at the end of March. All three of us on our team have at least a few days left: we just need to sort things out between ourselves so that (a) we're all around for important days on the calendar, such dates as involve sign-off on releases or vital meetings, and (b) we don't have two of us off at the same time. Were this a shounen manga, there would be calendar pages floating around in the air and high kicks. Since it is not a shounen manga, we're all being very reasonable and understanding about it.
Really.
---
Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.
-- Bernard Ingham
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January 25th, 2010
02:55 am - okay, so there were a few amusing moments
Managed to get 750 or so words written tonight. A small progression.
I feel guilty these days if I am not producing something. (Unless I get really distracted by the non-productive leisure engaged in at the time.) I'm not sure if this is good or bad.
I also watched Police Academy 6 while knitting, because there was nothing else on, and because there wouldn't be enough time to watch a full one of my DVDs which I might otherwise have watched. Now I really do feel guilty.
---
The beauty of mechanical problems is that they are often visible to the naked and untrained eye. If white smoke is rising from a disk drive, that is probably where the problem lies (unless your disk drive has just elected the new Pope).
-- Computer Wimp, John Bear
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